CrashedOutAndBurned
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Posts posted by CrashedOutAndBurned
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Well, yes, Harriet Harman - the niece of the Countess of Longford - simply brazens it out and refuses to accept she had a privileged upbringing.
She says she worked to ensure women in manual jobs were paid the same as men - but in my experience, in unskilled jobs, there is no distinction in pay anyway. The real distinctions come higher up - where people who are particularly skilled or particularly good at their jobs can argue for more money - and so Starkey is right to say that in nearly all cases it is middle-class and upper-class women who have benefited from Harriet Harman's egalitarian campaigns.
Actually working-class women have had their lot in life considerably worsened by such campaigns. Because the way HPI worked is that when all women went out to work, house prices simply went up from 3 times a man's salary to 6 times a couple's joint salary - and the benefit to the women involved was, once again, zero.
Harman is a disgraceful individual. There are millions of women on the treadmill in life whose lives have actually been destroyed by this egalitarianism and the way it has fed HPI. It all comes back to property prices in the end.
It's taken as read that women 'earn less than men for the same job' but is this true on a 100% life for like basis.
Say there's a job that has a pay scale of £15-£25k. Employees tend to start at the bottom and each year they can expect a pay rise of some sort. After a number of years they reach the magical £25k. The nature of the job doesn't change too much although the more experienced staff might have minor increased responsibilities in comparison to a new starter.
Bob and Jane both do the job. They started on the same rate and got the same pay rise over the first three years. Jane then had a couple of kids taking full maternity leave for each one, worked part time for a bit, now is full time again - she missed a pay rise or two and the breaks and part time working meant she didn't have the extra responsibilities. Bob did not take a career break and worked throughout, taking a modest pay rise each year and taking on some extra responsibilities. He currently earns about 20% more than jane.
Meanwhile, Kathy started at the same time as Bob and had a virtually identical employment record - she earns the same.
This seems to be how it works in companies at which I've worked. If it's 100% like for like work and the employees have like for like employment histories they'll get the same.
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There's always been career women in professional jobs that have chosen to go back to work after a few months and, with their fat salaries, pay childcare.
It doesn't make as much sense for working or lower middle class women as, yes, after the childcare costs, commuting costs, coffee-on-the-run costs, fresh blouse costs, etc. etc. it's hard to make work pay. And the crushing blow is you don't see your kids.
The idea of dumping kids in childcare and every woman working is still pretty avant garde and I notice a conflict between 'have it all' feminists and 'organic cotton' women who actually want a mumsy existence instead of sitting in some dull workplace while the kids are cooped up elsewhere.
As women are increasingly likely to out-earn their partners nowadays I'm all for men staying at home, or both partners dropping a day each to take on more childcare, with perhaps nursery or child minder a couple of days a week.
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How many will admit that this growing divide is because of the death of the middle-class, and that's happening here too (although many try to simply redefine the term).
Politicians and intellectuals only champion the poor and the rich, its become unfashionable to support the people who actually suport both these groups through their labour and their taxation.
Yes, I know lots of 20 and 30 somethings. Skilled working/lower-middle to middle-middle class. Most with degrees and education. They are all about Freecycle/eBay/Gumtree and have little money left after basics due to brutal living costs.
Henry Ford knew you needed well paid employees in order to have a market for the emerging consumer goods. You don't need to be a an economist see see that more more in the pockets of normal people will promote all manner of economic activity.
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My first graduate job was paid slightly less p/h than the McJob+commission I did part time as a student!
I felt really aggrieved at that but thought it would be a stepping stone to something better later on. It wasn't.
Today I'm sure those first rung jobs would be done for free by interns. That's all 99.9% of interns are, isn't it? A free worker.
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Probably is, but I'd imagine its the sort of thing Samsung would do...
Only if Apple had done it first.
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Hoaxes come back year after year these days.
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When I attended University in the late 90s, PGCE students nearly all seemed to be graduates from a year or two before who'd discovered that didn't have a hope of getting more than an entry level McJob. The 'low' starting salaries therefore were a big upgrade for them. I expect it's even more like that now.
