This is why we can't have nice things, and I'm tired of it

[faithinthesound]

Full disclosure: I don't actually think I'm being unreasonable. I know I'm angry and that is coloring some of my words and actions and responses, but I don't think I'm all that wrong. I'm here for a vent and some commiseration, really.

I've got this joke I make all the time when something goes wrong, like something gets knocked over or falls on the floor. I laugh and I say "and that is why we can't have nice things". But I'm sitting here today seething at just about everyone I've encountered today, because the truth is, we CAN'T have nice things. And I am so sick and tired of people who are the reason why.

Like, we can't have a nice sit out on the back porch because the neighbors are blasting rap.

Like, the timetable machine thing at this bus stop has been broken for months and will never be fixed because the second it's fixed, someone will be along to smash it up again.

Like, I can't get anywhere on time today because people want to stand and argue with the bus driver over whether or not they have to pay (spoiler: yes you bloody well do).

Like, I'm not particularly enjoying my dinner because the woman who served me at the fast food restaurant spoke to me like I am a moron (I'm not), and it has vexed me.

Like, we can't have threads like we used to like Sharon and the wasp, because there's a contingent of Reasons We Can't Have Nice Things who will be along before we're ten posts in, troll hunting and pooh-poohing and calling shenanigans, instead of getting into the spirit of the thing.

What about you guys? Want to share your "I can't have [nice thing] because [reason]"? I know I'm being very negative and ranty but sometimes it's nice just to be able to unload.

Who knows, RWCHNT (Reason We Can't Have Nice Things) might even catch on as a new MN acronym lol.

before anyone kicks off I am poor, I live in a poor area (im living in the most deprived area of my town in the southwest )

The problem with poorer areas is this people are so miserable, so lost because life is so fucking shite.

We had lottery funding for a playground and someone set fire to it.

We have a massive dog poo issue because people drive over to our big field in their fancy 4x4s, I've seen them do it because they park outside my house, and let their dogs crap everywhere and dont take it home. I had folk let their dogs crap in my garden. IT only happened once. the dog crap found its way on to that dog owners windscreen. So the kids cant play football.

a neighbour actually threw a hissy fit at kids throwing cut grass on the field. They were playing a safe game not hurting anyone and this really makes the environment hostile to complain about nothing.

we have had new home owners move in with snobby attitudes (houses are cheap so they are being snapped up but not by those from the community) that because they own their homes they can dictate to the housing association tenants what they can and cant do. threatening them with legal action for silly things like healthy trees shedding seeds like they have done for the last 15 years before those people moved in. Complaining about bins not going away the second they are emptied. People who petitioned to council to remove the light from the playground I can see from my house because 'kids use it late at night and the light is a nuisance'. kids still use it late but now none of the residents around the park can see who or what is happening in there so we cannot help keep the area safe.

The area here looks shit because people cant afford gardening tools, cant afford a mower, cant afford to pay a gardener to cut the grass so it gets over grown then others complain putting more stress on those people and life just stops being worth the effort. This is just one example of the issues people here face.

The biggest issue here is poverty. Pure and simple lack of money. people are desperate and when they are desperate the most basic needs becomes the focus. Litter on the pavement is the last thing they care about because they are trying to figure out how to pay £200 worth of bills with just £100 to spare this month. People aren't going to spend 20mins picking up litter outside their homes if they're struggling to find the money to heat their homes. They're not going to care about antisocial behaviour when they are hungry.

If we all want to have nice things again we've really got to work hard to change things. The biggest change is to get money to where it really needs to go first and foremost. Benefit sanctions destroy people then the knock on effect is on the community too and that spreads. If people saw that then they wouldn't be voting for austerity, for brexit for all this stuff thats going to make the poor even poorer and in turn take away the nice things we've all taken for granted. This is what we need to be pissed about.

Its exhausting fighting to change things and I despise the things that happen around here The fires, the break-ins, the snobby attitudes, our total twat of a tory MP. yep, our area actually voted tory, I despair. but glimmers of hope. The anonymous person(s) who blacked out UKIP signs over the last 2years locally. Those who volunteer and put on local events thanks to lottery funding, theres one lady in particular who works her butt off despite a heart attack and major surgery to do all these things. The volunteers that come help me do litter picks to try to make the area better. We try to do one with support of the local housing association every spring to clear the park and the field of the worst of the litter and fly tipping. The council for listening to my constant complaints over dog crap and finally putting in more bins and signs so theres fewer issues of it. The council even send out a street sweeper every now and again which helps.

sorry for my rant but I see this shit day in day out and I'm fed up of the desperate people round where I live be labelled feckless, scroungers etc. They're just desperate and screaming out for people to actually notice how hard it is.

There are many people cutoff from society, but wealth isn't the link; many poorer areas are beautifully kept and have community, despite the financial hardships people suffer, and many areas with extremely wealthy residents have no community, and are covered in litter because it's not "their problem" to sort out. (Easily seen in recent snow, which roads had their pavements cleared by groups of residents and which had icy drives all the way along).
Keeping things nice just needs people that care a little about others around them. Taking your litter home, not throwing eggs at people,( for tuppences), breaking bus shelters- these things are hardly affected by ones wealth.

make's poem is Kipling, isn't it?

