to think we in the UK have a bloody good life and we should stop bloody whinging?

[WriterofDreams]

This is a rant. Feel free to tell me IABU, as I am not going to be moderate in my views.

I know "what about the starving children in [insert poor country here]" is an endlessly annoying response to any complaint but it's been ringing in my head of late. I know people are struggling financially and being uncertain about the future is very worrying. But I do feel at times it would do us all good to stop and appreciate the huge privilege and good luck we have in living in this part of the world.

Something that will always stay with me is something my sister told me when she was working in Namibia. She had a spare notebook and pen so she gave it to a man who was about to study to be a teacher. He broke down in tears and she got a shock until she realised that this man could never have afforded to buy his own notebook and pen. He considered the gift hugely generous and had to be persuaded to accept it. A nun friend of mine also told me about children in Ethiopia who used to have their pens blessed by the priest in the hopes it would make them keep working. They had one pen to last the whole year and if it stopped working they might not be able to do their exams. Contrast this to my kids at school who would lose expensive handwriting pens left right and centre and expect a new one every time. We had to introduce a reward system to get them to look after them.

I wake up every day in a peaceful country in a dry warm house. I have running water, electricity, gas and a council that looks after the roads and collects the bins (as well as a lot of other things). If I need anything there are any number of shops I can go to where the shelves are constantly well stocked. My son will go to a clean well equipped school with highly trained teachers, for free, and get heaps of bloody handwriting pens, books, and photocopied worksheets. If I'm ill I can go to the doctor, for free, and be seen right away, given the correct medicine or sent to a state of the art hospital where I'll get great care, again for free. I don't have to worry that malaria or yellow fever will kill my family, or that war will tear my country apart.

On the whole I am one of the very very lucky ones.

There are elderly people in hospital wards as we type dying of thirst or starving to death. There are bright young people in our education system who will never get a decent job and be able to support themselves. We are entering into a situation, or dare I say it sleepwalking, where in this country you will not be able to access decent health care or a decent education unless you have money.

There was a thread in chat the other week where a woman was enquiring about how she could make a box of cornflakes and some flour last for 2 weeks 'cos she had no cash.

There are children in this country in inadequate housing whose families rely on FSM's to feed them.

If I were charitable I would say that the OP is being very worthy and a tad naive. I'm not charitable though and think the OP is being incredibly disingenuous.

It does no good to anyone to conflate the issues of the developing world with the dreadful conditions some people in the UK are living in.

Yes soverylucky- and that hardship etc would have been magnified a million times had we had to also cope with no water, literal starvation, no access to medical care at all, no shelter and living in a war zone with fear of death everyday. At least those burdens of food, shelter etc were greatly reduced for us.

Freudianslipper, the high earners in this country are also paying the most in tax to fund all the services you're talking about. We'd be a bit stuck without them tbh!

Of course they do. Like Philip Green, like Shirley Porter, like Bono...

As someone with a history of depression I sometimes struggle to be grateful for all I have in my life. I'm old enough to know from conversations with my parents and grand-parents what life was before the Welfare State. The apathy and 'I'm so hard done by' attitude of many people today makes me so cross.
I won't list all the benefits it brings but I hope we make a collective decision to fight to retain it.

basically, the 'it could be worse' argument is used to shut down debate about how things can improve for those who are suffering.

So the OP could say to alistron's dad, 'Ah, Mr.X, you may be 89, alone and in pain but at least you're not on the streets in a developing country as well!!!' And he would be quite entitled to tell her where to stick it. As is anyone who gives a monkeys about keeping our freedoms and services and exposing the areas in which they let the people of the UK down appallingly.

Some people really need to see the world. Or at least watch some documentaries on it.

Then tell me if you would go up to someone in a third world country, look them in the eye and tell them you still think you have it worse.

YANBU - I often thank my stars that by some chance I was born in UK and first world. That I am able to feed my children, live in nice flat, warm, dry running water, NHS. All those things. I cannot imagine what it must be like to not be able to feed your children.

Bono is Irish Oh Bugger. Not relevant, but just saying.

I do agree that voiceless people - people with disabilities, elderly people - do tend to be marginalised in our society. I don't think that's entirely down to the government, although of course they hold the practical responsibility for it. I think it's a cultural thing. When I worked with people with disabilities the attitudes of a lot of people shocked me. So many people I spoke to resented money being spent on children with disabilities. Of course not everyone is like that but there is a strong undercurrent of feeling that money spent on, admittedly very expensive, interventions and schooling, is money "wasted."

That's not my view at all by the way. Equally with elderly people there's a reluctance for family members to step up and look after them. I for one wouldn't let an elderly relative of mine languish in a home on their own. I would make it my business to be looking out for their welfare, whether that would mean paying for a place in a private home, having him or her in my home or having them in their own home and hiring help for them. I currently, with other family members, help to fund help for my granny but if she ever stops being able to live on her own she will move in with my mum. Similarly my parents will move in with me if needs be in the future.

I remember people saying this during the 80s when British pensioners were regularly dying from hypothermia because they couldn't afford to pay the heating. I could never understand why it was preferable to die from exposure in this country rather than in some other country: the sensation, I imagine, would have been similar. Hope we don't get to see those days again.

But of course even in those days it was true for most British people: it was just that it was trotted out as an excuse not to improve things for those people whose lives were not so different from those in a third world country.

writerofdreams, I'm so glad that you wouldn't let an elderly relative languish in a care home. Sadly none of us in my family have experience of managing/changing catheters or managing dementia. And even combining funds we can't afford the 500 quid a week plus that would be required for a private home. He is lucky though because he has us as advocates to look after his needs within the system. Sadly, many elderly and vulnerable people do not have that.

