Reply to: Europe - You decide

Re: Quality of life

Personal experience, eh, Dodgy

My chavs are happy on £12k hattra

Re: Quality of life

Chavs aspirations can be met with less than £15k per annum

Personal experience, eh, Dodgy

Re: Quality of life

I think £50,000 is a little more than most people on the dole get - are you exaggerating again DA?

I am making it relative to what people are comfortable with. Chavs aspirations can be met with less than £15k per annum hattra. I was indeed exaggerating to make a point

Re: Quality of life

If someone paid you say £50,000 per annum no matter, would you bother to look for a job

I think £50,000 is a little more than most people on the dole get - are you exaggerating again DA?

Re: Quality of life

They have plenty of opportunit; for education, entertainment and personal development, but they choose to waste it.

If someone paid you say £50,000 per annum no matter, would you bother to look for a job? would you bother to develop yourself? would you need to be pleasant to people?.
say that £50k were still paid to you even if you were fined for bad behaviour/petty crime/flashing (or whatever you contractors like to get up to ), do you think you would bother to try to develop relationships or even get on with people?

Now let us say that in addition you had access to a suite of public services (albeit very poor), would you care about anyone or yourself even?

If at some stage you then decided to try and get a job. How hard would you try? How much enthusiasm would you show at the interview? And if you did get the job and it got a bit stressful, would you dig in and make the most of it, or would you flick two fingers at the boss and go home back to your £50k?

Technically wageslave you are right. These people do have choices but they choose not to work.. because they do not have to. It is not their fault, it is the socialists who patronise these people.

If you want to level the playing field with your man in the urals (or urinals) then take away the soft underbelly of welfare and give them a choice between working and starvation (at least here people have the work if they want it).

Re: Quality of life

We exclude them by putting them on welfare, giving them a tulipe education, tulipe healthcare and no hope.

They have plenty of opportunit; for education, entertainment and personal development, but they choose to waste it.

It's the kids growing up in the Urals I feel sorry for, as they have genuine talent but no opportunity at all (apart from stealing the lead from gravestones to sell to the local factories).

Re: Quality of life

WS

Chav, to me, implies a certain way of behaving. What you are saying is that there was always a working class - however with the loss of manufacturing jobs that has changed into a benefit class. That's a profound difference.

Re: Quality of life

Are Chavs the result of social exclusion?

We exclude them by putting them on welfare, giving them a tulipe education, tulipe healthcare and no hope.
The socialists feel guilty so they "give" to the working class. The working classes do not need to be given anything other than a decent education, opportunity of work and freedom from the state.
They are big enough and ugly enough to not have to rely on handouts.

Re: Quality of life

Massive social exclusion (witness the growth of chavs)

Are Chavs the result of social exclusion? We've had chavs in this country for a long time. The only difference is that somehow they've now been given a title whereas before they were simply 'common'. I blame the rise of the chav on the introduction of comprehensive education and the 1960s (guilt ridden middle class intellectuals idolising the working class).

Quality of life

Well France and Germany do have many problems that need fixing. In the case of Germany I'll wager they'll get round to it sooner rather later, by voting their version of the Conservatives in.
I really don't think our model is the one to follow though:

Long hours
Poor productivity (according to most economists)
Massive social exclusion (witness the growth of chavs)
Huge crime and run down housing estates
Destroyed manufacturing industry

If I were the Europeans, I would be careful about making Maggie-style drastic reforms. They needed to be made, but could have been done better.

Neither!

Blairs damascan conversion is because he realises there are more votes in it than his previous position.

If you want to talk about Europe, hows about me selling services to French Companies just as I do with English ones.

Equality of Opportunity, low regulation, low taxes. A Europe regulated from the bottom up.

These are the attributes of a Europe Alien to Blair/Chirac and Shroeder

What Europe should be is a free trading block allowing us to sell goods and services to a large enough market before the costs of exporting may that difficult.

What we have now is nothing of the kind.

Yes but

is anybody here old enough to remember the grief this country went through in Maggie's early days?
Well, when the merde hits the fan La Belle France is going to make that look like a picnic by comparison.
That of course assumes they can't get some more mugs to pay for their lifestyle (I don't believe the newer member-states are any too happy about it and rightly so).

If I was them I'd be thinking "f uck the rest of you", I'll look after no. 1.

I believe that is what they do think, actually.

These countries need to wake up and realise that they do not have a god given right to "an idyllic lifestyle" paid for by the rest of the world.

Why not? Would you want to wake up? If I was a Frog I'd be thinking "f uck the rest of you", I'll look after no. 1.

traj in "typical contractor" mode.

This is all about the balance between capitalism and social welfare. In my opinion the Germans/French just need some tweaks to their system - reduce benefits etc. Their system is better

I think you are missing something here SAS. I will agree that the quality of life in countries like France and Germany is very high (for some). However the French "quality of life" is being paid for by us. Their rural idyll is paid for by the CAP. However these countries are faced with the huge threat of globalisation which is the inevitable result of freedom of people in choosing where to live and where to buy. France is no longer protected from globalisation. International markets are such that no one wants to start a business in France or Germany.

These countries need to wake up and realise that they do not have a god given right to "an idyllic lifestyle" paid for by the rest of the world.