Flight's loose tongue

Hugo Chav

I'd drop the peerage and let Flight go back to where he belongs, nowhere.

Young & Flight just show how out of touch these guys are with Middle England, they understand Upper England very clearly but for the "grafters" they just can't relate.

What a pair.

David Ossitt

“But his use of the word “breeding” sounds like he’s into eugenics,”

Only to those whose ears are tuned to listening for and are ready to challenge at the merest hint or even slight suggestion of a non intended offence.

Anne Wotana Kaye 1

I don't believe Flight has Foot and Mouth disease. Rather the Conservative Party is in shambles, trying to be a 'party for every season' yet a party for no one. Michael Howard could not accept Flight's outspoken tone, and 'Caring' Dave is really running scared.

Jupiter

Oh no!!!!!!!! Somebody's said what they really think. We can't have that.

sinosimon

and the inaccuracy in either the joseph quote or what flight said is where exactly?

Commentator

Howard's problem is that he is an honest man surrounded by chancers and charlatans. He should point out that the Coalition is implementing the very policies he proposed in 2005. If the Conservatives had been a half-decent opposition, these problems would have been addressed long before they got out of hand.

Rhoda Klapp

Try not to be so wet. Plain speech is to be commended.

Rhoda Klapp

Try not to be so wet. Plain speech is to be commended.

Cjamesk

Truth hurts hey.

Commentator

PS Fraser, you really are a shadow of your former self and your contortions on behalf of your friend Dave are an embarrassment. You sound like a mad medieval inquisitor desperately clutching at the flimsiest of straws in order to concoct a charge of "heresy" against Howard Flight. Desperate stuff...

Nick

Well, when the state treats people like slaves, to be milked for the cash generating abilities, what's not wrong with what he says?

Just like the slave owners of old, we are forced to register in the states stud book, and then have to toil for a large part of the year for the parasitic classes.

Yep, he's right.

denis cooper

Apparently he's apologised, although I can't see why he had to ... and you're not exactly helping the cause of free speech with your:

"But his use of the word “breeding” sounds like he’s into eugenics, and the language – talking about the poor – sounds dodgier still."

He's talking about the probable effects of the benefits system, for God's sake, not proposing a programme of mass sterilisation.

Tiberius

Since Flight has now apologized, I'd say his defenders have been hung out to dry.

The overtones in his old-dodderer speech deserve rebuke in terms from which I hold back for the sake of compassion for the fool.

Guess what the line of attack against the Tories will be on QT this evening? The defence of such events is corrosive in that incrementally it forces the Conservative-led Government away from the more radical options that they could have under consideration.

Woody

If you listen to some of the radio phone-in programmes, then you will find unsurprisingly that the vast marjority agreed with Mr Flight because those of us who live in the real world know his comments to be true.
His choice of words perhaps wasn't the best and just fell into the media 'soundbite' trap. The tories really need to get to grips with the 24-hour media, particularly the BBC.

R2-D2

Flight's choice of words may have been bad, but his point was very valid. And Fraser, being a higher-rate taxpayer does not necessarily mean you are rich if you are supporting a family.

Fergus Pickering

Commentator, are you really suggesting that the Labour government would do anything the Conservative opposition suggested? Do you suppose THIS Government will do anything Rad Ed suggests? Oppositions can do very little UNLESS the Government has a very small majority. Which was not the case then and is not the case now.

I think Flight's a bit of a twit. He can be offensive to the lumpen proletariat if he wants - in fact more power to his elbow - but he ought to know when he is actually doing it. In other words - take a leaf out of Lord Tebbit's book.

Fraser Nelson

R2-D2 - I'm not saying someone on £34k with a mortgage and a family to support is "rich". I'm just saying that someone in the top tenth of earners can't really be called the middle. But because so many journalists and politicos are in this bracket, and define rich as "Lord Ashcroft", folk amongst the top 5pc of earners are considered middle.

