The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Community => Coffee Lounge => Topic started by: rispainfarm on September 12, 2012, 11:54:59 am
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Did anyone else see the Estate last night, can't remember which channel. But it made for unsettling and depressing viewing. Sure there are people in this country that don't want to or have the inclination to find work, but there are others on sink estates that want to better themselves, but don't know how to either becasue they can't get a job or they are so poorly educated they just don't know any better other than a benefit life. There was so much hopelessness there and it made my heart break to hear how much that little boy wanted to see his dad but his dad was not interested. How easy it is though to end up in a hopeless situation even though we are educated and have at the time lots of options, one piece of badluck that snowballs and we could find ourselves in a situation that we can't control and that to me is frightening, just look at that normal couple who found themselves being burgled they shot the thiefs to protect themselves and they were charged with manslaughter or whatever. A normal couple going out their daily lives, luckily they got off, but you never know what is around the corner and that frightens me sometimes. Its programmes like that that makes me so grateful for what we have and who we are.
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Just talking about it in the office this morning, if you go to BBC news home page theres a link to it on that page 'Panorama Trouble on the estate' watch on i-player.
Yee gods what chance do those poor children stand! Eye opening.
mandy :pig:
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How about the mother who doesn't sent her son to school because she wants to keep him close to her? With no education the poor kid doesn't stand a chance.
I was brought up on a council estate but nothing like that one. My parents were hard working and a good example. We had a good education and good morals but it makes me wonder how I would have turned out if I had lived somewhere else. :relief:
Sally
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What sort of message are some of those 'parents' ( I use the description loosely) sending to those kids, Mother (sic) smoking pot and drinking , three kids by different blokes, keeping kid off school for company, and the saddest part, she's being helped with parenting skills.....about thirty years too late.
Got to admire the bloke with two cleaning jobs , at least that couple are trying to escape with some dignity.
Depressing program to watch :thinking:
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I did not see the programme but I expect it was very depressing viewing by the sounds of it.
BUT... there is education, apprentice programmes in fact allsorts of opportunities out there for eveyone if they could be bothered. We used to have quite a large business and joined a scheme run by the local council to get youths into employment. They could choose from a variety of jobs to go into as apprentices and even got transport to and from work paid for and their clothes!!! Very few turned up for work and that was only cause they were tracked down by the agency and brought to work. One lad went the distance and got a full time job. My sister lives on an estate but her kids are now doing degrees via their work. I do not listen to excuses and sympathy merchants. Life is made too easy nowadays, if benefits were paid in vouchers for food , clothes and bills then they would have to work for their fags, booze and massive tellies if they wanted them. If there are no jobs or placements ,unemployed folk should attend an education programme to widen there scope . If they still refuse to better themselves then bring back the workhouses. Rant over.
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Got to admire the bloke with two cleaning jobs , at least that couple are trying to escape with some dignity.
Depressing program to watch :thinking:
2 cleaning jobs and still only earning £100 per week. Yes, definitely admire him
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I didn't see it, but I've worked for the Probation Service and hubs is currently the senior surveyor on a green energy project in several sets of flats belonging to social housing. He's seeing some dreadful sights and was fed up when he got home yesterday because he'd been wandering around in areas filled with used syringes all day. It's the young children that upset us - like the two year old he ushered back into his flat because he was wandering on the communal landing of the stairwell on his own. So sad.
I do feel for the people who want to better themselves and are stuck surrounded by the problems in these areas.
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Although i totally agree with you hermit, and while i think about it, why don't the government put them to work doing community work, that way we wouldn't feel they were getting benefits for nothing and they might learn a skill and have a cv to present to a perspective employer. But getting back to what I wanted to say, parents have a choice but the children have none, and it is a vicious circle. They learn by their parents. Until we have experienced that mentality of no one working, a sink estate, I hold my judgement on judging them though as a lazy useless lot. (thats a first holding my judgement :roflanim:)
Sorry just to add, without a role model to show you how to work and have respect for yourself you will never be able to, so yes i do feel sorry for them because they are born into that world whereas there are others who have oportunities and yet waste them
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If they stopped the have a kid get a council flat/house benefits system there wouldn't be so many of these unfortunate kids about.
My friend scan mums to be at a hospital near a sink estate like this, anyway one day young lass is on bed in front of her and my friend says gosh you here again you just had one baby, the reply yeah well if you have two yer get more money don't yer!
need i say more ::) ???
mandy :pig:
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My friend scan mums to be at a hospital near a sink estate like this, anyway one day young lass is on bed in front of her and my friend says gosh you here again you just had one baby, the reply yeah well if you have two yer get more money don't yer!
need i say more ::) ???
mandy :pig:
I'm definitely doing something wrong because my three cost me a fortune! Even with all of the benefits, is it really possible to be better off long term WITH children, or are they just incredibly short-sighted? ???
