[urlhttp://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/06/19/conservative-young-people-welfare-reform-_n_3463663.html?utm_hp_ref=uk[/url

[urlhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/jun/18/conservatives-win-generation-y-older-voters[/url

There are contradictions in both of those news articles and the whole story is a great example of spinning a news story in that the large poll of under-33 year olds actually shows that the majority of them would support Labour at the next election - but putting that to one side and sticking with the headline story, why is it that the under-33's, so named "Generation Y" (why?), are increasingly supporting David Cameron and specifically (apparently) his welfare reform policies ?

Its also reflected, I believe, in opinions on this very forum too in that the most staunch of Tory supporters tend to be of a younger age group - that is if you believe that some of them are real people and not just the mentally challenged who get some sort of hard-on by pretending to be something they are not whilst online (it happens).

Whilst the poll may show an increase I don't really think its that surprising at all really, there are several reasons why the young may accept the sometimes very deliberate and often vile propaganda spread by the current coalition to justify their cost cutting exercises...

1. Younger people tend (generalisation coming) to be far less cynical than those with a few more years on their backs, when a government tells you that billions of pounds of taxpayers money is spent every year on shirkers who don't want to work and who have not worked for three generations, then it takes a drop of cynicism to ask the question "Really ? Can you show me that ?", to still believe it so when some of these lies are exposed as such is baffling, but there we are.

2. The article is true in that younger people don't get the same level of government support, they are currently completely ignored in the lines of the unemployed as collateral damage, a price worth paying, they don't get the same levels of job seekers allowance or other benefits whilst unemployed and the national minimum wage for under 20s or for apprentices is frankly a national disgrace - there is no opportunity at all for most young people to get out into the real world from their own efforts and living at home with parents and hoping for something to turn up in Mr McAwber style is their only option, hardly surprising that they don't see the concept of a society or a welfare system.

3. The young (generalisation coming) have no concept of welfare spending and in this I include healthcare, pensions and education - your average 21 year old will have what they feel is a huge amount of money currently in their debit account via the Student Loan Company and if not probably only avoided that because they didn't want to owe circa £20k - your average 18 year old today is facing at least a £50k debt for further education - hardly surprising that they believe that they aren't getting any support from the state for education (conveniently ignoring the thirteen years they got from 5 to 1icon_cool.gif and they certainly won't have any future offspring in mind of their own at which time they will need support from the NHS and education system.

They also have no concept of retirement or the need for a pension, this is the generation that are being told that they will have no state pension, hardly surprising that they have no sympathy for anyone who is expecting to draw one soon, a pension which they will be paying for but not entitled to.


Given all of that its natural that your average sub-33 year old has the impression that they are an independant unit, they should be fit and healthy still, have probably never needed the NHS for anything other than those few alcohol poisoning nights, won't be getting a pension but will be paying for other peoples, have paid for their own education (well, sort of), and are naive enough to swallow whole the line of thinking that states that anyone who draws any sort of benefit is a scrounger and worthy of their scorn and vilification.

I probably thought the same way 30 years ago too.

I think this post taken from the comments section of the guardian article you link to is very pertinent:

[iI think you're right about the influence of the media, I recently had a 21 year old student nurse on placement for a couple of months, lovely person, great attitude with our client group, good laugh etc, her attitude to people on benefits stank to high heaven and she was quite supportive of the Tory approach to social security, after I'd furnished her with the actual facts and where to find out for herself, she was stunned that IDS / the Tories are allowed to get away with repeatedly spewing out lies, needless to say she won't be voting for them. Just a shame I haven't got time to get round all of em! I think it's a combination of spin and lies from the media, and no disrespect to younger people (I myself am 40) but at 21 I don't think you've had much real life experience, my attitudes definitely softened as I've got older, I don't think I considered things as much at 21 and things were a bit black and white[/i

It's been a government tactic from day one to adopt the tactic of if you tell a lie often enough people will believe you in my opinion. The above anecdote would tend to support that and it seems effective.

I agree the tone of the articles is odd given even at 20% support up from 10% I can't see how that equates to "winning" generation Y. They have another 31% to go before that can be said.

There are other issues as well for the Tories though. In the same way Mitt Romney faced a demographic problem with latino voters so Cameron will with ethnic minorities here. They don't all live in Bradford or Birmingham now.

