Be Excellent To Each Other

This question can't be answered, therefore you don't try to. You just have to work on the other aspects of society so that the children can have better opportunities and more engagement with society than their parents. Yes, a very small % of people on benefits are claiming fraudulently, but if their children are well educated and see opportunities available to them then the hope is they won't perpetuate that themselves because they'll see it for the shitty life it is and reject it.

Poor people with kids don't annoy me on a conscious level. Yes, at times they are annoying when they have the same phone as i do, or "affordable housing" is built nearby, but by and large I really cannot begrudge the money from the state. I am fairly sure that in tje £x bandied about, the majority of that could be "tax credits". I think these are just revenues not deducted, and isn't a hand out so much as a "nah, you are on a spot, don't worry about it". I would rather it went to families than funding the fucking opera.

Kay Burley is an utterly hideous, horrible human being. She's a terrible, terrible interviewer. The UK's Fox News hack.

I'm certainly looking forward to my opulent final salary pension... oh wait. Never mind.

Assuming all my funding of the welfare (25% of budget) comes from my income tax, I'm not going to moan to much about the £40 a week going to help others. And I get £20 of that back because of T-Bomb.

Is 'affordable housing' a code word for something else that I completely don't understand? What could be annoying about housing that's affordable?

Poor people live in affordable housing, and who'd want to live near them!

I hope that's not what you mean, Mali, even as a joke

I've been homeless. It's horrible and soul destroying and I don't know if you ever really pick yourself fully up from that point.

I'm sure it was meant tongue-in-cheek given the rest of the post.

Very much that indeed.

It's hard to tell, sometimes.

Unfortunately a lot of people do have these prejudices, and like sexism and racism if it is casually bandied about as tongue in cheek some people think of it as an acceptable form of casual bigotry, because it's just 'banter'. But those people that are able to make off-hand sexist and racist comments as jokes usually do seem to harbour much of that feeling deep down.

I'm sure that Mali is not so small minded as to think that way as I know he is a nice and supportive chap, but sometimes if you take on elements of that thinking and display them as your persona, whether with actual belief behind them or not, it makes doubt creep in and someone on the outside looking in can't determine this so easily. Add to this already years or decades of judgement by others and as much as you can appreciate the joke it can hurt. Not me so much, I'm one of the lucky ones and managed to get back up and start again.

Anyway, I've been homeless and now I am expecting a child. I may be to some the absolute worst of society. They can all shove off.

The amount of money you have is irrelevant. So is the colour of your skin, background, or religion. I judge people on their observable behaviours. If you're observably a horrible chav, swearing, spitting, smoking (not even taking care to stub out and dispose of stubs even), it's really obvious that you're not a person I'm keen to know. Similarly if your attitude is that you can't be arsed to work, or that you're too good for McDonalds or a manual cleaning job, and you're living off the state by whatever means you can and worming out of attempts to get you employed, that speaks deafening volumes.

If you have no job, no private housing and expect the state to pay to keep you and your child while giving nothing back then yeah I probably do consider you amongst the worst of society.

But that's clearly not you Mimi. Whether you were once homeless or poor doesn't even factor in to it. What kind of person are you now? A nice one, providing for yourself with your husband. That's all that actually matters, imho.

Can't reply to any of the interesting posts at the moment but will just quickly say, no-one is saying anything about you Meems or any homeless person; I've not been homeless but was chucked out on my ear at 16 and was sleeping on sofas and eventually got a "house share" (loosest possible sense) that cost me £25 of my £35 weekly wage, worst days of my life.

It's good we can all talk about this because generally speaking most people are terrified to do so precisely for fear of being thought a heartless wanker or worse, but I am certain no-one, least of all me, is alluding to any nasty shit whatsoever. For the record, I think you are a wonderful, inspirational person, truly, especially having now met you.


Cavey

Rightly or wrongly, the perception of affordable housing is that you are more likely to end up living near some badly behaved twats, and it doesn't take many of those to make everyone's lives a misery.

