Here is part 2 of this thread - (and here is part 1)Subject: RE: BS: Why is the UK in such a mess? From: John from Hull Date: 06-Feb-02 - 11:46 PM
There are many problems in the Uk right now, (high crime rates, soaring teenage pregnancy, decline in standards of all public services, etc), so whilst litter in the street is a problem it is certainly not the main one.
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Subject: RE: BS: Why is the UK in such a mess? From: GUEST,Guest, Colonist, IHeartLimeys Date: 07-Feb-02 - 12:02 AM
Dear All: I'm sorry to hear the UK is in such a mess. Why not simply take a vacation and not get all tense about it? I always heard your islands were simply brim full of untapped potential.
Rousing chorus of Neddy Seagoon singing "There'll always be an England, and England shall be free, there'll always be an England......"
I heart limeys
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Subject: RE: BS: Why is the UK in such a mess? From: Ferret Date: 07-Feb-02 - 12:29 AM
The Tax on tobacco and alcohol comes to more than the health budget, and if you put all the unemployed in the armed forces then you have to up the defence budget so you have to pay more Tax's (if you pay them just the same as there benefit you still have to pay for training and equipment).
As for taking up all opportunities some people are not able to do so for many reasons such as low IQ est.
As for work for benefit it is much simpler to run if you put them all in camps, and so they can not sneak off and get out of doing work, put them in a uniform (striped cloths say) dose this sound familiar.
I live on benefit I get just £106 per week I am a single parent with a young daughter. My ex-wife & sister in law are mentally ill with agoraphobia, claustrophobia, panic attacks, anxiety, and clinical depression, (it run in there family and I did not know at the time) and I am there sole carer for them. I start my day at 7.30 in the morning get my daughter up and ready for school take her to school for 8.30. Go get my ex-wife & sister in law up and do there breakfast's (they live separately from each other and me) make shore that they take there medication, then take them to there groups or appointments sort out any problems (and there are many) do the washing help them do there house work, make dinner for them. Then go and fetch my daughter bring her home and take ex-wife & sister in law home do tea for my daughter make my dinner do the washing-up do my house work, put my daughter to bed then I have to do all the paper work for a club I run, (that has made about £20,000 for the Cornish air ambulance) then check my e-mail's and what replies need to be dun. Have a look at the Mudcat for about 1/2 an hour then go to bed about 4am and get up 3-4 hour later. And start again.
Saturday's I start at 9am. My daughter has rest bite care, and I have my ex-wife & sister in law for the day.
Sunday starts at 11am breakfast then get the dinner on go and get my ex-wife & sister law for dinner then take them back spend the rest of the day with my daughter.
No holidays.
I don't know how much it will cost the state if I did not do all this and got a job but I bet it's alot more than I get.
It's a pity I do not work, I can use the rest.
And if you had to have a license to have kids the may I mention with only one hand from berth you will probably not get one. You cannot in a free country tell people whether or not to have children. Learn your history. If you do not learn from history's mistakes you are destine to repeat them.
All the best ferret.
PS it 05.00hr here now
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Subject: RE: BS: Why is the UK in such a mess? From: Ferret Date: 07-Feb-02 - 12:35 AM
Hi Kat long time no here hope your well and doing fine all the best ferret
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Subject: RE: BS: Why is the UK in such a mess? From: GUEST,swirlygirl Date: 07-Feb-02 - 08:00 AM
Yeah ferret i know it's hard for some people, but it's for people who do act as carers and who do have lives like yours that I'm arguing FOR, not against, so please don't have ago at me.
You're doing a worthwhile thing and not being paid enough for it, and I'm sorry, if there was licensing to have kids and I was told I couldn't under fair licensing laws then I'd have to accept it. It's not everything you know. If you can't you can't. Just like I don't agree with IVF on the NHS either. It's not a necessary treatment in my book.
I'm already told I can't claim disability allowances (which I wouldn't even if I could cos I don't need it) and I accept that.
