2015 post UK election discussion

[Clint Planet]

Government efforts to reduce child poverty can of course be stymied quite dramatically by anyone who decides to have kids despite lacking the finances to support and raise them. This is the elephant in the room which Labour supporters ignore and the Tories cannot risk mentioning.

Why on earth people choose to have children when they are already struggling financially without them is utterly beyond me. It is NOT the state's role to pick up the pieces, regardless of cost, of every single bad life decision made by every person in the country. There is a difference between having compassion and making provision for the genuinely vulnerable in society, and just bankrolling every feckless irresponsible layabout you can find simply so you can pontificate about how self-righteous you are.

It's disappointing that you reduced it to a bit of cheap point-scoring at the end, there. I don't think it helps your argument.

Getting back to the core of the issue, I think we need to be careful not to see it in such black and white terms, like you do. I'm dubious about the amount of welfare mothers are really out there and I certainly don't think that the vast majority of child poverty has much at all to do with irresponsible procreation of the proles. There are 4 million children in child poverty in the UK today. That figure will no doubt increase dramatically due much more to government-imposed austerity measures than to the reckless breeding of "feckless, irresponsible layabouts."

And even if we accept that some women do get themselves pregnant over and over again just to live off the benefits (in my line of work, teaching in a very deprived part of London, I've come across this type but they're actually much thinner on the ground than you'd expect, by the way), is that any reason to cut welfare for all children living in poverty? It seems to me, the Tories (and your good self) want to "force the lazy and feckless off benefit-dependency and back onto their feet," for want of a better phrase, and yet in my first hand experience, the overwhelming majority of people on benefits desperately want to work. It's just that the work really isn't there.

It seems rather churlish to blame them for their own poverty (though I know that is the standard tactic of the right, even if it doesn't ring at all true to many of us).

I have stayed out of this thread for as long as possible, because it's blindingly obvious that there is a massive bias in favour of Labour on this forum as a whole. That's fine, everyone is entitled to have their own views on politics, and at least everyone on here voted... or did they? However, you would all do very well to remember that the ONLY party to poll over 10 million votes the other day was the Conservatives. The simple fact of the matter is, more people think they are right than agree with Labour. That's it. If you don't like living in a democracy, I don't really know what to say to you.

How incredibly patronising of you to put us straight in such a way. The simple fact of the matter is that it is much more nuanced and multi-faceted than you have made out, as you well know, and that people are perfectly entitled to lament a result that they personally see as regretable and unfortunate.

Disagree with them, by all means, but please don't lecture them.

 

[roydo]

Disagree with them, by all means, but please don't lecture them.

Exactly.

 

[Allezfan]

The simple fact of the matter is, more people think they are right than agree with Labour. That's it. If you don't like living in a democracy, I don't really know what to say to you.

I think you can like the system that produces a result and still regret the result itself.

 

[jaycee]

2 million single parents
less than 2% are teens
around 50% were married while having children
63.4% work
71% who have children over 11 work
hardly a drain on the coffers

 

[daylightrobber]

2 million single parents
less than 2% are teens
around 50% were single when married
63.4% work
71% who have children over 11 work
hardly a drain on the coffers

Does that mean 50% were already married when married?

 

[jaycee]

Does that mean 50% were already married when married?

will amend it 50% were married when having the child/children

 

[daylightrobber]

I don't have contempt for the poor. I think we should invest more in local projects that improve the areas and give people hope. I just don't think that is achieved through putting people on benifits and leaving them to rot.

There are also a lot of people who do exploit the poor but even then it's more complicated. Some times what appears exploitation is simply the result of having to run a business efficiently because if you don't then the business wouldn't survive and everyone would be out of work.

Stop with this insulting narritive. 50% of the people voted Tory.

You should probably have another look at those figures. Some would say that the %age of votes they actually did win shouldn't give a mandate to do what ever the hell they like.

 

[Mrk]

Utter tripe. Almost the whole of the media are slanted and biased toward a market economy and guess which party that favours?

It's a massive advantage that the Tories have. You'd be squealing like a stuck pig if the Tories had a Labour-compliant media behind them.

We have a media that are biased towards centre-right causes because people buy newspapers that are biased towards centre right causes. The readership of centre-left newspapers is minuscule in comparison - there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that stops people buying the Mirror or the Guardian instead of buying the Sun or the Mail - people buy newspapers that they want to buy.