It's very much not the case that everyone that finds themselves homeless or in a bad situation is either at fault or a bad person.

But I was a nice person back then, too. I just ended up in a difficult situation and didn't have the support of family to help me through. I may have been ok if I did.

And I know that most decent people do not think that way, but some do, and I was unfortunate enough to meet some of them. Some preyed on the women I lived with to take advantage of their situations, because the women were so desperate to get by. Many with children, suddenly with no roof over their heads, and yet these same people hated the fact that these women that they took advantage of were part of their society and surroundings.

I'm sure you don't understand, or can't understand, because I can't understand it either, and can't see how anyone with any decency thinks and acts in that way.

Some times people end up in a bad situation because they've had their world ripped out from beneath them, look around and realise that they are actually alone. But then I also knew people who had just grown up in abject poverty and didn't know to ever hope for better. Being expected to get nowhere in life, it was a self-fulfilling prophecy for many. Too young, often poorly educated and not cared for by their own families, young girls pregnant and having children whilst still children themselves. Bad relationships and partners not sticking around lead to many single mothers, and many feel trapped by their children, who they love desperately, and feel they've failed them by not being able to give them what they want.

I don't understand the phone thing, or Sky TV, but maybe that's all these people have. What else do you do with your life when you have nowhere to go? I don't know. I can't even remember why I started this rambling post now

Back to topic a bit more: I don't think benefits should be such that people see having children as a way of obtaining money, or benefits as an incentive to have children. Taking these away will hurt many families, and yes the parents will feel that squeeze... But I worry it is the children that will feel it more. It's a lottery when you pop into the world whether you are born into s nice, well off middle class family, someone at the bottom of society that may have all manner of social ills upon them or a starving mother anywhere in the world. For a long time you can do nothing about this, you just benefit or suffer from your lot. By the time you can actually action any change in your future, many kids will have been 'taught' their place into society. They know the system favours the better off, that they can't compete with people not even born into high privaledge, but those middle class, or even those still on the breadline but with an actual council house, rather than an infested high-rise in East London. Nobody they know works in a library, or office, or finance. There are no role models or people who have paved the way before. Mum can't afford basic provisions, child has nothing to do, petty crime may follow, maybe teen pregnancy, cycle continues.

Gone off topic again. Wish I wasn't on my phone: no idea what I have been yabbering about since I started writing.

Anyway: I hope they don't take away or cap benefits for children already in this world at least. If parents are those that spend half of it in cigarettes and alcohol, and it's cut for those families with lots of children, that won't stop them buying the cigarettes and booze, it will just mean that the bit 'left Over' that usually goes on the kids is far less, or gone. The children will suffer, and how is it their fault?

My first job was as a 'kitchen porter' for £2/hour. I was worked like a dog as most nights involved frantically washing up while waiting on, dashing back and forth from the kitchen serving meals, clearing empties, washing empties and kitchenware before rushing back out again to give out bills and take payments. Hardest bloody work I've ever done, long shifts of non-stop motion. I used to come home and lie flat on the floor as my back was knackered after a shift. I remember one Christmas I took home as much as £120 as I'd done almost 60 hours that week. I didn't get EMA payments for going to bloody college!

I saved most of that money to buy my first PC. It cost me £650 of hard-saved cash. A mighty Cyrix 200MX with 32MB RAM and a 14.4 modem.

I survived through uni on loans, making websites and sitting on the IT helpdesk at the Uni for what had probably leapt to a enormous £4.50/hour back then. During the summers I was waiting on again at a crappy local restaurant.

I've said it before, I'm not a rags to riches story. More like a 'poorer but ok' to a now comfortable enough life. If you work and grind you'll be OK. Like it or not but that's what the Conservatives generally purport for society so it's not mystical that I'm sympathetic to that view.

Oh, Goodness Cavey, I didn't think that anyone was having a pop at me, personally or indirectly, I just hope that people do realise that some of the people that are in 'affordable housing' have had the toughest of lives, that perhaps we don't understand.

