Be Excellent To Each Other

H
They used to do 'milk vouchers' when I was a little'un. Everyone knew which local and corner shops would accept them for whatever you wanted: people would exchange them for cigarettes, booze, all kinds of things. The shopkeeper didn't care as he was getting his money and an increased trade from the people who sought out his shop because he'd take the tokens as payment for anything.

Scummy practice.

I'm not sure that quite sums it up fairly. Going to the numbers, unemployment has come down, but the latest figure I can find (quickly) is 1.8 million. For jobs, 500,000. So that's 1.3 million people who might claim benefits. The figures can shift, of course, but any idea that the more people chase jobs and work and release money, the more jobs are created is true but not something that continues forever. Underpinning all of this is the fact that even if we got to full employment you'd still need a percentage of people unemployed, otherwise inflation goes haywire - and if that happened, then keeping interest rates low to prevent people being turfed out of their overpriced houses as their mortgages escalated would look insane, but letting them rise would create its own homelessness problem.

So given all that, there will always be a large number of unemployed people. It isn't so hard to see how some people see chronic un or under employment as being part of their lot. Call them the underclass, if you like. Some might even enjoy it, though it seems unlikely. The economic system, though, is the problem - that an underclass has developed (and been well-predicted in literature for years - dystopian science fiction anyone?) isn't because people are feckless, but because it is an unavoidable consequence of capitalism. Unavoidable and inevitable. Sure, capitalism is the best economic system we've come up with so far, but it has less and less to offer in building a society as time goes by and the rewards are shared around less generously.

I'm sure we can make the welfare system work better, but even if it was as full of incentive as possible and efficiently gave just enough for people to live on, you'd still be left with lots of unemployed people (3-4% unemployed in full employment, from memory). Any fixes are going to create problems elsewhere - like a barrel with four holes and only two bungs, you can plug any hole you like, but the others will keep leaking.

I could comment extensively, JBR, but suffice to say I don't agree with a single one of your various (IMO outlandish in some cases) assertions including in economic/consequential terms, nor your extreme pessimism.

The Left really does like to come up with these frankly implausible, hugely complex, counter-reality Heath Robinson intellectual constructs for what is, ultimately, a much simpler problem than you seem to imagine. I'm sorry, but Gilly is right.

Increasingly though, people are seeing things for how they actually are, and are equally increasingly impatient with the same old (bizarre) excuses.

Yeah absolutely Meems, this would deffo need to be sorted first and foremost. Hopefully these days we have the tech to do stuff like that, though I do take EBG's point about public IT contracts...

you know most Gov It projects fail, due to every changing requirements, not due to the It companies.. just saying

Except that's not the problem either. Benefits are a pretty small wedge of the spending (15%, if I remember the budget right), and the bogus / unneeded claims are a minuscule portion of that. The fact that most people seem to think that the fraudsters are the main cause of our money woes is pretty bizarre - pensions are by far the biggest cost.

No-one is talking about benefit fraud though? We're referring to those (legitimately claimed) benefits specifically about to be capped/cut in the first instance, and more latterly Gilly's point about widely available unskilled jobs that anyone could do going unfilled and being very widely undertaken by migrant workers, for whatever reason(s) despite this large 'bank' of long term unemployed etc.

As regards 'pensions costs', though, I think there needs to be some differentiation between basic State pension entitlement and the vastly more opulent final salary public sector type schemes that we, in the private sector, can only dream about. It might be BS, but I'm sure I read somewhere that a primary school teacher who's done 30-odd years service will have accrued a pension pot equivalent to £600,000 (i.e. the amount needed to pay into a private pension scheme providing the same benefits). If so, that's just bloody ridiculous and more importantly, unsustainable. The young shouldn't be the only ones feeling the pinch, here.

Edit: £600,000 looks like DM bullshit, but the actual figure is still likely to be around ~£300,000, which is obviously much more than average.

would it not be better going after the big tax avoiders, i thought that was a bigger chunk of missing cash, compared to benefit fraud.

would it not be better going after the big tax avoiders, i thought that was a bigger chunk of missing cash, compared to benefit fraud.

