Tories Want to Destroy Working People by Killing Minimum Wage
In the midst of one of the greatest financial crises to strike the world since the Great Depression, the Tories have announced that David Cameron would allow the minimum wage to “melt away” if he became PM — meaning that millions of first-time job entrants and young people would be exposed to the sort of rampant exploitation which has caused the current crisis.
Senior Tories made the admission in a newspaper report, and were quoted as saying “(T)he minimum wage won’t be scrapped but it will be allowed to wither on the vine.”
Bizarrely, Cameron’s logic is that the minimum wage rate increase “cannot be allowed to continue to rise annually in line with the rate of inflation” — in other words, that young people in particular who are the beneficiaries of the minimum wage, will not be compensated for any hyper inflation. Such market vagaries are highly possible, given the Tories’ multi-millionaire city bankrollers, who have already created the credit crunch disaster now engulfing much of the world.
The Tories originally opposed the introduction of the minimum wage, using the flawed “logic” that it would lead to “massive job losses”. Of course, nothing of the sort happened, and the only job losses which have been incurred were caused by the expansion of the EU and mass immigration - policies which the Tories wholeheartedly endorsed.
* At least Cameron knows how to protect his own: He has announced that he will not sack his embattled party chairman Caroline Spelman. The Tory leader will delay a decision on her fate until a sleaze probe is over — Spelman is facing allegations she used taxpayer-funded parliamentary allowances to pay for her nanny.
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The Tories have no interest in the welfare of the British people, they are a capitalist cabal who see the British people as no more than pawns on the capitalist board. The people are to be exploited, used, moved here and there on the whim of their banker friends to make the most money. Well your international plutocratic system is crashing and good riddance.
The only decent legislation passed in the eleven years of this shower is the minimum wage.Personally I think it should be £6.50 per hour and that income under £15,000 p.a should be tax free.
I’m patiently waiting for the Cons to wither on the vine.
Reading between the lines they are saying that they wish a poorer wage on poor people. Whilst the bankers recieve their golden goodbyes. I read that apple growers in Kent could not get anyone to pick this years crop. So even our new intake from Eastern Europe would rather not do the work on the minimum wage. Benifits will do for them. Next year we will be inporting apples from around the globe So much for global warming. All that fossil fuel getting them here. No doubt Cider will increase in price if the producers can get the apples to the presses. I cannot understand that Kent apple growers are in this position. Whilst on the Isle of Sheppey and in Maidstone and Canterbury Thousands of Prisoners sit idle waiting for their next meal.
I’m certain that some (at least) prisoners would jump at the chance of a change of scenery and some extra snout. But that sort of thinking goes against their Yuman rites doesn’t it.
Still under a Call me Dave administration a days work will probable only be worth a few cigarettes soon. Dave the Man with a Plan. “Starvation wages” Vote yourselves into the workhouse or vote BNP.
My table has a dent where i’m banging my head in frustration.. Stupidity has a new face. tell me again how this guy walks and breathes at the same time. Surely he has to be a medical wonder?
If they want to free up some cash I have some ideas:
Stop giving charitable aid to Africa from the Gov’t pocket, they wanted independence, let them have it.
I believe I’ve heard the figure £10 billion quoted before, but I can’t find a source on it, if anyone can find one I’d be much obliged.
Stop giving away so much money to people in the form of benefits when most of them don’t deserve it or are lying.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2008/08/12/100k-benefits-cheat-hid-money-under-mattress-115875-20693973/
Just one story about just such a person on a quick google search.
Stop wasting money on translators and make immigrants learn our native tongue.
http://bnp-chronicle.blogspot.com/2008/07/bnp-derby-city-council-spends-200000-on.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6172805.stm
Seems to me that that would be a lot of money freed up to go towards ensuring a minimum standard of life for good, decent, honest working people.
esselliott i agree totally!! Thankyou you have saved my sanity! There are people out there who have an IQ higher than the average tory and they are all on this site and voting the same way i am.
BNP!!!!!!!
Let’s hope this is widely publicized in the press, as I can’t see anything more likely to cause the downfall of Cameron’s CONservatives.
