Is Anyone preparing/hunkering down for 'after the budget'

[IsUnemploymentRising]

The news is today seems to be full of headlines such as unemployment is going up, housing markets are softening, budget is make or break.

Lots of people such as Andrew Bailey quoting things like markets could crash due to debt and AI bubble etc

I just don't see how RR or anyone else for that matter can get us out of our current situation without considerable cutbacks and pain.

Raise Taxes - lots of people think this is maxed out now with rich leaving and businesses already hit (thus rising unemployment)

Cut Benefits - will they try this again. If so what will all the people on benefits actually do to live. Will they all get jobs. Is there jobs?

So are you hunkering down?

Me personally I wish they would just get on with it. I hope to move house in next few years and whilst I'm still committed to it I can see another frozen housing market coming where only forced sellers sell and everyone else sits tight.

I'm retired (although not getting any pensions yet as too young) and definately worried about pension values (ie stock markets, bonds etc). It's very difficult to plan when your pensions are dependant on things outwith your control. (not applicable to those with final salary/defined benefit schemes of course)

State pension is a good 14 years away for me (I'm fully paid up) but I worry it will be eroded when I have built it into my calculations for retirement not to mention the freezing of tax brackets which means we are all getting taxed more each year by stealth.

I'm probably in a better position that many to weather the storm as no mortgage or debts and holding cash etc but even then I worry about our currency being worth nothing soon if they go down the route of printing money again.

Am I being overly pesimestic. I mean how are they actually going to get us out of this. For those on benefits (apart from worrying, being scared etc) how will you actually cope if your benefits are cut.

I agree with all those points.

The longer you aren't in the workplace, whether through employment, disability, or never starting the workplace in the first place, the harder it will be and the more mental health challenges due to loneliness, not having enough human interactions, lack of routine, etc.

I dont work due to mental health but I do attend a lot of support groups and have appointments. I have a lot of routine and see a lot of people.
Please dont assume that if someone is not working they are sat doing nothing and seeing no one.

I know someone who was doing a well paid job as a train driver and paying all his taxes and contributing to society in lots of ways. And then someone jumped in front of his train. Sure "routine" is good and for lots of people maybe work helps but he wasn't mentally capable of going back to his job driving trains after that. I think some people think PTSD is a made up condition or something weak people.call being upset. But it's a real medical condition. As it happens, he was unwell for a while before he was able to get back to (a different) job. Maybe he would have been fit to work sooner if there was better MH support but equally he would have struggled a lot more if he didn't have supportive family and friends. And help finding a new career.
I think if you haven't seen people actually go through PTSD and real anxiety it's easy to believe Daily Mail headlines about how they are all just making it up. But the X amount of working age people are claiming benefits for mental health problems includes people like my.acquaintence. who had always been a productive member of society.
I agree that in the long term it's much better for people to be helped back into work. Often that means actually receiving treatment for physical or mental health issues. Yes some people are over therapised. But that's really not a thing within the NHS. The fake concern "we just think people would be happier working" combined with the gleeful "we need to rip the plaster of" is very jarring. And, like lots of people who receive sickness pay or benefits, he did is now working again and paying taxes. Letting people like that presumably starve isn't really financially a good idea long term.

I think this interesting discussion about benefits and mental health begs the question of just why.modern life is so detrimental.to people's mental wellbeing .
Even if people are saying some of it is exaggerated for benefit purposes( and personally I.do not know enough to comment on that ) there is no doubt that modern life is not conducive to creating a happy and healthy society.
It seems to me that we should be looking at why that is and trying to mitigate the damaging factors because people are getting ill.from anxiety and stress at a younger and younger age. Lots of children are badly affected long before they reach adulthood which does not bode well for the future of a nation in any area financially or otherwise.
So why are we not tackling the root causes? Indeed what are the root causes and is it even possible to change the trajectory now ?
Answers on a postcard please !

