AIBU To think that Labour is more against aspirations than the Conservatives?

[DistinguishedSocialCommenator]

Both of the above are ready to shaft the hard-working people who have not just worked hard, but spent/invested wisely rather than throw it way on lifestyles.

IMO, Labour is seriously anti those with some investments, EG, BTL, and people who own another property. People who have savings etc as these people decided not to blow away their money but be wise with it

Both, Labour and Tories don't give a flying F about those that own even a single property when it comes to care home charges. The new alliance is a con. So, if you don't own you home as about 45% of England does not, you are unlikely to be shafted unless you have large amount of savings for your rainy day/retirement etc

The extra tax on cars , ir road tax pay extra in their hundreds/thousands on cars costing more than 40k new RRP was set several years ago and not been adjusted for inflation - thanks to Tories

LL's getting hammered by new rules always favouring the T's - There are many good LL's as well as T's, so why penalise asperations?

We boguth a couple of properties to fund our retirement, erly retirement and went without hols/etc for many years and at times both of us worked 50 hours a week, 6/7 days a week. We also did not want to live of the state and pass money etc to our children/grandchildren to help them to a less stressful start thn us.

Though both Lab/Con are as bad as the other, if you've saved a few qquid, earn a decent amount of money and have more than one property, AIBU to think the Labour lot will shat us hard, seriously hard and waste money on foolish projects in order to secure votes for the next election if they win this election?

"like fuck do they"

hang on a second... @DistinguishedSocialCommenator I'm PRETTY positive you were arguing with people for swearing on the homebase thread last night.

Tut, tut!

I don’t agree, I was able to live a decent life as a single mother and study while at home with my children then subsequently when they went to school to go to university and qualify in my chosen career under labour. I now don’t claim any benefits, yes I do think middle earners are penalised but were less so under labour e.g. they didn’t introduce the child benefit higher income charge or 9.5k tuition fees

They’re not unpleasant, they’re locked in a cycle of not knowing how to run their lives correctly but rejecting any help or advice (beyond financial).

I agree with @Butterdishy

They did introduce the tuition fees and wanted more people to go to university but in all honesty most of the jobs could be done by none graduates anyway

@greengreengrass25 they introduced the tuition fees. The coalition including the Tories tripled them. The Tories also introduced their ludicrous cap on child benefit, using individual instead of household income, leading to a situation where a couple each earning £49,999 kept their CB while a couple where one partner earned over £50k started having it tapered down. Absolute insanity. And the Tories abolished the nursing bursary, then reintroduced it as a pale shadow of itself - and now there's a huge recruitment crisis in the NHS. If you were earning and learning, you were absolutely better off under Labour.

They introduced the initial 3k tuition fees but it was the coalition government that wracked that up to 9k overnight. I do agree that it’s done no one any favours making a degree a requirement for so many jobs, while also simultaneously starting to charge people to do degrees was silly. Just means if someone want to be a paramedic they have to get themselves 60k into debt while also going without pay for 3 years and the poor person lying on the floor in pain is waiting hours for a paramedic as they’re in such short supply, ridiculous. Previously to that you were taken on as a technician and trained, paid and supported to become a paramedic, same with nursing.

I really wonder if the tories realise just how much they are shooting them selves in the foot with middle income earners over the child benefit higher income charge. The marginal tax rate people end up paying (especially if you add in SLC repayments) is astronomical, almost putting parents on 50-60k into a benefits trap. This is among parents who are in that income bracket and have outgoings for which receiving child benefit would be a huge help and often quite skilled workers who are then put off taking promotions and overtime at a time when the country desperately needs their skills

I do wonder if there's an element of 'we're all in this together' and 'it's for the greater good' within the Labour Party ( actually with the Tories too if I'm honest) particularly when it comes to cost cutting , inflation etc... yet they all have their snouts in the trough, flipping expenses and grifting.

Reminds me of Russia pre Berlin Wall.
Poverty, poor quality infrastructure, crumbling health care, poor social mobility and poor social care alongside food shortages and continuous inflation.
Then the Wall came down and most of the 'elite' were suddenly oligarchs and bought vast swathes of property in the west within almost days.

What is a commenator? Perhaps it's another word for Tory?

Taxes tend to be higher outside the U.K. if you can find anywhere to move easily since Brexit.

Labour has been in power in Wales since 1999.

You should come on over - no NHS waiting lists , world
class education, reliable affordable public transport , high employment……..

Oh no. My mistake. Wales is in the same state , if not worse, than the rest of the U.K.

Sadly I’m not sure any of the current crop of politicians have the answer.

I have no confidence in either side.

