There is something wrong in politics and you only need to look at the current situation and our views on the forum to see that somehow we need a reset.
We have what you might call right of centre Thatcherites, and I'm along those lines myself, arguing against the CBI, big business and the EU.
Meanwhile you have the Labour Party, centre left social democrats and even self-dubbed democratic socialists like Paul Mason who are pro EU, claiming alignment with the CBI and big business on the issue of Brexit.
That's cock-eyed.
I'm for free market and healthy competition, but big business has the power to influence in it's best interests and SME's have little or no influence, just their vote at the ballot box like all of us.
You won't see an employer of 50 people running a small engineering firm in East Lancs at the DEXU committee, but you'll see the Head of CBI or the CEOI of Siemens UK.
https://www.dw.com/en/how-non-eu-act...els/a-46182626
There are plenty of articles written about the power of lobbying and this is one of them.
I think big business has been able to manipulate the agenda too much. It needs pairing back. It has the policy makers in it's pocket and between them they are stitching up the individual.
When I started work, my wife and I worked in a shoe factory in Bacup.
It was Monday to Friday, early finish on Friday, time and a quarter up to double time for all overtime. 4 weeks paid holiday + 8 banks.
We had what my Dad called GPs back then - guaranteed payments for short-time work that worked on a quarterly basis.
They helped avoid the economic cliff-edge of not working for a week or two.
In 1986-88 my wife as a post machinist sewing zips and elastics in slippers could earn in excess of £300 pw for 40 hours and with overtime sometimes over £400.
In 2019 she works as a sewing machinist for part of John Lewis Group and earns around the same. £300 pw. And of course £300 now goes about as far as £100 back in the late 80s.
So workers rights, minimum wage, EU protections...…
It's largely a myth.
Big business has us stitched up to the extent they employ particularly many low-skilled people on 20-30 hour contracts now and they need their wages topping up by the state, nursery provision paid for by the state, help to buy for first time buyers.....
The workforce are just a commodity, a resource. It needs to change.
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Originally Posted by Wheeze