While I’m no fan of New Labour in the key areas we all understand, I do support the continuation of a minimum wage to prevent exploitation and provide self-respect to those on low incomes. Camerons proposals do not make sense, especially in context of the current financial fiasco and economic downturn. It would only increase frustration amongst millions struggling to cope with rising fuel and food costs. If Cameron wants to save money and help the environment then he ought to clamp down on immigration. And if the Tories have the attitude that they will allow the minimum wage to ‘wither o the vine’ it makes you suspcious of what else they will allow to wither.
The BNP should publicise this especially among young people, students and other vulnerable groups who the Old Etonian Jerk-circle are planning to use for slave labour.
agreed esselliott - scrapping the minimum wage is concrete proof that the Tories want to once again exploit the poor working class in favour of the aristocrats & the wealthy. it was only the tories who opposed the minimum wage when the idea was 1st banded about when they were last in power.
I understand though there are some employers out there still breaking the minimum wage laws through various loopholes that are not being bought to justice (such as those who pay less than minimum, but claim the short pay packets are going to balance out as the missing pay goes towards a bonus or some equity plan that never get honoured), so are labour any better?
A healthy economy produces plenty of employment opportunities and it is providing the climate for a healthy, sustainable and balanced economy which is the important thing.
Where there are plenty of jobs, employers have to offer a rate attractive enough to attract and retain staff. Currently this is partly undermined by the ability of employers to undercut British workers by employing immigrants and in turn by legitimate immigrants being undercut by illegals.
If you get the overall system right, with sensible immigration policies, manufacturing-friendly industrial policy, stable banking and housing sectors together with a fiscal policy which cuts down on waste and leaves people with more money in their own pockets then in a sense Cameron is right and the minimum wage becomes an irrelevance. The snag is, I don’t think Cameron’s current Tory party will actually get the overall system right!
Dave’s guiding “principle” is that government of the hedge funds, by the hedge funds, for the hedge funds, shall not perish from the earth. …apologies to Abe Lincoln for that.
In some ways the neo-liberal Tory faction of the liblabcoalition is the nastiest - they are certainly the most mean-spirited and money-grubbing; though they can’t really be considered Tories in the historic sense of the word, they are certainly not the party of Disraeli, Churchill and Powell. But Zanu are a bunch of control-freak, nation destroying malignants.
“Dave” is just going to be another, quite short-lived, hurdle to get over before we can bring the promise of a better day to our people.
How could this mug possibly know what it’s like to survive as the working classes, he’s a multi millionaire for gods sake, the only hardship he’s ever known was when his fois gras wasn’t cooked properly.
“Robin Harris, director of the Conservative Research Department under Mrs. Thatcher, who gave Cameron his first job, says: “I think that David Cameron is an out-and-out opportunist … I don’t believe that David Cameron believes anything.” He reveals that Cameron obtained his first job with the help of a phone call to Conservative Central Office from a Royal Equerry at the palace.”
http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/dispatches/cameron+toff+at+the+top/328047
ah Artorius, you mentioned the term “Slave labour” another “achievement” of the last Tory government.. i.e. useless “training” schemes where they were getting 16-18 year old’s doing a menial full time job that nobody wants to do for a “wage” of £30 a week (less than 80p per hour) + bus fare all called “YTS” (YTS = Youth Thatcherite Slavery) & a similar scheme more mature trainees doing similar schemes for £10 a week (around 25p per hour) added on top of their dole money wrapped up & called “Employment training” …all of course done in the basic name of juggling the unemployment figures around to fool the people that things like unemployment weren’t as bad as they seemed.
People of common sense said that the introduction of a minimum wage would be detrimental because everyone would find their wage and consequently their standard of living gradually reduced to that level, which is exactly what happened. Now practically everyone, myself included, is on minimum wage. A wage significantly LESS than I was earning a decade ago, but this was the whole idea of the minimum wage.
Sadly, the genie is out of the bottle and impossible to put back, so the only thing we can do is continue with the minimum wage but ensure it is set to, and maintained at, a most realistic level and not as Cameroon suggests let it gradually become as moribund as the con-servatives.
I’m sure Mr Cameron and his greedy paymasters would love to be able to allow the working rights of British workers to ‘fall’ to the standards seen in China, India and most other corrupt countries. Those countries allow their own people to be exploited, and I’m sure Mr Cameron & Co would not bat an eyelid if such conditions were allowed in Britain, as he would claim it’s being ‘competitive’.
