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Should ‘poor’ be a protected characteristic?

It all rather depends on what anyone means by "live on".

I have had this self-same discussion umpteen times over the years, but eating well, healthily, on something like £30 per week is actually easy. Been there, done that, for months on end and allowed a bit for inflation in the £30 since I did it last. I have even been complimented by a rather cheeky person on the check-out how healthy my shopping was.

The problem comes in paying fuel and water bills................................. THAT is impossible out of what remains, unless you just don't use any.

I have lived on straight single person unemployment for two years, twice, with no savings AT ALL to begin with on one occasion and some redundancy the other, and had very, very little debt at the end.

Actually, thinking about our weekly shopping bills, we spend about £60 between the two of us on food. (We eat well, if maybe not that healthily). But Council Tax, gas and electricity, house insurance, and keeping the car on the road costs a great deal more.

I'm not a great fan of Michael Portillo, but he actually tried to 'walk the walk' by living on benefits, and found it was well-nigh impossible.
 
The problem with Tories trying to live on benefits for a week or so is that it doesn’t take into account (a) what happens when the fridge breaks down or the kids shoes wear out and (b) the impact on mental health of feeling trapped in a situation with now way out. Any Tory has a very nice comfortable life to go back to. Choosing poverty for a short time to make a political point is not the same has having poverty thrust upon you with no way out.
 
The problem with Tories trying to live on benefits for a week or so is that it doesn’t take into account (a) what happens when the fridge breaks down or the kids shoes wear out and (b) the impact on mental health of feeling trapped in a situation with now way out. Any Tory has a very nice comfortable life to go back to. Choosing poverty for a short time to make a political point is not the same has having poverty thrust upon you with no way out.
Yes. Doing it for a week is a lark, doing it for a year is dehumanising, doing it indefinitely is soul-destroying.
 
I think a far better approach would be to have a high minimum wage that actually allows people to work and not live in poverty. $20-25/hour would be a decent start today, adjusted up going forward, not just to inflation, but to total GDP growth.
In the absence of any likelihood of your counter-proposal actually happening, what would you recommend instead?
It is condescending to propose stigmatising people who struggle financially by putting them into a "poor" caste.
Are you suggesting that the current classes of protected characteristics are in some way demeaning or stigmatising? We can, if it offends, find a different word to 'poor', so if that's your only objection, I'm quite sure we can address it.
 
The cost of running the DWP is around £6.2 billion (this does not include all the other private businesses like ATOS and Capita that they employ)

Close it down, do away with the DWP and the creaking benefits system which is based on dehumanising and inflicting cruelty as as disincentive by policing bureaucracy and grant everyone a UBI, it would save a ton of money in the process.
 
FWIW the more I think about this and the general trajectory of global economics the more I am convinced a fairly decent ‘universal basic income’ is the only way forward. There will always be winners and losers, and I don’t really have any issue with that, but it would deal with poverty and also provide an ideal platform for launching part or full-time micro businesses, which IMO is the real future outside the high-tech global giants. IIRC the Greens and Lib Dems are on board, Tories never in a million years, and Labour will, as ever, be found sitting on a fence somewhere paralysed by their focus groups.
 
So what is the point your trying to make? That asylum seekers should choose to seek asylum in France? That asylum seekers should be denied the choice of seeking asylum in the UK?

That crossing the channel is unsafe and the parents have to take some responsibility for their actions, as there were and are,

other choices that do not involve potential or actual death.

Simple to understand, yet you fail to see my point and insist on adding your own agenda.
 
I was not referring to you, as far as I’m aware you have not resorted to name calling or personalised ad hom. We have disagreed, perhaps even angrily, but our exchanges have not been characterised by some of the abuse I’ve seen used recently. My comment was directed at those who start with name calling then demand the debate is conducted in good faith or accuse others of dragging the debate down after calling someone a moron and a muppet

Thank you.

Call out the name-callers on this thread,


That would be of interest.
 