Commentator

TrevorsDen must be having the day off so that other dreary echo chamber for the Coalition, Tiberius, steps into the breach...

AF

Golly gosh,
I'm glad he overlooked the imigrants and ethnics
but our trusted media wished he had included them.

Jon Rosenberg

My mother tells the story that in the late 60's she went to a family planing clinic to ask about birth control advice. The nurse in charge inquired after my father profession. When mum said that he was a doctor, the nurse replied, "breed away dear, it's the lower order's we're trying to stop".

Torontory

"We're going to have a system where the middle classes are discouraged from breeding because it's jolly expensive, but for those on benefit there is every incentive. Well, that's not very sensible."

or

We're in danger of introducing a tax and benefits system where the middle classes (higher rate tax payers) are discouraged from having children because it's jolly expensive, but for those on benefit there is every incentive. Well, that's not very sensible.

Other than the word "breeding" what is the difference in the point being made and is it inaccurate?

Santorum

Can anyone provide a link to any evidence that welfare benefits have an impact on family size? I can't find any. Plenty of evidence that religious and cultural factors are linked (so pakistanis and bangladeshis are more likely to have large families). But not the level of welfare payments. I think Flight is talking out of his backside.

anne allan

Howard Flight - the "out of touch toff " - has just had his opinion endorsed by Tesco workers in Dudley, who, I would imagine have been too busy to keep up with the latest Westminster spat.

Simon Too

What he said was deeply offensive to thise seeking to be deeply offended. Everything is deeply offensive to them, anyway. They breed politicians who make a point of saying nothing and doing nothing - but surely we already have enough of those.

TGF UKIP

The problem you are, for obvious reasons, staying well clear of Fraser is the metropolitan progressive agenda, to which Cameron is a fully paid up subscriber, to place a limit on acceptable expressed thought and language.

All these reactions by Cameron guarantee that Labour and their BBC and other media allies can and will continue to regularly drum up a remark by some Tory public, or even semi public figure, which can be distorted so that yet another hand wringing, cringing disowning condemnation can be extracted from him.

Not that Dave minds that in the least, as it all plays to his and the Labour Mole's ongoing de-torification of the Tory Party.

The best thing the Tory right can do is say what they think and be prepared to argue their case. As for what line to take on that ludicrous show Question Time, well Kelvin McKenzie demonstrated just how it can be done on this evening R4 PM programme.

Norman Dee

The guy from the Evening Standard who conducted the interview has just been interviewed himself on Sky News, and he has made it completely clear that the context in which this is being represented is totally false, he also speaks highly of Flight, pointing out he is not a backwwods toff, but a Grammar school boy, who served in the Army and had a brilliant career in business. In other words just what we really want, an honest politician who has experienced the world, not the career toff who cannot keep his word. No names mentioned !
But, guess what, having been told what happened, did Sky change it's negative headline at the top of the hour, no, well "politician is right" doesn't really have a ring to it does it?

TGF UKIP

Careful Commentator, Tiberius is very sensitive, you know, and he does take his devotion to his beloved young Dave so seriously. So much so, that I'm rather surprised the house mag haven't given him his own slot here.

Pot Head

The child benefit reform to which Howard Flight is referring does not hit the middle class. It only hits those who are in the the top ten per cent of the income distribution.

Mr Flight's argument appears to be that it is a bad idea for 90 per cent of taxpayers to have children

strapworld

Tiberius and Trevors Den are one and the same!

Tiberius

When you feel you're losing the argument, play the man not the ball, eh, TGF and Commentator.

It is beyond comprehension that some people refuse to acknowledge that winning power in a Western democracy in the age of mass communication requires a fair degree of nuanced argument.

There are varying degrees to this refusal, from the mere frustrated to the outright barking. An example appeared on here the other day when the ideologically pure Verity suggested that the US bomb north western Pakistan even though the government told them they couldn't. And as we all know, the Lady of Truth doesn't do irony.

