14 million in poverty

[Aled]

Rewulf said: "Like has been said, theres no easy answers, but education would certainly help a lot of people who struggle"

I used to work with a group of single parents who lived in housing association accommodation, nearly all (at the time) were on benefits, when I asked the group what they wanted I noticed that more than anything else they wanted knowledge: No surprises what they wanted, advice on how to feed their children better, how to manage their money, contraception,  could they work a few hours and still claim benefits, how could they improve their literacy and help their children, one which I found quite sad was "were they allowed to join the local library" etc.

So perhaps there is a type of poverty out there which does not involve only money, maybe there is a "poverty of knowledge" in our communities, which addressing may well make a difference?

Cheers

Aled  

[grrclark]

15 minutes ago, 12gauge82 said:

It's not about making the rich poorer, it's about increasing the working classes pay and conditions, at the moment their are too many very wealthy individuals and organisations taking too big a cut of employees work, also leaving the masses with little incentive to work hard.

That is too simplistic an answer as well though.

If you increase the wages of everyone you simply make the costs of goods more expensive too so it cancels itself out.

Despite what many on here seem to think the vast majority of businesses don’t deliberately shaft their employees to keep the boss better off.

I have talked on this forum before about the last company I was an employee, and director, of.  In the UK, going back 5 or so years, we were paying people around £15k per year to pack cardboard boxes, zero skill job just relying on some manual dexterity and a lot of forebearance to put up with such a dull job.  The ones who packed cardboard boxes on the nighshift had a 25% uplift.

Skilled electronic debug technicians got around £25k.  So about £500 a month difference in real terms for doing a job that required a college education, the pressure of getting the diagnosis correct and continuous upskillIng versus lifting stuff up and down, and not even heavy stuff.

You were right on the question of “where is the incentive to work hard?”

In our Romanian factory we were paying one fifth to one third of those rates purerly because of the lower cost of doing business in Romania.  It cost us more to pack boxes in the UK than it did to debug a circuit board to component level in Romania.

We were paying the maximum the market would bear in the UK without binning 1600 UK jobs and shipping it all overseas.  The only reason the market would sustain that price differential between Romania and the UK was because of the lead time associated with shipping stuff to Romania and back again, proximity to the market saved the UK jobs.

If UK prices were forced to go up due to a change in cost in the UK through a general mandatory uplift in salaries the market would either need sufficient desire to carry that increase or it would change, ultimately the end user consumer decides what is or isn’t affordable and the market will change if the consumer says so.

That is the reality of a hell of a lot of business in the UK, we are uncompetitive relative to many economies round about us in the global market, largely because of the growth in property prices and as a reaction to that we have to pay bigger wages and so the costs of goods, including property, goes up and it becomes a self propagating nightmare.

One of the biggest problems the UK has is that it has become a very consumerist society of disposable goods that we love to buy cheaply and as we love to buy cheaply we have to import as we are too expensive as a market to make them ourselves.  That is a self propagating nightmare too.  Just look at the number of relatively new cars in the UK versus countries with economies that are still hungry.

We cannot put the genie back in the bottle, at least not quickly and not without a wholescale change in our own expectations and sense of entitlement.

[Prospero]

1 hour ago, Hamster said:

👍

 I have always voted Tory up to now but will be voting Labour next time, not because I believe they'll (be allowed) to change things but because it is the only thing I can do. 

Why is it always the Tories fault that people are living in so-called poverty? I really don't see it mate and another thing I really really doubt bearing in mind what you've posted previously that you were ever voted Tory in your life.

[grrclark]

Aled,

I believe that you are correct, there is a poverty of knowledge, or certainly of real world wisdom.

I personally think our educational curriculum has become far too heavily skewed towards academic results (that’s easy to measure) and misses out on education for life.

Edited November 14, 2018 by grrclark
A poverty of ability to spell and type!!!

[JohnfromUK]

4 minutes ago, grrclark said:

I personally think our educational curriculum has become far too heavily skewed towards academic results (that’s easy to measure) and misses out on education for life.

Interesting take.  I was in education a long time ago (I left school in 1974), but we had no 'education on life' element in the curriculum.  For 'O' level I had Maths, Additional Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, English Language, English Literature, Religious Knowledge, History, French.  No 'Domestic Sciences' type things were available.

For 'A' level, I had Maths, Physics, Chemistry.  Again no 'Domestic Sciences' type things were available, though Politics and Economics (one combined course) was available.  All of the 'O' level subjects were also available for 'A' level, but the maximum you could select together for 'A' level was 4. 

I can't recall there being any 'non academic' options available.  I know since those days there have been a number of less academic and more 'life' subjects.

[Yellow Bear]

16 minutes ago, grrclark said:

 and misses out on education for life.

And we have teaching unions who think this is NOT a teachers job.

 

[henry d]

1 hour ago, Rewulf said:

'If you build it , 'they will come..'  

But my favourite is this one , in answer to yours.
'Give a man a fish, he eats for a day.
Give a man a fishing rod.....'

