The working class

[Exfarmer]

I have no intention of ever retiring fully.

In my (limited) opinion, retirement seems linked to an earlier than originally scheduled grave.

I will continue to work- hopefully doing something I enjoy- for as long as I am physically able. People who retire early to sit at home or play golf are a total mystery to me.

I have a “friend” was a director of a big big multi national, has been retired now about ten years. Has done absolutely nothing in that time, talks about remodelling his garden building new garage, cant even be arsed to change a light bulb, so half the rooms in his £2M house are in darkness. Has not even taken a holiday! We can only put it down to a strange form of depression. A total waste of a life!

 

[SteveHants]

The article contains a kernel of truth, but its written from the perspective that the Left is generally right and good, and the Right generally wrong and bad. And as such contains the very thing that is repelling the working classes. The working classes have not changed, the Left has changed. The views that were mainstream Labour party views as recently as the 1990s would now get you 'cancelled' as an evil racist sexist misogynist dinosaur. Thats why the working classes are turning to the Tories, the Left has moved so far left every Labour Prime Minister there has ever been would now be considered a fascist.

And the idea that Tories in the UK are 'hard right' is laughable, it is another thing the Left have done to drive voters away, to demonise EVERYONE that disagrees with them, and make them into bad people. Boris is not by any objective assessment a racist, or a fascist dictator. Yet the left call him every name under the sun. And anyone who even thinks about voting for anyone other than the Left is treated likewise. Hint - if you abuse the voters they will not vote for you!

I can't see any way out of this - the Left have decided that politics is just another facet of morality, that anyone who disagrees with you politically is a bad person with evil intent, and they and they alone have the morally correct view about everything. Once you have that mindset you can no longer have shades of grey, you have stark black and white, everyone must either for for you or against you. And how can you appeal to the undecided voter with such rhetoric? By definition the undecided voter can see good in either camp, so if you say 'Hey, if you even think about voting for X you're a [insert any -ism you like]' then they will think 'Well I thought about voting for X, so you're calling me a [-ist]. F*** you.'

Disagree - the "liberal" left is probably what you are talking about. The Labour Party under Starmer is trying to position itself as a centre right corporatist party. So; the voters will have the choice of a right wing corporatist socially conservative party (the Tories) and a centrist corporatist socially liberal party (Labour).
The news in politics since 2015-16 is the collapse of the centre - how did the Labour Party end up with the greatest vote share in 2017 since Blair and not only not win, but not win with a considerable majority? The answer is the annihilation of the Lib Dems (who appear to have made little/no recovery, although the greens have a bit). New centrist projects have been doomed to failure, and sometimes laughably so (CHUK).The situation is the same in France, with the collapse of the PS.
The "centre ground" has ceased to exist. There is some argument that it may return in boom times and Blairism might work.
The situation has been compounded by BREXIT, which has highlighted the arrogance of the socially liberal "soft left" in Labour, who think that they can somehow call their voters thick and racist and still get their votes. Case in point: Hartlepool - voted massively (70%) to leave the EU, vote share increased by some margin for Labour in 2017, held in 2019, destroyed in 2021 when an arch remain/rejoin candidate was parachuted in.
Compare and contrast to the places where Labour made gains/held seats. Manchester - Andy Burnham, a self-described "sensible socialist" offers socialist policies and (possibly more importantly to northern voters) has offered robust criticism of Boris, unlike Starmer. Paul Dennett (Salford - my home town) although is slightly controversial for the way Salford has been developed has stuck two fingers up to central government and their ban on building council houses by having the council form a building company which....er.... builds council houses. Preston, massively successful socialist model, south wales massive gains under socialist Drakeford.
The working class does exist - there are millions on zero hours contracts, in service jobs, in call centres, in the public sector (nurses, firefighters, police) on low wages. The gap between the rich and the poor continues to widen, food bank use increases by families with both partners in work, let alone single parent families (the old man works in one).

Socially liberal centrism, delivered by grey middle manager types who talk down to their voters is never going to be successful - those days are gone. This is where the centre/centre left continues to fail.
Not entirely sure if the Labour Party will exist as an electoral force if they continue down this path. Who's idea was it to wheel out Peter Mandleson?

 

[ollie989898]

I have a “friend” was a director of a big big multi national, has been retired now about ten years. Has done absolutely nothing in that time, talks about remodelling his garden building new garage, cant even be arsed to change a light bulb, so half the rooms in his £2M house are in darkness. Has not even taken a holiday! We can only put it down to a strange form of depression. A total waste of a life!

I would hesitantly say that there is a mental health angle to that. From what I have seen, people who take a back seat and who no longer have any what I call 'stress' in their lives seem to have a fair degree of deterioration in their physical or mental health beyond what people who remain in work do if that makes sense. I can't explain it. The cases I can think of are in older men, 50s or 60s, who retire and then out of the blue have a coronary. I think a degree of stress and busy-ness is vital in life.

 

[Goweresque]

So; the voters will have the choice of a right wing corporatist socially conservative party (the Tories) and a centrist corporatist socially liberal party (Labour).

