Re:UK ‘barking up wrong tree’ trying to get over-50s back to...
by shapefrog on Monday February 20, 2023 @12:10PM
(#34870162)
In a speech to a room of over 50s the quantity of early retired person is near enough to 0.
Messaging that the kidz and the early retired (aka someone else) need to do their bit for the country will make the 99% of people in the audience that are employed and working hard feel like the true patriots trying to save the country from the forces of evil that they are.
So, this is a bit of an odd case where they're kind of _blaming_ their base; it is hard to think of a demographic in England more likely to be a Tory voter than an early retired person.
Of course, they're doing this because telling early retired people to go back to work, while highly unlikely to be at all effective, is at least quite cheap, whereas dealing with chronic illness would involve fixing the NHS, which would be terrifyingly expensive.
Also, if you're the Tories, the very last thing you want to do is to draw people's attention to the state of the NHS. They've been in government for _13 years_; it's very much on them.