FREEDOM!!!! [4]

{{{ Whilst I dont like paying more for my buckie thisone at least is not a tax as such, the increase of 30% is not because the minimum charge has gone up, but just becuase of inflation over alst few years, in real terms as the article mentions its actually gone done from 50p per unit to 41p. But more importantly, for a nation where a shocking amount of people have alcohol problems and die young as a rsult of them-

'Based on comparisons with England, it estimated there were 13.4% fewer deaths related to alcohol than would have happened without the policy, as well as 4.1% fewer hospital admissions.'

But the fact death from alcohol was last year at a 15 year high shows I believe that whilst it will deter when the world is going well, when things are hard, money, work, food, rent, scarce or hard to come by alcohol will always have its appeal to wash it all away into oblivion. The real enemy, as it always has been is poverty.
One of the biggest disgraces of my lifetime in this country is the emergence of a whole new class of people- the working poor- it should be an oxy-moron, but its not. People in work but who still need govenrment help in the form of benfits just to manage to scrape by month to month with nothing to spare. It shouldnt exist, if you work full tim you should be getting paid well enough to more than scrape by, but thatsnot the Britain we live in sadly, we live in the Britian where a family with two working parents can still need to rely on a foodbank to feed their children. }}

Yeah I think it is rooted in poverty and a lack of hope, people often turn to booze as an escape which is fine in moderation and as long as you know what you are escaping from. I haven't been drunk in probably 6 or 7 years, but go back a decade ago when my mental health problems were at their worse and alcohol more affordable and it was a differentstory, I wasn't exactly a alcoholic but drinking 5 or 6 pints by 3pm on a weekday
down the local pub wasn't a rare occurence for me (it was worse because it was generally by myself), I look back on those days with shame and regret and barely drink anymore (had a couple of pints last week and those were my first drinks in several months). I generally lost interest in drinking and feel better personally for it, so from my perspective minimum price laws for booze sold in supermarkets is in theory a good idea but you have to look at the root causes of why people turn to drink in the first place to really change things. Not so happy with the cost of a pint at the local pubs though...

As for the cost of day to day life, some of the people I work with are working 2 jobs (in addition to their partner working full time) just to make ends meet and pay for childcare, I still live with my parents and can't afford to move out (not that I really mind too much tbh).

I know part of the problem with low wages here PERHAPS stems from the tradition of working teenagers. They've got room and board covered, so they are just happy to get spending money for unskilled labor. Then the restaurants (can't think of any other type of business that does this) gets used to the idea of low paid servers, and so the low wages get locked in. The restaurant industry is packed with teenagers and college students, with the kitchen and washrooms full of often illegal immigrants. But now the general public is addicted to comparatively cheap restaurant meals and it's all locked in to society. Get rid of these cheap jobs and the economy goes with it. pay them sufficiently and people stop going out to eat. It's a trap that's hard to break free from.

{{ The change in my lifetime to working class life is astounding, and not for the better. There was still mass industry when I was a kid, the biggest employer around here was the nationalised, at the time, Forestry Commission, it employed half the village directly and the other half indiretly, but those jobs went when they brought in private enterprise and sold it all off and then the final nail in the coffin was the modern tech, a tree harvester can clear in an hour what it used to take a skilled team of foresters a whole week to clear. Its still an important employer, but its in the hundreds now not the thousands of the past.
And there was working class community, pre Thatchers right to buy the council scheme I grew up in was full of families some of whom were in the house they grew up in and their parents had as a council house before them, these places were generational, folk had roots and a stake in their community. It really was that ideal of a place where folk didnt lock their doors, as kids we just knocked walkd in to each others houses and shouted 'hello'.
And when it came to work, a single full time working adult could support a family of four with a holiday every year. The very idea of a single wage supporting even one person and having enough left over for holidays is becoming laugable let alone supporting a family on it.
And politics in the work place was a much bigger thing, and out of it, I remember smoke filled kitchens of heated political exchanges and alcohol as a frequent part of my childhood, with the presence of the US Navy and nukes on the doorstep giving it extra spice. But then Unions were a big part of working class life and helped bind the working class together in common goals, several of my Dad's friends were Shopstewards in one Union or another.
By the time I was of working age Thatcher had killed the Unions, right to buy had destroyed the sort of community I grew up in and disbanded them and the failure of wages to keep pace with inflation has reduced the average working class pay to the point of being comparable with living on benefits in the past. And that as I mentioned has led to the creation of a whole new class of Working Poor, of which I am one, I work 51 hours a week (35 as a carer and 16 as night manager at the hotel) and I need benefits just to scrape by on the basics every month, and there is noting left for saving or putting aside for emergencies, hell by end of most months I am lucky if I'm not in debt, and now gas and elec have gone up by another 10% (in an oil and renewable enegy abundant nation) and a Scottish winter approaches again. Its not a comforting thought.

And what have our new government done since coming to power? Means tested the Winter Fuel Allowance for Pensioners, taken thousands of pounds in freebies and favours for themselves despite most of them being multi-millionares in their own right, and attacked those on benefits and are threatening to give powers to be able to look into the bank accounts of anyone in receipt of any sort of benefit whatsoever (which thanks to our economy is most folk, wether its child allowance, help with child minding costs, pensions, carers allowance, unemployment benefit, there are so many and so many in need of them, some of the most vulnerable folk in our society and now the government wants to come after them).

Are these really the priorities of a Labour government? }}