Philip Hammond says there are 'no unemployed people'

[Irishwizard]

Tell that to the overweight people refused hip replacements or an alcoholic placed firmly at the back of queue for a liver transplant.
Surely you're not naïve enough to think that if you mess your head up with drugs that you chose to take, doctors with limited resources are going to lavish their time and energy on you.........?
Boy are you in for a shock.

why should you give a hip replacement to someone who can't walk when they aren't "fit' due to excess chips
Why should you give a liver to an alcoholic over some one who has genetic liver disease...get your facts right please . Have you had a blood transplant???

 

[Gunge]

He makes good TV because he gives straight answers and has more charisma than most other politicians today.

He's certainly entertaining, if nothing else (but he's that too - bonus!). I find T.May a surefire cure for even the most intractable bout of insomnia, whatever it is she's banging on about.

 

[Saisonator]

Back in the 70's I was attempting to control an offshore gas production platform from an onshore location with an IBM-1800 computer; and at that time we were being warned that we all had to look for something to fill out our "Leisure Time" because we would all be working a 10 hour week by the turn of the century.

What no-one realised was that another solution was to keep 25% of the population working 40+ hours a week on low wags and put the other 75% out of work!

Enter "The Bitch"!

In 1979 when she took power there were 1,390,467 people unemployed and within seven years (even after a lot of statistical juggling to lower the figures) a further 1,902,400 people had joined them.

Weird eh? All those people consigned to the scrap heap of unemployment and yet the nation has just voted to leave the EU on the basis that too many immigrants were finding employment in the UK.

Not really weird when you think about it. IT MAXIMISES PROFITS to employ smaller numbers of staff, working longer hours on lower wages than the more generous alternatives being put forward in the early 1970's.

Welcome to a UK economy which promotes austerity for the poorer members of our society and greater wealth for those who are already rich in material things.

It HAS to change! :thumb:

Reference:

Unemployment statistics from 1881 to the present day
https://www.ons.gov.uk/ons

The UK economy does not work in isolation, we are now competing with China, India and a load of other economies that we never were back in the 70's.
There is no god given right that each generation will have a better life and more opportunities than the previous.

Wages like everything else work on a supply and demand basis, increase supply and the commodity become worth less, decrease supply and the commodity becomes worth more. Europeans are not the problem in my view, the two million that flooded into Europe when Merkel decided to let emotion over ride logic, well that's something very different. It may well have been the difference between us leaving or staying in the EU. When people watched on TV what happen on shortly after the invasion, in Cologn on New Years Eve, then the terrorist atrocities across Europe, many knew we could not trust any of our politicians to keep us safe so they voted to force them to take some control of our borders.

I do believe that there is too much disparity between the lowest and highest paid in society, but socialism has never been the answer to lifting people from poverty long term. They can have a decent run for a few years but the wheels tend to fall off the bus once they run out of other peoples money to spend.
Much like Venezuela, which Corbyn tends to keep very quiet about these days :whistle:

[ame]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CCIdm3cM6zQ[/ame]

 

[Duxuk]

"In 1979 when she took power there were 1,390,467 people unemployed and within seven years (even after a lot of statistical juggling to lower the figures) a further 1,902,400 people had joined them."

It's worth pointing out that in the 70s in industries which didn't have to make a profit many people were employed who didn't really have any work to do. The dreaded British Leyland were given money to make poor cars at a loss on the understanding that they would employ lots of people.
It's still the same in the NHS and local government. A mate of mine had a "job" where no one would contact his depot (can't give details!) for days on end. They'd keep doing stock check so the computers said they'd done something. In reality he did a hell of a lot of internet surfing. Pity he isn't a brewer!

 

[Ajhutch]

It came as a massive shock to see that "New Labour" was apparently determined to discard the socialist values at the core of the Labour Party and in some instances become more "Tory" than the Tories themselves.

These 'more Tory than the Tories' things, could you give us a specific example? Should be easy enough, there's been a Tory government for seven years so perhaps some scheme or policy brought in by Labour that has since been reversed because it was too right wing for the Tories?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[MyQul]

On the 4th October 1779 Luddites rioted at Birkacre mill near where I live. They burnt the mill to the ground in a protest against the mechanisation of spinning and weaving. T' mill owner, Arkwright moved his operation elsewhere and was very successful. Chorley lost employment. The lesson is obvious. You must accept technology and adapt or we lose out against other countries. Ultimately technology will create it's own employment. In the '70s we were told that computers would allow us to work shorter hours but the opposite is the case.

I refuse to accept technology and plan on throwing my clogs into the gears of the infernal machines of Apple/Android/Facebook/Twitter and any other company you care to name :twisted:

 

[Oneflewover]

It's still the same in the NHS and local government. A mate of mine had a "job" where no one would contact his depot (can't give details!) for days on end.

Here we go, more uninformed 'public sector bashing'. My mate, blah blah blah.

This is simply utter, utter tosh, sorry. Yes there is money wasted in both the NHS and local government but this is largely due to bureaucratic inefficiency, not because people aren't doing a proper job!

 

[Thumper]

He makes good TV because he gives straight answers and has more charisma than most other politicians today.
Plus he pretty much engineered the Brexit referendum, so he has had a lot more influence in politics than UKIPS number of seats would indicate.

That he's charismatic can not be denied. But you can't claim that the BBC are biased towards the left when the simple fact of the matter is that they gave more air time to a right wing politician with less right to be on tv than the left wing politicians they ignored.

 

[Gunge]

....with less right to be on tv than the left wing politicians they ignored.

That is clearly a matter of opinion and I'm leaving it squarely at that!

