To really dislike the attitude some people have about council estates?

[MoominMantra]

Specifically this;

'I grew up on a council estate but I wanted to better myself'

Better yourself? What does that actually mean? I think people like this are insecure and suffer from internalised shame about their roots.

I was then told that because I didn't grow up on a council estate myself then I have no right to an opinion on this.

All I know is that it's deeply unpleasant to look down on others whatever the circumstances. It's not wrong to be happy living on a council estate is it.

AIBU?

I lived on a council estate once in my childhood for four years. It was an emergency house after our landlord suddenly announced he was selling up and my Mum couldn’t afford to buy it. We’d always lived in a lovely area prior to this. The council estate was a huge shock to our system and my DM did everything she could to get us out of there ASAP.

I’m sure some council estates are lovely, that one most definitely was not. Our cat was attacked by a big dog one day and almost died, my Mum had one car stolen and another one they attempted to steal, I had rocks thrown at me when I walked to school... It was shit, we all hated it. I’d never live on a council estate out of choice purely because of that experience.

It’s not difficult to see why someone who grew up on an estate like that aspired to have something better in life. It’s definitely not snobby to want to live somewhere, shall we say, appealing.

Posh students stealing and taking cocaine is in no way comparable to what kids on a certain inner city estate I know well are exposed to on a typical day. Those are very privileged people with choices and options and family backing (even if purely financial) - if not with the world at their feet then certainly with some degree of control over their own lives and hope for the future. It’s entirely different.

Oh and there’s a council estate in my home city (thankfully not the one we lived in, somehow even worse!) where people are literally shot and stabbed regularly.

I think you may have an idealistic view of council estates. I’m sure some are genuinely nice but the ones I have experienced definitely aren’t.

I know this but nobody should assume that rich people are all paragons of virtue
Who does think this though

I bought an ex council flat when I was 20 and getting married. It was all we could afford and a beautiful large, well built, flat with sea views. We stayed there for 6 years and I started off very much reverse snob, most of the people I met were hardworking people and there are definitely benefits with facilities that the council put in place to try and uplift the area (excellent swimming pools, libraries, parks, bus services).

However by the time we sold our flat I was so fed up and desperate to be out of there. My downstairs neighbour had paranoid schizophrenia and deteriorated significantly while we were there and was sectioned periodically. One particular attack involved him hammering and trying to kick down the door of another single female neighbour with no trousers on because she had been "making eyes at him' while she hid in a cupboard. Another neighbour kept her crack pipe hidden in our shared garden and lost custody of her daughter throughout the years we were living there. She was a prostitute in her flat to pay for her habit and I constantly bumped into business men visiting her premises throughout the day while taking my pram up and down the stairs. The day we had a viewing there was a needle left in the garden which thankfully I found before my toddler. Dog crap everywhere. Neighbours who forgot their keys kicked the door in about 5 times a year...£130 bill for us each time.

Wouldnt have said I've bettered myself but so glad to be rid of my beautiful first flat.

While I see where you're coming from, some neighbourhoods are definitely rough areas, and really I think that's what they're alluding to.

It's just unfortunate that council estate has become synonymous with rough area because of the social problems that arise from poverty and a lack of aid.

I think if you didn't grow up poor/working class then YABU, I grew up on an HA estate and while I've never used the phrase 'better myself' I was so embarrassed to be living there as a teenager...once I was about 14 onwards and realised that my MC friends from school had completely different lives/houses and the DC I'd grown up with were seen as scary 'hoodys'.
As an adult I love visiting DPs and remember it much more fondly, how we'd all be in and out of each others houses or playing out with the DMs taking it in turn to keep an eye on us. It's still like that now. But at 14 I hated it.

In a similar vein, DH grew up in a not gentrified bit of East London, he is in equal parts proud of where he grew up, and equal parts grateful we are not bringing DS up there.

my point MoominMantra is, what on earth do you think you know about council estate if you have never lived in one!

How patronising and smug to judge the people who have experienced them in real life and have an opinion about them!

The cheek!

You’ve got the best of intentions OP but you remind me of the well meaning MC people I’d find at the Militant meetings I went to in my teens. They’d talk about council estates and the working class and I’d look at them thinking ‘what the fuck are you talking about’ because they’re view was so disconnected from the reality I lived.
We don’t need you to speak up for us council estate folk. Honestly we have our own voice.