What about the lifestyle of people born into generations of wealth and privilege? What risks did they take? What years did they spend learning a profession?

Bottom line for me is that everyone should have a dry, safe roof over their head, enough food to eat, enough money to provide heat and light and some things that are purely there to bring pleasure. Ideally they should work to earn those things, but they should be paid enough to have them. If they cannot work, they should have those things nevertheless. Nobody should live in poverty in a country like the UK.

But old money elite types are surely a pretty small minority. Most people that are successful are that way through hard work. Yes, some are privileged in terms of having access to private education etc, but with trade jobs commanding higher average salaries than both graduate and office jobs nowadays that's less compelling an argument than it was a few decades ago.

I worked with a guy from a pretty rough background who had a criminal record for selling cocaine and hadn't had a proper job until the age of 27. In his 30s he now earns £65k driving fuel tankers.

I think that really denies just how hard it is to establish a career or know how to start your own business if you don’t have anyone in your circle modelling that.

But it also comes down to what you're prepared to do. I hated office work and having ADHD it was always going to be a struggle to progress in the sector I was in. I decided to learn how to drive a truck because I knew I'd probably be able to get a job on over £40k almost immediately, which I did. Nobody told me how to do it and I didn't know anybody that would even know how.

Of course we should help those that are genuinely struggling but I do feel like we have a certain level of entitlement in this country. My best mate's brother is the perfect example. Got a psychology degree with no idea of what he was going to do with it and now refuses to do anything he sees as 'below him', which has basically comprised not working for close to a decade and claiming for poor mental health whilst smoking weed all day and playing PS5.

I honestly think we could learn a lot from Eastern Europeans, who seem to just get on with it and play with the hand they were dealt. I've worked with so many Romanian guys that came here with next to nothing and are now earning £50k+ driving trucks. Compared to so many English people they seem to just get on with things without that sense of entitlement.

Not a popular opinion I'm sure but this has been my observation from a fair few years working in a relatively lucrative sector where you meet next to no middle class English people.

This would be depressing. This outcome with everyone voting Labour long term because the demographic is focussed on what the state will give them, and the people paying in drift off.

Depressing but hopefully not

@FatPrincess I'm not talking about old money elite types, although there are more of them than you think - I'm talking about people whose parents started at a modest level and who worked hard, and whose children are reaping the benefist whilst simultaneously going on about how everyone could have what they did if only they worked hard. Thing is, we don't live in that world anymore, if we ever did. Social mobility has stalled. The American Dream is dead.

The other thing is that low paid jobs are so often the essential ones. Someone has to do them. So why is it OK for those people to have to rely on food banks and insecure housing when they are in fact already working hard, long hours? Why is an investment banker in a nice cosy office worth so much more than the person who cleans that nice cosy office? It used to be the case that pay multiples between the highest and lowest paid reflected skills. Now they're a joke. Of course the manager should earn more than the cleaner - but not 100 times more.

But if not capitalism, what?

Social democracy, as practised in parts of Europe. We don't need the kind of capitalism we have in the UK. We also don't need full blown socialism. There is a happy medium, but people have to stop being selfish and racing to the bottom if we want it.

Yes the nursing and other healthcare bursary abolishment was awful especially when they work on the wards for free anyway

It's not hard work that is rewarded. There was a thread recently about high paid workers who basically sit around doing nothing all day working from home. Then you have low paid retail and hospitality workers etc as well as crucial NHS staff, teachers etc who are rushed off their feet all day on a fraction of the pay.

I know several well-paid people in industries like computing, freelance "consultants" (not actually sure what they do...) etc who work from home and have time to do school runs, go jogging, go out for coffee, walk the dogs and so on during their working day. Then people who seem to do twice the amount of work who struggle to keep a roof over their heads and are using food banks.

To be fair though they have probably done a lot of studying and working long hours onwards for free to get to this position in the first place.

Oh no. My mistake. Wales is in the same state , if not worse, than the rest of the U.K.

The Welsh government is still dependent on money provided by the Westminster government. What happens in the Welsh economy is also highly dependent on decisions made by the Westminster government. Decision-making is far from fully devolved.

I was meaning medical consultants

IT does seem quite flexible but again they may have done IT at university or have a masters or be naturally good at it

Many of the people in low-paid jobs won't have had the opportunities for studying.

Nurses, doctors, teachers etc have all spent a long time studying but will still have to put in the hours for their whole working lives.

Yes they rely on money from outside Wales as higher pp funding.

If we get into the same place, with same outcomes, there’s nowhere else to depend on

Yes I understand @lavenderlou

Teaching is reasonably paid however housing is so expensive