UK XI: Quadruple Lock It Down

[Lebowski]

Risk assessment...

Sexually assaulted 15 year old boy. No one under 18 in parliament, no risk carry on.

well this is awkward

[Neon Ignition]

Sex education in English schools set to be banned before children are nine | Education | The Guardian
My eldest is one of the youngest in his year so is still 8 whilst most of his class are 9 and they've only lightly, incredibly lightly touched on the subject and even then not in a way that he's particularly aware of 'how babies are made' etc so I wasn't aware younger ages were getting much on the subject in the first place?

But reading further on the new rules expose what I suspect is the real reason the Tories have brought in the changes: Classes will be barred from teaching about gender ideology, limited to saying that its contested and that the only facts are the binary sexes.

Many sex acts will remain off limits till children reach 13/14 years of age - You know, that magical age where the Internet has until then made a moral decision not to teach your kids first...

The broad strokes are:

9 Year Olds will be taught what sex is and how it is done
11 Year Olds will be taught about social media
13 Year Olds will finally be taught about contraception

...


Should go well

[QualityChimp]

As I heard about this in the news today, I wondered what had brought this hot potato of a topic back to the headlines.
Then I remembered there's a general election looming.

I was a bit taken aback when I first heard my kids in junior school would be getting sex education, but then I realised that we make everything taboo and naming our body parts euphemistically, it's no wonder kids are confused.

This all feels a bit of a cynical announcement, appealing to a certain portion of the electorate, rather than being a practical one.

[Neon Ignition]

https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/mcdonalds-makes-huge-change-iconic-happy-meal/

Treat your kids at McDonalds to a Mixed Emotions Meal!

[QualityChimp]

It's quite funny at the start of PMQs, every time a Conservative MP walks in, the Labour MPs are going "wooooOOOOOOHHHH" like it's not clear which side they'll sit, then go "aaaaahhhh" when they sit on the Tory side.

[Nu-Eclipse]

Once again, the classic Tory playbook of demonising the unemployed as workshy is brought back into play, with added blame-them-for-the-state-of-the-economy.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/may/15/jeremy-hunt-mel-stride-warn-benefits-lifestyle-choice-unemployment

[Lebowski]

What a choice, I think first let's address that don't want to work myth if you're on benefits you need to be active looking for jobs turning up to the job centre and jumping through hoops to get Universal credit. You can and will be sanctioned for lots of things like being late, refusing to take on jobs, missing appointments, missing job interviews etc.

The thing they need to address is employment law and zero hour contracts, why would you go from a guaranteed income to a non guaranteed income, It's not a small problem either.

Sports Direct 90% of its staff on zero hours contracts.
McDonald's, 90% of its staff on zero hours contracts.
Weatherspoons, 80% of its staff on zero hours contracts.
Subway standard terms of employment states no hours are guaranteed and shifts are issued weekly, so 100% of its staff are on zero hours contracts.
Amazon claim they don't use zero-hour contracts, but this is a lie that they have been caught out on.

The only people they work for are the employers too, staff getting out of line cut their hours to punish them, not busy this week cancel some shifts and save your company some money, it the busy season for your workplace make all your staff do a 70-hour week.

[Protocol Penguin]

Ban zero hours, raise the minimum wage above poverty levels, bring back Working Tax Credits for low-earners. That would solve a lot of problems, and lift many out of absolute poverty.

[Lebowski]

And when the people at the bottom and middle are out of poverty wages and have money they spend it, keeping people in jobs and adding more money to the economy via tax, It's not rocket science.

[Neon Ignition]

Like everything at this point, the scale of change to fix the problem goes well beyond the what will happen because the parties lack the cahone's to make the scale of systematic change required. The Tories won't change anything because the current set up is exactly as they want it (self-serving) and Labour won't make the changes needed because thanks to the gullible, uneducated masses the party now exists in a constant state of paralysis panicked that every decision will cause Joe Public to cry foul and rescind their vote.

You can't address anything anymore without bleeding into other sectors, the Tories having created a nationwide domino effect of damage.

Zero hours contracts need heavy revision. They should be banned across most sectors and tightly regulated in those where they are a necessity such as social care. For unemployment wages is a component but raising the minimum earnigns bar across the board will just see cost of living raise also as it always has resulting in a requirement for higher benefits entitlements which leads you back to where you started. As long as the critical, vulnerable areas of society are being addressed the rest should take care of itself but currently nothing is being done bar an argument of trying to make the poorest poorer to drive them out of unemployment which is a deeply broken approach.