 

[Ajhutch]

That he's charismatic can not be denied. But you can't claim that the BBC are biased towards the left when the simple fact of the matter is that they gave more air time to a right wing politician with less right to be on tv than the left wing politicians they ignored.

They have rules about which politicians get airtime on the BBC and I'm pretty sure it relates to number of votes as well as seats. UKIP got third place in votes in the 2015 election so got a lot of tv time. Their votes dropped markedly in the 2017 election so they will be on TV less.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Ciaran12s]

There's a lot of money wasted in the private sector on people who aren't any use at their job or just generally don't bring much to the table. I know of an office which employs around the 1000 mark. A considerable percentage of whom are "photocopiers and things like that " I.e good looking birds employed as eye candy.
Then you have the "real workers" employed by these firms through nepotism etc. A lot of whom are useless cretins that kick their feet through a shift, more often than not creating work for those that are useful, and they are highly regarded for it.

@saisonator I couldn't agree more regarding "no God given right - I don't believe anyone has a god given right to anything, even if you are one of these divine representatives on earth (e.g. HRM for one) However as politicians over the decades, I believe they have failed those they represent leaving the majority of the country decimated.

These magnificent unemployment figures are great but why are wages not rising? Supply and demand? So many jobs available and so many in work? Demand for workers according to the unemployment figures is high whilst the supply is low - result being that wages continue rise as employers compete for workers. I've not seen any evidence of this and as private sector employee for a massively successful (billions+ profit) company, I've not seen a pay rise in a few years either. But I'm "very lucky to have a job!"

 

[Saisonator]

I work for the public sector now after 30 years in the private sector and I can honestly say that the difference is night and day, well at least it is where I work.
My work load now is never more than half what it previously was, often quarter.
There are two types of workers in my team, those like me from the private sector who can knuckle down when required and those who have worked at this place from school. The latter do very little and if the supervisor tries to squeeze even half a day's work out of them they quickly fold and have two weeks off with 'stress' I even brought it up at a toolbox talk recently lol.

 

[Dutto]

These 'more Tory than the Tories' things, could you give us a specific example?

...........

How about the war in Iraq? :whistle:

 

[Dutto]

..........

It's worth pointing out that in the 70s in industries which didn't have to make a profit many people were employed who didn't really have any work to do. The dreaded British Leyland were given money to make poor cars at a loss on the understanding that they would employ lots of people.

.......... A mate of mine had a "job" where no one would contact his depot (can't give details!) for days on end. They'd keep doing stock check so the computers said they'd done something. ......

Poor management has ALWAYS blamed the worker and British Leyland was the epitome of poor management.

In your mate's case he was obviously being managed by a moron who possibly got his management job because his daddy knew someone from school. It is not the fault of your mate that he didn't really have a job so stop blaming him and start blaming the people responsible. i.e. the management.

The other "great lie" of this era is that the nationalised industries were being heavily subsidised when they weren't. This myth was used to perpetrate the biggest crime of all; which we are still paying for over forty years later!

An aide to President Regan was reported as commenting "When historians look back they will see that the biggest fraud of the 20th Century was when the British Government sold to the British People that which they already owned."

Oh that this was true!

Most of the shares in these industries were underpriced and sold to their friends in the City of London rather than the general public. The major purchasers of the shares took their profits by selling the shares on to foreign investors who are still bleeding this country dry.

 

[Dutto]

.......... I even brought it up at a toolbox talk recently lol.

Ah, that wonderful piece of worker safety: The Toolbox Talk (TBT).

A system whereby, before any work takes place, the potential dangers of a particular job are explained, along with the systems put in place to reduce the hazards to As Low As Reasonably Practicable.

The Socialist Government of 1970 (with Barbara Castle as Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity) appointed Lord Robens to chair a "Committee on Health and Safety at Work".

The main findings made by the Committee were that, under UK Common Law, there were many forms of redress in the event of an accident but for them to be activated someone had to be injured or die. This seemed unfair so effectively the Committee decided to legislate the Common Law and introduced the Health and Safety at Work Act in 1974.

For anyone who believes that there is no need to have worker protection in this day and age, I give you just ONE statistic.

"There were 2,542 mesothelioma deaths in Great Britain in 2015."

Mesothelioma is a very aggressive lung cancer caused by the inhalation of asbestos fibres. It can strike many, many years after inhalation and there is no known cure. We have known for years that asbestos is a dangerous commodity but people are still dying from the disease having worked with asbestos during their employment.

Until a few years ago, when faced with a claim for damages, Employers would use delaying tactics to ensure that the worker had died before the case came to court and thereby reduced their compensation payments.

Socialism doesn't work? Ha! Without an element of social justice in our society we allow ourselves to be abused for the profits of others; a situation that can never be justified.

References:

http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/
http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/causdis/mesothelioma/mesothelioma.pdf

 

[Ajhutch]

How about the war in Iraq? :whistle:

A terrible mistake but not anything to do with party lines. Have another go.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[MyQul]

How many pages is this thread going to roll on for :lol:

 

[Dutto]

How many pages is this thread going to roll on for :lol:

Well, I'm out on the basis of an old saying of my Dad's.

"There's none as deaf as those who don't want to hear!"

:thumb: :thumb:

 

[MyQul]

Well, I'm out on the basis of an old saying of my Dad's.

"There's none as deaf as those who don't want to hear!"

:thumb: :thumb:

My old dad used to say, "A thread never ends when a Dutto's on a roll" :lol:

 

[Thumper]

That is clearly a matter of opinion and I'm leaving it squarely at that!

Fair point. With less seats, then, which to my mind gives him less right.