Yes, some will find themselves in a bad situation one day, but many will have been born into that bad situation and sadly know nothing else. We need better education and a truthfulness behind the assertion that you can climb up through society. Social mobility through hard work is often given as a reason to push out of the cycle, but how realistic is it? You have to start with a decent education, but if that isn't there, and you don't have the family support to learn, you've pretty much blown your chance before you have an awareness of the consequences.

We need inspirational employment and decent wages for those who do want to climb out of the mire. I know a lot of people get angry at the idea that people do not want to work as road-sweepers, or cleaners, for a few hours of minimal pay on a 0 hours contract, because you should take any work you are given, but if there were decent contracts and pay for these jobs that treated the worker fairly and had some day-to-day stability and benefits such as we all hope for in our own jobs then the mobilisation of some people would at least be an inspiration to peers and future generations.

But that's horseshit though.

There are all manner of horrible disasters that can befall people that it's impossible to 'work and grind through'.

The notion that the root cause of all people being on benefits is that they're lazy and feckless is really quite abhorrent. And it's always backed up by 'I worked shit jobs and turned out OK, why can't they?'

Fair enough Mimi. To mitigate what I said above, I was neither given a leg up but I didn't have my legs broken by horror or misfortune either. It would be unreasonable to look at a person from a abusive home that was never supported, encouraged or properly looked after and demand to know why they're not a wealthy banker like others are. You are ultimately moulded by your experiences and your exposure to things when you're young, and as you say, you can't control it. Some people are dealt a shit hand and then suffer horribly on top.

The circular argument comes back to who you point to for responsibility. Parents? Parent's parents? The government of 1786 for failing to support the great-great-great-grandparents of the family now suffering?

An individual can break from a bad past to have a better life, with the often stated goal to making it better for their kids than it was for them. That's very worthy, and more power to them. But not all people think like that. Some people have kids almost as a thoughtless reflex, and instead of raise them merely drag them around while they continue to lead their selfish lives with no real regard for their responsibilities. Throw poor education and a bad environment in to the mix and you probably wouldn't have much hope for them. But everyone is sentient, and if you want access to the internet in the UK you can get it for pennies, or free. You can learn, you can choose to try. I enormously respect anyone that really tries, regardless of how well they're doing. If you've got some drive and aspiration for better, it doesn't matter where you've come from, you're alright in my book.

Heh, and I wrote my reply above before you wrote that, but just as well you jumped to that reduction isn't it? I clearly wasn't saying that at all.

Well yes and there are always these exceptions too, such as 'I didn't mean that really disabled person over there' and 'I didn't mean that battered wife and her children escaping from the tyranny and abuse of their abusive husband/father' and 'I didn't mean you Mimi' - but all the time espousing the concept that nonetheless there's a great mass of piss-takers out there raking in a fortune in benefits they shouldn't be getting. (When the department's own figures put the fraud figure at something like 2% IIRC.)

You were spouting vitriol at parents bringing children into the world they can't afford, like they can see the future. Let's say a normal family of four loses a parent, or one of them gets a horrible cancer, or whatever - all of a sudden that family may well need help. (Although the Tories have recently suggested that people should save up for their sickness periods out of their pay, all that spare cash from £9 per hour eh?) Is that their fault, should they have factored that into their equations?

It's almost like, I dunno, we need some sort of system, perhaps we could call it a 'welfare system', to decide who needs help and what it should be.

The challenge: Design an affordable welfare system that's both fair but also copes with all manner of situational permutations as decided by Hearthly.

If anyone complains come up with another scenario not catered for and use it to attack the government; repeat as required.

But actually yes, one primary consideration of any parent should be 'If I die or become ill, what happens to my family?'. So you make provisions, take out life insurance (even a modest £9/hour affordable policy), or... OR... decide the risk of disaster if you're out of work is too great, and opt not to have a family until you're confident of your ability to provide.

Fucking outrageous, I know.

£9 an hour life insurance policy sounds well expensive.

