to wonder why the govt are not doing anything about the spiralling cost of living?

[dirtyface]

they are making cuts left right and centre, but IMO are not looking at the bigger picture which is the REAL reason people are so skint. ie because of the cost of living ie food, gas, electric, (my particular bugbear) petrol , housing, local taxation.

this is why people are not spending money on the high street etc. its cos no bugger has got any disposable income after they have been fleeced every month paying for the essentials. i for one spend a good proportion of my earnings on petrol, so does dh and i am sure i speak for many people

obviously i am mostly talking about mr and mrs average joe on average incomes, ie, say min wage to about 30k or so. but am sure the higher earners are squeezed as well esp with them cutting off CB and tax credits etc after a certain income

whats going to happen? is it just going to keep going up and up. it scares me

disclaimer: i don't understand how any of this works so sorry if i sound thick. there is probably some clever obvious reason why "they" cant sort the cost of living out a bit

But then again everything reminds me of that speech these days

omg that speech

never heard of it before now but my god it dont half sum up how it is at the moment

dirty don't you think they were saying (in effect) that wages should be higher for those with large responsibilities

maybe but the poster just made it sound like low paid jobs should only be done by students and young people*

It's not that I think that low paid jobs should only be done by students and young people, but as they aren't enough to raise a family on, I don't think they are jobs that should be done by people who have dependants. They just don't pay enough. Of course they should be enough for one person to live on though.

I don't think wages should be higher for those that have more responsibility. Work is worth what it's worth, one persons work doesn't become more worthy of extra wages just because they have a child.

I completely agree that people in low paid jobs should be able to have a decent standard of living. But that doesn't mean they should be able to provide a decent standard of living for anyone other than themselves on a low wage.

I am on a low wage too btw, not much more than minimum.

'I don't think they are jobs that should be done by people who have dependants. They just don't pay enough. Of course they should be enough for one person to live on though.'

Some of those jobs are too skilled for young people living at home to do.

So people who don't have the capability or opportunity to get any of these huge numbers of higher-paying jobs shouldn't be allowed to have children? Ooookkaaayyy.

I don't think wages should be higher for those that have more responsibility. Work is worth what it's worth, one persons work doesn't become more worthy of extra wages just because they have a child

sorry, i think you misunderstood me...i meant responsibility in the job role, not responsibility in having children or dependants

and expat yes exactly

interesting speech from Neil kinnock but didn't Gordon Brown raid pensions in the last government and both governments have made fuel expensive with extra green taxes and selling off our utility cos which I know was a Tory policy,

I agree about setting people against each other but certain policies have made things difficult for people trying to get by and have been unnecessary and have made people disillusioned.

I was discussing the increase in politicians pay with someone, I felt it was worth it and might mean that we get a better mix of politician. And the high unemployment could mean that there will be people who become politicians who are happy with the 70,000pa and not from a priveledged background so in time there could be a change in those in gov which could make a big difference to policy.
Though I'm now sure how much the parties still control who is voted in.

I bought my first house, a £26,500 3 bed semi in South West England as a single person on a junior civil servant's wage of approx. £8K pa .

I was not unusual. Most of my friends and work mates bought their own homes.

Nowadays they would not be able to afford to do so.

I bought a 4 bed double garage, 3 bathrooms, detached new home in South West England in 1986 for £60K .

At the very peak of the housing boom it was valued at £180K before falling back to £120K.

It would now be worth about £320K

So over a 5x increase in 30 years. But wages have not risen 5x.

So home ownership has become unaffordable to a large sector of the working population.

That's wrong.

My friend recently met one the government's advisors in a social capacity. The conversation turned to houses and he made repeated reference to 'one's other house'. When pressed, he clarified 'You know, the house you go to at weekends. In the country.' When my friend of a friend explained that she didn't have a house in the country, in common with most people, he was genuinely perplexed and seemed to think that she was being deliberately obtuse.

Just sayin'

So you think people that can't financially support children, can't provide them a home, don't earn enough to feed them or clothe them are entitled to have children?

And I'm the one that's getting the ??

Wierd.

