To not want to raise a child into this vicious, dog-eat-dog, cut-throat country?

[summergal250]

Really I'm pretty close to giving up on the idea of one day having kids.

Why?

Unless you're rich, everything in the country is just an endless, ceaseless, dog-eat-dog fight over scraps. Day after day, month after month, year after year. I don't want my child to have to deal with this crap.

Examples:
. I'm currently having issues with the landlord over various repairs he's dragging his feet on. His attitude is, if you don't like it move. I pay £700 for this crappy shoebox. I could just move - again - or threaten court action, which as empty as any money I'd get from that would be wiped out by legal fees.

. This is like my 10th rental in 12 years. EVERY single one them had at least one serious issue with it - mice, damp, noise issues, no washing machine, landlords entering property etc. Out all of them only one landlord was actually a decent person - all the rest having been lying, cheating, two-faced money-grubbers. Of course, not a problem if mummy and daddy can give you a deposit. In my 30s yet feel as I'm trapped in a permanent state of being 21.

. I work full time and do freelance in my spare time. I constantly look for new, better paying roles and I have been saving for a deposit for years and as house prices just rise and rise it feels I'm getting nowhere. I'm almost at the point of saying, why bother? How is it fair to raise a kid in some crummy tiny flat? The housing issue has been a problem for 20 years and NOTHING has been done - every year it just gets worse and worse. Meanwhile smug boomers who bought their semi for £80K in 1979 bang on about avocados.

. I got conned into doing a degree which every adult in my teens said would be a ticket to a great future. Instead, all it represents is a massive pile of debt and a waste of three years. Yet, even a receptionist job now insists on a degree, so you have to do it, even though only a degree from Oxbridge or a top redbrick is worth anything these days.

. Jobs - graduated into the recession. I've had jobs where I've been bullied, others with psycho bosses, others with vicious backstabbing 'colleagues'. Constantly the implicit threat of - if you don't like it we'll fire you. Felt I was finally getting somewhere in my old job and then was made redundant during covid. Cue several months of soul-destroying unemployment. The job I have now is ok but less well paid then my old one - so, more struggle, more jostling for favour, wasting more of my free time looking for a better paid jobs, more endless rounds of interviews. I feel like I've been going up the down escalator the entire time. Every year it seems the jobs market gets fiercer, more competitive, more brutal and cut-throat.

. The low pay means I spend large chunks of my free time freelancing. I enjoy it but it can be exhausting. Atm I'm embroiled in a dispute with a client who is refusing to pay for some completed work (with £700) - turns out he's con man with a dodgy past. I'm having to take him to a small claims court - yet more of my time and energy wasted.

. Similar to an occasion a few months back where a hotel Cornwall was nothing like the pics when I got there - it was in a disgusting state. I cancelled and went elsewhere, and then was embroiled in a 3 month battle to get my money back, with the owner only relenting when I got the local council involved.

Spotting a pattern?

If you're not rich in this country everything's just a pointless, exhausting fight to keep your head above water. Every economic interaction is just a vicious bare-knuckle fight, with people out to shaft you for what they can. Honestly, if it wasn't for my family and friends I really would have just given up on the human race.

I won't go into the this country's general lack of manners, the yobbish behaviour of many people here, the rows of homeless tents in out high streets, the crappy education system, the utterly broken and corrupt political system, and the general utter madness society seems to fall further into with every passing year. The quality of life here just deteriorates every year.

So, basically, I don't want to inflict this on a child. My life is worse than my parents - fact. I'm doubt I'll ever reach their level. If you're not rich, children have no future in this country - just an endless treadmill of debt and exploitation. And every trend I've discussed above is getting worse - I just dread to think how things will be when they grew up.

And before people start saying, 'maybe it's you' - believe you me, I've fought coming to these conclusions tooth and nail. Grew up in a firm Old Labour home - solidarity and all that. I used to be the classic caring, sharing, naive people-pleaser - after years of being taken advantage of and shafted I've bit by bit given up. Now all I care about is myself, my family and my immediate friends.

you can’t guarantee that you’ll meet a partner though can you? Why shouldn’t single people be able to afford decent homes, yes, even in London? If all the poor people who get told to just “move out of the south east” followed that advice, who would work in shops, restaurants, drive taxis, clean loos, nurse you in hospital, clean the offices the rich people work in, empty bins, etc? So basically get a partner and don’t live in an entire region of the country and you’ll be fine. Yeah, no.

So what are you going to do then?

Because it’s one measure that I am familiar with whereas you seem unwilling to provide any data at all suggesting that disparity here is “huge.”

For the third time I haven't based it on one measure. What data have you provided that there isn't huge inequality?

You must have some actual numbers to make the claim, why not say what they are, and their source?

google wealth inequality, difference in life expectancy, gdp per capita if you want

Nobody is saying that no signs saying that ever existed, but the idea that this was some mass phenomenon to be seen at every second boarding house is nonsense

Actually, if we pay tax we are owed a lot.

But you said they were a myth. Sadly that is not the case at all.

You’re not wrong, OP. This country is terrible for many things, particularly single people- 1 person to pay for everything such as rent and bills. Plus, if you’re child free there’s no free money that parents get.

I’m incredibly lucky atm to be house-sitting in an extremely beautiful part of the country and so in return for a few tasks, I have no rent or bills. For a bit.

Thank f* I can save a bit and then either pay rent upfront for a flat for a bit to live alone in or possibly a shared ownership mortgage. Could you do similar? Have you looked into property guardianship?

It is ridiculous that us singletons (if in a low/average paid role) have to work 60 hours a week to just make rent and bills.

