Tories lost the 2019 election among working age adults

[Uther]

Again another person totally missing the point. The issue isnt that they were better off than people today, they were better off than their parents generation. That has now gone for the current generation and its break even for the generation before.

The point being made its these people and those born in the 50s and 60s who will know decide on who is government and what polices they follow as the largest majority of elderly voters are over 65.

Are they going to vote for smaller pensions and reduced healthcare in order to balance the books? Or are they going to protect their own interests and vote for the current working generation to pay more and more?

Well I was born in the 60's but usually vote Labour so...

 

[Greebo]

Well I was born in the 60's but usually vote Labour so...

So nothing. So do 26% of your fellow oldies. Do you think thats going to make any difference?

Anyway, the point isnt whether you vote Tory or Labour, its a case most people will vote for the policies which are best for their lives as an elderly person

 

[Uther]

So nothing. So do 26% of your fellow oldies. Do you think thats going to make any difference?

Anyway, the point isnt whether you vote Tory or Labour, its a case most people will vote for the policies which are best for their lives as an elderly person

And why wouldn't they? Don't you? Do you think the young today won't do exactly the same when they get older?

 

[Greebo]

And why wouldn't they? Don't you? Do you think the young today won't do exactly the same when they get older?

majority does. You vote for what affects your personally.

The difference is the older vote used to be 10% and it will soon be 38% of all eligible voters and since 85% of them vote unlike the lazy young, the older vote is the key to winning any election.

The Tories know this and even labour are taking about changing their policies to go after the older vote.

Easier to win the vote of somebody who votes every GE then to try and persuade those who dont vote to go and vote.

Look, its a democracy, thats how it works, I know that. I am about to become one of those retirees and will vote for whichever party protects my annual income and assets.

Does stop me feeling sorry for the next 2 generations. At least when I was 18 my vote counted more.

 

[Demon]

I'm going to suggest that globalisation has played a big part in the end of increasing wealth. Multinationals employ workers on the lowest possible wages (hence wage level stagnation) and the profits disappear to shareholders and funds across the globe. I imagine retired people in the UK hold more shares than other groups, but the real issue is low wages and profits not trickling down locally. It is worth pointing out that Labour and Conservatives both support, or have supported, globalisation.

I'm not advocating protectionism.

I think people are too quick to jump on this voting difference as some sign of significance or relevance.. I'm with you that globalisation and other factors that transcend the government of the day are far more obvious.

I don't really know what conflated point people are trying to make by saying something obvious like in 2019 more old people voted conservative?
if you go back 50 years when those retirees where 'young', they too voted overwhelmingly for labour (https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/how-britain-voted-october-1974)..
BUT.. if you look at Tory/Labour split against age since then, it's ebbed and flowed.. make of that what you will, but I don't see any strong basis to support retirees being some awful destructive part of society.

And on the subject of poverty, this is something that generally has always been going down:
(source) https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn07096/


And you can see, under the Tories (Major) there was a steep decline in 'absolute' poverty, which Blair initially continued, but soon plateau'd and relative poverty has been fairly stable with a slight trend down..
Looking at the before/after housing costs, for relative low income stats, the gap was worse in the 90's than now..

And oddly, I can say with confidence (I'm Gen X) that in the early 90's, it took 2 wages with a hefty multiplier to afford our first house, and that was with a very modest annual holiday and no kids, then it took me quadrupling my wages before we had our first child and could just survive on 1 wage (and 'just' surviving)..

I get that relatively speaking house prices are rising and the cost of ownership/renting is increasing, but it's not all bad, other outgoings seem relatively cheaper and the standard of living is much improved from when I grew up in the 70's and 80's..

My kids (Teenagers) have way way more then I ever had, My daughters first car which she funded from a weekend job whilst at school is immeasurably better than my first rusty wreck of a car and I paid £400 a year insurance initially back in 1988, my daughter is currently paying £300 for learner insurance and full insurance will be almost identical when inflation is taken in to account..

So yes, I agree there are some things like property that are most certainly disproportionately increasing, but relative levels of poverty I'm not that convinced about and you can't just ignore everything else that contributes to quality of life, I've not seen work get any harder, workers rights and conditions have most certainly improved and in todays society workers rights have never been better.
The main one I agree with is the retirement age increasing, but that's always going to happen as we live longer and are able to work for longer etc.. but also balance that with the fact we actually work less annually on average as time goes on. (https://ourworldindata.org/working-hours)

 

[hurfdurf]

My Gran told me she literally used to get an Apple and an Orange for Christmas, and my Grandad on my Dads side fought in WW2 and probably suffered PTSD which was simply undiagnosed for the rest of his life, but morons on here are telling me they were well off compared to us now, mean while I'm sat working from home watching Youtube all day. What a bunch of entitled morons, try stepping back from Twitter and your Billionaire envy/hatred and take some of the many opportunities that you are fortunate enough to have in the UK in 2021.