Don't necessarily disagree with the sentiment there, but is that level of risk-aversion in life fair to anyone at all? I mean, if I only ever did things that I could absolutely afford come what may with no risk of negative impact, that would be a miserable life. Nothing sums up the rat race more, to be honest.

Managed risk, of course, not simply doing nothing if it carries smallest potential for going awry. The alternative is to simply be relaxed and allow any and all in society to blunder in to any ill-thought out unplanned situation that they can't manage, and expect those who are more sensible and cautious to pick up the tab, in the name of 'society'. There are many here who seem to think that's always the preferred choice over expecting any personal responsibility or accountability from any individual anyway.

I don't have kids yet. I could afford one now easily, but if I wait at least another couple of years I'll be in an even better, more stable situation and worries will be even more reduced. If you want to do things sooner you accept the risk, or take the necessary precautions. Rocket science it ain't.

Well in our case both me and Mrs Hearthly were denied any offer of life insurance whatsoever due to 'previous lifestyle choices'. However at this point we'd already had a child and were applying for a mortgage.

Probably should have just killed the kid at that point eh? Just in case something happened and we weren't able to look after her properly in the future.

And she's turned out to be disabled too, so she'll just be a massive benefits drain all her life. Even though what she actually needs to do is just 'work and grind' her way through disability. Bloody slacking disabled.

Hot damn we fucked that up!

Hearthly mate, turn down the volume knob please, yeah?

Lets have a discussion like adults instead of reacting and taking everything as a personal slight and/or interpreting stuff people say in the very worst possible and most emotive way? This is exactly what I meant by 'we should be able to talk about this stuff', especially here, and for the most part - we can.

I'm shortly offline and off on a site, but would really like to come back tomorrow to respond/contribute to many of the interesting posts without the discussion being closed down in the meantime because, for example, people are made to feel bad and/or they "can't say" what they actually think about this stuff. Too much of that goes on already IMO.

What were your previous lifestyle choices? Sorry, historical decision that affect your eligibility for insurance are on you, much like any future ones will also.

And to try to draw an equivalence between what I said and the statement 'The disabled just need to grind their way through disability, the slackers', is a patent fucking nonsense. So while you might be going for the anger/sympathy play to make your point, it's a billion miles off the mark.

Meh, EBG is a goliath of vitriolic ranting, it just so happens his rants come from the side of the fence as yours.

If my response and reactions are borne of emotion, then so be it.

Grrr! Behold my vitriol! People should make careful decisions about their life! Incoherent statement of rage! And so forth.

Sigh. Yeah, even when we fundamentally disagreed in this very discussion (not that I object to anything he's said, he's entitled to his opinion and has made interesting points as far as I'm concerned).

Whatever. Still, well done for deflecting onto personalities etc., as ever thanks for your positive contribution.

It's more that you're doing an awful lot of arguing against something EBG isn't saying. I don't agree with a lot of what he's saying here, but can you see a single place where he's once mentioned that disability benefit spending should be cut?

I don't mind him disagreeing, and I think I've shown I'm at least up for discussion on the topic. He does however seem determined to accuse me of something I haven't said, and hasn't at least asked what I think the scenario he's outlining before lambasting me for my non-stated view on it.

FWIW disability allowance is one aspect that should never be cut, although 'cut' is too simple a term to cover the variety of adjustments to a policy that may or may not be applicable for certain scenarios. You can't talk generally, or assume a general position on something so intrinsically granular. It's a political football.

If you're incapable of work due to chronic injury or disability, then absolutely there should be a liveable allowance with support. If you're partially disabled needing additional support, it should be funded. I don't think anyone that's ever been a member of this forum has ever said, in one way or another 'Fuck those lazy disableds'. A controversial government measure is the attempt to get disabled people to work as much as they can, and again it depends on people's behaviours and individual situations.

