Compassion deserts Cameron

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 24 May 2011, 07:44

kenneal wrote:"If you give a person food you will have a client for life,

It's worse. You get a whole bunch of new clients, the local farmers you have put out of business.

2 As and a B · Post by **2 As and a B** » 24 May 2011, 08:00

And all their children, and their children, and their children, ad collapsum.

JohnB · Post by **JohnB** » 24 May 2011, 08:23

biffvernon wrote:
kenneal wrote:"If you give a person food you will have a client for life,
It's worse. You get a whole bunch of new clients, the local farmers you have put out of business.

You get rid of the local farmers by selling them GM seed, so they get into debt, their crops fail, and they commit suicide.

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 17 Jun 2011, 21:21

The mask just slipped a little further.

A Tory MP has sparked anger by suggesting that disabled people should work for less than the minimum wage to increase their chances of being taken on by employers.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/ ... CMP=twt_fd

Post by **kenneal - lagger** » 18 Jun 2011, 02:40

biffvernon wrote:The mask just slipped a little further.
A Tory MP has sparked anger by suggesting that disabled people should work for less than the minimum wage to increase their chances of being taken on by employers.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/ ... CMP=twt_fd

Oooooh!! Lordy, Lordy!! One says it so they are all committed to damnation!!

RenewableCandy · Post by **RenewableCandy** » 18 Jun 2011, 22:17

kenneal wrote:One says it so they are all committed to damnation!!

Well, yes, because none of the others has made an effort to distance themselves from him.

Asking people with learning difficulties to work for artificially-low wages is basically taking advantage. They can either do the job, in which case they deserve the same pay as owtelse, or they can't, in which case you can't be expected to employ them. Same as anyone else, really.

ndon · Post by **ndon** » 19 Jun 2011, 04:16

RenewableCandy wrote:...or they can't, in which case you can't be expected to employ them. Same as anyone else, really.

yet we as a country are expected to carry them? (devils advocate)

this whole southern cross care home abuse thing gets me too, people outraged that those they off loaded their unloved ones onto ....

Post by **kenneal - lagger** » 19 Jun 2011, 04:41

As one who has offloaded a loved onto a care home run by another company, Brandon, I can sympathise with the people having problems with Southern Cross. In the current economic climate people have to work full time to keep their heads above water. Caring for the elderly is, in many cases and especially with dementia sufferers, a full time occupation and requires specialist premises.

The home my mother in law is in has a closed perimeter with security locks to prevent inmates, for want of a better description, escaping. It is laid out around a sensory garden and different finishes are used in various parts of the premises to stimulate the residents. They have almost one to one care at meal times to ensure they eat. It is a full time job caring for many, though not all, people at that age.

Come the crash, though, care homes will soon become casualties themselves as the banked money from sold off homes disappears and the support from the government and local authorities vanishes. Those elderly people who are still capable will become the baby sitters and educators of our children that they once were. Those who aren't capable will soon succumb to a very much lower level of medical and physical care. The newborn disabled will once again die early as the specialist medical care which keeps them alive also disappears. Those disabled in later life will suffer the same fate.

Unfortunate for those involved, but true.

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 19 Jun 2011, 08:14

That's capitalism for you.

Post by **kenneal - lagger** » 20 Jun 2011, 02:33

Ijit! That's collapse for you!

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 20 Jun 2011, 06:42

Aye, the inevitable destination of capitalism.

2 As and a B · Post by **2 As and a B** » 20 Jun 2011, 07:39

Deleted

DominicJ · Post by **DominicJ** » 20 Jun 2011, 08:15

RenewableCandy wrote:Asking people with learning difficulties to work for artificially-low wages is basically taking advantage. They can either do the job, in which case they deserve the same pay as owtelse, or they can't, in which case you can't be expected to employ them. Same as anyone else, really.

You're assuming they CAN do the job there...

If I do twice as much work as my co worker, shouldnt I get twice as much pay?
The counter to that of course, half the work, half the pay.

Master Craftsmen earn more than apprentices, all the minimum wage does is elimate apprentices.

RenewableCandy · Post by **RenewableCandy** » 22 Jun 2011, 22:00

DominicJ wrote:
RenewableCandy wrote:Asking people with learning difficulties to work for artificially-low wages is basically taking advantage. They can either do the job, in which case they deserve the same pay as owtelse, or they can't, in which case you can't be expected to employ them. Same as anyone else, really.
You're assuming they CAN do the job there...

Well, yes. The obvious example would be someone in a wheelchair can still work as a secretary, or indeed as a research scientist! I know someone who has to use a wheelchair but she can drive (including getting in and out of ordinary car unaided: she's got strong arms). Which means she can do a lot of jobs I, a non-driver, cannot.

One thing that can be very different about (some) disabled people is their condition gives them "good days" and "bad days", a problem which being offered p/t work can often address. Of course, to do this, we need to equalise p/t and f/t working rights, or in fact just get rid of the distinction altogether.

To fail to employ people doing the things they actually can do is to waste talent: and we need all the talent we can get.

woodpecker · Post by **woodpecker** » 22 Jun 2011, 23:13

ndon wrote:
RenewableCandy wrote:...or they can't, in which case you can't be expected to employ them. Same as anyone else, really.
yet we as a country are expected to carry them? (devils advocate)

this whole southern cross care home abuse thing gets me too, people outraged that those they off loaded their unloved ones onto ....

Not unloved. If you'd been a not particularly well pensioner yourself for 15 years while also full-time looking after a parent who needs 24/7 care (vascular dementia as a result of perhaps 50+ strokes and mini-strokes, wheelchair bound, double incontinent, mostly blind, mostly deaf, osteoporosis and many broken bones etc etc but no life-threatening condition and increasingly stubborn and child-like with absolutely no memory of anything in the last 50 years). Year after year... There is a limit to what you can expect of a person who (in my family's case) is a pensioner herself.

You watch the cared-for person have another stroke, another fall, go further downhill month by month, or from one day to the next, and consume more and more of your time and energy, while, for example, accusing you of starving them (the dementia means she doesn't know whether or what she's eaten) at the top of her voice, or threatening to jump of the balcony (7th floor). Not that she could jump. There are many carers who just cannot any more, they get to the point of total exhaustion, with the person concerned having completely consumed their life.

[We are waiting for my gran, almost 100, to be offered a place near my mum's home, so mum can visit every day. I think my mum is looking forward to the day when she can put on a record without provoking continuous screaming, and the night when she doesn't have to be up for most of it, dealing with shouting, toilet visits and diapers, falls and ambulances etc.]

I'm terrified about stuff like Southern Cross. Obviously we can't expect non-family to do what we would do, but I do expect vulnerable people to be treated with respect, some humanity. I spent some early years in an old people's home - my mum managed one in the 1960s and we lived on site - and I have really fond memories of many of the old dears there and all the goings on. I think the residents liked having small kids around the place, made life a little more interesting. The place was full of 65-75 year olds, young by today's standards, and the oldest was 86 or so (Mrs Beamish, who gave me an early edition of Little Women that I still have). Small, friendly and human, and perhaps the antithesis of what Southern Cross represents.