Remember, the Tories will always put profit before the British working person, and by working person I mean anyone like me who works for a living regardless of their profession. Oh, and don’t expect any help from the TUC and the so-called Labour movement–they sold the working person down the river many years ago.
Do these polititians care about the working man? I think not. Cheap labour is the mantra of business corporations and the Lib/Lab/Con will do anything for their corporate masters. Skills, standards, quality, professionalism…they don’t give a fig.
Tell everyone, typical Tories. I remember an ‘Asian’ businessman writing to the ‘Times’ saying how his business folded because upon the introduction of the minimum wage he wasn’t allowed to pay slave wages any longer. Maybe my father is right & the Tories won’t get in. Unfortunately it will be more of the same with the present lot for the time being. People have to get the message: VOTE B.N.P.!
And yet Cameron bleats about poverty in the Third World, and that the Conservative Party would maintain Labour’s level of international aid. So there you have it - the Tories will continue to pour taxpayers’ money overseas while allowing the working poor in Britain to suffer a declining standard of living. Cheers Dave!
They closed the mines, privatised our national assets, and took higher taxes of us all than even Zanunulabour–and that is saying something!–so is this news surprising ? Of course not. Vote for this outfit and pensioners will probably have their bus passes disappear into the wide blue yonder as well. Do not be fooled–the only viable alternative for Britain and Britons is the BNP.
I guess the money they would save by doing this would be going into their pockets, which is why they are suggesting it.
Make no mistake. CAMERON, I believe, is feeling the effects of his habits during his youth. The people of this country must be made aware that this man refused to say if he used CANNABIS in his younger days which was alleged when he became the leader of the Conservative party. I asked my Con party MP if he did or did not and did not get an answer from him, so it is a fair bet that he did use cannabis and that is what I choose to believe. It is a proven medical fact that to use CANNABIS can result in MENTAL problems sometime later and it is therefore DANGEROUS to have this man as leader of his party, let alone as Prime Minister. Some may say that he has lost it already with some of the things he says and does.
Check out this lot - the Media Standards Trust. It is a ‘foundation’ which, on reading its true intent, wishes to control the news. It is supported by Common Purpose. The reason why I post it on this thread is that Robert Peston,Gordon Brown’s placeman as BBC Business Correspondent, has links to this body.
http://www.mediastandardstrust.org/home.aspx
Nulab is deliberately undermining the banks in order that the blame for the disgraceful indebtedness of our people and country can be shouldered by them and not Gordon Brown. The BBC spreads rumours at Brown’s behest which reduces the market value thus permitting cheap nationalisation of banking and finance a la Karl Marx, and all Cameron can do is abolish the minimum wage. Note that Gordon Brown wrote a thesis on a Fife Marxist who was his hero. I’m sure that Brown would now be any Marxist’s hero.
We must keep this information in the news as the Con Men want exposing. The Conservative Party is just as dangerous as Labour.
I support the Minimum wage too. Members of my family, (All BNPers) are on it. Don’t know how they would manage if the minimum wage was undermined by the Tories. The Tories have ALWAYS been contemptuous of Working Class people. The BNP is the ONLY party that cuts across the phoney “class barriers”. I support social justice, and a classless society.That’s why i joined the BNP!
OUR TIME IS COMING!
The Conmen aren’t yet as dangerous as Nulab to the working people of this country - but only because they’re not yet in power. However, I must disagree with Ian above: no matter how disdainful Cameron may be of our working class, he comes nowhere near Mandelson, the Millibands, Hodge, Cruddas et al.
The minimum wage is a tricky one.
The whole concept of its removal is that it allows labour markets to clear, i.e. everyone has a useful output and is demanded at some price level, it is economically inefficient to have people under employed.
However, currently labour has been playing it both ways, exposing Britain to third world labour market prices and significantly increasing the minimum rate well above this third world rate.
With the recession, we will have mass unemployment. So they have a huge dilemma, drop the minimum wage or accept lots of unemployment benefits payments for no economic output.
Labour till now have got away with their devious little plan, as when they let jobs go to third world countries they continually mopped up with inflating the public sector (In basically non productive red tape jobs).
Once upon a time they could go all Keynesian and invest in large public infrastructure works… but now that would likely be sucked up with Eastern European labour and Chinese steel etc (You get the drift, there isn’t a 1:1 relationship anymore).