Well there was a big increase post Covid. That's also when you saw teenage mental health problems go up. I think it shows humans need in person social interactions with other people..computers can't replace that. Obviously the COVID lockdowns were because of a virus- but in general people are interacting in person less. Especially teenage boys/young men. And it's all very well saying "get off your computer" but a lot of the spaces that would be available to those ages - youth groups, cheap sports clubs, football grounds have closed down because of budget cuts. (And the spaces that do exist have a lot of pressure on them- mum's getting annoyed that teenage boys are all over the children's play equipment meant for their toddlers, people feeling threatened by teenagers hanging out on benches in town.) It's an example of how seeming to save money by cutting those things, ended up costing a lot more. That said, the only people I know of who had very bad mental health issues that did affect their ability to work had been through:

• PTSD as a result of watching someone die violently and being powerless to stop it
• Very complex childhood trauma that resurfaced later in life
• early onset blindness that left them very depressed (they were young and had been very active previously)

So I suspect the people actually claiming benefits for poor mental health are more likely to have reasons beyond the general.rise in mental health issues. Based on my own very small sample size of people I've known. But even for working adults mental health is an issue- it decreases productivity for example which costs the UK economy

The problem is fixing it will cost money and.ypu won't see all the benefits straight away. The same way the cuts because of austerity took a while to show up. There's latency in the system

@persephonia
Yes well said. I agree with all.of that.
And as you say no quick ,or indeed cheap fixes to be found .

My dd fell apart during Covid. Later diagnosed AUDHD. 5 years later she just getting her life back on track.

When we saw the ed pysch for her EHCP, he said he was overrun with cases, particularly of girls. He’d never seen anything like it in the 14 years he’d been doing his job.

He was working evenings as standard just to try and keep on top. He called it an explosion. He thought it was because habits and everyday contracts were broken. So no regular habit of getting up and going to school. He also said that that he was overrun with kids who could no longer cope with crowds and noise.

It fucking really pisses me off when people moan about snowflakes and that the mental health epidemic in young people is out of hand or fake.

Read the room. Why are young people like this? What once in a century huge event happened to them?

Could it not just be that being encouraged to stay at home wasted their social muscles, in the way it does with elderly people etc? Rather than a pre existing underlying condition.

Looking at a few family members - young men who had just finished school - spent a year hiding in their bedrooms - no need for alarm, they didn't claim benefits for much of this becuase they didn't have the confidence to enter a job centre. What creates this situation - these young men are not gaining confidence at school and when they leave, they feel worthless.
Jobs helped enormously (gained by a parent approaching an employer and a job coach insisted one did a week in a charity shop), anxiety levels were high. but through working they gained self-worth, talking to them they feel like school wasn't for them, especially 6th form - I agree, it's not designed to make kids like this feel good, feel like they are ready to face the world. The education system let them down - it is a one size fits all - but it doesn't, it fails lots of kids, it's time we started focusing more on the left behind.

I don’t know. It could have been l guess.

But we struggled with getting her back to school after Covid ( keen hard worker) When l told school (( she was in y10) at the time, they said lots of them were struggling with it.

I agree jobs can really help young men like that. They are a different problem in a sense since they aren't (in my experience too) the ones claiming benefits. But there is still a big personal cost and a different cost to society in the sense that it's someone not filling their potential. I think it's partly confidence, partly that men especially young men aren't great at asking for help. So they won't ask for help with MH issues and won't ask for help getting a job. And are unlikely to even sign on. I don't think it's one size fits all- some might benefit from a parental kick up the bum whereas for others that's the worst thing you could do.
I think part of the problem is that there is less opportunity outside of school to excel at things/boost self esteem/socialise other than online. Which is better than nothing but not a replacement for sports etc or table top games. Even schools have less playing fields and less time for sports than they used to. And there are quite predatory online influencers. I don't think the biggest issue is even the mysogyny although that's a problem. I think it's the amount of content telling them they are worthless/already failed. It's often cloaked in antiwoman rhetoric but underneath it's just demotivating.
Going to the gym is quite popular with boys now which is actually a positive. But it costs money which not everyone has.
I think maybe more youth clubs, more affordable activity style clubs like boxing, cheap gyms etc. But that costs money and councils are skint. And it won't immediately solve the issues with people needing benefits for mental ill health because most of the time they are a different group.

Even if it is just social muscles, shouting at people to be better doesn't work. When I broke my arm my real muscles wasted away. It took time and lots of physio exercises to build them back up. Someone demanding I just pick up a cup of tea wouldn't have worked no matter how much will power I had. For young people they literally missed out on a big chunk of time when they would have developed specific social skills. I don't think it means they are doomed to be stuck in arrested development but it makes sense it would take them longer to get back into it.
It's hard because for some teenagers being told to toughen up probably is the best thing. For others it's the worst thing you could do.

Yes, I think it’s delay rather than permanent . But it’s a big delay,

Its going to take much longer to recover than politicians or whatever think. I think they will all have equalled out in another 10 years.

But it’s currently a public health issue of our young people that is being derided, sneered at and minimalised. This will just prolong it imo.