If social history was a compulsory subject in the curriculum, maybe we'd see more young people understanding why the welfare state came into existence at all.

I don't know whether it was strictly part of the curriculum but I remember covering the welfare state at school (I'm 22).

As for the original post, I am finding myself in an ever shrinking minority amongst my friends as someone who sticks up for the welfare system. It annoys me when people brazenly won't work because they know they can rely on benefits but 90% of people aren't like this. It also doesn't help that much of the country is still massively racist and can't bare the thought that some of their hard earned money is going to help someone with darker skin than theirs.

Thats also another interesting point and its not always down to skin colour either - note the massive hysteria being generated (possibly deliberately) by the media at the moment about Bulgaria and Romania and the way they are presenting their citizens as being in the "shirkers" group rather than "strivers".

It shouldn't surprise me but it always does that the sort of people who openly spout racist language about indiscriminate nationalities usually follow up with something like "Oh yes I went to school with loads of afro/carribean/asian/Polish kids, they were great lads, but..." in other words the most common form of racism in in peoples minds is the anonymous racism targeted by the media which often fails to translate into personal experiences.

There's a jarring great pile of hypocrisy coming from the right of UK politics about immigration from new EU countries.

Those who uproot their families to come here from Bulgaria, Romania etc are doing exactly what the right wing media in the UK seem to think British unemployed should be doing - getting off their backsides and considering relocating to where the work is in order to better themselves.

Ah but, those Romanian and Bulgarian sorts, they're just coming here to claim on our benefits aren't they ?

Does anyone ever hear a bad word to be said about Poles and Lithuanians now, a few years after the invasion of "all these bloody former soviet bloc countries" and the realisation now through working alongside many of them that actually the reason they come here is to work hard and earn money rather than shirk, the realisation that many of them are more highly educated than UK citizens, the realisation that most of us would be like a rabbit in headlights if we were dropped into a foreign country and told to learn the language and find accommodation and a job to pay for it all, and the realisation that actually the shirking targets usually turn out to be UK born citizens ?

Careful. While I agree with your assessment of the people who come here generally being keen to work your statement "..that actually the shirking targets usually turn out to be UK born citizens" could of come right from the lips of IDS.

So easy to slip into the language of the coalition even unintentionally!

Although I think there is a lot of BS spoken and written about immigration into the UK particularly surrounding benefits there are issues. My wife works in a nursery school and while there are very few Eastern European immigrants in Chester there has been an increase and schools do find it hard to cope. The kids often don't speak English and the parents struggle sometimes as well. This puts a lot of pressure on already stretched schools. School results can suffer and then you have the dept of education calling you a failing school and you must become an academy etc. I suppose what I am trying to say is while these people coming over for benefits is a joke the fact they don't do that doesn't mean there are not other genuine issues that need addressing.

They come over here and work and then pay tax & NI. If the government of the day cannot apportion financial and human resource to address the situations you describe, then I'd blame the government of the day. [size=30Mind you, I do tend to blame them for most things[/size

Quite true and you might be forgiven for thinking that the forced switch to "private" academy status is a nice little by-product and not at all opposed to one of the current regime's goals by the time 2015 comes around, so let them in and lets fail some more schools !

I was at a nursery school last week in a very deprived area on t'other side of the Pennines installing some of our software when the conversation with the owner turned to their current high rate of business - because they are classed as being in the highest category of deprivation the families there are entitled to an increased level of free nursery care per week and this particular nursery has high ratings with the local council and so is attracting lots of new business, they are fully enrolled for the next 12 months from 2 years of age upwards.

Their main problem is as you indicated above, the main bulk of their intake are asian and at 2 years of age the children have barely been exposed to English at all let alone as a first language so part of the nursery's KPI is the teaching of English as a second language to nursery school children - and they are assessed on this too !

The owner was only slightly joking when she then went on to say that the young girls that they are taking on as apprentices from the local college who are taking courses in childcare also have language problems, but most of them are 16 and 17 year old English girls who don't speak the same "style" of English that the council inspectors are looking for ! She was laughing when she said it but was also despairing of the number of trainees they received on work experience who were English as a first language but barely coherent and who could only write in text abbreviations believing that to be English.

I'm starting to sound like an old git now - when I left school to start work in an office I'd never used a telephone up to that point

But the 2.6m unemployed in this country means that there clearly isn't the work here.