And don’t get me started on the NHS waiting times and fight to get an NHS dentist. Polish friends of mine go home to get better treatment. It’s not great.

💐

Plus, if you’re child free there’s no free money that parents get.

As a parent where can I get this free money?!!

as for ‘no blacks, no dogs, no Irish’ - from one of the articles posted:

“Back in the UK, debatable claims that ‘No Irish, no blacks, no dogs’ signs were a myth have grown in number in recent years, albeit among a small minority of critics.“

also:

In a reply to John Draper’s letter in the Guardian, Dr Murray shot back at his claim that the much-reproduced ‘No Irish…’ photograph “emerged only in the late 1980s”.

He explained that although the picture was donated to his university in 1989, by the Irish in Britain History Group, there is “no reason to doubt” its authenticity.

As Dr Murray explained: “With community ventures of this kind, such items are not always formally acquisitioned and their provenance not always recorded.

“We had no reason to doubt the authenticity of the image and that the archive had received it in good faith.

He added: “I’m puzzled by what exactly Mr Draper is trying to prove. Ample evidence exists in numerous oral history interviews with both Caribbean and Irish migrants that such signs existed well into the 60s.

“Further proof can be found in the report Discrimination and the Irish Community in Britain published by the Commission for Racial Equality in 1997.“

so not really ‘generally accepted’ as a myth at all.

Well you cant disprove a negative can you, I cant say nobody ever wrote something and displayed it. I'm saying that the idea of these signs as some big cultural phenomenon just doesnt stand up to scrutiny. People say they have photos and stuff which is interesting, but it usually turns out to be from the same source which was a sign made for a museum exhibition, so as a historian it's not something we could ever actually say really happened.

It’s utterly grotesque how something as basic as a secure home is now seen as an achievement you have to work for

This is entitlement.

I mean, of course every man, woman and child on this planet should have a secure home. But the laws of nature don’t provide secure homes for humans. Humans do. Why should people NOT have to work for a home? There will always be people who cannot work to pay for life - these people are the collective responsibility of the rest of people and should be provided for. But, if you’re able to, why shouldn’t anyone work for their home?

And leaving all that aside, how utterly grotesque to live in a regime that routinely fights wars in other countries for its own betterment - won’t risk jeopardising its own populace, they’re too special. Do those people not have a basic right to a secure home? One that’s secure from destruction by a foreign regime? One they actually HAVE worked hard for?

Irish historian Enda Delaney,-

“No blacks, no Irish’ or ‘No Irish need apply’ signs were apparently not uncommon sights in the 1950s. In fact, they occupy a central place in the collective memory of the Irish in Britain, often featuring in the personal testimony of migrants as emblematic of the reaction to large‐scale Irish settlement in post‐war Britain and even appearing in the title of the autobiography of John Lydon, the lead singer with the punk band, the Sex Pistols, who was raised by Irish parents. Such signs are, by their very nature, ephemeral, but unlike the American case, where the existence of ‘No Irish need apply’ signs was challenged by one historian, who claimed that Irish Americans had incorporated this myth into a wider account of discrimination and anti‐Irish prejudice, no one has, as yet, set themselves the almost impossible task of disproving their existence. But caution is needed here as such foundational narratives can effortlessly enter oral testimonies as individuals interweave a well‐known communal memory into a personal life story. There is little doubt that the terminology was subsequently altered to take account of more recent nomenclature—‘coloured’ was the term in widespread use before this description came to be seen as offensive in the 1970s.”

Anyway it's a derailment

@Pumperthepumper he decided it was something important to him and he saved hard. He didn't live at home to save either (though he could have, he lives close to my parents) tbh he does live a very frugal life and is very self disciplined.

To where? Which utopia are you leaving UK for?

Bit of back pedalling there @SpaceGoatFarm. You clearly are not familiar with utter paradise that Smethwick was in the early 1960s. Are you are going to call multiple members of my (white English) family who saw them liars? Why would they lie?

Unless they have reliable evidence then they are useless as a source. Nobody seems able to provide it. A lecturer in scotland asked for evidence from private collections and got nowhere. Look up the Mandela effect

And as Delaney says, nobody used the phrase 'black' in the 50s and 60s in britain

I agree

We are relatively ok off and thankfully have bought our home

But we aren't rich and I feel like we're always just about keeping our heads above water all the time . Despite pay rises etc everything just keeps rising to meet them and we are never better off. I feel like everyone is just ripping us off all the time using the Ukraine and covid etc as an excuse. It's bollocks

We aren't wealthy enough to help dcs onto the property ladder so I do fear for my children . They're 16,13 and 8 and i don't believe it was anywhere near as bad when they were born. I feel like it's in the last 5 years it's really gone to ratshit

So you don’t have any data to back up your claim. I thought not.

It’s really poor, making a claim and then telling others to Google it. A more honest approach would be for you to justify your claim.

That’s not how it works at all. It’s no-one’s responsibility other than your own to provide for your family.

If your household earns less than £40,000 per year then you are probably already receiving more from the state than you are paying in.

I think we are probably the same age, the difference is I haven't been moaning about graduating into a recession and have instead just got on with it 🤷🏼‍♀️ You have a very defeatist attitude

Yes they did.

Does he have a 35 year mortgage?

Of course they do but that’s not what we’re talking about, is it? The fact that worse societies exist and wars are going on doesn’t mean we shouldn’t wish our own society was run better especially because it is actually within our reach. And I’m not saying people shouldn’t work (but I think you know that and are being obtuse). Minimum wage these days often isn’t enough for a secure home though, is it? Many people on benefits DO work, they just need their salaries topping up because the cost of living is too high. THAT is what’s grotesque. A secure home should be achievable on a low wage.