Gambling machines. I'm seriously impressed.

[Rum]

Not my experience I must say - though I live in a very small city - more like a large town. Even so what we see, despite almost full employment, is more and more obvious poverty. There are more beggars and apparently homeless people on the streets - a gradual increase I would say since the beginning of the 'austerity years'. I have little doubt that people are poorer. More minimum pay jobs, part time contracts while costs such as food and housing continue to rise.

It is of course the poor who suffer most from unregulated gambling. It is the poor who buy most of the National lottery tickets and so on. For them it offer the fantasy of a quick escape from the grind. There's quite a lot out there in terms of research but an interesting article is here too:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... helen-pidd

[JimC]

I think I've said this before, but a regular purchase of a moderately priced lottery ticket is not problem gambling, whose real dangers (poker machines being the best exemplar) is the tendency for people to become addicted, and spending more and more and more...

[pErvinalia]

God you are a disgrace. Reality has no impact on you, does it? Where's your evidence that any significant number of people are "unwilling to go out and earn their own through an honest day's work"? Welfare fraud at the bottom end of town is tiny, and is dwarfed by the top end of town - the people who you and your neoliberal buddies wank over. Not to mention that there are far more job seekers than there are jobs. But don't let reality get in the way of your conservative biases...

The UK is at or close to full employment.

So how is it that you can think that the unemployed are "unwilling to go out and earn their own through an honest day's work" when there is no work for them to do?

[Scot Dutchy]

God you are a disgrace. Reality has no impact on you, does it? Where's your evidence that any significant number of people are "unwilling to go out and earn their own through an honest day's work"? Welfare fraud at the bottom end of town is tiny, and is dwarfed by the top end of town - the people who you and your neoliberal buddies wank over. Not to mention that there are far more job seekers than there are jobs. But don't let reality get in the way of your conservative biases...

The UK is at or close to full employment. You have no idea what things are like in the UK, I don't go a single day without being pestered for money by some fucking mutant in the street. I can just ignore them, but goodness knows how intimidating that is for someone less physically imposing than me, my girlfriend has given money more than once out of genuine fear for what might happen if she didn't.

You are not taking ONS data as gospel? The real unemployment is about 20%.
https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/8/un ... ent-in-uk/

[Strontium Dog]

God you are a disgrace. Reality has no impact on you, does it? Where's your evidence that any significant number of people are "unwilling to go out and earn their own through an honest day's work"? Welfare fraud at the bottom end of town is tiny, and is dwarfed by the top end of town - the people who you and your neoliberal buddies wank over. Not to mention that there are far more job seekers than there are jobs. But don't let reality get in the way of your conservative biases...

The UK is at or close to full employment.

So how is it that you can think that the unemployed are "unwilling to go out and earn their own through an honest day's work" when there is no work for them to do?

Congratulations on demonstrating that you don't know what "full employment" means.

[Scot Dutchy]

Do you? The UK is nowhere near full employment. ZHC are illegal in most European countries. Limited hours contracts dont count as full employment.

[laklak]

I don't get this zero hour contract thing, can someone explain it to me? I could Google it but I'm lazy.

[Strontium Dog]

I don't get this zero hour contract thing, can someone explain it to me? I could Google it but I'm lazy.

It just means you're employed, but you're not contracted to work a set number of hours. In practice, the average zero hours employee works approximately 25 hours per week.

[laklak]

Ah OK, so it's like being on call but with no guaranteed hours? Sounds like a pretty shit gig.

[Rum]

I don't get this zero hour contract thing, can someone explain it to me? I could Google it but I'm lazy.

It means your so called employer can exploit your need to work and pay your bills but refuses to give you any guarantee that he/she will employ you at all. You are asked to work as and when it suits the employer and that can be anything from zero hours to full time. It is a capitalist's wet dream come true.

Those who defend it say that cash strapped businesses scraping along and trying to find profitability need the flexibility but of course like the minimum wage we have here it results in a race to the bottom.

[JimC]

Here in Oz there was a tendency in the teaching game for young teachers to be put on a series of one year contracts, never knowing whether they'd have a job the next year or not, with the carrot of "permanency" dangled in front of them if they didn't rock the boat. In such circumstances, many of them cannot successfully apply for a home loan. A fairly recent development; teachers of my generation, once employed, would only be dismissed for incompetence.

Not the same as your zero hours thing, I know, but another example of employers trying to get the whip hand. Mind you, the union I belonged to is fighting it, and has had some limits put on how long new teachers can be kept on a purely contract basis.

[Scot Dutchy]

I don't get this zero hour contract thing, can someone explain it to me? I could Google it but I'm lazy.

It just means you're employed, but you're not contracted to work a set number of hours. In practice, the average zero hours employee works approximately 25 hours per week.

I would like to see some data on that?

[Scot Dutchy]

I don't get this zero hour contract thing, can someone explain it to me? I could Google it but I'm lazy.

It means your so called employer can exploit your need to work and pay your bills but refuses to give you any guarantee that he/she will employ you at all. You are asked to work as and when it suits the employer and that can be anything from zero hours to full time. It is a capitalist's wet dream come true.

Those who defend it say that cash strapped businesses scraping along and trying to find profitability need the flexibility but of course like the minimum wage we have here it results in a race to the bottom.

Totally illegal in other parts of the EU. Here they can give you a temporary contract for two years but then you have to be offered a permanent contract.

[pErvinalia]

God you are a disgrace. Reality has no impact on you, does it? Where's your evidence that any significant number of people are "unwilling to go out and earn their own through an honest day's work"? Welfare fraud at the bottom end of town is tiny, and is dwarfed by the top end of town - the people who you and your neoliberal buddies wank over. Not to mention that there are far more job seekers than there are jobs. But don't let reality get in the way of your conservative biases...

The UK is at or close to full employment.

So how is it that you can think that the unemployed are "unwilling to go out and earn their own through an honest day's work" when there is no work for them to do?

Congratulations on demonstrating that you don't know what "full employment" means.

I know what full employment is. You apparently don't, as full employment is an arbitrary number that doesn't say anything about the number of jobseekers in a country. So congratulations on avoiding the point. Again, there are far more job seekers than job vacancies. So to say that the unemployed are "unwilling to go out and earn their own through an honest day's work" is spectacularly ignorant and callous in a way that only conservatives can be.

[pErvinalia]

I don't get this zero hour contract thing, can someone explain it to me? I could Google it but I'm lazy.

It just means you're employed, but you're not contracted to work a set number of hours. In practice, the average zero hours employee works approximately 25 hours per week.

I would like to see some data on that?

Strontium Dog doesn't do data. He does conservative fee fees..