Whilst he’s certainly extremely unlikely to win the general election anyway, the best thing Corbyn can do to give himself any sort of tiny, miniscule shot is to unashamedly ignore people like yourself* and instead, go after that large swathe of the electorate that either generally doesn’t vote or has become totally apathetic towards the Labour Party.
I think Nottarf Krap’s post a few pages ago more or less nailed it - but Simon Jenkins said much the same a few days earlier in the Guardian.
*Not trying to be provocative or wind you up here by the way- I really am speaking purely in terms of Labour’s political strategy and getting their chances of winning up from 0% to their absolute maximum of probably like 2% or whatever - their best bet is to completely abandon voter demographics where they’ve got no hope and target their ‘winnable’ demographics.
I’m on a zero-hours contract at the moment doing a bit of callcentre work to keep me going till I kick off my job in the Autumn.
There’s nothing to stop me getting another job or saying I’m unavailable. Me and my employer literally just come to an agreement about which days in a week I want to work and bob’s your uncle. Seriously, the flexibility is helpful - as is the fact that you can get hired with literally one day’s training.
(I realise this might not necessarily be quite the case with bigger employers - when my mate worked at Pizza Hut at uni I remember he wasn’t able to skip or change shifts very easily at all - but the point stands that these issues aren’t inherent to ZHCs)
_ The biggest issue about ZHCs is the tax _. You’re taxed on an hourly rate so if you do 20 hours a week at £8 per hour you’ll earn £160 gross and £159.64 after tax/NI.
If you do 60 hours a week you’ll earn £389.51 after tax/NI. That’ll be £229.87 for those 40 hours of work. £5.75 an hour basically.
Now, for people in my position its fine, because I’m just muddling along working part-time as a temporary thing and not paying much tax.
However, if, God forbid it was your main job and you were working your arse off to pay the rent for 10 hours a day/6 days a week (and btw your lunch half-hour is unpaid), then you’d be getting taxed as if you were earning a comfortable, annual salaried 35-hours per week job. That strikes me as pretty unfair. I don’t know what the solution is, but I feel like its something Labour should address.
I couldn’t agree with you more Phil. Politics suck at the moment. Whatever happened to electoral reform? It was a thing in 2010 but Clegg fucked up his huge opportunity and now it has been drowned out by the apparent need for a 'strong and stable leadership." Forget that the rich get richer whilst the rest of us get screwed over. Forget that the NHS, the police and countless other Government agencies are underfunded. As long as we have a leader and a party who talk tough, everything will be fine. Nothing like a bit of S & M to keep the British public in line.
But the other side of that is that its super easy for people to get hired and given a shot. An 18-year old without A-levels can easily get a crack working for somewhere like I’m working after a day’s training. He’s then got a decent employment reference in a customer-facing role. From there he can get a half-decent shot working in (for instance) recruitment.
This is part of the reason our youth unemployment rate is much lower than say, France’s for instance.
Fine and dandy. If you’re able to do other work when you’re not given hours by the call centre, then you’re not on a contract of the type that the Labour party is committed to banning. The contract you have clearly doesn’t bind you to be available for work between certain hours, whilst guaranteeing you none. In other words, it’s a part-time work contract and not what would be termed a zero-hours contract. Hence my comment about confusion over definitions.
If you were contracted to be available for work between the hours of 8am and 6pm, five days a week, but not guaranteed to be given a single minute of work during that time, that would be a true zero hours contract. How much flexibility would that give you?
I can see what you mean about tax, but I’d say that the real issue there is one of low pay.
What’s a “full on Tory”, and what makes you think I’m one. I haven’t got any party, a floating voter.
Which cuts are you on about, the cuts where more money is spent than the year before, that’s not my definition of a cut. If I spend £1200 on beer last year and £1205 this year, can I tell my snap dragon I’ve cut down on my beer fund?
Staff leaving to stack shelves suggests there might be some issues Duckie.
“Years of pay restraint and stressful working conditions are taking their toll,” said Chris Hopson, NHS Providers’ chief executive. “Pay is becoming uncompetitive. Significant numbers of trusts say lower paid staff are leaving to stack shelves in supermarkets rather than carry on with the NHS.”
Is it possible that the ppl who are looking to vote Tory are just as Intelligent, Well-Informed & Compassionate as the ppl who ain’t? Does thinking Tory is a Better Bet than Labour at moment, srs make them Cunts? Is tory really a synonym for Evil? srs question no trolls pls