Doesn't that just lead onto the fact that there are far more unemployed people than there are jobs, and that a large wedge of the benefits bill actually goes towards people who are in paid employment anyway?

Anyone who thinks Osborne's 'living wage' pledge (which IIRC won't even top out until 2020 at a rather miserly £9 per hour) is going to plug the gap in benefits/tax credits cuts is deluding themselves.

There are many families working very hard that need benefits/tax credits just to get by, whatever the myths of crap like Benefits Street or what it was called like to peddle.

We should do both? £1.5 trillion has to be paid for somehow.

Well that's all very civilised, I like it. And I did ramble on. But still, I can't remember a time when the number of people without work didn't dwarf the jobs available. Never mind where that goes or why it is, but that's a great problem to the idea that there are jobs there for all - in any dynamic economy there will always be jobs available. There will never be enough.

Edit - and therefore you'll have people on benefits, some of whom will be lazy. In the grand scheme of things, they cost so little that that can't be where the problems in the economy lie, unless they poison everyone into thinking that a life of laziness (with very little money) is lovely.

Consistently not taking a job when you could (and continuing to claim benefits) counts as fraud in my book, to be honest.


I think that's under the "benefit" heading for money spent. I might well be wrong, though.

BS or not, you don't have to pay 600K into a private pension fund to have a 600K pot. Compound interest is a massive factor in pension schemes. And that's where government-backed pensions fell down. The state should have been investing those funds as if it were a private scheme, at which point interest would have picked up a massive chunk of the bill. Instead they spent the money and made it future government's problem. Half the state-backed investment funds going tits up didn't help either, of course.

Personally I'm glad the governments spent the (albeit derisory, far from commensurate) staff contributions (if any) at the time rather than 'investing' it - you'll know far better than I do, Cras, about what has happened to your average pension fund investment over the last 8 years. My wife's is worth perhaps one-tenth what it was, which is why I've never bothered with one in the first place.

Except that they're still paying it. So instead of having to put their hands in their pockets at the time for 300K of contributions over 25 years and allowing investment capital growth to make up the difference, they're putting their hands in their pockets right now to the tune of 600K.

Sorry, I think you missed my point. That "capital growth" you speak of was, in this case, actually a decimation of at least 80% of the whole fund from memory, could be more. There are many other similar examples as you yourself allude to in your earlier post.

(Oh, and this is a static fund as accrued over 20-odd years of (now completed) service, so no-one's paying anything into it).

Whichever way you care to slice it, there's good reason why final salary pensions are non-existent anywhere now, in the commercial world.

Hard hitting interview by Kay Burley!
http://i100.independent.co.uk/article/k ... 1evSUtX8Xl

Re: Corbyn, I think he's practically the only option if Labour want to do any actual opposition. They likely could have rallied to defeat the welfare bill, but decided to not bother.

Like a tweet I read earlier, this is the Jedi deciding that instead of fighting they will just accept lots of dark side policies to appear as a realistic alternative to Darth Vader.

There's a decent argument that Labour lost the election by straying too far right and losing core support to the likes of SNP, UKIP, Greens and apathy.

Anyway, they don't need Corbyn to fight an election. It's five years away. Get him in for 3 years or so, get the base inside, then drop in a hero like that guy who isn't running this time but who sounds posh and was in the army and that. He can go more towards the centre while keeping the rest happy, and will benefit from looking like a saviour to the party. I'd genuinely say that's a better, more pragmatic strategy than Burnham et al.

Re: benefit caps, it can feasibly 'lock out' families from huge areas of the country. And like many other Tory policies will continue to increase inequality and child poverty whilst the ministers continue to claim expenses as absurd as 9p for individual car journeys.

Also, nobody should be prevented from having a family purely based on how much they earn.

While I firmly agree with that last, I feel my moral certainty start to waver a little if people decide to have seven kids despite not having a chance in hell of providing for them. So then do you have to draw a line somewhere? Fucked if I know.

