RANT - Fed up with life here in the UK

[Sdrawkcab]

@Sdrawkcab you have yet to acknowledge any legitimate instances where this is proven and not snap judgements as you put it.

 

I would be more than happy to tell you many incidents that I have witnessed first had that more than backs up at least my own claims.

 

Because you haven't provided any. Practically everyone on here arguing against me has just said "They definitely do exist, you see them in the street all the time! There's a family over the road from me who live in a council house, I looked in their window and they had a MASSIVE TV and they all had iPads! Disgusting!"

 

"Events I have witnessed first hand" is the definition of anecdotal evidence, and you don't win arguments with anecdotes. In your day to day life, you may have seen more of these people than most. However if you actually look at the numbers, they are a miniscule minority.

[pcstru]

@Sdrawkcab you have yet to acknowledge any legitimate instances where this is proven and not snap judgements as you put it.

 

I thought the data in the article linked to by @Sdrawkcab acknowledged the existence of such, but the point is that they quantified them as a very small proportion of the welfare bill, somewhat out of proportion of the fuss made over them. I can't see from some of the anecdotes here, how people can actually know enough detail about the incomes of "people in the council house down the road" to make these judgements. What are people doing to get that level of detail; slipping in and opening up their mail?

[localzuk]

Ok, here's a statistic for you.

 

There are 370,000 households where no-one in the household has ever worked. Out of around 25m households. That's about 1.5%. Which is far too many. Far, far too many.

[tmcd35]

Because you haven't provided any. Practically everyone on here arguing against me has just said "They definitely do exist, you see them in the street all the time! There's a family over the road from me who live in a council house, I looked in their window and they had a MASSIVE TV and they all had iPads! Disgusting!"

 

So you see a house in a council estate - how do you know they haven't bought it? or it's not private rented? I live in a flat in an estate of what where council houses; I'm buying (bloody money pit!).

 

You look in the Window and see TV and iPads, nice. Look in mine and you'll see the same.

 

So, where the evidence they don't work? Maybe they work nights when your asleep? or have part time jobs? Self employed? Who knows. I certainly have no idea what any of my neighbours get up to during the day. Like I said above, that desciption fits my sisters family; they both work!

Edited October 24, 2013 by tmcd35

[CHR1S]

@Sdrawkcab how about one of the families 3 children singing happy birthday to himself, then hearing the mother (or a loose definition of one) telling him he has one card and no presents. Then hearing the parents row with each other as they blew his birthday money on weed and alcohol. We gave the poor sod £5 and loads of sweets, he was so happy.

 

Seeing the same kids dirty, in ripped, undersized clothes day in day out, yet seeing the bin bags full of Oranjeboom cans and a permanent smell of weed?

 

How about the massive TVs (yes plural), stereo (which was loud all the time hence the noise complaints), xbox, sky yet they barely left the house to take the kids to school let alone do anything that resembled work. Even the drugs were delivered to the door!

 

And thats a sample of one family...

[DPrince]

Actually, having lived on a council estate myself, and I'm sure others have, you tend to know which are the non-working council tenants, and which aren't.

The 'scroungers' and 'low-lifes' that people are referring to get a disproportionate amount of fuss because they tend to cause a disproportionate amount of problems. Where I lived, we had three problem families (out of about 30) who were a real problem - they were only 10%-ish of the population of our street, but caused pretty much 90% of the problems.

And it's not just a cost in benefits; there was the extra policing costs (they were always on our street sorting out various problems), costs in rubbish clearups, social workers, school places they didn't attend...

 

The fact is, people tend to object to these families because whilst they may make up a "tiny, tiny" proportion of the benefit cost, they are a direct blight on the neighbourhoods they live in, and on society as a whole.

Quoting statistics is small comfort to a family that is kept up night after night, or have their car windows put through on a weekly basis (as we did).

[CHR1S]

Actually, having lived on a council estate myself, and I'm sure others have, you tend to know which are the non-working council tenants, and which aren't.

The 'scroungers' and 'low-lifes' that people are referring to get a disproportionate amount of fuss because they tend to cause a disproportionate amount of problems. Where I lived, we had three problem families (out of about 30) who were a real problem - they were only 10%-ish of the population of our street, but caused pretty much 90% of the problems.

