British working/lower class only

[TinklySnail]

I’m personally not okay with rioting but understand why it’s happening.
What is the best way to fix this issue and do you think it is mass immigration that has caused it?

People like me?

The nastiness on this thread astounding.

Your lack of understanding of UK politics means you have incorrectly predicted that the Labour Gov will bring in the army. I can assure you, they won’t.

Why did these riots not take place when under the Tory Govt then?

Riots take place when any new government forms. It’s a defining marker.

2011
1981

I'm not sure it's anarchists, but definitely the extreme far right. I agree 100% with the rest of your post. Why now when Labour have just come to power?? I can't help feeling that this is the UK equivalent of 6 January in the US. "Our party didn't win, we are not happy and we're not gonna take it."

@Dweebie

FE is under funded and under attack. It used to be a place where less academic students could go to either still work up to uni but in a less exam based way or get to a level and go and work.
Unfortunately with the introduction of t levels many students will be cut off and won't get the initial grades and then will struggle with the exams.

You’re turning it into a class issue (middle class v working class) when it wasn’t. Just maybe people with expertise understood the issue better than those without ? Nothing to do with higher incomes. More to do with an actual understanding of the decision to be made and how damaging a vote to leave was for the economy. Included business owners who predicted how it would negatively affect their ability to trade.

Working class people understood the issues just fine, and purposely voted the way they did. Part of it was how poorly the Remain campaign was presented. Part of it was because they focused solely on economic issues and ignored concerns like immigration.

The working poor don’t care about broader economic issues. When Remain said “labour costs will go up if we leave the EU”, working class people heard “my wages will go up and my boss will have to pay me more”. And they thought “stick it to the man, it’ll cost my greedy boss more money, serves him right for not paying me a decent wage”. You need to understand the psychology behind the vote.

I think one the biggest problems is the lack of social housing in the UK.
Lots of working class people who grew up in social housing, who grew up with aunts, uncles and grandparents living a few doors down in social housing have lost that. They see people who didn't grow up in the area being moved into the houses that their relatives lived in whilst they either have to carry on living with parents or are placed in B&B accommodation. Instead of directing their anger at the government who hasn't built more social housing they direct their anger at the newcomers.

I could weep, really, reading this. In the 1960s a college lecturer said that there is a class 'lower than the working class' who seem never to be able to rise above that.

I agree with what you have written.

I knew a woman who used to be furious if she saw a mother pushing a child in a push-chair, not chatting to the child, but texting away on the mobile.

Education secretaries come and go and for decades not one government has ever taken out a few minutes of TV time and a bit of money to put out a 2-minute public service broadcast to tell parents that even if they are not good readers themselves, just talking to their children from the time they're in the womb will help them with reading when they get to school.

Lower the school-leaving age to 14, as long as the teenager has a work-place to go to. Give money to the employer rather than the school, to educate the youngster when he/she can see a point in what they're doing and stop the unions from demanding full pay for the learners.

Sorry, hobby horses of mine. Gotta go.

You missed a pretty bloody significant sideline in 2011 - whilst the SKYCopter was pointing its cameras at Reeves Corner and making it appear to be wholly black people, they were directly over - and ignoring - the swarms of people taking advantage to smash in the windows of places like Richer Sounds and Cycle King. And completely ignoring the groups driving in and attempting to smash into the gun shops in Coulsdon and Wallington, shops in Bromley, Sutton and the like. Because they were the same demographic who fetched up over the past week. The reason I know this? Because I was listening to the fuckers making arrangements outside my window.

Or maybe not feeling entitled to social housing. The common theme seems to be a huge sense of entitlement.

If you signed up for this course they’d stop your benefits too. No money for food and bills. No roof over your head. Then if the course didn’t lead to a job you’d have to fight to get benefits back.

They also stop your benefits if you do voluntary work or unpaid work experience. I think the maximum allowed is 16 hours a week. So you can’t offer to work for free in the hope of impressing the employer and being kept on, or at the very least getting a reference for your CV. That’s if you could even afford the bus fare to get there on a voluntary basis.

People who’ve never been in that situation don’t realise how you’re blocked at every turn. If they just offered some free courses and a bus pass if you do voluntary work, it would get loads of people into jobs.

well said! I agree with every word.

Is an equal effort being put into improving / educating British people in deprived areas, it isn't.

That is another of the them and us issues.

There are courses and colleges. The people you are speaking about all had access to schools.

