Lefties 9: This will succeed through its success

[taffetacat]

Is everyone on Twitter now?

Yes, I'm afraid I agree with ZD on this one. I've found the division around benefits at the 30K and 45K mark dispiriting. It's turning into a bit of a divide and conquer thing, I think, and I fear will be the thin end of the wedge to lower resistance to further cuts.

45K really won't get you a house anywhere commutable in London, large enough to actually accommodate children, and cover childcare bills. Unbelievable to many, but, I fear, true.

But, yes, there are many, many, many earning below that. And owning a house is not, of course, a basic human right. But not, I think, an aspiration for which people should be demonised in the current economic and social set-up.

OK, OK - we'll read Danny Dorling!!!!

You see, that is what skews life in London. i wish they'd suddenly decide they want to live in Cornwall, or Wales, or ... anywhere else, really.

And of course if you have a family income of £45k but happen to have a reasonable amount of equity in a house that has miraculously doubled or tripled in value since you bought it, then you are in a completely different situation altogether.

But it's the large numbers of very very high salaries in the City in recent years that have made this such a particular problem in the SE.

This is all fascinating stuff - I've just had a google to remind myself about the "pursuit of happiness" in the Declaration of Independance, and whether or not it is seen as a right. It isn't.

But that sense of entitlement could be seen as the pursuit of one's happiness. And I agree with animula that a depression of expectations could be worse. Having said that, I was listening to an infuriating chap on the radio today telling us that people who work hard are entitled to spend their money on a second home in Cornwall, regardless of what that does to Cornwall, and that attitude makes me want to weep.

I know people who earn devent money but it is all spent on childcare, mortgage and school fees. These people do not feel rich and some of them scrimp on family holidays and are very careful with what consumables they buy compared to people who earn much less money.

I know people who earn devent money but it is all spent on childcare, mortgage and school fees. These people do not feel rich and some of them scrimp on family holidays and are very careful with what consumables they buy compared to people who earn much less money.

sorry but immigration hasn't had a real effect on the working class.

immigrants fill jobs in this country that british people do not want.

it's ALL scaremongering.

and every pole i know GOES BACK TO POLAND for their medical care because the system here is so shit, so so much for 'strain on the system' bollocks too.

it's absolute bullshit. and no political party should be pandering to it.

Hassled, your point about whether a sense of entitlement equals the pursuit of happiness is interesting. Entitlement in the terms we've been talking about is very much entitlement to material things and there is more and more research showing that this isn't a route to happiness - owning things just creates a sense of dissatisfaction because no matter how much we have it is never enough to make us feel good more than temporarily (plus we always compare ourselves with people who have more). One of the best bits of research showed that when people set out to buy something, they are much more satisfied with their choice if they have chosen between two options than if they've chosen between numerous ones. Choice has been the mantra of modern society since Thatcher but it's actually making us unhappy.

Read an interesting book about happiness once which after loads of interviews and research concluded that overwhelmingly the people in our society who are happy are the ones who have jobs (or do voluntary work) that helps other people. I did wonder why I didn't just chuck in my job and go and help people, but I suppose we're all stuck in our comfort zone.

and fwiw happiness is massively overrated. i'm quoting a very dear person to me, now sadly departed who told me once that happiness is a side effect moment. that everything was a cycle of destruction and creation and that 'pursuing' happiness was a total dead end.

Yes, Sophable. To paraphrase John Lennon, 'Happiness is what happens when you're doing other things.'

Choosing between two options is still choice, though.

i know proles (that that was what you were saying)...you find me a british person who wants to clean for 5 quid an hour. and to work 12 hour days.

you saw that documentary about this didn't you? about the asparagus pickers/potato packers? it was so bloody depressing.

out of about 12 british wc people who were supposedly 'actively seeking work' and really desperate to be in work, only 2 stuck it out for more than a day! it was awful.

CT only time i ever really saw my dad cry was on the day JL died. apropos of nothing.

I can't claim to understand how others feel but we are on a very average (French) income and I would make myself sick if I tried to claim in any way that I wasn't anything other than extremely lucky and privileged.

I know it is not a popular argument but Coolfonz (no matter how much I may disagree with a lot of what he/she says) - is right in saying that people who are truly leftist care about others (a la Gordon Brown funnily enough with regard to the unpayable debt of disadvantage countries) around the world who cannot even dream of the riches we complain about.

I have a house, I have a car, I pay tax, I have a TV and a computer, my children are well fed and have access to healthcare. I consider that rich.

Poverty does of course exist in the west and it is as ugly and devastating as it is anywhere else. It does not, however, exist in the middle classes.

Prolesworth, I suppose there's always been jobs that are only done by a perceived 'underclass' - e.g. Irish and black immigrants in 19th and 20th centuries. Everyone always needs to feel there's something that they wouldn't stoop to. Would probably only stop if we started actually valuing unskilled jobs a bit more and recognised their importance.

please explain in full what living wage is (is it raising the basic wage to a level where it becomes motivating?).

i think wages are only part of it, i know i'm going to sound like some kind of tory nightmare, but we seem to be living in a world where working really hard for a living are obsolete in people's imaginations...everyone wants to be jade goody (minus untimely death) rich and famous for nothing. the thought of working way up to things is just gone. this goes all the way through the class strata ime: people don't want to work way up to family home for eg, want one straight off the bat.

don't want to work way up in company or career, want spondulicks and kudos straightaway.

don't know that living wage will do anything about that at all...don't know what will.

that scandies do don't they: cleaner gets paid not much differently to doctor there as i understood it when danish guy explained it to me once?

You're right, Beachcomber.

It was a very sad day, Sophable.

Vesela, a choice between two things is still choice but the research showed that the more choices we had the more dissatisfied we were. If we chose between two things, we were pretty confident we'd made the right choice, but if there were more options we were always worried we could have got something better. I once read an article by someone who'd got out of Eastern Europe decades ago when her father got a university job in the USA. She and her mother literally couldn't cope in the supermarket for months because all the choice was so disorientating.

totally agree that poverty of the scale and type that exists abroad doesn't actually exist here, and that the poverty that does is rooted as much in ignorance (of what is available) as anything else.

it's why child poverty is such a problem...children are not responsible for the ignorance of their parents.

it comes back to education doesn't it? fix that (from as early on as poss) and the knock on is massive.