[deepinthewoods]

There isn't an answer to this.  There might be a lot wrong in society these days but at least we're not in Dickensian times when children starved to death and died from illnesses they shouldn't have.

ummm really? maybe you should get out more.


you know what theres so much in this thread i could pull apart and shred, with evidence, that im gonna have to raincheck. just looking at the bigotry and intolerance and narrow mindedness in some of these posts knocks me sick. ive done allright for myself but my car blew up on xmas day and its cost me literally every penny i had to put right, and half of this months rent. im officially skint, got nothing left for emergencies, i have been penniless before and can cope but there are 100s of 1000s of people out there who dont know where their next meal is coming from, before you judge them as selfish or inept walk a mile in their shoes, try seeing how long £30 will last you, i bet its not even a day, let alone a week, for months on end.

this is my last post on this thread, so feel free to continue without being reality checked.




cw, bang on. im out.

[happygolucky]

I honesty think none of us know just how hard it is  unless we are or have lived it . Voluntary work helps, me and my husband worked with homeless, the biggest sort of shock i got was the amount of once happy, well off, intellectuals that, had hit it hard, often break up of marrages, etc etc, then found themself homeless...living and being treated so totally differently than they were used too, and I do know there are some who are homeless that choose that freedom but not many or maybe I am wrong. In the current and foreseeable economic climate, things are going to be much much worse, a lot of people will never be able to afford to live in their own home, even rental is expensive and housing benefits will only pay so much if anything.  I think I have a wide and varied insight into all sorts of peoples life's, working with both very rich and very poor, only money divides them, but that divide makes a huge huge difference, money brings freedom and better choices at least.
Anyway, one thing for sure, crime, drug use and violence is certainly going to increase for sure!!

[Rosemary]

It makes me very depressed because I can't see a way out of it.

The government and ALL parties seem to think capping benefits to a 1% increase for three years is OK because working people are not getting pay rises. 1% of not very much isn't vey much; 1% of a lot is a lot. So the poor just get poorer - the price of a loaf is the same and goes up by the same amount whether you are on benefits or earning £50k a year.

[Anke]

It makes me very depressed because I can't see a way out of it.

Same here.... and I won't even get into this discussion...

[RUSTYME]

You hit the nail on the head there cw , dependant and under control.
It has been going on for many years now .
As Tony Benn says " a nation of sick people on pharma drugs are easy for the government to control " fit and healthy people who can think for themselves , are a nightmare , for they wouldn't stand for the crap that the corrupt corporate controled government dishes out .
You only have to listen to the shite people repeat about the unemployed , disabled etc to see that the 'control' is total .
My  father , dead now , was in the army from the 40's to the mid 60's and he 'taught' new recruits to be soldiers .
Well as he told me , they didn't teach them , they broke them and then rebuilt them as they wanted them ie do as they were told without question .
He told me how this was done , and it all boils down to the system and total control .
This same system is used in schools .
Indoctrination from the beginning , it is a very succesful training system .
The basics are still in force now , but the wheels are coming off the system fast now , due to the out of control , utter  greed , for money , power and control , of big corps , bankers and the government .
The only way corrupt government can keep control of so many people , is turn them on the weaker among them , ie the unemployed the disabled etc . This is exactly what has been happening .
Hitler did exactly the same with the German people , turning them against the jews , the disabled etc . History repeating . Ian Duncan Smith even said on tv ,"work brings freedom"
that was the phrase that met the jews at auswitz death camp .
It is clear where these bastards are heading .
What isn't quite so clear is , will the people allow this to continue ?

[Lesley Silvester]

I have been in the position where money has been not so much tight as non-existent.  When my ex and I had our spinning and weaving workshop, we had just borrowed money to self build a workshop rather than using a room in our house, when a recession hit.  Despite being on the highest possible rate of the then Family Credit and having no mortgage or rent to find, in the winter when customers were thin on the ground, I often had just vegetables to eat because I couldn't afford to buy meat for all of us, so my sons and their father had most of it.  A chicken would last us most of the week and I would make meals out of next to nothing.  I foraged for food and we collected drift wood for fuel.  I never bought myself as much as a magazine because there wasn't the money to spare.  I made myself clothes out of curtains that I had been given because I couldn't afford to go to a jumble sale and get myself something when most of my clothes had worn out.  I have even made my own tampons because I had cotton wool and sewing cotton in the house but no money for extras like sanitary protection.