The money in the system should be going to help the people who need it. Some of the money in the system obviously goes to respite care for your daughter and that's a good thing. But I genuinely think that just GIVING certain people extra money is not the way forward. It should be put into programmes to help them move on and have a better quality of life, even if this has to be done forever because that's what having a welfare state is all about. Providing for those who NEED it, and giving them what they need, not just shelling out the money and then forgetting about them.
And may I add that I don't particularly see why I couldn't bring up a child as I'm prepared to make all sacrifices necessary for its wellbeing. That's what I meant about licensing...mentally ready...I can do 99% of tasks that everyone else can do including having a faster typing speed than most people I know (EJ will vouch for this). Please never throw any disability back into anyone's face because if you're looking for any sympathy and help that's not the way forward, dissing someone else. I don't need anyone's help to do things on a daily basis. Obviously learning guitar is out but I am learning melodeon. There would be nothing I couldn't do from my experience of caring for family member's children so far that would prevent me from having proper control over any children I may have. And never once have any of them, being so used to me, ever used it in an argument against me, because they've been brought up to know better...
:)
xxx
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Subject: RE: BS: Why is the UK in such a mess? From: GUEST,swirlygirl Date: 07-Feb-02 - 08:02 AM
You know it's kind of funny how everyone who's dissing me on here for being "right wing" (hey I voted Scottish Socialist at the last elections) and other stuff and not prepared to stick up for the disadvantaged is quite prepared to throw my disadvantage back at me...
Bit of a hypocrisy there methinks...
:)
xxx
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Subject: RE: BS: Why is the UK in such a mess? From: GUEST,swirlygirl Date: 07-Feb-02 - 08:13 AM
And another thing...as I'm training to be an archivist I think I might know a bit about history.
The idea you're talking about is to learn and move on from your mistakes. That doesn't mean to scrap your ideas all together. It's all about change and review, and if you'd carefully read my last post about it you'd have read how I don't think it's feasible...go learn to read...and spell...
:)
xxx
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Subject: RE: BS: Why is the UK in such a mess? From: GUEST,swirlygirl Date: 07-Feb-02 - 08:21 AM
Oh and Kendall...you didn't get extra allowance because your dad was "incapacitated" then. It was money given to you because of your situation, not to your dad as he wasn't living with you. I'm not objecting to the money given to the single parent struggling family due to circumstance.
You can't predict sometimes how family life will turn out and that's what welfare is there to cope with. But I still think there should be better provision to allow people to get back on the horse after situations like that. It can only be beneficial to the country as a whole.
But the answer to alcoholism is not giving extra money to the person to fund that addiction. It's to put the money into schemes to help them kick it and get them back into society.
This is where governments fall down because they don't want to take responsibility for people who need help. They just want to give them money and palm them off...
Now do you see where I'm coming from?
:)
xxx
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Subject: RE: BS: Why is the UK in such a mess? From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 07-Feb-02 - 08:28 AM
All focussing on the symptoms. It's true enough, the nasty stuff that goes on at the bottom matters, and needs attention, and that can't wait until the system is sorted out that gives rise to it.
But it's important to try to stand back and see where it is those kind of things happen, and where it is they don't, and to try to identify the causes, and imagine the kind of changes that might make it better.
And that isn't just about money either. It's about the kinds of things we value and the kinds of things we reward and the kinds of things we just don't take any notice of.
And I'm with Morticia on suggesting that there are far far more people who don't get the help they deserve and need. compared with those who get help they don't deserve and don't need. But it sometime seems that there's a lot more attention paid to the latter, even when the effect of this is in fact to make things harder for the former. (Extra hurdles to get over, extra forms to fill in...)
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Subject: RE: BS: Why is the UK in such a mess? From: kendall Date: 07-Feb-02 - 08:50 AM
Peg is 100% right. I also was struck by the amount of trash in the streets of London. Even here in my little city I'm seeing more and more graffiti on buildings and highway supports. It is the first sign of urban decay. Sure, they are symptoms of a deeper problem; so, let's discuss the real problem.