There's nothing right wing about the current Tories. Not one of the current cabinet would have made it into a Thatcher cabinet, they are all liberals now. Where are the right wing policies? Where are the tax cuts, the cutting State spending, abolishing quangos etc etc? Where is the backing of the free market and individual rights and freedoms? All the current Tories do is try to spend more than their opponents, while hoping the economy will grow enough to vaguely cover the expenditure, and meddle constantly in the economy and people's lives with more and more laws covering everything under the sun. Thats leftist social democracy, not right wing-ism.

 

[ollie989898]

If there are people on low pay working as nurses or police or firefighters, I would like to see it.

The firefighter I know works full time, only 4 days a week, works in construction the rest of the time and is laughing his arsh off.

 

[SteveHants]

There's nothing right wing about the current Tories. Not one of the current cabinet would have made it into a Thatcher cabinet, they are all liberals now. Where are the right wing policies? Where are the tax cuts, the cutting State spending, abolishing quangos etc etc? Where is the backing of the free market and individual rights and freedoms? All the current Tories do is try to spend more than their opponents, while hoping the economy will grow enough to vaguely cover the expenditure, and meddle constantly in the economy and people's lives with more and more laws covering everything under the sun. Thats leftist social democracy, not right wing-ism.

How much further can they cut tax?
They are probably the most right wing government of my lifetime, beyond a Thatcherite lassez faire free market, and It's scary that people don't see it.
Siphoning off tax revenue directly into the pockets of their preferred contractors (cronyism)
Ramping up xenophobia in policy (the hostile environment)
Removing civil liberties (the protest bill)
Dismantling social projects - the further privatisation of the health service
Disaster capitalism rife (BREXIT, COVID - see "track and trace", "eat out to help out") to further aim 1 -

I'm afraid that if you think this has anything to do with social democracy, you are very much mistaken. Also "leftist" is not an actual thing. It's a weird American term to describe the centre liberals of the type that you might find in Hollywood (which is a massive wealth generating vehicle) and certain companies that market to socially liberal young people (Coca Cola, Facebook). One of the more baffling notions that I have seen circulating on social media etc is the notion that "woke" marketing from massive multinational corporations makes them somehow "left". Corporations exist to make money for their shareholders, nothing more.

 

[SteveHants]

If there are people on low pay working as nurses or police or firefighters, I would like to see it.

The firefighter I know works full time, only 4 days a week, works in construction the rest of the time and is laughing his arsh off.

Perhaps you should visit a food bank. There are nurses, in work who use them. Also, a retained firefighter earns £ 6-8,000 pa, so would have to have another job.
Outside of London, the payscale for full time firefighters is:

Firefighter	Annual	Hourly	Overtime
Trainee	23,833	10.88	16.32
Development	24,826	11.34	17.01
Competent	31,767	14.51	21.77

Newly Qualified Teachers Start on £24,000

 

[linga]

Perhaps you should visit a food bank. There are nurses, in work who use them. Also, a retained firefighter earns £ 6-8,000 pa, so would have to have another job.
Outside of London, the payscale for full time firefighters is:

Firefighter	Annual	Hourly	Overtime
Trainee	23,833	10.88	16.32
Development	24,826	11.34	17.01
Competent	31,767	14.51	21.77

Newly Qualified Teachers Start on £24,000

Reasonably well paid then !

It all depends on the comparison

 

[SteveHants]

Reasonably well paid then !

It all depends on the comparison

It's not at all well paid, especially if you have rent and food. My last rent for a static caravan was £700 pcm, let alone if I had a house and more than one child

 

[Swarfmonkey]

It takes around 18 months to get to competent in most fire services so a salary of not far off £32k for that isn't at all bad.

You've also got to remember that shift patterns tend to be very conducive to having a second job, and around a third of firefighters do. I know one locally that must be making at least 70 grand a year between his job as Watch Commander and second job as a plumber.

 

[Exfarmer]

I know one too works as a fireman in London lives in MK and has a second job. He has 2 children his wife works in the NHS and has a second evening job. His MIL looks after the children nearly full time.
They live this way to finance a very expensive lifestyle, which is fully funded ( not all on the drip as sadly so many are)

 

[Devil's advocate]

If you identify socialism with the left and the working class then you are only a hairs breadth away from Fascism. The Nazi party, arguably the farthest right of any regime in history, started off as the National Socialist German Workers Party. Look at China, a communist country, so far left, but a more totalitarian authority you couldn’t imagine.

Then take people like Arthur Scargill, More red than a baboons arse, but speak to people with a bit of intelligence from Barnsley and they will tell you just how close to fascism Scargill was.

Politics is confusing and complex, people who write these articles try and simplify for their own narrative ‘right = bad, left = good’

But is the working class gone? I don’t think so, all the families that went through the closure of mines and shipyards are still there, they have just adapted and moved on, the political left haven’t, in this country anyways.

There is no one with any intelligence in Barnsley, including me.

But in the 80's there were no coloured faces in Barnsley & the NUM pretty much ran the town. I'm very glad we have moved on as a town.