to wish people would stop the competitive woe is me.....

[toccatanfudge]

and actually try having a little sympathy for others? And support each other?

I don't care whether the squeeze means you're going to have cut down your number of foreign holidays from 3 a year to 1.

Or whether whether you're going to have to cut your weekly food budget from £60 to £40.

(well ok I do care - but I don't have any less sympathy for the former than I do for the latter)

Having to make changes to the way you used to living is hard - and it sucks.

Surely the least painful way to get through hard times is to support each other rather than rip each others throats out and try to make our situation/understanding of how hard things are any worse than anyone elses?

[southeastastra]

[toccatanfudge]

(oh and FWIW before anyone accuses me of not understanding - I'm in the latter group - not the former)

[Mingg]

Yes yes yes!

[ShinyAndNew]

We're actually going to be pretty much okay I think. Luckily we seem to be in the group effected the least, low income, working family. Our TC credits are frozen and the vat will effect us, but will almost matched by the raise in the tax threshold. There was a couple on the news with an almost identical set up to us and they are only going to be £75 per year worse off. Which is a lot better than I was expecting.

However, while I have no sympathy at all for the former group (sorry) I do sympathise for those on similar/lower incomes than ours who are going to struggle.

I try to be sympathetic towards the 'middle and higher earners', but to be fair, we cope pretty well on what we have, and they still have far more than we do, so I fail to see why they are struggling.

[tethersend]

I'm a long way from sympathy, TBH... to be sympathetic is to accept the status quo.

I do not accept that these cuts are necessary- my instinct is to fight and fuss rather than sympathise...

[GypsyMoth]

i havent complained or moaned yet....does that mean i cant (or you dont want to hear me doing so) in the future then??

[toccatanfudge]

tether - I'm not arguing that the cuts are necessary.

I'm talking about the fighting and fussing among people about how their situations will/won't change, and about how they understand better than anyone else about why it's happening blah blah blah.

Not fighting and fussing to the stinky politicans who are going to sit back with their cushy tax free allowances and carry on life as normal totally oblivious to how the rest of the people in their country are living.

Shiney - thing is though we all (mostly) live within our means don't we? I'm doing "ok" at the moment, I was also doing "ok" when exH and I had a joint income of over 30k (with just 2 children). We were doing ok on a single income of 16k - with 3 children (all in the same area - indeed the same house).

How many people, realistically, if they double their wage would keep back the "extra" money and save it? More likely that money will be incorporated into their daily lives, it becomes part of the "norm" for them. They lose that extra income and they have to lose things to which they've been accustomed.

We all have different priorities, and expenses, and there's nothing wrong with that (I personally prioritise adding to my boot collection from the 2nd hand shop in town over buying new (or 2nd hand) clothes for myself - hence now having more pairs of boots than jeans/trousers ). And I put the DS's school trips/resedentials over the need to feed myself properly >

Having to change the way you live, even if it was apparently "very comfortable" before hurts and is uncomfortable.

And I just hate all the bitching about it.

[toccatanfudge]

ThreeBlonde - nothing wrong with complaining that's not what I mean.

I mean the competitive moaning and whinging. The "oh I have it so much harder than you because x,y,z", or the "well really what did you expect" type comments that often follow.

[tethersend]

I understand what you mean, toccata- ire should be directed at the government IMO, rather than one another. It's the classic trap of divide and conquer; take from the poor and make people think that it's other poor people who have taken your money.

I just think that sympathy is the wrong thing to be promoting because it accepts that that is just the way things are and 'isn't it terrible, poor you', when we should be fighting this.

It is getting a bit four yorkshiremen though

[toccatanfudge]

ahhh well - I'm a yorkshire lass with a limited vocabulary, and one that doesn't quite come into play when I've only had one coffee, have a DS2 off school, another whose country dancing I'm supposed to be watching this afternoon and wondering what the hell I'm going to do with DS2 while I' watch DS1. Of course their -twatish-- father will 100% have some "reason" why he can't help out for all of 20 minutes.......so sympathy probably isn't actually the word I'm looking for

[toccatanfudge]

yes yes yes - fighting it - together, not fighting each other

[TriplePachyderm]

I agree

[toccatanfudge]

empathy - is that the word I was looking for??? rather than sympathy

[traceybath]

Totally agree with you toccata.

You see it a lot on mn regarding every subject, eg, I'm so tired says poster A, well I'm more tired says poster B so suck it up.

Its just annoying.

A little empathy and kindness goes a long weay.

[Chil1234]

Catherine Zeta-Jones made some comment about 'a million pounds is a lot of money to some people but not us' (I paraphrase) which was pretty crass. And 'crass' also applies to people moaning about having to cancel their second foreign holiday in earshot of someone wondering whether they can take the bus or they have to walk...

I don't think it's anything as deliberate as 'divide and conquer' just an indication of insensivity, selfishness and bad manners.

[toccatanfudge]

I kind of get that Chil.

But where does it stop?

Would it crass of me to moan about the short notice for DS1's residential trip money, and about how I'd have to use some of my holiday (which incidentally is 2 weeks in scummy flat - free of charge - in an area of Ednburg h not on the tourist trail spending money in ear shot of someone who was raiding the copper pot to buy the bread and milk for the day?

I don't think it is, it matters not that I've scrimped and saved for his residential and some spending money for our trip away, as opposed to just taking it out of this months wages.

And actually, although I can only dream of a foreign holiday right now (although maybe not if I can scrimp for the Eurostar fares as I have an offer to go and stay for free in Europe at some point in the future) I think I would moan too if I'd had to cancel my holiday

I don't know - I reckon life is just too short to be getting worked up about people with more money than me having a whinge about having to cancel/change things that they're used to do when living within their means - things that I would consider a "luxury".

[WynkenBlynkenandNod]

I do get what you mean but DH found out on Monday that he's paid to the end of the month and that's it. We gave seen this coming so aren't going to starve as we have been lucky enough to be able to put money aside and hopefully we'll be able to take in some language students.

I have just done an emergency budget and things wil need to go but we really don't deserve any sympathy as for we fall into the foreign holiday category and are far from starving and would quite frankly deserve a verbal slap if we were to moan at the moment.

Now if this had happened a few years ago things would have been very different and we'd have lost the house. At that point I would have liked a bit of sympathy. So I think really that though it's not a pleasant thing cutting down for anyone, you really can't moan if you are losing your foreign holidays (though mine are not expensive, £450 for a week in the summer holidays but that is irrelevant) whereas if it is a matter of having heating and food on the table it is very different.

[Cartoose]

[toccatanfudge]

see I don't get that wynken - your DH has lost his job and you think that you'd deserve a verbal slap if you moaned. It's still uncertain times for you even though you've been lucky enough to save and will hopefully be able to take in some language students.

I don't understand the British stiff upper lip either

[ApocalypseCheese]

I agree entirely toccatanfudge

[Litchick]

A litle grumble is all well and good, Tocca, but for some it doesn't stop there and they tip over into complete negativity, unable to see anything wonderful in their life anymore.

And like tsc, if I din't like it I would most definitely use my energy fighting it.

[toccatanfudge]

well perhaps then if it's tipped over into complete negativity unable to see anything wonderful in their life anymore we should be helping them and supporting them not lambasting them for feeling like that.

[toccatanfudge]

and if I hear one more

"well back in the day" comment I think I shall scream

We're not living "back in the day" - we're living NOW - I don't give two shites (really I don't) about how hard it was 30/40/50/60/70/200yrs ago for other people as that actually doesn't make any difference to my life or anyone elses in the here and present