Are you one of the 70% who ARE NOT a "Hard working Family"

[EternalOptimist]

missing the point here guys.

It's possible to work smarter and out perform a hard worker. But it's also possible for a smart worker to work harder as well

which makes them doubly, trebly probably eight time more effective than an average dude

[Contractoid]

missing the point here guys.

It's possible to work smarter and out perform a hard worker. But it's also possible for a smart worker to work harder as well

which makes them doubly, trebly probably eight time more effective than an average dude

True but we are getting a bit off beam on my angst -

1. Defining a collective unit of 2 people living together as either hard working or not is ludicrous / subjective
2. Politicians are full of s&*t
3. At least 70% of the voting population are not part of a Hard working family. So what are we then? Outcasts? And they wonder why voting turnout is as shockingly low as it is. Gits.

[scooterscot]

Simply put a hard working family is a family is who manages to continue keeping pace with inflation without changing the quality of life.

[SantaClaus]

I'm happy to be in the MAJORITY and not hard working.

The same could be said of most MPs.

[EternalOptimist]

True but we are getting a bit off beam on my angst -

1. Defining a collective unit of 2 people living together as either hard working or not is ludicrous / subjective
2. Politicians are full of s&*t
3. At least 70% of the voting population are not part of a Hard working family. So what are we then? Outcasts? And they wonder why voting turnout is as shockingly low as it is. Gits.

don't worry about what people call you. They don't give a flying fck about you, just look after you and yours. fck em. fck em all

[SpontaneousOrder]

I just have to get this off my chest before I go mad

Since around the last election politicians seem obsessed with targetting the needs and wants of "Hard Working Families". Examining this curious statement for a minute how exactly do you measure whether a "Family" is "Hard Working". Do both members have to be in employment? What if one of them works really "Hard" but the other bums around in a Easy Life career and has 10 fag breaks a day? Anyway, this conundrum put aside lets go for some statistics -

First, definition of a Family (Oxford English)

"A group consisting of two parents and their children living together as a unit"

Now some actual numbers (Last UK Census)

Married Families With Dependent Children - 4.7m
Cohabiting Couple Family with Dependent Children - 1.2m
Lone Parent Family with Dependent Children - 1.9m

Some simple maths yields a Total number of voters part of "Hard working families" being roughy - 13.7m

In the last general election 45 Million people were elligable to vote.

So my question to Mr Cameron, Mr Milliband and all you other f&*kwits who KEEP BANGING ON ABOUT THEIR POLICIES TO HELP HARD WORKING F&*KING FAMILES is

What are you going to do for the other 31.3 Million (or 69.6%) of us who ARE NOT part of a hard F*^king "working family" which by the way is a completely made up piece of political wank demographic that is impossible to define anyway?

Maybe I should buck my ideas up as a moderaitely hard working cohabiting person with no dependent children to court the attention of the above mentioned political muppets!

I don't think you get how this politics thing works.

'hard working families' make up 14 million voters, by your calculations - all under one collective banner.
The other 31 million are of no collective that its would-be members instinctively cling to.

Given that politicians are interested in securing power for the next 4 years - and not in representing the electorate - it should be very obvious why they make promises to the minority, but collective, 'hard working families' demographic.

You make it sound like you think government gives a tulip about you (or hard working families). Lol.

They bribe their voters with other people's money in order to secure enough muscle over the remainder in order to wield power for a few more years. It's as simple as that.

[jjdarg]

I don't think you get how this politics thing works.

'hard working families' make up 14 million voters, by your calculations - all under one collective banner.
The other 31 million are of no collective that its would-be members instinctively cling to.

Given that politicians are interested in securing power for the next 4 years - and not in representing the electorate - it should be very obvious why they make promises to the minority, but collective, 'hard working families' demographic.

You make it sound like you think government gives a tulip about you (or hard working families). Lol.

They bribe their voters with other people's money in order to secure enough muscle over the remainder in order to wield power for a few more years. It's as simple as that.

WSOS

However, many of the policies they define as helping "hard-working families" come from the Fabian/Gramscian ideas of eliminating parental influence on children, in favour of State control, and getting as many people as possible to pay tax and used to pushing paper for the Man permanently, so that from cradle to grave the minions have the sensation of a jackboot stomping on their faces repeatedly.

Take paternity leave - its proponents in Scandinavia where it originated were all about allowing the father to build a bond with the child, its proponents here are all about getting the mother back to work as soon as she has popped a sprog.

They've also made the family tax credit or child benefit (whatever it is called) favour a grouping with two people earning 50k pa versus a grouping where one person is earning 55k and the other is home taking care of the children, rather than sending them off to an institution for 8+ hours a day for communal upkeep.

Then there are the subsidies for the child care industry to the tune of several billion a year. So that a working mother may net £100 extra a month.

I would say take away many of the subsidies the gov't provides that allow employers to pay lower wages and let employers compete in a free market for labour rather than use a benefit and immigration system to artificially deflate wages. Used to be that minimum wage was a floor for many jobs, now it appears to be a ceiling thanks to subsidised mass immigration and low wages.

[/rant mode]

[original PM]

WSOS

...

They've also made the family tax credit or child benefit (whatever it is called) favour a grouping with two people earning 50k pa versus a grouping where one person is earning 55k and the other is home taking care of the children, rather than sending them off to an institution for 8+ hours a day for communal upkeep.

...
[/rant mode]

Which has been proved to actually give many children a better start in life than those who are left at home with mum...

but that is completely off topic

[jjdarg]

Which has been proved to actually give SOME children a better start in life than those who are left at home with mum...

but that is completely off topic

FTFY

If mum is a benefit-scrounging, welfare-hogging, (insert adjective and noun here), with no reliable partner, then yes, the outcomes for institutionalisation are better. (But it is not just mum who can stay at home while the other person is working, to be clear - if my wife had the same earning power I did, I would have stayed home to home-school our kids...)

If a gov't is interested in supporting strong families and giving a better start in life, then strengthening the institution of marriage, rather than cohabitation and getting back to work as soon as possible would provide for more stability. But that horse has bolted, I think.

[original PM]

FTFY

If mum is a benefit-scrounging, welfare-hogging, (insert adjective and noun here), with no reliable partner, then yes, the outcomes for institutionalisation are better.

If a gov't is interested in supporting strong families and giving a better start in life, then strengthening the institution of marriage, rather than cohabitation and getting back to work as soon as possible would provide for more stability. But that horse has bolted, I think.

Indeed the key thing is it allows children to learn to interact with other children at an early age - even a very well looked after child who has no time with his peers until they get to school will be be at a disadvantage.

The thing about marriage is not down to the government it is down to successive generations of people putting less and less value on it - and maybe the whole political correctness has got to a point where having a traditional marriage between a man and a woman is now seen in a similar vein to being proud to be British - e.g. a bit old fashioned and slightly bigoted.