Confused re attitude to benefits and work experience

I remember reading years ago a book written by a woman who had lived in real poverty during the 1920s, as a child and teenager, she said that the cold was the worst thing and that unless a person is dying of starvation she felt that warmth was preferable to hunger.

Think it was Helen Forrester if I remember correctly.

i expect that to be limited.

Tilly - no I don't think that, but you are being rather hardline about this. I say again, being cold with no possible way of getting warm anywhere in the house is miserable and will induce illness in a previously healthy person if suffered long term. Even the poor in the olden days with only an open fire weren't in that situation.

shotin - i dont begrudge paying for the NHS but if i rely in it, other people will decide what they want to fund & expect that to be limited.

Okay, we can agree that some need warmth and some can cope without. I do visit (or that should say "did visit") families with only storage heaters in appalling and poorly insulated housing. Being very expensive most families were not using them but managing with other heaters instead.

I think the move to the "decent homes" program is a good one if only to ensure those that need to have central heating or some efficient way of getting warmth, can access it. The only time I lived in housing without this luxury (actually first 5 years of DS's life) was unfortunately for me in a property which was icy in winter with no open fires and an oil fired heating sysyem which broke down every year without fail. Having experienced this cold I am a tad touchy about anyone suggesting that this is a luxury. Maybe had the house been better insulated I wouldn't have an issue.

I am so fortunate now to have a modern two bed house with a good heating system and it is well insulated too so that although I fear the bills I manage them easily. The one time we were freezing our bits off was during a very cold spell when the heating broke down and I was anxious about using the plug in heaters as they drained the electricity.

Oh to be as carefree as the previous tenant here....who bypassed the electricity meter and presumably lived freely with heat, light etc and no bills! It took me three days to realise that the meter was a prepayment one (installed as she had a massive debt) and it was showing zero credit, therefore all my lights etc should have been off but they weren't!

gaelic - You don't think there could be other reasons why you can't find people to work for you?

think that if you like.

xpost gaelic

but Tilly, very few people say things like 'why should I pay for all these sick people when I've tried really hard to keep myself healthy'. We accept that, in health terms, there will be times when we will suffer from ill health and therefore happy to pay for others. We also accept that some people will always be more ill and than us and need a lifetime of higher levels of treatment.

We don't deny it people because it would be better spent in the third world, and we don't (hopefully) begrudge the people who rely on it.

Rightho then. I shall expect a thread imminently where we all sit and chastise someone for daring to be so physically weak that we are wasting our hard earned cash on keeping them alive. Let's have them justify their need for treatment and we can all decide if their symptoms and pain are bad enough to pay for.

Nobody lived without so much as a fire before the days of electricity. Nobody. If they did they died.

You don't think there could be other reasons why you can't find people to work for you?

gaelic - Do we all get to sit in judgement to decide how much treatment you're allowed before you've exceeded your quota?

yes - if i rely on anyone individually , they get to choose what they provide & if i rely on the state, everyone gets to choose via the voting system. how can it be any other way?

CodandchopsWed 07-Mar-12 22:31:51
I think anyone who can say that heating isn't a necessity has never really experienced living long term in an unheated old property. In other words she might think she knows what a cold house feels like but in reality is clueless.

practically cod, i think you should do what you can to change your situation. e.g. look on MoneySavingExpert to see if anyone can advise. i have lived in a house with the only heating one an electric coin meter & a plug in radiator which was obviously stupidly expensive. & it was an old house. ice inside etc.

but i have been brought up to think that is not a notably bad thing. for me, my mum, my gran or anyone else. i am not saying its fine you you & not for me. a fleece means its much more comfortable in a cold house than in the past anyway.

(NB: you did not mention your son had autism & i was not even sure if he was a child as you has paid tax since 80s)

i dont have a problem with fit healthy people who can work but who can't get a job - working for their benefits.
what i do have a problem with is the government paying businesses to take these people

1. becuase they have a connection to the tory party and effectively my taxes are paying camerons rich friends

2. these are jobs - they are not made up jobs they are real jobs - that could be given at a normal rate of pay - amking people not dependant on benefits.

work for a charity, plant pretty flowers along the railway, take a voluntary position advertised at your local volunteer bureau - and keep your benefits - thats fine, thats great, thats good.

but DON't put my taxes into your rich fucking friends pockets Cameron you fuck

DON'T blame the state of the economy on poor people when rich people fucked it over Cameron you fuck

IF you are the working poor - stop being so bloody stupid believing all this murdoch /sun tory media bollocks. seriously do some digging - you'll soon find out that the rich get richer and the rest get shafted - RESEARCH it, don't bloody believe popular press - it's for thick people. Stupid people read the Sun.

"That" being workhouses, not protein factories (at least I hope not!)

What is so terrifying is that if people like the OP had their way that is exactly what would happen. It's people like that, and the current Tory government, that allowed those godforsaken places to exist. In those days the privileged in society stuck their fingers in their ears and assumed that the poor deserved to be so and merrily ignored the horrors that went on. It could happen again. That is so very frightening.