I think the other thing is there have always been (well at least as far back as I - now in my 50s - and my parents' generation can remember) "respectable" and "rough" poor districts. My gran's council estate back in the 1970s was "respectable" with neatly trimmed privet hedges and mowed lawns. My experience in the inner city was during the Blairite years. My dad remembers bits of Liverpool as a student where the local kids chucked half bricks at them while they tried to do surveying fieldwork (1950s) and bits of Glasgow as a newly qualified engineer where people (drunken males) crapped in the lifts of the new tower blocks (1960s). And social cohesion was always undermined by rich bastards - Glasgow of the same period, the worst maintained of the old Victorian slums at the time were, notoriously, owned by the Church of Scotland.

roomsonfire I'm sorry- it's looks as though I'm answering your post, I wasn't, just bad juxtaposition there.
People moving into your community seem to have no community-mindedness, and that is annoying at best, but if they're then complaining and acting against the community that's bloody awful for you all.
Children playing with grass? Ffs, people need a good shake!

Also cross-posted with rooms - I think one of the biggest, most pernicious myths of modern times has been "trickle down" economics, the false idea that so many in the comfortable middle class had, that just because they were doing quite well things were getting better further down the social heap. I also think that the number of people struggling is expanding dramatically after the Cameron/Osborne austerity years, and now under May's Universal Credit and fuck the poor years. Things were far from rosy for the poorest in society under Blair, but it's now turned into an absolutely brutal regime.

PhilODox no harm done! I did write an essay. I knew there'd be a few out of sequence replies!

yes... there is a clear homeowner vs HA tenant here. I am a HA tenant and have personally taken on some of the crap thrown at me by homeowners and stood up for my neighbours with similar things.

the homeowners set up a neighbourhood watch scheme. I went to a meeting because the local PCSO said one was happening ( I know her well via my work in the Housing association) ... I was made to feel like I wasn't welcome with comments like 'you're not a homeowner, you dont know what its like!'

Thank you roomsonfire for taking the time to post that

I think a lot of these problems are caused by the massive cuts in locals services and support thanks to, guess who, the Tory Government. It's austerity in action

The underclass still existed and was highlighted by Tony Blair's labour Govt, who threw a lot of words and policy at fixing it. Which of course didn't work.

Its too easy to blame austerity and the govt and society and the rich and the privileged and the immigrants and Brexit etc etc etc without taking any responsibility for their own actions.

Why cant the police deal effectively with anti social behavior? - its not budget that constrains them but people's attitudes preventing them from upsetting the poor dears, same as teachers, cant tell of naughty and disruptive Jane or Jonny as the parents will be in to see the Head to raise complaints ( see many threads on here ).

Society as a whole needs to deal with antisocial behavior and allow it to be dealt with and make it unacceptable.

I have to say that I do believe the broken windows theory has something going for it. It's about the social acceptance of certain environmental conditions.

I live on a mixed estate with both long term social housing residents and owner occupiers. The gardens and homes of the social housing residents are immaculate, and there's a very obvious cultural pressure to ensure your own home looks presentable. So everyone does. And as a result, any dumping or litter is removed immediately.

My DM also found something similar with a back alley that ran behind her house. It was often littered, so she and other residents cleared it and planted flowers. The littering decreased significantly.

It has to be said though that, in other countries, the pretty appearance of homes and businesses is often either enforced by zoning and fines or encouraged by tax reductions. There's one town in Europe (cannot for the life of me remember where it is, maybe somewhere like Slovenia) where you get reductions in your local property taxes if your home has window boxes full of flowers. And the fines for not having clean white paint on your pavement mortar joins in Mykonos old town are horrendous.

We can have nice things. It just sometimes takes a headspace change. There's a fantastic woman who's been "greening the ghetto" in the South Bronx by spearheading projects to turn abandoned lots into community gardens. Her points about environmental justice are extremely valid.

PricklyBall I work with a small group and all the people are on some form of benefit. Over the last year this group has gone from bringing in their own packed lunch to eat as a group and we work on the project to some in the group no longer eating all day and others feeling uncomfortable they are eating and others aren't. Its noticeable the effect it has on individual people and the group as a whole and this is all to do with benefits and austerity.

That's an awful attitude, and is at the heart of why community is dying out- everyone is part of the community, no exceptions.
Please don't let them make you feel bad for anything- it's them, not you, you're doing the right thing.

Roomsonfire "The area here looks shit because people cant afford gardening tools, cant afford a mower, cant afford to pay a gardener to cut the grass so it gets over grown then others complain putting more stress on those people and life just stops being worth the effort. This is just one example of the issues people here face."

A friend and I were discussing this the other day and how inefficient it is to expect every home to own these big items that only need using occasionally, such as a hedge trimmer or lawnmower, and what a benefit it would be for communities to have a community toolshed type of thing, where people can borrow them (free) and then return them for someone else to use. It's madness to have six houses on a street and six lawnmowers when one would be fine for everyone. Of course now we're in such an individualistic society and rarely speak to our neighbours let alone share and borrow things, it would have happened naturally when that wasn't the case. Though I do wonder how to counteract theft and vandalism.

