My feed
Premium

Please
or
to access all these features

Politics

Ha ha ha! Even the lefties have had enough

39 replies

Wellwobbly · 23/07/2013 11:50

Michael Heaver:

Unite's workers have had enough of funding the underclass
By Michael Heaver

Don't be fooled by the banners: Unite members support the welfare cap
There are some interesting findings in Lord Ashcroft's poll of Unite members. For instance, only seven per cent plan to vote for the do-gooder Liberal Democrats while 12 per cent plan to vote for the supposedly Thatcherite Ukip.
One thing is clear in the study though: the working people within Unite have had enough of being taxed to the hilt in order to pay for the bone-idle underclass that Labour created. A huge 86 per cent of Unite members agree that the Government is right to introduce a benefit cap on each household.
Despite Labour's hysterical shrieking, the workers don't want to be popular with people who claim every benefit going in order to enjoy a lifestyle that they couldn't fund themselves. It is a stark contrast: those in Unite who get up and work versus their neighbours, friends and even family members who chose not to. Those who contribute to the system have clearly had enough of unlimited welfare payments. Rightly so.
Other findings in the poll show Unite's members to be far more Right-wing than the likes of Ed Miliband: 71 per cent of them don't think councils should have to provide sites for travellers and 59 per cent don't want to see the top rate of tax raised to 75p. Socialism isn't very popular amongst Britain's working class.
Sadly, 49 per cent of Unite members still say they'll vote Labour, but that will largely be either out of public-sector self-interest or tribal voting handed down from generation to generation fuelled by a hatred of the Tories. It isn't, tellingly, because they actually agree with the party's social or economic stances. In the long term, Labour's traditional base will increasingly migrate away from it as Labour stands up for welfare and not the working man.

OP posts:
Report
OnTheNingNangNong · 23/07/2013 11:53

Link?

Report
ouryve · 23/07/2013 11:54

Oh, well done. You know how to copy and paste.

[headtilt]

Report
SolomanDaisy · 23/07/2013 11:55

Poorly written and bad analysis. A bit of a triumph to make such a crappy article out of interesting data.

Report
CogitoErgoSometimes · 26/07/2013 09:08

Funnily enough, I was having a conversation with someone on those lines yesterday. We're both from a working class background and felt that the people most likely to expect others to roll their sleeves up, contribute and not expect everyone else to give them a free ride are those that follow the same ethos themselves. Doesn't mean working-class people aren't sympathetic to genuine plight, far from it. If someone genuinely needs help, there's none better. But anyone who has grown up, lived and worked among people who are very clearly taking the piss will be much less dewy-eyed and more hard-nosed about it than those who have never experienced hardship.

Report
ProphetOfDoom · 26/07/2013 09:18

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

LunaticFringe · 26/07/2013 09:24

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

CogitoErgoSometimes · 26/07/2013 09:26

Labour being deliberately vague about everything at the moment, really. Hmm The economy's finally back on the up, the welfare changes are popular, the union troubles have set them back and it's the Coalition team smiling on the way into the summer break.

Report
TabithaStephens · 26/07/2013 13:24

There really aren't that many working-class union members left anymore. It's mostly middle-class public sector professionals.

Report
ttosca · 26/07/2013 13:53

But anyone who has grown up, lived and worked among people who are very clearly taking the piss will be much less dewy-eyed and more hard-nosed about it than those who have never experienced hardship.

Those 'taking the piss' account for less than 1% of welfare claimants.

More money is not claimed which people are legally entitled to claim than is lost through fraud.

So this whole idea of large swaths of the country - the worker vs shirker rhetoric - is complete and utter bullshit.

Report
ttosca · 26/07/2013 13:56

The economy's finally back on the up, the welfare changes are popular, the union troubles have set them back and it's the Coalition team smiling on the way into the summer break.

The economy is being propped up housing prices again, and is creating another bubble.

Secondly, this temporary return to growth misses out on two facts:

a) We've lost 3 years of growth thanks to austerity.

b) People living standards (that is, the vast majority of Brits who aren't rich) continue to decline, growth or not.

Report
CogitoErgoSometimes · 26/07/2013 14:29

There's only so many times anyone can put things down to 'rhetoric' and 'bullshit'. Fact is that, in a lot of working class areas, people are living cheek by jowl with those who they either know or suspect are getting something for nothing. Nothing to do with what newspaper they read or what political party they support.

Report
ttosca · 26/07/2013 14:40

There's only so many times anyone can put things down to 'rhetoric' and 'bullshit'. Fact is that, in a lot of working class areas, people are living cheek by jowl with those who they either know or suspect are getting something for nothing. Nothing to do with what newspaper they read or what political party they support.

Oh, is this like Ian Duncan Smith's "I firmly believe" statement which he makes when his assertions have no basis in fact?

Report
JuliaScurr · 26/07/2013 14:49

of course people suspect each other! We've heard nothing but fraud/scams/skivers/blah for years.
they tend to adjust their views when they become disabled or redundant

Report
CogitoErgoSometimes · 26/07/2013 14:52

I'd rather you didn't call me a liar but, that aside, I'd say you'd learn far more about what working-class people actually think and what experiences we have if you engage with us one-to-one rather than copy/pasting the opinions of people who, judging by their ignorance, treat 'the working class' as some kind of sociological experiment.

