Off Topic Political Debate

Sir Graham Brady is requesting that no more Tory MPs send him letters requesting a leadership election. It is getting very close to the 48 required to trigger one. Seems as if it is her dull and boring style rather than a policy issue. Brady has intimated it could spark a bitter leadership election and plunge Brexit talks into chaos. The next local elections could seal her fate one way or the other.

 

This "study" asked only 2,000 people and then used highly emotive descriptors to suggest there are now five new distinctive classes. By lumping two of these hypothetical groups together, which it had already defined as different, it then concluded 70% were "chronically broke" which is in any case not exactly a measurable criterion. Personally, if I wanted to suggest all was not well with the UK I would look for a more thorough and perceptive analysis.

 

We have Jacob Rees Mogg standing by to complete the Brexit negotiations if need be. The dissident MPs are making sure the red lines are maintained.

 

Seeing as it was compiled by Matthew Taylor who was respected enough by the government to write The Taylor Review Of Modern Working Practices for them, it is not exactly new research. The PM did take a lot of that report on board and spoke in favour of most of the contents. I think that if you read both reports together you can see how the latest one meshes with the official report.

 

How many of these "chronically broke" are spending money on tattoos, gambling, overpriced trainers, take aways, booze, etc. When I was "chronically broke" my priorities lay elsewhere. There does seem to be a 'must have' attitude in the UK nowadays regardless of any affordability issue.

 

You ask a question, and the only answer is we don't know.

 

As you said Frenchie we don't know on this one - people believe what they want to believe based on their political convictions. These ideas do the rounds - mostly they are myths. Like the poor spend their money on booze, all beggers only pretend to have a limp, life in the nick is like a hotel etc. etc.

 

I base my views on the massive profits of gambling companies, full pubs and restaurants, busy tattoos parlours etc. To suggest many people have the wrong priorities is a political stance is rather silly.

 

How do you know that the pubs or tattoo parlours are full of poor people who should be spending their money elsewhere ? Have you gone round asking them ? What I am basically saying is that our political beliefs, and experiences, condition the way we see the World around us. We spend all our lives making instant judgements about people, based on some exterior visual thing without knowing their life histories.

 

I also have loads of personal contacts and relatives that would fit in to this so called 70%. There is a chronic mismanagement of personal finance in the UK.

 

I'm rather puzzled about what 70% you are talking about here, or is this in answer to some other post ?

 

keep up Cologne

see 8215

 

Ok. I've just looked back at Frenchie's text. In which case I'm rather puzzled about how the expression 'chronically broke' fits to 70% of the population, and how it was calculated.

 

It means they have to buy their champagne from Aldi or Lidl, the rest buy from Waitrose.

 

I have just seen how the 70% was calculated from the original Guardian article - whilst it may be true that some of these spend their money unwisely, it is nonetheless a disgrace that they are in that condition in the first place. This applies to 70% of working people, not the unemployed. I would imagine that after working 40 hours per week in some unrewarding job that people have a right to buy pleasure in some way. The tragedy is that Frenchie is wrong in thinking it will have an impact on voting. If this applies to working people in the UK. then it also includes many immigrants who would not have voting rights. It is also true that the poorest 30% of the electorate are the most badly represented in the voting figures ie. they are statistically the least likely to vote anything. So the 30-40% who are 'all right Jack' decide elections - because the others are either split between parties, or not voting. The job that Corbyn has is to convince the army of non voters to vote - this is more profitable than going into the middle ground where you can lose voters in all directions. Another good reason for compulsory voting as they have in Belgium and Luxembourg.

 

Maybe it is worthy asking why people spend in this way?

Alienation?
Poverty? ... yes as it brings hope and some sort of instant gratification
Need for identity?
Stuck in a debt cycle?

Amazes me how how those who have income 'blame' the poor. Just like the blamed the unions who historically rescued the poor from the degradations of wealthy business owners and ensured that what is now enshrined in our laws was enacted.

If people are happy they are less likely to have to dream of a better future way beyond their reach.

 

The cost of living has risen whilst wages stagnate. Young people now can't buy a house in the south east of England without either parental support or a couple of decades of saving every penny possible, thus wasting the prime of their lives. I'm fortunate enough to earn a decent wage in London, but I'm still broke at the end of the month.

