to think we should be grateful for flushing toilets...

[evergreener]

honestly, there is so much trauma and anxiety on these threads, and I don't really understand it. Spending much of time in a part of the world with no sanitation or drinking water, I think that we are incredibly privileged and fortunate in the UK. I'm thankful for access to flushing toilets every day!

yet these threads are so full of misery, inspite of our luxurious life style, abundance of clean water, cheap food, clothes, education, medical care, etc.

People are upset about not wanting a CAT scan, wanting a change or HRT medication, teens being anxious about going to school, wanting a better car, not liking the homework a teacher has set, wanting their partner to get up early with the baby, wanting someone else to unload the dishwasher, worried about what brand of moisturiser to use, and so on and so on

I hope I am not offending too many people by saying this, but we are so rich here, we have so many luxuries, we had such an easy pandemic, we have got everything that most of the worlds population cant even dream of, why is everyone so sad?

Again you show your prielege by stating all UK children have those things available.

I've worked in an area where I have seen far too many children and adults slip through the net, I've seen kids of drug addicts being lft in dangerous homes, people living in extreme poverty, people who are in B and B accommodation or hostels for years etc.

Money doesn't buy happiness so even the people who are wealthy are not neccesarily going to be happy.

Mmmm. All the things that make a country civilised to live in: social care, services for the elderly and the disabled, maternity services, good, integrated, reasonably priced public transport, health care, the justice system, public housing, clean waterways, libraries, public parks, the police and ambulance service, the forces, the infrastructure of schools, free tertiary education, have been asset stripped by successive governments.

I think people in the UK have the right to feel aggrieved when they look across the channel to their neighbours in the EU and see how public funds are used differently for the public good, and realise how poorly they have been served by their elected leaders.

People in the UK voted for it repeatedly.

well, on the whole, happier and calmer than the children in the UK, even with traumatic back grounds, 1% of the material possessions and a much harder life, sleeping on the floor, washing their own clothes by hand every day, etc.

And suffering far more acutely from covid lock downs than UK children!

but people in other parts of the world have all those problems to the same degree, and DON'T have access to a toilet - this is the sort of attitude I am talking about - you are responding as if having a flushing toilet is nothing at all to get excited and thankful about. Why are you not happy that you have a flushing toilet?

I have never heard of this, but it sounds like exactly what I am witnessing

why do I see self harm among rich, privileged well fed teenagers with every opportunity in the world open to them, and not among teens with little food, no flushing toilets, no clothing, no roof over their head except when they sleep on the classroom floor, and no prospects?

This is exactly what I am asking

I agree with that! It blows my mind that we are using drinking water to flush toilets, it is plain stupid

Yes they did but they were also lied to repeatedly. And served up a lot of blatantly anti-democratic propaganda in the right wing press. We’ve all been suckered in to a greater or lesser extent.

Do you think my hard-working, one nation Conservative elderly aunt, who only retired from ft work at 78 years, fully appreciated what was coming when she voted for Boris Johnson because she thought he was “a nice man”?

Do you think any of us, even the highly educated among us, fully realised the effect that say, to take one example among many, privatisation of water would have on our waterways and coastal areas?

Would people have voted for Brexit had they fully understood the issues? I doubt anyone now would vote again for the shit show that actually followed?

You might like to read up on toxic positivity @evergreener

There is also masses of research out there about the impact of inequality within a society and declining living standards on mental health, both of which apply in the UK.

The idea that having a flushing toilet - something totally normal in the UK for many decades - should make people with serious problems feel so 'grateful' they forget/accept their other issues is, frankly, offensive.

This thread is very Oliver Twist! You have gruel, how dare you moan about being hit round the head!

A lot of people who feel aggrieved that their lives were restricted during the pandemic seemingly have no understanding that their "restricted" pandemic lives were actually hugely freer and more comfortable than many people's normal, non pandemic lives.

I have no words for how deluded this attitude is.

To dismiss this country's children, en masse, as 'rich, privileged, well fed' is appalling and requires total denial of what we all know is the reality in the UK.

If you wanted to understand, the information is all available. It has been posted on the thread - but as the saying goes 'it can be explained to you, but you have to do the understanding yourself'.

The question really is where is your compassion? People have been saying 'there are people worse off than you' forever - which is a way of denying compassion.

The village I was living in last year had one toilet between around 300 people, and it didn't flush, it was over a pit.

What was it like using a pot toilet with 300 other people?

