I get the impression that Marine Le Pen has knocked the harder edges off the NF/NR’s policies so they present themselves more as a France 1st, economically protectionist, eurosceptic party. It is not surprising in the current political climate that many “ordinary” people will find this message attractive, as they did with Trump in the USA.
The NF in the UK is a much more overtly racist - indeed white supremacist - organization who don’t mind being very clear on the point. I don’t see that anyone can really claim to support them because they like their stance on Law and Order.
Barbara, I can’t claim to know the answer, but having worked in prisons for five years, I can suggest some pointers worth considering by the open-minded. I have a very high regard for Prison Officers and non-custody prison staff. Humane and hard-working.
Many prisons have intolerable conditions, suited perhaps to Victoria working men, who at least had a cell to themselves. Sanitation is squalid and degrading. Staff shortages mean excessive lock-down times, with many prisons having to keep inmates in their cells, 23 hours day. Such conditions would drive most people mad.
POs have liitle time to spend with inmates, time which is essential for the morale of both, so relations become strained, suspicious and hostile. There is scarcely any time for recreational activity or rehabilitative training.
Prisoners use drugs to combat the unremitting stress of prison life, not for fun. Many POs turn à blind eye to it because it keeps prisoners from rioting or worse. Some POs collude and cooperate in smuggling, some under duress (blackmail, we know where your kids live) and some for a quiet life. The more drugs are confiscated, the more ungovernable prisons will become, and staff will leave. This is NOT just a Peter Goble lunatic leftie theory, I know it happens, and so do most prison staff, including the governers (and the politicians), but they feed the law and order narrative to get votes.
Many prisoners are mentally ill, mentally impaired, or illiterate and socially inept. They are mainly not evil. The general public has very little idea of the typical prisoner, or the conditions in which they are confined. Stereotypes are as often misguided fantasies than approximations to “reality”.
We (Brits) could learn from the prison systems in other European countries where prisoners are treated with more dignity, and there is an ethos of cooperation and trust in the systems,and less recidivism (repeated crime).
Very interesting Peter and of course it is logical.
Many of these people would be mentally in a bad place.
But once they come out it is almost impossible for them to leave
the drugs alone.
When I lived in London there was dealing every where above me, next door
to me…I did also live in All SAINTS road during the 70s and I was an innocent
party to what went on with the chap whom I held the restaurant drinks licence with
in Operation Julie.
Maybe not every one knew about that.
All Saints Road, Barbara? In Winson Green, Birmingham? I was senior nursing officer at All Saints Hospital in the 1970s and lived “over the shop” and hard up against the wall of HMP Winson Green. Two of our kids went to Foundry Road Infants School. Happy Days!
Please do not make such assumptions. What Sandy thinks / believes / votes for is her own affair and this is not the place for you to question her. There have been some increasingly personal comments on SF lately (not including you with this in any way) but it’s made us aware that we need to have another ‘crackdown’ - there is ZERO tolerance for personal comments on SF. Please can we all remember that.
Perhaps close this down maybe it is a bad idea. We are not able to be open enough to ask questions.
Why cant you accept that people have different experiences etc?
A question which I answered not bothering if it was a sharp dig or not.
I just answered.
Barbara, I think that being utterly deprived of one’s liberty is in itself a very severe punishment. Away from one’s family, no personal privacy, imagine it, 24 hours a day, every hour of every single day under the watch of others.
It is only when under lock and key and totally restricted in one’s movements that one realises how much one freedom is so taken-for-granted, how humiliating, how utterly disempowering.
Under such circumstances people seldom need to be encouraged to reflect and reform, and prison allows that, but the time has to organised to allow reflective conversations with officers, who have those human skills in plenty. But there has to be mutual respect. One doesn’t learn much from a teacher who despises one, or punishes one on a whim. POs dislike being seen as dispensers of punishment, and prisoners find ways of getting back at them. Remember, POs have homes and families “on the out”, and prisoners have allies “on the out” too.
Prisoners have very few ‘privileges’ and have to earn these by a system of reward and punishment similar to those used to train circus animals, and not much more subtle. But there is inadequate time and staff for even those in most prisons.
Prison reform is long, long overdue IMO, but being soft on crime is politically suicidal, until the person-in-the-street learns from the evidence about the failure of current policy on crime and crime-prevention
I agree a nightmare of the highest order would be to be imprisoned.
It is the end of life as you know it.
By the time they leave prison they are totally addicted to drugs.
I would go absolutely Nuts if locked up.
Being claustrophbic! (which developed only a few years ago).
Couldn’t have the door or volet of my room shut, when in Hospital.
I’m making no assumptions, her comments about Labour made her position quite clear. The far right parties are only an evolution of the central right so it’s not surprising that some NF policies should hold some appeal. That’s how they work. Nothing sinister about my post at all, I’m sorry you read anything into my comment.
That’s no joke, Bill. Do you think anything triggered it? Is it in any way connected with your happiness and fearlessness on the ocean’s mighty but restless bosom?
I’m not offended at all. I was trying to point out that some political ideas just baffle me and I have no idea who would want to vote in a way which is so opposite to my own point of view on the Right. But I’m interested in that other opinion. My point about Labour was that, from where I stand, I just don’t ‘get it’ why somebody would vote for the Left. But I’m not standing where you are, don’t have your experiences, … but your point of view and vote is as equal as mine and the ‘moccasins’ quote covers this. Likewise the Extreme Right … I don’t ‘get it’ although accept it’s a far extension of my right-of-centre beliefs. Likewise Communism, being Extreme Left … easy to see an insidious drip-drip-drip of one’s beliefs getting further and further to the edges. (slightly off-topic: Actually my Welsh grandfather was a Communist leader in the South Wales coal mines … and I totally understand why, based on the appalling conditions in which they worked and lived. He was so well though of that he visited Germany or Russia (not sure which) in the Thirties on a sort of trade union mission. When he returned he tore up his Communist papers and told my father “I have seen Communism in action and it will never work”. ) But back to the original question, ‘what type of person votes NF?’, I don’t think any of us who vote elsewhere can answer. But I’m not sure that insulting them is productive … I say, disagree with their politics but don’t insult the person.
Triggered when building a bungalow in Scotland Pete, I was putting the C/H pipes in under the floor and got stuck in wriggling thro’ a ‘sleeper wall’.
My wee Jack Russel tried to help licking my face, didn’t help!, it was getting dark, out in ‘the sticks’, thought I was there for at least the night, after a long while, managed to work out backwards, but never liked being ‘contained’ since.
Left, right kick centre a little like an Argentine Tango;
But what is really with straight steps is that M La Pens
not over keen on us and she would happily give us the
marching routine.
