Has Boris gone yet?

[The Don]

This word is getting bandied about quite a lot here, but without much substance attached.
In what way are working-class Britons 'downtrodden'?

A gradual erosion of employment rights - which will doubtless accelerate post-Brexit.

Zero hours contracts.

Wages decreasing in real terms.

Erosion of health and safety standards.

Increasing wealth and income inequality which in turn leads to increasing life expectancy inequality.

The usual stuff.

 

[Cosmic Yak]

Yes, it's the unfortunate overlap between upper-class bigotry and racism and white working class bigotry and racism. What the white working-class don't realise is that the upper-class are just as bigoted towards them.

I'll repeat my question: have you read The Sun lately? For that matter, have you read The Mirror lately?

I think that's overstating it a smidge, IMO it's not a case of despising those opinions but given that those opinions are those of hate and intolerance, it's better than fuelling them as the Conservatives do.

Or, categorising the views of the white working class as hateful and intolerant without knowing what those views actually are, sounds a lot like despising them to me. I note you have not actually provided any evidence that this is what they think.
(And yes, I know about Brexit, and the reasons for voting Leave were largely not down to hatred and intolerance.)

As with so many things, the solution lies in education, both formal and informal, which is why those on the right are so suspicious of teachers. You have to keep people ignorant if you want to keep them hating.

That may be true in America, but I have seen no evidence at all that the Conservative party is opposed to education or suspicious of teachers. On what are you basing this?

 

[The Don]

That may be true in America, but I have seen no evidence at all that the Conservative party is opposed to education or suspicious of teachers. On what are you basing this?

The Conservative government's attitude towards teachers as evidenced by the experience of our friends who have been teachers prior to - and since 2010.

 

[Cosmic Yak]

The Conservative government's attitude towards teachers as evidenced by the experience of our friends who have been teachers prior to - and since 2010.

Come on- this is anecdotal, and you know it. I do wonder why the normal standards of scepticism are suspended when it comes to politics.
Do you have any factual examples?

 

[Cosmic Yak]

A gradual erosion of employment rights - which will doubtless accelerate post-Brexit.

We are now some time into post-Brexit, so again I will ask you for examples. I'm not saying this isn't happening, but this kind of unevidenced assertion is not what I call scepticism.

Zero hours contracts.

Have been around for decades and, interestingly enough, the last Labour government declined to ban them.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/op...-and-ed-dont-tell-you-about-zerohours-contra/

That said, I agree that they are a bad thing.

Wages decreasing in real terms.

For sure, this is happening, but to what extent is this due to the current financial crisis? Covid, energy prices, Ukraine- all these things have contributed to inflation and limited wage rises. I'm not sure, though, that this constitutes people being 'downtrodden', and these factors are largely out of the control of the government, and the effects are not exclusively class-based.

Erosion of health and safety standards.

Again, examples needed. Just saying something is so doesn't automatically make it so.

Increasing wealth and income inequality which in turn leads to increasing life expectancy inequality.

Good point: agreed.

 

[The Don]

Come on- this is anecdotal, and you know it. I do wonder why the normal standards of scepticism are suspended when it comes to politics.
Do you have any factual examples?

How about a reduction in per-head spending in real terms:

Total spending per pupil in England was just over £6,500 in the latest complete year of data in 2019-20, a fall of 9% in real terms compared with its high point of £7,200 in 2009-10, according to analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

https://www.theguardian.com/educati...h-schools-to-fall-to-under-2009-10-levels-ifs

But it's more insidious than that, funding was cut most for the most disadvantaged:

Overall, the most deprived secondary schools have received a 14% real-terms cut to spending per pupil between 2009-10 and 2019-20, compared with a 9% drop for the least deprived schools, the IFS said.

 

[Darat]

You might be right in this specific instance, but I have noted you seem to have a feeling that History can teach us nothing. I think you are very, very, wrong there.

No you haven't because that isn't the case.

 

[Cosmic Yak]

How about a reduction in per-head spending in real terms:



https://www.theguardian.com/educati...h-schools-to-fall-to-under-2009-10-levels-ifs

But it's more insidious than that, funding was cut most for the most disadvantaged:

That does not show that the Conservatives are opposed to education or suspicious of teachers. If you use that logic, it would mean that the cuts in defence spending meant that they were opposed to defending the country and suspicious of soldiers.

 

[The Don]

That does not show that the Conservatives are opposed to education or suspicious of teachers. If you use that logic, it would mean that the cuts in defence spending meant that they were opposed to defending the country and suspicious of soldiers.

There was a rationale (faulty as it turned out but I was as taken in as most of the rest of us) behind the defence spending cuts - the UK needed less defending because the Cold War was over. I guess in that way they were opposed to defending the country but in any case the cuts were commensurate with a perceived reduction in need. As soon as the need was perceived to have risen, more money was found.

OTOH the requirement for education has supposed to have risen - we're a post industrial information and cryptocurrency powerhouse don'tcha know - and yet spending per pupil per head has fallen in real terms. If it was anything other than dogma to chronically underfund the education sector then spending would have risen. Likewise w.r.t. the NHS, underfund it, declare it a failure and then dismantle it.