Ah yes, because no one in 2021 has ptsd after fighting in wars that were for the simple profit of billionaires. It was only soldiers that fought in WW2 who had to walk up hill both ways to school and didn’t have iPhones. Excellent point well made. Loads of people itt are saying that there were literally 0 poor people at that time as well.

 

[Greebo]

Ah yes, because no one in 2021 has ptsd after fighting in wars that were for the simple profit of billionaires. It was only soldiers that fought in WW2 who had to walk up hill both ways to school and didn’t have iPhones. Excellent point well made. Loads of people itt are saying that there were literally 0 poor people at that time as well.

Why are you talking about people who are currently 100 and older and make up a small fraction of the current retirees?

Nobody else is. Show me anybody who said it was better growing up in the 30s and 40s>?

 

[Hades]

Technology changing and abundance of goods has nothing to do with easy or hard.

Back then, a single wage could easily sustain a family of 4 including the owning of a home and holidays with a stay at home parent. Now it can’t. It’s that’s simple.

Said job was also very easy to get, the hours were shorter, and room for development plentiful, with a final salary or equivalent pension.

These are far far more impactful on ease of life than kids having to walk to school….

I disagree with most of the above points:

1) Technology has brought about globalisation, which means easy and cheap transport of goods and the availablility of remote services. Simply put, technology means workers in this country are now competing with workers across the globe. That reduces wages through competition and the general wealth of the nation. Working hours have had to increase to compete with global labour that work longer hours. When I talk about technology I don't just mean the internet but even the container ship was a massive leap forward for globalisation.

2) There is an argument to say that two parents working is one of the causes of the rise in living costs and housing costs. Demand and supply dictates that greater household wages allows a family to offer more to secure a house, which pushes prices up through competition (I'm not saying this is the only cause). We are now in a situation where both wages are needed to be able to afford a house. The drive for both parents working not initially house prices. It was emancipation of women.

3) Jobs were not always easier to get. The 70's was a terrible time for employment with young people rolling out of school onto the dole. The UK was even known as the sick man of Europe. The 80's seemed to be OK (can't really recall) but the 90's was bad for employment again due to the biggest recession since the war (only beaten in 2008). Bands were even naming themselves after the unemployment form (UB40). I'm not sure what it was like in the 60's though.


EDIT: It's also only in recent times that companies were legally required to provide a pension. Before that you had to rely on the state pension if your employer didn't offer one.

 

[hurfdurf]

Why are you talking about people who are currently 100 and older and make up a small fraction of the current retirees?

Nobody else is. Show me anybody who said it was better growing up in the 30s and 40s>?

Because I’m responding to someone who bought them up?

 

[cheesyboy]

And why wouldn't they? Don't you? Do you think the young today won't do exactly the same when they get older?

Exactly, that's the point of the thread.

The elderly vote in their own interests. They're almost monolithic in their support for the Tories. And as such, they have swung the last two elections (maybe more) to the Tories (to a landslide, no less, in 2019) despite working age people voting in favour of Labour.

So is this potentially bad? That we get governments so in the pocket of the elderly, in election terms? Intuitively, you might think so, given that the interests of the elderly tend to be more short term.

 

[Hagar]

Exactly, that's the point of the thread.

The elderly vote in their own interests. They're almost monolithic in their support for the Tories. And as such, they have swung the last two elections (maybe more) to the Tories (to a landslide, no less, in 2019) despite working age people voting in favour of Labour.

So is this potentially bad? That we get governments so in the pocket of the elderly, in election terms? Intuitively, you might think so, given that the interests of the elderly tend to be more short term.

2019 was exceptional. Brexit was hanging up parliament with all sides gridlocked and unable to make a decision. The electorate was offered two main choices.
1. Vote for Boris and 'get brexit done'.
2. Vote Jeremy and have another referendum.
Well colour me surprised, turn me upside down and whether you agree or not with Brexit having been done, that was the reason for the "landslide" majority. Half as big as Blair in 1997 but sizeable enough.

The next election will be much closer.

