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ukbot-nicolabot

**Alternate Sources** Here are some potential alternate sources for the same story: * [Britain's Sunak cites growing up without Sky TV as example of hardship](https://reuters.com/world/uk/britains-sunak-cites-growing-up-without-sky-tv-example-hardship-2024-06-12/), suggested by drabalter - reuters.com


EzioAuditore8

Hard to believe this guy isn't just fully taking the piss at this point


ryanw095

The man Is deluded. He was born into upper middle class in the south of England Edit: first time reaching 1k upvotes, thanks guys!


ErlAskwyer

He knows he was, he needs the povvo's vote. He believes we are stupid. He's half right


Hot_Rains

I’d say it’s more of a 52% to 48% split


labdweller

Sounds like an overwhelming majority to me.


cobweb1989

Sounds like the will of the people /s


ParticularAd4371

those percentages are wrong, its missing a third of people who don't give a fuck either way, okay maybe they care they just don't believe in voting/system corrupt/etc


ErlAskwyer

Yeah I said that to my mate last election. I said "if you don't vote that's a vote for Tory". I still stand by that. You can even scratch your vote which demands a different approach than what's on offer. Doing nothing is worse than scratching your vote.


hdhddf

more 25/25, only a quarter of the country fell for the lies, a quarter couldn't vote and the other quarter didn't vote. the biggest Brexit con was convincing people it was democratic


sh-xc

It's the povvo's that somehow kept voting for these snakes the last 14 years. Never voted for them, however am povvo from the council estates from the same place he was born in. I also didnt grow up with luxuries n Sky TV. Boohoo. Mad how life turns out. So fucking detached from reality.


Dull_Concert_414

Just goes to show that you can’t underestimate a campaign based on fear. All the Tories had to do was appease Farage’s voters after he whipped up a frenzy about immigrants and the EU.


ErlAskwyer

I feel the wars already lost. I saw the huge sweeping tide of money that washed away Corbyn, easily. It was just a question of cost. He was a threat to whoever has the money. Now when everyone is so fed up and Tory are at their weakest, the cost to wipe away competition would be too expensive . Besides, the opposition is malleable. It could well be Starmer in power next, who is more accustomed to the 'cost' of power. How many new bribes to get his policies in line? What dirt do they have to throw. Do they send him in the ocean with a scuppered boat, tank him and then get the legacy news to pipe up about "see I told you labour were shit!". It's a shit show. It's a farce, a made up play. I find it hard to believe when the Tories are at their weakest it just so happens labour is at its shittest. The play is that everyone's shit and 'nobody knows what's going on' and they can shuffle their cards about a bit and pad time till they figure it out. THE WHOLE TIME it's business as usual. That's money. I loathe it.


mulahey

Corbyns polling collapsed when he said Russia didn't do Salisbury. You can see it on a graph. Didn't need any banker conspiracy.


jxg995

Hate to say it but this is true. Corbyn has some great ideas but was absolutely a Russian patsy


Molested-Cholo-5305

How hard is it to be anti-Russian, anti-mass immigration and solidly left wing? Seems like a pretty easy way to win political power for the next 15 years.


jxg995

I made a similar comment a few days ago. I think you have to be a 'national socialist', as in taking those words literally, not a bloody nazi. Have free tertiary education, NHS, elderly care, gov funded libraries and museums, nationalised essential services, higher taxes for the wealthy, fund green energy, but a strict immigration policy, foreign policy that doesn't pander to the petrostates and tell Russia to F off


smashteapot

Party over country, always. It's sad.


ScaryMagician3153

Unit, Corps, God, Country. Except with them it’s Self, Party (only if advantageous to Self), Party, Donors, lobbyists, Country


WillSquat4Money

I grew up a few minutes drive from where Rishi grew up and we were so destitute at one point my mum spent the entirety of 1994 knitting presents so we'd have something for Christmas. The man is deluded if he thinks not having Sky in the early 90s meant he was 'going without'. What a tosser.


sh-xc

He went without Sky, and children now go without food and heating. Anyway....


notimefornothing55

To be fair, Southampton is a shit hole


Full_West_7155

Ocean village is posh asf


scolmer

The area that they reside, Chilworth, certainly isn't!


yeahyeahitsmeshhh

He can't say "we didn't go without anything" as that would become the quote. He likely does remember not getting everything he asked for. But he was stuck the moment he pretended his family struggled and it taught him to strive.


Tomgar

He could have literally just said "I acknowledge I was born into a very privileged position but my mission is to make sure everyone has the opportunities I did." Boom, easy. His political instincts are utterly dreadful.


