And no one would blame you!
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[Politics] The General Election Thread
- Thread starter crodonilson
- Start date
And no one would blame you!
Did they forget to put this policy in their manifesto or, alternatively, having got grief for their tax proposals which are hostile to small business, have they just made something up quickly to try and make amends.
I wonder what other rabbits they'll be pulling from their hat over coming days that somehow missed the manifesto print deadline.
Thunder Bolt
Silly old bat
Don't be ridiculous. Oldies don't queue up for their pensions any more. It's paid directly into a bank account and even us old crusties know how to use a cash machine.
The exchange rate for euros is far better in M&S than in the Post Office, too.
beorhthelm
A. Virgo, Football Genius
- Jul 21, 2003
- 35,827
its part of the £250bn National Investment Bank. 3600 Post Bank branches across the country apparently.
pastafarian
Well-known member
It appears Sally-Ann Hart is being criticised for her support of an article concerning therapeutic exemption from the minimum wage which was written by Rosa Monckton (hence why she keeps asking the people shouting to please read the article)
Rosa Monckton herself is a campaigner for young adults with learning disabilities and runs a charity in Brighton named after her daughter who has Down’s Syndrome, the charity aims to help young adults with learning difficulties gain employment.
It does look like some people have never read the article and have reached straight for the outrage button.
It is worth a read before judgement is made.
Why people with learning disabilities should be allowed to work for less than the minimum wage
For her, and hundreds of thousands of others with learning disabilities, the rules have become an obstacle, not a protection
Rosa Monckton
Freud said ‘Love and work… work and love, that’s all there is.’ And ‘Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.’ What is life like for people with learning disabilities who have the cornerstone of the love of their parents, but who have little prospect of work?
Approximately 1.4 million people in the UK have a learning disability, yet 1.3 million of them are unemployed. Think of the misery that figure represents, the isolation and loneliness. The October 2016 Department of Work and Pensions Green Paper, Improving Lives, states: ‘The evidence is clear that work and health are linked.’ It says that there are 1.5 million people in receipt of the Employment and Support Allowance benefit, yet acknowledges that there is little practical support to help them into work. It accepts that ‘the longer a person is out of work, the more their health and well being is likely to deteriorate… so every day matters’. But it barely focuses at all on people with a learning disability.
In September 2016 I started a charity in Brighton, Team Domenica — named after my youngest daughter, who has Down’s Syndrome. The purpose of the charity is to get young adults with learning disabilities into employment because I found, as have so many other parents, that there was nothing for my child to do to once she had left college. Our charity has 21 trainees and it runs a year’s course in supported employment, in partnership with Brighton City College. We also have a training café which is open to the public, where our young men and women can hone their practical and social skills. We have an on-site business, where they weigh and package spices, stick on labels and parcel up the goods. Our kitchen is also a mini-business: they select items they would like to see sold in the café, make the shopping list, do the shopping, cook, price up and deliver to the café. But what next?
According to the Improving Lives Green Paper, several of them should be entitled to ‘personal support from accredited coaches’ to accompany them into work. This would be wonderful — many will need one-on-one support throughout the day — but we have so far failed to gain any of this ‘access to work’ funding. It only applies, we’ve been told, if the work is paid.
Pay is the really thorny issue. The single thing that makes it most difficult to get people with learning disabilities into work is the ratcheting up of the minimum wage, which from 1 April goes up to £7.05 per hour if you are aged between 21 and 24, and £7.50 if you are older. On the whole, employers are not charities, and it is difficult for them to employ people if their output amounts to a loss. Most of our graduates will manage only eight to 15 hours a week. Yet even to raise the subject of exempting disabled workers from the minimum wage, letting employers pay them less, is to be considered brutish and inhumane.
In 2011 a Conservative MP made a speech in the House of Commons on the employment opportunities bill. He declared it a scandal that only ‘6 per cent of people with learning disabilities have a job’ and said, ‘If legislators are not prepared to accept that the minimum wage is making it harder for some of those vulnerable people to get on the first rung of the jobs ladder, we will never get anywhere in trying to help these people into employment.’ For this thoughtful intervention, he was described as ‘insane’, ‘disgusting’, ‘like Hitler’. The Daily Mirror declared: ‘This is a contemptible bid to impose slave labour.’
Just over two years ago, Sigmund Freud’s great grandson Lord (David) Freud, then a minister in the DWP, was asked a question on the subject by a Tory councillor, David Scott, who said: ‘I have a number of mentally damaged individuals, who to be quite frank aren’t worth the minimum wage, but want to work… but you can’t find people who are willing to pay the minimum wage. How do you deal with those sorts of cases?’
Freud replied: ‘I know exactly what you mean, where actually as you say they’re not worth the full wage, and I’m going to go and think about that particular issue, whether there is something we can do nationally.’