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Subject: RE: BS: Why is the UK in such a mess? From: GUEST,swirlygirl Date: 07-Feb-02 - 08:58 AM
Disposable society...that's what we've created...
:)
xxx
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Subject: RE: BS: Why is the UK in such a mess? From: GUEST,swirlygirl Date: 07-Feb-02 - 08:58 AM
Disposable society...that's what we've created...
:)
xxx
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Subject: RE: BS: Why is the UK in such a mess? From: GUEST,swirlygirl Date: 07-Feb-02 - 09:09 AM
But again, when you have people living on benefits and no help to get them out of that cycle then they don't own anything and nothing's theirs so they don't regard anything around them as precious.
Why shouldn't you thrwo trash out of your window if it's not your garden it's being thrown into and the council come to clean it?
And no one seems to be responsible for their actions anymore because some PC human rights person will find some mitigating circumstance that illustrates how the person has had a hard life, or whatever.
We do need to start being a bit tougher on people...
I think...now that's only my opinion...nothing to start a war over...
I also think that part of the problem is that no one knows anyone anymore. When I was growing up if I'd been seen littering or doing anything bad by anyone my mum knew, they'd have told her, so I was too scared to do anything bad!
But we're not allowed to make children afraid in any way anymore. Like, you're not allowed to tell them about the bogey man or anything, so we have a generation growing up who think there's very little to fear. Obviously (cos I realise now that I have to state the obvious here) that doesn't apply to everyone, but i think it does to quite a lot of kids/teenagers nowadays, some members of my own family included....take drugs for example...won't happen to me will it?
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Subject: RE: BS: Why is the UK in such a mess? From: GUEST,PaulM Date: 07-Feb-02 - 09:35 AM
swirlygirl,
I'm very sorry if I've seemed to bully you in this thread. That was never my intention.
Yesterday, was a bad day, and I took things out on you.
I apologise.
Paul
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Subject: RE: BS: Why is the UK in such a mess? From: GUEST,swirlygirl Date: 07-Feb-02 - 09:51 AM
S'ok...I'm tough really...we all have to take it out on someone, but next time can you make it someone you know??!!!
...sniff...sniff...
:)
xxx
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Subject: RE: BS: Why is the UK in such a mess? From: GUEST,PaulM Date: 07-Feb-02 - 09:56 AM
I'll try...
A very sorry Paul
who doesn't really, like hurting anyone, ever
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Subject: RE: BS: Why is the UK in such a mess? From: Peg Date: 07-Feb-02 - 10:44 AM
I think things like high crime rates could be said to be very much connected to the large amounts of litter...again, it comes down to human beings having no respect for anyone else or anything else beyond what is in their own backyards or wallets...I honestly don't think you can oversimplify this. If people think for two seconds before tossing their plastic water bottle on the ground, they will think two seconds before cutting someone off in traffic, screaming at someone who jumps the queue, ignoring the homeless person who needs change or the elderly woman who needs help crossing the street. Lack of empathy for others seems to me to be at the heart of criminal activity and violence.
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Subject: RE: BS: Why is the UK in such a mess? From: GUEST,swirlygirl Date: 07-Feb-02 - 10:54 AM
I'm with ya on the litter there Peg. Was drummed into me my whole life "put it in your pocket and take it home if you can't find a bin". I've been known to stop people in the street and ask them why they dropped whatever they dropped.
But it's because we're becoming a culture of immediacy. We want everything now and we don't care who we have to stamp on or con or whatever to get it.
:)
xxx
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Subject: RE: BS: Why is the UK in such a mess? From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 07-Feb-02 - 11:17 AM
This thread is getting a bit long to load for people with slow loading computers, but it still seems to be chugging alongt at a fair rate - so I'm starting a new one, and putting the last few posts into the opening thread to make it easier for people to catch up. See next post for link.