Flight may well be right, just as Enoch Powell was right when he expressed his concerns about immgration after seeing at first hand the problems in India. But in both cases their openness, coupled with inflammatory language, has resulted in their causes going backwards. They didn't pay respect to the politics involved.

As For Kelvin McKenzie, TGF, I admire him just as you seem to. I also admire Melanie Phillips. But they can only say what they do because they aren't running for office.

Commentator

There is at least a country mile of difference between what Howard Flight said and what Enoch Powell said, Tiberius. Given your apparent inability to work that out, I don't think it lies in your mouth to lecture anyone about nuance. Flight used the word "breeding" which only has a derogatory connotation if (like you and your beloved Dave, the Fake Tory) you are fully signed up to the Frankfurt School of Linguistic Stalinism.

daifromwales

Flight is telling the truth, and the reaction to his statement was totally predictable. So Tiberius is partly correct in his implied assertion that politicians must not tell the truth because the Public cannot accept it. Flight spoke out because nobody else has said any such thing in any way - and the middle classes are unable to reproduce themselves. Only the very rich (like Flight himself) and the very poor can afford large families. And the matter has gone unremarked by 'moderate speaking' politicians - the elephant in the room.

Baron

what is it exactly Flight said you’re objecting to, then? It’s bleeding obvious that the incentive to breed for those who won’t qualify for the benefit will be reduced.

what one should object to is for the Government to tax us all then give a bribe to anyone it picks (here to encourage breeding). Social engineering at its most pure best, I reckon. Have said it before, here comes again. Our taxes should only pay for the country’s administration and the services we cannot arrange ourselves. That’s it. This half-baked communist construct in which more and more people are bleating for the Government’s, i.e. someone else’s money, to fund their lives corresponds neatly with the set-up run by the Red Menace of the East. If we carry on with it, we’ll end up as they did.

the guy Thomas Jefferson got it in one: ‘A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have’.

Edward

I read Joseph's comment - presumably made in the mid seventies - and suddenly realised the cause of the coarse, ugly culture which now prevails.

Anne Wotana Kaye 1

Anne Allan: I agree. I also saw that programme, and everything Flight said is correct.
Santorum: In the "sink estates" professional mothers produce as quickly and as often as possible. Breeding? Rutting, more like it.

TGF UKIP

No quarrels with "nuanced argument", Tiberius but there is a world of difference between that and hoisting a white flag to one's ideological opponents.

Where I suspect others beside myself have a such a large problem with Cameron is that all the gesturing, posturing and "progressive" language might be acceptable if it was just that, and behind it all lay a politician with any sort of consevative agenda but that is plainly not the case with Dave.

He now carries with him just too much "progressive" and egalitarian liberal baggage for even you to be still clinging to the Ugly Duckling theory, Tiberius.

You have plainly nailed your colours to the Cameron mast so firmly and for so long that I fully accept that you cannot acknowledge who and what he really is. However, there is one aspect of all this that I do find genuinely puzzling.

While I do gently razz you from time to time as one of Dave's very own One Continent brigade I do know you to be a rock solid conservative and an avowed admirer and disciple of Mark Steyn so I do find it genuinely mystifying that you are such an enthusiastic apologist for a politician so far towards the opposite end of the Tory spectrum if, indeed, he lies within it at all.

Tiberius

Where have I said Powell and Flight said the same thing, Commentator? But as you raise the matter, they both used language which much of the media judges
derogatory, and has no problem broadcasting that judgement to the voting public.

Tiberius

TGF: if Cameron was the persona you depict, we would not have Gove, Pickles, and IDS pursuing their respective policies.

But you are right: we both want to get to the same place. We just differ on the means to get there.

lids

Crikey, the moment I finally agree with a Tory in the year 2010 and he gets jumped on and forced to apologise.

Going back to my normal topic, we now have the prospect of a rump of students being handed a free pass to university, and very rich students handed a free pass from their parents.

Let me guess, once again the middle classes squeezed.
What is the point in voting Conservative? The same people Flight was sympathizing with. Didn't he realise Cameron is not a Conservative?