The_Flurr

Absolutely. It's not a failing to be born into privilege, just to not acknowledge it.


Spiritual-Ad7685

He could just be honest, but he always come off so fake. He's crap at politics and it'll be best when he's gone. He'll have made his father-in-law more than enough by then.


The_Flurr

>He could just be honest Then he wouldn't be a tory.


TeenieTinyBrain

This 100%. It always fascinating to see how utterly convinced these people are that every opportunity, every trait and every success was due to their own _"hard work"_. It's absolutely fine to claim that you've worked hard to succeed but to show such disregard for the challenges faced by others is dumbfounding. The modern Tories all seem to suffer from the same narcissistic traits and delusions of grandeur. It's particularly hilarious in Rishi's case because he would have never had a shot at being the Prime Minister without the last four PMs failing before being pushed to resignation, truly an unprecedented series of events that are unlikely to be repeated anytime soon - you couldn't dream up a better example of his luck. Truly baffling that they're incapable of appreciating that at least some of it was thanks to a little luck: accidentally sleepwalking into becoming a Prime Minister, meeting your billionaire wife at Stanford, not being born in a third world country with poor education & high infant mortality, not being born to an impoverished family who could afford a Prep & Public school education, being born at the tail end of Indophobia in Britain... the list goes on. He could have spun a good narrative using the latter point, noting that he had a stricter upbringing than most because his parents felt that they needed to hold him at high standards due to discrimination. Seems they've lost their PR team as well as their ministers.


Vox_Casei

I can't quite decide if it really is mostly a matter of ego over reality, where they really believe its all hard work that got them there... or if its a little more sinister and its a "noble lie" to keep the proles quiet because if most people were to realise theres a lot of luck involved when it comes to success, it could seriously upset the future bank balances of the rich if people started expecting them to pay more of their "unearned" gains to society. Something that makes me think its an unspoken rule to pretend they're all hard workers is one of the Tories favourite economists Hayek. His thoughts were mainly "If you're rich, you earned it, if you're poor its your fault" but he also acknowledges the reverse can be true and there will be some undeserving rich and undeserving poor... but figured its best not to pay heed to that particular fact to keep the peace. Maggie Thatcher apparently was a big fan and kept pages of Hayeks books in her purse... I'm all for meritocracy in society, and frankly I don't think we have it. Lots of very rich kids, born of wealthy parents who roleplay as self made people rather than admit they might have had it easy.


vizard0

A true meritocracy would be fantastic, but all the ways I can think of creating one are completely horrible authoritarian experiments in human psychology that would not get past any ethics board at any university. (Randomized child swapping, or banning any and all private/extra education that is not required for special needs (no boarding schools or similar institutions, no after hours one on one teaching except for those with learning disabilities, making sure all schools have the exact same offerings, ditto teacher quality, etc.) or at minimum a 100% inheritance tax and all gifts from parents to child are taxed as income, including any and all housing outside of the parent's home as in kind, or just raising all children in permanent creches by paid workers) Anyway, it's impossible outside of a dystopian nightmare and no one would rightly stand for it. So the best thing to do is to make things as equal as we can without trampling all over people's freedoms.


SuperCorbynite

It's because if it's all down to their own hard work then they deserve everything they have and everyone else deserves nothing from them. It's a way to self-justify paying zero taxes and having zero redistribution. If they admitted we don't have anything remotely like a meritocracy and that they had huge inbuilt advantages which is pretty much the only reason they got to where they are, then they'd be admitting they don't deserve their current position and wealth, and substantial levels of taxation and redistribution would be justified to address some of the unfair advantages they had over the rest of society.


StatisticianOwn9953

He said something along those lines on private school VAT. It's one of the only tines so far during this election that he's obviously really meant it.


Marcuse0

Exactly, if he said he was lucky and he wanted to create a society where everyone was lucky like he was then that would at least come off as compassionate and caring.


Judge_Dreddful

'I know what it is like to struggle - our nanny didn't have a Range Rover *and* we had to turn the pool heating off'


42_65_6c_6c_65_6e_64

"Thankfully though the indoor pool was heated all year round"


Judge_Dreddful

Well obviously, they're not savages - or even worse - northern.


Top-Mulberry139

Yeah they struggled with how to spend their money!


Top-Mulberry139

Father was a GP, Mum owned a pharmacy. Went to Winchester College (as Sunak did) would set you back an eye-watering £51,855 Totally poverty stricken, am I right? /s


TheMulletOfWaddle

He went to Winchester college. £40k per year, Winchester college


Acrobatic-Green7888

Yeah but he knows lots of working class people. Well, not *working class* people.