Second question first; not if he is disabled, not if the weather is rubbish, not if you sweep the oceans clean/electro fish the clams and everything else off the sea bed...

Yes they will come, in their droves. I had the pleasure of talking with a few of the guys who serve with community dinners from Lisbon...

https://vimeo.com/35566164

[henry d]

 

3 minutes ago, Yellow Bear said:

And we have teaching unions who think this is NOT a teachers job.

 

It is not a teachers job to be a social worker, but they do it, they shouldn`t have to pay for materials to do the job of educating, they should not have to work more hours than they are contracted either, but they do all this and more.

[Yellow Bear]

1 minute ago, henry d said:

 

It is not a teachers job to be a social worker, but they do it, they shouldn`t have to pay for materials to do the job of educating, they should not have to work more hours than they are contracted either, but they do all this and more.

So now you are saying that we need social workers to teach life skills - In reality the job is the parents but the state will do everything mentality is still in the ascendance.

[Westward]

12 minutes ago, grrclark said:

Despite what many on here seem to think the vast majority of businesses don’t deliberately shaft their employees to keep the boss better off.

And that is a point well worth making.

Almost everyone in this country has the opportunity to get an education, despite what the political opportunists claim, and for those who don't do well at school there are apprenticeships, training places and any number of employers offering opportunities to have a decent job. I personally know 2 brothers who were given places on a 6 month trial at Delphi, offered to a few young people for whom the education system didn't work out. One of them has realised how important the opportunity is and will be placed on their apprenticeship scheme but unfortunately his brother who turned up late and showed little interest is now on the dole, working for cash with his mother's boyfriend and smoking weed. One brother is destined to have a proper salary and a decent life, the other will most probably end up bumping along and drifting from one poorly paid job to the next. More pertinently, the loser brother and any dependents he might acquire in life will undoubtedly be included in the poverty stats without it being in any sense the fault of government nor will it be something the government can fix.

Is it the case that poorer people generally have a lower standard of education because they're poorer (as the socialists are always claiming) or are they poorer because they have a lower standard of education?

I know what I think...

[grrclark]

14 minutes ago, JohnfromUK said:

Interesting take.  I was in education a long time ago (I left school in 1974), but we had no 'education on life' element in the curriculum.  For 'O' level I had Maths, Additional Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, English Language, English Literature, Religious Knowledge, History, French.  No 'Domestic Sciences' type things were available.

For 'A' level, I had Maths, Physics, Chemistry.  Again no 'Domestic Sciences' type things were available, though Politics and Economics (one combined course) was available.  All of the 'O' level subjects were also available for 'A' level, but the maximum you could select together for 'A' level was 4. 

I can't recall there being any 'non academic' options available.  I know since those days there have been a number of less academic and more 'life' subjects.

At that time life education came from the family home and society, I don’t believe that is done to nearly the same extent.

If you read some of the associated articles around the poverty measure headlines you will see examples of kids arriving at primary school, aged 5, still in nappies and unable to perform the most basic of motor skills you would expect of a child that age.  In one example the child didn’t even know its own name.

Regrettably we need life lessons in schools as there is a very real shortage of it in lots of sections of our society outside of schools.

[Hamster]

37 minutes ago, Prospero said:

Why is it always the Tories fault that people are living in so-called poverty? I really don't see it mate and another thing I really really doubt bearing in mind what you've posted previously that you were ever voted Tory in your life.

It isn't specifically their fault but they have been in power for a decade now during which time things have got steadily worse and unlike Labour they never even attempt to make the right noises regarding things such as the obscene fat cat/utilities boss's pay packets or addressing housing shortages or preventing dirty foreign money from buying up (and leaving empty) thousands of London properties purely for investment while the middle to lower classes are finding it next to impossible to afford to buy their own home. 

The list is pretty endless, I have come to prefer Labour's (and it has to be said Corbyn's in particular) slant on social justice,  scrapping tuition fees (I know I know, we could afford it 50 years ago but can't now 😴 ), renationalising certain utilities, more police and of course their attitude towards the very many unnecessary wars (and alliances ) which I believe makes us presently unsafer due to increasing terrorism.  The more they smear him the more I know they fear him. 

[Westward]

Do you mean fat cats like say R Branson. Britain's favourite entrepreneur who cosied up the Blair and Co?

Anyone know where he got the name Virgin from? Think tax havens...

 

[grrclark]

2 minutes ago, Westward said:

Is it the case that poorer people generally have a lower standard of education because they're poorer (as the socialists are always claiming) or are they poorer because they have a lower standard of education?

I know what I think...

One drives the other and my thinking is broadly the same as yours.

However it is also a little bit too simplistic othwrwise we wouldn’t have a problem as it would be easy fixed.

Whether we believe in capitalism or socialism there are always people who lose out and people who prosper.

True communism is the idealists answer, but that has never and will never work.

The problem is human nature, we’re fundamentally greedy, selfish and self interested as a race and that is never going to change.  We are masters at exploiting situations to suit our own interests, that’s why we’re carrying guns and driving cars whilst the other animals don’t.