There are lots of jobs, for example, a paraplegic person can do, and may want to do, and it certainly hasn't stopped lots of others. Or you could be a person that says 'Look, my legs don't work, I'm disabled, give me the benefits', and I don't think it's reasonable to be accepting of that position any more than you would some lazy git who just can't be arsed to work at Maccies. I'm not saying there are lots of people like that, or that such an attitude comprises any majority of such people. Merely that it's an acceptable response to have when presented with that scenario.

Yeah, a lot of it comes down to whether you believe that you actually are being confronted with a given scenario to a significant extent. There is little doubt that the mass support for welfare cuts comes from quite a large disconnect between people's estimations vs the actual facts, as Grim... alluded to earlier. It seems to me that the Tories are only too happy to perpetuate and exploit many of these misapprehensions in order to further their ideology.

There are elements of DLA that should be cut or means tested. However, having seen the previous and current shenanigans on qualification tests, then I wouldn't trust any administration to correctly manage the few adjustments that I think could be due without fucking everything up, and costing more money than the savings.

I haven't said EBG has said that, I did directly pull him up on the 'don't have kids you can't afford' statement (which he did make, with the suggestion we should all be planning about twenty years ahead from the age of around 21) and then branched out into disabled benefits of my own accord as I was getting cross, and also because the two things are very much conflated in the public conscience IMO. (I mean, we've all seen The Daily Mail, right? I just go there for the bikini pics.)

Plus the Tories are hacking at benefits across the board, and the disabled have arguably suffered more than most. (And yes I know it was the last Labour government that brought ATOS into the fray.)

And this debate makes me angry which doubtless comes through in my posts, because outside of a tiny fringe of people who are undoubtedly milking the system and living a life of fecklessness and idleness (and it's a tiny fringe of people according to the DWP's OWN FIGURES), all that's really happening here is the folks at the bottom of the ladder are getting kicked and stamped on. (Oh yes and the under 25s, because fuck them.)

I think I probably am a rags to riches story to be fair. I've been homeless, I've worked horrible soul destroying rubbish jobs for a pittance, lived in areas where the neighbours send their kids round to chap the door so they can peer in and see if there's anything worse stealing etc etc. Now I can barely remember what it feels like to be terrified to put my bank card into a machine incase it got swallowed, or to do the run round the house searching for change to buy a bag of rice. I don't even really register payday anymore.

Of course people shouldn't be stopped from having children but it's so infuriating that some people can just pop them out without even caring about it and claiming benefits and not even bloody looking after them and I can't. If I want kids I have to spend >£1000 just to have one shot at it and it might not even work. Biology sucks.

I think one of the best things to do for people from areas of traditionally high unemployment would be to show them what employment looks like. Basically exactly what you're sayng, inspirational employment. It's not some unacheievable notion of suddenly earning £30,000 a year but even working a low skilled job you can suddenly afford to go on nights out and buy clothes and choose your meals for the week and maybe even learn to drive. I think not having anything to aspire to must be a huge part of the problem for some people. What are you aiming for when you don't know what it looks like?

As for 'affordable housing'. We're buying a new build and in our new estate there is going to be some affordable housing. I have literally no problems with that at all, but I have to admit if I knew it was going to be local authority housing I would probably be less pleased. Not because I think that everyone who lives in local authority housing is a bad person, or a potential criminal or a druggie or anything. There has been a time when I would have burst into floods of happy tears to be offered a council house. But simply because as a very (very) broad generalisation, home owners take more care of their home than people renting.

One thing that I'm sure would help is some basic financial education in schools, to give people a proper idea of what "grown up stuff" costs, and how much you need to earn to pay for the lifestyle that you want.
Lets face it, at the start of our GCSE courses did anyone really have a good idea of any of that kind of thing.

That could mean picking a few example jobs then going through the calculations to work out take home pay over a week/month/year, then looking at what that will pay for in terms of rent/mortgage/car/bills and so on.

If you sit them down and get some realistic aspirations, then work back to see how you can pay for it kids are more likely to see the value of hard work and studying.

