AIBU to feel so weary of labour voters going on

[livingonstrawbs]

I think if people in real life knew I was saying this, they would be shocked or maybe not.

Reform are not my politics but I'm honestly so fed up of labour voting friends lamenting the rise of reform and blaming it all the greens and declaring everyone voting reform to be racist, stupid, ignorant.

Reform absolutely have some racist nutters but I do not believe that councils that were labour for more than 50 years turned reform because everyone became a racist overnight or is ok about racism.

Even saying yesterday that the rise of reform was down to failure of lab/conservative to do do anything other than maintain the status quo for many working class communities, let alone others, and the media to properly question, inform and hold to account farage was met with a barrage of hostility and false accusations. one person genuinely thinks this is all down to zack polanski and that farage has been questioned as hard as he has. Really?!?!

I should say by the way that I am a person of colour, was on free school meals, ended up going to Oxbridge and doing professionally well even if it's not lucrative. that's fine - those are all my choices. I'm miles better off than many other people and I know that. But i'm still very connected to the community i grew up in and see how working class people of all races etc without the same chances are living in immense poverty and the grind that is going on for them. Meanwhile, my very affluent labour voting friends seem to repeat 'labour is the best of a bad bunch.' for who, i say?? maybe for you. but honestly, when life is continualy shit, people do vote for change and will vote for reform or greens.

i'm just sick of being patronised and told i'm stupid, ignorant etc etc.

Those points sound simple, but they mostly fall apart once you look at how they’d work in reality:

“Get tough with the French” ignores that small boat crossings are driven by demand as much as enforcement. The UK has already paid France hundreds of millions for patrols, fences and surveillance & crossings still continue because people are desperate, traffickers adapt routes & there’s no legal route for many asylum seekers. You can’t just demand another sovereign country to solve it for you.

ID cards wouldn’t magically end illegal working. The UK already has right to work checks, biometric residence permits, HMRC records & employer verification systems. The issue is enforcement. Illegal labour exists because some employers knowingly exploit it for cheap labour. An ID card would just be something else to ignore.

Calling anxiety in teenagers “normal human emotions” massively oversimplifies what PIP is for. PIP isn’t awarded because someone feels nervous sometimes. It’s based on how severely a condition affects daily functioning. Plenty of young people with autism, severe anxiety disorders, PTSD, eating disorders or physical disabilities rely on it to function and stay in education or work. Pretending all claims are just “medicalising emotions” ignores that.

Employer NI absolutely affects hiring costs but the jobs market has wider problems too. Stagnant wages, weak growth, housing costs, Brexit related labour shortages, automation & years of underinvestment. Blaming one tax rise for everything is politically convenient but economically simplistic.

The “gold plated” civil service pension line is also a bit misleading. Most civil servants are not highly paid senior officials, they’re ordinary admin staff, job centre workers, prison officers etc. Their pensions are generally decent defined benefit schemes because salaries are often lower than comparable private sector roles. The real issue is that private sector pensions got worse, not that millions of public workers are living lavishly.

There’s a bit of a contradiction running through all of this. You want fewer benefits, fewer worker protections, lower employer taxes, tougher border enforcement & better public services but all of those things cost money and staff. You can’t endlessly cut the state while also demanding it does more.

@ExitPursuedByABare to medicalise normal human emotions.

As the mother of a teen who suffered with panic disorder and agoraphobia I find your trite summary of that terrible period of her and our lives offensive, ill informed and ignorant.

I’m sorry your teen suffered but did receiving benefits help?

What does 'getting tough with the French' look like to you? We're no longer in the EU. Why should the French take any steps to stop the boats coming across?

Introduce ID cards? That's going to go down well with Reform supporters. Do you remember the vitriolic backlash when it was suggested Labour may be going down this route?

I'd be interested to know how many teens receive benefits for anxiety. I think you'd be surprised at how few do. I don't think taking these benefits away will supercharge the economy.

Employer NI rates? Govt benefits are propping up businesses paying wages that are too low for people to live on. Perhaps if businesses paid adequate wages, government wouldn't need to pay in work benefits and could reduce employer's NI.

If civil service 'gold plated' pensions were reduced, perhaps civil service wages could be brought into line with private sector wages. Many civil service staff earn little more than minimum wage. There are very few 'gold plated' civil service pensions.

@ExitPursuedByABare yes of course it helped. She was able to have some independence she wouldn’t have otherwise got. It helped pay for online education because she couldn’t get to school.

I think you'll find the correlation is more closely associated with grooming gang activity. I wish people would stop ignoring the elephant in the room. Children in these communities have been harmed & the people asking for action silenced by accusations of racism & stupidity for years. It's now coming home to roost.

That’s not possible given the grooming gang activity was broadly confined to one area - Rotherham, no?

Otherwise, I agree with you.

Someone put together a map of areas affected by grooming gangs

https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/s/fldkWdd2lU

No, it's not isolated to Rotherham. Don't forget this isn't limited to the areas where rapists prowl the streets. Girls from neighbouring towns are trafficked, bailed alleged rapist are bailed into communities & often in very inappropriate locations (near schools). There is absolutely no trust between community/police/council/govt. But the salt in the wound is people (usually left wing) dismissing these very valid concerns for so damned long. It's now hit crisis point, there's no more rug left to sweep things under.

I take your word for the gangs issue, thanks.