And it's not just a cost in benefits; there was the extra policing costs (they were always on our street sorting out various problems), costs in rubbish clearups, social workers, school places they didn't attend...

 

The fact is, people tend to object to these families because whilst they may make up a "tiny, tiny" proportion of the benefit cost, they are a direct blight on the neighbourhoods they live in, and on society as a whole.

Quoting statistics is small comfort to a family that is kept up night after night, or have their car windows put through on a weekly basis (as we did).

 

Same boat mate, noise complaints, fires, criminal damage..... getting out from there was the best thing ever!

[Sdrawkcab]

Actually, having lived on a council estate myself, and I'm sure others have, you tend to know which are the non-working council tenants, and which aren't.

The 'scroungers' and 'low-lifes' that people are referring to get a disproportionate amount of fuss because they tend to cause a disproportionate amount of problems. Where I lived, we had three problem families (out of about 30) who were a real problem - they were only 10%-ish of the population of our street, but caused pretty much 90% of the problems.

And it's not just a cost in benefits; there was the extra policing costs (they were always on our street sorting out various problems), costs in rubbish clearups, social workers, school places they didn't attend...

 

The fact is, people tend to object to these families because whilst they may make up a "tiny, tiny" proportion of the benefit cost, they are a direct blight on the neighbourhoods they live in, and on society as a whole.

Quoting statistics is small comfort to a family that is kept up night after night, or have their car windows put through on a weekly basis (as we did).

 

BRING BACK WORKHOUSES! That'll teach those uppity poors who's boss!

[Garacesh]

A single mother of two was renting a house and spent around £4,000 doing it up. New wallpaper, painting, new flooring/carpets, stuff like that. She lived there for two years. One day her landlord decided that he wasn't going to renew her tenancy at the end of the lease because he wanted to sell the house. In her spending £4,000 on that house and taking wonderful care of it whilst she and her two children lived there, she'd increased the value by around £15,000. Her and her two sons were forced to move onto a council estate because she couldn't find another house to rent that was within reasonable distance of her job, her youngest sons' school and the eldest sons' college.

 

I was that youngest son. Not everybody on a council estate that has nice things is a scrounger, that being said, not everyone on a council estate isn't, either. From my experiences there, I can tell you that @DPrince hit the nail on the head with his post. There were two terrible families on the estate I was on. Absolutely terrible families that I remember having to run from. Which didn't help, because I lived on the same estate. No matter how many police reports we filed, it continued. Disrespect, violence, drugs, alcohol, vandalism, those two families were involved in it all. We'd wake up to our garden filled with empty beer cans from their frequent parties, cigarette and joint butts, almost-empty bags of weed and on one-or-two occasions, almost empty bags of suspicious powder.

 

Loud music from their houses or cars. Threats of assault - and a few followed through with, too. And this was the parents! Their children had nice clothes, flashy phones and 'bling' jewellery, but you'd barely ever see them in school. The parents had no jobs. We know this because we communicated with our neighbours, some of them did indeed work nights. The parents never left their house unless it was to go to Asda or the corner shop to buy food, tobacco or alcohol. Their kids were just as dysfunctional. Aggressive, vile children who would hapily let you know how little they thought of you.

 

These are the benefit 'scroungers' we all hate. They exist. Yes, they're disproportionately referenced, but only because they cause the disproportionate amount of problems. No, they're not the cause of the economic crisis, but they certainly contribute. I'm not blaming them for the situation I'm in, but I'll be long deep in the ground before I accept somebody saying my animosity towards them is unjustified when they earn more than me for not working and having kids. I haven't had kids. I wouldn't have kids right now because I can't afford them. If I wanted to start a family, right now, I couldn't. They didn't have to worry about it.

Edited October 24, 2013 by Garacesh

[Sdrawkcab]

Ok, here's a statistic for you.

 

There are 370,000 households where no-one in the household has ever worked. Out of around 25m households. That's about 1.5%. Which is far too many. Far, far too many.

 

Would you rather they sleep on the street?

[localzuk]

Would you rather they sleep on the street?

 

Sorry, what? How does my not liking 1.5% of all homes in the UK never having had a job result in wanting them to sleep on the street?

 

Working for benefits shouldn't be a problem either... There is a massive amount of public infrastructure that needs maintenance but the country lacks funds to do so whilst paying everyone benefits.

