working for your dole......

Azza said:
My parents rent two other houses out and in 3 years they'll have no mortgage(s) and will be retiring, my Dad will be 55.

Though I'm sure people on here will still bemoan them for doing that, even though my Dad has worked 12 hour shifts for the past 25 or so years. Hard work and being careful doesn't seem to count for a lot to quite a few people on here when it comes to buy to letting.
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Why don't you tell us when your Dad bought his first property... doubtless it was before 1997... when house prices were about 3.5x average salary. In 2007 it was double that, at 7x average salary. I read something the other day which suggested it is currently 11x, tho I don't have anything to back this up.

Point being, the situation your Dad faced as a first time buyer was much more favourable than the situation existing today.

It's great that your Dad can retire at 55 with tenants to pay the mortgage on his other properties. It's wonderful. But spare a though for the tenants, who may not have a choice, because they may have no hope of ever owning their own home [edit: regardless of how hard *they* work].
 
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But you don't get it. If you work really hard then you will magically get a promotion and more money, or if not you can just move to another job which you will get because you're a hard worker.

I don't begrudge people who own property or are financially secure in a meaningful job that doesn't pay a trash wage, but please don't do yourselves the disservice of thinking that anyone else can get into that same position.
 
nick.lidgett said:
Mainly because "young" people think unskilled labour is below them, even though they have no skills themselves, and refuse such jobs. enter the migrant workforce.
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Thats my experience too. Not just young people either. I know when I was unemployed that the job centre had plenty of people signing on but when I took a manual labour job to get off JSA that I and one other was the only native brit there, the rest of the team were poles and czechs and other eastern euopeans, even my boss.

I don't think they were stealing jobs, quite the opposite infact I never faced any kind of problem or discrimination for not being one of them. I can only only assume that for everyone locally manual labour is regarded as beneath them.

Caged said:
But you don't get it. If you work really hard then you will magically get a promotion and more money, or if not you can just move to another job which you will get because you're a hard worker.
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Not in my experience, you only need to suck up to the boss, are good socially and generally make yourself useful to the higher ups is whats necessary for promotion. If in addtion you can pass the work onto other people i.e. people who do actually do some work, so much the better. Theres a name for it, its called "delegation"

The ones who keep their heads down and work hard will prevent the company from going under, maybe even prosper, but they'll never get promoted.
 
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Its pritty sad that they would even think of stopping under 25 benifits,how do they expect people to survive and have any chance of life?
 
So we're at least agreed that a two-party system where each spends their term trying to undo what the previous lot did gets us nowhere, and meanwhile we have a ton of problems that are seemingly not solvable?
 
Caged said:
So we're at least agreed that a two-party system where each spends their term trying to undo what the previous lot did gets us nowhere, and meanwhile we have a ton of problems that are seemingly not solvable?
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Unchecked capitalism that socialises losses but privatises profits is the only problem with the economy, and can only be sorted out with violent revolution.
 
elmarko said:
If a person is working a full week they deserve a wage, not JSA.

JSA should be reserved for people who are currently not working but are actively seeking work.

The very most which should be enforceable is 7 hours a week (one full day) which at minimum wage works out to about the £45 a week (if this is really to get people to 'earn' the JSA payments), anything over that seems to be missing the point about what jobseekers allowance is meant to be for (ie, people who are not working).

Who whole thing isn't that sensible anyway, as it ignores the fact we currently have a deficit of available jobs - which regardless as to how many penalties they plan on inflicting on people seeking work it will never get everybody into employment.

Yet another short-sighted idea, not backed by any evidence meant to appease the "average 'Joe' on the street" who feels hard done by, who takes an element of pleasure from knowing those further down on the pecking order are getting shafted.

Schadenfreude at it's best.
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I agree.
 
hurfdurf said:
I am a home owner and land lord, and I am not feeling any hatred here what so ever?
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Quite, I am neither but nor have any negative feeling towards home-owners and don't, in principle, hate the idea of land-lordship or the making of money from owning houses.

I do however, think that housing should be affordable to the majority of working people, but don't think that necessarily has to mean the two groups mentioned above losing out.

If housing was cheaper, then home owners wouldn't have to be negatively affected (only the concepts of mortgages/loans ensures this) and nor would landlords (their rents would be cheaper but their markup wouldn't have to be).

The problem is upsetting the applecart. If, hypothetically, the price of housing was halved overnight then the only people negatively affected would be current homeowners and landlords, it wouldn't affect future home owning or landlords other than beneficially (as they would buy housing easier).
 
I think I'm probably about to unwillingly plaigarise someone since I'm sure I've heard this before but can't remember where, but surely in this day and age (talking about the UK as opposed to globally) the idea of full employment just isn't a realistic one? You shut down manufacturing or replace people en masse with improved machinery, there's only a certain amount of call centre staff that you need in this new service driven economy, and it's not as many people as you needed to run a factory.

Aren't we inevitably headed into a very two-tiered system where there's careers and then essentially crap jobs on zero hours contracts, and good luck moving from one to the other? I don't think it's realistic to expect there to ever be enough crap jobs to support every person who is unemployed but wants to work, especially when you have things like the high street dieing off, more self-checkouts being introduced etc. all of which require less staff to run.

