Heartless Britain - will attitudes ever change?

Did anyone say all conservatives were heartless GrannyGravy? Did the survey say the percentage who "think people have lost their jobs because of under achievement" during the pandemic are all conservatives?

I didn't see that. Presumably, from your position, you are very aware that the pandemic has meant perfectly hard working, able people, are loosing their jobs and that this also happens at other times but on a lesser scale. That's great but if half the country are taking the view that came out in the survey I also presume you will tell them that jobs are lost mainly because of the ups and downs of business and only sometimes because people lack the high moral fibre that a great many Conservatives seem to believe they (alone?) have.

“The point is I can neither prove you right or wrong and your little bit of jingoism seems to be academically meaningless. I am sure all your friends are wonderful human beings who would never put down someone, that they don't know/have never met, in their very hour of need. Your friends are, by the look of a properly run survey, not in the majority in this case.”

I don’t doubt that, in your opinion, my ‘jingoism’ is academically meaningless, and that unkind jibe says more about you it than it does about me.

Life is not just about surveys, politics and mean mindedness - well, not for most of us anyway.

PippaZ, my argument was with the title of the post, Heartless Britain, not the content of the main thread, as is clear from the rest of my post. I know many people who are kind and caring, as I said, and can’t think of any who have such an unpleasant viewpoint.
In my, as you’ve kindly pointed out, limited experience, those who wave banners and shout about injustice rarely actually try to do much to help in a practical way.

As an employer and a Conservative voter who has managed to keep all staff during the pandemic, I would like to point out that Conservative employers are not heartless due to the box they tick on Election Day!

I have not waded through all 80 pages of the survey, but would like to say that a survey is only as good/pertinent as the questions it asks and the way it asks them.

Pantglas2 Sat 27-Feb-21 11:33:29

There are certainly some on here ready to describe people who have lost their jobs as "less than" Pantglas and the survey seems to show that a majority think the same way. Covering up such thinking will not help anyone.

The point is I can neither prove you right or wrong and your little bit of jingoism seems to be academically meaningless. I am sure all your friends are wonderful human beings who would never put down someone, that they don't know/have never met, in their very hour of need. Your friends are, by the look of a properly run survey, not in the majority in this case.

Also, if you had two employees and one hardly ever rang in sick and performed better in every way than the other one, and your firm was struggling, which one would you keep on furlough and which one would you be prepared to let go?
There are many reasons that staff have lost jobs during this pandemic.Stores like Debenhams closing down is only one reason.

PippaZ knows all Conservative voters in the UK......all the many millions of them.Time to tiptoe away, judgement has been passed.?

GrannyRose If you were running a small business at the start of the lock downs and you had two employees - one highly skilled and one a junior - which one would you get rid of? Given that it's your business and you could manage the work yourself with the aid of the junior, I suspect it would be the highly skilled one. Thereby saving yourself enough money to maybe get you through.

grandmajet Sat 27-Feb-21 10:22:31

What you do counts for a great deal but so does how you percieve others. We see haloes being polished, as you have just done, every day of the week. Surely this thread is not about you but how others see those who are losing their job?

As I said before, it is a common habit of conservatives to think a lot of themselves. However, where would we all have been if we hadn't grown up with the significant political and social changes in British society af?er the war?

PippaZ

Pantglas2

There are more good people in the UK than there are good surveys.

That is rubbish and certainly not provable. It is a common Conservative trait to think a lot of themselves and also of what they have achieved. When that is dealt with we may have a reasoned and reasonable country-wide view on unemployment.

In your opinion PippaZ my words are rubbish.....?.

I actually don’t feel the need to prove them as 99% of the people I know and have met in my lifetime have been kind and generous with their time (and money where they had it to give) and I’ve never heard such uncharitable thoughts uttered aloud in my presence.

Most folks I know have lost a job at one time or another and would hardly utter those words about someone else being in that unfortunate position - maybe I’m mixing in the wrong circles and need to surround myself with orrible folks who push that view for some purpose?

And I stand by my original sentence- go ahead and prove me wrong!

growstuff

So are you claiming that the survey is flawed?