 

Obviously, there will always be some households with no workers - due to disabilities etc... and this is absolutely fine. However, this will not equal 1.5% of the population.

Edited October 24, 2013 by localzuk

[CHR1S]

BRING BACK WORKHOUSES! That'll teach those uppity poors who's boss!

 

I actually agree to some extent.

Not the traditional workhouse, but a place when you can work, learn a trade and be paid in housing and food would be great.

[unixman_again]

@Sdrawkcab did you watch this? On Benefits & Proud

[pcstru]

Working for benefits shouldn't be a problem either... There is a massive amount of public infrastructure that needs maintenance but the country lacks funds to do so whilst paying everyone benefits.

What would that do to the economy? If the government can do infrastructure maintenance using the unemployed then they won't need workers to do that. So you will end up with more unemployed and presumably then you will put them to work on something else - which will pull the rug out from under another market and you will have more unemployed. Sounds like a winning plan.

 

A big dent could be put in the welfare bill by raising the minimum wage to pull more working people off benefits - effectively stop subsidising businesses who refuse to pay a living wage in return for labour. Of course, again that might impact the profits of wealthy tax dodgers, so it's probably a non starter. It's always nice to know my taxes are helping McDonalds serve their burgers cheaply.

[Sdrawkcab]

@Sdrawkcab did you watch this? On Benefits & Proud

 

Mate that is a channel 5 show which has been designed to cause controversy and hype in order to boost ratings. They're just trying to make a quick buck off the back of this news "story". It's like getting your opinions about people who live in Essex by watching TOWIE.

 

Sorry, what? How does my not liking 1.5% of all homes in the UK never having had a job result in wanting them to sleep on the street?

 

Sorry, I was being pretty hyperbolic here. It was just the way you said "far far too many" which irked me somewhat.

 

Working for benefits shouldn't be a problem either... There is a massive amount of public infrastructure that needs maintenance but the country lacks funds to do so whilst paying everyone benefits.

 

This is something I have a problem with too. If you want people to work, you should pay them a fair wage for the time they worked. Anything less (like our current Workfair scheme) is basically slave labour and should be illegal.

 

If you want to attack the benefits system, here's a major problem with it: It takes 6 weeks to process a benefits application. This means that most people on benefits are unwilling to take on temp jobs, since they could actually end up being worse off due of the amount of time they'd have to wait to get back on benefits after the temp contract is finished. According to this, at least half the jobs created since 2010 have been temporary (I'm actually pretty sure that over the last year the figure is actually higher than that, but I couldn't find any articles to back that claim up in the short time I wrote this post).

 

The fact is, there just aren't enough permanent jobs for people at the moment. If we're going to continue down this trend of employing temps over creating permanent positions, we need to change our benefits system to make taking temporary jobs a viable option for people on benefits.

Edited October 24, 2013 by Sdrawkcab

[localzuk]

What would that do to the economy? If the government can do infrastructure maintenance using the unemployed then they won't need workers to do that. So you will end up with more unemployed and presumably then you will put them to work on something else - which will pull the rug out from under another market and you will have more unemployed. Sounds like a winning plan.

 

A big dent could be put in the welfare bill by raising the minimum wage to pull more working people off benefits - effectively stop subsidising businesses who refuse to pay a living wage in return for labour. Of course, again that might impact the profits of wealthy tax dodgers, so it's probably a non starter. It's always nice to know my taxes are helping McDonalds serve their burgers cheaply.

 

It would improve the economy. The maintenance isn't being done now, as no-one can afford to do it.

[pcstru]

It would improve the economy. The maintenance isn't being done now, as no-one can afford to do it.

 

I think you mean it would improve infrastructure. At best it would do nothing for the economy. You would still be paying people, they would just be doing something (and while doing that, unable to look for work). At worst you have just undercut the minimum wage. Companies that would do the work (eventually) wouldn't do the work because it had been done and they couldn't compete anyway unless they themselves reduced the wages they pay down to the same levels as benefits.

 

I think I said in my first post "nice to see another race to the bottom". I sympathise with the OP - the economic situation is becoming increasingly desperate for many people. I hope the solution to being miserable isn't to make someone else with even less, even worse off.

Edited October 24, 2013 by pcstru

[Sdrawkcab]

I hope the solution to being miserable isn't to make someone else with even less, even worse off.