Michael Porrtillo should not be on benefits when he gets to ride on trains all over the world and wear luxurious brightly coloured trousers.
Tory scum!
 
FWIW the more I think about this and the general trajectory of global economics the more I am convinced a fairly decent ‘universal basic income’ is the only way forward. There will always be winners and losers, and I don’t really have any issue with that, but it would deal with poverty and also provide an ideal platform for launching part or full-time micro businesses, which IMO is the real future outside the high-tech global giants. IIRC the Greens and Lib Dems are on board, Tories never in a million years, and Labour will, as ever, be found sitting on a fence somewhere paralysed by their focus groups.
Again, it's unthinkable that this could happen under Conservative rule. Conservatives are committed to the idea that only the threat or reality of immiseration represent a sufficient incentive to get people to work. They believe this in their bones, despite understanding very well that a certain amount of unemployment (the "natural rate") is built into their own economic planning.

It's not a simple delusion either. Needless, cruel immiseration is a campaign strategy, first of all: it speaks very loudly to their base of hardcore bastards who simply cannot bear to see the feckless go unpunished. And secondly it does actually make sense, as a theory of motivation, in the context of what they have in mind for working conditions: minimum wage, minimum skills, minimum rights, zero contract forever. If you're being abused by your boss it might well only be the threat of your children starving that keeps you turning up for work.

It's good to think of imaginative solutions to poverty but at the same time we need to grasp that poverty isn't a policy failure or an unfortunate side effect of an otherwise rational economic approach to governance: it's a deliberate political and economic strategy on the part of the Conservatives without which they probably can't survive. There aren't going to be any policy solutions as long as they're in power.
 
That crossing the channel is unsafe and the parents have to take some responsibility for their actions, as there were and are,

other choices that do not involve potential or actual death.

Simple to understand, yet you fail to see my point and insist on adding your own agenda.
But my question throughout has been, ‘what other choices?’ If it’s not accepting the forced ‘choice’ of seeking asylum in France, what are these other choices? To live illegally in France.
 
But my question throughout has been, ‘what other choices?’ If it’s not accepting the forced ‘choice’ of seeking asylum in France, what are these other choices? To live illegally in France.

To be alive.
 
Easy. They’re all Tory Scum, Blairites or Man City supporters

Well I dodged that easily.

(Note: I dislike football with a passion, and find the large interest of the game baffling.
I only know one Tory and I wouldn’t describe him as scum. He is has views that I do not agree with.
Blair is a liar.)
 
Michael Porrtillo should not be on benefits when he gets to ride on trains all over the world and wear luxurious brightly coloured trousers.
Tory scum!

Ah (too many 'r's to be precise), Mr Little door surely benefits from his railway excursions, as a great many television viewers do subsequently. Don't forget the brightly coloured jacket to clash with his equally lurid trousers.

There are lots of references to Tory scum in various threads of late, and I wonder if this scum is distinguishable by its blue shade as opposed to the usual greyish-yellow scum found elsewhere. However, even that shade might reflect Lib-dem scum for all I know. I wonder if pinkish scum has gone out of fashion if it was ever in. Quite a political artist's palette, really !
 
There aren't going to be any policy solutions as long as they're in power.

Agree entirely, and my post kind of makes that point. I am however not an anti-capitalist. I believe very much in being free to create stuff, be that ideas, products or services, and being able to cash-in on that innovation or labour, and to employ others should that be desirable and they willing. I have personally always wanted to do my own thing, not to work for a state or anyone else. That for me is capitalism. I view UBI as a potential spring-board for innovation in a similar way that the Enterprise Allowance Scheme of the ‘80s was, but far better as it lacks the political duplicity, restrictions and oppressive bureaucracy. A platform from which to try new potential business ideas rather than living in fear on the dole/black economy. The point I’m trying to make is UBI shouldn’t be viewed as some fringe far-left idea, it should be welcomed by those who truly believe in capitalism and personal freedom too. It is just the logical solution to where we are.