TGF UKIP

Tiberius, the presence of Gove, Pickles and IDS demonstrates, I'm afraid, precisely zip. Pickles has forced his way to the top but was kept well out of the inner circle even when Party Chairman(and since when has Dave given a monkey's about the Party since they were conned into electing him.) IDS, according to one very authoritative source, is only there as a price of peace with Tory MPs after all the sell-outs to the LibDems, and as for Gove, he may well be Henry Jackson but he has all the makings of a walking political disaster as well as being an unfortunate and unwitting victim of the John Gummer syndrome.

Perhaps, you should instead consider who Dave keeps most close and who provides the architecture for the de-torification project.

Major Plonquer 1

Suggesting that Flight is 'out of touch with ordinary people' is bonkers. However, this leads to a much DARKER conclusion.

Visit any pub the length and breadth of the land and strike up a conversation with any of the people. Will you find ANYONE who will disagree with Flight? Not on your nellie. Flight's problem is that he's chosen to take a stand that is universally popular with the vast majority of Britons. So how is that bad?

And the DARKER side? Well it would seem that none of the austere journalists reporting in this rag takes the time to visit their local pub. Journalsist who don't frequent pubs?

There is something very wrong with our society if journalists don't spend time in pubs. Maybe we should bring back smoking and ban Twitter.

HFC

The Major said:

'...none of the austere journalists reporting in this rag takes the time to visit their local pub. Journalsist who don't frequent pubs?

There is something very wrong with our society if journalists don't spend time in pubs.'

Perhaps they do, but only the pubs where journalists gather to validate one another's views?

Hysteria

seen on the back of a truck in West Texas today (25th November)

"I'm good and tired of supporting welfare mothers and their babies.....and their babies.....and their babies..........."

The current social, political and economic mess will be sorted out by politicians having the vision and message to take the people with them - or it will be sorted out in a much more messy process by individuals outside of the political environment....

Ruby Duck

Seems to me it's a pretty good thing that any of us are still breeding.

Mr Adequate

Joseph: spot on
Flight: spot on
Young: spot on
Fraser: way off the mark

Pot Head

TGF - I'm not convinced that the top 10 of earners are the middle classes, rather we make up your despised Metropolitan liberal elites.

Do you really want to use the benefits system to encourage us to breed more Isabella's and Giles's, to go on student demo's, buy Priuses and then get job's at the BBC?

Neil Turner

BBC's 5Live Drive and Radio 4's PM yesterday decided this story was more important than

- Irish debt problems
- North /South Korea at war
- the Ashes
- the demise of Global Warming (again!)

Peter Allan's blearing was pitiful. Why do we pay them ?

revolution

Can anyone really argue that Joseph all those years ago and now Flight got it wrong when far and away the majority will agree with them.
The problem now aggravated during Blair's disastrous years are the huge numbers of non working alien immigrants sucking the welfare system while breeding like dogs.
Flight for PM because a strong personality is required to deal with the mess left by Tony the phony Blair and Gordon the clown Brown.

munich15040

When are we going to stop playing the left's PC game?

We need to throw their "outrage" back in their faces and put an end to this censoring of our terms of discussion.

It's really sickening to see that all the hysteria is over his language and that the problem so well highlighted is not being discussed at all.

The right need to robustly defend such remarks to signal that the enfeebling socialism of the past 13 years ends now.

John David Barnett

I condemn Howard Flight, but only for apologising. His original remark was spot on.

Jo

Flight's choice of word was insensitive and not clever. However, in the quote he was using breeding when he talked about middle classes. Reading the Guardian almost all commenters assume he was referring to the poor.

They get hung up on him equating the poor to animals. He said no such thing.

On BBC news at ten last night the clip after the Flight coverage was of Tesco workers telling MIlliE that in their street some people don't work and just have more kids. Ed nodded sagely and agreed. Tell me why the Tesco lady's comment was different from Flights please?

oldtimer

Out of curiosity I checked out my Oxford Dictionary for the definition of the verb "breed".