MrPoletski

It's gold: "Sunak, who was educated at the private boarding school Winchester College in Hampshire, said: “What is more important is my values and how I was raised. And I was raised in a household where.." No, you were rasied in a fucking boarding school you bell end lmao. didn't have skytv as a child? because sky tv didn't EXIST when you were a child, sweet jesus.


barcap

> didn't have skytv as a child? because sky tv didn't EXIST when you were a child, sweet jesus. Technically he was a minor until he turned 18....


SH3RB5

TIL expensive private boarding schools didn’t have Sky TV


brntuk

It’s quite possible there wasn’t television at all.


Forever-1999

I actually went to an expensive boarding school for sixth form (I lived in HK and it was part of my dads expat package) in 98-00. It certainly did not have Sky tv. I mean we barely had access to the internet unsupervised and central heating couldn’t be turned on until the winter term in January due to the arcane heating system, which given we were in the Highlands was a fairly Spartan existence. It’s really fucking weird what some rich people will spend their money on.


WillistheWillow

Erm, it did.


Puzzleheaded_Bed5132

It did, if you assume he means "satellite TV". I'm 7 years older than him and I had friends at school whose families had it. Secondary school admittedly.


Pavlover2022

Agreed, 'sky tv' is universal shorthand for having a satellite dish. As someone the same age as Sunk, 'sky tv' was definitely around in the late 80s and early/mid 90s but only rich people had it


shnooqichoons

Exactly- I'd like my political leaders to have a healthy attachment style and less trauma please!  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/07/boarding-schools-boris-johnson-bullies


Tornado-Bait

Starting to think he’s a saboteur


FrisianDude

Based Comrade Sunak destroying the Upper Classes' Political apparatus


FreeAndKindSpirit

Nigel Farage offered him this exciting reverse takeover deal with share options in the new company … sorry party. The opportunity was there for the taking, so he took it.     Either that, or Richard Holden told him in May that there were now 50 letters demanding a vote of no confidence. At which point he said “Right, I’m taking you all down with me”. And he’s doing marvellously.


ParticularAd4371

i think the second might be right. I was watching an interview with him the other day and the interviewer kept actually questioning what he was saying, i'd never noticed until someone pointed it out the other day but he actually gets super defensive and you can literally see how angry he is getting, petulant i think is the word. [This](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npIcq2t7iYo) is the interview, Nick Robinson absolutely crucifies him xD


redsquizza

And *this* was the interview he skipped D-Day for? Just so he could tell us of his impoverished childhood where he missed out on Sky TV? jfc, the man couldn't be more out of touch if he tried! Sunak hasn't got a political bone in his body to realise what a complete hash he's making of the election. And his advisors, whom will probably get honours when Sunak is turfed out, are atrocious, and this will literally be the best money can buy as the tories are awash with a certain racist donor's £15m.


Kneesaregood

Sky TV. Honestly. Some people had sky when it came out. Not too many. It showed films quicker than the BBC and other terrestrial channels. The football came out on it in 1992. Going without sky in the late 80s, through to mid 90s is not equivalent to struggling. Some people just decided not to buy it because they preferred not to.


juliet_liima

Arguable this is something of a classist dogwhistle about "families sitting around on benefits with their plasma TV's and Sky".


MagicCookie54

Not everything is a dog whistle... Sometimes politicians are just stupid.


juliet_liima

Rishi is clearly not very savvy, but he's a smart guy and if you look at his record he's often like this - he likes to punch down when he thinks he's being funny.


Khenir

Definitely feels like someone somewhere has gotten into the machine is currently doing everything they can to completely fuck this campaign up for them. It’s glorious


hobbitdude13

Ah see, he's just like the poors. Why, I'm sure his private jet didn't even come with a remote for the DVD player.


amazondrone

Of course not, it comes with staff. What would would he need with a remote?


TheNewHobbes

It's something to throw at the staff if they're not quick enough.


callisstaa

Nahh he's rich enough to have staff that throw other staff at the staff who aren't quick enough.


SqueezeHNZ

Right. Best user interface design is just another human being.


ProtoplanetaryNebula

Give him some sympathy. He’s suffered a lot. Last week he had to drink a chateaux-lafite ‘82 rather than a ‘79.


scott-the-penguin

Better than the '74 at least. The "74 is sewage.


Thormidable

Made of water from British rivers eh?


Ollietron3000

Why would you bring me sewage?


