Willie Hutton talking out of his arse again.
Ignore the rightwing moaners. We don’t have 9m shirkers – they just want better work
The article appears to ignore the little fact that we have a benefits system that rewards idleness. Also, the definition of poverty has changed somewhat. Poverty used to mean barely having enough to eat. How many starving paupers are there on Britain’s streets? If they are wandering about in fashion trainers and playing on a smartphone, they are not in poverty. As for wanting better work, well, don’t we all? However, if you want to work, you take what you can get and work on building from there. I’ve had to do it several times in my life. I’ve shifted stuff around in warehouses, answered calls in a call centre and stacked shelves in a supermarket, despite being over qualified for all of these and I hated every moment, but I took those jobs because it kept me in employment.
Too much work, especially at the bottom, is coercive and alienating. There is ever less autonomy, ever more micro-management and a shrinking capacity to shape what you do day by day. Personal autonomy, to feel that you have some control, is the key to mental wellbeing.
When I came back from France, I had no money and no work. Yet I was out of work for around six weeks because I took one of those bottom of the ladder, minimum wage jobs were everything is micromanaged. Eventually, thought dint of determination and hard work, I got back to where I wanted to be. Hutton is peddling the usual Guardian claptrap where everyone is a victim and in so doing denies a whole swathe of people agency.
Yep, I’ve been there as well. Back in the early 1980s I did a lot of temporary jobs that just kept me in work a few months at a time. I’ve worked on farms, on a land drainage crew, in the garage on a Butlins holiday camp, in a newly built extention at an electronics company building workbenches and painting the walls. I would take any work that I could get. I never once considered whether the job was good for my mental wellbeing, I did it for the pay packet.
Lefties always have to make excuses for the losers of this world, if they admit that people are responsible for their own outcomes their whole worldview collapses.
I found it difficult to find full time employment after graduating from poly – having a long term health condition didn’t help. I took whatever casual work i could find – I worked on road construction, warehouse work, working in a sweet factory and multiple other jobs some of which i absolutely hated. I did it for the money. I retired on ill health grounds a few years ago and had several stints working at the post office at christmas , and casual work in a call centre just to keep my hand in. I’ve been recently invigilating at my local college in between various medical operations. I’ll continue despite not really needing the money. Then again i started work at 14 or 15 (i can’t remember exactly its so long ago) working at woollies on a saturday. I don’t normally get bored living by myself, but find a small amount of work good for my mental health. If i was entirely fit and healthy and of pre retirement age I’d go mad living on benefits.
Poverty is now defined as being below a certain percentage of average income, which is a stupid way to define it. Poverty (as defined) could be greatly reduced or eliminated, not be increasing the income of the poor but by reducing the income of the rest of the population. It could be reduced by forcing the very rich to emigrate. That’s how stupid it is.
Of course if some billionaires lose their marbles and were to move here, poverty would increase because the average had increased also show the ridiculousness of the measure
“Poverty (as defined) could be greatly reduced or eliminated, not be increasing the income of the poor but by reducing the income of the rest of the population.”
In the minds of the socialists that’s a result.
They will never get rid of poverty with the way it is calculated. If we handed £1M to everyone there would still be people classed as in poverty.
It is just another way of making the sheep pliable and agreeable to letting the government steal money from them. Getting rid of poverty is a good thing to aim for isn’t it and generally people are too stupid to realise what is going on.
It is a good aim, but no government bureaucracies ever solves a problem because if they did, they would lose the justification for their jobs.
“If we handed £1M to everyone there would still be people classed as in poverty.”
Just as a thought experiment, pretending for a moment that it wouldn’t cause massive inflation and leave us back at square one. How many folk would blow through the lot and be broke again within five years. I know a guy who has always held down a reasonable job but has been constantly skint his entire life. Not on the same scale I know, but a few years ago he inherited about ten grand. It appears that the only thing that he now has to show for it is a big telly, and now he’s broke again. Some people are just like that.
If you did put all the money in the world in a big heap and dished it out to everyone in the world then:
The sensible ones would spend it on barley, hops and yeast and start a brewery (or drugs, take your pick).
The feckless would drink themselves (or drug themselves) into oblivion.
Within a wee ( a month at the most) you would have millionaires and people in dire poverty.
‘Tis the way of the world. What then? Take the money off the rich bastards and distribute it to the poor? Repeat until the industrious and enterprising say “Sod this for a game of soldiers”.
Not my idea but from a Science Fiction story I read in my youth at least 50 years ago.
I work in recruitment, at the lower end of the scale. Needless to say that we never get anybody from a job centre, apart from twats (or according to hutton, people looking for better work) pretending to look for jobs. The minimum requirements I have, apart from a driving license, is to show on time and not be a tosser. Not a high bar but surprisingly high for a lot of people.