Blimey – that's a lot of people in your family circle who come from broken families – did your parents all 'choose' that? Was your finance's mother irresponsible to have four children?
Your not talking to Kirkstaller here I know things don't work out but I wouldn't class every single parent family as a broken home, would you class someone with a deceased parent from a broken home? Probably not but then again a family with both parents there could be classed as a broken home depending on how the family life is
There is a shortage of jobs. This is a fact.
60% of benefits claimants are in work.
The 1:5 UK households claim housing benefit – and 89% of those are working households.
So let's dismiss the 'scoungers' and 'skivers' myth straight away. The majority of people on any benefits are in work; the vast majority of people on housing benefits are in work.
Ok
More reality: foodbanks are on the increase – massively on the increase. And this is the UK. So are legalised loansharks. As I have posted before, I was interviewing a debt counsellor a few weeks ago and I'm not even going to start repeating how scathing she was of these legalised loan sharks.
Agree
Your apparent desire that everyone should just go out and get 10 jobs – remember: there's not even one job for everyone of working age.
Many people are increasingly being tied to zero-hours contracts. They have to sit by the phone waiting to be called to a job. If they're unavailable, they'll lose their job. We are seeing an increasingly casualised workforce, with employers using all sorts of means to cut the wages and conditions of the staff on the ground – although never their own, for some strange reason that's hard to fathom
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I was self employed from 2010 to 2012 until I got the job I'm in now and after 9 months on the agency I have worked hard enough not only to get taken on but to be offered a managers position.
Whilst self employed I had to go out and find the work, if I didnt get any work one week I wouldn't earn a penny so who pays my rent/mortgage for me?
And this is against a background of income inequality having risen for 30-plus years.
That income inequality – it is bad for the whole of a society. Less equal societies have more crime, more negative health issues, more addiction, less educational achievement – and much more. More equal societies are better across these things and more (if you wish to read about this in detail, read The Spirit Level).
Was the author of that book on Newsnight the other night? I'll give it a read, I agree with you on that front.
On belief – do you look back to what your own relatives went though and think it was A Good Thing? Do you feel nostalgia for it? Y'know: 'we suffered, so can they'?
I look back with pride that they had the substance to overcome hardship into the position they are in now, I don't expect anyone to suffer I want people to go out and earn their money, you may know people who are out of work and in hardship and want to work and base your judgemnet on those people, from my experience in working in social housing a lot of them didn't work some never have.
And let's do another myth while we're at it – his 'hard-working taxpayer' one. Most of us are fortunate enough to not have to work very hard. By comparison with a hospital cleaner or porter, I don't. I very much doubt you work anything like as hard as the grandfather you mention. Or the same hospital porter or cleaner.
Yet it seems that you – and plenty of others – actively want hard-working people in unsexy but essential jobs to suffer. Why? It's not good for society. It's not good for productivity. What is it good for?
No I never worked as hard as a miner but fitting 1 day central heating is hard graft, well paid hard graft but I went to college for 4 years on £50 a week apprenticeship and worked behind a bar 2 nights a week and at a bookies on a Saturday so that I could learn to become a gas engineer/plumber and earn decent money. Now I'm in a different job where I don't break a sweat, because after I came out of my time I stayed on at college for another 4 years funded by myself 2 nights a week after work to do my HNC/HND in Construction.
As I said, do you really look back at what various members of your own family went through and think everybody should experience a bit more like that?
I expect the government to provide the opportunity for people to work for a living and not have to rely on state handouts (obviously pensioners, disbabled and carers etc exempt)
If it weren't for the last Labour Governent god knows where I would have ended up, without their Asset Training Scheme I wouldn't have been able to have complete my apprenticeship which was funded by the Government at the cost of £50 a week payed to me which they invested well and now I don't need to rely on them.
Like I said, the benefits system needs overhauling massively to rid the idle from the taxpayers hard earned but first the opportunity to get into work and training must be implemented but somehow I can't see the Tories doing that.
