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?

100% this ⬆️

Well, yes, there are professions that are criminally underpaid. I do totally agree. And how hard you work doesn't always relate to how much you earn.

I'm talking about something slightly different I guess. I feel like a fair few people don't seem to grasp that you ultimately need to do it yourself because nobody will do it for you. There's always complaints about rich people dodging tax, certain jobs not paying enough etc. But really if you want to make decent £££ it's wise to choose a lucrative job rather than sit in a poorly paid one and hope the world changes - which in many cases it would be nice if it did but do you want to be the one sacrificed in the meantime.

I choose driving trucks over things like caring because it pays so much better. Six years later I'm in a decent management role. I was only average at best in my previous roles due to my ADHD but in my current sector there's a huge shortage of drivers and the number of people with management/executive skills who have also done the job is nonexistent.

Average driver was 51yo and there was a 100,000 deficit a couple of years back. That's apparently now only a 60k deficit. I notice a lot of Indians and EE and almost no middle class white British people. I think it's ingrained in us to be picky when other cultures have no issue with taking a job that pays £40-50k plus and can be attained with four days training and an investment of a couple grand. £65k with no student loan and 4on/4off shift pattern isn't a bad setup IMO in terms of work/life balance and remuneration.

I just wish there was less stigma about things like women being crane drivers. People seem to turn their noses up and would rather earn £35-40k in an office job than £65k piloting a crane.

I was talking to the young working class lad that directs the crane yesterday (slinger/signaller). He was early 20s and having been promoted to supervisor was on £48k. He didn't seem super intelligent either without being nasty. I reckon I could do his job with a few weeks training no probs.

I think it's ingrained in us to be picky when other cultures have no issue with taking a job that pays £40-50k plus and can be attained with four days training and an investment of a couple grand.

Do you not understand how 'an investment of a couple of grand' can be beyond the reach of so, so, so many people? Do you really not get that?

You would make excuses even it was free. Which it was during the pandemic because there was such a shortage.

Wanting someone to wipe your arse rather than doing what PP suggested does not make you vulnerable.

@Alcyoneus so you've clearly never been in such poverty that you have to choose between heating your home or eating, that you feel utter despair when a household appliance dies because you know you won't be able to replace it (and did you know that using a launderette costs so much more than running a washing machine?) - you have no experience of any of that? You don't believe that people live like that in the UK? There are the people for whom saving a couple of grand would be a dream - and if they saved it, they'd need it to get their household functioning again. Some posters on here really have no idea.

But £2k is a lot less than the £20-30k that many people spend on getting a degree and can lead to a comparable salary, given that not everybody climbs to a level above £50-65k in an office.

There are plenty of people that can feasibly save £2k but not £20-30k. Do you really not get that?

I was talking to the young working class lad that directs the crane yesterday (slinger/signaller). He was early 20s and having been promoted to supervisor was on £48k. He didn't seem super intelligent either without being nasty. I reckon I could do his job with a few weeks training no probs.

I reckon a fucking good starting point for pay is how responsible someones role is. A nurse can be responsible for 30, 40 peoples lives at any one time. Same as an airline pilot or ships captain. If they fuck up, people die.

Meanwhile, worst an accountant could do is cut themselves on a pencil sharpener. And you don't need 7 years training to deal with that.

I also note the modern tendency that the higher you go, the less responsible you are, not more. Until you get to the Post Office story where no one anywhere is responsible for anything.

So this slinger sounds like quite a responsible role. They mess up - people could die. Building sites being incredibly dangerous workplaces even when all the rules are followed.

This is a good point tbf. What I'd add is that the level of difficulty in a job is not always proportionate to the level of risk.

So you may just be sounding the 'heads up' alarm to notify workers that a skip is overhead and then guiding it to the ground via walkie talkie - bearing in mind that the crane operator will always be extremely experienced on the big jobs and hold a blue card rather than a red card, so could almost do the lift on their own but just need guidance to avoid that 'one in a thousand' catastrophic event.

Once you've landed hundreds of skips you can almost do it with your eyes closed, so it becomes more a matter of diligence and avoiding complacency (the cause of many accidents). This is distinct from many £48k office jobs where you need good soft skills or a certain level of academic accomplishment.

I feel that there are many people who could never be an accountant who could be a crane slinger with the right mindset and will to succeed. It's just not something that we really hear about at school or in job centres etc. I'd love to see more women in these roles.

@FatPrincess you don't save up for a degree because there's the loans system. Yes, you end up in debt but realistically unless you end up well paid, you don't pay back a significant proportion. I would personally prefer a graduate tax system, but this is what we've got and it means you don't need to shell out up front for a degree, unlike the £2k that you were talking about.

And there are plenty of students who work alongside their degree in order to fund themselves. Nothing wrong with that. It isn't perfect, but it can be done - unlike saving up £2k when you struggle to make your rent every month.

You can get a HGV license and pay for it monthly via DD. I know somebody that did this.

I posted on another thread about a comment I once read which went along the lines of:

The left believe in fairness and equity which the right criticise as the politics of envy.

The right believe in ambition and personal responsibility which the left criticises as the politics of greed and selfishness.

and it's only when we meet in the middle, anything gets done.

