Finally ! Therese Coffey tells it like it is. If you need more money, work longer.

[SerendipityJane]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-64745258

Hurrah for the voice of reason. Now this is the sort of person we need as Prime Minister.

Exactly! All these teachers, nurses, carers… all trying to help and treated with disdain!

So true @SerendipityJane have you seen the way the government treats nurses who are trying to help keep people alive?

This, exactly; anyone struggling has only themselves to blame, for being lazy/stupid/feckless.........so Tory voters can rest easy that none of it is their fault.

Thank the lord for Denise Coffey. I've been wondering what to do with all these turnips. Eat them! Brilliant. So glad we're being governed by such impressive forward thinkers. She's nearly as good as 30pLee, another shining star in the firmament.

Or parents can work around each other so as to not pay childcare. We did this for tears on end.

Are there no prisons? And the Union workhouses? The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?

If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.

I have literally just made turnip petrol.

Take that, PutinGaz!!!

What an absolutely silly bitch Terese Coffey is. Doesn't she just love to hear herself make dramatic statements.

I have been trying to smoke turnips for months, it really doesn't work, if only I had known to eat them before.

@jgw1 He's a complete waste of space. Can't believe he's been your MP for so long. I'm in the North of the county - at least we managed to get rid of our waste of space Tory MP in the last elections.

Don't disrespect the turnip!

Didn't you see the young woman on MasterChef who created a whole turnip-based main course?

He visited DC school a while back, apparently he tries to visit the county once a month if time permits...

No turnip emoji?

Wtf

Misses point of thread completely.

Christ, aren’t three PMs in seven months enough?

So out of touch!

I wonder if she could faith heal me so I could work even one hour…

m.facebook.com/MasterChefUK/videos/masterchef-the-professionals-tasoulas-planet-turnip/3320282291543947/

But how will I afford more childcare in the evenings if I’m working? Already almost wiped out my wages. Also not sure many places provide childcare for me to work in the evening, can you suggest any?

Yeah, don't think most of the money is going on wages.

More like profit for the electric and gas companies these days

Good job she has private healthcare otherwise that chubby, cigar smoking, champers quaffing cow would cost the NHS a fortune in a few years.

@jgw1 Saw him at Shrewsbury Station one Saturday. He got off the TfW Crewe shuttle. I was very surprised to see him slumming it with the rest of us 🤣

I thought/hoped OP was actually joking and being sarcastic about Coffey in this thread? I bloody hope so as I can't believe she would actually think that Coffey is being helpful in what she suggests...

Work longer hours? I work FT and my shifts are anything from 10-13hrs. Most of the time, I don't get the chance to have my unpaid break. I finish late after every shift (this is not paid as over time). I am also a single parent to 2DC. XH doesn't look after the kids. I don't get maintenance.

Upskill? I have two BSc degrees, and numerous post grad quals. To retrain would cost me ££££'s. If I left my job and retrained, my ward would be short of yet another experienced nurse.

I'd love to be able to do one job but unfortunately I'm disabled and won't ever be able to work. What does she think people like me should do? Thankfully I haven't needed to use a food bank (yet) but I won't ever be able to 'work more'.
The only good thing about this (and many others by the tories) comment is that hopefully it'll make people sit up, and actually vote, and vote for a party that's for the people not just their pals.

No. The Blair government made them slightly fairer

In the United Kingdom, under the National Minimum Wage Act 1998, workers operating under a zero-hour contract on stand-by time, on-call time, and downtime must be paid the national minimum wage for hours worked. Prior to the introduction of the Working Time Regulations 1998 and the National Minimum Wage Regulations 1999 zero-hour contracts were sometimes used to "clock-off" staff during quiet periods while retaining them on site so they could be returned to paid work should the need arise. The National Minimum Wage Regulations require that employers pay the national minimum wage for the time workers are required to be at the workplace even if there is no "work" to do.

Sorry to allude to the B-word, but this sort of rhetoric from the government was inevitable I'm afraid when we voted to leave the EU.

When you vote against the centre left politics of the EU and reject it's controlled capitalism and regulations governing working hours and standards, you inevitably travel in the opposite direction towards the Singapore-on-Sea/USA model of minimum- and low-wage workers having to have a second job in order to cover basic costs, thus widening the gap between the haves and the have nots.

Not only is it a morally unjust policy, it's a pretty poor strategy economically, as it is ultimately unsustainable and creates a country with poor infrastructure and poor economic resilience, and a work force with poor health, low morale and low productivity, which all costs more to put right and really only benefits bankers and those who play the financial markets.