mormont
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Posts posted by mormont
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Referring back to the links from the previous thread, it's worth noting that of the reasons given for not wanting to work in care, while it's true that pay and conditions was the biggest reason (42%), that's only just true. At 41%, we have the fact that the work is 'emotionally challenging'.
That is just inherent to the work and it won't change. You can and should give support to workers who do emotionally challenging work, but you can't change the fact that a lot of people just don't want their job to be emotionally challenging to that extent. If you're not up for that, putting you in that job anyway will be harmful to everyone involved.
Anyway, Sunak now seems to have given Tory rebels the green light by saying they will not be disciplined for rebelling on the legislation. So look forward to a massive rebellion.
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17 minutes ago, Heartofice said:
I'd question whether those people are truly unable to work or not
On what basis?
19 minutes ago, Heartofice said:As I said, that isn't a defensible position.
It's not the position of anyone who's commented here. Everyone wants pay and conditions to be better, including most of the people in those surveys. They agree that care work should be respected more - even while saying that they, personally, don't want to do it.
A parallel can be drawn with apprenticeships. Everyone agrees we desperately need more of those, and that they lead to work that is essential and respected. But nobody wants their own children to do an apprenticeship instead of going to university, even people who think there are too many kids doing the latter and not enough doing the former. There's things people are in favour of, and things they personally are prepared to do, and the two are not the same.
You're advocating here for higher pay for care work and so on - but would you change careers and be a nurse if it was? Not looking for an actual answer, but just saying that of those reading this thread, not many would say yes. I wouldn't. Some of my best friends are nurses, and I respect what they do enormously, but I wouldn't want to do it, even if it paid more than I get now.
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7 hours ago, Heartofice said:
Can you point me to this evidence?
To begin with, there's the well described increase in economically inactive adults of workforce age.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1388245/uk-sick-leave-figures/
Health and social care jobs are physically and mentally demanding and making accommodations for disability is not easy. As the number of economically inactive people due to disability increases, the recruitment poll shrinks.
The recruitment troubles of health and social care jobs are under-studied, but well known. Increasing demand for staff but high turnover, poor retention, high vacancy rates, existing staff looking to leave, and insufficient applications.
https://www.health.org.uk/news-and-comment/blogs/social-care-workforce-crisis
The majority of the population (67% - 78%) wouldn't consider a career in care, and while that is partly due to pay, it's also due to the nature of the work, including perceived low status, high mental and physical demands, few opportunities for career progression, the perception that it's 'woman's work', and the fact that bluntly, not everyone wants to work in a job that involves caring for others.
https://www.totaljobs.com/recruiter-advice/overcoming-the-challenges-facing-social-care-employers
There's no magic bullet here. Increasing pay would help but it would need to be by a lot. The current government does not intend to do that. And it would address only a part of the problem. You would also need to improve training, career development, and diversity, all of which are expensive, and you still would only be catching up to where we needed to be before we decided to tell a giant chunk of the existing workforce they were no longer welcome because they had the audacity to think that caring for our most vulnerable might entitle them to be with their own kids.
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21 minutes ago, Heartofice said:
We have this assumption that everyone in the UK is this layabout who won't do the hard jobs.
Do we?
The problem with recruiting domestic nurses and carers is not what you think it is. The evidence (and again, policy should be supported by evidence!) is that most of those people you refer to are either incapable of doing these jobs, for various reasons, or personally not interested in doing that type of work, and that enhancing the pay and conditions (which is much needed) would not solve those issues. Having nurses and carers in post who do not actually want to do the job is not going to help anyone.
The labour market is more complicated than 'we have unemployed people and vacancies and the one can solve the other'.
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10 hours ago, butterbumps! said:
Yes. The magats are coming out for Trump regardless of who his running mate is. The fact Haley is a woman will convince a bunch suburban women to come back to the gop and worry less about things like women losing rights to their body, and give “generic republicans” that veneer of acceptability.
No, the reverse will happen, surely.
Assuming Trump could be persuaded to accept a female running mate, he won't want anyone to think he's sharing the limelight. He'll need to assuage his ego by reminding everyone of her subordinate position all the time. He won't be able to stop himself from speaking of her in such patronising and disparaging ways that those suburban women will be constantly reminded of how bad a Trump presidency will be for them, personally.
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11 hours ago, Heartofice said:
The wage requirements do not apply to health and social care workers, so I'm not sure why that pretty important point is getting missed. In fact I think the way it is being reported is deliberately misleading.
The dependents thing I'd argue is not a good move, but given that 100,00 workers brought 120,000 dependents then something is really off with that system and needed to be fixed.
Otherwise I think they are all pretty sensible changes, I am not in any way surprised by the hand wringing by the usual crowd over this.The wage requirements aren't the problem. The 'dependents thing' is. Not being able to bring your children is going to put health and social care workers off, reducing the supply when all the data shows we need to increase it. This is not evidence led policy: it's a party damaging the country in a desperate attempt to cling to power.
I'd note also that the idea that 120,000 dependents for 100,000 workers (source?) shows 'something is really off' strikes me as a statement made without any reflection. How many dependents do you think the average working age person has?
The other aspects of this announcement are just as bad. Having forced universities to rely on attracting overseas students, for example, the government is now going to drastically reduce that income stream and then disclaim any responsibility for the funding crisis that will follow. If you marry someone from overseas, they now have to earn at least £38,700 p.a. to get a spouse visa.