How people are supposed to manage when their benefits are being cut is beyond me.  What do they say when their children come home from school asking for money for school trips that all their friends are going on?  And when a lot of these young parents have never been taught how to cook cheap but nourishing meals that those of us born in the post war years when rationing was still on, learnt by watching our mothers make them, how are they supposed to do it?

On the subject of breakfast clubs, my daughter had to work to support herself and her three children when her partner walked out on her and she had to finish maternity leave before she wanted to.  Breakfast clubs mean that she could get to work early and then finish that bit earlier so that she was home in time for the children.  They enjoyed the breakfast club, not because it meant they were fed, because she always did feed them and  very healthily at that, but because they had a chance to play with their friends before school.  She pays for their breakfasts because she is working and because they want to have breakfast with their friends, not because she can't be bothered.

In an ideal world, mothers (or fathers) would stay at home until the youngest child started school but these days, apart from how much it costs to get by these days, what chance would they have of getting another job.

I have friends who are in the library every day it is open looking on the internet for jobs.  He is a qualified engineer but all he keeps being told is that he is too qualified, they want apprentices that they can pay a pittance to, not a man in his forties who would expect a living wage.

I dread to think how this country is going to end up.

[sokel]

I can see both sides to this
My Nephew is a teacher and at his school they have breakfast club and also after school club, I agree with it to some extent but I do not agree with some of the parents that send the kids, they drop the kids off for breakfast and as soon as the pubs are open they are in there all day long. They then collect the kids after the after school club half cut !

[SteveHants]

how can you possibly compare parents with mental health issues with drug addicts?

that is fundamentally wrong on all levels.

you wouldnt compare a parent with chronic arthritis with a drug addict so why compare someone with a mental illness?

One might say that addiction is a mental health issue.


Dont leave the discussion - you were talking a lot of sense.

[doganjo]

When my kids were we  I hid from the milk man so I wouldn't have to pay for the next week's milk all at one go, then just bought it day by day from a shop as we needed it.  Another time I told him we were going away and wouldn't need milk and bought it daily again.

As a treat I once bought my daughter an ice lolly and cried when she let a stray dog lick it as we were walking home, so don't tell me life wasn't as hard 35/40 years ago. It never stopped me looking after MY kids and MY husband well!

I have no sympathy with shargars!  Mental issues can be faked!

[SteveHants]

As a treat I once bought my daughter an ice lolly and cried when she let a stray dog lick it as we were walking home, so don't tell me life wasn't as hard 35/40 years ago. It never stopped me looking after MY kids and MY husband well!
I have no sympathy with shargars!  Mental issues can be faked!

I have sympathy for their children though - and it is the responsability of a civillised society to look after them.


And even if you did look after your kids etc - many didn't, are those kids to be condemned to a life of malnourishment?
My point about the income gap had, by its nature to be a generalisation - many people today are comparatively worse off than they were 50/60 years ago, yes. 


What about people who aren't faking their mental issues, because they clearly exist, probably more so than the fakers....

[mojocafa]

I would like to clarify that the only comparison I made with people with mental health issues and drug and alcohol dependants is that sometimes they don't put the needs of their children first. NO OTHER COMPARISON WAS MADE!  I absolutely stand by this as I work with their children on a daily basis and I see first hand the damage caused.  I hope the comment about bigotry, Intolerance and being narrow minded was not aimed at me as in my line of work, I do not consider myself to be any of these, in fact the complete opposite is what I would like to think I practice.

