Taxpayer funds familys £1,600 per week rent - The Times

lostinrates

The_White_Horse wrote: »

fine, as long as they don't expect more pay/benefit than the NHS carer.

personally, if i was a high earner, I would want to work to get the best for the child, and let the carer care for them.

Not everybody is a high earner. I think this is a the sort of sitution where choice for the family is vital. There SHOULD be state support. In some cases it will be eter for family and tax payer to go to work/stay home. In other cases the decision will be more complex, and I imagine, a greater breadth of ideological difference would be evident in our feelings, and this is why shades of grey are so very, very important.

bo_drinker

moggylover wrote: »

I can agree with much of the content of this post! However, the persistent insistence on calling people "scum" exhibits exactly the ignorance and lack of vision that has brought our country to its current sad position and thus you and your ilk will always remain part of the route cause of the problem and not the answer.

In my eyes as in the eyes of others, me and my ilk if you like these 3rd generation wasters are no better than scum, and as long as I am paying for them to sit on their lazy a55es they will remain that way
PS how can me and my ilk be a part of the problem?? I work and pay tax, I don't claim a thing. Sorry you have lost me there.....
It was their choice to be lay abouts, I didn't force them.

moggylover

lostinrates wrote: »

I'm sorry, I find this last it difficult to read (me not you)...so my answer will be disjointed. Reasnable family, sadly, is difficult, choice wise....of course the children have no choice..on family size/priority. Agree, earnings should enable choice not just to survive but to save, to have some degree of choice for earner and for someone entering adulthood...e.g. career direction. Think they do atm, think could be considerably better though. The focus soley on finaical equality is unequalising, and risks impoverishing many....as is the aim for untold riches. I do not feel the richer for a media and society focusing on bling and famous.

Never going to resolve proportional poverty, poverty extends beyond finance. We SHOULD have provision for no absolute poverty withn our political borders ..,to have such need to have the sustainable resouces for all within them.

Like wise crime...it never will be overcome. (Partly because crime extends further from ''instinct'' into rules to complicted for every one to adhere to..people can become disillusioned with the complexity. Ohers are just greedy but lazy. Others are unfortunate in one of many ways, others still just get it worn or make a mistake/error of judgement)


Sorry for lack of clarity towards end....:o

quote:

do not personally wish for ANY personal choices which infringe on the life (but not particularly lifestyle or monetary choices) of another less fortunate human being: to do so requires an egotistical desire to be godlike that I would consider borders on serious mental decay:D

Less fortunate comes in mny guises...to assume they are all financial is similarly...weird!" end quote


Have never, ever assumed that they are all financial: however a simple fact of life is that the ability to make something of the gifts you are given in this life can be seriously hampered by a lack of funding and what might have been a gentle hill to climb for those who had more financial support becomes Mount Everest for those who lack any.

There was no great lack of clarity in the last of your post, and we are not far apart on our thinking: I do however think you would be greatly surprised at just how difficult it can be to lift oneself out of the gutter without either a marketable gift, the determination of an ox or the kind of self-esteem not easily gained from living on one of the lovely sink estates/ghettoes that have become the norm in many areas of the UK.

At least in my day there was work out there no matter how few skills or gifts you had and no matter how lacking in self-esteem or determination you were.

lostinrates

moggylover wrote: »

: I do however think you would be greatly surprised at just how difficult it can be to lift oneself out of the gutter without either a marketable gift, the determination of an ox or the kind of self-esteem not easily gained from living on one of the lovely sink estates/ghettoes that have become the norm in many areas of the UK.

At least in my day there was work out there no matter how few skills or gifts you had and no matter how lacking in self-esteem or determination you were.

I really, really don't think I am terirbly uninformed on this, not so much as you think anyway! when I worked as a solicitors clerk most of my clients were young men with low educational acheivement and IMO trapped into that gutter from inner city/high crime/areas of deprivation in London.. I feel that they were supported to do so actually kept them there often, not provided means to lift them out. Some of these young men, despite their crimes, I liked very, very much.

An example: One broke through my reserve and the resevre of the female barrister representin him. we provided help, looked things up for him, (extra to the case. to his life, to give him answers to his reasons why ''there was no point'' or no route out) and so desperately wanted to help him. All he had to do was make the effort and keep his nose clean..and have a drive.