Seriously, the only way to restore lots of blue collar type work is to deny influxes of foreign labour and bring back competencies to actually build and maintain British infrastructure. Like say building Nuclear power plants etc etc.
I personally think we will be rapidly seeing the emergence of structural unemployment in the blue collar sector that will become a permanent feature unless we take back our industries.
So Cameron’s plans for Britain is to take us into Depression. An ever decreasing spiral of unemployment and decreasing spending power, fall in growth and so more unemployment. Therefore I suggest he reads John Maynard Keynes. Rather than decreasing the minimum wage he should double it. This will stimulate the market, increase employment, increase growth and then should increase wages, an upward spiral. This was good enough to bring the world out of the last depression and as I always say history repeats itself. Cameron the buffoon is too inept to see the obvious and I suspect his enclave too cowardly to tell him.
Yes I understand their plan!
This will make the employment of cultural enrichers even easier.
They will be the only ones who will work for such a pittance.
Simple, wipe out those nasty British workers at a stroke, and encourage multicultural diversity and all it’s “benefits”!!
Common Purpose?
One thing people don’t realise is that while the Labour government pumped the public sector with cash it also kept on increasing the minimum wage rate which in turn consumed quite a bit of that. People would be surprised to see how many public sector workers are on minimum wage.
Secondly, as the government pumped the public sector, many employees got themselves placed on a higher grade, The problem with this is that each year there is an automatic increment uplift (Up to 4-5 increments) and each increment is worth around 4-5%. So, large numbers of public sector workers started getting automatic 7% wage uplifts per annum (4-5% + Inflation) and couple that with final salary pensions and that’s a huge pile of money.
For all the money Labour has spent on the public sector has schools or hospitals actually got any better? No.
Letting the minimum wage ‘wither on the vine’ is a good idea, because in a productive, efficient market economy with - and this is the important bit - NO mass immigration, it will cease to be a relevance. As employers need to find labour, and as that pool of labour is not ever increasing, they will HAVE to pay their workers more. So it ‘withers’ in a good way. An ahead of his time monetarist like Enoch would have had no time for it, that’s certain.
I stopped listening to anything that came out of David Cameron’s mouth when he said that he was ‘the heir to Blair’ and then led the Tory Party in a standing ovation when Blair left the House of Commons for the last time. How anyone can want to emulate and applaud the worst Prime Minister in our history is beyond me - but I believe that these 2 things show the state of Cameron’s mind and that of his Party.
Of course, it is clear what Cameron and his Party intend for the working people of this Country. Let the Minimum Wage ‘wither on the vine’, import millions more from the Third World who will do any job for a pittance (they are the only ones who will put up with living 50 to a 3 bedroom house) and then watch the Business Owners get unbelievably rich. Those Business Owners can then donate some of their riches to the Conservative Party, in return of course for the obligatory Peerage, and everything is hunky dory.
Except of course, if you don’t happen to belong to the ‘Ruling Class’ and have the misfortune to belong to the indigenous working class - then you are going to be pretty much stuffed!
Another point is that the Minimum Wage had to be introduced to make a clear difference between earned income and benefits. When the wages that a working person takes home fall below what they would receive in Benefits if they were unemployed, you have a difficult time convincing people about the ‘joys’ of working.
Me and my mate came out of work over a year ago, 2 months ago we were put on a `new deal` scheme which i refused to go on, he now works 39 hours a week for £1.53 an hour!
I decided it would be preferable to labour on the black market economy paying no tax or national insurance for £30 a day.
Decent hard working tax-payers may find that unacceptable, but there`s no way i`m working for this system for £1.53 an hour!
As the credit crunch/recession kicks in further and unemployment rises, these schemes are going to enslave the British people!
The Tories are traditionally a party of the middle classes, well I`ve got news for Cameron, those `middle classes` are about to vanish!
Tommy - “Seriously, the only way to restore lots of blue collar type work is to deny influxes of foreign labour and bring back competencies to actually build and maintain British infrastructure. Like say building Nuclear power plants etc etc.”
Lot of interesting stuff in your post. Keynesian approach would certainly seem to be very problematical because they have effectively bankrupted the state, another £50 billions for the banksters as of this morning. Giving that liblabcon has got us into the position of laundering bad debts for money lenders I doubt that it will be very long before the State itself loses its credit-worthiness.
