THE Prepping thread - a new beginning :)

Karmacat

mardatha wrote: »

I don't mean to sound bald lol, I just say what I think, because I know we're all friends in here. And friends are allowed to disagree as long as they are not hurtful. Although I can cope with hurtful if I have to.

:kisses3:I *like* the way you post, Mar! Bald had no negative connotations for me, I promise. You don't tie yourself up in knots and you speak straight from the heart. I love it. I was always able to do it in my professional life, but in my personal life I'm terrible, that's why Captain Awkward was so great: my skin was always too thin, and reading that blog, I turned a corner, suddenly started to feel that my own point of view was worth having, since it only applied to me, and I'm absolutely entitled to make my own choices about my own life. As is everyone else.

TS been Hitting the F here for a few months now and it's getting steadily worse. Apologies if I am rattier than usual recently, I'm getting seriously not amused. Hopefully life will re-balance itself for me soon.

I'm so sorry to hear that, Mar. I remember you posting about some of that a few months ago I hope a new balance is reached really soon, and it's in a good way.

fuddle

Bedsit_Bob wrote: »

Nor can it take into account addiction, be that illegal drugs, nicotine, alcohol, gambling, or anything else for that matter.

There will always be people, who will put smoking, drinking, etc. ahead of feeding themselves and, in some cases, even their children.

These people wouldn't be able to budget for household needs, if they were on £1,000 a week.

What should we do about these people?

I'm damned if I know.

Having lived through this very scenario there is absolutely nothing 'we can do about these people'. What I do know is there is a softer approach when dealing with council tax debt when it gets to the court stage and certainly with mortgage arrears, when taken to court, the outcome is helpful rather than brusque.

daz378

Thanks for the kind words .... i have a brother and sister only lives a few miles away and another sister lives in LA, my nearby sister has been on welfare most of her working life due to her lovely disabled daughter now in her thirties, i have immense love and respect for her has if that wasnt enough her son has recently started having epileptic fits hes also in his thirties, shes very proud and will only let me help on her birthday or xmas , so i usually send her a tosspots(thanks GQ) online shop to have a big party and i have friends both at work and live locally who ive known over 30 years so on the whole bobbin along ok for now but i dont take it for granted . you all take care

GreyQueen

Having both worked and volunteered in the debt advice sector, before my present employment, I would say that it is often possible to drag the fat out of the fire with debt, if the indebted person is serious (or even semi-serious) about making some changes.

Although you sometimes had to have gentle but firm words with people about how their £400 a month cigarette habit or their Sky subscriptions which take one quarter of their benefit income not being acceptable on a SOM as an explanation to their creditors of why they can only pay £1 a month towards their debts.

I see quite a lot of my neighbours spending their limited funds in the pub and the betting shop, but have never bumped into one of them at Tosspots YS time, and that store is a five minute stroll away. I draw certain conclusions of my own from what I see but it's a free world. Some choices are forced on you by circumstances, some are made by your own, repeated, actions or inactions.

I have been 'on the social' for years at a time, due to chronic illhealth, and am no stranger to the terror that a brown manilla envelope landing on the mat can induce. Even to this day, I get a bit shaky at the sight of one of those. I've also had the joyful experience of opening a DSS letter and being told, effective a date already a week or so in the past, that I have no benefit award, and thus no money coming in.

I sought advice immediately from CAB and the kindly advisor asked if I had food at home, did I need a food parcel? I was grateful for the thoughtfulness but did have a storecupboard and also some cash on hand, but many people sail very close to the wind and are so incredibly vulnerable.

Whenever I see/ hear/ read those smug barstewards in power knocking the little people in this country, I wish I was a supernatural being who could somehow change their lives. Such as sentencing them to an indefinate term in real life, at or near the bottom of the socio-economic pile, without the benefits of family connection, elite education, cronyism or even good health. I'd love to make the policy makers live the policies, not for a week or a month, but forever, as a superb lesson in compassion.

Alas, I lack supernatural powers, don't even believe in such things, but one has to have a dream, hey?

mardatha

GQ just gimme a machine gun and a barricade and I'm with you all the way! lol

VJsmum

I think the old adage of 'walking a mile in someone's shoes' is rather applicable here. We don't know, on the whole, what is going on in people's lives.