So many people, without the knowledge, know so much more than those with it growstuff.

LauraNorder

Good morning.
I wouldn’t think any but the most naive would think that the Debenhams employees lost their jobs through underperformance.
In my experience when an employee underperforms they will lose their job.
When cuts in employee numbers need to be made those who perform least well will be the first to go. Not necessarily underperforming but others are performing better.
This latter scenario could be that cuts have to be made but all perform equally so it’s the toss of a coin, then it’s down to luck.
When whole companies are forced to close then the job losses are no fault of the employee and the job loss is unlucky.
Too many variables to make a judgement. This is where surveys fall short in my opinion.

When cuts in employee numbers need to be made those who perform least well will be the first to go. Not necessarily underperforming but others are performing better. LauraNorder Sat 27-Feb-21 09:57:34

That is certainly not my experience LauraNorder. Companies will look to cut expensive workers and push thier work both up and down. They need to save as much as they can as fast as they can and I don't see this pandemic being any different.

If we’re arguing on the basis of qualification.
Biology O level is my highest scientific qualification. I didn’t study social science either.
I do have a law degree - question, critical analysis, argument.
My opinion is equally valid, as is that of any thinking person with or without academic qualifications.

I wish posters would stop doing these great pile ups of multiple post quotes, hard to make head or tail of them, as to who said what.

?Nell

Good post grandmajet ( in fact, excellent post)
Your last sentence should be engraved in gold and hung on the Opening Post.

growstuff

PippaZ

GrannyRose15

By far the most disturbing inequality at the moment concerns unemployment. Nearly 50% think people have lost their jobs because of under achievement. Only 31% think job loss is attributable to bad luck. Apparently, by 57% to 39% Conservative voters are more likely to accept poor performance as the reason for job losses.

But doesn't it stand to reason that struggling businesses are going to sack their least successful employees in a crisis. It might not be that they were bad at their jobs but simply relatively poorer workers

Consevative voters would look at the whole contribution of workers to the success in a company and act accordingly, Labour voters might have a different criteria for success. In other words the answers might simply reflecte their experience, rather than it being seen as moral issue.

No, it doesn't stand to reason GrannyRose15. Businesses will reorganise and shed cost. Neither of these means you are less successful at what you have been doing.

Exactly! A business will look at functions within the organisation and evaluate how much each section contributes to the overall success of the business. It might, for example, decide that computers could do the jobs of a whole section of human employees. In the current climate, a restaurant is likely to come to the conclusion that waiters and waitresses don't contribute to the business when it's not allowed to trade. Retailers might decide to shut their high street outlets and change to an online model, with inevitable job losses.

That is simply a misreading of the situation. If you have risen in your job and, up to the business having problems, are well paid why would that make you think those people are "relatively poorer workers". They are just expensive a company running into possible trouble financially has to cut costs and pray they can rehire people of the same calibre when the market improves or they have paid off their debt.

Your description of a restaurant in no way shows those people as being "poorer workers". Poor work is not the change in the business, it is simply a societal change and one we need to protect workers from while they move into other, newly created jobs. As a country, we also need to support the creation of those jobs.

I have really never heard such a nasty, point of view, degrading people at a most difficult time of their lives. If you can't do your job you get sacked or redeployed, not made redundant. This is typical Conservative speak and grinds down those who lose their jobs in a downturn. I would go as far as to say I would see someone as wicked who tells those losing their jobs at this time that it's because they are "poorer workers", grinding down on those already struggling to stay afloat.

Any research/survey which collects information from opinion is flawed, because that information is subject to so many variables - it can't even be considered to be proper data as it can't be proven to be universally factual and applicable. It's inherently weak as 'proof', but highly useful as food for thought, suggestions of trend and evidence that further quantitative measurement may be required. Surveys are intended to provide indicators rather than fact.

Doesn't mean it's useless. I looked a the methodology of this one and it seems pretty robust as surveys go.

NellG DipHE/Msc Research Methods/Qualitative vs Quantitative methods in Health Research.

MPhil - Ardent Pomposity

?