What is it about children that makes it ok to have them when you can't afford them? I want a bigger house, a third child, an exotic holiday every year, but if I can't afford them, I don't have them. Simple really. I don't expect other people to provide stuff I want for me just because I'm not capable of earning enough to pay for those things alone.

It takes two people to make children for a reason.

So quite a lot of posters on here think that the Govt is simply out of touch while another group think they don't care.

Probably both. They neither understand the finances of the normal wage earner or would care if they did.

Don't think it's confined to any particular party - they're all as bad as each other. I suppose we're paying the price for electing ex-public school PPE graduates, who've fallen into jobs as political researchers, bag-carriers and then MPs, and who've never had to live in the 'real' world.

Whether the Govt is out of touch or "just don't care" it doesn't change the real reason why the costs of living are rising faster than most people's incomes: the globalisation of the world economy.

Technological advancements have made it possible for companies to outsource jobs to lower wage economies in a way that was unthinkable just a couple of decades ago (think call centres in India, typists in South Africa, back room paper-pushing jobs in any English-speaking nation). In many cases the people taking those jobs are far better qualified and more dedicated than their UK equivalents ever were. Added to that the rapid development of enormous nations such as India, China and Brazil has led to massive increases in demand for commodities (oil, gas, metals, food), outstripping increases in supply.

The Govt can fiddle around with what and how much they tax and how they spend that tax, but there's nothing they can do about changes in the world economy.

We've grown up to believe that each generation will have a better (or at least the same) quality of life as their parents and we need to rethink that expectation. It was formed as a result of the booming economies of the "developed" nations in the decades after WW2, but we need to recognise that other countries are now rapidly catching up.

To my mind the only solution is to focus on the things we are best at as a nation and which can be exported (or draw in cash from outside). Things like high quality engineering, innovative technology, pharmaceuticals, high finance, the law. All of which require not only excellent education but also intelligence, aptitude and dedication. The country needs to earn enough from its exports to pay for all its imports and to maintain a decent quality of life for all its citizens. Otherwise we'll just have to accept that we're a nation in rapid decline and that Mr and Mrs Joe Average are going to live very hand to mouth lives.

Actually, having said all that, there is one thing the Govt can do to make a big difference and that's to relax planning laws hugely. The only surefire way to halt the inexorable rise of property prices is to massively increase the supply...

So brokensglasses, what happens to the lower working classes? Where do you propose they live? Will you be happy when people much lower down the socioeconomic scale are no more, because they couldn't afford to have the next generation, and the next? Who exactly will look after your great grand children at nursery? The would-be nursery worker may well not exist in your future scenario, or if they have managed to climb up the socio economic scale (further than their own parents) then they will be competing with your ancestors for middle class jobs. Tough titty for your ancestors.

Don't you get it? We NEED service industries and blue collar workers. They deserve somewhere decent to live and the right to reproduce FGS!

Sorry, I meant descendants, obviously, not ancestors.

For those who think people do not leave when tax rates rise see this on France's now cancelled 75% rate.

Yes, we do curly. But at the moment what we have is high unemployment and not enough unskilled and low paid work to go round everyone that needs it.

So while we need some unskilled workers we do not need as many as some seem to think, and the fact that we need some is not a good enough reason for people to have children they have no way of providing for IMO.

SOwhile we need some unskilled workers we do not need as many as some seem to think, and the fact that we need some is not a good enough reason for people to have children
they have no way of providing for IMO

so what about the middle aged person working in the supermarket or the bus driver or the person working as a hospital cleaner do they not deserve children I am trying to work out in my simple logic f this is what you mean

Totally agree with MusieB. Globalisation is completely changing the playing field for all the reasons she states.

Many posters on this thread believe that everyone in Britain should make a living wage and have a reasonable standard of living. But other countries are producing goods that we buy made by people not paid a living wage. That's not fair either. I often think that when I go into Primark: disposable clothes made by the very poor to fund britains much-less 'poor'.

There is an issue about unskilled work and you're right - there isn't enough of this, as this kind of work has gone abroad. Isn't the solution then to upskill our labour market?? I once read somewhere that for every unskilled job there are 40 applns, for every job at 50k there are half that. Not sure how true but a pretty sad story about our labour market.

Many posters on this thread believe that everyone in Britain should make a living wage and have a reasonable standard of living. But other countries are producing goods that we buy made by people not paid a living wage.