Many of us have sailed close to the wind - if not floundered in the storm. I watched my mother struggle to feed us - and yet she smoked... I stopped judging that a long time ago, she had nothing else and, looking back, i think she herself went without food. We were never hungry and we were wamly, if not fashionably, dressed. But fear of poverty, once experienced, never leaves you.

On the other hand, my OH has never experienced poverty but knows how it affects me and I overheard him telling our kids, not that long ago, about why it affects me so much when they take money for granted.

I try not to judge others, though I am only human. Jack Monroe, the thrifty food blogger sums it up quite well when she says that things like tattoos and big tellys can be acquired before poverty strikes. YOu might get a few quid for a big telly, but you can't sell tattoos. Illness and job losses can arrive out of the blue - I was unexpectedly made redundant after we had signed to buy some expensive furniture. We could afford it, but there must be many who think it'll be ok only to find out it isn't.

fuddle

I've come to the conclusion that the human mind never wants to do a rubbish job of something. That's not in our makeup as we're primed to survive.

I have had to accept that my mam did the best for me that she could. Something effected her that made her unable to do a gold standard job but she tried. It's only that thought that enabled me to move on.

It's very difficult to function when there's mental, physical and life obstacles and as humans we have to survive somehow. Who are we to judge people coping methods for getting out of bed and trying to get on with life?

Doveling

Good grief Fuddle, I agree with you!!!!:eek:

I think you are talking about resilience.

Children need to learn socially acceptable coping mechanisms for life in general.
(I'm not talking about abused and neglected children which is another kettle of fish entirely)

Some children today, not all, have their battles fought for them and do not learn how to handle life for themselves.

If you can't cope with coming last in the sack race, life will be very hard for you in the future.:(

[Deleted User]

We're all only human and that means we're all standing in very different places to make decisions because we've all had widely differing experiences in our lives getting to this day in 2017. It's easy to judge, to feel superior and smug because we're OK, to look askance at people who have debts, make (in our eyes) wrong life choices and fritter away their incomes on items we deem unnecessary and wasteful BUT it's a long way up into the gutter if you're born below it, it's a monumental struggle to break conditioned habits you've known since infancy and the effort to heave yourself over the kerbstone isn't in everyone or the strength to make the changes that let you climb on. I KNOW how it feels and it is possible but you have to be mule stubborn and driven to do it. It sometimes means rifts with family and your whole acquaintance group, your peers, your mentors (to that point) and the strength to change who and what you are, it frankly hurts like Billy Oh and you become a pariah, a stuck up b*tch, a disloyal and wayward child and NOT 'one of us' any more. Not everyone has the guts or drive to do it, FUDS has, I have and I suspect many others of us have made the rock hard choices that have led to them being the folk they are today. People have differing values and because I hate people smoking with a passion or getting high on drugs or drunk as a skunk doesn't mean they shouldn't make their own choices but I DO think a good object lesson is to let them live with the consequences of their choices. If life has dealt cruel and devastating blows that take away everything people have however that have meant not having choice I would give anything and everything that was needed to help folk onto their feet and back to better lives.

thriftwizard

I was unexpectedly made redundant after we had signed to buy some expensive furniture. We could afford it, but there must be many who think it'll be ok only to find out it isn't.

Very similar to what's just happened to DS2; 2 sofas bought on interest-free credit to fit their rented home, but now they've split & neither of them can afford to keep the place on solo, or wants to stay where they've been so unhappy. Luckily they'll fit in our conservatory, so he can at least keep them, but at the cost of a couple of our own pieces. Heaven only knows what's going to happen to the rest of their stuff, but it's not my worry.

There will always be people, who will put smoking, drinking, etc. ahead of feeding themselves and, in some cases, even their children.

The nature of addiction is that you can only tackle it effectively when you're on a relatively even keel in your personal life... I count myself very lucky that I managed to give up smoking before I had DS1, now 29, and haven't ever slipped back into the habit, but there are still times, usually when TS really has HTF, when I really, really want to light up...