It was getting tough in 2006 and the workhouse still threatens us in 2011

Charis

HariboJunkie wrote: »

People took whatever jobs were on offer , not just the ones they thought were good enough for them.

I was talking to a neighbour this week about her early life here. She's 75 but it's like talking to one of Laurie Lee's generation. I love her tales of how there were so many children the latest baby slept in a drawer and all the other kids slept several to a bed for warmth. Anyway, she said that 'there al'us used to be jobs on the farms but there 'ent these days'. Mechanisation and a flood of cheap foreign seasonal labour has put paid to that. This is poly tunnel country and the nearest huge strawberry farm has contacts in Eastern European countries who provide a continual supply of pickers and the work is just for a few months a year. Sometimes they barely earn enough to eat because if the crop is late, or poor, or lost (like in 2007) they earn nothing, as they are paid by the hour.

So the jobs just aren't there to be had any more. She said the money earned on the land was always bad but there were tied cottages and they often got their milk free. Not any more.

Another contributory factor to anyone's happiness is their sense of community and family. Community was at the heart of life in those days now the hear has been ripped from towns and villages everywhere as people become insular and selfish. Family breakdowns and estrangement were practically unheard of back then whereas now it is common place to lose touch with family.

Very true. I think we have lost our own sense of identity and belonging because of it. Often families are torn apart by the need to move for work. Tonight my four adult children are in four different counties, hundreds of miles apart. My mother and my father (divorced) are in a fifth county. Fortunately I have good friends here and it's a town where strangers say hello as they pass. I'm happy here, yet there is a sense of impermanence, as though I am on holiday and have forgotten to go home.

bluebag

greenbee,

It's really nice to hear that some sensible decisions are being taken. Clearly it's a positive step if some cost benefit analysis is being done. Great to hear it.

ceridwen

Rainy-Days wrote: »

Well it's looking like George Soros is going to be right - the Euro will be disbanded and everyone will go back to their own currency. Thank goodness we didn't go into it. I know so many people who have said that when the Euro came into being everything costed so much more.

On a slightly different note, the world economy is going down the toilet again. Wonder what they are going to come up with this time to fix it!

I'm almost surprised the Euro has "held on" as long as it has....

Re replacements to "fix" the world economy - well there have been two ideas at least "waiting in the wings" as from the latter part of the 20th century - with value not just in themselves - but as a "basis to build on if need be":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_Exchange_Trading_Systems

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_banking

There may be other "possible rocks to build on" that have come up in the same time period that I am not aware of - but both these ideas are capable of "large scale expansion" and there are huge multinational businesses that have been running their own version of LETS for some years now. I believe this basic idea (encapsulated in both versions of The Basic Idea here) are quite possibly capable of being "expanded Up" to include national governments.

My mind starts boggling though at how to deal with continuing to pay pensions. Salaries/wages could possibly be replaced by The Basic Idea (at least to a large extent) - but I cant figure out how people are still to get pensions (disability benefits could be replaced by a Gift Economy operating within The Basic Idea - be it Lets or Timebank or some combination of them both. That is - people voluntarily donating surplus "earnings" towards a central fund for this - but my head is hurting at how pensions would continue - other than that they obviously must).

ceridwen

Charis wrote: »

Very true. I think we have lost our own sense of identity and belonging because of it. Often families are torn apart by the need to move for work. Tonight my four adult children are in four different counties, hundreds of miles apart. My mother and my father (divorced) are in a fifth county. Fortunately I have good friends here and it's a town where strangers say hello as they pass. I'm happy here, yet there is a sense of impermanence, as though I am on holiday and have forgotten to go home.

Very true Charis.

My best friend is an incomer - but of so many years standing that both her (adult) children and her sister all have houses within stone-throwing distance of each other and she lives a "fit persons" walking distance from that little grouplet. But she is highly unusual in that. A substantial group of us in my workplace are "locals" - with many incomers. Darn nearly the whole of my "social circle" are incomers. Evidence of my eyes every day that people rarely stay put in their "own" part of the country these days.

Divorce is something that rarely happened to people in my parents' generation and I only had one friend that had come from a single parent family whilst I was at school - everyone else had two parents (the same as myself). My generation - its like "Who ISNT divorced?" - as so many of us are (lost count of how many people I've had telling me the "ins and outs" of their divorce as it progressed over the years....).

MARDATHA
I hope we're all WELL stocked-up with loo rolls - as I just get the cheapest ones there is of them and they've shot up in price by a huge percentage. Guess its on the basis of "No matter how poor people are - they have no option whatsoever but to buy loopaper". Hmmm....mind you...we do have a certain MSE poster that will sell any of us cloth wipes to use instead......

mardatha

Nowt wrong wi the good old sponge onna stick dipped in vinegar...it was ok in my young days !
Mardathus of the Tiber

ceridwen

Just found in todays papers:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2041522/chancellor-George-Osborne-forced-deny-plan-let-Greeks-default-debts.html

I thought that Plan B had been (unofficially) in operation for some weeks now - ie the Greeks cant be thrown out of the Euro (for some sorta "technical" reason) so have to be "set up" to take themselves out. Well - that was my "put it very simply and cynically laypersons read between the lines of whats happening"....:cool:

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On a lighter note - to the aspiring writer on this thread (you know who you are.....) I found:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-2040044/Kindle-How-make-million-writing-e-book.html

[Deleted User]

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ceridwen

kittie wrote: »

That would take a big leap of faith but is well within your capabilities. If you `feel` as though you are heading that way then go for it. Don`t ever forget that many of us have celtic roots from long ago so it will be like going home

Kittie

I DO have Celtic roots - and they're not that far back:rotfl:

...and yer did get me seriously wondering about a Kindle (mega book-reader that I am) - but I'm offput by the thought of wireless technology that I gather it takes to use them....so must take up up on Squeaky's link to install that e-reader thingie on my computer.