Owen Jones haters are in good company...http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/rod-li...was-on-question-time-last-night-was-he-awful/
Question Time & This Week
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik and Imran hold a long overdue conversation about United's awful league form with 1 win in 7. They discuss a disappointing draw at Bournemouth, a not so disappointing draw against Liverpool and a crushing defeat at Chelsea - Is time nearly over for Erik Ten Hag?
Then in a special second half of the pod, Nik welcomes Natalie ( https://twitter.com/natalie_17) to discuss the fortunes of Manchester United Women as they booked a place in the FA Cup Final after a historic first ever win vs. Chelsea.
Haven't watched QT in a long while but looks like Owen Jones has wound up the right quite a bit that they are picking on his mannerisms and comical mistakes rather than directly countering his points. May give this ep a watch.
He's certainly got the Tory Boys rattled, and he got Duncan Smith to turn up the volume again.
He was brilliant when talking of the Palestine/Israel conflict.
I LOLd when one audience member called another ignorant
I LOLd when one audience member called another ignorant
After all the chatter in here i had to go to iPlayer and watch a few of the debate topics.
On Israel-Palestine i think that the general theme of Owen Jones words were fair and worth airing on such a stage. I personally didn't know that some Israeli minister had been as crass as he alluded to. Not that he has a monopoly on such sentiments mind you.
However as for the final discussion on benefits, Jones came across as bit of a twerp and IDS had the better of the interchange. He would ignore relevant rebuttals and had more convenient anecdotes than Paul Ryan.
On Israel-Palestine i think that the general theme of Owen Jones words were fair and worth airing on such a stage. I personally didn't know that some Israeli minister had been as crass as he alluded to. Not that he has a monopoly on such sentiments mind you.
However as for the final discussion on benefits, Jones came across as bit of a twerp and IDS had the better of the interchange. He would ignore relevant rebuttals and had more convenient anecdotes than Paul Ryan.
Surely some kind of parody?
Yeah, the same person then accused the other 'ignorant' one of not even knowing that the West Bank and Gaza both used to belong to Jordan in the first place.
He just pissed off everyone in the audience actually who saw him for the opportunist fraud he is. IDS was just absolutely contemptuous of him, and it's difficult not to be.
Yeah, who does he think he is, standing up for the vulnerable like that. Commy twat.
And the moralising of the far left continues. This implication that anyone in the centre or right wants vulnerable people to be hurt is just ridiculous.
Very few ideologically want them to be (though the frothy mouthed cut-all-benefits brigade is growing), but a large number seem happily willing accept collateral damage.
Poor? Bone idle, more like.
Often seems to be the attitude.
Often seems to be the attitude.
Jones' mind would be at peace so long as the vulnerable had benefits. IDS, faults or no, has a medium to long term aim for as many as possible being more active members of society.
Why is it that Jones doesn't give some disabled the credit they are due, that they could gain more from life than the existing systems and structures promote?
What I, and most people in this country, don't accept, is people on benefits being wealthier than those who work. Very few people want to get rid of welfare entirely, and especially not for the disabled. It's a very obvious post, but it seems to need saying.
Obvious and pointless. Few would disagree with such a simple statement whether they were right or left.
Most people probably accept that. What they don't like is people who are genuinely unable to work having their benefits cut and told they can work, with the misery that brings to them.
It's a massive simplification but sometimes I distinguish the left from the right this way:
Both see the same problems in society, and many would imagine a similar vision of utopia. But the right is unwilling to countenance people gaming the system, and is willing to accept the genuinely needy losing out if it means benefit scroungers are thwarted. The left regrets the existence of benefit scroungers but accepts them as an inevitable byproduct of a system that offers a safety net for those that need it.
In other words, you have a problem either way, be it benefits scroungers on one hand, or people struggling with no help from the state on the other. You pays your money and makes your choice.
As I said, very crude simplification. But that's how it sometimes seems to me.
Then the appropriate support should be there, not just swingeing cuts that affect those who are unable to find work. And what about the demonisation of the able-bodied unemployed? You can't open a right-leaning paper without an attack on them of some shape or another, even though there quite simply aren't enough jobs to go around http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/...curtis/2012/feb/06/jobs-shortage-maria-miller (bit dated, but I doubt there's beeen a massive swing either way in the past 9 months).
And that's before we get to workfare, where apparently you can't expect the hard pressed taxpayer to subsidise someone who's struggling, but you can expect both them and the struggling individual to subsidise Tesco's wage bill.
Looking down on someone for having different opinions? You big leftie you.
So then pay the workers a decent wage. A life on benefits is not a luxury, no matter what the sun or the mail tell you, and I have first hand experience of being raised on feck all money, which is why I don't begrudge kids in a similar scenario some of "my" tax money now.
If someone is working full time, and worse off than someone receiving a pittance from the state, then serious questions need to be asked of their employer.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/nov/20/benefits-stigma-newspapers-report-welfare
Indeed. As Owen Jones alluded to last night, the right wing press have a nasty and deliberate agenda against people on benefits and set out to demonise them. Stupid morons of course pick this up and think everyone on benefits is living in a £1.2 million Fulham townhouse, with 8 kids and widescreen tvs on every wall.
You only have to look at Freud's comments last night on the benefits 'lifestyle'.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/nov/22/benefits-system-dreadful-tory-minister
It really is breathtakingly nasty.
Tax credits are actually a subsidy to businesses who won't pay their staff a living wage, than to the actual claimant themselves.
Also, something the Tories refuse to acknowledge is that something like 90% of new housing benefit claims are for people actually in fulltime employment. The increase of wages at the bottom tier has been ridiculous over the past 30 years under both governments. It's crazy.
