I have friends who are Tories and friends who are lefties. We all get along most of the time and there is plenty of common ground in our outlooks on life.
There is really little difference between them.
Although the Tories are bigger cunts.
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Thanks mate 
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âI have a colleague who is foreign. She was worried before Brexit and had told me the talk of foreigners taking up housing and jobs (by other senseless colleagues) had upset her. Sheâs been here over 10 years. She has been working supporting some of the most vulnerable in society. Like a lot of foreign workers. Quite frankly I am not sure why I am having to say they are foreign. Theyâre workers. Mandatory reporting feels uncomfortable and draconian to me.â
Well Iâm really sorry for what your colleague has experienced. I personally canât understand how anyone can blame the migrants themselves.
Case in point at my work. Thereâs a girl from Latvia whoâs just joined and sheâs an absolute whizz. Sheâs bright, speaks English flawlessly, bold and hard-working, and yet sheâs getting paid ÂŁ20k. It annoys me that the company I work for gets her for ÂŁ20k. They do not deserve her for a mere ÂŁ20k (in London). I realise thatâs my being emotional (the free market pays you what your worth blablabla) but it really is how I feel. Itâs the clearest example of how free movement and an oversupply of labour just massively, massively tilts the table in favour of the employers.
How on earth anyone could be in that situation and actually be angry at her is beyond me. Sheâs the one getting paid less than sheâs worth ffs!
_âAre we going to have them wearing badges next?â _
I wouldnât advocate making them wear badges.
_âRe 23k cap for benefits. Yeah sounds sort of reasonable. Itâs a few grand under the average wage. But then it depends where you live. How many you are supporting. We could get dien a route of you cannotnhave kids until you can afford them. That would mean none being born reall_y.â
Iâm afraid I simply donât see having kids as a ârightâ. In fact, having children is one of the most environmentally harmful things anyone can do and dincentivising people from having more children is probably a good thing. How we tackle the inevitable ageing population that would result from that I guess is another challenge.
âAs Mr Trampoline has said in another post he needs more than average wage to live on and feel happy in his lot.â
Actually I set the bar at ÂŁ35k for a final salary and was berated for being unambitious. In the same thread, I also got a bollocking for saying that I couldnât move out and live on ÂŁ20k. Now Iâm getting told off for suggesting that ÂŁ23k is a fair amount, particularly as a temporary measure for those out of work as its not enough. Meh. Confusing.
_âI donât see many well paid jobs for some of those who havenât quite done well enough for uni etc. I see the work theyâre offered on not the greatest wage in London. Then they will have housing benefit paid to the council if lucky but more and more to private landlords. They also get a top up for their low wages if theyâre lucky. So some may think why should I bust a gut at mcdonalds for not a lot. You think youâd do something different?â _
Sorry, I donât quite understand this part of your post. Are you saying that people who are capable of work should be paid benefits if they *choose* not to work because their only options are McDonalds? Iâm personally unsure (I mean I wouldnât blame them for jumping on benefits), but I wouldnât think someone disagreeing with you is being all that unreasonable.
âThen there are pexpletives who canât work for health reasons. Should they live in poverty because we think work is more important then health?â
Yeesh, hell no. People who are disabled and unfit to work should certainly be taken care of.
âAnd I do think we shouldnât get into being abusive towards each other if we disagree. That just makes no sense and makes us look like idiots.â
Completely agree sir!
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Ha! Thatâs the spirit!
The grounds for my Labour suspension are getting weaker.
I called the Tories a pack of racist, venal cunts, remember. They seem to be doing their best to validate my sentiment.
Youâre another poster I enjoy reading, MrTrampoline, but I didnât enjoy reading the apparent indifference or your assertion that the Tories are pursuing fair or reasonable policy. Theyâre just a particularly inept set of custodians at the neoliberal reins. Letâs lance another canard. The Tories have never been economically competent.
Theyâre the political equivalent of Nick Cotton coming home and pawning his maâs jewellery. Problems occur when the people youâre stealing from have nothing left. Cameronâs government was a bandit government, intent on getting as much remaining public treasure into private hands, even schools. Mayâs lot seem even worse.