Not all schools are equal. In Knowsley (one of the most deprived boroughs in Europe) there is a 26% GCSE pass rate. Loads of the ‘schools’ are glorified holding pens.

You are talking of a huge amount of effort re-educating adult asylum seekers and how well that effort rewards but in the same breath are implying the British requiring intervention have had their opportunity.

That's ok then, leave them to it.

It really isn’t a them and us issue. Level 2 and 3 qualifications are FREE TO ALL. 16-19 education is FREE TO ALL. These are the facts. I was working in a massive FE. college catering to people from every local community. This happened to include asylum seekers. Same with housing. There is no special secret supply of housing for refugees.

You don't need a course to accept if you are white and male that doesn't make you better.

Free education from the age of 5-18 in England (not sure if it differs in other parts of the UK), free level 2 and level 3 qualifications if they are your first qualification of that level. Subsidised courses for mature learnings on a low income/receiving certain benefits if it isn’t their first qualification at that level. Access courses free until the age of 23, above that age a loan is available to cover the fees, this is still available to those in a lower income who pay a reduced tuition fee.

Yes, I went to a school with a 15% GCSE pass rate. These issues exist in many communities, but those communities are not trying to burn people alive in hotels. I have friends with no GCSEs and criminal records received as juveniles. They all are doing something with themselves. Do they enjoy those jobs? No, but they are paying their bills and trying to improve things for their children. They realise the government is not here to save them.

No but refugees being taught not to behave inappropriately to females is ok?

I am white, British, working class. I live in a tiny council house in a poverty stricken part of the UK.

The violence in my area is coming from thick, violent racists. When they're not intimidating black and brown people, they're intimidating children, old people and the disabled. Anyone "other".

https://www.irishnews.com/news/northern-ireland/loyalists-linked-to-heartless-sectarian-attack-on-new-home-of-nine-year-old-disabled-boy-in-shared-housing-development-GRAHMKGUTFHTLBOUPRHXAQTEFQ/

They are causing problems because they are Combat 18 led thugs. Many are stupid. Some are forced to riot by paramilitaries.

@Simonjt 16-18 isn't free. School bus from our village is £450 a term. Books are no longer provided. Sixth formers are expected to lease a laptop and a locker. If parents don't have the money available, kids can't go.

If you strip out the rhetoric, the root problem is that there is a British "underclass" that feels disempowered and unheard. It was the reason for the Brexit vote and the reason for anti immigration. It would have been better if the chattering classes had sat down after Brexit and asked why and what could be done about it. At heart, life for many in this group has been going downhill for some time especially in areas that traditionally relied on heavy industry with "man's jobs" which have closed usually without any proper thought to what could replace them. SO in eg a pit village the space of a generation you have lost a society that lived in tied housing, lived on the father's salary and dad and the boys expected to have a secure job. Instead there was widespread unemployment, enormous disenchantment with a political establishment that didn't listen and didn't bother to look at investment in the area to replace what had been lost. That background of disengagement and feeling unheard has continued into the younger generations. For them the housing and cost of living crises are exacerbated by an education system that only values the most academic (and by default therefore the better educated and resourced middle classes), the job insecurity of zero hours NMW contracts etc. Then they look around and what they see is "foreign families" getting the council houses their long term resident families' "taxes have paid for", jobs going to young economic migrants (there were cases before the Brexit vote where companies like Next were advertising vacancies in Poland rather than in the UK in the areas where the jobs were) etc etc. You can see how, once disengagement sets in the demagogues on the far right can have a field day by appearing to listen and how those who feel unheard may think that they need to take more drastic measures to make their point.

None of it is right but there are societal problems behind the violence that do need to be addressed.

You don't have to be a refugee to behave inappropriately to females. There is plenty of home grown "Christian" men who haven't got the hang of that.

If you wanted to move to Japan you would need to learn a whole heap of local customs to be able to live harmoniously.

There are bad apples in every barrel.

Lots of people got pushed into a random level 3 qualification at 16. Probably some Mickey Mouse course to keep them off the streets, chosen by their mum so she could continue claiming child benefit. It doesn’t help them 5-10 years later when they need a job. They need to be able to go back to college and do another free course, one which actually leads to employment.

It also has to be a part time course, because if you study full time they take your benefits off you.

The bigger issue is that you don’t get a bus pass to go to college and the bus is a fiver a day. People on benefits don’t have the money to catch the bus to college, even if the course is free.