I saw him in court a few months later and he was embarrased and tried to avoid my eye line. He was not a bad man, he was a man with no special skills, who had no idea of the pride of attainment, acheivment other than financial ..who had no impetus, and no need for impetus, to get out of his rut. I don't thinkunder anysystem he would be a beaon of sucess, but I think he could have lived a nice ordinary life, crime free, with a nice family...he just needed a reason too. He had help, he just had no need.

I also once had a client who worked in a fairly high profile scheme where a small number of young people were given a start in restaurant kitchens. That scheme, the work, the learning, was superb. More of that would be wonderful, I was also very fond of that client, who had, much to his own apparent shock found pride in a low paid job, learning (and he was not what you'd describe as bright) and working as a team to complete something.

I agree, the work, the oppertunity to work, and earn a living wage, is the key......I think oversupport from state is a further padlock.

moggylover

lostinrates wrote: »

OK, this is important I think.... Why do you think i was easier then than now?

Partly because there had not been the dumbing down of education that the Tories instigated when Maggie decided to pander to what "business" required in people leaving university. The selection in my day was not entirely right but it was far less wrong than the blanket "ability" tests today and at least it gave those who actually did have an intellect to bring to the playing field a very strong chance of nurturing that.

Also, there was a lot of work about. On leaving school most people could get a job of at least some sort, and many of those jobs involved training or working ones way up a ladder within a company that did not involve "formal" training course type training which many people cannot relate to or cope with.

Nowadays I am afraid that there are very few of those sort of jobs out there (and I have been researching these things for the mentoring I am doing for the local school and have been quite horrified at what is lacking out there) and even when the jobs exist they are not being offered to those that might actually gain from them because there are a pool of those with "paper qualifications" who are also unemployed and seen as more employable: this despite the fact that they are just never going to stick at it in most cases because the have "a degree" and see themselves as too good for those menial jobs.

If they take up that job for 2 years, and then use it as a springboard for moving on, there will be another newly graduated "degree" holder just as willing to use it in the short-term and the company will foolishly train yet another person to do the job in order to be employed whilst the person who would quite probably have contentedly stayed for 10 years learning to do the job better than those "more educated" ones will be overlooked time and time again and the myth of "choosing" to remain unemployed will be perpetuated.

Lastly, because our manufacturing base is now so desperately contracted, and our apprenticeships so thin on the ground that if you are not academically gifted then you have few other areas to use for a jumping off point.

lostinrates

moggylover wrote: »

Also, there was a lot of work about. On leaving school most people could get a job of at least some sort, and many of those jobs involved training or working ones way up a ladder within a company that did not involve "formal" training course type training which many people cannot relate to or cope with.
.

I think the background of NVQs was to give such unformalised experience recognisable quals so that they could move rather than sit in a job for ten years, if it would benefit their career to move. They are not so formal,and can be repeated again and again with no penalty (or could) so a nervous performance was not a career doomed to failure.

But yes, in the main I agree with you bout the relevance of ALL of those factors. I saw a huge drop in standard of my course while at university, and the entry requirements, the way the course was pitched in relevance (in my opinion incorrectly) and the negative impact that has now had on that (related) industry.

zygurat789

In any society there has to be rich, middle (income) and poor (you've seen the TW3 sketch). Poverty is defined in percentage terms and, therefore, will always be with us. Even in the richest country in the world there is still poverty. GB's attempts to "take children out of povery" may have been very laudable but by handing out tax credits to the poor, and therefore making them richer he has effectively relegated some of the middle income group to the status of poor. They are, naturally, very upset about it and I would suspect reading the above that a fair few posters are in this position, where having worked for all they've got find themselves poorer than those who haven't.
It's a mess. Benefits have to be reduced but the really vulnerable protected.
I'd means test every benefit. I'd cap every benefit. I'd make people do whatever needs desparely doing around (insert your town) that hasn't been done for years because of lack of funds (which isn't going to improve anytime soon)

lostinrates

Grr, for the first time in ages I wish I didn't have to step away from the screen. Thanks moggy, for a much appreciate different opinion, eloquant portryal of it and reasonable, friendly and thought provoking discussion.

moggylover

lostinrates wrote: »

I really, really don't think I am terirbly uninformed on this, not so much as you think anyway!

