May Kasahara
take me to the feeling
Funny, I was only watching Thomas this morning and reflecting (not for the first time) on how they are all happy slaves. It gives me the fear.
Thomas the Imperialist Tank Engine
- Thread starter Firky
- Start date
Poot
My wife thinks I work too hard
But kids themselves are shockingly Conservative! Talk about seeing things in black and white... They are the personification of "you're either with me or against me". Give them a chance and they'll have closed down the mines, privatised everything and there would be 3 million unemployed. It is hardly surprising that their viewing material reflects this...
weltweit
Well-Known Member
We took sprog to a railway in the Forest of Dean when Thomas was there. Then we discovered that Awdrey, the son of the original author, who wrote the later books, himself in his 70s I would estimate was there signing books. We got some books signed but sprog could not really understand what this white haired old man had to do with Thomas and was most unimpressed!
kittyP
Pluviophile
but 
as I think you may be right.DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
Trivially true (I'm not sure who isn't a product of their time), but I'm not sure why that's supposed to be a defence of their views?
I mean we're not talking about, for example, homophobic views which were institutionalised in the culture/politics/laws of the 1920s/30s. We're talking about striking, something that someone living during that period would have far greater experience of than most of us. They chose which side they were on and they chose the bosses.
seeformiles
Lost in the wood
Have they still got "Stalin the Red Engine"?
My sympathies always lay with the trucks tbh. Thomas was always looking to climb the greasy pole, as evidenced by his shameless scabbing on the big engines' strike, and I fucking hated those simpering Thomas groupies Annie and Claribelle who were a complete disgrace to the womens' movement.
OK I didn't think in quite those terms at six years old but my instincts were something like that I seem to remember. And we never had that awful Ringo Starr thing either, just books and Johnny Morris tapes. So none of this "Topham Hatt' shite, he was the Fat Controller. There was also a Thin Controller and another one I seem to remember but they weren't quite so hands on iirc
OK I didn't think in quite those terms at six years old but my instincts were something like that I seem to remember. And we never had that awful Ringo Starr thing either, just books and Johnny Morris tapes. So none of this "Topham Hatt' shite, he was the Fat Controller. There was also a Thin Controller and another one I seem to remember but they weren't quite so hands on iirc
youngian
Well-Known Member
Steam trains have always been a metaphor for middle England Conservative reaction. They represent a gentler age of bobbies on bikes, rosy cheeked children and red telephone boxes. Thomas would surface in the mocking of John Major and his adolescent Tory pastoral fantasies. He would even invoke a mythical golden age of steam railways in his rail privatisation plans.
Ealing's Titfield Tunderbolt in which jolly middle class villagers rally round to save the local steam train from heartless nationalisation plans is also a Daily Mail readers wet dream. Also features a less than trustworthy working class chappie played by Sid James.
It was interesting that Boris Johnson's original mayoral strategy was to increase outer borough votes and his only policy was banging on about Routemasters over bendy buses which no one in outer boroughs used. Like steam trains Routemasters represent a care free all white London before it was swamped by foreign things like bendy buses and people who are different.
Ealing's Titfield Tunderbolt in which jolly middle class villagers rally round to save the local steam train from heartless nationalisation plans is also a Daily Mail readers wet dream. Also features a less than trustworthy working class chappie played by Sid James.
It was interesting that Boris Johnson's original mayoral strategy was to increase outer borough votes and his only policy was banging on about Routemasters over bendy buses which no one in outer boroughs used. Like steam trains Routemasters represent a care free all white London before it was swamped by foreign things like bendy buses and people who are different.
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
And yet, rail-hater beeching whose utter vandalism knocked our once-fine network back by a hundred years was a tory. Its a mystery
youngian
Well-Known Member
Thatcher learned from Beeching and never risked BR and Royal Mail privitisations claiming 'people have strong views about that sort of thing.'
In other words she knew middle England isn't so keen on the free market when Upper Drakes Bottom railway station and post office is threatened with closure.
stuff_it
Too skool for cool
Oi! My father is a vicar!Thomas was written by the Rev. Awdrey in the 40s. It's not surprising that he come across as a bit of a conservative. His father was a vicar.