The backlash was spectacular. Ed Miliband declared ‘The Nasty Party is back’; and various disability charities, such as Mencap, denounced Freud. Esther McVey, a fellow-Tory who was the disability minister in the same department as Freud, said on the BBC Daily Politics programme that ‘Those words will haunt him… he will have to explain himself.’
As the mother of a child with a learning disability, I followed these events with mounting anger. It is so obvious to most parents in my position that a therapeutic exemption from the minimum wage would have a transformative effect.
But policy makers seem to live in an abstract world, driven by the idea of ‘ending inequality’ without looking at the real lives of people involved. They obsess on the ‘human right’ of disabled adults to receive the minimum wage; they are more interested in political slogans than in understanding what would be the best thing in practice. Because in practice, money isn’t the real point. People with a learning disability may still be living with their parents. Very often they have no understanding of money (Domenica was given a £5 tip on one of her work placements, and asked me if she could now go to New York). They want to work so as to have a fulfilling and purposeful life.
When I am in our training centre, speaking to our students when they return from a work placement, I can see how changed they are. When they say ‘I’ve been to work today’, they look confident and happy.
If you want to finish the article, follow the link
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/03/the-minimum-wage-denies-my-daughter-the-dignity-of-a-paid-job/
I’ve played it to the whole of Churchill Square shopping Mall and they all think he said talent.
I guess that’s a yes then Walter.
Mellor 3 Ward 4
Well-known member
I listened to Rebecca Wrong-Daily on Today this morning.
She's clearly bright (ex Solicitor I believe) but has no concept of running a business (which is a pity as she is Shadow Business Secretary) but let's remember she was the person who thought companies were taxed on turnover, not profits.......
Perhaps we could get Simon Cowell to listen. He’s supposed to be able to recognise talent when he hears it.
I’ve already ordered an Uber.
Ernest
Stupid IDIOT
Who says people of talent rather than talented people 
Who says people of talent rather than talented people
Quite. I’m pretty certain he says colour. Pretty sinister stuff, getting people to question what they have actually heard.
Ernest
Stupid IDIOT
Listen without looking at the video and it sounds like colour to me
KZNSeagull
Well-known member
Very interesting. Thanks for posting that.
We are going through this stage with my autistic son who is 20. He tried doing a supported internship but as his social skills are not currently good enough, all he could get was voluntary work. A couple of the students he did this with did get paid work eventually at Sainsbury's but their social skills were better. He is a bright lad and wants to work - he even came into work with me at Tesco for a week for work experience and he was fine. I had to be around when there was any social interaction but otherwise he did really well although he got extremely tired which has put him off a bit. Once he finishes college if there is nothing else available to him then I will try and get him a job at Tesco, but if that doesn't come off I worry that he will not be able to get any paid work at all. If he is good enough for voluntary work then imo he is good enough for paid work, but obviously comes up against people without learning difficulties who may get preferential treatment, especially if they are going to be paid the same. So I can understand where Rosa Monkton is coming from. Obviously I would rather he was paid the same as everyone else doing the same job but if that prevents him from getting a job in the first place, then it is self defeating.
As subtitle replacements go, it’s not a particularly easy sitting substitute is it. Talent. Colour.
I’m not buying it.
pastafarian
Well-known member
Who says people of talent rather than talented people
Boris Johnson does obviously. Clearly says talent. You should have listened to it first with your eyes shut and not reading the subtitles.
100% says talent.
beorhthelm
A. Virgo, Football Genius
- Jul 21, 2003
- 35,827
even though the source has corrected and apologised for the error?
pastafarian
Well-known member
Indeed.Must be very testing circumstances sometimes that many of us really have little or no experience of unlike yourself.
Best of luck for your son.
Something of a U-turn from me but you’re right. Listening to it without looking at the screen and it is talent. I stand corrected.
I guess we’ll just have to stick with his back catalogue of picaninnies, watermelon smiles and tank topped bum boys as proof of his prejudices! No new releases today.
He should speak up and stop mumbling and bumbling into his own chins.
Thunder Bolt
Silly old bat
I can understand people saying Rosa Monkton is right, but companies would take advantage in exactly the same way they did when kids were on the YTS.
That doesn't excuse Sally Ann Hart's comment at the hustings.
Ms Hart, who is also a councillor for Rother District Council, said: ‘They should be given the opportunity to work because it’s to do with the happiness they have about working.’ As the audience shouted ‘shameful’ and ‘they deserve a salary’, she responded: ‘Some people with learning disabilities, they don’t understand about money.’ During her response she repeated: ‘It’s about the happiness to work.’
Clumsy at best.
BBC now reporting it.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election...C2__BKiMhd-wYOOM67i8oUWAiuRbkhpR716JONDsu_J40
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