[TIGHTCHOKE]

8 minutes ago, Hamster said:

It isn't specifically their fault but they have been in power for a decade now during which time things have got steadily worse and unlike Labour they never even attempt to make the right noises regarding things such as the obscene fat cat/utilities boss's pay packets or addressing housing shortages or preventing dirty foreign money from buying up (and leaving empty) thousands of London properties purely for investment while the middle to lower classes are finding it next to impossible to afford to buy their own home. 

The list is pretty endless, I have come to prefer Labour's (and it has to be said Corbyn's in particular) slant on social justice,  scrapping tuition fees (I know I know, we could afford it 50 years ago but can't now 😴 ), renationalising certain utilities, more police and of course their attitude towards the very many unnecessary wars (and alliances ) which I believe makes us presently unsafer due to increasing terrorism.  The more they smear him the more I know they fear him. 

Blimey you've got it bad, will you turn the lights out once you've chased every one from this once proud country.

Old (REAL) Labour were a force to be reckoned with, since the Bliar years things have got steadily worse until now with Corbyn and Abbott and Co they are truly un-electable.

[JohnfromUK]

11 minutes ago, Hamster said:

The more they smear him the more I know they fear him.

We all fear him - if you think it is bad now, it would be 100x worse under Corbyn & Co.  Just look at his much admired Venezuela.

[Westward]

16 minutes ago, grrclark said:

However it is also a little bit too simplistic othwrwise we wouldn’t have a problem as it would be easy fixed.

 

But it's not easy to fix is it? I do not believe the education system is heavily flawed or heavily skewed toward the middle classes. What I do think is that the problem lies fairly and squarely in the mindset of young people, their parents and often their grandparents, all of whom typically hail from certain areas that exist in most towns and cities, that education is not vitally important.

Edited November 14, 2018 by Westward

[Hamster]

6 minutes ago, JohnfromUK said:

We all fear him - if you think it is bad now, it would be 100x worse under Corbyn & Co.  Just look at his much admired Venezuela.

I know next to nothing about Venezuela or any other ruined country touted as proof socialism doesn't work, I do know though that there's a 99% chance the US is behind their problems. I love how we're allowed to ignore the fact all capitalist countries with the notable exception of Germany are in deep economic problems and under trillion $'s of debt, have millions living on foodstamps and millions more in poverty and rough sleeping but that is never the fault of capitalism. 

[Vince Green]

1 hour ago, Prospero said:

Why is it always the Tories fault that people are living in so-called poverty? I really don't see it mate and another thing I really really doubt bearing in mind what you've posted previously that you were ever voted Tory in your life.

Labour needs a poor underclass in order to maintain its position, it bribes them with impossible promises, if they vote Labour. They blame everybody else for everything, its called deflection.

When people get richer they stop believing the lies and deflection. So labour can never actually make things better, it would make then redundant

Edited November 14, 2018 by Vince Green

[Hamster]

13 minutes ago, TIGHTCHOKE said:

Blimey you've got it bad, will you turn the lights out once you've chased every one from this once proud country.

Old (REAL) Labour were a force to be reckoned with, since the Bliar years things have got steadily worse until now with Corbyn and Abbott and Co they are truly un-electable.

So unelectable they feel the need to demonise and smear him with every trick in the book week in week out.  

[TIGHTCHOKE]

That's a particularly poor argument!

He and Dianne and Co are the best things to happen to the Tories for years.

[grrclark]

1 minute ago, Hamster said:

I know next to nothing about Venezuela or any other ruined country touted as proof socialism doesn't work, I do know though that there's a 99% chance the US is behind their problems. I love how we're allowed to ignore the fact all capitalist countries with the notable exception of Germany are in deep economic problems and under trillion $'s of debt, have millions living on foodstamps and millions more in poverty and rough sleeping but that is never the fault of capitalism. 

To examine Germany you need to examine all of the EU, or more pertinetly the Euro zone economies.  There are a great many economic problems throughout much of Europe that could be very reasonably be argued are due to the disproportionate strength of German capitalism.

[Hamster]

1 minute ago, TIGHTCHOKE said:

That's a particularly poor argument!

He and Dianne and Co are the best things to happen to the Tories for years.

Yes, didn't they do well in the last elections...............................(whistles off quietly)

[grrclark]

5 minutes ago, Westward said:

But it's not easy to fix is it? I do not believe the education system is heavily flawed or heavily skewed toward the middle classes. What I do think is that the problem lies fairly and squarely in the mindset of young people, their parents and often their grandparents, all who typivally hail from certain areas that exist in most towns and cities, that education is not vitally important.

We are not so far apart in our thinking on this.  Social conditioning plays a massive part in the problem.

[TIGHTCHOKE]

Y

1 minute ago, Hamster said:

Yes, didn't they do well in the last elections...............................(whistles off quietly)

Yes, well enough considering what has been going on for a long time now!