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My Dad said all folk on benefits should be given a bucket and brush! Shovelling snow , leaves , whatever the jobs were in the community that needed doing. One man whom I totally admired ( he is dead now) went to work with computers three days a week. He also was a fully qualified horticulturist and worked ther rest of the time in a garden centre. He was physically disabled, in a wheelchair and found it hard to talk. He was an inspiration, he could have lived a very easy life at home but he chose not to . Roll models are not just parents , they should be shown this at school or by attending other schemes. Perhaps National service should be brought back.
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I've just watched it now. I hadn't realised it was about Shadsworth - hard to believe that it's only 10miles from here.
I felt so sorry for the couple where he worked as a cleaner :(
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Read "Chavs" by Owen Jones.
Part of the problem is that most of the council house stock was sold off under the 'right to buy' schemes - so houses are only available to those in most need, which perpetuates that "daily mailist' stereotype of council estates being full of 'scum' (or the most needy/those who the system has failed/insert your own 'underserving poor' analogy here). There is no chance of any governments building more council housing, so it becomes a vicious circle.
The other factor is one that was born on a large scale in the individualist philosophy that became popular in the eighties, and was continued by New Labour that one ought to improve the status of ones self (usually by acquiring more possessions or greater wealth) rather than ones social class as a whole (a strong trade union movement, improving health service, state pensions, state housing etc).
Insert your own version of that idiotic Lamont "on your bike' comment if you choose.
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i was brought up on one, they are hell. and theres lots of them!!
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I didn't see the programme as I don't have TV but I was talking yesterday to a friend about some of the kids she's taught. One 11 year old boy, if asked to do something he didn't like would tell her to F*** off and storm out of the room and she would have to get someone to find him before he left the school, as she couldn't leave the rest of the class. She said that she didn't blame him as that was how he was talked to at home.
Other friends took in their two nieces (through Social Services) as their mother was neglecting them (out wandering the streets at 3am with her 3 year old, in search of some alcohol, etc). These girls were the youngest of 6 children (four fathers) who were living with varous relatives. The last I heard, she had had another baby and was in a special residential centre learning parenting skills. I think the baby would have been taken into care if she hadn't agreed. She was one of six children herself who all have successfully brought up their own children. In her case it was alcohol that was the problem not her upbringing.
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I grew up in NW London, parts of the programme reminded me very much of what my friends went through.
I just found it so very sad, it seemed that many of the teenagers were resigned to the fact that their future was likely to be drugs, prison, unemployment and lack of self worth so they were just going with the flow :(
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its a joke isnt it!..i didnt watch it but think im going to find it to watch as it sounds interesting..how are thrse poor children supposed to get on in life !?!..
somebody i know recently had her little ones taken off her as she alcoholic..breaks your heart...brought up on a rough estate with no hope in the world..poor beggers..only one good thing to them is that now they will be hopefully starting the good life they deserve .. :fc:
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And for the parents who desperately want the best for their children but who are tarred by the same brush or who get swept along in the awful momentum of what society perceives happens in that environment, its an uphill struggle.
My best friend doesn't live on an estate but is in a similar battle due to family reputation. She's the most amazing mum ever and would put her life on the line for her children but the local police, schools, shops, residents - they don't see that, they 'see' those who have preceded her and her extended family. We have to not judge people, but we have to look and truly see what they are saying and feeling based on individual merits. A little boy wearing a hoodie, burberry cap, nike joggers and sporting a shaved hair cut will quite possibly be trying to conform to avoid a beating but behind closed doors might be trying to teach himself to read, to understand maths, his heart might break each morning as he has to face school bullies who make his life hell because he is 'different'..Thankfully our local middle school is doing this, sadly the first school did not - that could have been the difference between a young lad making a life for himself and serving life :( I know because I am helping such a lad learn to read in his and my own time.
I have no idea why that mum didn't want her child to go to school, there must be some deep seated reason based on her own childhood perhaps why she felt she needed him close to her. That is sad but its not going to help him (or her).
We all know benefit claimants who make the 'if I have another kid, I'll get a 3 bed house' type comments but they are the minority. I truly believe that most of the people on that estate are good, proud people but that wouldn't make good viewing would it?
sorry, got carried away there but I had to console my 10 year old last night who got into a huge battle at school for defending her best friend when a 'posh' kid made some awful comments and Milli said to me "If I don't defend him Mum, who will?" :'( [size=78%] [/size]
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but I had to console my 10 year old last night who got into a huge battle at school for defending her best friend when a 'posh' kid made some awful comments and Milli said to me "If I don't defend him Mum, who will?" :'( [size=78%] [/size]
Good on her plums, not many children would do that and well done for the sort of parenting that makes her think like that :thumbsup:
I agree with alot of what you say. i have done that myself, judged people then found I am wrong. Its all very well for us to judge the estate but I believe that unless we live in that sort of environment and brought up in that sort of culture we can't say how we would behave. I would like to say i wouldn't be like that, but who knows, if I had that sort of background, little education and parents like that and that was all I had ever known, who knows what i would be like. That is why I feel desparately sorry for the children.
