Kemi B - the best form of welfare is a well paying job...

[Oofftheflooff]

She is absolutely right isn't she? Discussing the triple lock pension challenge and instead focusing on getting people into work. Do you agree with her ? Working 3 or 6 or 9 hours to then top up with benefits isn't the way forward (not including disabilities in here )

No nursery workers either, hospital porters…..

Yes, I am sure they are hoping to find employment commensurate with their skills and experience.

I don't know what the answer is, but you suggesting there are options i.e. these people are choosing to be in this 'regrettable' position and that they have the sympathy from people like you is patronising and false in many cases.

do you think they would really cough up more when the abolition of the wages councils has already proved the opposite

But we need qualified experienced people staying in sectors such as childcare, elderly care, TAs etc. How does people not being valued and staying to hone skills help the vulnerable? Other countries pay these people a proper wage.

Being in receipt of benefits (the social, the dole) used to be a source of shame. Nowadays it’s worn like a badge of honour. That’s the difference.

There's a distinct difference between those who previously had a high paying career but through no fault of their own have had to accept a (hopefully temporary) NMW paying role and those who willingly take those roles from the start of their working life and expect that they will lead a comfortable existence for ever (often subsidised by taxpayers). The two are not the same groups of people and shouldn't be conflated when arguing the level of the minimum wage.

I don't know whether the minimum wage should be £1/hr or £100/hr but I do know that it will ALWAYS be less than everybody else earns by it's very nature, and the higher it rises, the more employers will look at other options.

Which should include parents on £1000.00 who have chosen to have kids.

Well of course. So what is Kemi doing to make sure that there are enough well-paid jobs out there? I mean jobs that pay a living wage, not just minimum wage, and enough that everyone willing to work can get such a job to start building up work experience?

And yet people are convinced that employers would pay more.

So your dd has family support and doesn’t need benefits.

Not sure those working hard find being topped up by benefits a badge of honour.

And it's attitudes like yours that send people with already an rock bottom sense of self-worth and inadequacy into depression.

Try working in retail in December if you dont think its stressful I did and i didnt even have time to fart.

I think Badenoch may well be right…

The two are not the same groups of people and shouldn't be conflated when arguing the level of the minimum wage.

It's what you did. You did not (until challenged) acknowledge that many people are not choosing to be on NWM. And you still think that those down on their luck are taking NMW jobs temporarily.

I don't think anyone disagrees that the bone idle could try and better themselves.

So only extra help for those who have living proof that they have had sex without contraception

Ive seen child free ppl told on here that they shouldnt be in social housing even if its a one bedroom flat and be told that they should cover the shit hours at Christmas so parents can have the time off Now they have to subsidise parents on £100,000 a year too.

The wage council abolition appears to have been an error then.

Geez, is Badenoch the best the Tories can produce? At best, its an embarrassingly vacuous comment.

Hopefully she'll be out of job soon enough!

Which means we bring back the councils.

Im seeing a private dentist. Cant find an NHS one. On the bottom of the appointment slips it says if i need to cancel an appointment they need 48 hours notice or half of what i would have paid on the day will have to be paid So if i had cancelled my last appointment with less than 48 hours notice that cancellation would have cost me £150

A missed appointment on the day means full fee is still payable so £300.

My HA is fond of doing things with no notice so they would have to be asked "who do i send my invoice to" if they insisted on coming here on the day i have a dentist appointment with only 24 hours notice.

I'm losing the thread of this one a bit. My original.comment was that I believe the NMW to be too high relative to wages generally and thus offputting to employers. You presumably disagree, so where should it be, bearing in mind that lf you raise it to £15, those currently on £15 will want £17 and those currently on £17 will want £19 and so on? Where does it end? The NMW will always be the lowest of anyone earning and employers won't believe they're getting sufficient value for their £15 per hour + NI + pension contribution etc and so will try to avoid where possible. I'm surprised this is a controversial take.

Sounds like we're on the same page with your last comment.

Yeah....I think different issues are becoming entwined, but that's kind of the issue - NMW maybe was never meant to be able to support someone properly (widely acknowledged, including by the government), but it's not just the young, students or the person looking for 'a little job for some pin money' who find themselves struggling on NMW and having to rely on benefits.
If the jobs aren't there, no amount of sanctions, politicians bleating on about 'getting people back to work' or supported educations schemes will help.

I fully agree and I also think we got muddled somewhere along the line. Glad we cleared that up 👍🏻

I think employers should be forced to pay a living wage - that needs one that does not need benefit top ups. This should be all employers, including NHS and carers.

This means the government will have to pay higher salaries for staff, instead of just topping the salaries up with benefit. Private firms will have to operate a company paying a living wage or close. The state should not be subsidising them by topping up the salaries. This subsidy goes to the shareholders in the end.

Disability should be looked at again. We should look at what people can do and not what they can’t. The government has recently (this was instigated by Labour) cut the funding to help enable disabled people to find and continue in paid work. This enabled companies to employ disabled people without it costing more than able bodied people.

n.b Some disabled people will never be able to work. The state must and should pay benefits in these cases.

Childcare should be heavily subsidised, so that parents can afford to work. If they choose not to, the parents need to fund it. Specialist childcare should be available for disabled children.

There should be an overall assumption that people work to earn their keep and that companies that employ these people do so at a wage that enables them to live.

There will be exceptions, but everyone who can, should work to pay for themselves.

There is not a free market for labour because at the end of the day, people need food, accommodation, care, transport, education and so on.

The Conservative's dream is for the labour market to be totally unregulated so that employers can pay as little as possible, offer no benefits, no employee protections, skimp on working time regulations and health and safety and generally treat employees as expendible. In other words the American model, or as we used to call it - serfdom.