Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To think that sometimes we forget that most people are essentially decent

58 replies

Tryingtokeepalidonit · 10/05/2015 20:43

I, and my family, completed Walk the Wight today, a 26 1/2 mile charity walk for the Island's hospice. An amazing and exhausting day shared with hundreds of thousands of other people and over 400 dogs. It was a day of shared blisters, tea and laughs. Going by the Island election results a large % must of been Conservative/UKIP voters but whilst last week we were divided by politics ( Labour voter here) today we were united in supporting a common goal. Surely this proves that whilst people have differing politics most of us want the same, a fair and decent society. I was just uplifted by today, also knackered and in bed already!

OP posts:
fiveacres · 10/05/2015 21:35

The lengths some people go to for their elderly parents is humbling. My mother broke her back for hers.

DamnBamboo · 10/05/2015 21:35

Damn - Most of us, including me, walk past homeless people regularly. Don't regularly make sure elderly or disabled people in their street are okay. Don't look after their elderly parents in their own home

I just don't think this is as broadbrush as you say. Sure, I don't help every homeless person I walk past, but I do help some, if I have time/money to hand. Many people are the same. Same with elderly people etc.

Have a little more faith in humanity.

morage · 10/05/2015 21:38

Try being a homeless street kid for example and see how decent most people are to you?

sconequeen · 10/05/2015 21:38

I think that it's great (genuinely) that people took part in the walk. But maybe more of those who took part should be thinking about why we live in a society where proper end-of-life and palliative care is funded by charities and only available to a minority of the population.

Political choices have very practical impacts on our everyday lives. In my view, people who vote Conservative are in effect supporting an ideology which limits the options available to the less well-off, and which has very real impacts on their quality of life. It would be nice if fewer people would vote on the basis of whether they think a particular party will put a few extra pounds in their pocket and instead think about the bigger picture.

fiveacres · 10/05/2015 21:40

Morage, homeless street kids don't usually come with signs round their heads Hmm

It isn't that people aren't kind, it is that they are wary of being duped. When the need is found to be genuine it is often overwhelming just how lovely people can be.

TwoAndTwoEqualsChaos · 10/05/2015 21:42

YANBU and, Amen, Sister!

morage · 10/05/2015 21:43

I am not talking about helping them. I am talking about how people generally divide people into deserving and undeserving.

If you are dying of cancer, you are deserving.
If you are dying of emphysemea you are undeserving.
If you are poor because you are disabled you are deserving
If you are poor because you have had an abusive childhood so struggle to manage your emotions, and so keep getting sacked from jobs, you are undeserving.

Original poster
Tryingtokeepalidonit · 10/05/2015 21:44

FWIW this walk has been running for 25 years and when Labour were in power the money was still needed. I didn't want this thread to be party political I just wanted to mention the fact that politics does not define you as a person. The vitriol recently has ignored the fact that most people genuinely want to live in a decent country.

OP posts:
sconequeen · 10/05/2015 21:52

...politics does not define you as a person. The vitriol recently has ignored the fact that most people genuinely want to live in a decent country.

But there is no getting away from the fact that how you vote will have a big impact on the most vulnerable in society. I do not think, for example, that a decent country can have one in five children living in poverty, with the number set to increase exponentially by 2020 due to Tory cuts.

nancysblushes · 10/05/2015 21:54

trying

I get you

I have friends who vote all ways and (some of them Smile ) are decent people.
My point is that people have different views about how to get to a decent country. But that is their end goal.

sconequeen · 10/05/2015 22:08

My point is that people have different views about how to get to a decent country. But that is their end goal.

I'm afraid that I can't agree with that. I think that a lot of people basically vote according to what they think is going to be best for them rather than for the country as a whole.

morage · 10/05/2015 22:08

I am more cynical. If you are a respectable victim, people will generally help. If you are not, most people don't care.

That is why Rotherham happened. Most of the girls who were abused were not sweet sympathetic victims. They were girls who had behavioral problems, who drank, who truanted. They were not seen as victims.

Original poster
Tryingtokeepalidonit · 10/05/2015 22:14

But Rotherham happened under Labours watch. It is not party political more about sexism and police corruption.

