h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Because from what I read in blogs, twitters etc it feels like the 1980s all over again - a reactionary Conservative government doing everything it can to roll back reforms and regulations, introduce new laws that hurt the poorest sections of society and their support structures (such as the unions), cut benefits far beyond the bone and take others away completely, go against the wishes of ordinary people with unworkable ideas such as the bedroom tax (because there aren't enough smaller houses for people to move into), give more to those who already have and take from those who have but little, sell off public assets, and much more more besides.

But even Thatcher wasn't as bonkers as to have vans driving around urging immigrants to go home or pull people off buses in a Children of Men style (no matter how much she might have wanted to), or sell off the Royal Mail.

It makes me want to be back there again, fighting against it all again.

It really is bad. The current government is basically rushing the reforms through which Thatcher didn't far to contemplate. The NHS is a lot more privatised than most people realise, the privatisation of Royal Mail has been announced already, and there is an ideological commitment to roll back the welfare state to a pre-Attlee government stage. I think this government is aware that they scraped in on a wing and a prayer, might not get another, and want to do as much damage to the post-war settlement as they can in this one term.

I'll put my cards on the table - I'm saying that as a social democrat and don't make any secret of that. But I think if you moved home, you'd be appalled.

That's where conservatives (with a small c) have such an advantage. Their MO is to run down services, cut taxes, offer short term gains and make everyone feel like they've got more money, so that when the left gets back in they have to rebuild, which means spending more, raising taxes and looking like the bad guys for taking money away from people.

There aren't enough voters who take the long term view and who don't mind giving up enough of their wages to help others and build a fairer society in the long run.

And I think this lot can go on until 2015. There is one even scarier prospect than what's going on right now - Boris as leader of the Conservatives Run away! Run Away!

Labour thinks that people earning £60,000 a year aren't rich??!?

Well, no they don't as a matter of fact, it's just the media twisting and spinning again. What Rachel Reeve actually said was "The focus should be on a privileged few right at the top, and that’s not people earning £50,000 or £60,000 a year. If you’re a single-earner family in the South East on [that income], you don’t feel particularly rich, and you’d be aggrieved that people earning between £150,000 and £1 million are getting a tax cut." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/10324660/Rachel-Reeves-interview-minimum-wage-would-be-19-an-hour-if-it-rose-like-bosses-pay.html

There are several ways to take that, leastways from my point of view.

I have no doubt that she's right about 60 grand a year not being a comfortable income these days if you're a family in the south east of England, one parent going to work, another looking after the kid(s) and buying a house or renting privately. If you live in council accommodation it's probably a little easier and you could live a fairly decent lifestyle, probably save some money too.

I have never come within a country mile of earning £60,000 a year, or even half that, while living in the UK, so I reckon my feelings if I was earning that much would be "Woohoo, I'm... doing alright". I don't think rich starts until you hit six figures.

A week Just kidding. Never been any good at football anyway.

I'm not sure how well that compares to the US because the standard of living here is generally higher, and it's been my experience that you can live well for less in the US than you can in the UK.

Once you get outside the south-east of England, I think most single-earner families on £60,000 a year would most definitely feel rich. or at least well off, with one or two exceptions where the cost of renting/buying a house is within spitting distance of London/south-east prices.

What really puts this into context for me is that I was surprised, and not a little impressed, when my dad told me, a few years before he retired, that he was earning £100 a week - £5,200 a year, because at the time (late 70s) that was a bloody good wage for an unskilled worker. This would have been about five years after I got my first job, which earned me around thirty quid a week, again, a pretty good wage for unskilled work at the time. When I started work the Daily Mirror was still running its weekly grocery basket index, showing how much the average family's weekly shopping bill had increased... from the £5.00 it started off at.

Five sovs to buy all the basic needs for a family of four for a week. These days I reckon most families spend more than my dad's £100 wage packet in one visit to Sainsbury's.

The more this current climate goes on, the stronger the urge is growing within me to be there and doing something about it other than tweeting my displeasure.

The storm that's blown up in the past few days over that piece about Ralph Miliband in the Daily Hate tells me a lot about the way things are going. It's bad enough to smear a person's dead father, but it's worse to do that and be unapologetic about it (and repeat the original article next to Ed Miliband's reply) when you're the same people who ran headlines about how awful it was to speak ill of the dead when Thatcher died, when you're the people who supported Moseley and the blackshirts, when you're the people whose owner was pictured with Hitler, when you're the people who complained about "Jews pouring into Britain" from Nazi Germany. And that's the tip of the iceberg.