And none of this has any evidence behind it showing any benefit to the country at all.
- Fragile Bird and Crixus
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Tory immigration policy is something, isn't it?
We're utterly dependent on immigration to staff the NHS and social care but the Tory policy is, what if we just pretend really hard that we're not?
ETA - just to be scrupulously fair, the 'salary discount' was always bullshit and I'm glad it's gone. But it was a Tory idea to start with, so.
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29 minutes ago, Spockydog said:
Yeah, and he won't do himself any favours by praising that witch.
As we've discussed before, I'm sure, the 'Red Wall' voters are an odd bunch in that they suffered a great deal from Tory (particularly Thatcherite) policies but nevertheless aren't like your stepfather - they don't seem to feel resentment towards the Tories in the way that, say, urban Scottish voters tend to.
And for quite a few of them, it's because they personally did benefit in some ways from Thatcher. Please do bear in mind - these 'Red Wall' voters are moderately well off older property owners. That generation, remember, were able to buy their council houses at an enormous discount and sell at a massive profit: and then invest the proceeds in privatisation shares and sell those at a profit too.
Did those same policies ruin their communities and wreck their kids' future? You won't get any argument from me. I don't think anybody could be in any doubt about how I personally feel about Thatcher, and have done since 1979. But it would be daft to pretend that the 'Red Wall' voters who defected to the Tories are more bothered about Starmer namechecking her than they are about Sunak and his party constantly invoking her and aping her policies. If they were willing to switch to her party, they aren't going to be put off by a Labour politician talking about her.
ETA: McTernan's main argument, though, about the pool of swing voters being exhausted, I would agree with.
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58 minutes ago, Ran said:
The Palestinians are definitely not yet defeated
Nor should they be. I know Netanyahu and the rest regard this as the war aim in practice, but it's not. The aim is to defeat Hamas, which is quite different.
58 minutes ago, Ran said:If they can lock down Gaza's borders to prevent smuggling going forward, they're going to put a serious pinch on the armed capability of insurgents.
That's an enormous 'if'. They haven't succeeded in decades of trying previously. I see no reason to think they can succeed now.
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7 hours ago, Spockydog said:
You know all those Red Wall seats he absolutely has to win back to get his majority? Well, most of those seats are elected by people whose communities were absolutely destroyed by Thatcher and her policies.
These are the exact voters he's appealing to by mentioning her.
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10 hours ago, Kalbear said:
I don't know of any independent reporting.
I don’t know how there could conceivably be any on this topic, since I believe independent reporters are not permitted by the IDF to enter Gaza.
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There's an assumption that the US can control Israel, certainly, but Netanyahu appears inclined to test that assumption.
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I kind of feel that if Charles wants to make a point about returning things to their rightful owners, a more powerful way would be to hand back significant bits of the Crown Jewels.
https://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/celebs/a43538153/stolen-jewels-india-royal-collection/
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No, Boris, the bombs were dropped from B-52s. Concorde's a different kind of plane entirely.
- kissdbyfire and karaddin
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The man who notoriously sacrificed his beard to his political career.
You still rarely see an MP with a beard, despite their increasing ubiquity.
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4 hours ago, Bael's Bastard said:
But it would be difficult to hold new elections during the war.
Why?
Genuine question. It is certainly difficult for Ukraine to hold elections due to the war, for example. But here, I don't see the problem. The only real reason it would be difficult that I can see if the belief that it would be difficult, which politically has become a truism, but I can't see that other than the political belief, there is an actual practical reason.
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Is there any really good reason why Israelis can't get rid of Netanyahu right now?
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6 hours ago, Altherion said:
This is a fair point, but on the other hand, is there evidence that disease or any of the other typical non-combat causes of civilian deaths are about to take hold in Gaza? There is a fairly heavy UN presence there and trucks of aid just a few kilometers away.
Quote"Eventually we will see more people dying from disease than we are even seeing from the bombardment if we are not able to put back (together) this health system," the WHO's Margaret Harris said at a U.N. briefing in Geneva.
She repeated concerns about a rise in infectious diseases, particularly diarrhoea in infants and children, with cases for those aged five and older surging to more than 100 times normal levels by early November.
"Everybody everywhere has dire health needs now because they're starving because they lack clean water and (they’re) crowded together," she said.
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9 minutes ago, Altherion said:
This is somewhat pessimistic.
It's wildly optimistic. The serious deaths among civilians, from disease for example, have not yet really begun.
Whoever you blame for this whole debacle, it is unarguable that the scale of suffering among Gazan civilians is already enormous and only stands to grow much, much worse.
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I think the real insult is offering the Greek PM a meeting with Oliver Dowden instead. That's surely a serious diplomatic offence.
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1 hour ago, Werthead said:
Russian state media has been discussing the need to capture...Lisbon.
My colleague had to cancel a trip to Lisbon this weekend. Sounds like she dodged a bullet, literally!
- Matrim Fox Cauthon, Bironic and JGP
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40 minutes ago, williamjm said:
The plot twist could probably be seen from orbit
Given that the plot twist was revealed in 1980, I don't feel that the writers were relying on the element of surprise there.
UK Politics: Rwanda Rehash
in General Chatter
Posted
Notable, perhaps, that none of us are even commenting on the COVID enquiry evidence even with Johnson testifying today. Possibly because absolutely none of it is coming as a surprise?