I don't think anyone is excusing the 5% who crap in the lifts and destroy kids' play equipment in the local park - they are scum. And that 5% exists in all social strata. In my current town, which has a very upper crust university with a much higher than average number of students from private schools, we had a huge problem in the first house I lived in with pissed-up rugger buggers coming back from clubbing in the early hours and karate-kicking the wing mirrors off parked cars just for the hell of it. And believe me, I could hear their bloody braying hooray henry accents. They were not poor by any stretch of the imagination. But they were behaving in exactly the same way as the 5% of scum in the really poor inner city area I'd lived in before who "twocced" cars (local slang for joy-riding; the legal offence is "taking without owner's consent" hence "twoc"). The difference was in the better off area, the locals grumbled about the insurance excess and loss of their no-claims bonus, but could absorb the loss financially.

We have a local service where you can borrow tools and garden tools for free. Anything from a screwdriver upwards. people still have messy gardens etc because they can't be bothered and they think it's someone else's problem

I have fought back via volunteering in a local park. It has gone from a scrap of barely grass and concrete, full of dog shit, occupied by drug dealers, to a rare inner city green oasis, full of plants and benches and art, and the community love it - including the local drunks, who now put their tinnies in the bin and kind of protect the park from those who might abuse it.

Sure we have had lots of plants stolen on the way, and we've done all this on barely any money, and there were even very few Tories involved, but we have done it. I'm so proud of what a few volunteers, lead by one person with a cheerful and relentless vision have achieved.

Things can change for the better and the experience has certainly changed me for the better. Sure dog shit continues to be a problem, but most dog owners now even pick up their own crap.

PricklyBall You can be pretty sure if any of these 'rugger buggers' had been caught by the police, it would have been classed as High Jinks and they would be let off if they paid for replacements. See the antics of the Bullingdon Club for examples.

"people still have messy gardens etc because they can't be bothered and they think it's someone else's problem"

Or because in addition to being financially poor they are time poor - trying to juggle split shifts/second jobs/ dovetail each other's shifts so someone's always around to keep an eye on the children/ taking an extra hour a day to do school/work runs because they can't afford a car and have to rely on a flaky bus service. Some will be lazy, some just don't give a shit, some will genuinely have other priorities and not have the time.

We can’t have nice things because our house sale hasn’t gone through and we are stuck in a tiny flat with all our things slowly burying us. We should have been in our 4 bed at least 6 months ago I can’t get a new sofa or carpet because there is no point just before we move... if that ever happens!

WaxOnFeckOff Oh that's interesting. And a shame. Who runs it? Do you know any stats to say that nobody has used it to improve their gardens or is it just that it's the minority who have and the ones who haven't bothered are more visible?

I must say I think there is an aspect here of allowing people to keep their properties how they wish, I know most people think neat tidy gardens are more pleasant to look at but I don't think people should be looked down upon for letting theirs grow wild. It's a matter of taste and if someone is working crazy hours or has health issues or multiple kids on their own I wouldn't judge them for not taking the time to mow their lawn and plant flowers. I'm not fixed in this view though and open to what others might think about this.

we can’t have nice thinks because we live near a Tesco /Homebase /B&M and there are constantly shopping trolleys dumped all over the area . We can’t have nice things because people keep chucking litter down and the council don’t have the funds to clean it up everyday . We can’t have nice things because rude entitled people keep parking on the pavements.
I could do this all day.

We (as a society) can't have nice things because we always want more than we are actually willing to pay for, we all have a reason why it should be someone else paying to make up the shortfall not us, and we are seemingly incapable of having a calm, rational discussion about how "big" problems should be solved - it always descends into 2 polarised groups shouting at each other.

LemonShark we have a tool bank on the cards here! I read about that whole thing in a book called 'collaborative consumption' www.amazon.co.uk/gp/search?linkCode=qs&keywords=9780007395910&index=books&tag=mumsnetforum-21 Its a good read on alternative ways to share and pool resources.

the second issue is disabilities or caring for people with disabilities and as pricklyball pointed out.. time!

me? I can afford a gardener at £30 per grass cut but on my own my garden would take me out 2 hours to do. I'm a single parent and I couldn't leave my DC for that length of time or deal with power tools because its just not safe. So I would have to stop and start meaning the job could end up taking all day. My issues are pretty normal.

I have travelled in many dirt poor countries, lived in some very poor (not starving villages) abroad. People could see on the communal TV the inequality of their lives. But they had amazing dignity, and a great sense of community and self-worth. So littering was tiny, the kids playing in groups and little packs but still being incredibly helpful and respectful, and theft was very low. What gives?

I'm with you lemonshark mostly for the environmental impact. Neat clipped lawns are horrendous for eco diversity. Everyone should be letting parts of their garden grown into a maintained wilderness. All manner of wildlife will thank you for it. Plus seeing butterflies, birds and other insects like brightly coloured damsel flies and even hedgehogs lift the spirits in ways a neat green square never will.

but thats just me.