Just wish Posting a thread in response to a recent event was not distasteful

Folly mon's post STARVING CHILDREN IN BRITAIN

The only starving children in Britain are the ones whose parents have stolen their money for drink, drugs, or tobacco
When you have a child you are responsible for that child, not the Government,

The fact that the Government gives every poorer families child £80per week per child,free school clothes and free school dinners,
Now I could feed and cloth myself quite well on £80pw let alone a three year old

Even RICH parents get £20 from the Gov for their child

So starving children are not a disgrace to Britain their PARENTS ARE

Next, the tragic loss of the fishing boat down at Portland Bay

Why oh why do fishermen refuse to wear a life jacket ?
This boat was rescued Jan 2011 when it began to sink, so it has a history
How it was lost so quickly the lifeboat could not be launched $eity knows

I know money is a problem, so yes the boat leaks, repairing it is beyond their means, but as long as the pump is pumping the bilges, it stays afloat, a life jacket each would be the cost of one Saturday night drinking down the fish quay pub
What an utter tragic waste of young men

Jack McHammocklashing

 

I'm afraid to say there are people that the system doesn't look after Jack. I can totally believe that there are British citizens starving in Britain while the rest of us just carry on as normal. I'm not passing judgement on anyone, its just how it is.

Consider a family facing the loss of everything. Lets say the chap has just been made redundant from the only job he's ever known, along with hundred of his colleagues in the biggest company within 100 miles. The pressure of going from a wage to dole, paying whatever he can to keep the house that he knows his family call home. Having given up the car because he can't afford to run it, he now has no practical means to get to interviews, if only he could get them. Sure the gov pays travel expenses for such things, if you can give them about a weeks notice, which is no good considering many prospective employers give you just a couple of days notice if they're willing to see you, so he ends up in a catch 22. He struggles, he tries to use his dole money to fend off the bailiffs because he can't bare to see his family lose their stuff and his kids to see him as a failure. Being human, the pressure gets to him. Every time he looks at his kids faces as they play happily, oblivious to the pressures of adult life, his heart breaks at the very idea of the disruption they will suffer if they get repo'ed. Sooner or later, being human, he cracks under the pressure. This is not a failing on his part, unless it is a weakness to be human. And while all this is going on, the kids are suffering, the neighbours are blaming him, and the government are patting themselves on the back for being so fair and riteous as to pay back a tiny fraction of what the chap paid into his national insurance in all his years of hard work.

 

These are good, true words clueless. Spoken from your heart and they make me sad too today. All I can offer with regard to the scenario you are describing here is that, if the home is full of love then it will stand a better chance of survival then many "homes" where there is none. Life without love is a very dark place.

Re; the Weymouth lads. Yes they made fatal errors. We all make errors and there, but for the grace of God..... may go anyone of us. How sad it must be in Weymouth this weekend. So hard for those who are mourning,
Jenny

 

The Victorians had no problem with dividing the poor into two groups: 'deserving' and 'undeserving'. If you were doing your very best to keep your family going but nonetheless failing, you deserved help (although whether you actually got it or not was quite another question). If you were making no effort at all and spending your time rolling around in a gutter with a bottle of hooch in each hand, you didn't. However, we no longer think it's right to judge. I have to admit I wouldn't ever wish to have to decide who got help and who didn't. On the other hand, the concept of 'benefits for all' throws up a lot of anomalies.

To anyone who is feeling a bit out of sorts with current thinking, I recommend you buy a copy of The Politically Incorrect Lexicon by Peter Mullen. Best couple of quid I've spent in ages. Here are a couple of extracts:-

Liberal establishment The politically correct tyranny running the country.

Duty (1) Obsolete Now only used as part of the phrase duty free.

Duty (2) Others' responsibility to provide for my rights.

Difference Euphemism Shockingness, repulsiveness, ugliness.

Vibrant Noisy

Socialist One who extorts your taxes so he can waste the money on fanciful ideological projects.

Shish titty The noise that leaks from your neighbour's earphones on your train journey.

Social inclusion A diktat ordering preference to be given to oiks, so spoiling many a pleasant social activity.

Academic Handsomely-subsidised obfuscator of the blindingly obvious. Person paid to translate what everybody knows into words no one can understand.

Proactive Interfering.

Fault That which attaches to someone else.

 

On the question of starving kids, I do agree with Jack.

Clueless comes up withsome good points about being made redundant.
But my personal thoughts are that in these times that is often a likely proposition, and should be taken into account before buying the 42inch Hi def,TV, or the brand new 4 wheel drive, that you must have.
All bought on tick, and knowing should you get redundancy you wont afford the payments.

The modern way is "I want it now", live by that rule and you'll come down faster than you came up.