That was EXACTLY the point I was making in my earlier post: people expect a higher standard of living than the value of their skills can provide.

Yes, you used to be able to buy a house when you worked in an unskilled factory job years ago but back then there wasn't the automation that there is now and so your work was worth more.

To be brutally honest, unskilled labour is practically worthless in the modern, global economy. As there are relatively few low-skilled jobs now, compared to a few decades ago, there are far, far more people fighting over those jobs and hence there's just no need to pay any more than NMW to fill them.

There are highly skilled people in Asia working long hours putting together computers and TVs then going home to a very basic existence while people in the West think they should be able to buy that computer with their wage from 37hrs of unskilled work and have enough left over for decent housing, food and clothing. It makes no sense whatsoever if we're honest about it.

Credit (both in terms of the public coffers and personal borrowing) has been filling the gap between workers' 'worth' and their perceived entitlement to a particular standard of living. That's gone now so there's some re-aligment going on and people are finding out that their skills won't buy them the things they used to.

No doubt someone will say that the person working in factory in Asia should be paid more. Yes they probably should, but that would only magnify the issue of the unskilled western workforce having unrealistic expectations.

Areas of the world though that provide labour at low cost will not last for ever either. Already wages are going up in India and china and will continue to do so. Companies that outsource this kind of labour are now chasing the lowest labour rates round the world, but as globalisation continues labour rates will become higher everywhere. What this means for us I'm not quite sure.

Everything reminds me of "V for Vendetta" or "The Matrix". That said, I can't ever remember some golden period when this sort of thing was not happening. It's been done before and will be done again.

I do think people in sticky economic situations need to be pragmatic about it though. Perhaps families could start sharing accommodation? My grandma's family had three or four siblings and their families plus elderly parents living under the one roof at various times (she was one of 11 or so). We have a fair few neighbours in our apartment block and those surrounding who are squeezing in four to five to a room , take 2 minute showers and share their bills. They just put their heads down and get on with it really.

Globalisation is to blame. If companies stopped outsourcing to China and India and employed people in the UK it would lead to high prices at first, but then there would be jobs for people and there would be money to spend.

I know of companies who look for contractors on various sites and pay them a few dollars a day. That could go to a British person who would then spend that money in this country.

I don't think comparing ourselves to developing nations is particularly helpful. Our ancestors fought to give us this standard of living, but Thatcher was instrumental in royaly fucking British industry and putting countless people on the dole.

For starters, I am all for green energy, but we are still using a lot of coal which is imported, whilst we are still sitting on loads of it in the UK.

I just think we should be focussing on how we can make our nation more self sufficient.

Another observation I've made is that there are more jobs for the unemployed than people think. Granted, a lot of them are shitty or have zero hour contracts, but a lot of British born people think they are above these kinds of jobs. In my area, Eastern Europeans snap them up, because they don't have that kind of snobbish attitude and they are prepared to get their hands dirty.

Another observation is that people in this country will always need local people such as builders, plumbers, mechanics and electricians and actually, people I know in these fields of work seem to be doing very well for themselves. I think people need to be more creative, lower their lofty aspirations and just take whatever work they can. We need to stop looking down on the working classes and cease the idea that all kids should go to uni, as degrees have devalued. There is no shame in learning a trade.

Right. Rant over.

The problem is that housing costs and minimum wage are so completely out of kilter.This could be solved in a stroke by relaxing planning laws.

I'm with you Paulsmenis about making the uk more self sufficient, but the reason employers prefee foreign workers is that they only can afford to work for so little money. Their home i abroad, they see their life here as temporary so don't need good accommodation and don't need ti run a car for instance. There are plenty of UK workers applying for jobs but the jobs are not economically viable. There should be a subsidy for employers who chose uk workers but a law like that would be seen as discriminatory.

If we could only stop fantasising about this holy grail of 'foreign investment' and pandering to the whims of the multinationals. We are perfectly capable of looking after ouselves.

Regarding the unskilled worker value issue, I would like to live in a society where the shop assistant had as much respect as a doctor. Paying them peanuts is insulting and degrading. They have probably gone through life trying their best just like anyone else.