OP posts:
stubbornstains · 10/05/2015 22:18

If we're talking about the election, I think that decency is part of the problem, in that people who are fundamentally decent expect that the political parties who represent them are the same- full of fundamentally decent people who wouldn't really let anything bad happen to those in need.

In addition, I think fundamentally decent people find it hard to believe that the newspapers and TV channels they trust would manipulate them and feed them massively biased information, because surely they must be fair and impartial?

Sadly, they are catastrophically mistaken Sad.

morage · 10/05/2015 22:21

TryingToKepp - No it is not about party politics. It is sexism and the idea that some people and children deserve their fate.
So no, I don't agree with the OP.

nancysblushes · 10/05/2015 23:22

Scone - fair enough - your view.

I know some people who are in local rather than national politics (conservative) and the time and the effort they have taken to get funds (and in one case huge funds) to improve e.g. social housing and the school associated with it is a great thing to see.

Anyway I am derailing the thread.

I am with Op in that there are a great many people who just want a decent society and also with a pp, if you are a bit left or right of centre then you probably have more in common than you do differences.

Not all conservatives are "heartless self-servers" , just as not all labour supporters are "feckless wastrels / luvvies" .

I've voted for both and I decide on an election by election basis.

Anyhow it was just nice to see a thread where people have a reasonable discussion rather than mud-slinging. It gives me heart.

OwlinaTree · 10/05/2015 23:33

It depends. I agree it is heart warming to take part in such an event, it is the group dynamic and the desire to belong to a group I think. Also the feeling of doing good.

I'm not sure how this translates to voting really. Like everyone votes whether they agree with you or not, but presumably people who disagree with this cause you support aren't at the walk, so it's not comparable really.

OwlinaTree · 10/05/2015 23:33

But well done on the walk!

OwlinaTree · 10/05/2015 23:37

I think it's hard to see people as essentially decent when they are essentially saying 'I only care about my own interests.' That's how many people see the decision to vote against what they see as right for society.

Hope that's clear!? Don't want to name a party there!

AddToBasket · 10/05/2015 23:43

Not really very clear, OwlinaTree, as no political party is essentially saying 'I only care about my own interests.'

Well, if you have a nuanced grasp of politics, that is. Perhaps there are parties that I don't know about...

LoisWilkersonsLastNerve · 10/05/2015 23:44

Yanbu. Its just the good stuff /people don't get talked about enough, well done on your walk op.

Coyoacan · 11/05/2015 05:36

Mmm, definitely what I have found in life. Hospices are wonderful places, we don't seem to have them in Mexico but they are sorely needed

My mother was dying and one night my cousing and his wife came to visit. My mother hated cousin's wife, because she is a rabid hater of Catholics (talking N. Ireland here) but fortunately was asleep. I didn't know the wife but she offered to stay the night with me, looking after my mum and she did for which I am eternally grateful, no matter how much I hate the ultra-protestants.

daisychain01 · 11/05/2015 05:39

Then I will be controversial and say even the politicians are at heart decent people. They don't wake up in the morning thinking I'm going to create policies that will harm the people of the country but they have to make decisions that the majority of people don't have the guts to do.

A bit like football, you get brilliant armchair football managers who'll pontificate about how their club should be run, but when push comes to shove put them in charge and they are no more immune from ballsing it up than the next person. Humans are fallible, and nobody is either all good or all bad.

I think I may have splinters up my bum.

alteredbeast · 11/05/2015 07:14

I need to feel like this, but I'm cynical.

The child abuse scandals, for example.

The fact that Nationalism has taken a nasty root in Scotland.

Hate the policy, not the person. I don't think all Tory/SNP voters are horrible and many voted with best intentions. But I do think they have been misled.

devon004 · 11/05/2015 07:19

Yes morage. My dad an oap with emphesia (sp) was struggling to breathe daily. But we had to pay for a nebuliser for him. When he died we donated it so someone else didn't need to suffer and we didn't even get a thank you. Lucky he had family because according to someone on another thread we cannot expect state to replace family and was insinuating that the poor diabetic who died after being sanctioned should have had more family support.
I have another relative dying of cancer. Even she is struggling to get hospice care so I will be walking for the local hospice again.
Ghat does not make me an amazing person though. I could do alot more.