I am very sorry I repeated the methodology. I missed the first posting of it. So, it seems, did most of the other posters on here, who have made a lot of critical comments without any knowledge of the profile weighting which took place after the contributors had been recruited - recruited by random invitation of people who had previously said that they were open to fill any survey (not just selected people eager to rubbish those who had lost their jobs due to CoVid)

I don't know why any of us bother to find and post the original sources of surveys, "quotes" etc. The media versions are what Joe and Josephine Public prefer to base their judgments on.

Growstuff, I’ve made my view of surveys in general very clear and this one is no exception.

Many many people have lost employment solely due to the pandemic. If a business has to shut completely the question of employee performance is irrelevant, although I agree that prior to this situation it was a main factor.
The jobs market if changing fast. People want things cheap and delivered to our door, and we have come to rely on poor working conditions in distant countries to achieve this. We have been complicit in this, as if it doesn’t matter how people are treated if we don’t see it.
As for the survey, I’ve waded through much of it. In many of the questions, the categories for the answers overlap. Is a poor economic area more relevant to life chances than ethnicity? Which comes first? Ethnic minorities are more likely to have a poor background so it’s hard to divide the two factors.
Latest figures show that poor white boys are now the most under performing group educationally.
It’s all too intertwined for my brain to cope. The only thing I absolutely know is that in my daily life I know many kind caring people who willingly have paid all their due taxes and who give time and effort to charities in their desire to help those less privileged than themselves. I myself helped for years with a riding for the disabled group, and a hospice at home charity, my husband helps with witness support for vulnerable witnesses and spends hours trying to raise money with the local lions group. Many, many people people of all political beliefs and economic backgrounds do the same. For this reason I think the thread title ‘Heartless Britain’ is both unkind and unjust.
Sometimes it is what you actually do that counts, not what box you tick in a survey.

So are you claiming that the survey is flawed?

Good morning.
I wouldn’t think any but the most naive would think that the Debenhams employees lost their jobs through underperformance.
In my experience when an employee underperforms they will lose their job.
When cuts in employee numbers need to be made those who perform least well will be the first to go. Not necessarily underperforming but others are performing better.
This latter scenario could be that cuts have to be made but all perform equally so it’s the toss of a coin, then it’s down to luck.
When whole companies are forced to close then the job losses are no fault of the employee and the job loss is unlucky.
Too many variables to make a judgement. This is where surveys fall short in my opinion.

We've learnt this morning that 647 Debenhams workers in Scotland have all lost their jobs due to the closing of their stores, a closing due in large part to the impacts of the pandemic. Are we to believe that they were underperforming?

Being a bank clerk used to be a reasonable job. I wonder how many have lost their jobs over the last decade or so. I don't think they were all underperforming. The nature of the workplace is changing, especially during the pandemic, which is a catalyst for change, and individual employees can't be held responsible for that. Unless one lives in a large metropolitan area, it's not always possible to find alternative employment easily.

PippaZ

GrannyRose15

By far the most disturbing inequality at the moment concerns unemployment. Nearly 50% think people have lost their jobs because of under achievement. Only 31% think job loss is attributable to bad luck. Apparently, by 57% to 39% Conservative voters are more likely to accept poor performance as the reason for job losses.

But doesn't it stand to reason that struggling businesses are going to sack their least successful employees in a crisis. It might not be that they were bad at their jobs but simply relatively poorer workers

Consevative voters would look at the whole contribution of workers to the success in a company and act accordingly, Labour voters might have a different criteria for success. In other words the answers might simply reflecte their experience, rather than it being seen as moral issue.

No, it doesn't stand to reason GrannyRose15. Businesses will reorganise and shed cost. Neither of these means you are less successful at what you have been doing.

Exactly! A business will look at functions within the organisation and evaluate how much each section contributes to the overall success of the business. It might, for example, decide that computers could do the jobs of a whole section of human employees. In the current climate, a restaurant is likely to come to the conclusion that waiters and waitresses don't contribute to the business when it's not allowed to trade. Retailers might decide to shut their high street outlets and change to an online model, with inevitable job losses.