#99

Honestly wasn’t very politically minded and probably quite accidental Tory until circa 2012 when I had an enormous argument with my ex when I told her I “didn’t like to think about politics” (or something along those lines). She rightly tore me a new one and I’ve been miserably aware of how absolutely fucked everything is ever since

#100

Think I actually said “politics doesn’t affect me” or something equally donkey brained.

#101

Yeah I wonder how much of my early thoughts on it come from becoming aware of politics at the end of the Blair era and the disillusionment with the New Labour project, felt like real “a plague on both their houses” stuff. I guess for a lot of people my age or thereabouts the Iraq war was a big catalyst for political engagement but I don’t remember really thinking about it at all, I was way too interested in my own made up worlds and stuff, just completely materially insulated.

#102

That front cover:

image
image750×1334 66.1 KB

I need to track down a copy of this.

1 Like
#103

I love stuff like this. Who are those people? What are they doing now? I want to know about them

1 Like
#104

I saw a great one like this in Birmingham library- portraits of people in the early 70s and they’d tracked them down and interviewed them about their life in between

3 Likes
#105

I feel like this is a really easy trap to fall into because so much political coverage seems designed to obfuscate the process so it seems impenetrable to people who don’t read the Telegraph or whatever. Feels like it’s designed so that people don’t make the connection between why things are shit and those posh guys shouting at each other on the news every Wednesday.

6 Likes
#106

Yes! 100% And that was exactly me until that argument. I’m so, so glad we had it

#107

Growing up during the Miners’ Strike and under Thatcher in NW England.

My mum was the first of her family to go to university and my dad left school at 14 and was a massive leftie. He died when I was 7 and my mum remarried and we became pretty middle class. I think I had a backlash against the tweeness of it all and some notion of wanting to follow in my dad’s footsteps.

Then I went to university and all the interesting people were left wing.

Mainly though, being right wing is not very nice and even though we are all to some extent products of our environment, actively choosing to be a Tory is a shit choice.

4 Likes
#108

I hadn’t heard of Jarrow until moving to Newcastle, but shortly after the move I met someone from there, and he mentioned that it often comes up in geography textbooks as a “town in decline”… including the textbooks he had in school at Jarrow.

And that seems really shitty to me. What does that do to the mentality of kids in Jarrow, who are taught that where they live is considered by the whole country to be beyond any kind of state help. Yeah, it’s accurate that it is a town with a lot of issues, but being singled out would surely make you so disillusioned with everything? And make you feel even more self-conscious about your upbringing than you would do already?

Edit: Just realised this maybe comes off a little negative. Sorry for the unasked-for Jarrow anecdote!

#109

Whilst there was certainly an awareness of Jarrow being something of a ‘poster child’ for post industrial towns in decline; it was taught to us in a relatively positive light - I remember a distinct focus on the Jarrow Crusade, which was very much conveyed with a sense of pride.

Not at all!

1 Like
#111

That’s good to hear, certainly better than I assumed. And aye the marches are fascinating!

#112

If you ever go to the Baltic Gallery they’ve got a copy in the library. That’s how I first came across it. then I set up an alert and got a copy when someone put one on gumtree.

1 Like
#113

Scunthorpe

#114

No obligation to answer if you don’t want, but I’d be interested in knowing if that was like a lightbulb moment or if it still took time for you to get more engaged?

#115

He said it’s an ex

1 Like
#116

Mostly my powerful intellect

4 Likes
#117

I hate you Epimer.

#118

I get that a lot

1 Like
#119

Always think part of their anger is that all the absolutely shittest culture is the right wing stuff. Right wing comedy and music, all just complete trash

3 Likes