PS FWIW I don’t however view the modern Conservative or Republican parties as having capitalist ideology at all. They have moved far beyond this core concept into being purely parasitic elite oligarchies/kleptocracies that exist to restrict freedom whilst siphoning taxation into their own pockets and donor money-laundering businesses. They have zero to do with the ‘nation of shopkeepers’ rhetoric of the past and everything to do with millionaire elites like Rees Mogg, Farage, Banks and the rest of them shorting financial markets after very deliberate and premeditated political actions. They actively profit from instigating misery and I view them as gangster organisations. Where we are now is a place of total corruption and systemic failure, the gradual entry-ramp to a far-right dictatorship. This is not capitalism in any real ‘I made this cool thing, do you want to buy it?’ sense. Not at all.
 
Actually, thinking about our weekly shopping bills, we spend about £60 between the two of us on food. (We eat well, if maybe not that healthily). But Council Tax, gas and electricity, house insurance, and keeping the car on the road costs a great deal more.

The food calculation works that way very commonly, when people sit and think and drop any booze and ciggies. Super careful and all own brand stuff and I reckon $25 per week is not a huge achievement (except eating own brand baked beans :) )

If you are unemployed, Council Tax is zero or close to. One tip if you are skint - don't pay water bills - they can never cut you off, gas and leccy, they can. I have no fix for running a car except don't, and pay whatever you do have to pay as often as possible - don't look to pay one or two payments a year.
 
Agree entirely, and my post kind of makes that point. I am however not an anti-capitalist. I believe very much in being free to create stuff, be that ideas, products or services, and being able to cash-in on that innovation or labour, and to employ others should that be desirable and they willing. I have personally always wanted to do my own thing, not to work for a state or anyone else. That for me is capitalism. I view UBI as a potential spring-board for innovation in a similar way that the Enterprise Allowance Scheme of the ‘80s was, but far better as it lacks the political duplicity, restrictions and oppressive bureaucracy. A platform from which to try new potential business ideas rather than living in fear on the dole/black economy. The point I’m trying to make is UBI shouldn’t be viewed as some fringe far-left idea, it should be welcomed by those who truly believe in capitalism and personal freedom too. It is just the logical solution to where we are.

PS FWIW I don’t however view the modern Conservative or Republican parties as having capitalist ideology at all. They have moved far beyond this core concept into being purely parasitic elite oligarchies/kleptocracies that exist to restrict freedom whilst siphoning taxation into their own pockets and donor money-laundering businesses. They have zero to do with the ‘nation of shopkeepers’ rhetoric of the past and everything to do with millionaire elites like Rees Mogg, Farage, Banks and the rest of them shorting financial markets after very deliberate and premeditated political actions. They actively profit from instigating misery and I view them as gangster organisations. Where we are now is a place of total corruption and systemic failure, the gradual entry-ramp to a far-right dictatorship. This is not capitalism in any real ‘I made this cool thing, do you want to buy it?’ sense. Not at all.
Yes, not disagreeing. UBI is part of the solution, and possibly one that might get a good deal of support from across the political spectrum (which is one reason to be cautious: parts of the libertarian right have always supported it because they think it will allow them to destroy the last remnants of the welfare state). It's just not a solution to the problem facing the Conservative Party, which is how to hold onto power while stripping the country bare.

(This is very recognisably a form of capitalism, by the way. Obviously I prefer your version but it's never really existed.)
 
Actually, thinking about our weekly shopping bills, we spend about £60 between the two of us on food. (We eat well, if maybe not that healthily). But Council Tax, gas and electricity, house insurance, and keeping the car on the road costs a great deal more.

I'm not a great fan of Michael Portillo, but he actually tried to 'walk the walk' by living on benefits, and found it was well-nigh impossible.

ISTR Matthew Parris on World In Action in the ‘80s doing that, he found it quite humbling IIRC.
 
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