That's not true. The left think that meritocracies are a MYTH (because they are), not that they're bad.

If everyone had access to the same opportunities and one's cultural capital had absolutely no bearing on their life chances then a meritocratic society would be fair and just. But they don't. So they're not.

Do you think you'll ever turn conservative Jack?

I'm predicting you will when you get into your 30s.

I told my ex-housemate and a few friends about a year ago during a conversation about this very subject (the idea that people get more right-wing as they're older) that if it ever happens - if I so much as even say Dey Terk Er Jerbs or something about benefits, let alone consider voting for a Tory - they have my permission to assault me until I snap the **** out of it and start flying the red flag again :joker:

I would sincerely hope that the last six years of my education, everything I've read, researched and learned, will ensure it won't happen in the way it does to some people.

What opportunities are some people missing out on, and why?

I never thought I'd ever vote Tory when I was around your age, but at the last election, I saw no other option. Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of May, but there was no other option for me.

Even when I was "left wing" I still believed in things like flat+low taxes, capped immigration, and maintaining the countryside. I guess it didn't occur to me that letting people keep the money they earn, not overcrowding ourselves, and environmental conservation fell on either side of the political scale ;)

Taxation is a difficult one really. In theory I'm not against low taxation on earnings, I'm not against the ability to be a high earner, so long as the existence of high earners isn't detrimental to those on lower income or the disabled and vulnerable. So in other words, so long as there is abundant money to support those who need it - and to support those working in the lower tiers of the system that makes it possible for ANYONE to thrive - then low income tax is fine. If a comfortable (not just subsistence) existence is impossible for those on low income / for the disabled, then there's a problem that has to be addressed. However there SHOULD in theory be ways of ensuring that everyone can be provided a good standard of living without overly affecting the ability to earn higher wages; e.g. property / land value taxes.

Oh and capped immigration / maintaining the countryside really does have nothing to do with left/right politics. People seem to be increasingly using the terms as blanket or tribal descriptions of a whole range of things (e.g. Gay rights somehow falling under "the left"? It makes no sense whatsoever.)

Nazism did start as a radical movement popular with workers in the 1920s, same is true of Italian Fascism and Spanish Falangism in their infancy. That said Nazism was always obsessed with race in a way that the other two were not initially. If you look at the Nazi partys first statement of principals there is a fair bit of stuff that would appeal to 'the left'. Gradually all three movements had their radical side diluted into standard ultraconservative stuff though when they became the parties of the middle classes and the wealthy as well and when they wanted to position themselves against communism

A working class white boy from a single-parent family and a failing school in Bradford will never have the same access to opportunities that a middle class white girl from a nuclear family and attending a private school in Chelsea will. Whether it's access to extra curricular tutoring, a better-performing school with fewer internal issues, a better locality that isn't a hotbed of crime and/or anti-social behaviour, exposure to a wider and richer vocabulary, as well as high art, or being well-travelled. All of these things and more have a significant impact in later life.

Yes, there are ALWAYS exceptions to the rule, no doubt there will be people who respond to this with their own anecdotes. But that's all they are, exceptions to the rule. In general terms, one's background, social status, cultural and social capital, financial (in)stability, geographic location (both on a national and international scale), and often gender, ethnicity and (dis)ableism - or all or some of these at their intersections play a huge and undeniable role in one's life chances. To pretend otherwise is disingenuous.

Didn't you once say you'd never voted Labour though? Or was that someone else? Because if so, I don't think we're starting from the same position.

That sounds like a centrist.

It always makes me laugh when I hear people who are passionate about conserving the environment also being proponents of capitalism. You cannot be a capitalist and care about the environment. It's a walking contradiction, and misses the fundamental link between environmental damage and the pursuit of capital at any cost.

No never voted Labour Jack, usually voted fringe parties. I've voted liberal (may have been SDP in those day) I've voted UKIP. I even once voted National front (I just felt we were going so extreme one way, that we needed to balance things out, I was young and dumb). Yet I've lived in a labour constituency all my life.

That boy can still get into university, and he'll get more financial help to do so, as students from well off families get smaller/no help with university expenses. He take a college course instead of A Levels if his secondary school is that bad. You don't have to go on a gap yah to get far, plenty of people don't.

I will admit the apocryphal boy might have fewer advantages than a minority kid who would otherwise be in the same shoes, as there are BAME only schemes to help working class minorities, but not the same for working class white kids.

When did I say I was a capitalist? Or were you talking in general?

Right but this would be an example of socialist policy in action; people from lower income backgrounds getting extra financial help to access higher education. There are various other policies to help those who are disadvantaged in other ways to gain access to university, too... But these are left and center policies - harder right policies would offer no such help to the financially disadvantaged and people would be expected to somehow secure their own funding, or simply miss out. So what you're giving here, really, is an example of how we DO already address some of the inherent imbalances in the system.

Maybe the working classes should stop voting labour?

I touched on this in a comment that has been 'ethnically clensed' from this now sticky topic.... not sticky enough as most of my comments have slid off!
Can't be bothered to add anymore.

Lol not sure how I accidentally made this a sticky but apparently I did, pleased to say it is now unstuck