General British politics discussion thread

Led By Donkeys giving Starmer a gentle reminder of what he's said in the past about electoral reform.

I'd love if he did bring in PR but a probable massive majority suggests he won't.

Yep, spot on unfortunately.

Worse still, some poor buggers' bodies are falling apart, too!

If people want their children to go to schools with non killer walls they should just work harder so they can afford Eton.

Can't see any logic to this post.

It was a total bizarre way of holding referenda, mind boggling in fact. 99% of countries hold referenda on something they want implemented and ratified. Holding a referendum on constitutional change you are not in favour of is weird and arguably even an abuse of democracy.

Cameron was an utter shyster of course and abusing the referendum process.

1980s Irish politics on abortion or anything with church influence are not something that any democracy should aspire to.

It's really a black mark on your government if anyone says "hey that's like 1980s Ireland"

Can't wait for the 2051 Brenter vote 🤣

"Worklessness" a driver of child poverty?"

Did you not see the word "and". He said worklessness and the drivers of child poverty.

Worklessness is just a rarely used term for unemployment.

Sometimes "workless" is just a synonym for "unemployed". Sometimes it's a slightly wider term — "unemployed" describes someone who is workless because no work, or no suitable work, is available; someone else might be workless because, e.g., they are incapacitated, or have caring duties, or other factors prevent them from seeking or taking up work that is available.

I suspect in this case it's just a synonym for unemployment.

I don't see how this tween is "a case of victim blaming". The great majority of children in poverty in the UK come from households where no adult is working, or where only one adult is working. There's an obvious link between unemployment and poverty, and pointing to that link is hardly blaming the unemployed.

The main point about the tweet, and the reason why I think it's a bit evasive, is that Ashworth can't say that he will tackle child poverty by raising benefits, even though this would be the quickest and most effective way to tackle it. He can't say this because his party leader has forbidden anyone to make any unfunded spending commitments this side of the election.

This is a particularly sensitive issue because of the Tory policy of capping child benefit at two children per family. It only applies to children born after April 2017, which means that as time passes it affects more and more families. Tacking child poverty without addressing this cap is going to be, um, difficult.

But, if you have to do it, the way to do it is (1) raise employment rates, and (2) raise wages for the lowest paid workers. Easier said than done, but it is at least something Ashworth is allowed to say he wants to do.

As for the workless/unemployed distinction, 11.7 million Britons aged between 25 and 64 are workless. Of these, only 864,000 are (registered) unemployed. This is dwarfed by the 6.4 million who are caring for family members, the 2.3 million who are sick or disabled and the 1.2 million who are retired. (The rest is accounted for by students and a variety of "other" classifications.)

Your first thought here is probably that there is a bit of massaging of figures going on. It suits politicians to keep the unemployment figures low, so where possible people are steered into other categories. In addition to the 864,000 officially unemployed people in this age group, another 1.2 million in the caring, sick, etc groups want a job. And that's before you look at people in this age bracket who are employed, but under-employed - e.g. people in part-time or casual work who want full-time or permanent work.

But leave the massaging aside. It's obvious that a discourse about unemployment, the unemployed, etc risks focussing on the 864,000 registered unemployed. But it's equally obvious that a discourse about poverty, family poverty or child poverty that just looks at the registered unemployed is going to miss the bulk of the problem.

Just because you never heard it does not make it a "creation". Google says nothing it just gives links to dictionaries which are a pretty defining authority on words.

It's a simple tweet about wanting to tackle unemployment and child poverty blown out of proportion by someone who didn't read it properly and who didn't understand the word and wrongly assumed it meant "work shy"

"Workless" isn't a new word; it's attested in English from the late fifteenth century onwards.

Far from generating obfuscation, I think it's useful in making a distinction between the registered unemployed and the much larger body of people who are looking for work but cannot get it.

This could be huge if true.