Arturo and highandet, goodbye, i'm sure you can find a home in the socialist workers party.

Yes well everyone's entitled to at least and opinion - so "vocational House" seems like a good nick name for the Lords, I daresay. Providing of course we don't end up with the second House being totally elected -the concept of a vocational Lords has a certain ring to it, I think. Thus the "locational House" in modern trendy parlance might indicate the power of the Commons in terms of where it's at, so to speak ie embedded in those to whome our M.P's are first accountable and responsible to (and for) - if only they had a proper job description.

Get it?

Labour needs the Blue collar workers, but the Blue collar workers don't need Labour.

A fair proportion of the Labour vote has always considered how to cast its vote on an economic basis.
It is only fear of the Tories that motivates this highly volatile rump of voters to choose Labour. Very grudgingly.
Most of the clientele of British Workingmen's Clubs that we met over the years held racist, anti-women, and not far-off fascist views. Even public sector workers of our acquaintance were always anxious to escape to the private sector or start a small enterprise.
Pro-empire and Royalist to a man.
However, when it came to knowing which side their bread was buttered on you had no problem.
In spite of this economic certainty, a small war a la the Falklands, Suez or now Libya, and all bets are off.
The natural working-class Tory has always existed but since the coming of women workers in numbers this element has been reduced.
It took the Tories some time to realise that that death-grip of a mortgage inclined holders of this debt to vote the right way. Apparently the Tories were afraid of upsetting their middle-class voters. The spread of pensions to workers at large, and not just pen-pushers, was motivated by the same reasoning. Then council-housing!
And now the landlord is back - big-time. Ex-council housing is going at a discount and former occupiers, tenants transformed into householders, are selling to aspirational buyers cum landlords. Of course, in some cases the owner of the ex-council house is not the original tenant who once held a tenancy agreement with the local council. No, a blood relative, in-law or speculator more likely. There have been private tenancies for some time and housing authorities have even been forced to lodge the homeless in such premises.
Fortunately, well-to-do parents are purchasing starter homes for their offspring in such localities. Keeps the standard on the up. Some local psephologists advise us that these young householders either do not vote or vote Tory - a wasted vote?

Chav

Blue Labour a "mixture of patriotism and populism." Patriotism, "The last refuge of a scoundrel" - Oscar Wilde. Populism, "The first refuge of opportunism." - Anon. Blue Labour r 'The Cling Ons' clinging on 2 New Labour. Time for Progressive Labour.

Hugh Markey says:

"Most of the clientele of British Workingmen's Clubs that we met over the years held racist, anti-women, and not far-off fascist views."

Translated into English, this means "(a) Most working class males know instinctively what the more educated pretend they don't know: that men and women have different capabilities and different roles.

(b) It was the inner city working class, not the Polly Toynbees and Tony Benns of this world and the other over privileged bourgy leftie denizens of Hampstead , who were were turned into strangers in their own country by mass immigration, and object to this fact

Even public sector workers of our acquaintance were always anxious to escape to the private sector or start a small enterprise.

Pro-empire and Royalist to a man.