Surely the way to do it (and I'm pretty sure the Child Benefit thing is doing this already) is to say that these rules will start at some point 9+ months in the future. Then people who already have lots of children don't suffer, and then people who are planning to have children can take the new rules into account?

Really though?

And we are back to here:

Like my Dad used to say, "you need a license to catch a fish, but any idiot can have a kid"

But...

"Anyone with a dick can be a father, but it takes a Man to be a Dad"

Just think about that.

*strokes chin*

I sympathise, but that is one awful, awful pension scheme - I don't have an investment that isn't worth more than I paid for it, and some substantially so. What the hell your wife's trustees have been doing, I don't know, but till recently the UK stock market was at a record high, so even a tracker would have been showing a decent profit.

As Craster alluded to, time in the market and consistent investment is key - one of the reasons final salary schemes have died is because employers didn't pay in when times were good, thinking a fund in surplus could be ignored. But it can't - keep building it when times are good, to cover when they're not. Once you fall behind in investments, you'll never catch up with the amount needed (and so schemes close, unless some sugar daddy dumps lump sums in).

Yes. What's the alternative?

I don't mean having 85 kids and getting a bajillion dollars a day in benefits, but you simply can't stop people wanting to have kids, and trying to deny that people becoming parents based on income is futile and not a good indicator for civilisation.

As Cras said, the impossible question is where you draw the line.

Also, it could disproportionately impact on anyone that is not white. Which would really make it a poor policy.

Well, yeah. Purely because any other position is either horrifically draconian (e.g. enforced contraception, criminalising larger families, etc) or adversely impacts the children (e.g. limiting child benefit) who are innocent in all this. Don't get me wrong, it is frustrating, but, seriously, what else could reasonably be done?

I'd suggest you base a decision on pragmatism. e.g,. are families with huge amounts of kids actually a huge drain or are they the outliers which generate a lot of press and get people frothing with rage? Also in an economy predicated on unfailing, never-ending growth isn't the creation of many new little economic units something of a necessity?

Bring back chimney sweeps and the mills and let nature take its course?

This question can't be answered, therefore you don't try to. You just have to work on the other aspects of society so that the children can have better opportunities and more engagement with society than their parents. Yes, a very small % of people on benefits are claiming fraudulently, but if their children are well educated and see opportunities available to them then the hope is they won't perpetuate that themselves because they'll see it for the shitty life it is and reject it.

Poor people with kids don't annoy me on a conscious level. Yes, at times they are annoying when they have the same phone as i do, or "affordable housing" is built nearby, but by and large I really cannot begrudge the money from the state. I am fairly sure that in tje £x bandied about, the majority of that could be "tax credits". I think these are just revenues not deducted, and isn't a hand out so much as a "nah, you are on a spot, don't worry about it". I would rather it went to families than funding the fucking opera.

Kay Burley is an utterly hideous, horrible human being. She's a terrible, terrible interviewer. The UK's Fox News hack.

I'm certainly looking forward to my opulent final salary pension... oh wait. Never mind.

Assuming all my funding of the welfare (25% of budget) comes from my income tax, I'm not going to moan to much about the £40 a week going to help others. And I get £20 of that back because of T-Bomb.

Is 'affordable housing' a code word for something else that I completely don't understand? What could be annoying about housing that's affordable?

Poor people live in affordable housing, and who'd want to live near them!

I hope that's not what you mean, Mali, even as a joke

I've been homeless. It's horrible and soul destroying and I don't know if you ever really pick yourself fully up from that point.

I'm sure it was meant tongue-in-cheek given the rest of the post.

Very much that indeed.

It's hard to tell, sometimes.

Unfortunately a lot of people do have these prejudices, and like sexism and racism if it is casually bandied about as tongue in cheek some people think of it as an acceptable form of casual bigotry, because it's just 'banter'. But those people that are able to make off-hand sexist and racist comments as jokes usually do seem to harbour much of that feeling deep down.

I'm sure that Mali is not so small minded as to think that way as I know he is a nice and supportive chap, but sometimes if you take on elements of that thinking and display them as your persona, whether with actual belief behind them or not, it makes doubt creep in and someone on the outside looking in can't determine this so easily. Add to this already years or decades of judgement by others and as much as you can appreciate the joke it can hurt. Not me so much, I'm one of the lucky ones and managed to get back up and start again.