I don't think it's particularly egregious to say that renters don't take as much care as owners. For an owner their investment is worth a couple of hundred grand at least, so it's worth keeping tidy. The most a renter expects to lose is a bit of their deposit even if they've practically set the place on fire before leaving.

I don't think I earn loads of money, but I'm careful with it and I exploit all of the moneysaving tips where I can. Cashback on pretty much everything, cashback bank accounts, credit cards. Shifting money about for best interest, lowest fees. Changing energy suppliers. Buying things in bulk when some insane deal is on offer. Little things all over the place that add up over time. Topcashback puts my lifetime cashback earnings at over £1000 and that's just on stuff I would have bought anyway. Even then I'm not as tight I could be, and none of these requires a superior level of intelligence to exploit.

I had an ex that, unbeknown to me at the start of the relationship, had £25k of debt that she'd racked up because of spurious purchases and terrible money management. I spreadsheeted the everloving shit out of every single account, with balances, payments and future interest repayments calculated to the penny. Worked up a monthly budget and repayment plan for each account, hitting the ones with the highest interest first, or consolidating others for best cashflow. None of it needed anything more than basic Excel formulas - you just have to want to do it. She also just didn't appreciate how much money she spunked on stupid shit - like spending £35 getting her nails done every two weeks, or paying £12/month for a website she'd never set up. Wastage everywhere and she had a massively hard time accepting that things like her nails weren't essential purchases.

She managed to write off her car by driving through deep water, and when about £6k of insurance money came through she didn't understand why she shouldn't spend it all on a new car instead of using it to consolidate or draw down on some of her overdrafts. After some discussion she thought maybe 3-4k was the acceptable minimum for a car. This is the girl that lived less than 2 miles from work and didn't need a car for anything else. I told her she could spend £1000 on something that was perfectly serviceable and more than sufficient for her usage. She really didn't understand why. Eventually her coddling mother stepped in to buy a £2k car for her, paying half of it herself.

The other thing is that she lived in a 3-bedroom semi-detached social housing (that she was living in under the false pretence her mum was still living there, which she wasn't....), in a nice area. Paying £350/month for the whole fucking house. She earned £24k a year and had no dependants other than a cat. By the time we broke up about 6 months later her debt was down under £20k with a projected payoff of 3 or so years, none of which would have happened if I wasn't guiding every single basic financial decision.

I really do struggle for sympathy for people that are just incapable at managing LIFE. This girl was privately educated and she couldn't even manage herself. No excuses, no mitigating circumstances, no personal tragedies. We eventually broke up because the stress was making me ill.

So all along the politicians have been getting it wrong, and the problem isn't as complex or intractable as it appears.

More spreadsheets is what's needed here.

EXCEL FOR ALL.

I don't want no scroungers using their benefits to pay for Excel, when Sheets is free.

Not everyone is poor or in debt because society has conspired against them. Some people are just really fucking shit at managing themselves.

So naturally Hearthly pipes up to assume I'm assigning that label to absolutely everyone in society, of course. Logical and rational both.

If the Tories are so keen on making work pay, why are they going after low earners by cutting tax credits? It seems mental to be targeting people who are already working full time and trying to get further along in life economically.

Sorry guys, work shite, not been able to post...

But in the interlude, hopefully something to raise a giggle, some cheeky sod sent this to my phone

Banks, not Labour, to blame for blowing up the economy. Corbyn is correct and is reaping the rewards.

Includes stats and facts to back the argument up.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/201 ... ial-crisis

How many more times, man?

The banks "blew up" for two reasons:

(1) Um, the banks.
(2) Lack of competent regulation from the then government.

Even Millipede conceded point (2) during the last GE and, frankly, the only people refusing to acknowledge this most fundamental fact of governmental responsibility are revisionists and fantasists, regardless of political hue.

Really can't be bothered trotting it all out again. As for Corbyn, man, I hope you're right. If he wins, I doubt anyone will be celebrating more than me as it'll spell the end of Labour as an electable party of governance - and probably the end of them full stop.