The Government is at pains to take credit for yet also distract from the fact that a whopping 96% of the nation are employed meaning that the 'problem' isn't actually that much of one. Of the 4% who are unemployed the vast, vast majority won't be employable for a great number of reasons. The most common brackets though are going to be:

-Due to sickness: Government can moan all they want about these but they literally aren't going to move the needle and if anything will only increase the number until they can ensure treatment can be provided efficiently to those in need of it in order to get them back into work which means sorting the NHS, one of the next huge dominos.

-Due to mental health: Similarly and particularly in the shadow of the pandemic, this is a needle that won't move until the Government makes huge strides in mental health support and social care, another domino

-Parents: Typically where one (if that) may be working but the other is unable to due to having children. The cost and availability of child care as well as the practical hours of schools making it impractical and/or too expensive to work. They claim they've tried to improve this one with the extended free hours but in reality they've only further restricted the number of places and remaing day care centres so yet another domino.

-Long Termers: Those who are unemployed and on paper available to work but can't get a job because there's nothing located close enough to them or much, much more likely that they can successfully get because employers won't take them due to how long they've been out of work. Which means another domino where employment rules need to be looked at.

In reality, the number of people not working due to being unwilling to and opting to live on benefits will be so small that if it were a known fixed figure no-one would waste time worrying about it. We're already at multiple sectors that effectively need ground up fundamental full scale reform and it doesn't hit the sides.

Job opportunities need to opened up across all sectors by creating room for greater job mobility. That means tackling stagnation in the older age brackets making higher earnings and progression easier to attain to promote older people staying in work because the pensions system is literally not going to exist in a few decades time.

Employers need to be made to consider a wider range of job seekers and to increase their focus on training up and developing career paths. That means putting an end to graduate requirements where it isn't industry or role related. Far, far, far too many jobs prioritise graduates but place no focus at all on the subject. You can literally get priority over someone else because you have a catering degree, even though the job is in something like an office, the employer just sees the word graduate - they don't even care what level of pass it is. This also then leads into Universities, they need to be scaled back by an eye watering scale. It's literally an industry that is exploiting young people by making tens of thousands of each one only to spit the vast majority out with a qualification that most will never make use of. Slash degree weighting right down, forcing Universities to specialise and increase vocational paths.

Unemployment numbers are also reflective of national population figures. todays percentage is nealy unchanged from 2018 when it was recorded as being at one of its lowest whilst the overall population has increased by 3m since that year so any increase of unemployed numbers is actually correctly scaled with population. If they want figures like this to stay the same then they need to abandon a focus on growth and switch to sustained targets. But literally no country or business will ever entertain the notion that endless growth is impossible which brings us to the next domino - immigration.

You need jobs for unemployed people, you need long term prospects for jobs for them especially if you want to grow the population in order to ensure the economy continues to grow. That means you need infrastructure. You can't magic that up overnight which means you need plans for tomorrow, this means immigration today. More towns, more cities, more roads, more Doctors, more police etc. This means not only creating more jobs for unemployed people to potentially take up but also growing the balls as a political party and governing leader to finally turn to the public and tell them it's time to put their racist rants back in their box, shut their mouths and deal with the fact that mass immigration is going to be a necessary fact.



Short version: We're screwed.

[Neon Ignition]

New 'death by dangerous cycling' offence after MPs back law change (msn.com)

[Lebowski]

This feels like something to appease the gammons,

Road deaths by cars 1,633 fatialites Cyclist killing pedestrians none in 2023-2024

[Neon Ignition]

Any move toward greater regulation is welcome, particularly since the new rules will cover e-bikes/e-scooters etc which are a scourge

[Asura]

Any move toward greater regulation is welcome, particularly since the new rules will cover e-bikes/e-scooters etc which are a scourge

Yeah, that's critical. I was almost knocked over by one last week, doing easily 20mph on the pavement in a pedestrianised zone - pedalling away, but **** off, that was a moped, not a bike.

[Lebowski]

Any move toward greater regulation is welcome, particularly since the new rules will cover e-bikes/e-scooters etc which are a scourge

I'd still rather take my chances against a chav on a chinese ebikes, than some chavs in his tuned up polo, it's about punishment vs danger a car is far more dangerous than a push bike so the law should be different, the stats speak for themselves in this, if anything it undermines dangerous driving convictions.

Yeah, that's critical. I was almost knocked over by one last week, doing easily 20mph on the pavement in a pedestrianised zone - pedalling away, but **** off, that was a moped, not a bike.

Police have stop and seize powers as doing 20 on a E-bike means it's been delimited and is illegal to use on UK roads, they should have a top speed of 15 to be UK legal. if your caught on a delimited ebike it can get seized and destroyed!!!