Sorry LIR it wssn't supposed to sound patronising:o

when I worked as a solicitors clerk most of my clients were young men with low educational acheivement and IMO trapped into that gutter from inner city/high crime/areas of deprivation in London.. I feel that they were supported to do so actually kept them there often, not provided means to lift them out. Some of these young men, despite their crimes, I liked very, very much.

An example: One broke through my reserve and the resevre of the female barrister representin him. we provided help, looked things up for him, (extra to the case. to his life, to give him answers to his reasons why ''there was no point'' or no route out) and so desperately wanted to help him. All he had to do was make the effort and keep his nose clean..and have a drive.

I saw him in court a few months later and he was embarrased and tried to avoid my eye line. He was not a bad man, he was a man with no special skills, who had no idea of the pride of attainment, acheivment other than financial ..who had no impetus, and no need for impetus, to get out of his rut. I don't thinkunder anysystem he would be a beaon of sucess, but I think he could have lived a nice ordinary life, crime free, with a nice family...he just needed a reason too. He had help, he just had no need.

What I think he probably most lacked is the self-esteem (the belief that he simply is a decent and worthwhile human being, not any arrogant pride thing) to believe that he could do it, or was worth it.

I also once had a client who worked in a fairly high profile scheme where a small number of young people were given a start in restaurant kitchens. That scheme, the work, the learning, was superb. More of that would be wonderful, I was also very fond of that client, who had, much to his own apparent shock found pride in a low paid job, learning (and he was not what you'd describe as bright) and working as a team to complete something.

I agree, the work, the oppertunity to work, and earn a living wage, is the key......I think oversupport from state is a further padlock.

I agree entirely with that post: but what my job teaches me time and time again is that there is little alternative to the state support since the jobs market is seriously contracted (not everywhere but in many areas) and the opportunities to even experience any sort of work are far too low to service the numbers wanting them.

I have nothing but admiration for those who do well in this life by hard work (Jamie Oliver comes to mind) but who do not loose sight of the fact that they may have had one or two instances of sheer good luck in their beginnings that made the difference between them being a success and not. These sort of people always seem to be the ones that want desperately to put something back (and usually get quite a bit of nasty flack from the press when they do as well) and if there were more of us willing to do so then I think we might get on track.

What stands out for me with Jamie is that despite the fact that he gets irritated at some of those who apparently "resist" his help in the first instance he is usually willing to step back, calm down, try to see where that person is coming from and the feelings they might be feeling and then he gets back in there and shows them just how good they can be!:T

That is often all it takes! I have had some smashing success with one or two of the "difficult case" kids that I have been "mentoring"! But for many there is never one single person who is going to point out what your "skill" or "gift" is in this life and praise is so precious little that it is scary to receive. Imagine that, coupled with a family who may well feel totally angry and let down and cheated upon by a society that failed them (and we have failed several generations) and then couple in the fact that these young people will have seen themselves repeatedly referred to as scum and worse in the press! Where will the self-esteem necessary to try to improve ones lot ever come from in that mess?!!!

moggylover

zygurat789 wrote: »

In any society there has to be rich, middle (income) and poor (you've seen the TW3 sketch). Poverty is defined in percentage terms and, therefore, will always be with us. Even in the richest country in the world there is still poverty. GB's attempts to "take children out of povery" may have been very laudable but by handing out tax credits to the poor, and therefore making them richer he has effectively relegated some of the middle income group to the status of poor. They are, naturally, very upset about it and I would suspect reading the above that a fair few posters are in this position, where having worked for all they've got find themselves poorer than those who haven't.
It's a mess. Benefits have to be reduced but the really vulnerable protected.
I'd means test every benefit. I'd cap every benefit. I'd make people do whatever needs desparely doing around (insert your town) that hasn't been done for years because of lack of funds (which isn't going to improve anytime soon)

I so much see where you are coming from and I quite agree with most of the sentiments.

With regard to the latter though, I think I would prefer that to be done on the basis of us actually making those things that need to be done into paying jobs and probably more importantly that we respect those doing those jobs and stop putting them down!

If you continually kick your dog he will either slink away and hide himself away coming out only to eat and dissapear again: or he will bite your ankle:D Humans do just as badly with kickings and abuse as animals do - the psychology is not difficult!