I have no problem with conservatives - they have some good ideas. The problem is they are as extinct as the dodo.

By the same token, socialists can have some hatstand ideas - they aren't automatically right on everything.

But divided seems to be how we want to fall. And boy, are we falling.

What do you think would happen if everyone who couldn't be an accountant but could be a truck driver left their current job to do those roles instead?

At best you'd have an oversupply of truck drivers, causing the pay & conditions there to decline and then you'd be back on here saying "I don't know why these lorry drivers don't just go work in the care/retail sector"

The idea that there are enough "good paying jobs" for every single person in the UK to take if they just try a bit harder is pure fantasy (although it shouldn't be and every job, including the least responsible, should pay a wage that allows people to live a decent life).

Society needs a hierarchy to function, that much is true but ours is now too much like a pyramid when it needs to be a trapezoid.

What do you think would happen if everyone who couldn't be an accountant but could be a truck driver left their current job to do those roles instead?

Some jobs are a bit more madey-uppy than others though. Accountants, lawyers and politicians are all very much abstract concepts. Only really valuable if you choose to make your society complicated enough to need them. And that is an artificial process where you send people to jail for not paying taxes.

Farmers, butchers, bakers, doctors and nurses on the other hand are essential at any level of society.

"Will management consult for food" isn't a sign that is really going to catch my eye when I need my roof fixing.

A nice phrase is "I pay my taxes. They buy me civilisation". Which is unarguable unless you are dim enough to argue. The question is what happens when you don't feel you are getting civilisation in return ? Indeed, what happens to the whole social contract when the state abrogates it's side of the deal. Which the UK is in the process of doing ?

Has it ever happened before ? How did that end ? And did they know at the time it was happening ? All questions you need to ask the historians you didn't want to pay for when you were dishing out learning. I guess we'll have to rely in influencers and TikTokers then.

@DistinguishedSocialCommenator - while you're sitting there convincing yourself that Labour are as bad as the Conservatives on an ideological level when it comes to people who've worked and saved hard, you should probably consider the fact that your savings are worth 23% less than they were 5 years ago (ie at the time they were last elected).

That's because of the utter incompetence that remains with the conservatives, given that we're now on our fifth-choice PM and even further through the bottom of the barrel when it comes to the Cabinet.

You can fix policies, you can negotiate around ideology, but you can do neither for recalcitrant incompetence.

I can't disagree with the facts re-inflation and we know that as we left work years ago aged between 50 and 55 - our incomes are lot lower and we have big outgoings, eg big cars massive bills for matenenace insurance etc and relatively large house the gas/eltric etc ad repairs etc

However, for someone like us in our financial position the tories are better - but that incompetent and dangerous woman Truss, fucked up millions by her actions and she hs the cheek to show her face

Labour will hammer people like us and I know for a fact that people like us in the middle who have worked hard for everything we have will continue to get hammered by the tory clowns and more so by the useless Labour lot that have no answers to NHS waiting lists, boat people and repair our roads and new jobs and get the workshy back to work

So reluctantly, me and my family will vote tory, especially our children and their OH's as most of them pay the higher rate tax

Just being totally honest as always

I don't think it's that simple.

Firstly, there are absolutely loads of different trade and construction jobs. Secondly, it's not just about these specific jobs. I'm making a point that everybody and their dog seems to go to uni, often without a real game plan, when there are plenty of other industries out there crying out for workers.

I wouldn't want to acquire £20-30k debt to then go and work for <£40k.

OK, there's a bit to unpack here...

If you're no longer working, then inflation means that everything you have is becoming more worthless by the day, and all the services you rely on - insurance, bills etc - are becoming more expensive on the same timeline. We're in recession, and not only is it the accumulation of their policies for the last 13-14 years that has directly led to this situation, they've explicitly said that they have no answer to it (choosing rather to argue over the definition of "recession"). To vote for more of the same is to say "I want this to continue", which seems somewhat self-defeating.

The point is that the current situation is not just because of Liz Truss. It's the inevitable culmination of the entire strategy since Cameron took office - for austerity to work, you have to assume that nothing will go wrong and that the country will forever be free of negative external influence. Not only did things outside our control go wrong (Covid, Ukraine etc), but they actively broke everything with Brexit.

The fact is that the country is crumbling around us. Roads are falling apart, the NHS is on its knees, almost all public services have been pulled back to less than the minimum standards required to function...so yes, that needs to be fixed for us all to be able to live our lives. One way or another, we're all going to end up paying for that, either by taxes (direct or indirect), or the consequences for just letting it rot by refusing to chip in.

Personally, I pay a fair bit of higher rate tax, and I'd be totally happy paying more - if there was a reasonable chance that it would go towards fixing what's broken, rather than just going up the noses of the ruling class.

Even if you want to look at it from a selfish perspective, there's little to no point hoarding your own cash when a) the people you're voting for make it worth less every day, and b) you have to pay more for more and more private services that the public purse can no longer afford.

How lucky of you. I always had to work full time since I left home and could only dream about studying. Then went straight back to full time work both times after maternity leave and paid full childcare costs.
I was massively struggling financially and was jealous of my single mother friend who could stay at home, study and had free hours at very good nursery.