Labour’s gimmicks won’t get Britain working again
- The cost of sickness payments will soon top £100 billion a year
- After 14 years in opposition, Labour do not have a credible plan to tackle worklessness
- There is no better tonic for poor mental health than satisfying work
With all the technological and medical advances we keep seeing, this should be a glorious era where all barriers to work are demolished. To a modest extent, we have seen this with people continuing to work as they get older. Men in the UK used to retire at 65 – finally eligible for a state pension after decades of physical drudgery. Eligibility for the state pension is now 66 and is due to rise to 67 between 2026 and 2028, and to 68 between 2044 and 2046. It should be raised further and faster to avoid the country going broke. But we also have millions continuing to do work of some kind or another past the official retirement age.
The whole piece is well worth reading as a reminder of Labour's ideological unfitness for government. The party belongs in another age, not this one, and no amount of rhetoric can disguise it.
Labour are hard-wired to believe that a compassionate approach means an ever bigger role for the state with an ever more generous offer of benefits. They don’t really believe in the moral case for personal responsibility. Their instinct is to ‘protect’ people from work and being ‘exploited’ by business. But nothing could be a better tonic for our mental health than the pride of independence, of making a contribution to the needs of others rather than being a supplicant of the bureaucratic leviathan. What better boost to self-esteem and cure for loneliness and depression than the shared endeavour of wealth creation? Of the appreciation of satisfied customers, the teamwork of colleagues and the gratitude of the boss?
The whole piece is well worth reading as a reminder of Labour's ideological unfitness for government. The party belongs in another age, not this one, and no amount of rhetoric can disguise it.
Labour are hard-wired to believe that a compassionate approach means an ever bigger role for the state with an ever more generous offer of benefits. They don’t really believe in the moral case for personal responsibility. Their instinct is to ‘protect’ people from work and being ‘exploited’ by business. But nothing could be a better tonic for our mental health than the pride of independence, of making a contribution to the needs of others rather than being a supplicant of the bureaucratic leviathan. What better boost to self-esteem and cure for loneliness and depression than the shared endeavour of wealth creation? Of the appreciation of satisfied customers, the teamwork of colleagues and the gratitude of the boss?
No comments:
Post a Comment