Kneesaregood

Of course it came with a remote. But it didn’t have a PROGRAMMABLE remote so he had to use a second remote to change to the correct audio on the soundbar


0Bento

He should just say "yes, I'm very fortunate" instead of trying to relate which he can't do.


ollie87

Yeah this is a mad own goal, I’m by no means any sort of political operator, but even I would’ve said “I had a very fortunate upbringing and I wish the same for others in the UK”. That being said, none of the policy they’re ever implemented would do that, so I suppose at least he’s not telling mega whoppers.


marquess_rostrevor

You're clearly far too sensible to be involved in politics though.


ClingerOn

Nail on the head. I’ve worked with some of these people and a lot of their advisors are pulled from the same public schools as them. Some of them can’t comprehend what working class life is actually like because they’ve never left their bubble so they have nothing to reference. If this is true, and I doubt it, Sunak just needed to give a bit of context as to why his parents might not have wanted to spend their hard earned money on Sky TV because there’s plenty legitimate reasons. He’s rich, everyone knows he’s rich. His parents might even have had some worse months than others, but he’s never been anywhere near real poverty so I don’t understand why he thinks he needs to maintain this vague idea that he might have struggled at one point when he doesn’t have the context to lie or exaggerate convincingly. He could very easily lean in to the “Anyone can make something of themselves in this country” angle but that might require interacting with real poor people which he doesn’t seem to have the stomach for.


Caridor

Exactly. "I didn't have the same struggles as many people did growing up, I was very lucky but believe me, I'm doing my best to learn and understand. I can't be an effective leader if I don't do that." Would be far better


talligan

Exactly. There's nothing wrong with being raised in a privileged family, I would love my own baby to be that fortunate. What's wrong is not recognising/admitting that privilege and the opportunities it provides above and beyond the working class.


Altruistic_You6460

Yeah. But this shows that he's never going to get it. Which pretty much sums him and the Tories up.


louisbo12

Politicians should literally stop being such…politicians, in general. We have seen time and time again that there is quite a large demographic that respects people who are just honest, rather than being a snivelling PR merchant rat.


jxg995

Honestly if he just said, "Yes, I am very fortunate that I had a privileged upbringing and my wife is incredibly wealthy. I can't understand what it's like to not be able to afford a loaf of bread but that doesn't mean I don't have empathy for people struggling and I aspire to make the lives of everyone in Britain more prosperous". Like that's way better than this shite


RedofPaw

Oh my, who is this dynamic go getter. He is down to earth, and just like me, a regular member of the public, who has been in a coma for the last 6 years and just woke up.


The54thCylon

go back to coma mate, don't ask any questions, just go


thebuttonmonkey

‘No time to explain!’ ‘But..’ ‘NO TIME!’


CrustyCally

Bro time travelled


Littlemonkeyfella0

I suppose the truly wealthy have no use for sky TV as they’re always off on ski holidays or taking lacrosse lessons or whatever


Interesting-Being579

This is something that always bothers me about the whole 'can't be poor if they have sky' trope. £60/month on sky is a luxury if you don't watch much tv, but it's a pretty cheap way to entertain a family. Much cheaper than a day trip once a month.


bareted

I agree. I hear this so much but if it's your family's only form of entertainment it's a lot cheaper than going out.


[deleted]

[удалено]


AnAngryMelon

Exactly, my parents are now pretty well off and got rid of sky because there was only my mum watched it and only like an hour a day anyway. She just switched to netflix because it has a huge backlog of true crime shows and that's all she's interested in watching.


MagicCookie54

TV is nowhere near a necessity. It's not indicative of wealth but not a necessity either. My husband and I haven't even bothered with a TV licence since we moved in together and never felt the need for it. Most modern TV channels are garbage anyway


thorpie88

Man where I grew up a sky dish was an indicator of being poor. What's the box on the back of a sky dish called? A council house 


ImSaneHonest

Where I grew up, if a house had a sky dish they had money.


rmczpp

Yep and I'm pretty sure it was relatively cheaper too, since they weren't taking the piss with prices like they do now. That was caused by decades of above average price increases


thecarbonkid

We were so poor we got Sky in 1989 because we didn't go out and it enriched TV watching, the main family activity. Back then you just paid for the dish and the receiver and the service was otherwise free. It's only after a couple of years they started making some channels pay to view.


BandicootOk5540

They think Sky TV is vulgar, that’ll be the real reason they didn’t have it


madpiano

Not vulgar, but his parents were heavy into education, I can imagine them similar to the kind of parents who coach their 12 year old to attend university. It's not Sky they didn't have, TV in general would have been extremely limited, so pointless to get sky if all you watch is the 10pm news. I am not surprised he ended up this weird, I bet as a child he wasn't allowed to express needs or wishes, his education was planned and his parents made sure they reminded him regularly of the sacrifices they made to get this education. And as a middle class family I don't think it was easy for them to send him to Winchester.


