"Well, obviously no one here is 'financially excluded' - they're all employed, and everyone in the same salary band is paid the same! This isn't relevant to us! " If you're an employer, that's likely your first reaction to the idea that working people can be financially excluded - yes, even when they work for your company, which pays above the minimum wage, and has salary review points every three years, and six months fully paid maternity leave (which is quite burdensome for you to offer, actually, and you really wish people would be a bit more appreciative...) While the ways in which demographics which are excluded from employment - the aged, those with significant-impact disabilities, those with full-time kinship care responsibilities, asylum seekers, those who seem to have no barriers, but "just can't get a job for some reason" - are also excluded from the very real and obvious benefits of financial security - better mental and
There are 551,000 more people unemployed than there are available jobs. Clinicians are EXCEPTIONALLY resistant to the idea of providing routine medical appointments outside of working hours. Bus companies just shrug their shoulders as able-bodied mothers take over the lone wheelchair bay on each bus with their buggies, tourists yeet their wheeled suitcases into it, and bored teenagers sprawl there, because schools refuse to provide their own bus services, and bus companies are allowed to take more passengers than there are available seats. In the UK, there is an average of 37 reported hate crimes against disabled people every single day. That's an average of a crime against a disabled person every single hour of every single day. It's not an "epidemic of worklessness" - it's an epidemic of intolerance for anyone who isn't 100% "normal" and "on the ball" 100% of the time. It's an epidemic of intolerance for any period of absence, and a