 

[shuttlt]

There was a rationale (faulty as it turned out but I was as taken in as most of the rest of us) behind the defence spending cuts - the UK needed less defending because the Cold War was over. I guess in that way they were opposed to defending the country but in any case the cuts were commensurate with a perceived reduction in need. As soon as the need was perceived to have risen, more money was found.

OTOH the requirement for education has supposed to have risen - we're a post industrial information and cryptocurrency powerhouse don'tcha know - and yet spending per pupil per head has fallen in real terms. If it was anything other than dogma to chronically underfund the education sector then spending would have risen. Likewise w.r.t. the NHS, underfund it, declare it a failure and then dismantle it.

When you are analysing peoples motivations, you have to do it from the perspective of their view of the facts rather than yours. Did the Conservatives provide no rational whatsoever for these cuts?

In any case, most of the population are not going to go in to "information and cryptocurrency powerhouse" jobs no matter how much money you throw at education. The average amount of money spent per pupil has little relationship to that goal.

 

[Cosmic Yak]

There was a rationale (faulty as it turned out but I was as taken in as most of the rest of us) behind the defence spending cuts - the UK needed less defending because the Cold War was over. I guess in that way they were opposed to defending the country but in any case the cuts were commensurate with a perceived reduction in need. As soon as the need was perceived to have risen, more money was found.

OTOH the requirement for education has supposed to have risen - we're a post industrial information and cryptocurrency powerhouse don'tcha know - and yet spending per pupil per head has fallen in real terms. If it was anything other than dogma to chronically underfund the education sector then spending would have risen. Likewise w.r.t. the NHS, underfund it, declare it a failure and then dismantle it.

Absolute bilge.

 

[shuttlt]

Likewise w.r.t. the NHS, underfund it, declare it a failure and then dismantle it.

What is the correct level of funding? Any system like the NHS that doesn't use charging it's users to throttle demand must either use rationing or queueing to do so. Having insufficient funding to meet demand is necessarily the normal state of this kind of system. It can not reasonably be otherwise. Before the pandemic, spending on the NHS as a % of GDP had gone up something like threefold since it's foundation. What percentage of the national income would not be "underfunding"?

 

[Garrison]

What is the correct level of funding? Any system like the NHS that doesn't use charging it's users to throttle demand must either use rationing or queueing to do so. Having insufficient funding to meet demand is necessarily the normal state of this kind of system. It can not reasonably be otherwise. Before the pandemic, spending on the NHS as a % of GDP had gone up something like threefold since it's foundation. What percentage of the national income would not be "underfunding"?

Only to Daily Mail readers and US Republicans. The truth is that the current situation can entirely be traced back to deliberate government decisions, it mysteriously functioned better under governments that actually placed some value on it.

 

[jimbob]

What is the correct level of funding? Any system like the NHS that doesn't use charging it's users to throttle demand must either use rationing or queueing to do so. Having insufficient funding to meet demand is necessarily the normal state of this kind of system. It can not reasonably be otherwise. Before the pandemic, spending on the NHS as a % of GDP had gone up something like threefold since it's foundation. What percentage of the national income would not be "underfunding"?

Check out my signature:

OECD healthcare spending
Public/Compulsory Expenditure on healthcare
https://data.oecd.org/chart/60Tt

Every year since 1990 the US Public healthcare spending has been greater than the UK as a proportion of GDP. More US Tax goes to healthcare than the UK

The UK system is pretty cash-efficient.

 

[Darat]

Absolute bilge.

No it isn't. The last 10 or so years have seen a "privatisation by stealth" and we are now seeing it in areas such as GP provisioning.

 

[Darat]

Check out my signature:



The UK system is pretty cash-efficient.

Sadly the last few governments have been trying to end that by adding more privatisation into the system allowing "profits" to be taken out of the system.

 

[Cosmic Yak]

No it isn't. The last 10 or so years have seen a "privatisation by stealth" and we are now seeing it in areas such as GP provisioning.

The left has been screaming about the Tories wanting to privatise the NHS for decades now. It wasn't true back then, and it still isn't true now.
I could provide evidence, but as the political discussions on this forum are not conducted with even a semblance of scepticism, I won't bother.

 

[Darat]

The left has been screaming about the Tories wanting to privatise the NHS for decades now. It wasn't true back then, and it still isn't true now.
I could provide evidence, but as the political discussions on this forum are not conducted with even a semblance of scepticism, I won't bother.

They have already managed to privatise whole swathes of the NHS, have they done that by mistake?

 

[Cosmic Yak]

They have already managed to privatise whole swathes of the NHS, have they done that by mistake?

This is a politics thread. All I have to do is say you're wrong, and my job is done. Don't expect me to debate details or provide evidence. No-one else does, so why should I?

 

[Darat]

This is a politics thread. All I have to do is say you're wrong, and my job is done. Don't expect me to debate details or provide evidence. No-one else does, so why should I?