A lot of the people attacking the poor/the young are slightly older people that lucked out by being born when they were. They've now raised the drawbridge to guarantee their house prices/pensions, leaving us to struggle.

I remember reading somewhere that in the 70s, you could live an ok life on benefits, nowadays you can barely afford to eat. Those stats do refer to working people though, and it's disgusting that unskilled workers need state help to be able to survive, just to guarantee that a few rich people/investors get even richer.

This is why I would never vote Tory, and would never respect anyone that voted for this vile lot.

 

The idea that the poor are responsible for their own poverty is deeply ingrained in our society. Conversely that the rich have, somehow, earned their position. Maybe this dates back to a time when there was a grain of truth in this. Children born in the 1950s had a very real chance of moving up the social ladder in their lifetimes - social mobility was, for many people, a realistic possibility. But for those born later the picture has changed - social mobility has slown down to a dribble in most western countries. Those born today in poverty are likely to stay there - and this has been measurable since the 1980s. As the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, so they become spacially distanced from each other - there is less dialogue, and the prejudices and stereotypes become stronger. In my life I have never known a rich person to say 'I was just lucky' - 'I had the right parents'. Always it was a result of their own hard work. If they are not prepared to be honest then why do they expect honesty from the poor ? Why is it profligacy for a poor man to buy a beer, but not for a rich man to waste millions on a Renoir ? Money which could, also, be put to a far better use.

Logic would tell us that there are wastefull, lazy people in all walks of society. Just as there are industrious people at all levels of society. Yet we focus our scorn on the negative characteristic of the 'other' group. ie. the rich will focus their scorn on the 'lazy' poor, and the poor will focus their scorn on the 'lazy' rich. In both cases they are too far away to be able to influence the other in any real way. As always the human psychology comes into this as well - when my life style takes a sudden drop it is the result of unforeseen circumstances, an unexpected medical bill or something. When the same happens to others it is a result of profligacy.

We need to get back to the idea of respecting work for its own sake - not just 'fine' work but all work. The good toilet cleaner is a better worker than a bad doctor, and just as deserving of being able to live from his earnings. We also need to redefine what work actually is: Is it work if my only goal is to get money from someone elses pocket into my own ? To me this is play - no different to playing poker. So in that way the City of London is a place of play, not of work. Work is where something is produced which was not there prior to this work, and where that something is usefull to either other people, or to my environment. For a real worker to not be able to live comfortably from his work is a crime in our society, just as it is for a 'player' to be living in luxury.

 

I grew up in an era when there was real poverty still around me. Furniture out on the pavement because a family was a week late in paying the rent, children who in the coldest part of the year didn't have a coat to put on, and others cutting up cardboard to put in their shoes because they had holes in them. Parents would work all the hours they could just to try and put some food on the table, sometimes to the point that it killed them. Those that had a family member who suffered long term illness, there was a lot of TB still about, struggled even more as they attempted to provide care and earn a living at the same time.
Over the decades since then life had become better. Some state help where by pooling resources, paying taxes, the people who through no fault of their own were at the bottom did at least have the chance of getting by.
As years went by more and more goods became available that were priced so that the lower earners could afford them. Cars, TVs, phones etc. things that were only available to the rich in my childhood, suddenly became desirable and when things such as hire purchase, credit cards and bank loans became common everyone felt they should enjoy these goodies. You can have whatever you want, and have it now was the message. That message got through and we see today the mountain of personal debt that people carry. If a person is just living for today and doesn't see the risk of becoming a non-earner through illness or job loss, then it is one thing, but entirely different to the person in a zero hours contract who has no money to put aside for that rainy day.
Go back to the poverty of my childhood days, no thank you. I thought society had long since moved on from that, yet why are the food banks being stretched to breaking point? I believe that there is little contact between the public and government over what is fair for everyone. Listen to some politicians and they seem to say we know what is best for you, the world is too complex for you to understand. This is heading in the direction of the mill or mine owner telling his workforce they should be thankful that he provided a job for them.

 

Foodbanks and homelessness on the rise. Patients dying in hospital corridors and cancer drugs are 'too expensive'. Stagnant wages and fake jobs, with benefits cut for the poor and the ill. Personal debt reaching new peaks as people struggle just to pay the bills. And the rest...

Yet the current government can find billions to pay for Brexit, tax cuts for the well off and bribing the DUP

It's ridiculous.