NowThenWreck Great post. You are spot on in your posts about the past and about the ideas behind the original welfare state. It is very sad that people have become such a selfish and ignorant society.

'Bring back workhouses. Problem solved.'

too good for 'em! Factory farm them as a cheap protein alternative to beef.

Oh yes, chilblains and paraffin heaters. I remember them well. I had chilblains on every damned toe in the winter in that house. When we moved here it was slightly warmer as one of the heaters worked so I only had them on every other toe. Then I got a pay rise and we could afford to replace the storage heaters with new ones that worked properly. Thank God. Not everyone's that lucky.

Bring back workhouses. Problem solved.

*Tax Credits are a BUSINESS SUBSIDY that allows employers to pay their employees LESS than a LIVING WAGE FOR THE UK (which WILL be different to what a living wage is in any other country, it's individual to each country).

It does NOT mean that the person in work is feckless, or workshy - it means their employers refuse to pay them ENOUGH TO COVER THE BASIC COSTS OF LIVING IN THE UK.*

Exactly this.

I think it is so strange when people cite the way we used to live as being perfectly fine, in the "never did them any harm to have no heating and to live hand to mouth, with the threat of starvation constantly upon them.
Actually, it did a great deal of harm.
People were malnourished. They got rickets. They had horrible untreated depressions and acted it out by beating their children with belts.
Families had to move to find work (and this is what tillyminto would have us do now) and so were rootless and isolated from their families.
Unmarried mothers had to give their children away because they could not work and there was noone to support them (and this happened to millions).
The disabled and mentally ill were hidden away in sanitoriums to rot.
The working poor suffered awful working conditions and died young, toothless and broken.

Is this really is the direction people like tillyminto want us to go in-backwards?

My grandparents were immigrants who knew real poverty, and "pulled themselves up". They were also staunch fighters for union rights and equality because they knew the alternative.

Bring back chilblains and paraffin heaters, like the good old days (remembers these bitterly...)

Good grief, Cat, how can you be so unfeeling? I'm now on income support after being on JSA since the company I worked at for over 10 years unexpectedly went out of business just before Christmas, because our biggest customer folded and didn't pay the money they owed. I had one of the top jobs in the company but was still on a low wage so wasn't able to save much money. I'm also very pregnant (the baby was conceived long before my company ran into trouble, not that it matters) and, understandably, potential employers were reluctant to take me on. Anyone could lose their job in this economic climate; yes, even you - no one is more than a couple of steps away from having to sign on. And yet you'd villify and dehumanise someone who is out of work and needs help! Well one day it could be you needing help.

I just find the whole premise of this thread quite incredible. We have people who are fortunate enough to find themselves on a good income, with a good standard of living, sitting in judgement on those less fortunate and feeling they have the right to decide which parts of a decent standard of living they should be entitled to. Those who are doing this, who the hell do you think you are? Should the unthinkable happen - say you become seriously and chronically ill - YOU will be net scroungers from the system too. Do we all get to sit in judgement to decide how much treatment you're allowed before you've exceeded your quota?

You have a good education, you've been lucky enough to have a good job and get on the housing ladder before prices went stupid. You have enough to eat and you can afford to drive to work. You know there are many many rich people in this country taking the utter piss. And yet you dare to claim that a home and heating are unnecessary luxuries for people who are not as fortunate as you?

Totally totally incredible. I suggest any of you who are taking part in that conversation take a long hard look at your own lives.

I think anyone who can say that heating isn't a necessity has never really experienced living long term in an unheated old property. In other words she might think she knows what a cold house feels like but in reality is clueless.

I'm a bit confused as to how catontheroof can take the moral high ground when she too is benefiting from the appalling exploitation of the developing world by this country. I'll bet she buys Chinese, Indian, African, Indonesian etc, made goods, clothes and food without very little genuine thought for the people who are subsidising her lifestyle by barely scraping a living in order to support her smugness. I mean, really - shouldn't she stop buying it and benefiting from it and go and live in a cardboard box on a rubbish tip so as to avoid being an outrageous hypocrite? And by supporting this outrageous exploitation, she has also, in her own little way, contributed to the destruction of manufacturing jobs in this country, creating a population with nothing much useful to do. How selfish is she???? I don't know how she sleeps at night, although I guess looking down on others helps.

We lived in a house a few years ago which had a constantly breaking down heating system. Very old house but open fires had been bricked up years before. It was so cold I used to put DS to bed in our bed and get in with him to keep us both warm. DH was working away and the LL took a lifetime to sort out repairs. I'll always remember how sore my hands were and the GP telling me it was due to the very cold house. DS had the same sore hands (he was 3 at the time and I thought we had some weird skin thing). GP was right because when the heating was fixed it cleared up on us both.
Yes it was a miserable time - we got through it though.

DS is now 9 and struggles due to his autism, one of the things which stresses him is cold hands. I do wonder sometimes if that harks back to the very cold winter in that unheated house. It might not but I can't help wondering.