Anyway, I've been homeless and now I am expecting a child. I may be to some the absolute worst of society. They can all shove off.

The amount of money you have is irrelevant. So is the colour of your skin, background, or religion. I judge people on their observable behaviours. If you're observably a horrible chav, swearing, spitting, smoking (not even taking care to stub out and dispose of stubs even), it's really obvious that you're not a person I'm keen to know. Similarly if your attitude is that you can't be arsed to work, or that you're too good for McDonalds or a manual cleaning job, and you're living off the state by whatever means you can and worming out of attempts to get you employed, that speaks deafening volumes.

If you have no job, no private housing and expect the state to pay to keep you and your child while giving nothing back then yeah I probably do consider you amongst the worst of society.

But that's clearly not you Mimi. Whether you were once homeless or poor doesn't even factor in to it. What kind of person are you now? A nice one, providing for yourself with your husband. That's all that actually matters, imho.

Can't reply to any of the interesting posts at the moment but will just quickly say, no-one is saying anything about you Meems or any homeless person; I've not been homeless but was chucked out on my ear at 16 and was sleeping on sofas and eventually got a "house share" (loosest possible sense) that cost me £25 of my £35 weekly wage, worst days of my life.

It's good we can all talk about this because generally speaking most people are terrified to do so precisely for fear of being thought a heartless wanker or worse, but I am certain no-one, least of all me, is alluding to any nasty shit whatsoever. For the record, I think you are a wonderful, inspirational person, truly, especially having now met you.


Cavey

Rightly or wrongly, the perception of affordable housing is that you are more likely to end up living near some badly behaved twats, and it doesn't take many of those to make everyone's lives a misery.

It's very much not the case that everyone that finds themselves homeless or in a bad situation is either at fault or a bad person.

But I was a nice person back then, too. I just ended up in a difficult situation and didn't have the support of family to help me through. I may have been ok if I did.

And I know that most decent people do not think that way, but some do, and I was unfortunate enough to meet some of them. Some preyed on the women I lived with to take advantage of their situations, because the women were so desperate to get by. Many with children, suddenly with no roof over their heads, and yet these same people hated the fact that these women that they took advantage of were part of their society and surroundings.

I'm sure you don't understand, or can't understand, because I can't understand it either, and can't see how anyone with any decency thinks and acts in that way.

Some times people end up in a bad situation because they've had their world ripped out from beneath them, look around and realise that they are actually alone. But then I also knew people who had just grown up in abject poverty and didn't know to ever hope for better. Being expected to get nowhere in life, it was a self-fulfilling prophecy for many. Too young, often poorly educated and not cared for by their own families, young girls pregnant and having children whilst still children themselves. Bad relationships and partners not sticking around lead to many single mothers, and many feel trapped by their children, who they love desperately, and feel they've failed them by not being able to give them what they want.

I don't understand the phone thing, or Sky TV, but maybe that's all these people have. What else do you do with your life when you have nowhere to go? I don't know. I can't even remember why I started this rambling post now

Back to topic a bit more: I don't think benefits should be such that people see having children as a way of obtaining money, or benefits as an incentive to have children. Taking these away will hurt many families, and yes the parents will feel that squeeze... But I worry it is the children that will feel it more. It's a lottery when you pop into the world whether you are born into s nice, well off middle class family, someone at the bottom of society that may have all manner of social ills upon them or a starving mother anywhere in the world. For a long time you can do nothing about this, you just benefit or suffer from your lot. By the time you can actually action any change in your future, many kids will have been 'taught' their place into society. They know the system favours the better off, that they can't compete with people not even born into high privaledge, but those middle class, or even those still on the breadline but with an actual council house, rather than an infested high-rise in East London. Nobody they know works in a library, or office, or finance. There are no role models or people who have paved the way before. Mum can't afford basic provisions, child has nothing to do, petty crime may follow, maybe teen pregnancy, cycle continues.