@CitadelsofScience no mortgage - 'savings' ie, what they'd kept out of their benefits

I think it's just a way of saying you grew up without too much money. Fwiw I grew up on one too and some aspects were bloody awful, but it's not something I define myself by.

Er, ok @thentherewascakes

I’m completely baffled why anyone should even mention it, like they survived shark infested waters or much, much, worse

@gamerwidow how do you know I'm 'middle class'?

I am not 'speaking up for' anyone as it happens.

My points are

1. That my teeth itch when I hear someone who makes value judgements about people who live on council estates and call them 'low lives'

1. People would be nicer and happier themselves if they didn't need to feel a part of a snobbish hierarchical system.

The UK is one of the worst places on earth for snobbery.

It depends on the estate really. I've lived on one or two as they were cheap and all the residents have been lovely but I wouldn't want to live on a sink estate in a city with knife crime etc. Who would?
On the other hand I've lived on private roads in well off areas that have been unbearable with bullying neighbours and people who think you are beneath them.
A good community is essential wherever you live.

It's the phrase that is wrong because it makes it sound that those who live on council estates are not as good as those that don't. All the wealth in the world can't make you a decent person, it can however give you a very comfortable life.

Exactly my point @sweeneytoddsrazor

Well this is true. I worked for a company in Brighton some years ago and there were some arseholes there, the richer they were the more they thought they could treat you like shit. I hated them with a passion.
I'd sooner work with people on a council estate any day.

nobody should assume that rich people are all paragons of virtue.

On this thread, I haven't seen anybody do this. But the law of this country does precisely that. And The Law in its turn is supported by a largely-establishment biased media, who prefer to focus their angst on pockets of council housing up and down the country, rather than where it really belongs: a roughly 3-square-mile area of London commonly known as the City.

Which costs more? Benefit fraud or tax avoidance? What is the reason benefit fraud is not only illegal, but highly frowned upon; considered the practice of the lowest of the low, but tax avoidance is perfectly legal? (And a blind eye is very often turned to the crime of evasion, too). And it seems you can grind this country down to the brink of financial collapse through greed and ineptitude, yet the same bankers responsible for that mess are still regularly netting their 6-figure bonuses, having been nicely bailed out by the taxpayer.

Why aren't people furious about this? It's a clever tactic - get everyone else scrapping like crabs in a bucket over the meagre spoils left when the super-rich have momentarily taken their hands out of the cookie jar. In the meantime, the grasping people we should really be looking down upon are getting off scot-free.

I think you're being too sensitive.

People often want to go on to do more than they had as a child, offer their child more than what they had, whatever their background.

I've known people say they'd never want their kids to live where they grew up, they'd want their kids to have better educational opportunities and outcomes than they had, I've known some who had parents who were money rich but short on empathy say they'd want to be a better parent by being there more emotionally.

Some don't aspire to do more than wjat they had on the grounds 'I turned out ok so it doesn't matter, some haven't put much thought into it and some do care and want to do more.

Yes @MarieIVanArkleStinks, absolutely.

The government engineers a situation where people look down on the poor instead and blame them for all the UK's ills so that people turn against each other and accept the shit policies of the government.

The infamous housing estate I grew up on (in Oxford) became notorious for crime etc. I thank my lucky stars we moved from there.

DH grew up in a council estate. I think its fair to say he's 'bettered himself'. We met his old neighbour and she still lived in the same estate, but the wrong sort had moved in left and right. Now she's as lovely as anything, but her new neighbours, even she thought they were low lives. The entitlement culture in the UK does breed these types of people sadly. Living in the council estate doesn't make one a low life, but it is the reality that there are plenty of criminals and scumbags living in the estates,and troubling the good decent folks there!

Op you are coming across as hypocritical and as if you have a huge chip on ŷour shoulder.

It's ok for you to call people posh, criticise a private school, stereotype oxbridge students as all having drug problems - you're making exactly the same negative judgements about other people.

People that say they want to better the lives are talking about what they want for themselves, not automatically making a judgment on other people. Why do you assume they are?