GazChap wrote:
Cavey wrote:
It matters a lot more that we have nearly 4 million people more in work than 2010;
Even if the work they're doing is paying so little that they can't afford to live comfortably?
Quote:
Yes, food bank use is terrible (and I'm personally doing a lot about it, a lot more than many people here I would wager, and I mean in time, as well as money terms)
Good for you - you almost certainly do more than I do about it, and for that you should be applauded, of course. The point is, however, is that there shouldn't need to be any food banks. It's 2017, we're (supposedly) one of the world's greatest economies, and you continue to "bang the drum" about how well the country's doing.
So when are the little people going to start seeing some of that benefit? Because I see and hear about an awful lot of situations where those who need help are not getting it, while those who don't need help continue to get richer.
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but do you honestly see lower levels of deprivation in Europe, or the USA? Bullshit you do, and Germany excepted, the former has 10-22% unemployment, not 4%. I travel widely in Europe on business, and I see massive levels of deprivation, breaks my heart! Open your eyes, eh?
Why is any of this relevant? I don't mean this to sound heartless, as obviously deprivation is horrible wherever you go, but of course I don't see deprivation elsewhere - I rarely leave the UK except on holiday jollies where, by definition, I'm unlikely to come across that stuff. I'm one of the lucky ones.
*BUT*, what I do see in this country is a rapidly increasing amount of homelessness, food bank usage, massive strain on public services and just general shittiness. But woop-de-do, the rich corporations continue to get richer and are confident about the future.
To put it another way, let's say you volunteered to hand out food at a local food bank - you may do this already, and again, more power to you if you do. Would you try and convince people using the food bank that actually, things are alright because the FTSE100/250 is at record highs, we have the highest employment rates and lowest unemployment rates (not sure why you separate those out when one implies the other, but whatever) and our manufacturing output is booming?
Didn't think so.
//edit:
37% percent of children will be brought up below the poverty line.Quote:
Soon more British children will be poor than since records began, back in 1961.
Quote:
More people are in work than for many a year – but never in modern times have so many been paid so relatively little, with families still poor and reliant on benefits even when both parents work
I'm sorry, whether by wilfully perverse choice or simply an inability to assimilate and absorb information that's contrary to your deeply seated belief-system, Gaz, you're simply not getting it, and I find myself repeating myself for the umpteenth time, man it's so tedious.
You talk about food banks (and at least graciously concede that I personally do far more about them than you do, and probably pretty much everyone else here), and their tragically rising use as if in some ridiculous vacuum, and as if:-
(1) Similar levels of deprivation (much worse actually, with massively higher - at least double - levels of unemployment) aren't happening in *Europe*, i.e. within the EU (the very organisation you espouse, and our leaving it is somehow removing some safety net when manifestly none exists now, here as elsewhere)
(2) Things were somehow so much better in either the distant or indeed recent past; as if somehow there was some Golden Age where poverty and gross inequity did not exist in the UK (2008, 2009, 2010 under Labour ring any bells?), or indeed in Europe or the US.
It's just all so naive, and no matter how many times stuff gets pointed out like this, there's this dumbassed, unyielding, default "well your just an evil [toree/capitalist scum] who doesn't care people are using food banks111", like as if very moderate Centrists and Patrician Tories like me, who by even your own admission get off our armchairs and into Round Table, Church and/or other charity actions to make a huge financial and more importantly human kindness improvement for people, directly at the coal face as it were.
You're also catastrophically missing the point I am making. I am NOT (repeat, NOT) suggesting that Brexit, even as it is currently unfolding, is good, merely that it is nowhere near as bad, so far, as has been predicted, and actually - by any measurable metric (number of people working, number of unemployed, business confidence, manufacturing output and investment, GDP growth, inflation, interest rates, FTSE100, FTSE250 etc.) - the UK is doing *well*, and therefore in no sense deserving of all the increasingly absurd, bitter, supremely resentful doom merchant/grievance-chimpery crap that's repeated here and elsewhere, like somehow people are willing things to go wrong. Well, sorry, mock me all you like (just as I assuredly mock you), but that's not where I am at; I like to look at realtime information and I reserve the right to amend or outright change opinions where this is appropriate, in the face of actual facts unfolding and hard data. There are no sacred cows for me, I have absolutely no time for it.
Your argument, aside from its frankly dishonest dual premise that things are somehow better and more socially equitable across the Channel in most of our comparably sized EU peer States (or indeed in the US), or that there was hitherto some Golden Age in the UK for that matter, also totally ignores the fact that things ARE getting much better for a huge proportion of the working population. Instead of endlessly looking at extremes and outerliers as those of your ilk obsessively - and exclusively - do, presumably in ever more desperate attempts to fuel eons-held, unyielding political grievances, may I invite you to remove the blinkers just for a minute and understand that, with 4 million more people working and an economy that's grown every quarter pretty much for 7 years, with the value of British business increased four-fold and manufacturing in rude health, the best for a generation, this IS going to mean improved prosperity for median and upper quartiles in particular. I cannot even recognise the business climate now, as compared to even 5 years ago, and in fact I would go so far as to say "we've never had it so good". Bear in mind, that we are a tiny little Engineering consultancy (In the North of England), hardly some giant PLC. If you're prepared to work, the work is there, now, where there was precious little before.
Of course, though, it's just so much easier to ignore the inconvenient truths of all those economic parameters that I mention, whether it's manufacturing output, levels of investment or confidence, unemployment lowest for more than four decades, employment highest ever, FTSE100 and FTSE250 etc., just because there ARE still bad things which must be dealt with (social inequity, but ignoring this has always been there) - and just cling ONLY to the bad stuff, totally ignoring all the good, at all costs. Apart from being absurd, it must be so miserable. If your benchmark for success is a never before achieved economic and social Utopia, then guess what Gaz: you are going to have one disappointed political outlook my son. (Guess what also: if you're so, so disappointed with all this manufacturing renaissance, record unemployment and GDP/FTSE growth etc., well, my word, you would be REALLY PISSED with a few years of Corbyn.... or would you? Maybe you would do what you do now in reverse; refuse to see the sacking of Rome as it were, because, heck, such swivel-eyed Socialism is *your* football team?
)
As for your final point about me saying stuff about the FTSE100/250 in the food bank, and my not doing so somehow proves jack shit, well that's a very weak effort. No, I wouldn't talk about why I think people resort to using food banks to those people, I just lend them a helping hand and tinned goods, stuff that they need. But I *do* talk about this kind of thing in the Politics debate thread on Beex, because you know (and difficult as it is to believe), I have some vain hope that amongst all the snarking and years out of date cut and pasted graphs idiocy etc., there may yet be decent, intelligent discussion to be had, like back in the day. But then that's me I guess: an optimist...
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