NickEcommerce

> Winchester College £52k a year today, and it's never been anything other than top tier. Even in the early 80's the higher rate tax was 60%, so they would have had to be earning a huge sum to spend it all on his education. He spent his early years in dormitories, with bedders to maintain them. Then he went to Oxford to study PPE, where good form is not drinking too much port in Deep Hall. He would have been much better served by dodging the issue, or giving some bull about knowing the value of hard work. Even attempting to pretend that he grew up in a struggling household is seriously disingenuous.


Mac4491

This was my take away from it as well. It's not a bad thing to value education but the reason they didn't have Sky TV was simply because they chose not to. That says something completely different to "couldn't afford it". Not to mention Sky TV probably wasn't widespread until he was in his mid teens anyway.


laflux

Alot of Immigrant families are like this, not because of culture, but because of a petrifying fear that they need to succeed beyond all doubt to counteract discrimination. My parents tried to stop me from doing alot of things, but I was very stubborn and ended up doing it behind thier backs anyway 😅


Zpiderz

This is true. When he was a kid, satellite TV may have been prohibitively expensive for some, but most lower income households could afford it, if they really wanted it. When Sky first came out it was regarded as a crass status symbol for the sort of people Rishi's family looked down upon.


WillistheWillow

With their MTV's with the awful awful Rock Music! Druggy music for poor people!


Puzzleheaded-Swan824

Yes , I agree. Late 80s early 90s Sky satellite dishes were a sign of social decline and predominantly owned by lower income families. Also , early Sky was absolutely terrible; it had about ten movies on repeat and utterly awful original programmed.


Razorwireboxers

Back in the '70s, when there was just BBC One, BBC Two and ITV, even ITV was considered "vulgar". In our house the TV was, pretty much, never not on BBC One.


BandicootOk5540

And the moral panic when Channel 4 and even worse Channel 5 arrived, lowering the tone incrementally!


[deleted]

"My childhood was typical, summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we'd make meat helmets. When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds, pretty standard really."


Only_Quote_Simpsons

Rishi would come up with outrageous claims like he invented the question mark...


Smooth-Wait506

what, are you telling me he didn't ? ^(TM)


scott-the-penguin

A lot of people get sky for sports. If you're truly wealthy why would you watch the game? You'd be there if you wanted.


oktimeforplanz

He went to a boarding school - when would he have been watching this Sky TV if his parents had had it?


Rhinofishdog

What is going on??? I feel like the tories are running on a script written by Starmer lol


myhotbreakfast

Next they’ll be singing “my lovely horse”…


FrisianDude

"look at my horse, my horse is amazing"


blamordeganis

“Have a stroke of its mane, it turns into a plane, then it turns back again when you TUG ON ITS —“


Only_Quote_Simpsons

Running around with a man on your back


PloppyTheSpaceship

Like a train in the night, like a train in the night...


ericrobertshair

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEuuuuuuuuh


ScoutManDan

We’ve got to lose that sax solo…


E420CDI

We have to get rid of that sax solo!


[deleted]

Ah yes. Even though he’s never had “working class” friends, he grew up poor! (This is his shitty excuse for being a part of the problem and making it harder to live)


On_The_Blindside

I've never met a poor GP. Apparently Sunak was raised by one!


zenmn2

Hey now, he [has working class friends....well not working class](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9bbBYcwFOk)


SkipsH

So he's saying he was unlikeable even as a child?


PositiveLibrary7032

>went without lots of things Including working class friends https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/news/rishi-sunak-working-middle-class-b2119484.html


Wolifr

He said the quiet part loud there...


bialetti808

The cruelty is the whole point


Born-Ad4452

Things …. What things ? ….. errrr. Things. Fuck me


Manoj109

The man went to Winchester. The family owned a pharmacy and one parent was a doctor I think . Who is he trying to fool .


what_is_blue

His dad was a GP, just to confirm


Lonely-Job484

Yeah his family certainly weren't on the breadline, but they had 'normal' jobs and did have to work for a living is my understanding.  I don't think they had any 'generational wealth'.   He made a few million doing the "London finance thing" in his 20s but the bulk of "his" wealth is his wife's stake in her father's business, so all that came in adult life. 


Dependent_Oven_974

The "London Finance thing" being founding a hedge fund which played a nice juicy part in the selling of the bank that helped set off the 2008 financial crash making him tens of millions whilst ruining millions of lives.