Cameron twice gambled on big referendums, leaving lasting enmity in Scotland over the shenanigans there, and getting us out of a political union because he thought he could heal a rift in the Conservative Party. His failure is so complete that his second gamble has put his win up North into serious jeopardy.
More people are homeless, huge spike in foodbanks, and weâre lowering that benefit cap to the point where we wonât need a vicious sanctions regime, staffed by the sort of cunts that would set fire to dogs as kids. Theyâre a fucking disgrace. The sooner this Thatcherite shit is throughly defenestrated, the fucking better.
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Yep, because they would be lying!
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A lot of Brexiters must be starting to feel a little uneasy as it all starts to turn a bit fascist. Was very predictable though.
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You fight what they put in front of you. The Tories havenât helped themselves with this line of policy. Theyâve got a majority of twelve. These are highly controversial policies that probably wonât get through Parliament. As shit as this all sounds now, itâs all got to be made law. Unless they decide to use the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006, this has to be debated and passed.
Even if they do decide to use the enabling act, there will be uproar.
Originally posted by @Chertsey-Saint
Originally posted by @Goatboy
I have friends who are Tories and friends who are lefties. We all get along most of the time and there is plenty of common ground in our outlooks on life.
There is really little difference between them.
Although the Tories are bigger cunts.
Thanks mate
Aw Cherts, you know youâre my pet Tadic. More natural on the left but stuck out on the right 
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Ah, now hold on a moment, I havenât said I supported all Tory policies whatsoever; I just picked out a couple of examples that seemed to draw a fair bit of ire that I personally thought were reasonable.
So in the interest of balance, Iâm happy to give two Tory policies that I have vehemently opposed:
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Having claimed Jobseekerâs Allowance myself in the past, I saw first hand how unfair the sanctioning system under the Tory government was before it was even widely reported in the papers. The entire set-up was designed to get people off benefits whatever it took - and this usually invovled incentivising âadvisersâ to try and find fault with your job applications - or âbetterâ yet, giving you âsigning onâ and âadviceâ appointments (one per week) at varying times in an effort to schedule one at a time you were unavailable to show up and thus eligible to be sanctioned. The only reason you could possibly miss an appointment was a job interview (funeral for a loved one? forget it. Sanctioned. Benefits stopped for 4 weeks). You couldnât even request to have it moved.
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The stupid proposed compulsory 2-year jail term for carrying a knife. Simpler one to detail here; but what a daft idea! Why on earth should the judgment of, yâknow, an actual judge have been superceded by a crude government policy with no thought to circumstance? How on earth could that be an improvement to our justice system?
Anyway.
The objection I have to so much Labour rhetoric at the moment isnât the opposition to the Tories, its just the ridiculous level of hyperbole, straw-manning and exaggeration that seems to come with it. So much of it seems to be summarisable as âif-you-donât-wholly-agree-with-us-youâre-a-complete-scumbagâ or âany-single-individual-Tory-policy-is-evil-racist-sexist-selfish-scumbaggery-and-anyone-who-disagrees-is-all-of-those-thingsâ. It turns people off Pap. It turns me off. I find myself going straight into Kyle Broflovski ââŚREALLY?â mode again.
Why canât we proceed on the basis that most people interested in politics argue in good faith, want a fair and just society and that we just disagree on how we get there? Whatever happened to kinder, gentler politics? Do you want my vote or not?
The two policies youâve picked are indefensible on anything but a spin level. The benefit cap worked because the Toryâs could use the politics of envy.
âThese people are getting more than you. That canât be rightâ.
It was, in fact, bollocks, particularly for any family earning more than 26K household. The Tories used the average salary for *one* person, and said that was enough for an entire family in 2010. In November, that drops even further. It wasnât really justifiable to start with. Benefit caps have already caused social cleansing in London. At some point, I suspect even Stoke and Hastings will be too expensive, especially if 840 families are at risk of eviction in Liverpool.
