Preparedness for when

Karmacat

thriftwizard wrote: »

I find it quite alarming how far worker's rights have been eroded in the last 30-odd years. Not just worker's rights, either; our right to be seen to protest about all sorts of things has just about vanished. Internet petitions are just a safety valve; you think you're doing something positive, and they'll look or sound as if they're responding, then sneak the thing through as soon as public opinion's looking the other way.

..... Our legal system has almost invisibly swung hugely in favour of landowners, landlords & employers; I'm not saying that they shouldn't have rights, but that there should be a right to reasonable debate, & a right to protest when things clearly are unfair, unwise or being imposed with no knowledge of local conditions or other considerations.

Thank heavens you wrote that, thriftwizard. There are so many tales of utterly horrendous practices, its obvious just from this thread, let alone from the newspapers and websites we read, that this is a systemic problem. Someone mentioned the erosion of the unions? Yep.

When we've been reading in the papers recently about the transfer of wealth towards the 1%, this is what it means.

My own history is maybe anomalous: I'm a little bit younger than the oldest here - graduated in 1976, and that feeling of "you can always get a job" had gone by then. And I became ambitious, after my engagement broke down, and put in at least an hour a day or so, extra unpaid (just an office admin job). By the early 1980s, I'd moved on from finance and I was working in management in a national charity - it was common for me to spend the whole of Sunday travelling by train to our furthest-flung schemes and never take the day in lieu, and take no compensation for living away from everyone I knew for a week at a time. And it was a charity's money I was spending, so I didn't eat in restaurants all that much, either, I used to go to the chill cabinet of a supermarket. Needed a hot meal every now and then though.

This system is slowly killing itself, basically ...

GreyQueen

Bedsit_Bob wrote: »

What if you don't do social media?

But you're HERE and this is arguably social media.

But I get what you mean, you won't find me of FaceAche or the rest. One of my pals was pulled up by his management (private company) for posting on social media whilst off sick. He was housebound and bored witless, not like he was posting about gallivanting around the countryside.

By their reckoning, if you can update FB you were well enough to be at work. The logical progression being, if you're well enough to make a phone call to a friend, you're well enough to work, yadda yadda yadda.

In the modern world, people who are willfully disconnected from FaceFart etc are clearly anarchists, libertarians and probably ter'rists and should be on somebody's watch list.

If anyone needs to know, I'm eating banana cake, having a cuppa and a break between chores. I'll be overthrowing the present order of society commencing 14.00 if anyone would like to join the revolution. Should be done and dusted by 19.00 and then we can go to the pub for a couple of shandies and a pkt of pork scratchings.

Karmacat

GreyQueen wrote: »

If anyone needs to know, I'm eating banana cake, having a cuppa and a break between chores. I'll be overthrowing the present order of society commencing 14.00 if anyone would like to join the revolution. Should be done and dusted by 19.00 and then we can go to the pub for a couple of shandies and a pkt of pork scratchings.

Excellent! Make mine a half of bitter ale, and you're on :j

moneyistooshorttomention

I do tend to agree there, ie re the system "killing itself". I sometimes wonder how I would manage if I had to "start over" again.

Things didn't go according to plan as it was, but that was basically because I never found the man I wanted to marry and life IS much harder financially when single.

However, I wouldn't be that sure it would go "according to plan" these days even if I did get married, ie two of us to pay for everything. In fact, given the available options, then for someone like myself (ie whose brain doesn't turn in the direction of the type of thing that will be well-paid, eg no maths skills at all for instance) then I think there's at least a 50/50 chance I would have no option but to drop out basically (despite being a fairly conventional person) and try and get together with likeminded others in a "back to the land" type commune. That looks a good deal like hard physical work (ie not my type of work then:rotfl:) but, given the other options on the table, I tend to think it would have been the "lesser of two evils".

Of course, if I'd been born beautiful (rather than just attractive) and with less idealism as to who to marry, then there would be Eternal Option of "marry money" (but then I had that option anyway and turned it down, courtesy of the idealism and a good dose of commonsense...:cool:).

I honestly don't know realistically what reasonable options there are for younger people these days...no wonder so many of them have unrealistic dreams of being "discovered for a Life of Fame and Fortune".:cool:

GreyQueen

Karmacat wrote: »

Excellent! Make mine a half of bitter ale, and you're on :j

Excellent. See you at 2 pm.

fuddle

Ah yes, Sunday afternoon drinking at the WMC. That was acceptable when I was a kid, growing up in a mining village. Dad worked Saturday mornings and relaxed on Saturday evening. He and my mam went out the the WMC that night too. Life as a kid back then was hanging around at home while the grown ups did what they needed to do to relax and work.

In my own family 30 years on we see the weekends as family time. We always do things together, don't drink and socialise of an evening in the weeks as other families are doing the same sort of thing.

I'm not sure why the shift in this. Anyone any ideas?

[Deleted User]

Interesting to see everyone's individual views on a very complex and emotive set of problems, we all stand in very different places to see the world and have different life experiences to draw on when it comes to viewing a situation. I think it's what gives strength to the prepping thread as one or other of us can always find a workable solution to someone elses current problem and good ideas abound from such diversity.

[Deleted User]

GreyQueen wrote: »

But you're HERE and this is arguably social media.

By "you", I didn't actually mean any individual, just a hypothetical employee.

Also, I wasn't aware you could "Friend" someone on MSE?

By their reckoning, if you can update FB you were well enough to be at work.

I could (if I were registered on it) update FB, while lying in bed, with a broken pelvis and 2 broken legs, but I wouldn't be well enough to go to work.

GreyQueen

Fuddle, that's a poser, isn't it?

My own parents weren't ones for socialising outside the family, an issue of temperament rather than a feeling that they should be doing other things.

I think some of it is a side effect of helicopter parenting. People didn't think that they needed to be with their children 24/7 and even women who were full-time housewives and mothers used to chuck the kids out of doors to play, even if the weather wasn't brilliant. The idea being that Mother had things she needed to be getting on with and having children, once they were past their youngest years, hanging off her apron strings, would get in the way of the smooth running of the home.

My lovely Mum would have laid down her life for us if necessary but she didn't feel obliged to pretend that having us around for the long summer hols was an unalloyed joy; she'd quip that she'd hang the bunting out to celebrate come September and school being back in.

[Deleted User]

My goodness, they say an army marches on it's stomach don't they? Pork Scratchings and half a pint of Shandy GQ, make sure you take serious cash with you, you'll have the ravening hoards queued up and waiting and I'll be somewhere close to the front!!!