General British politics discussion thread

No not people I don't agree with. I don't agree with some Labour fans here.

The only people I label Tory fans are the ones constantly trying to defend the Tories or shut down or rabbit hole any bad stories for the Conservatives

Well, it is now crystal-clear that the whole voter ID thing is an excercise in disenfranchisment.

Only today I got a leaflet formally telling me about the requirments for elections 7 weeks away and the gov.uk website says it could take a month for the certificate to come through once approved. Thinking of putting in a paper application just to see how much of a farce it actually is.

Some reasons.

The unemployed people may not be qualified, skilled or physically able for the job in question.

The jobs may not be in locations that the unemployed reside - no government as yet has come up with a plan to close unemployment blackspots with a mass-movement of people (though closing Liverpool came close to government policy in the 1980s).

A lot of the jobs are transient in nature (fruit pick in Kent in spring, then work a tourist bar in Cornwall in summer) which fit better with an immigrant or 'passing through' population, but not permanent residents.

There is a line where cuts in social-welfare eventually leads to riots and a UK Bastille Day. It's better to be 10% above that line rather than 5% under it.

Liverpool can't say much when they in league with the Conservative government went and created literal ghost towns in Tryweryn Valley.

You might equally ask, why have employers not increased the wages so that more people will be motivated to apply for the jobs and thus fill the vacancies?

Armanijeanss has explained the issues well — neither jobs nor workers are "one size fits all".

A further factor is that most social welfare payments do not go to unemployed people. In fact just 1% of the UK's welfare spending goes on unemployment benefits. Only 3.7% of the UK workforce is unemployed, and anything less than 5% is generally considered to represent "full employment". (There's a natural level of unemployment in any economy which represents, e.g., people between jobs; people who have recently entered the workforce [e.g. completed education or training] but have not yet been hired; people whose skills have become redundant and who need to retrain, etc.)

Your question assumes that there's a significant pool of healthy, competent working-age adults out there who are not in work merely because they find the UK's (not conspicuously generous) unemployment benefits sufficient for their wants. In fact this is almost certainly not the case.

Yeah, but if you take a low-paying job you can still get housing benefit — it's means-tested. And of course you still get free NHS. So these things are not acting as a disincentive to take up work. A huge chunk of the UK's social welfare expenditure goes to people who are in work, but in low-skilled, low-paying jobs — far more than goes to the unemployed.

There's a right-wing Daily Mail-ish trope that social welfare subsidises and encourages idleness. On the figures, there's a far stronger case for saying that social welfare subsidises exploitative employers, low-grade employment, low wages and low productivity. If there's a scrounger class in the UK, it's not the unemployed.

@Peregrinus I agree. I wasn't trying back up the original poster's point that it stops people from working.

Yes I agree that benefits serve as deniable subsidies for large employers.

Same in Ireland. Council staff aren't paid well.

Do you know people in the real world?

And you ask me for evidence but not the previous post?

You're a bully.

Not sure where you got that info - council operatives in Ireland would be paid well above the minimum wage. I think they're on €13/€14 per hour or something.

This would make these people eligible for council housing.

13/14 euro an hour is very low pay.

Many civil servants are in the same position. Many earn less than 30 grand a year.

Well in Ireland, your income decides if you're eligible for local authority housing. If it's a low income, you can join the waiting the list and wait 20 years to get a house.

In Scotland, people aged 16 and 17 can vote in Scottish Parliament elections.

If Labour does well enough in the next UK general election for Starmer to become prime minister, is it a foregone conclusion that people aged 16 and 17 in all of the UK will be given the right to vote in future general elections?

British politics really is in the Toilet, when Starmer is the only hope to get the Tories out.