They are not here because the work is here, they are here because the rewards for working here are significantly higher than the rewards for working in their country.

Your second point is certainly true but your first point is a bit more complex than what you state.

There is work available, there are vacancies in every job centre and certainly in every job agency in town, the problem is that in an "employers market" there is no need for commitment and short term contracts or zero hour contracts are the norm now, as is minimum wage rates and location flexibility.

All of which is fine if you are newly arrived from another country and the minimum wage is double what you would expect in your old country (not the case now with the first wave of immigrants from the Baltic regions), and more importantly you can locate anywhere and relocate at a days notice, if you have no children to find schools for and no family ties with anywhere then you will always find work anywhere you choose to stick a pin in a map.

The bulk of the unemployed do not have that flexibility and you do get to a point where you are trapped into having to find a job in your locality - at worse on a bus route (good luck with that outside London) and at best economically viable to drive the distance (ESJ's now recommend seeking work up to 30 miles distant, car or no car).

It's not that simple is it. They could chuck money at it tomorrow and it doesn't mean there is the infrastructure in place and where does it stop? How many different foreign languages are lessons to be offered in or how many different kinds of language teachers are to be employed in each school to cater for arrivals from different countries?

I am certain school are left to flounder financially when having to deal with an influx of migrants but there are practical issues as well.

Spot on.
It is the much-acclaimed "flexible job market" upon which HMG prides itself ... and wants to make even more flexible with even fewer protections for the employee.
Custom designed to be undercut by recent entrants to the EU.

one thing to remember though, most EU citizens speak and write English to a good standard (it could be argued, better than many posting on here)and yet few "English" people have more than a "conversational" second language.

Christ.

Have the cast of "Cocoon" woken up?

Anyone got a spare Werthers?

I worked in Madrid for nearly a year and picked up the language for use outside of the office quite quickly.
Granted, the project's official language was English but my Spanish colleagues knew that I was keen to use Spanish wherever possible. Nonetheless I'm certain my grasp of the language would have accelerated if I'd had to use Spanish more in the office.
Ditto with working in Germany.

So, your point is accurate, I couldn't have started on a Spanish-speaking job without better Spanish language skills and I actually failed a German interview for another job there where the project language was German as it was too hard work (quite understandably) for the interviewer to simplify his German for me.
If I'd been better prepared, I reckon I'd have stood a really good chance of that job as I was very experienced in all the other skills required, indeed the guy was in a bit of a dilemma whether to give me the job despite the language shortfall but, to be honest, I'd have struggled with the scoping and planning meetings early in the project.

It's not actually difficult to learn another language but if you don't know (as I did but many don't) what a verb is or a noun, even in English, you're going to have to learn that at the same time, which makes progress that much slower.

On the other hand, a large part of the rest of the world tends to use English as a sort of Esperanto second language, which does make us a little lazy.

Yes, we're back ... and this time sit up and listen.

Was racism ever about skin colour? I mean, in the colonial days of the United States - which came first: the need for lebensraum or hatred of the native population? the need for vast reserves of cheap labour to harvest cotton or the Klan?

Far too often people get wrapped up with skin colour and forget that there is almost always a rational basis to racism which is linked to wealth and power.

It's interesting to look at the racial targeting of drug laws in the United States to understand how racism is economically motivated. Take opium and the Chinese for instance. The use of opium in medicine and recreation pre-dates Columbus' arrival. Aside from church activists there really wasn't a great deal of opposition to it. Similarly, no-one cared all that much when Chinese immigrants first arrived to help construct America's vast railroad network. It was extremely hazardous work in tough conditions for minimal reward. American workers thought the Chinese were out of their minds and even the media wondered whether it was a hopeless pipe-dream. But despite the corruption, attacks by native Indians and a shocking death toll the railroads were completed and suddenly there was a glut of cheap Chinese labour competing for jobs Americans most definitely didn't want to lose. It was at this point - not before - when being Asian became a problem. Facing a storm of protest which threatened to get out of control (particularly in California and Colorado) state prosecutors found a way to legislate against a specific race by targeting the one activity which impacted most severely upon the Chinese - opium usage.

Take any of the major recreational drugs and look at how legislation against such was very often defined within a sectarian context.