Where did this idea come from that if you're left wing you must hate your country? It's been a tactic the right wing here in the US have been using for some time, and now it's getting some prominence in the UK.

I've no intention of arguing the rights and wrongs of such a ridiculous idea. I wish the commentators and politicians would do the same, and instead of justifying how patriotic they are despite/because of their political leaning, go a step further and *attack* the idea for the pointless and empty rhetoric it is. That opportunity is missed so often and it frustrates the hell out of me. When the right says something clearly ludicrous and childish, instead of attacking it straight back the left validate it by trying to reason it out.

That's a problem I suspect we'll always have - the left are just too damn nice, and the right knows it.

The cost of living in the South East can't be underestamated... I was a bit shocked, just this evening, talkign to a friend, and he was contrasting some prices, of his Daughter in Oxford, and some of his friends here, in Cambridge... the one that stuck in my head, is the £2500 per month, rent* for a flat. yeh, a two* bedroom flat, here in cambridge... My maths might be wrong, but... err, isn't that about £30000? per year, just* in rent?! how... on earth much do you need to be earning, to be able to pay that in just rent... easily add £150 Per month to that, for council tax, and about the same again for average gas/electric, plus £50 for your water/sewage.... that's not even including things like insurance, phone line, internet connection etc... let alone food Yet, the governments always seem ever keen on pushing up house prices, letting rent circle further upwards, and gerneally favouring the rediculus inflation to do with anything remotely connected to home ownership, renting, or expense thereof living in either

a single earner on 60,000 (can't make a pound sign) would be ok I guess, it depends what their outgoings are (single parent paying childminders, etc etc) but imagine a pair earning that together, your outgoings are higher (travel for work etc)

as for the Daily Mail. I just can't go there. They are just seriously... unspeakable.

I don't have a pound sign on my keyboard either. Are you on a PC, Sho? Hold down the Alt key and type 0163 on the number pad (doesn't work if you use the numbers on the top row of the keyboard).

Voila £

There's a guide to those codes in conversations here A978636 but I find this one more useful A1098876 . I use 0176 all the time for the degree symbol °

frankly for the number of times I need one I'm too lazy to remember that.

Although they are cute. £

On my work computer, I put a shortcut to the Character Map on my task bar. I've got CRS disease so memorizing ascii codes is not an option.

Ooh, my affliction has a name! That makes it official. Let's call it a syndrome. It sounds more... heavyweight.

I'm hated by the Daily Heil! http://toys.usvsth3m.com/are-you-hated-by-the-daily-mail/

I pretty much knew it already, and to be honest it's not difficult - if you're not the Queen or a member of her immediate family, a hereditary peer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Mayor of London or a member of the Tory cabinet it's a foregone conclusion and you should get ready to have all kinds of stuff about you made up and printed as fact, but it still gives me a nice warm fuzzy feeling

I am merely Loathed by the Daily Mail. Mostly because I live in the present, I think.


Geggs

I think it was not having a job that tipped me over the edge, despite the fact I haven't claimed any benefits in all that time.

What am I talking about - the only things they could possibly like about me is that I'm white and hetero. And I once owned my own business. And I'm a royalist. And I like to watch Morris dancing.

Oh dear, I'm desperately close to being one of theirs

oh they hate me - I'm a working married woman, I didn't stand a chance

I love that one of the questions is simply, "Michael Gove" Y/N.

I've just discovered there are more questions beyond the point where the scale hit 'Hated' for me.

"Have you ever worked for the BBC?"

Ooh good, I'm hated. That's not bad for someone who's rather a small-c conservative. Mind you, I don't think the Mail likes anyone who isn't Paul Dacre.

I wonder if there's a sane person in the country who'd click Yes for the Gove question?

Just as a reference, 60K-GBP is somewhat over 100K-Cdn$, 97.4K-USD

Outside of major cities such as Ottawa, Toronto or Edmonton, most of us would find that comfy enough for a family of 4, with some to actually save for a rainy day. But that is with over-all costs of living in Canadian terms. Knowing how about half of the things of life in the UK are near double the prices of here? A childless couple would do well enough, perhaps.

Personally, I dream of the day when our household income hits the $100K. With my wife full-time employed, as am I in a technical trade, and I have a small military pension and a teeny pension from a previous long-term company, ... We're still not there, a bit over $92K (54.86K-GBP)

Evibestein tweeted this link earlier.

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/daily-mail-hates-everyone-in-britain-2013100279973

It's not just us...