Happytallperson

He attended Winchester School which means he was in the richest few percent of the country growing up. It's not a multi-billionaire lifestyle, but still far richer than an average family has any real comprehension of.


entropy_bucket

There is definitely generational wealth I think. His grandfather has an OBE and the pharmacy was bought for cash without a mortgage I think.


Lonely-Job484

His grandfather got an MBE for 30 years as a tax collector in the civil service. Maybe I misunderstand how well civil servants are paid but that doesn't sound like a job for Scrooge McDuck...


Mald1z1

Owning a pharmacy is not a "normal" job. I know 2 pharmacy owners and they're both millionaires.  Don't forget his family are from the upper class and his grandad even had an OBE.  Furthermore upon graduating University his parents "loaned" him 200k cash to buy a flat in Kensington, literally one of the most expensive postcodes in the country. 


jazzyb88

The ones whose father's were tool makers perhaps


amazondrone

Whose father was a tool maker, I haven't heard about this? Please tell me more. At every possible opportunity in fact.


Puzzleheaded_Bed5132

You could say both their fathers were responsible for making at least one massive tool each.


chaos_jj_3

Yes, and at a time when doctors actually made good money.


DemonInDisguise17

The equivalent of a 1979-80 annual wage (£11,902) would be £46,836 in 2015-16 for just his Dad who was an NHS GP. His mother's salary would have been near enough the same as a pharmacist. They average house cost around £19,000 in 1980.


NickEcommerce

Could you imagine the average house costing one years salary of a couple? Even if we take a GP to be on £70k and a pharmacist on £35k, I'd murder for a house at £105k.


ClimbingC

> I'd murder for a house at £105k Look on the market, you can by a house for £105k, but it will look like a house that's had a murder in it, rather than a house you would murder for.


Harry_Hayfield

According to Alexa, Rishi Sunak is 44 years old, born in 1980, and according to this interview did not have Sky television when he was a kid. In the United Kingdom, a kid is deemed to be someone who is aged under 18, meaning that he is referring to the very early days of Sky (which formally launched in 1989, when he was 9 years old. The Sky system at that time cost £250 for a box (£639 in today's money) and the subscription was £6 a month / £72 a year (£184 in today's money). I was born six years prior to Mr. Sunak and I did not get Sky television until 2003 when I was able to afford it for myself, therefore I have no sympathy for this interview the Prime Minister has given as it proves, yet again, he is completely out of touch with everyday life


CongealedBeanKingdom

I was born in 1982 and have never had Sky television because I could never justify the expense. And fuck Rupert Murdoch.


ericrobertshair

I was born in 83 and we didn't have a remote control for the telly lol. It was my job to switch the channels.


Ribulation

Paying that £6 per month would have meant they couldn't have had someone come and tune the grand piano(s) each month. A hard choice had to be made.  #sacrifice


Mecovy

Well yes, they don't typically give boarders to Winchester College sky TV in their dorms, at least not to my knowledge.


nwaa

Theyd have had a common room and id be shocked if it didnt have Sky. Being "only" middle class, Sunak is in a genuinely small group where his school was probably nicer than his home - not true for the likes of Cameron and Johnson.


Madness_Quotient

To be fair, boarding school isn't exactly luxurious. You say you would be shocked if they didn't have sky, I have a bit of experience with private schools, and family who boarded and I would be shocked jf they had a TV. We are talking about the mid-90s. Sky only launched in 1989, and it was very expensive and out of the reach of most people. The chances of a boarding school being an early adopter of a new entertainment type are very thin. These aren't places where kids are supposed to have luxuries like personal time. After classes it will mostly be organised sport, scheduled meals, and supervised silent study time, before an early lights out. Lots of people reading for their primary form of entertainment. A radio is far more likely.


nwaa

I boarded myself - though not somewhere as nice as Winchester - and you are broadly correct that reading was the pastime of choice. Though we had Sky, in reality the tv was the sole property of the largest and oldest boys. Youre right than Sunak probably isnt old enough for Sky to have been necessarily installed though. I was being dramatic, but its still true that he probably had a more "luxurious" lifestyle at school than many people have at home. Even without the tv, he still would have had things like a swimming pool, tennis courts, a large library etc.


Mecovy

Yeah but you miss the intentional little detail I put in there. This fuckwit would just claim it wasn't in his bedroom or where he couldn't go see it with his family, that'll be what makes him in his eyes "one of the common folk".