"well, that's the exact sort of thing I mean - I've lived in through many uk winters without heating, as a child, as an adult and as a parent. I don't consider that a "major issue" and yet you do. The UK counts child poverty statistics entirely relatively - so the statistics will never change, no matter how rich the UK children are as a cohort.

UK children have food, clothing, education, medical care, play opportunities, safe outdoor spaces, - all of them"

Jesus you are actually really blind to the issues in this country aren't you??

I too didn't have central heating as a child - but don't particularly want to go back to these times. Mostly because we had a coal fire - so one warm room. Don't have that now.

But it's not about me - it's the fact I can understand that fuel poverty in this country actually does kill people. I do consider that a major problem. In a country such as this, that shouldn't happen but sadly it does.

And if it were true that all uk children had food, clothing etc then food banks wouldn't exist. But they do. And struggle to cope with the demands. Working families shouldn't have to need food banks. But due to the high cost of basic needs such as a roof over their head means they can't.

And medical services - on the face of it we should feel privileged. But the reality is many people cannot access it. Not because they have to pay at point of service, but because the medical service cannot cope. Gp appointments are becoming harder and harder to get, which in turn means people are getting sicker before treatment which ironically puts more pressure on the services.

Just because I'm not personally suffering doesn't mean I can't see that other are.

Well we have the whingeing Pom reputation and now with social media we can whinge publicly.

Didn’t you post this already and MN deleted it. You’ve tried to come back with a different tone but it’s still the same theme of the last post

Oh, come off it. Boris Johnson was never a nice man. We all knew his record. Even the right-wing papers reported the facts. Boris has a life-long record of nasty, selfish, dishonest behaviour and that's what people liked about him.

As for privatization, you have got to be kidding. We all knew what it meant. The most powerful voting group (Boomers) chose it because they were told they'd cash in. They bought shares in water and other companies. They were given our council houses at rock-bottom prices. They have been helped to prevent new building in their neighbourhoods. They've been protected from having to pay their share by tuition fees and NI rises and starving public services. This is what people chose, not an accident.

It is beyond ridiculous to pretend that people didn't know what privatization meant. It's about making a profit from necessary services and that's exactly what those who voted for it wanted, to line their pockets at everyone else's expense.

People knew very well that they didn't understand the issues as far as Brexit. I watched it all play out from a European country that I had to leave because of Brexit. British people are used to acting out, getting to whinge and then having someone come along to clean up the mess. I don't believe for a second that people didn't understand what they were choosing. They expected someone to come along and fix it all though.

It's still going on. Go to the Daily Mail, the most widely read paper in the English-speaking world. The majority of comments still blame everything on illegal immigration and not on their own voting decisions. It's a fairy story, everyone knows it's a fairy story, but people are so wedded to voting for their own team (incompetent, greedy Tories who line the pockets of Boomers and easily manipulated red-wallers) that they won't change.

I tend to agree, I'll take my life now over medieval England anytime

That’s a totally mad thing to say.

If I cut off your arms, will you be grateful that you still have legs?

I shat in a bucket , in an outhouse and in fields. I used newspaper, leaves and at the height of luxury scratchy ,thin toilet paper.

I could still be miserable then, I'm still miserable sometimes now despite my flushing toilet because shit happens.

If you have to scrape the bottom of the barrel to argue how good life is, then it's not good as it should be.

"We had such an easy pandemic"
I hope you've never said that in real life to someone who lost a love one who died alone and couldn't even have a proper funeral.
Or to a doctor who worked through it and lived apart from their family for months to try and not spread it and ended up having ptsd
Ffs

🙌 🙌 🙌

Suffering is personal and not comparative.
Just because there are people suffering around the world in third world countries, it doesn't mean 'privileged' people are not allowed to suffer.

The happiest countries are the most equal countries. We are a deeply unequal society and that breeds resentment. There are millions of people in this country paying an absolute fortune to live in unsafe, over-crowded, dangerous, unsanitary housing. And a small group of people are getting very rich from it!

Telling people they have a wonderful privileged life when they haven't eaten for days, their children are sick from their mouldy house that they can't afford to heat and they're waiting in line to get a bag of crappy tinned from a foodbank isn't going to make them happy. If you live in a rich country and you are surrounded by wealth and privilege but have no access to the basics bar a flushing toilet yourself, that's got to be pretty bloody depressing. Especially as we have enough money to ensure a basic standard of living for the poorest in society, we just chose not to.