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The post war period saw reconstruction tied to fast-paced technological development see the growth of the skills working and lower middle class like never before, who bought cars, homes, holidays, and consumer widgets an masse for the very first time. Up until that point the majority of the population usually lived in grinding abject poverty.
It's very optimistic to think that this historic blip could be sustained forever long after the industrial economy that created it has long since been dismantled and sent to emerging nations.
The historical norm is a tiny elite, a slender middle class and poor plebs.
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I predicted this a long time ago. As anyone and everyone was going to University and only a tiny few graduates were able to land milk round jobs, students would pile in to Law, medicine and so on leading to a glut.
I caught some of the Radio 4 programme - seemed there was an idea that being fleeced for £40k by a law school would land you a trainee position in the profession. It's just another money making scam targeted at young people desperate for a real career in a low-skill, low-wage economy.
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There's so much wrongness. Where does the steam go? Where's the ventilation? Won't this be damp as hell in two minutes? Mould and mildew will grow and you'll be breathing in the spores all night.
There's probably better places to live in third world shanty towns.
I really would love to punch the cynical ******* that thought he could make the bathroom a £410PCM jackpot.
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Do you remember the days before EU expansion?
Factories had to down tools as there just weren't the staff to bolt the stuff together.
Fruit rotted in the fields as lazy locals and camping students refused to pick it.
No. I don't remember it either.
By making the 'lazy, good for nothing unskilled Brits' argument Cameron may as well hold up a big placard saying, 'F-you - go vote UKIP'.
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http://www.zoopla.co.uk/to-rent/details/30884298?more_details_carousel=1_carousel%3D1
Ever been so drunk as a student that you staggered home and pissed in your bedroom? Here it doesn't matter.
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My grandfather wanted to do this.
My mum wasn't up for it, though.
People will always work the system. Especially now as so many working people think they are taxed too much to get nothing back - so they see fiddles such as this as pay back.
It reminds me of a teacher who taught in a grammar school who knew the parents driving a Range Rover probably didn't actually live in 'catchment area hook' Basement Flat 1a.
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Back in 1985 when I graduated it was mostly those with thirds and the drop outs that went on to do pgce's and on to teaching. I suspect it's the norm.
Used to hang out with a few teacher training people at Uni in the late 90s. Not one was a 'vocational teacher' - they'd all pretty much failed to find more than a McJob so came back to do a PGCE. Despite the 'teachers are low paid' mantra these people were pretty happy with the promise of earning much more than they did folding knickers in M&S or temping.
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Some don't seem to get Help to Buy. Spoke to a woman in her late 20s that discovered she could only borrow enough to buy a bottom of the barrel one-bed flat and couldn't have really afforded the mortgage and all bills as a single person. I get the impression she thought HTB would provide more than it actually does. In many areas it's only going to help the pretty affluent buy a home sooner.
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This tory has mild cerebral palsy and has described disability campaigners as 'extremists'. Seems to feel he needs to be an exaggeratedly 'evil tory' to gain acceptance by the gang, a bit like Maggie Thatcher showing she could be more macho than any man.
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Maybe they'd retain more servicemen if they didn't keep sending them to pointless wars.
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My great gig in the sky (London job) is winding up in the new year.
Have been thinking of doing this for a while.
Yes i know the UK weather is generally shyte.
Yes i know UK coastal towns have a worn image.
But it seems like a piece of piss to run one, and i can be a real lazy ******* when i put my mind to it.
Fry a few eggs, make a few beds etc.
Anyone want to put me off the idea?
Would be looking at taking over an existing place not a massive refit.
I've been fully self-employed for 3 years now. Completely different business to B&Bs but how I made it work in the early business-building days was having very few overheads - even then I bought a load of stuff I thought would be useful that was completely unnecessary. When I could no longer fit sideline work around my 2/3 time day job there was a natural progression to self-employment - still a leap, but I could make a good estimate of how much money I might bring in if my time was mine again. As I could bill many expenses to the client, aside from tax, what I invoiced was often exactly what went into my pocket. Thus, even if the work calendar was a little gappy at times, it was easy to make more than, say, when I last had a 40-hour full time job.