Gone off topic again. Wish I wasn't on my phone: no idea what I have been yabbering about since I started writing.

Anyway: I hope they don't take away or cap benefits for children already in this world at least. If parents are those that spend half of it in cigarettes and alcohol, and it's cut for those families with lots of children, that won't stop them buying the cigarettes and booze, it will just mean that the bit 'left Over' that usually goes on the kids is far less, or gone. The children will suffer, and how is it their fault?

My first job was as a 'kitchen porter' for £2/hour. I was worked like a dog as most nights involved frantically washing up while waiting on, dashing back and forth from the kitchen serving meals, clearing empties, washing empties and kitchenware before rushing back out again to give out bills and take payments. Hardest bloody work I've ever done, long shifts of non-stop motion. I used to come home and lie flat on the floor as my back was knackered after a shift. I remember one Christmas I took home as much as £120 as I'd done almost 60 hours that week. I didn't get EMA payments for going to bloody college!

I saved most of that money to buy my first PC. It cost me £650 of hard-saved cash. A mighty Cyrix 200MX with 32MB RAM and a 14.4 modem.

I survived through uni on loans, making websites and sitting on the IT helpdesk at the Uni for what had probably leapt to a enormous £4.50/hour back then. During the summers I was waiting on again at a crappy local restaurant.

I've said it before, I'm not a rags to riches story. More like a 'poorer but ok' to a now comfortable enough life. If you work and grind you'll be OK. Like it or not but that's what the Conservatives generally purport for society so it's not mystical that I'm sympathetic to that view.

Oh, Goodness Cavey, I didn't think that anyone was having a pop at me, personally or indirectly, I just hope that people do realise that some of the people that are in 'affordable housing' have had the toughest of lives, that perhaps we don't understand.

Yes, some will find themselves in a bad situation one day, but many will have been born into that bad situation and sadly know nothing else. We need better education and a truthfulness behind the assertion that you can climb up through society. Social mobility through hard work is often given as a reason to push out of the cycle, but how realistic is it? You have to start with a decent education, but if that isn't there, and you don't have the family support to learn, you've pretty much blown your chance before you have an awareness of the consequences.

We need inspirational employment and decent wages for those who do want to climb out of the mire. I know a lot of people get angry at the idea that people do not want to work as road-sweepers, or cleaners, for a few hours of minimal pay on a 0 hours contract, because you should take any work you are given, but if there were decent contracts and pay for these jobs that treated the worker fairly and had some day-to-day stability and benefits such as we all hope for in our own jobs then the mobilisation of some people would at least be an inspiration to peers and future generations.

But that's horseshit though.

There are all manner of horrible disasters that can befall people that it's impossible to 'work and grind through'.

The notion that the root cause of all people being on benefits is that they're lazy and feckless is really quite abhorrent. And it's always backed up by 'I worked shit jobs and turned out OK, why can't they?'

Fair enough Mimi. To mitigate what I said above, I was neither given a leg up but I didn't have my legs broken by horror or misfortune either. It would be unreasonable to look at a person from a abusive home that was never supported, encouraged or properly looked after and demand to know why they're not a wealthy banker like others are. You are ultimately moulded by your experiences and your exposure to things when you're young, and as you say, you can't control it. Some people are dealt a shit hand and then suffer horribly on top.

The circular argument comes back to who you point to for responsibility. Parents? Parent's parents? The government of 1786 for failing to support the great-great-great-grandparents of the family now suffering?

An individual can break from a bad past to have a better life, with the often stated goal to making it better for their kids than it was for them. That's very worthy, and more power to them. But not all people think like that. Some people have kids almost as a thoughtless reflex, and instead of raise them merely drag them around while they continue to lead their selfish lives with no real regard for their responsibilities. Throw poor education and a bad environment in to the mix and you probably wouldn't have much hope for them. But everyone is sentient, and if you want access to the internet in the UK you can get it for pennies, or free. You can learn, you can choose to try. I enormously respect anyone that really tries, regardless of how well they're doing. If you've got some drive and aspiration for better, it doesn't matter where you've come from, you're alright in my book.