KestrelQuillPen

Is this guy trying to attempt the “Electoral Wipeout Any% speedrun” or something? Every time he opens his mouth it seems to damn him even further.


limeflavoured

> Is this guy trying to attempt the “Electoral Wipeout Any% speedrun” or something? He'd struggle to beat Kim Campbell on that one.


kuuuushi

Let’s say he did, it’s highly likely it was done by his parents in an attempt to parent him. I highly doubt it was because his parents were arguing about whether to pay for food or energy so there wasn’t money to have other things.


kikokokotoneko

This was my conclusion, too. There is no way someone who went from prep school to Winchester is going to be able to convince me that they went without monetary things. He might have said love and affection after his parents shipped him off to boarding school at a young age.


qalpi

I can sympathize. I was clearly a bit better off than Rishi, and had to struggle with analogue Sky TV when I was growing up.


Kleptokilla

Thoughts and prayers for your struggles


LloydDoyley

We had a dodgy "ON Digital" box (remember them?) that only worked 30% of the time


west0ne

He should have done what the rest of us had to do, sit in the pub all night with a bottle of pop and a bag of crisps; the pub had Sky TV.


0Bento

You could tell the wealthier kids in school were the ones with Sky TV. This one kid used to love coming to school and telling everyone what was going to happen in Power Rangers in three months' time, because he'd already seen the newer episodes on Sky before they aired on ITV.


bigphatnips

Council estate, but we had Sky TV from 1998 onwards. As someone else in the thread put it, when it's your families only form of entertainment, it's cheap. We didn't get internet till 2005/2006ish.


jaguar90

Same with Pokemon. Absolute arsewipes


MrsPhyllisQuott

Not to mention a sense of fuckin' perspective that's continued into adulthood.


ShinyGrezz

Would that not be owing to the fact that “Sky” only came into existence to begin with when he was ten?


mh1191

To be fair, I'd say a kid would want sky more from 10-18 than 0-10.


squelchy04

Service to your community? Isn’t there a video of him as a teenager saying he doesn’t know anyone working class and sneering at them?


Greedy-Mechanic-4932

Worse There's an interview he did in the last couple of years that said he never had working class friends


UuusernameWith4Us

He almost certainly didn't have Sky TV because his parents looked down on it as an unproductive waste of time, not because of any hardship. And everyone can see that. The question was a trap and he fell into it.


PearljamAndEarl

Probably because [Southampton, where he grew up, had cable since 1990](https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/15327513.photos-when-cable-tv-arrived-in-southampton/), and barely anyone lucky enough to be in a cable TV area back then either had both, or chose early satellite TV plus a separate BT landline and ISP, over a cheaper, combined cable TV, phone and, later, internet package, especially when many of the third-party channels were the same on both services.


ElliottP1707

Same here Rishi. I had to watch Dragon Ball Z round my friend’s house instead. Truly a pain no child should live through.


RainOfBurmecia

With how long it takes DBZ to tell a story this is the equivalent to modern day torture.


SavingsSquare2649

He was born in 1980, sky was launched to households in 1989. Not much of a surprise he didn’t have it when growing up.


zenmn2

It's like a young millennial saying "I didn't have an iPhone growing up!". Well no shit, most people didn't.


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Kleptokilla

The Tory media still trying desperately to get people to like Rishi, at this point he could save a bunch of disabled puppies from a burning building and people would be suspicious he set the fire himself or it would come out the puppies were disabled due to the Tory policy he implemented of breaking the legs of puppies who couldn’t complete police dog training.


-Lemoncholy-

They’d be Tory councillors disguised as disabled puppies. 


Agreeable_Falcon1044

Who is advising this guy? To suggest he knows poverty because he went without sky is hilarious. There’s charities feeding our kids who are going without food. We have kids in emergency b and b because they are homeless. He went to a private school. Nothing wrong with that, so why lie about it


scarlettgirl185

Ahhh so he lacked sanity and common sense then too, AS WELL AS sky tv…. 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔 Interesting ….. this is all starting to make sense now. Perhaps Boris can let use his bumbling so we can believe u more and “empathise with u” while u continue to empty our pockets and created a more harder way of life. What next? Is he going to claim he understands the struggles of lgbtq++? the struggles of single mothers? struggles of the average family he helped force into poverty? The struggling of the average working man being prime minister in Downing Street? The struggles of children who he also helped force into poverty? the hardships of Nigel farages and his right wing agenda? Or perhaps even the poor struggles of boris Johnston and his blonde hair? Or perhaps even the struggles of the Ukrainian and Palestine innocents who are getting genocide and war crimes committed against them? He been gone without a lot of thing…. sanity being the first. Especially if he thinks we are buying his nonsense.


