Monthly Archives: January 2018

If you encounter an employer paying at or below the minimum wage, tell us!

I’m Richard Shrubb, a sometime journalist and social justice campaigner, and I’m angry at the fact that Weymouth and Portland falls in the lowest quintiles of almost all health and social welfare statistics in the UK. It now appears that those who do work are getting the lowest pay in the UK too.

I am fed up with those who do very well in life treading on the heads of those who have not. You do not choose to have a debilitating injury at work and have to take disability benefits. You do not choose to be so traumatised in your childhood that you develop schizophrenia and possibly never work. You do not choose to be beaten up by your husband and look after your children alone as a result. Yet this world we live in seems to engage in victim blaming.

“It is her fault for earning too little money so let’s slash her benefits!”

I have moved in certain social circles for a while that include people who do give a monkey’s cuss for the welfare of others. It is a pleasure to count as friend people who actually care. To me it seems that you are missing something if you put money hoarding above the welfare of your fellow man. Yes, you are missing something human.

Where there are underpaid Indians there are exploitative Chiefs. I don’t see Mr Richard Drax driving around in a battered Ford Ka, looking after his 65,000 constituents. Instead I see a multimillionaire aristocrat earning more every month than many of his welfare dependant constituents can expect in 10 years.

Isn’t it time we got the people of Weymouth and Portland a pay rise?