10 Responses

1. Howard says:

   January 15 2010 at 12:07 pm

   This is great. It should be the Labour poster campaign for the 2010 election.
2. Carol Wilcox says:

   January 15 2010 at 12:27 pm

   Than 🙂 ks, Richard. I’ve posted it on my Facebook account. I know at least one friend who will hate it. 🙂
3. mad foetus says:

   January 15 2010 at 12:38 pm

   One thing is clear: the forthcoming election will be entirely negative and based upon each major party attacking the other, rather than putting forward positive policies of their own. The Tories at least have the advantage of not being led by somebody who appears to be widely hated by those who have worked most closely with him.
   • Richard Murphy says:

     January 15 2010 at 1:02 pm

     Give it time….

     Which admittedly Labour have not got
4. mad foetus says:

   January 15 2010 at 4:19 pm

   I thought this poster was funny at first. But it is actually more interesting than that. Because if the poster were to be used, it would reinforce one of the key Tory messages: namely, that there is a divide between the public and private sectors and the public sector has it easy. The poster would be interpreted as confirmation that the “you” it refers to is public sector workers: and they are all that Labour cares about. In other words, it creates a divide between “us” and “them”, with the Tories siding with the majority of hard working private sector workers, whereas Labour is obsessed with keeping the minority of public sector workers in cushy, non-jobs.

   I would be very interested to see an official Labour response to this poster: I suspect they would hate it for exactly those reasons.
5. Richard Murphy says:

   January 15 2010 at 5:21 pm

   @mad foetus

   Only a very, very perverted form of thinking could come up with that logic

   Or someone from Jersey, of course

   It’s also known by all but a) The Daily mail and b) bigots that the so called divide between state and private workers is a myth. Do you know many families include both and many swap from one to the other without apparent problem?

   All are people trying to do a good job

   And 98% do not give a damn who owns their organisation – so long as it is a good employer and meets need as effectively as possible

   The NHS could not be privatised and do that – as any reasonable person knows
6. mad foetus says:

   January 15 2010 at 5:58 pm

   Richard,

   Keep your hair on – I didn’t say that was what I believed, just that that was how I think it could and would be interpreted. As you know, I have worked in both the public and private sectors and I think the individual employer is much more relevant than the arbitary divide between the two: so I’m with you on the 98% bit.

   One can have a thought and articulate it without necessarily subscribing to it. From a labour perspective I think if it replaced the “throwing millions like you onto the dole queue” with “turning a downturn into a catastrophe/a recession into a depression” it would be more effective. A phrase like “millions like you” immediately provokes the question “am I one of the people this is talking to” and given that the tories are perceived as planning to cut 500,000 public sector jobs, the answer for many people will be “no, this is about public sector jobs, it doesn’t affect me”. Which would be the wrong response. Which is why it should not be a labour poster (unless you are a tory, in which case you would like this poster).

   Any clearer?
   • Richard Murphy says:

     January 15 2010 at 6:55 pm

     Yes
7. Dan says:

   January 16 2010 at 12:39 am

   @mad foetus

   I think you’re in the “puzzled by economics” group.

   Both the private, and public sectors are dependant on government spending.
8. David Rotherham says:

   January 16 2010 at 7:53 am

   Yet millions of private sector jobs do ultimately rely on government spending: Outsourced public services, suppliers of equipment, suppliers of consumer goods and services to the ex-civil servants. The ripples of the cuts would spread out through the national economy in exactly the same way as a Keynesian boost.