It says "cause (an animal) to produce offspring, especially in a controlled and organised way".

Did not the IFS itself find that the birthrate was higher among those on benefits?

Was there not a shocking case of the mother of several children (by several men) faking the kidnap of one of her children?

Did we not all see, recently, the case of those very large families whose sole purpose in life appeared to be to keep the benefit gravy train on the rails?

Were we not all recently worked into a lather by the media about all of this to whip up support for the "most radical reforms to welfare" since Beveridge?

It seems to me that Mr Flight said it as it is.

Catesby

Flight is utterly wrong. Take one example of a child of a single mum - David Davis, now compare with the offspring of a well off couple - Paris Hilton. 'nuff said?

Tiberius

"...precisely zip".

I'd say that is a kind of sophistry.

Revolution Now

Ha! You (the Tory supporters) really are the nasty party, however NOTHING you think or say will stop me having children. I'm currently unemployed with 3 children, living on benefits, actually I get more on benefits than my last job. Keep paying those taxes suckers.

Percy

Fraser, this stuff is pretty lame; get back to giving us your rehashed view of economics, I like a good laugh.

stephen maybery

The cardinal sin of politics is to call a spade a bloody shovel and this is what the noble Lord has done, silly man. In the real world, the one foreign to our political elite and the the professional mendicants of the welfare state,it is readily understood that if you can't feed them, then don't breed them.

Val Duncan

Of course Flight was right and they ALL know it! They have always known it and encouraged it because a lower intellect population is easier to manipulate.
There is, however, a mark of danger in the fact that although a less intellegent population can be used easily... when they (the population) suddenly cotton on to the fact they are being peed on its not likely they will go to the debate to work it out. They will more likely pull the entire house down!
It's worth the risk, however, because if we had intellegent Brits we may start thinking for ourselves... and we can't have that, can we?

yank

Those Isles must have been a beautiful place, back when you had the freedom of speech.

It is really a shame, that our ability to dialogue has been stripped away, and even the tools of our dialogue... the language.

Once, you lot could be depended upon to vouchsafe all those. No longer. Now, even allegedly "conservative" publications such as this one scuttle away from them, and are sure to conform with all diktat.

Bad enough that the seething mob here falls into this censorship now and again, but for it to be championed and enabled by this rag is simply unforgivable. Shame on you. Others would have been ashamed to draw their next breath without at least the attempt to smash this poisonous regimen to atoms.

Not you. It's just more chatter for the chattering class, thought-free and easily overlaid across the partisan-bannered field. It's a living, I guess. For now.

TGF UKIP

Oh Pot Head, dear Pot Head has it perhaps not occured to you that the trans generational pattern is for offspring to rebel against the orthodoxy of their parents. Thus it is quite likely that in ten years time or so your Isabellas and Giles will be making the likes of Verity and myself look like a couple of old ultra pc lefties and their bedrooms will be festooned with pictures of President Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and President Palin.

As for the Toyota Prius those still remaining on the road will then, as now, be suitable targets for "the finger", with the vehicle of choice and desire for the youth wing of the British version of The Tea Party being a Corvette.

Edward McLaughlin

Political Correctness 7 - Democratic Free Speech 0

And they always get to play at home.

Ali C

But the peer spoke the truth.

However uncomfortable that looks to Guardian readers.

cecile

//!!!!!!!! Somebody's said what they really think. We can't have that//

We can have that - but not in party politics. Always been the case.

JohnAnt

Tax relief for those who get married and have children has been abolished. Only the wealthy can afford to take the hit.
Benefit incentives for those who decide to have a child in order to get a free lifetime ride of leisure from the taxpayer have been only marginally chipped away.
Flight is right.

Edward McLaughlin

Pot Head

I'm trying to figure out how someone gets to be in any elite, liberal or otherwise, and yet is unable to master the use of that most basic punctuation: the apostrophe.