Getting back to the original post , yes breakfast clubs are needed
Mojo

[Mel Rice]

I could go on as long as you HGL but here is just my twopenceworth.
Having rasised five girls and been a teacher in an area of the UK known for its high rate of teenage pregnancies......I have seen a complete range of parenting styles.
I was thankful that all my girls completed school with no babies in sight (the first baby is only due now from my number 4 at 25) Many carrer girls cannot/donot contemplate carrer breaks (however short) untill their 30's....and that can bring its own problems too.
Our primary school only ran a breakfast club during SATs (external exams) at the time. As well as the nutrition it helped to make sure all children were awake well before the exam started and helped them all feel special. t was not only the financially deprived children that had no or little food in the morning.

[happygolucky]

I think I said that parenting skills are nothing to do with money, it's just easier for people with money..... I remember a friend who's mum was a very wealthy, the family had to look after them self as mum was a heavy drinker, bread & jam on Christmas day.


the sad fact is, some people will always take more than they need and some people will always get left out, nothing new.

[deepinthewoods]

okay, i relent.

speaking from my own experience ill tell you now what the problem is. there is a whole generation of people who were born with a silver spoon in their mouth, they had everything on a plate, the whole financial system was rigged to cause an artificially high property market, so from having a modest 2 bedroom cottage worth 50K they were suddenly able to release 250K of capital, this then grew into a trading market whereby these people got richer and richer, and the country got more and more into debt to pay for it.

now that bubble has pretty much burst but instead of these rich people being asked to pay it back it is the poor. because the government dont want to lose the votes of the rich.

the method the government is using is to turn these rich and less rich people against the poor , the mentally ill, the disabled, so the rich dont feel so bad when they see the reality of this country. they have someone else to blame instead of themselves. hence nobody complains about bloody osborne.

as far as drug addiction and mental health is concerned, of course there is a correlation. however, in my experience a small MAJORITY of all the druggies ive met (and ive met lots....) are basically selfish, they are spending their lives doing exactly as they wish, and guess whos financing it all, yup, those rich mummys and daddys who are planning to leave them their 'estate' these people know they are going to inherit, so do nothing, they dont need to.   here are your skivers and scroungers, they are the product of a spoilt society, they live in propertys paid for by the state, they claim whatever benefits they can. waiting for their trust fund or for their parents to die.

lets not forget, these drugs come from somewhere, they are an investment used by the rich to get richer, there i s enough documented evidence about who actually supplys these drugs, look at how heroin production under the taliban was nearly cut in 2001, then the troops went in and heroin production soared again. if our governments wanted to stop the drug trade then they could, they dont because its an income generator.

there is little or no rehab centres in this country, addicts are just given more drugs.

there is no resources for mentally ill people, yup, theyre just given more drugs.


i know lots of p[eople with mental health issues, it affects 1 in 4 of the population, so i would imagine theres quite alot of people on this forum......


i wouold bet that the majotrity of those kids going for breakfasts are from parents who are out at work, i know of a 'rich' family, 2 kids, both parents out at work all day 6 days aweek, kids borught up by a succession of nannies, kids go to private school, the familys property empire growing, these kids are ill behaved, selfish screamy little gits, the next generation of rich druggies.


here is the problem. a generation of takers, who want everything and dont care who they hurt or ruin to get it.   sound familier? i just call them torys.

[happygolucky]

I know a very rich man...who has a very dodgy life..... yet I see his stuff all around me..........I say no more otherwise I WILL be in deep poo.......you name it, he does it......


just before I sound like a know it all, sorry, I know very little but experience a lot in regard to vulnerable people, mum a psychiatric nurse so my early years were spent around mental health, nanny and nursery work, then school work with mainly Dyslexia and behaviour support, very naughty boys and a few girls, fostering, drug and alcohol counselling, support worker in all fields of social work, residential, child protection, .disability etc and youth work, homeless, offenders and eventually, elderly......rich, poor and get buy......what I observe is, there are them that have, them that take and them that do not care.......just as we are all different, we all need to survive somehow and since I spend so much time with dogs I find more and more similarities.......


just watch if any free thing is given out, it will be the people who are least needy who get the most....pack leaders get most .