 

Amen to that.

[DPrince]

Amen to that.

Agreed.

 

Although I'd happily see some of these £30k pa claimants a bit worse off...!

[APMerry]

Once again this is anecdotal evidence. You are literally making a snap judgement based on how these people look. This is classism at its absolute worst, and you don't even seem to know you're doing it.

 

The point I was trying to make is, where is the incentive to raise your earnings when you can live more comfortably on lower income. I'm not making snap judgements, I was referring to people I know personally.

[laserblazer]

The truth is that we have been living on borrowed time. I just about remember food rationing and petrol rationing after the Suez and Oil crisis in 1973. Three day week and regular power cuts, it was tough but we survived. If necessary, we even put on an extra jumper. For the last 15 years or so, we have been in a Wonga type society that is simply not sustainable. Make the most of what we have.

[pcstru]

Although I'd happily see some of these £30k pa claimants a bit worse off...!

How much of that is housing benefit and going straight into the pockets of private landlords? This is another cost of not building housing, allowing house prices to over-inflate and rents to spiral in proportion. It's effectively a state subsidy of private landlords - they pay the mortgage from welfare and reap the rewards of capital gains as house prices climb. It's not the unemployed tenants who make any gain in the long term. Probably the only thing the two have in common is the amount of tax they pay!

[superatticman]

The UK is still one of the best places to live in the World. Definitely in the top 5 all things considered. The 'race to the bottom' isn't just affecting the UK. Its a worldwide transition of the very rich cosying up to the poor to work for them for less than we would.

 

The lower middle especially are the ones that get squeezed. As pointed out on here that's sadly the way its always been. The productive and aspiring need to be kept at a certain level to keep a certain political class at a safe distance from it all. For all the wrong that Mrs T did, she gave a section of the skilled working class to have a good go at usurping the established and smug quintessential middle class from their complacency. No wonder New Labour's champagne socialists spend 12 years getting their own back at Thatchers working class winners

 

But as for emigrating, it all depends on your expectations from life. If you like warmer weather then obviously the UK isn't the country for you. If you like space and quality of life, then maybe rural Canada is your natural home. If you are hard working, well qualified and want a big house with a high standard of living then the USA may be of interest. All depends on your outlook.

[SpuffMonkey]

The truth is that we have been living on borrowed time. I just about remember food rationing and petrol rationing after the Suez and Oil crisis in 1973. Three day week and regular power cuts, it was tough but we survived. If necessary, we even put on an extra jumper. For the last 15 years or so, we have been in a Wonga type society that is simply not sustainable. Make the most of what we have.

 

I think you're right there - most people have forgotten how basic life was in UK until very recently - without getting all Monty Python Yorkshireman about it - when I was young, having a car was fairly unusual, only a moderate %age had a phone, foreign holidays of anything more than the very basic package variety were unknown to most people. Food was fairly local and seasonal - no strawberries in the winter etc and life for a lot of people was a grind.

 

The North Sea oil bubble saved the country from catastrophy in the 80's, but alas, we just pi55ed it all away without any long term plan or benefit - we've had the Saturday Night - now its Sunday Morning and the outlook is bleak for a lot of people.

 

The current economic policy seems bizarre to me - keeping interest rates to nearly zero isn't going to help in the long term - the only way our debts are going to reduce to a manageable size is if inflation rates are high and erode the value of the debt - we've been living beyond our means for decades - I remember when the balance of trade figures were regularly reported on the news - and negative values were perceived as a "bad" thing - nowadays they are rarely mentioned - we'd rather look the other way and think that all our cash flowing out of the country to China or wherever is a "good" thing as the prices of goods are "cheaper" - trouble is once that money is spent and gone - that's it - it doesn't recirculate through the economy as it did when we bought things that were manufactured here.

 

Ach - enough of this shilly shally - its time for bed!

[alttab]

the recent raising of the tuition fee threshold has been a huge hit to those on middle incomes, the uk was already pretty high up the list of developed countries when it came to avg. tution fees and proportion of those fees paid by the student...the govt. will use the argument about university graduates on avg. doing better over their lifetime in the job market, but then there has to be a balance between needing future graduates with key skills entering the workforce and the disincentives of yet another tax on career progression/increased earnings.

 

I just don't like the idea of people being mortgaged for years to come based on the perceived benefit they receive.