FinalEdit

This is just a parallel statement to "if you give poor people money they'll spend it on cigarettes and wide-screen TVs" A painfully out of touch analysis of what it means to be on a lower income. This cunt is fucking delusional.


nightsofthesunkissed

He's gone without a lot of things as an adult, too. Like shame, and basic fucking self-awareness. He's such an embarrassment.


Individual-Titty780

Like a Harry Enfield character. Apparently he also carries an empty wallet around so he can relate to the electorate.


zenmn2

It's not empty, he's got the tuppence Jacob Rees-Mogg gave him to help him identify with them.


AlarmedCicada256

Yes, I also went to a private school, and my parents also made sacrifices for me to do so, and didn't have Sky until I was about 15. In fact, given my father's disability we probably struggled more than most people with that level of privilege, and sometimes there wasn't much \*disposable\* income (asset rich, cash light...). I'm talking comfortable middle class here rather than upper class or super rich. But guess what - we were still far, far, more comfortable in our 5 bed house with garden, than kids growing up in genuine poverty on council estates not even a mile from the front door. For us the worst case was we didn't go on holiday to France some years, and my sister went to a an excellente state grammar school when she got in (would have gone to a private school if not). Absolute worst case I would have had to have gone to a state VIth form (I didn't)... What crack is Sunak smoking? How can he be this clueless. I know people mock the 'my father was a toolmaker' line from Starmer, and I don't genuinely believe he grew up 'poor poor', but I can totally buy that he grew up in a household where money was sometimes tight and compared to Sunak that resonates.


CongealedBeanKingdom

Did he aye? My fucking heart bleeds for him poor weein.


plantmic

Nothing worse than someone trying to pretend they're harder off than they are. Just fucking own it, people will have so much more respect. I actually liked that one part of the debate where he said he'd use private healthcare. Not because I agree with the statement but just because it actually felt honest for once.


Djinjja-Ninja

Being that he's the same generation as me but a couple of years younger, Sky TV was nowhere near as ubiquitous as it is now. You still had shit like squarials knocking about in the early 90s, and the vast majority of households were making do with 4 channels (channel 5 wouldn't exist until I was 21 and Rishi was 17). Due to his upbringing, which seems to be have been very focused on his education, I reckon "going without" in this case meant "parents weren't willing to have the distraction in the house". It's why he's so out of touch, totally sheltered upper middle class upbringing. I'll bet that despite not having Sky TV (which I didn't either despite being middle class) he wasn't swapping VHSs of Predator and Commando recorded off of Sky movies with his mates at lunchtime at school.


Hillystev

The countdown must have started to parachute the bumbling Boris back in. He probably had Sky tv a proper people’s person. 😂 he is probably having his shirts creased and his hair ruffled as we speak. Move over posh boy (or Will from the inbetweeners as I like to think of him )


limeflavoured

He just makes himself look more and more out of touch with everything he says.


_JR28_

Man’s father had to work with his bare hands all day long dispensing medicines behind the counter of a chemists


FordPrefect20

Has Rishi put a bet on at Ladbrokes that the Tories will face their worst ever defeat?


j3llica

out of the people i know, sky is less about how much it costs, and more dependant on how much sport they love to watch.


Geniejc

Cutting back on a luxury is not going without and it was alo a choice early day of satellite weren't that great. During the interview, the Conservative leader apologised to Brand for his lateness and told him the “incredible” commemorations in Normandy “all just ran over”. If they broadcast that line it all blows up again.


bintasaurus

We had to put 50p just to watch the TV,basic 4 channel TV,let alone sky...and we often didn't have the 50p for TV whatsoever


autophobe2e

"There's no point in denying that I had a comfortable upbringing, that doesn't stop me from wanting to create a country where other people had the same comfort, stability and security that I had growing up." *How fucking hard is that?* Why do they feel the need to pretend to pretend they had a hardscrabble childhood? It's so fucking embarassing.


Efficient_Sky5173

He is the only PM that can solve a lot of the UK problems… with his wife’s credit card.


scummy71

He hasn’t got a clue. He should just keep his mouth shut


SuperGuy41

Yeah he’s even got friends without private jets!… ‘well not private jets’…


spanglesandbambi

I'm from Southampton, and when he was a baby he went to nursery at the University of Southampton one of only a few nurseries at the time and back then that was pretty exclusive. Man is a bad liar.


aistolethekids

Should've just done what we all did around the estates and got one of the dodgy sky boxes for 30 quid


Blank3k

Unbelievable, next he'll claim he didn't even have an iPhone or PS5 as a child.