You're going to be ignored on this, you know that, don't you?
Whether this government wants to hurt the vulnerable or not is besides the point. The fact is that, regardless of their intent, they are hurting an awful lot of the most vulnerable people in society.
So you agree that the government should strive to drive down living costs and push up wages then?
Shall we play a game of "guess how many big companies exploit the unemployed for unpaid labour over the Christmas period"?
Oh god.
As bad as a lot of the stuff claimed by people on here. Actually almost identical.Maths and politics doesnt mix.
That was brilliant
Or how many big companies pay a pittance of corporation tax, while the government sack HMRC staff left right and centre, instead of fixing this crazy situation root and branch. But that would drive away wealth creators and is the politics of envy
Most people who vote left probably do so because they believe it is more fair/equitable. What's wrong with that? You have to vote for what you believe.
Even the right call a lot of the left's politics "fair". But they also call them many other things "wasteful" and "damaging". Minimum wage for example.
The standard thing is to claim that the minimum wage, for example, is in reality unfair because if employers can't pay a pittance then they'll be reluctant to employ people.
In other words, the supposedly fair policy is unfair because the rich and powerful are too greedy for it to work, and that government action to curb this greed is unconscionable. And yet Alistair thinks that voting 'left', whatever that means, can't possibly due to a greater level of empathy...
In other words, the supposedly fair policy is unfair because the rich and powerful are too greedy for it to work, and that government action to curb this greed is unconscionable. And yet Alistair thinks that voting 'left', whatever that means, can't possibly due to a greater level of empathy...
Furthermore, just 35 of the 1000-odd dismissed disabled workers at the closed remploy factories have so far found a new job 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/nov/23/remploy-workers-new-jobs-labour
A price worth paying.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/nov/23/remploy-workers-new-jobs-labour
A price worth paying.
They had to be let go to teach them independence.
Ah yes, because state communes of work for the disabled were the only way to go?
Giving the disabled a daily sense of purpose, that mental well being and social inclusion that employment provides.
And you use state commune in a derogatory way. These factories were a brilliant idea. But it saved 68 million so wahayyyyyy.
Who cares these vulnerable people have been dumped on the scrap heap by the government in the most cruel manner, the majority never likely to find proper employment again.
Next comes the ATOS checks and workfare no doubt.
How do those who work in such factories feel about being in a 'state commune'?
Tony, 34, says: “I love coming to work. What will happen to me? It’s difficult enough getting a job for normal people. I don’t want to live on benefits.”
...
here. I feel safe. I love my job.”
Paul has a severe learning disability, and has just learned the Remploy factory where he works will close this month.
“I don’t know what I’ll do without it,” he says. “It’s my whole life.”
....
Meanwhile, among those who have experienced bullying in mainstream employment, there is genuine fear and panic.
“Before I worked here, I had a job where I was bullied every day for seven years,” Paul says. “They set my trousers on fire, they punched and kicked me. This is the first place I’ve felt safe.
...
To the Tories it's all about survival of the fittest, personal responsibility and being disabled means you get no special privileges.
Tony, 34, says: “I love coming to work. What will happen to me? It’s difficult enough getting a job for normal people. I don’t want to live on benefits.”
...
here. I feel safe. I love my job.”
Paul has a severe learning disability, and has just learned the Remploy factory where he works will close this month.
“I don’t know what I’ll do without it,” he says. “It’s my whole life.”
....
Meanwhile, among those who have experienced bullying in mainstream employment, there is genuine fear and panic.
“Before I worked here, I had a job where I was bullied every day for seven years,” Paul says. “They set my trousers on fire, they punched and kicked me. This is the first place I’ve felt safe.
...
To the Tories it's all about survival of the fittest, personal responsibility and being disabled means you get no special privileges.
You're failing to understand that his real problem is lack of aspiration, caused by years of voting Labour. So it's all his own fault really.
So instead of creating a genuinely inclusive labour market, one where the disabled [and the able bodied for that matter] would receive the most benefit of all through employment in a mainstream environment, we hide from the problems and construct an unrealistic bubble?
What of the thousands of others abandoned by the system and seen as okay just because they have benefits? Do we judge them by the minority helped by Remploy or bad too?
I'm sorry but this mindset that Labour matches deeds to rhetoric when it comes to the needy, is to be kind, flawed.
Do they offer a safety net to bounce back from, or a clinging web out of sight and out of mind.
What of the thousands of others abandoned by the system and seen as okay just because they have benefits? Do we judge them by the minority helped by Remploy or bad too?
I'm sorry but this mindset that Labour matches deeds to rhetoric when it comes to the needy, is to be kind, flawed.
Do they offer a safety net to bounce back from, or a clinging web out of sight and out of mind.
These were originally set up in 1945 to assist wounded soldiers after the war.
Believe it or not, some of the most disabled would struggle to work in a normal working environment for many reasons shown above. Their disability genuinely holds them back.
I don't see anything wrong with giving them a work environment where they are comfortable. In the grand scheme of things it costs feck all and the sense of purpose and inclusion it gives them massively outweighs any of the negatives you present.
Which is all well and good but hardly enough given the numbers involved and the year in which we live.
From my personal experience of the system which is a mixed one, i must question your certainty of the status quo.
Thats actually unbelievable, but there isnt enough information. How many people were employed in total? 68 million pounds a year for 1000 workers is 70 grand a year for each disabled person. That seems high.
35 of 1000 is very damning though. Cant see how Nick can defend that.
35 of 1000 is very damning though. Cant see how Nick can defend that.