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but I had to console my 10 year old last night who got into a huge battle at school for defending her best friend when a 'posh' kid made some awful comments and Milli said to me "If I don't defend him Mum, who will?" :'( [size=78%] [/size]
Good on her plums, not many children would do that and well done for the sort of parenting that makes her think like that :thumbsup:
:thumbsup: from me too - when she gets home from school today, please tell her that I want to say that she is a very special, caring person & that I was bullied in school & I would have loved to have had a friend like her - you must be so proud of her Plums :thumbsup:
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hear hear :thumbsup:
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Milli has just read your comments :) She say's "thank you very much". I am incredibly proud of her, she's not afraid to say what she feels or believes, I'm not sure I had her confidence at that age. Good news is that she and her friend have had a better day today :)
So sorry to hear of your experience with bullying Beewyched :bouquet:
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Milli has just read your comments :) She say's "thank you very much". I am incredibly proud of her, she's not afraid to say what she feels or believes, I'm not sure I had her confidence at that age. Good news is that she and her friend have had a better day today :)
So sorry to hear of your experience with bullying Beewyched :bouquet:
It's ok, thanks Plums - a long time ago & other stuff ... well you can never turn the clock back ... what doesn't kill you makes you stronger & all that.
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.. what doesn't kill you makes you stronger & all that.
Weird, I am literally listening to that song on the radio as I read this and her words are what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.... der der der der!! ;D
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Three generations in many estates, of worklessness and hopelessness. It's easy to say you should sort yourself out and there's work if you want it, but to generate that sort of motivation from such a background takes someone really unusual.
The idea that people deliberately have kids to get a house is interesting as it suggests there's actually some thought and control about having kids. I wish that were so :P
Add in poor diet, bad parenting and the resulting attachment disorders, foetal alcohol syndrome, low intelligence, agressive neighbours.......what chance do they stand, either the children or the generation before them.
I'd like to see a sort of community work for benefit, ie there's a basic level of benefit and you get an increased level if you do a community job for it, ie all the painting houses, mending roads, fixing things in old people's houses etc. that need doing but don't get done.
Maybe then people would feed needed, as though their lives had some point. They'd learn skills, they'd connect with people round them in a positive way. Maybe.
And then you've got to thank your lucky stars that you were born to a family that had some get up and go, some intelligence. Mine were in coal board housing (so council housing by any other name) and grandad went down the pit at 14. But he was bright, so was Dad, who got to the grammar school, was encouraged to work hard and so we got out. But that was in a community that had full employment, if very hard employment, people's lives had purpose, structure and the community spirit was strong and constructive. Not the case in the coal mining towns and villages anymore.
So there but for the grace of God.....
A little boy wearing a hoodie, burberry cap, nike joggers and sporting a shaved hair cut will quite possibly be trying to conform to avoid a beating but behind closed doors might be trying to teach himself to read, to understand maths, his heart might break each morning as he has to face school bullies who make his life hell because he is 'different'..Thankfully our local middle school is doing this, sadly the first school did not - that could have been the difference between a young lad making a life for himself and serving life
Just this Plums :thumbsup: We've got to keep keeping on, giving as much hope and practical help as possible. Because what are the alternatives? And can we really abandon those kids?
Give Milli a hug from me :hug: She is a little star, that there are people like her (and you, who gave her her values) gives me hope :thumbsup:
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Well done to Milli. She is a good friend to have and a daughter to be proud of, Plums, and give yourselves a pat on the back for bringing her up to be like this.
Jaykay, I think your idea for a basic and extra benefit scheme is brilliant. Those who want to work could then feel useful, get up to date references and have a bit more money. The others can just have enough to live on but no more. It's such a good idea that the government wouldn't do it.
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Jaykay, I think your idea for a basic and extra benefit scheme is brilliant. Those who want to work could then feel useful, get up to date references and have a bit more money. The others can just have enough to live on but no more. It's such a good idea that the government wouldn't do it.
When the previous Tory Government tried something like this (back 20 years ago) it was called the YOP Scheme - & that was like child labour ::)
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Yes! My imagined scheme would be for anyone unemployed for longer than 6 months and definitely not aimed at youngsters instead of decent apprenticeships or proper college courses.