Eighthours wrote:'Champagne socialist' is not a meaningless phrase at all.
Depends on who it is used against. Usually it is a right winger trying to discredit anybody on the left that has a bit of money which does makes the phrase meaningless.
Used against somebody advocating full redistribution of wealth it would be fair enough bit it isn’t when it is used against somebody that just wants a fairer society.
Polly Toynbee rails against the evil Tories and the rich while sipping on pina coladas in her Tuscan villa, and preaches social equality while sending her kids to a private school.
I have no idea what Polly Toynbee says and her opinions are meaningless to me. If she is being hypocritical then rail against her, not everyone on her side of the political divide.
If you don't practise what you preach, then you're a hypocrite. I recognise that this may seem unfair where politicians are concerned - imagine the outcry if Ed Miliband had used a private hospital for his nose op! It would have been his absolute right to do so, but the imagery would have had a terrible political impact. And why? Because the rhetoric about how bad privatisation is comes from the left themselves, so it's their own fault when the likes of Toynbee get called on their hypocrisy.
I am getting the impression you don’t like Toynbee.
For me it all comes down to what people argue against. Miliband going private for an operation would make him a hypocrite I agree. Miliband using the postal service probably wouldn’t, he might not like the privatisation but he would have little choice when it comes to posting a letter. Miliband wanting to tax millionaires is fine as long as he is not tax dodging himself. Etc etc.
You can be as rich as you want as a left winger, but if you slag off the concept of private services before using them yourself (hello, Polly!), if you rail against tax avoidance while having your accountants arrange complex off-shore arrangements (hello, The Guardian!) or if one of your biggest donors is Pricewaterhousecoopers (hello, Labour!) then you deserve every bit of opprobrium thrown at you.
Polly again?
How many left wingers slag off the concept of private services? What private services are we talking about? Examples like Miliband going for private medical treatment or something else? Somebody like Diane Abbott would be a hypocrite imo for sending her kids to private school but she wouldn’t be for using a supermarket. All of this depends on what the people have said and what private services we are talking about.
If the Guardian uses off-shore tax then I agree they are hypocrites.
Why is Labour receiving donations from Pricewaterhousecoopers a problem? That’s a genuine questions as I am not aware of what the issue is there.
It wasn't an old TV box, by the way. That model was released in 2014 and currently has an RRP of £799.
He should have written it on the box of a 14 inch black and white portable.
A 2014 TV would be an old box now. Who keeps their boxes? He could have picked it up out of a skip for all we know.