letsskiptotheleft wrote:If Liz Kendall wants my vote she's going the wrong way about it. I have no aspiration and I do not generate wealth, I work, most days bloody hard. I also work in the public sector these days, much maligned of course and I notice the creeping in of "the UK is a 7 day a week economy" so no doubt the remuneration people like me get for working weekends and unsocial hours will be more in the spotlight. I doubt Kendall on present form will be too bothered to stand up and be counted there, more interested in aspiration, whatever the fuck that means and wealth creating.
I write that not as one with far left views, I am more pragmatic than that, I grew in a solidly working class home, mother a housewife, father a miner, I didn't have the luxury of education after I left school, worked in a factory where every year we had good paid holidays, a guaranteed 3% pay rise and reasonable conditions. People like me weren't and aren't interested in wealth creation, I could clean cars on the side of the road, fair play to those who do and some knob would class it as wealth creation, some of the slimiest toads in the country are deemed as creaters of wealth, all bollocks of course, and as soon as someone going for the leadership talks about people I once was, happy with a reasonable wage, paid my bills and a bit to spend and save the better, cut out this wealth creation and aspiration bollocks.
This.
I remember when I was small, and my dad earned enough as an engineer/technical author to keep a family.
That was plenty - we weren't well-off, but he had his hobbies (tinkering with vintage cars which he bought from Exchange & Mart in bits)
Mum worked too, once we were safely in school.
We always had a council house, and until I grew up and left, we had teachers and our doctor living in our road and it was a good mix of people. Right to buy finished all that, and people moved on, up, or whatever.
When I was nursing, my aspiration was to be a sister. I got there, and it was enough for me. If I hadn't taken time out for a family, I suspect I'd still be doing that, just getting better at it. The pay was enough, Not fantastic, but enough.
When the big retail shops started their Sunday opening, staff were not paid more for weekends; the same applied when they started 24 hour opening. I have every reason to think that Camerons' 7-day NHS will involve tinkering with shift patterns and unsocial hours pay; there is no way he can do what he claims unless he employs more staff and finds a way to pay them less.
Aspiration - ask a little boy what he wants to be and he might say a policeman or a builder, he might say a doctor or a spaceman. As he grows up, he'll come to understand that he can be any of those things and none.
I happen to think it is OK to tell a child that it is a perfectly good aspiration to want to make things out of wood, or build a boat, or save lives as a consultant oncologist - but what's most important is not that they make wealth or wear themselves out trying to do something they're not suited to just because it's fucking aspirational.