Obviously then the question is what on earth are these people supposed to do? I appreciate there are likely to be glaring flaws in this argument and it might be a bit too much for a GD thread where we're supposed to be attacking property owners / anyone without a job depending on what camp you fall into, but it does raise questions.
 
Caged said:
So since this is Britain and people will knuckle under seemingly forever, unsolvable.
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I for one can't see myself staying here in the long term. It's increasingly plain that Britain is not a workers paradise - far from it ;) And the current govt seem intent on putting the desires of mega-corps 1st, 2nd and 3rd on their priorities list.

The headlines I'm looking forward to reading, in the not too distant future:

-Abolition of NMW ("hurts the economy")
-Full privatisation of NHS, US-style health insurance.
-Parents having to pay for all schooling, not just University. Privatisation of schools (academies are only the beginning).
-Most council run services fully privatised (is happening right now in my county, BT just won the bid to take over a lot of stuff)
-House sharing as more and more people can't afford to live in their own home
-Repeal of human rights legislation
-Greatly lessened rights and protection for workers
-Retirement age going up
....
-Peasant uprisings, revolution ;)
 
Oh yeah christ I forgot that they pretty much committed to repealing the Human Rights Act. Obviously they claimed that this would allow us to deport those dirty muslims quicker but I can't believe that anyone would support that.
 
Tory's are insane...they have no idea one bit....

Get a job when there are none available?

That party political broadcast tonight made me cringe....
 
Caged said:
Oh yeah christ I forgot that they pretty much committed to repealing the Human Rights Act. Obviously they claimed that this would allow us to deport those dirty muslims quicker but I can't believe that anyone would support that.
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Got to repeal that before they can set up the Gulags - I mean, Phase II of the Work Programme.
 
FoxEye said:
-Abolition of NMW ("hurts the economy") There are perfectly valid arguments that it can hurt employment figures. it is also simplistic thinking to assume a NMW ensure everyone in that soceity a good standard of living.
-Full privatisation of NHS, US-style health insurance. Will never go that far, the NHS is the UK's scared cow. You also seem to be confusing the private status of service providers with the need to pay at the point of service which aren't remotely the same thing
-Parents having to pay for all schooling, not just University. Privatisation of schools (academies are only the beginning). Where has this come from?
-Most council run services fully privatised (is happening right now in my county, BT just won the bid to take over a lot of stuff) Again see the point about the NHS, as long as evryone pays into a fund and that fund pays for a service for society why does it matter if it is carried out by people employed by the LA or people being paid by the LA on behalf of the tax payer?
-House sharing as more and more people can't afford to live in their own home Well I agree but this is more likely under a left wing government (as they are the ones who believe in the no borders utopia)
-Repeal of human rights legislation Disagreeing with the implementation of the European Court of Human Rights does not mean one does not believe in Human Rights. That's like saying anyone who doesn't watch the BBC can't like or have television
-Greatly lessened rights and protection for workers I can't say I agree with the incumbent's extension of the no right to claim unfair dismissal rule but I do generally believe that workers and business should have the same rights. Is is really fair that a good worker can leave with 30 days notice and no compensation to the business when a business can't give a bad employee any length of notice without a big payoff? Being able to fire at will just a boss is having a bad day is wrong, but so is the idea that because someone does you the kindness of employing you in their company, that you should expect a job for life regardless of your performance.
-Retirement age going upWe are living longer, expecting the pension age to remain static is just dumb.
....
-Peasant uprisings, revolution ;) Won't happen in a modern and well off state.
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FoxEye said:
I for one can't see myself staying here in the long term. It's increasingly plain that Britain is not a workers paradise - far from it ;) And the current govt seem intent on putting the desires of mega-corps 1st, 2nd and 3rd on their priorities list.

The headlines I'm looking forward to reading, in the not too distant future:

-Abolition of NMW ("hurts the economy")
-Full privatisation of NHS, US-style health insurance.
-Parents having to pay for all schooling, not just University. Privatisation of schools (academies are only the beginning).
-Most council run services fully privatised (is happening right now in my county, BT just won the bid to take over a lot of stuff)
-House sharing as more and more people can't afford to live in their own home
-Repeal of human rights legislation
-Greatly lessened rights and protection for workers
-Retirement age going up
....
-Peasant uprisings, revolution ;)
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I think you mean world revolution. ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proletarian_revolution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_revolution
 
estebanrey said:
so is the idea that because someone does you the kindness of employing you in their company, that you should expect a job for life regardless of your performance.
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What on earth is this thinking about? No employer does you the 'kindness' of employing you - you (presumably) have a marketable set of skills, and in exchange for the use of those skills you negotiate fair compensation. Nobody is doing anyone else a favour here.

If you flip it on its head, the employee was gracious enough to reply to your job advert in your time of need and was able to assist you in the matter of getting work achieved. For this the employer should be eternally grateful. See how daft it sounds?

Oh, and:
estebanrey said:
Is is really fair that a good worker can leave with 30 days notice and no compensation to the business
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Yes it is. If your organisation isn't appealing enough to keep someone there, either through competitive salaries or other benefits, then why should you expect to retain staff? If they're a good worker and they are being sufficiently rewarded for this then they wouldn't be leaving.
 
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