There are several studies now showing the detrimental effect of the pandemic on children’s social and emotional intelligence (varies by age group from memory). We have just assumed with our DC that they are 1-2 years behind where we where in life experience and socially and emotionally and parented accordingly. So more patient if they are not controlling their impulses at a certain age, for example. The impulse control of adults also seems widely affected, hence the road rage etc and constant complaining and then it is exacerbated by media, including social media. It is almost fashionable to be angry about something.
I reckon more time outside, with friends, healthy foods etc all make a difference. Difficult to implement when you live in a City and work full time and are worried about money, like most people are.
My DC actually are very nostalgic about the Covid period but then they had each other (4 DC). It is my work patterns that were affected and I dropped down to part time, as working full time remotely and homeschooling 4 DC nearly broke me. DH could not get involved due to the nature of his work. So my productivity has not recovered, nor do I want it to now. I am around the tax threshold where more work does not equal much in your pocket so my extra time spent cooking, financially planning is more productive for my family than actually working.

Someone demanding you pick up the cup of tea would have been ridiculous but someone demanding you did the physio would not - if you didn't do it - you might never be able to use your wrist properly again.
Social skills do not develop by sitting in your bedroom - you have to step outside, take a risk, do something outside your comfort zone. My family members who spent a year in their bedrooms didn't really have COVID to blame, it started before Covid - they had very understanding parents (for better or for worse) they were enabled to remain in their bedrooms and it almost became a thing - once one family member did it - the others followed as a weird kind of right of passage. My reaction to it was the complete opposite. I told my kids it was not happening in our house - not for even a week! I expected them to get out there and join the world, ds struggled initially but I kept pushing and supporting, talking about his fears, facing them together.

Well you were lucky that yours responded. Don’t think others didn’t try. Mine ended up refusing to go to school for 18 months. Self harmed when we tried.

I sympathise, I really do - I don't think schools are working for these kids - I don't know what a different structure looks like but to feel you are going to school everyday and you are not winning must be soul destroying - we need to find ways to reach these kids, to build their confidence, make them feel like they are achieving something. When they get to school refusing we have already gone too far.

Traditionally they think school doesn’t work for 10% of kids - that’s a massive proportion and they can’t just be written off

but everyone is so scared to suggest change. Afaic GCSEs are not fit for purpose - they haven’t changed from when I did them 30 years ago and even then anyone with a good memory and a willingness to put time into that could do well. Get rid of timed exams - give everyone extra time (within reason!) if they want it. Consider if the right skills are being tested in the modern age.

school is a sausage factory and kids today are seeing that even if they go to uni and work hard for a degree there are still no jobs out there

Couldn't agree more. The maths GCSE is such a pointless qualification for so many kids - yes they need to be able to work with everyday numbers but that's not what's being tested, It breaks my heart to think of the kids who sit this test over and over again - to not gain this qualification can hold back so many kids. Why the need to set a percentage pass rate - all the kids should be passing a basic functional test - all that is needed for a lot of kids. I'd actually do away with GCSEs - like they did in Australia - and where vocational subjects can contribute to the high school diploma - we have to start thinking differently.
Untimed exams would be a great place to start - where's the harm?

A grammar school I looked at for DS (he did not end up there) had a really nice SEND hub, light filled, fully staffed and they managed to get bright anxious about school children in on their terms and do really well. I remember the head said 1 kid spent his entire secondary years there and ended up at Cambridge. The kid was quite self driven in their learning, but needed a supportive environment. There seem to be a lot more of these kids around. Same with the lowest of attainers who have SEND as well. If they were in small classes with lots of attention and mental health support in school, a lot of them could do well.

They have changed them a lot. Gove got rid of coursework for all but practical subjects and made the exams much much harder, content much much bigger and increased the amount of papers kids had to sit.

They haven’t changed that much though as when my DS recently did them we dug put some of my books and the content was very similar.

I do think there’s too many papers and too much content. By all means test maths and English but for the other subjects I don’t think a formal exam at 16 is necessary and teaching for an exam is the worst type of teaching. Coursework and project work are good skills and if they weren’t marked they’d be no hysteria about cheating

I agree with all that.

I agree. When our son was at secondary school 2013-2020, a huge amount of the subjects, content, exams, etc were very similar to the teaching/exams I did in the late 70s/early 80s. If anything it seems to be less content and an easier level. I think people who say they're harder and broader content are comparing the 90s and 00s when they were claimed to be a lot simpler. We just seem to have gone back to what we used to have.

Depends on when you're comparing them to. They're no harder than, say, the 70s and 80s, in fact a lot easier.