The propensity for the deindustrialised, hollowed out UK economy to suck in imports is alarming; that is a killer problem in terms of reflation - as is the very poor educational and training set up and the long-term unwillingless of British finance capital to invest in training.
We have been comprehensively asset-stripped and are running with about half a gallon in the tank. The “replacement” of manufacturing by public sector employment has been disasterous in the greater scheme of things. There has to be a whole-sale shake-out and re-deployment here, painful though that will undoubtedly be.
“Enrichment” has very largely been upon the basis of an allegedly highly successful economy. “Vibrance” in the economy was supposedly matched by “vibrant” multi-culturalism. Both were of course an utter lie; but the economic part of this has now imploded; and can’t be avoided any longer. There will therefore need to be a similar coming to terms with the disasterous effect of mass immigration, which essentially means halting and then reversing the flow.
To give ourselves a chance of escaping the consequences of treason and folly Nick is calling for a mobilisation of national resources, in a way absolutely unprecedented in peace-time. He is absolutely right to do so.
Stringbag and Tommy make some interesting points.
The truth is that we never had a boom during NuLabour’s tenure. What we had was rampant asset price inflation which banks took as security to lend against. (Part of this was the immigrant demand for housing outstripping supply) ‘Secured’ debts were at relatively cheap rates and people were encouraged to borrow, fuelling a consumer spending excess. In the short term the banks and retailers made increased profits and everyone felt good as they bought their latest imported goods. Tax revenues on all this spending also gave the government a (temporarily) generous revenue stream, which in true Labour tradition they largely squandered.
Now, however, the chickens are coming home to roost. ‘Hollow’ is indeed the correct term.
We need to enter a period of structural readjustment which will be painful. The replacement of manufacturing with the public sector is Labour’s worst legacy. We lost some of our manufacturing base during the Thatcher years but one could at least argue that what remained was leaner and fitter and competitive. These fit industries should have been the basis for an expansion of our manufacturing capacity. Labour wasted the opportunity.
This manufacturing base is now perilously small and it needs urgent nurturing. The public sector can never be relied upon to run industry efficiently. It never has in any country in the history of the world. What we need is to encourage private investment in UK industrial capacity and one of the primary roles of a better government would be to encourage this culture.
In response to Agentiron’s post:
“I decided it would be preferable to labour on the black market economy paying no tax or national insurance for £30 a day.”
That is what the ‘great’ Gordon Brown and his cronies just don’t get. The higher the tax and compulsory National Insurance rates are (and National Insurance is just another tax), the more people will avoid paying it, with the result that less flows into the Treasury coffers. High Tax rates are self defeating.
Just like the Tax on cigarettes. When such a huge chunk of the price is taken by the Government in tax, more and more people find it cheaper to travel to Belgium and load up their car with cigarettes, than to buy them here. Some of these people then sell their ‘excess’ to friends, relatives and workmates. The result being ever more decreasing Tax revenues. Set the tax level at the same, or just above, the rates payable in other European countries, and every smoker will buy their cigarettes here - therefore paying tax to our Treasury. If the French, Belgian, and Spanish governments (plus all the others) can get enough tax revenues with the low tax rates charged on Cigarettes - why can’t ours? Could it be because their governments don’t throw the revenue away like ours do?
‘Prudent’ Gordon Brown and his cronies don’t get it because none of them have ever had a job in the private sector - the one where you have to make a profit to survive - and they are all from the ranks of the liberal elite, where it seems to be a firm belief that you just have to wish for it hard enough, and it magically happens. In short, they live in la-la land where all immigrants are highly skilled and have the demeanour of saints, no one has to worry about silly things like feeding their family or paying their rent, criminals are of course simply poor ‘misunderstood’ victims, and somehow this country is so huge that we can find room, jobs and food for ALL the Worlds excess population.
The complete mess that we find ourselves and our Country in is all a result of the population of this country buying into the La-La land dream and allowing these people to run our country, when in all truth, they couldn’t run a Market Stall successfully. Even Tony Benn stated that Gordon Brown couldn’t run a corner shop - this when Gordon Brown was our Chancellor and running the finances of the country!
My prediction still stands. Within 3 months of office Call-Me-Dave will be more unpopular than Gordon Brown. If I’m wrong, I will start taking the Tories seriously and consider giving them my vote. I’m not going to be wrong.