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View Full Version : British workers 'among worst idlers', suggest Tory MPs



Dennis the 'Bloody Peasant'
20th August 2012, 08:57
...it shouldn't still surprise me that pompous Tory fuckheads still use this tedious rhetoric of 'hard work' and enterprise, shitting on the workers because they're not as 'brave' as those that would exploit them...
Conservatives and the right have been failing to better society in any way for a long long time...does anyone really need another free market-loving book by self-important windbags?

British workers are "among the worst idlers in the world", a group of Conservative MPs have claimed.
The UK "rewards laziness", does not encourage risk-taking and must strive to emulate the work ethic and low-tax culture in parts of Asia, the five MPs argue in a book due out next month.
The authors include Elizabeth Truss and Dominic Raab, both tipped to be promoted in a future reshuffle.
"Too many people in Britain prefer a lie-in to hard work," they argue.
The other contributors to Britannia Unchained are Priti Patel, Chris Skidmore and Kwasi Kwarteng, influential members of the "class of 2010" - MPs elected to Parliament at the last election.
Unions described their comments as "ridiculous" and said the most serious challenge facing the economy was a "severe lack of jobs".
'Rewarding laziness'
The MPs' arguments will intensify the debate in the coalition government about how to reverse the slide in the economy, which has seen the UK slip into a double dip recession.
Many Conservatives on the right of the party argue the government's pro-growth initiatives are inadequate and that changes to the labour market, tax cuts and other "supply side" measures needed to boost competitiveness are being held back by the Lib Dems.
The five MPs - who are all members of the Free Enterprise Group of Tory MPs - say the UK needs to reward a culture of "graft, risk and effort" if it is to compete with fast-growing nations.
"Britain will never be as big as China and Brazil but we can look forward to a new generation, ready to get to work," they argue in excerpts of the book published in the Evening Standard.
"If we are to take advantage of these opportunities, we must get on the side of the responsible, the hardworking and the brave.
"We must stop bailing out the reckless, avoiding all risk and rewarding laziness."
The UK, they argue, is being held back by an excessive public sector, substantial public sector pension liabilities and a welfare system which does not provide sufficient incentives to work.

(more at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-19300051)

Le Socialiste
20th August 2012, 09:18
Because these politicians and the corporate, big business interests that back them truly know the value of "hard work". :rolleyes:

The real idlers are the parasitic leeches living off the backs of labor so that they may enjoy lives of privilege and luxury at the top, which ironically is spent in a general state of idleness.


The UK "rewards laziness", does not encourage risk-taking and must strive to emulate the work ethic and low-tax culture in parts of Asia, the five MPs argue in a book due out next month.

Yeah, enough laziness! Y'all should be working atrociously long hours in abominable conditions with little to no pay and benefits. :thumbdown:

Hit The North
20th August 2012, 10:19
It seems that these Tory idiots have forgotten that it's the private sector that has run the economy into the ground, not the public sector. Suddenly a crisis caused by greedy, crooked and incompetent capitalists is transformed into the problem of a lazy workforce. Typical bourgeois mendacity.

Anyway, in a system of economic compulsion, laziness is an act of resistance.

maskerade
20th August 2012, 10:35
Man, the people who wrote that book are idiots. if anything, preferring hard work to a lie in is a sign of abnormality, not the other way around. few things i like more than sleeping in, few things i like less than working hard.

"oh, if only we had whips like the good old days on the plantations in the colonies, we wouldn't have this problem"

die tory scum.

hatzel
20th August 2012, 11:03
It's nice to see even the Tories praising the spirit of British workers...

...oh, wait...they mean they think this stuff is negative?! :confused:

Hey why is it 'worst idlers' rather than 'best idlers'? I mean, aren't they suggesting these workers are really good at idling? Surely the worst of all the idlers would be the ones who don't idle at all...?

brigadista
20th August 2012, 11:55
only idlers are the bleeding government - what a cheek..

bricolage
20th August 2012, 12:15
"Too many people in Britain prefer a lie-in to hard work," they argue.
no shit mate.

and just for the lols it's not like MPs ever get lie-ins, is it? (http://www.parliament.uk/about/faqs/house-of-commons-faqs/business-faq-page/recess-dates/)

Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages
20th August 2012, 13:02
Why I bet those good for nothing workers also enjoy companionship over soul-crushing lonliness and breathing more than suffocation. Truly a sad state of affairs in your country.

Kotze
20th August 2012, 13:47
The UK "rewards laziness", does not encourage risk-taking...What is meant by risk-taking here? When a kid wants to go skateboarding without any safety gear, do you encourage that bold risk-taking? :thumbup1: Innovation does require some risking to fail, and you can encourage that by having a social safety net.
...and must strive to emulate the work ethic...What was Archimedes doing again when he had his eureka moment?
...and low-tax culture in parts of Asia, the five MPs argue in a book due out next month.A government that sets prices can abolish taxes, like the DPRK did in the 70s. Depending on how this is enforced, this might not be as efficient as taxes however.

Take environmental protection. In a top-down command economy, rules can be very rigid in that this or that is simply verboten for everybody. With green taxes on the other hand it might be possible to meet the same aggregate goal in a more fluid manner, so that local actors have choice between doing things the green way themselves or paying a tax that is used for meeting the goal in another way instead. You still hit limits where things are verboten, but the higher the tax gets, the more individual freedom is possible. The question here is: Why do Tories hate freedom?

(Not as intuitively obvious, computing power today allows that with a given goal and reliable data individual freedom can be maximized by centralizing the computation, but hardly anybody gets that, including people on this forum. I digress, I will bake an essay about that next week or so :P)


The UK, they argue, is being held back by (...) a welfare system which does not provide sufficient incentives to work.I agree with that. There are families where the parents don't work and the kids don't plan to ever work themselves, dynasties, so to speak. I support the right and duty to work for every able-bodied person (don't freak out, it doesn't have to be more than 20 hours a week, it might be just 10) — which is something the Tories have never supported, unless you define work in a very special way that encompasses "jobs" like receiving income from rental property.

Sinister Cultural Marxist
20th August 2012, 23:31
It's not the people who make a living off of the work of others who are the idlers, it's the workers themselves who are! They are shamelessly not toiling harder to make the bosses paychecks bigger ... does anyone really expect a tory to have a different view of economic value than this?

Beeth
21st August 2012, 04:46
What's worse is, many workers will nod their heads at this and say, "yes, yes, immigrants are the problem, or many lazy ppl are trying to play the system" and so on. We are our own worst enemy. Politicians simply exploit that.

Die Neue Zeit
21st August 2012, 04:53
What's worse is, many workers will nod their heads at this and say, "yes, yes, immigrants are the problem, or many lazy ppl are trying to play the system" and so on. We are our own worst enemy. Politicians simply exploit that.

Compared to their European counterparts, one could say that British workers are more, ahem, politically idle (unfortunately).

Robespierres Neck
21st August 2012, 06:55
I'm not surprised by the comments, especially coming from conservatives. Still, it's incredibly insulting, misguided, and ironic. I'd like to know who they think are among the least laziest in Britain.

RebelDog
21st August 2012, 07:58
The UK "rewards laziness"

I couldn't agree with this more. The royal family are mega-rich and they are a bunch of lazy bastards.