To find it annoying that politicians keep on saying

[Iliveinalighthousewiththeghost]

we're all behind hard working people... Not heard a mention of the sick, mentally ill and the disabled. What about a mother who's had to flee an abusive relationship.
Just because someone does not work. Does not make them the devil. I bet there are people out there would give anything to work but due to life's circumstances they can't.

yanbu. It drives me up the wall.

It's usually "hard-working families". I'm in the kind of unit they mean, and it still enrages me. It's such a lazy phrase.

I hate it. It's like a reverse of the 90s single mum bashing that went on. So they've made it 'positive' but implicitly are saying if you're not a 'hard working' family then you're the problem.

It annoys me not least because it isn't true.

If it wasn't for the 'hard working people' there would be precious little money, or support, for the sick, the ill and the disabled.

Yes-but they do make it sound as if "hard working people" are the only ones that matter.
It has been irritating me too.

They are saying what people want to hear. No party is going to say "we're behind all the benefit claimers" if they want any votes at all.

As a country we need as many people to be working and paying tax as possible. All parties know that.

I think most people would be happy to hear that they wanted to support people with severe disabilities and their carers though.

"Benefit claimers" is a broad category and you put a judgemental slant on it Littlemonsters

Hard working people fund those who can't work.

They're just differentiating from lazy people who don't work, but could.

Most people fall into the hard working category, as opposed to the disabled/ ill category so it doesn't really make sense to reference them every 5 mins.

I do find it annoying though as labour seem to think you can only be hard working if you don't earn much.

custardcream14 I think if you earn very little working full time it is very different. Having to worry about paying bills every day etc must be exhausting.

It annoys me too, what if you're disabled and hard working?

Yes but it's the way anyone who earns over x amount must clearly not work hard at all. Which is just silly.

It absolutely fucks me off. I'm disabled and it's hard work for me to get out of bed in the morning. I had absolutely no control over what happened to me. I worked part time, then very part time, then less and less until it became impossible after an operation failed.

I hate that all benefit claimants are branded as "scroungers", it's all our fault that the economy was fucked, we're all on the cadge. When we go in our front doors we somehow magically become well again and can do everything , we just don't want to according to IDS. Esther McVile thinks we're all on the fiddle and she can make us all better!

People just can not seem to accept that there are some people in this country who are unable to work and I wish they'd just fuck off!

(we do fit in to the hardworking family thing, btw, cause DH and DS1 work full time. It still pisses me off)

I think they should turn it into the title of a song. Hard working workers who work hard working hard, and find it hard not to work hard and have to work hard on not working so hard.

Chorus
We work hard working hard.
We work hard.
We work hard working hard.
Hard, hard.

Snow White:
"Hi!Ho!, Hi Ho!" "We dig,dig,dig,dig,dig" etc

Don't lazy single people have votes, too?

Wot ya doing for them, Mr/Mrs Politician?

I was going to start a political party for lazy single people, but in the end I couldn't be arsed. Far too much effort.

Hard working families who do the right thing.

If you're not one of those, they don't care.

Won't anybody think of the idle rich?

I think it's because of the whole 'squeezed middle' thing, and to be fair, that very large section of the population does have a pretty rough deal from government, so they are trying to appeal to them. It's about time that those who are working for low and average wages were recognised though, so I don't think it's a bad thing that they are finally bring acknowledged.

Will no one think of the children of the idle rich?

oh yeah, good save

The reality is that a small number of votes in a small number of seats actually matter, so politicians reach out to those people

Some people choose to work hard at caring for elderly parents, running a greener and healthy home, looking after their children themselves instead of leaving them in the care of state-provided childcare, having the time to be good neighbours and do voluntary work for the good of the state/community.....

But the only type of hard work acknowledged by the politicians is paid work, even if it results in little or no extra revenue for the treasury, owing to the low hourly pay and the cost of free or subsidised child-care, ill-health caused by the stress of constantly having to rush around, children spending up to ten hours a day in institutions, employers bearing the cost of sick days taken to look after sick children, ever-increasing numbers of elderly people having to go into institutionalised care, which is expensive, and lonely isolated elderly people who no one has time for as they are too busy rushing around doing low-paid, unrewarding stressful paid work.

I don't get it. Driving everyone into work seems like a false economy to me.

They could reach out to me by cutting the salary of both my council leaders and mandating the fixing of a pothole or two. Singing the dwarves song from Snow White isn't doing me much good. The bins need emptying more often too. I wouldn't mind benefits going up, if claimants could fix the holes and empty the bins on the way to collect them.

They're not driving everybody into work, are they, they're driving everybody into zero hours, JSA, and off claiming altogether. The good thing about the people being driven, though, is that they're lazy, workshy and deserve it.

So, a win all round, really. And, if some of them die, because their benefits have been cut off, well, we're not missing them, anyway. And, there's more to go around at the local food bank.

Polling day? Remember me, Vagrant-Basher-Willy. I'll be wearing an enormous blue rosette and be carrying a club.