To think the 'work shy' rhetoric is insulting?

[DeliaDerbyshiresSlippers]

Who are all these great swathes of work shy people? The Express today, never grow tired of rehashing the same old pre-election trump card - convincing people that our most vulnerable are bleeding the country dry (shhh, don't mention the state pension).

Who even believes this stuff anymore? How did slashing benefits during austerity help anything, how did it fix the fucking country? It only created more decaying towns and a system that can no longer support those in need (kids mental health, dentistry).

Who is the demographic this illiterate garbage is aimed at? My guess is moneyed working class 'boot-strappers' (it's hardly a intellectual broadsheet).
I only know of two people who access the benefits system, both disabled and both actually work as much as they can.

Do people really think, considering the utter shit show we are in, that making poorer people even poorer is a good idea? Will it make some peevish armchair grump feel better about having to pay tax? And is this typical armchair grump completely unaware of tax avoidance? Or is that ok, because 'trickle down, blah blah, creating jobs, blah blah)?

The rhetoric itself is punitive and degrading. This idea that everyone in receipt of benefits (inc. in work benefits) is a shirking, scumbag. The language is reminiscent of how prisoners or deviants were discussed in medieval society.

I thought I was non partisan, or at best apolitical, the outlook for the poorest in the UK looks dismal no matter who is in power

So do you perceive the disabled and unfortunate to be idle and work shy?
Let's hope you never, or your incredibly well adjusted offspring, never need assistance.

I agree. It's possible for both to be at play here. Of course the media and government use damaging tropes to stereotype the population and rile people up a la the daily fail.

But, on the other hand I do personally know "work shy" people. They arent ill, they just don't want to work and its become almost an entitled expectation now.

This issue isnt black or white, there are lots of shades of grey in between.

I think for me, the word 'work shy' and 'scroungers' are problematic, regardless if there is a minority of people abusing the system.

i would be embarrassed to use such language in my every day chat, tbh.
It shows an incredibly small minded approach to a multifaceted issue, not to mention the mortifying possibility that I might obtain all of my cultural knowledge from a barely literate, toxic rag.

I would probably try to keep that quiet.

I hae also rarely heard the middle class discuss claimants in such a way. Or they are more likely to have a standard of living that doesn't get it's cultural fix from the tabloid press - therefore less likely to appear in their everyday speech.
People always assume MN is riddled with the MC, but I don't find a lot of that here in general, especially in AIBU or Style&Beauty. Financially stable perhaps but not culturally MC. I mention this because in such discussions I am often told that I live in a privileged bubble. Maybe I have to some extent, but do care about how our country is failing to protect the most vulnerable, even if some of them are hard work.

Well, it sounds like you've just not come across the work shy.

There are a few people on this thread who have attested to growing up in such communities and they do exist, whether you like it or not.

I myself know this from experience. And no, these weren't uneducated working class people I refer to. I grew up around rather well educated hippie types who had unconventional beliefs, and many were work-shy.

Not sure what the tangent about the culturally middle class is about. Seems self-congratulatory.

Well, it sounds like you've just not come across the work shy.

it's the word, not the issue.
it smacks of tabloid obsessed small mindedness.
just call them 'problematic', 'unconventional', 'shitty'.

it sounds small minded. As if one receives all of one's education and cultural knowledge from Rupert fucking murdoch. A wee bit brexity. An inability to parse knee jerk headlines from nuanced reality.

We get it. Some people take the piss. But not all. Yet the hounds are happy to take the rest down too.

We need to vote politicians in who are not invertebrates then

There's nothing new about it. The Victorians had the deserving and undeserving poor. The wording may have changed, but not the concept.

What word would you prefer?

Your working on weird class assumptions. The work-shy can very much be middle class. People can understand the term without being Brexiters.

As someone who never reads tabloids, didn't vote for Brexit and has never voted for Tory ( or any right wing party), I couldn't tell you what Murdoch is saying about the work-shy. Not a term I use in my every day life as I don't go around policing other people's work ethic, despite signing at least one or two fit notes a day for patients as part of my job as a GP. If they tell me they are not fit for work due to bad back pain, depression, period issues, etc, I take them at their word.

But when someone refers to the term, I understand that there are certain communities, such as the one I grew up in, who fit the description. This hardly means it applies to the majority of people who are out of work for legitimate reasons.

