Bloody foreigners, coming over here, stealing our jobs, speaking their native tongue together, on the rare times they are on the same shift, let alone on opposite tills, causing you to be put-out, to be offended, to act racist, even when you aren’t; bloody foreigners.

Hang on, he never said they were foreign…

My mrs spent 2 years studying mime in Paris with Jacque Lecoq…

Is that a euphemism?

bidy language

Now you’re being ageist!

Ive not stated what language or where they may have been from for the record as I don’t know so I can’t comment .

Sorry, thought that’s what your poppadoms reference was about.

Would it bother you if they were two white people speaking french, or German? Or two geeks speaking Klingon? Or were you annoyed because they were Asian?

Is this racist?
.
.
.
.
I’m far from racist so please don’t go down that road.

You’ve asked a question, then denied us the opportunity to answer it!

Are you asking if they were being racist?

Because they were talking?

Reverse the situation. You’re English, you live and work in Spain and your English colleague asks you something in English, does it matter if you respond in English or Spanish?

No, it does not.

I’d say it was pretty unprofessional to be chatting (regardless of the language used) whilst serving a customer, but then how professional do you expect a checkout attendant to be?

Does a flounce still make a noise, even if no-one’s around to hear it?

Death – Leprosy

In order to sack her for misconduct, the school would have to prove misconduct. If she has been ill, then there is no misconduct. If, however, her illness affects her capability to carry out her job to the standards set out in her job description, there may be a case for ill health retirement. Given your description, I doubt the latter applies. I’ve had a few health issues this last year and I got one of them “attendance management” meetings where I was threatened with a written warning. I got my boss to say in a minuted meeting that he believed all my sickness to be genuine, then he had to admit that a written warning would not be appropriate. They’ve pretty much left me alone since then.

Wouldn’t want that failing on a fast descent.

I think you’ve got the right attitude, OP.
Plenty of people got their pitchforks out for Social Workers when Baby P died, but then a lot of the same people cry like babies when Social Workers act on reported concerns.

Yes, it’s shit when someone reports you and it can be terrifying when a Social worker rings up or knocks the door, but they’ve got a job to do.
I’ve looked after children in care and spent a lot of time with the sorts of families who have their children taken away. Untidy houses and alcohol would not even get a social worker out of bed, but the bruises require at least a phone call, just to tick the box.

Now all you need to do is find out who shopped you and wee in their shoes…

I don’t know nearly enough about Trek’s recruitment, its policies, the diversity of its workforce or the demand/need for more women in this area to have an opinion.

However, as a white heterosexual male I think it’s great that society became equal when we gave them the vote a century ago. I am rightly threatened by any such scheme which may expose or diminish my privileged position in society. Therefore this is as bad as Hitler. Worse, even.

Next day tyres?

My wife’s a better driver and parker than me and she gets better mpg. Can’t navigate for shit though, but I don’t think that’s because she’s a woman.

Don’t tell her I said this.

Yes neilsonwheels!

‘ardcore til I die baby!

AAAAARRRRGGGGHHHHHHH

not a set, just a track, but

Oh

My

God!

What a track!

Avalon Emerson – The Frontier

Everytime I hear people talking about “work setting you free” etc.. I just keep wondering what are we going to do when we run out of work??

Because of this very issue, more and more people from all sides of the political spectrum are starting to take the idea of a basic income guarantee rather seriously.

Coyote, there’s nothing “tongue in cheek” about such imagery. If people are prepared to use such strong imagery to score points in a discussion then they should be prepared for the inevitable reaction of people to such strong imagery.

Don’t get me wrong, Kimbers, things like sure start were a bloody great idea, but without wider reforms of the labour market, were unable to be anything more that a plaster. Rather than giving people the confidence, opportunity and optimism to build a better future as part of a comprehensive and holistic package of anti-poverty and labour measures, they just became one more thing to keep the poor artificially suspended above the worst poverty, creating a dependence at odds with people’s wider needs, ultimately feeding the idea in government and wider society that the poor are an expense rather than a potential asset.

Wow, this really got out of hand, didn’t it?

Look, lets go back to the OP. This demonisation of the poor and promotion of low skilled service jobs is not about nasty Tories. This has been a consensus since the early 80’s. Yes, Labour threw a load of money at poor people to put a plaster over working poverty, but did nothing to tackle the root causes.

The zero hours contract thing. My wife is a regional manager for a large care provider. Without zero hours contracts half of her care services would not be able to operate. Believe it or not, some people like the flexibility of a zero hours contract. I agree, they are massively overused, have been used to manipulate unemployment figures and have allowed certain large organisations to “cheat” the employment system to some degree. But to ban them outright would do great damage to certain areas and is not going to solve the problem.

But as usual, people want to reduce everything down to simple explanations and find easy things to blame. Be that nasty Tories or spendy Labour.

This polarisation and entrenchment needs to stop, it is masking the fact that the people at the top never change no matter who we put in “power”, why do you think that is?
Is is because our tribal identities are based on falsehoods? A deception by those in power to give us the illusion of participation while they keep all the money for themselves.