 

I think Pete's right. Two many young people starting out now in their first home expect some plush pad with all mod cons. When I got married and was lucky enough to buy our first home (with a mortgage we could afford), we had very little. All of our furniture etc were either cast offs from friends & family or bought second hand. We had no fridge ( OH would go round and get ice from the pub to put in a plastic tub) to keep things cool. Our only TV was a small B&W portable that was borrowed from the in-laws. I draped fabric remnants over cardboard boxes to act as bedside tables. We couldn't afford to replace the carpets in the house we brought, so lived with them, tatty as they were with awful pattern and colour. Ditto the wallpaper. Although we did manage to buy paint to cover that.
We also had a banger of a car, but we were grateful that we had a car.
This was 1981.
It makes me cringe to hear so called 'poor' going on about how they can't afford a holiday this year, sitting in their lounge with it's flat screen TV, leather suite and posh decor in the background.
I'm sure there are some genuinely poor people (i.e with nothing!), but there seems to be a lot more claiming to be poor that I would not define so.

As an aside, when we moved to France we were shocked to find how poor some people are here. I mean living conditions like: living in what can only be described as a barn,(and I mean a barn not a 'Grand designs' conversion!) Where they have a bed, cooker, table & chairs and a sink on one side of the barn divided off with a curtain. No toilet,bath or shower. I don't think people in the U.K know how good they've got it!

O.k I'll put my violin away now.
But something tells me that many of you were like that when you 'started out' too. So what happened to subsequent generations?

 

We used to lick the streets clean for a living ...

 

I don't think anyone's claiming that it is never the fault of anyone.

I happen to know one or two people personally, who had nowt to speak of even in good times, choosing instead to keep up to date with the bills and put a few bob away in anticipation of the possibility of hard times. A close friend was one of them. When redundancy inevitably came along, he did all he could to find another job asap, and lived off his few grand savings while he looked. A few grand doesn't last very long when the mortgage and bills are coming out of it, and travel expenses to interviews at ever increasing distances from home. The money ran out, and he had to go on the dole. He doesn't have any kids, which is lucky, because he was barely managing to feed himself. He did everything you're supposed to do. He rang his mortgage company and negotiated a deal so he only had to bit a bit of his dole each month in order to not lose his house. He nearly froze to death during that harsh winter we had a couple of years ago as he chose not to use his heating, because it was either heat the house and starve, or not heat the house. Yet he was really in trouble. If he wasn't fortunate enough to have a good circle of friends that could ocassionally do him his dinner in return for a bit of un-needed help in the garden, he would have almost certainly had to lose the house. Not a country mansion, a modest street house.

And therein is a massive, gigantic failing on the part of society and the government. Because he owns the house on a mortgage, he is entitled to no help at all to save it. Because he was fortunate enough to be able to pay about 40% deposit, his mortgage payments are about half what it would cost to rent. So the government is cool with the idea of letting someone lose their house, then after they get repo'ed, the house will be sold off cheap by the lender, the ex-owner will then be entitled to housing benefit and will be able to claim up to about 3 times what it would have cost to pay the mortgage on the house they've just lost, for potentially a much longer term than was outstanding on the mortgage, the individual will drop out of the system as depression means they can't work or can't be bothered to work having realised that those that work just get nothing (which for them is true), so they get to claim every benefit going, and everyone gets to rant about the lack of social housing and all the job dodging scroungers.

And what of the bank that lost several grand having gone through repo proceedings and then sold the house at a substantial loss? That's ok, because if they get a bit skint, the government, or more specifically the taxpayer, ie us, we'll just give them a nice little bung of a few hundred million or so.

 

I am with Naylors on this, as it is exactly how WE started, and £80 from the gov for each child would be a dream

The government does not own every child and responsible for rearing it

It is ones duty to only buy what you can afford, We saved for things we wanted we did not take it on Hire Purchase,
We did not have the big colur TV like our neighbours, but again as Naylor a borrowed B/W portable, If I lost my employment the next day, we could live as we already were
A car what is that, Oh the family up the road, nice car, and when the grocer visited 2oz of SPAM for the cat, which was infact Hubbys dinner

People living with Fur Coats and no knickers deserve what they get when the bubble bursts

Folly Mon, if your mates are layed off the Tarmac, then it should not be a problem unless they live with ambitions above their station
They do not need a big car, or HD SKY SERVICES TV, wall to wall carpet or booze
If they can not afford the mortgage they should not have taken it on, and lived in what they can afford

The county does not owe anyone anything, and £80 per child is not only generous but ridiculous they had the kids not the Government

I repeat I could feed myself well on £80 a week, clothes well they last years, you do not HAVE to follow fashion, a pair of jeans sitting on your backside for years will last forever
You do not need a designer bag to take your lunch to work, a paper bag will do

People should live within their means, and not their desires

I have just ceased working with people who have now hit disaster, big mortgage big quality car, all the trappings and 100k a year, now unemployed and believe themselves to be above the working class Well join the club sunshines this is reality

As for employment, Just because you were a company director and expect company director wages, you are now unemployed pal and if you do not take the job of picking vegetables then your Dole stops live with it, Like millions of others have to do that provided you with your luxury living previously

Jack McH