 

[Secret_Window]

We can debate which generation had it tougher until the cows come home - I don't think that argument matters - if people want things to change, then either the young start making the effort to vote or Labour will try to swing the older generations to vote for them - and I suspect the latter would result in that not being the real change that the younger people would want.

 

[Dis86]

The next election will be much closer.

I really don't think that'll be the case unless Labour change massively. They're just not a credible opposition right now. So as per before the vote will just get spread out amongst every other party leaving conservatives the victors.

 

[Uther]

The next election will be much closer.

Not if they don't get their act together. Currently they might as well not exist.

 

[chrcoluk]

Most jobs did not have a final salary pension or any pension at all in many cases. Hours were not shorter, a five and a half day week was common, six days frequently. Working conditions were poorer, no minimum wage legislation.
Many families had no access to a car, I ran a Honda 90 to work for a couple of years. We could not afford a mortgage and also holidays. A foreign holiday was every few years after a lot of saving up.
The house we bought was a terrace with rising damp, one power socket upstairs, lead water piping and needed a lot of modernisation. Therefore it was cheap but a semi or a detached was serious money even then on my £3500 per annum salary.

The decade, 1980's. If you just read all this stuff of the Internet you are only partially informed.

Just as a reminder many people are forced to rent properties at high cost, with issues like broken boilers, damp, and other problems.
Likewise is many people today have to work multiple jobs and well in excess of basic 8 hours 5 days a week, you talk as if its all in the past, but I felt I needed to correct it.

I agree on the min wage, but bear in mind cost of living has shot up, so whilst there was people working for £2 an hour when I was at school, at the same time things were way way cheaper back then. Social housing was far easier to get, and buying a house was far cheaper (relative to income).

Now days zero hour contracts is common, fire and rehire is the new trend, contracting out is common, getting final salary pension is like trying to win the lottery. Jobs you could get by walking in and asking now require a degree.

 

[dlockers]

2019 was exceptional. Brexit was hanging up parliament with all sides gridlocked and unable to make a decision. The electorate was offered two main choices.
1. Vote for Boris and 'get brexit done'.
2. Vote Jeremy and have another referendum.
Well colour me surprised, turn me upside down and whether you agree or not with Brexit having been done, that was the reason for the "landslide" majority. Half as big as Blair in 1997 but sizeable enough.

The next election will be much closer.

lol

 

[Hagar]

lol

LOL WHAT.

 

[Greebo]

2019 was exceptional. Brexit was hanging up parliament with all sides gridlocked and unable to make a decision. The electorate was offered two main choices.
1. Vote for Boris and 'get brexit done'.
2. Vote Jeremy and have another referendum.
Well colour me surprised, turn me upside down and whether you agree or not with Brexit having been done, that was the reason for the "landslide" majority. Half as big as Blair in 1997 but sizeable enough.

The next election will be much closer.

It wont. It will be an even bigger landslide unless Labour start putting forward financially beneficial policies for the elderly.

 

[platinum87]

Difficult to get credit agreements for phone contracts when you're very poor, my friend.

Not to mention that household budgets are sometimes so tight that meals are skipped. £15/month is a lot when you don't have it.

Apparently, around 33% of children live in poverty. That compares with 22% working age adults, and 11% retirees.

Only retirees' poverty rate has dropped over the past couple of decades (started at something like 20% in about 2000)

People on here always quoting statistics going on about how poor people are, yet i do not see anyone who is poor on that level without also seeing them spending unnecessarily.

Now days zero hour contracts is common, fire and rehire is the new trend, contracting out is common, getting final salary pension is like trying to win the lottery. Jobs you could get by walking in and asking now require a degree.

Zero hour contracts are misleading, the problem is most people are useless and cannot be sacked. Giving them 5 day contracts is silly.

With my company we don't do zero, but 2-3 days. If you are COMPLETELY useless, you'll get sacked after 6 months when probation runs out.

The reason you can get a job as a laborer, barely speak English, have no qualifications, and earn £25,000 per year is very simple.

You are self employed, be useless, work slow, you wont survive a day.

If they are looking for people to work, you can just literally walk up and get the job, because its no risk.

However passive aggressive corporate types can only deal by making zero hour contracts.

So my point being, that a person cannot easily get into a job because of extremely heavy employment law. And that is why they ask for a degree, to thin the herd.

So as you put more regulation, more laws, it would only get worse.

 

[Secret_Window]

I don't know why we worry - we're slowly evolving into a genderless and classless society anyway - ready for our Alien overlords.