Iâve already stated numerous objections with the short-sightedness of your other âfair and reasonableâ policy. I really canât be arsed, nor need to re-state them. There are ways to make British people more competitive. Not tying a fucking big debt millstone around any student trying to better themselves might be a start. Instead, the government plans to effectively name and shame firms that hire people not dropped out of a womb hovering over this sceptred isle.
Itâs the same, shitty, negative policy. Always taking something away. Never looking to build. I apologise if my total disgust at that position has been perceived as hyperbole, but I am totally disgusted with them.
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âInstead, the government plans to effectively name and shame firms that hire people not dropped out of a womb hovering over this sceptred isle.â
Dude, again, youâre straw-manning. The policy is simply to introduce mandatory reporting of the number of foreign born workers. They havenât advocated a limit. They havenât said that theyâll âshameâ anyone. And like I say, thereâs tonnes of professional, white-collar firms in London thatâll have around 50% of their staff being foreign-born - many of them in very traditionally âprestigiousâ (and I use that term very loosely) industries like banking!
The only companies thatâll be exposed as doing something that could in any way âsocietally dodgyâ are agencies hiring for farm and warehouse work etc. that have to admit that 90+% of the staff on their books are from overseas. Thatâll raise eyebrows and at least stimulate a debate about unscrupulous employers.
This reminds me of Jim Norton in a debate with someone (I canât remember who), on Opie and Anthony. He ended up banging his fists on the table and shouting. âLOOK!.. I. WANT. TO BE. A LIBERAL.â before going on to say similar to what Iâve said here.
I mean; put it this way - can you think of one Tory policy, just _one _where you sort of think âhmmâŚI guess thatâs not a bad idea to be fairâ.
Because I can think of several for all the parties across the political spectrum to be honest. Again, I bet most people can.
Iâll humour you for a few minutes, Mr T. Why do the government want to know the percentage of foreign workers and what will we gain from it? What is the expected outcome here? You already seem to know what sort of percentages weâll see so what difference will this register make?
Surely you need to know the jobs that foreigners are doing so we can identify skill gaps and train up our own people
Why does the government want to know the percentage of women and minorities in certain firms? Why ought we have one and not the other?
The charge against the kinds of unscrupulous employers Iâve mentioned is precisely the same as could be levelled at those firms whom diversity reporting is aimed at - its harder for them to discriminate (and yes, there are certain agency-based firms who have been charged with exclusively looking for East-European workers who they know arenât going to complain/unionise/leave quickly/push for higher wages etc.etc.).
Like I say, some of the most traditionally prestigious, white-collar industries will have (I suspect) numbers around the 40-50% mark. Your hiring of foreign workers will have to be pretty âout thereâ for it to raise an eyebrow.
so youâre saying that the government want the information so that they can stop British people being discriminated against? If the percentages are high (in low skilled jobs) then this means that foreigners are being preferred to Brits because theyâre cheaper? Is that the argument?
so what is the end goal then? To prosecute firms with too many foreigners, but only those who cant justify employing them? To deport those foreigners deemed unnecessary?
well, according to Mr Trampoline, the foreigners are working on farms in East England. So we will have to start training British people to pick vegetables and fruit. Shouldnât be too hard, if the Eastern Europeans teach their young how to pick vegetables and be good at it we should be able to do it as well.
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Interesting.
Do you think itâs right that local toerags are on the dole , whilst we get people in from Eastern Europe to pick our fruit .
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See, again you have to either straw-man or slippery-slope the policy to find fault with it.
For this policy to actually outright shame a company, foreigners would have to be being preferred to Brits on such a collosal scale as to raise suspicions of discimination and at least âraise the questionâ, much like a 100-strong company with an all-white workforce in somewhere like London. The principle is exactly the same.
Yup. It would be a good thing. Kids get work experience, employers have to pay more, people on the dole have opportunities to undertake an honest days work and get back into a job and scumbag recruitment agencies profiteering off migrant desperation get screwed.
All good things. You might have to pay a few quid more for your salad at Tescoâs though.