Secondly, you do embarrass yourself sometimes, which is a shame because occasionally you make good points, because as for me 'squealing like a stuck pig', I've posted my thoughts on our newspapers before and I'm no fan whatsoever of the Mail, or the Sun, or the Express. I don't find them interesting and they represent about 1% of my views on the world. So on that count, you're wrong. I'll leave the squealing like pigs to the far-left and far-right.

 

[Mrk]

Tories in 1983?

Wasn't a full term. She only did 4 years I think.

 

[roydo]

I would like to make the observation that the Tories didn't win based on their policies. If they did, then 36% of the nation voted for food banks and poverty. I genuinely don't believe that was the case.

What happened was that people voted out of fear. They were scared by negativity. I understand it. However, this is why I hate the Tory party and UKIP. They win by spreading fear. It is ruining our nation.

Compare this to the VE commemorations yesterday. People faced unimaginable terror without that fear winning.

How things have changed.

But what is wrong about someone voting for someone because they dont like the thought of the SNP calling the shots? Or if they think that Ed was not speaking to or for them?

As I said last night, I really wanted to find a solid reason to vote Labour, I really did. (Wouldnt have made a difference where I live anyrate), But the hectoring style he adopted, the faux sincerity, the SNP factor, the absolute belters he started coming out with about the NHS, and the inference, repeated by your post, that not voting for him meant I was in favour of killing poor people and that food banks are great, quite frankly, put me off.

And for the record, I am neither rich, nor earn tons. In fact, I probably earn below the minimum wage. Called being self employed.

 

[Allezfan]

We have a media that are biased towards centre-right causes because people buy newspapers that are biased towards centre right causes. The readership of centre-left newspapers is minuscule in comparison - there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that stops people buying the Mirror or the Guardian instead of buying the Sun or the Mail - people buy newspapers that they want to buy.

Yeah, basically. The UK is mostly a centre-right country.

However, I do think there's also the perception that labour have their hearts in the right place but couldn't organise a pissup in a brewery, while the tories may be heartless gits but they can get the job done.

I think if people trusted the competence of the left, they'd be far more popular than they are.

 

[Clint Planet]

Wasn't a full term. She only did 4 years I think.

Nitpicking!

 

[Khalekan]

Yes, a far more appropriate thing that I should have said is that "you only stay poor if you lack aspiration to work hard and improve your situation."

I actually believe, largely, that how we get on in life broadly reflects how much we put into it, regardless of our starting position.

Yes, that kind of thinking might have meant sommat forty or fifty years ago when Britain was replete with a manufacturing base and the shipyards, steel foundries and car plants were employing thousands upon thousands of people and even the most dim witted among us could leave school at 15 and make a life for himself in one of them.

The days when lads started working with proper plumbing companies, electrical contractors or glazing companies and emerged after a five year apprenticeship as an accomplished tradesman who maybe eventually started his own small business.

But your sentiments and your thinking are pure bunkum in this day and age where successive governments made it easy for multi national companies to leave these shores so they could exploit third world labour and render our industrial base devastated.

That is a hand wringing post and you don't even know what you are saying.

The key word is "aspiration".

Every poor kid on the sink estate "aspires" to do better but long gone are the opportunities to lift themselves out of it.

Every homeless person dossing down in a shop doorway "aspires" to having a place to call home.

It us quite disgusting for chaps to smugly imply that the only thing necessary to lift oneself from poverty is the "aspiration" so to do.

No, my friend.

What people really need to rise out of poverty is the "opportunity" to do so.

And there is precious little of that in this once industrial powerhouse of a country.

The best most of these poor kids can hope for is minimum wage Mac Jobs, zero hour contracts or agency jobs with the council or in old people's homes without any kind of job security.

Job security.

That is another old fashioned concept which had gone out the window since Thatcher started her attack on industrial Britain and those people who depended on it to lift themselves out of poverty ......and to "stay" out of it.....and raise a family.

Oscar Wilde once said that we are all in the gutter. But some of us are looking at the stars.

Ponder on that and think of the hopelessness of kids who long to reach for the stars but lack the opportunity to do so.

 

[Mrk]

Nitpicking!

Maybe, but my original point was based on a fact (I just can't remember what it was...)

 

[Allezfan]

Maybe, but my original point was based on a fact (I just can't remember what it was...)

I'm with clint here, the fact that cameron got more votes after a term in office is a hell of an achievment but he's just matched what Thatcher did, he's not surpassed her.