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You've Never Had It So Good....
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India is a strange country. I'd not call it precisely socialist or capitalist.“The ideas of debtor and creditor as to what constitutes a good time never coincide.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, Love Among the Chickens0 -
I agree with you to an extent, but you're forgetting that the "vulnerable" tag is a qualifier here. Councils routinely use it to deny help.
I'd say anyone who is sleeping on the streets is vulnerable, but there are many more of them now IMHO than there were five years ago.
There is a gap between statistics for homelessness and rough sleepers, because there are a lot of people who are homeless who are very far from being rough sleepers. Rough Sleepers are very difficult to count because if they are sensible they stay as far away from anyone who looks official as possible.
We had the absurdity of a committee of councillors going out looking for rough sleepers, to ask them what they thought of the service. They couldnt find them. They hunted high, they hunted low. Because, there wasnt any. Oh, except someone who had got so drunk on a night out he had pis*ed himself and fell asleep on the flower beds in the cathedral grounds.0 -
Someone said that the poor will always be with us. In the UK, absolute poverty is mostly 'chosen'.
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I can understand this 'chosen' viewpoint. It's a reflection of the reality we can't solve everyones problems.
Personally, I can't comment on the chosen or not argument.
I do think that very poor or homeless people in all countries become disconnected with the rest of society. The Work Programme ably demonstrates how difficult , expensive, and sometimes futile it is to reconnect these people.0 -
I do struggle with the Guatemalan / UK comparison. There are so many differences.
A different example would be India. The significant numbers of the poor element of the population still live on a dollar or two a day.
How does India reconcile this with a Space or Nuclear weapon program? If you are a middle class IT professional in India you live pretty well.
Is there an implicit acceptance that there will always be a large divide between rich and poor, that this is somehow a natural order of things?
In places like India, with 1 billion people and a huge amount of space, I think such things are easily reconciled.
Over recent decades they have emulated China and become another large 'factory' for the world. Additionally they have become the software and outsourcing capital for USA and Europe - and they have good natural resources.
Hence they have become the 10th largest economy in the world, and it will not be long before they overtake UK. Even when they do, the "headroom" of GDP per head has incredible heights to go, whereas ours hasn't.
They key difference, as I see it, is that the vast wealth being created in India goes (broadly speaking) to those who helped create it. They have not (yet) decided to extract another 30% (say) of this individual wealth in taxation in order to give to those who do not help create wealth. i.e. those who do not work.
I strongly suspect that as each year goes on, factories and businesses will expand, diversify, move out to the sticks for cheaper labour, invest in untapped areas and markets, so that the opportunities for the "wretched poor" will continue to cascade down. It can only go so fast.
The argument is, therefore, whether we are right to criticise this strategy [which currently has a degree of poverty - just like UK in the industrial revolution] or whether we should leave them alone. For India, now, to spend massive proportions of their wealth on creating a "welfare state" would staunch investment, reduce the will to work, and bring the country to total stagnation. It is not as if India have not studied Western economics and weighed up the pros and cons of such generous welfare benefits. I suspect they have rejected it as an optimum model for the way forward.
I see no reason to criticise them for that. Although I do criticise Dave for insisting on throwing our money into the country as aid - although I reckon that behind the scenes, this is more to do with 'reparations' for the financial rape we inflicted upon India in the past.0 -
We had the absurdity of a committee of councillors going out looking for rough sleepers, to ask them what they thought of the service. They couldnt find them. They hunted high, they hunted low. Because, there wasnt any. Oh, except someone who had got so drunk on a night out he had pis*ed himself and fell asleep on the flower beds in the cathedral grounds.
I'd be amazed if they could find any rough sleepers... they don't want to be found.“The ideas of debtor and creditor as to what constitutes a good time never coincide.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, Love Among the Chickens0 -
Loughton_Monkey wrote: »Not so sure. Did they go on the dole, then?
I believe they were kept by the state for a fair chunk of their lives.'Just think for a moment what a prospect that is. A single market without barriers visible or invisible giving you direct and unhindered access to the purchasing power of over 300 million of the worlds wealthiest and most prosperous people' Margaret Thatcher0 -
G’day all - I hope christmas day was good. I was delivered back home this morning, and I am enjoying the return to normality!
It occurs to me that it would be interesting to compare the Guatemalans’ experience of christmas with the MSE experience of christmas.
During the 20noughties, I volunteered at the Crisis xmas shelters in London. From the outset, I had questions about the comparative profiles of volunteers and clients, and at one point there was something of a debate about what would now be called ‘benefits tourism’.
I stopped volunteering after I was forced to spend the week living at my own expense in a backpackers’ hostel in sarf london sharing bedroom and bathroom with nubile youngsters of all genders and nationalities. Omigod, the price we were expected to pay…!
If MSE is rooted entirely in the culture of consumerism (and the struggle between the conflicting demands of profiteering and equal rights) then I wonder if the Guatemalans are rooted in the no-man’s-land between animal survival and religious belief.
I have no doubt that Guatemalans (especially the poor) experience high mortality rates, and probably high birth rates as a result. But the paradox is that in The West, we now have a growing debate about how to pay for the extended survival of the old and the weak. We even have a debate about whether or not we should be allowed to help them to end their own lives.
TruckerTAccording to Clapton, I am a totally ignorant idiot.0 -
To sum up this thread: most of you have no clue about how lucky you are.0
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To sum up this thread: most of you have no clue about how lucky you are.
Most people do recognise how lucky they are.
Sadly society that has been engineered and crafted leads to hopes and aspirations. It focuses on creating unrealistic wants that can be fixed all it takes is money.
Why is there a lot of poverty in the world?"If you act like an illiterate man, your learning will never stop... Being uneducated, you have no fear of the future.".....
"big business is parasitic, like a mosquito, whereas I prefer the lighter touch, like that of a butterfly. "A butterfly can suck honey from the flower without damaging it," "Arunachalam Muruganantham0
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