Report
Onesleeptillwembley · 26/07/2013 14:58

Cogito has it spot on in her post at 9.08

Report
JuliaScurr · 26/07/2013 16:13

I am working class
I am a socialist
This govt wants to destroy the Welfare State
They protect tax avoiders
That's why I campaign against them

Report
ttosca · 26/07/2013 17:49

First of all, Cogito, you are not a representative of the entire working class (as Julia notes)

Secondly, as has been pointed out already, the public in general (and not just the working class) are very misinformed about the many social and political issues:

British public wrong about nearly everything, survey shows

Research shows public opinion often deviates from facts on key social issues including crime, benefit fraud and immigration

--

A new survey for the Royal Statistical Society and King's College London shows public opinion is repeatedly off the mark on issues including crime, benefit fraud and immigration.

The research, carried out by Ipsos Mori from a phone survey of 1,015 people aged 16 to 75, lists ten misconceptions held by the British public. Among the biggest misconceptions are:

  • Benefit fraud: the public think that £24 of every £100 of benefits is fraudulently claimed. Official estimates are that just 70 pence in every £100 is fraudulent - so the public conception is out by a factor of 34.


  • Immigration: some 31 per cent of the population is thought to consist of recent immigrants, when the figure is actually 13 per cent. Even including illegal immigrants, the figure is only about 15 per cent. On the issue of ethnicity, black and Asian people are thought to make up 30 per cent of the population, when the figure is closer to 11 per cent.


  • Crime: some 58 per cent of people do not believe crime is falling, when the Crime Survey for England and Wales shows that incidents of crime were 19 per cent lower in 2012 than in 2006/07 and 53 per cent lower than in 1995. Some 51 per cent think violent crime is rising, when it has fallen from almost 2.5 million incidents in 2006/07 to under 2 million in 2012.


  • Teen pregnancy is thought to be 25 times higher than the official estimates: 15 per cent of of girls under 16 are thought to become pregnant every year, when official figures say the amount is closer to 0.6 per cent.


Among the other surprising figures are that 26 per cent of people think foreign aid is in the top three items the Government spends money on (it actually makes up just 1.1 per cent of expenditure), and that 29 per cent of people think more is spent on Jobseekers' Allowance than pensions.

In fact we spend 15 times more on pensions - £4.9 billion on JSA vs £74.2 billion on pensions.

cont'd

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/british-public-wrong-about-nearly-everything-survey-shows-8697821.html
Report
ttosca · 26/07/2013 17:51

This ignorance is perpetuated by the right-wing press and exploited by politicians with an agenda to attack social security, and enact even more sociopathic neo-liberal economic policies which have done so much harm already.

Report
BMW6 · 26/07/2013 21:17

Nah, there has always been an underclass that the working class regard as shiftless.
The only thing that has changed in the 50+ years that I have lived is that you don't see the level of poverty that I did in my youth.
And, of course, there wasn;'t the volume of drug abuse around.

Report
BMW6 · 26/07/2013 21:18

Oh and an overweight child was a rarity.

Report
CogitoErgoSometimes · 27/07/2013 08:29

I don't pretend to represent anyone. I just agree with a lot of the contents of the survey at the start of the thread because it chimes with my own experience and observation and I think it dumbs-down the argument to keep insisting that everyone is simply misinformed. When your own family and immediate neighbours are playing the system, that's not misinformation.

Report
Solopower1 · 27/07/2013 15:22

Cogito, if you know someone who is playing the system, can you tell them what you think?

Imo, people will often carry on doing something until their nearest and dearest point out that it is not acceptable.

I am sorry that you are surrounded by benefit scroungers. In the 18 years that I lived on a council estate in Manchester, I can only think of one person who ever cheated the system, and that was my ex FIL, who fiddled his tax returns.

On the other hand, there were at least three single-parent families who claimed benefits while they went back to college and got the qualifications they needed. They are all earning good money now, and have been paying taxes for the last 20 years.

Report

Don’t want to miss threads like this?

Weekly

Sign up to our weekly round up and get all the best threads sent straight to your inbox!

Log in to update your newsletter preferences.

You've subscribed!

RandallPinkFloyd · 27/07/2013 15:30

Ok, I've read your copy & pasted thing and I get that your clearly a conservative. That's fine, each to their own.

But what's funny about it? I can't see a joke anywhere. I'm genuinely curious at to why you're laughing.

Report
BMW6 · 28/07/2013 09:01

Cogito, if you know someone who is playing the system, can you tell them what you think?

Imo, people will often carry on doing something until their nearest and dearest point out that it is not acceptable


What version of Disneyworld do you live in Hmm? Here where I live you will, at the very very least, be told to Fuck Off!! Most likely bricks though the window and forced to move!!

Report
FeegleFion · 28/07/2013 09:18

Anyone who believes the propaganda spewed by the Tories and into the tabloids about benefit thieves really need to educate themselves.

“If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”
Malcolm X

Report
Please create an account

To comment on this thread you need to create a Mumsnet account.