Yes, there is good news in the fact that more people have jobs than last month, but we also need to look deeper into those numbers and appreciate that there are millions of people not benefiting from being in work and that the success of a society should be measured by more than a simple set of figures manipulated to suit the needs of those in power, whoever they are.

I think we’re a long way from Auschwitz, that is a ridiculous analogy, but it does make sure that your “enemies” are suitably dehumanised. Do you not see how your use of such imagery is quite ironic?

There’s little there I can disagree with.

since most agree that work is the best route out of poverty. But there have been no posts on that topic.

I bet the 3 million working poor in Britain might not agree.

I am excite.

Isn’t neo-liberalism great? All at each others throats so divide and conquer can prevail for the haves in our society.

Indeed…

Or to put it another way, we are all so busy worrying about how many are cheating the system that we don’t notice how many the system cheats.

From the ONS

There were around 3 million people in in-work poverty in 2013. This meant their household income (adjusted for household size and composition) was below the poverty threshold and were in employment themselves. The ten per cent of households with the lowest disposable income spent an average of £196 a week in 2013. Of this, half (£98) was spent on food and non-alcoholic drinks, transport, housing (including net rent), and household fuel and power.

As for out of work people claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance and Universal Credit, there were 760,200 people claiming these benefits in January 2016. This number has decreased by 11.2% compared with a year earlier.

I think looking at employment/unemployment figures alone is pointless. Yes, more people are in employment than ever before. That is a tiny part of the story. Three million working people in poverty?
That’s three million people who are NOT BENEFITING from being in a working family.
This narrative that, once someone has a job, everything is fine is nonsense.

£44 billion goes on family benefits, income support and tax credits. This includes benefits such as child benefit and support for people on low income. Around £3.5 billion goes to the unemployed.

I would suggest that poorly paid jobs are costing the taxpayer far more than unemployment. Are we subsidising the unemployed or employers who don’t want to pay their staff enough to live off.

So yeah, great news, unemployment is down.

Let’s have a **** party!

I’m not a lefty hand wringer but reductionist arseholes might call me one. I don’t know, I don’t control how others view me.

If I was to give myself a title (which I avoid, as philosophy should evolve with one’s experiences and understanding) I would probably call myself a green libertarian with anarchist/localist leanings.

But you will probably just see that as being a lefty hand wringer, because you’re coming across as the sort of person that calls everyone who isn’t the same as you a lefty hand wringer.

Which is fine, I don’t care, I’ll still be your friend.

What I do know is that if I don’t get my flaccid, tasteless slice of veggie bacon every morning I’m just going to have to invade Czechoslovakia, such is my omnivorous passion. 😉

Incomparable to fake bacon made to appease vegetarian sensibilities and omnivore desires.

Wow, that is quite a loaded sentence.

Inevitably, one day, we’ll be able to grow “meat” from stem cells in big vats (not too dissimilar to quorn, I guess). It won’t have been anywhere near an animal, apart from it will, technically, be flesh. Would you eat it?

When there’s plenty of existing food on the planet to feed everyone, why on earth would we need to grow meat from stem cells?
I get it, it will probably have a smaller footprint than current meat, but it will probably be pretty expensive, so limited to a small number of customers, therefore not particularly sustainable as a food source.
Also, way too much money is invested in the current systems of agriculture, which have been monopolised to such a point that the political lobbyists would soon put a stop to anything that threatens their profits, as this sort of thing might.
Long answer, but no, I would not eat it, as, for me, being vegan is about more than animal welfare.

Don’t be afraid of silence, take your time before answering questions.

Had a mk1 eunos roadster for 2 years. A hoot to drive, will regret selling it for the rest of my adult life.

but certainly no obsese vegans

Not fully vegan yet (but getting there), I am definitely obese but have lost some weight lately. Not veggie/vegan for health reasons but if I lose a bit of weight as a result I won’t be upset about it.

Skittles are nice though, especially the big bags…

Toys, you’re my kind of meat eater. 🙂

That looks like more fun than a fun thing.

No. But they didn’t turn up to the remembrance day service yesterday and start shouting about how great killing lions was.

So do what you like, be as cruel as you like, just don’t talk about it near the war memorial?

Seriously?

Not excusing the particular lady’s behaviour, it is obviously not a cool thing to do, maybe she needs some psychiatric help or counselling or something.
Or maybe she feels that that’s the only forum she’s got.
After all, the fox hunters have the government’s ear.
The shonky slaughterhouses keep getting away with it, there’s no real sanctions for the crimes they commit.
Oh, and the last guy, well, who’s behaviour caused more outrage internationally, his or the annoying local vegan shouty lady?

Some meat eaters really are ****!

Is she more of a **** than the people who want to ride around the countryside watching packs of abused dogs ripping wild animals to bits?

Is she more of a **** than the people who committed all these crimes?
4000 breaches of animal welfare laws

Is she more of a **** than this guy?

Most people who eat meat would be horrified to be associated with these sorts of people based purely on them having only one thing in common.

So carry on, lets keep playing **** bingo, I bet you’ll run out of **** before I do.