I know plenty of people who are workshy and either don't work and rely on benefits or work very minimal hours and rely on benefits. I also know people who claim to to be disabled to claim PIP and people who think that working is a mug's game and say so out loud.

So if I know people like that in my own little sphere then I'm sure that's multiplied around the UK.

But thankfully I know plenty of people who work hard and believe in contributing to the greater good of the 'system' and the economy. Which is good, otherwise we'd all be fucked.

Yep, I also used to live in an area where a small minority played the system very successfully while the rest of us got our arses out of bed every morning to go to work. Hey ho, while they are struggling on state pension and a bit of credit, I’ll have a decent works pension plus full state and be on more than I am currently working part time.

Thems the breaks.

There is nothing morally superior about employment over non employment.

We need to totally reject this orthodoxy.

@cordeliachaseatemyhandbag If you are unable to work due to disability, retirement, caring responsibilities or self-funding.

However if you are able to work and choose not to but expect others to pay for your lifestyle choices then you can expect those working to feel morally superior to you and rightfully so because you are the definition of workshy. Disliking work and trying to avoid it when possible as defined by the Cambridge dictionary.

Erm yes there is, especially when the unemployed are fraudulently claiming they cannot work and allowing all those that do work and pay tax to pay for their lifestyle!

Who exactly is it that you think wants to employ those sort of people though?

I wouldn't take on someone who obviously doesn't want to do the job and is only there because they've been forced into it.

So, even if you make these people waste companies time applying for a job, who is actually interested or willing to employ them when they have better options?

I think some people are just not what you want in the working world.

I'm not talking about people with disabilities, ill health, or caring responsibilities that make their hours difficult; just the genuinely unwilling to work who I believe are a tiny fraction of the out of work population.

@HumanRightsAreHumanRights They do what thousands of other people in the UK do who want to be their own boss and they identify their skills and talents and become self-employed.

The only talent or "skill" my workshy ex had, was smoking weed, playing XBox, and debating in the pub.
He has not worked for decades and is totally unemployable.

It takes some serious hard work, years of sacrifice and money to start a successful small business.

People who don't want a job aren't likely to be the same group of people who just get on with it, do a shitty job they hate for years with a smile on their face while they get together the skills and finances to try and start their own business.

The benefits system nowadays is set up to make it almost impossible to start a small business while claiming benefits.

I've never met a lazy self employed business owner in my life, unless they are the pretend ones who have a super rich husband or parents to basically fund them playing CEO of their one man band even if they don't make a penny.

Sane people would be aiming towards building a society where everyone had to work less, so it's very odd, twisted and just nonsensical to place a disposition towards hard work on a pedestal.

Obviously it's a manipulative tactic to create division and part of the fallacy of capitalist opportunity and a legacy of the old protestant work ethic — all ways to keep the less well off in their place. Why anyone would fall for it in this day and age is beyond me.

Yup

2bn in services when you already can't get Gp appointment, an ambulance, a cancer diagnosis in time, or school meals or a freaking BUS out where I am as they trouser enormous private contract backhanders, but no, it's all the peasants' fault as the COL bites so hard your average person in full time work can't afford fucking Lurpak.

Don't you need to believe it's a good "system" for it to be a good thing to work for it?

There is no non dependent deduction on parents UC rent element until a young person turns 21. That is actually an improvement on housing benefit where a young person is expected to start contributing at 18 ( assuming they are working).

There were lots of protests outside the tv production offices at the time that was made. It was appalling misrepresentation and it contributed, no doubt, to the rise in violent attacks on disabled people at the time.

Yes . I don't understand why people are up in arms about carers allowance being deducted. If it wasn't deducted they would be paying you twice and people get the carers element added. Uc is actually better in this respect because people who want to and can work and earn over the carers allowance earnings threshold can still receive carers element not matter how much they earn. This was never possible on the old tax credit system.

I see your point, I have buckets of empathy for the myriad of reasons that people find themselves in difficult situations but it amuses me that the middle class types are often those who espouse the sympathetic narrative.

If you had grown up amongst and still know those who DO NOT WANT TO Work (yes - they exist) you would have a more balanced view.

Speaking as someone brought up in a very working class area, we all know of these types and it probably annoys us more because we know their game and see it up close.

If a man doesn't work he shouldn't eat.

Everyone can do something to contribute.

Agree with this. In my job I see whole families, parents and multiple grown up kids and no-one working. It's depressing. They just become unemployable really. There's always excuse after excuse.