WriterofDreams Mon 04-Jul-11 07:23:42

"That's not my view at all by the way. Equally with elderly people there's a reluctance for family members to step up and look after them. I for one wouldn't let an elderly relative of mine languish in a home on their own. I would make it my business to be looking out for their welfare, whether that would mean paying for a place in a private home, having him or her in my home or having them in their own home and hiring help for them. I currently, with other family members, help to fund help for my granny but if she ever stops being able to live on her own she will move in with my mum. Similarly my parents will move in with me if needs be in the future."

That's easy to say before it happens. But what if you end up in a situation like my MIL, paralysed from the waist downwards and swelling up from medication to a point where it takes two professionally trained people and a large hoist (which won't fit into a normal room) to lift her onto the toilet? She is an absolutely charming person and I love having her around, but it wouldn't take me many weeks to kill her, through dropping her or just failing to get her cleaned. She doesn't want that any more than I do.

But even without such specialised physical needs, most people with children would struggle to look after a relative with dementia who cannot ever be left alone for safety reasons. How do you manage the school run? Children's doctor's and dental appointments? What do you do in an emergency- do you leave grandma to set fire to the house or leave the 4yo to spurt blood?

Yes, I know people used to do it, but dementia was less common (because fewer people reached that age), children could be kept home from school to mind grandma (Education Welfare would have something to say these days) and even so elderly people regularly died in horrendous accidents.

Care homes can be staffed 24/7 and made safe in a way that is pretty difficult in your standard 3 bed semi.

YABU. It's the sort of thing I'd expect a government to say, while driving through cuts. "You've never had it so good".

Poverty and the effects of are relative folks. Go do some reading about what the impact is in THIS country. We are fortunate in comparison to others but it doesn't make the impact any less of an issue.

Given that you are aware of how expensive it is to care for someone like your grandfather, don't you think the care he does get for free on the NHS is quite remarkable? He might not get round the clock one to one care but frankly it's up to the family to provide that. As for being there to be his advocate when he was injured, I would think that was normal, don't you? I don't think hospitals can afford to hire extra staff to be sent off the ward when necessary.

It is possible by the way to pay for private care with the support of the local authority.

'don't you think the care he does get for free on the NHS is quite remarkable?'

It's not free. We all pay for it out of taxes.

Do you think relatives of elderly people who have died on the marvellous NHS wards because they weren't fed and became dehydrated should stop whinging about it? It's not as rosy as it seems, not as rosy as officials tell us. It's not free, it's not a charity, it is a service that we have paid for. That's why we have a right to complain and whinge as much as we like.

Claig, but it's available to all regardless of whether they contributed a lot through their taxes, a little, or nothing at all. It isn't there at all in other countries. Why not go live in Ireland or the US for a little while and start paying for every single one of your treatments and maybe you'll appreciate the NHS a bit more - even with its flaws.

That's why many Tory MPs and rightwing coloumnists have started questioning the increased ring-fenced foreign aid budget at a time of austerity at home. They are on the side of the public, the so-called whingers, who are asking questions about how their tax money is being spent.

It's free at point of service claig. American's pay taxes but still have to pay directly for healthcare. In Ireland each visit to the GP costs 60 euros. That's what I mean by free.

sorry that should be Americans

'Why not go live in Ireland or the US for a little while and start paying for every single one of your treatments and maybe you'll appreciate the NHS a bit more - even with its flaws.'

But they aren't paying for it like we do. I don't think we live in teh best of all possible worlds. I want to hold the NHS to account, with people dying on hospital wards due to dehydration and people catching MRSA. We have had lots of scandals in our hospitals. We deserve better. That's why people complain and others try to shut us up by calling us whingers. People are not getting life-saving operations and drugs, sometimes due to postcode lotteries, while fat cat managers are receiving bonuses and huge salaries while people die of dehydration. It's not good enough, and whinging about it is frankly mild.

WriterofDreams Mon 04-Jul-11 08:02:58
"Given that you are aware of how expensive it is to care for someone like your grandfather, don't you think the care he does get for free on the NHS is quite remarkable? He might not get round the clock one to one care but frankly it's up to the family to provide that"

And what if there is no family? What would childless people do? Or what if the family, in the shape of a single daughter, would have to go on benefits because she couldn't combine 24/7 care with working- how is that better for the tax payers? Or what if children end up neglected because mother is tied up with dementia-suffering grandfather? (having spent a holiday as a 17yo looking after my senile grandmother, I am very aware that there is no way I could have combined this with school, let alone holding down a job or being responsible for small children). And what about low earners, doing essential jobs- how are they supposed to be able to pay for private care for their loved ones?

Do we want to go back to the days when every family felt they had to have 10 children for fear there would be noone to look after them in their old age?

Claig, no one is saying it is perfect. Of course it could be improved but can you not appreciate that what we have is better than the nothing that many other people have? Can you imagine what it is like to not be able to afford to take your child to the doctor? To perhaps lose your house because you don't have health insurance to pay for your treatment? My mum did charity work in the US with families with young children who lost EVERYTHING because one of the parents got ill, lost their job and had to sell their house to pay the bills. They were living in shelters and eating in soup kitchens. The US isn't a developing country.

They tell you to stop whinging. What are you complaining about? You're better off than the poor people on the other side of the world. Count yourself lucky for now, you might soon end up as poor as them, while fat cat bonuses keep rising. Stop whinging and start giving thanks instead. Start chanting that everything is fine, praise the government, praise the Lord. Pay the fat cats even more, they're there to help you.