In the grand scheme of things the progression was 'easy' compared to some hassles you get in life but I think friends keen to follow don't appreciate than any business/self-employment is hard work. Might be a nicer, more flexible, boss-free, dynamic life but you still have to put in the hours to keep things ticking over and progressing.
B&B/guesthouse seems laden with overheads regardless of how fully booked you are. Scant bookings and you still have most of the same running costs. My business could benefits from a premises as there's some work I struggle to take on without a dedicated space in which to work. But with business rates and bafflingly high rents the extra business generated would struggle, at least for a long while, to cover the new overheads. Thus I'd have a nice 'vanity' space but be working merely for the State and the landlord.
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It looks like next election campaign begins.
As many here have predicted there will be a tipping point as politicians do not merely pander to property owners and those with mortgages as the priced-out age.
Even the once smug previous generations don't really like seeing their 20 and 30 something offspring raising babies in dank rented flats or cramped homes in rough areas with mortgages the size of a mountain.
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Small ideas are about finding and using hidden spaces and choosing furniture that does more than one thing. It's about being creative, a little rebellious and doing what you dream about no matter how much or how little space you have. And we think that is a pretty big idea.
Furniture retailers realise that cramming new adults into tiny, often shared, spaces means less of a market for furniture. No matter, just fill your rabbit hutch to the brim with ingenious IKEA junk. -
People are renting because they are expecting a crash.
Big discussion blew up in my office last week about property. Everyone says there's a bubble and there has to be a crash.
Looks like it only a matter of time.
True. But people I know are trying to buy to escape high rents even if they have to set their sights a lot lower, especially those with decent deposits.
Rents have risen 20% in less than 5 years while many people have had pay freezes or pay cuts.
So the attitude is 'you have to live somewhere and rent hikes are currently more worrying than interest rate rises.
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Yet those same middle classes totally bought into the Globalist Agenda of deregulation and deindustrialisation- having been sold the idea that the future belonged to those-like themselves- who worked in the 'knowledge economy'- everyone else's job being presumably expendable.
It always puzzled me why the 'symbolic analysts' did not grasp the fact that their data based jobs were far easier to outsource than those of the working class- no expensive plant and machinery required- just an internet connection away are all the 'knowledge workers' you need- in places like India.
Yes, the information economy was always going to devalue any occupation that could be reduced to zeroes and ones. There are lots of middle class or white-collar jobs that, while perhaps while requiring more cerebral knowledge and unique skill than a traditional skilled working class trade, command much less money in the marketplace.
I've met several sparks, builders, etc. with degrees and middle-class accents over the last 15 years.
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There's the 450 acres of Filton main runway to be built on yet. After all, we don't seem to need this irreplaceable piece of capital infrastructure that is capable of taking the largest airliners in service. It should be possible to build 10000 homes on that at the Governments recommended suburban housing density.
The strange thing about Bristol is that median salary is really quite low despite all the big companies, universities, and hospitals.
Yes, the Osbourne-contrived mini boom seems to get Britain back to its usual habit of selling piles of bricks to each other for ever greater sums. So much for a more balanced economy where sectors like export-focused industry are promoted.
To be honest low mean/median average salaries is true of every provincial town in the UK, even the 'affluent' ones. Outside the traditional professions and trades it's mostly crushingly low-paid McJobs.
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Why can't the rich just stay in nice guest houses and hotels, which would help the local economy?
Why the need for a proberdee that merely takes a home out of circulation? There's no logical or moral reason that these second homes shouldn't be regulated and taxed out of existence.
Northants Private School Goes Into Administration.
in House prices and the economy
Posted
Just being a bog-standard GP or provincial Solicitor is not enough to put the kids through private school anymore once you've paid the mortgage and bought the fancy car.
The more prestigious private schools increasingly look overseas for students. The tinpot ones will increasingly go to the wall or, in some cases, become state academies.