Welfarisation has made people utterly entitled and unable to take responsibility for themselves and their families.

[hagchic]

I grew up in a working class family. The values I was taught were that you stood on your own two feet and it was no one else's job to do what you could do for yourself.

If you were hurt, you were expected to get up and go and clean yourself up - and stop whining about it unless it was actually serious. If you were ill, you went to bed and if you were lucky some magic lucozade appeared.

If you were sad, then you were sad. If life was unfair then that was just how life was and you needed to deal with it.

You never ever sought charity or took benefits when you were able to work or put up with less. You lived to your own means, not to what you saw on TV or at school - and if you wanted that lifestyle it was up to you to get it.

Today everyone has the expectation that someone must help them, that they are obliged to help them - even before they have made any attempt to actually do the work of helping themselves. They expect luxuries like holidays, pets, new clothes and treats when they do nothing to earn this.

I think self sufficiency is a value that needs to return to our society.

I used to hold it up in front of my eyes and enjoy seeing the world turn orange

It might have been an interesting two or free pages that left us wishing for more.😂

But not this🙄

No, it was the same where I grew up. Values and integrity. I agree with the OP.

A lot of those things relate to the fact that some consumer goods have become cheaper. Take carpets they used to be very expensive wool when I was younger and there werent cheaper options from mass production abroad and newer synthetics so yes people would wait longer for a carpet.

Those TV rentals in the 70s/80s, people were spending around 2.5% of the average weekly wage on renting them. In fact adjusted for inflation my parents renting our colour tv is more than we spend on Netflix and my mobile phone contract each month.

More people are childless or only have one child than ever and costs are often sited as a reason. Council flats feel like such secure tenure compared to housing association.

Its very hard to compare.

I still think people frown on people taking the piss.

The authorities don't have guts or are not allowed guts anymore in dealing with these. Three houses down the road, the two parents never worked in their lives, the kids are secretly taught to hate but use the system - you hear strange comments through open windows passing by, the father is in and out of prison but at the same time is on disability and all other possible benefits you can think of

The glasses you could get on the NHS were awful and children were relentlessly bullied because of them. NHS dentistry gave a whole generation PTSD. fillings with no pain relief

I Don't believe she actually said that .

Hard agree. Even on here there are people saying they can cut tgeur hours and be better off on benefits. It's a shit show. It was during BoJos reign that the income through working people was less than the benefits Bill and it's just got worse.

I have said this a few times and honestly think it's something we could get on...

Any adult claiming benefits who can work should work for them (except pensioners). So that's all benefits including tax credits, UC, housing, council tax but not child benefit or money associated with a disability that prevents a person working.

Pensioners in pension credit should not receive anymore than full state pension.

Honestly sick to death of lazy bastards lounging about off my hard work.

The benefit system is there for emergencies not for lifestyle.

Of course there's a lot of unemployed people at the mo esp experienced people, but I have written to the Home Sec and said she should train people to process assylum seekers more quickly. Add to Street cleaning and bobbies on the beat. But safeguard the jobs that exist ie they don't get replaced by benefit claimants.

There are so many jobs people can do. It won't cost the government or councils much more - fix the freaking potholes, mend broken patching stones so people don't fall over, repaint road markings etc. Seriously we need to give these lazy AHs a sense of purpose. It's utterly pathetic that a grown adult who can work chooses it to.

YABVU to use the word "welfarisation"

Well I couldn't quite believe it either and yet there she was, saying exactly that 🤷‍♂️

”Today everyone has the expectation that someone must help them, that they are obliged to help them - even before they have made any attempt to actually do the work of helping themselves. They expect luxuries like holidays, pets, new clothes and treats when they do nothing to earn this.”

I don’t know anyone who thinks like this, so what does it say about you as a person that you know people like this. You need to raise your standards a bit if these are the type of people you are mixing with.

I think we are reading two different threads.

You knew you were proper ill when that got cracked open.

UC covers several benefits, including legacy ones.
The people who are fit for work, will be expected to look for work. Everyone else is either already in work and getting a top up, are sick/disabled, are carers (and some also work), have disabled children.
Why should people who already work, are sick/disabled, or are carers, have to sweep the streets or repair potholes?
If the unemployed job seekers are to do those things, then properly employ them.
UC claimants should not be used as cheap labour. Remember Workfare?

the shame of asking for help - it was seen as personal failure

And there we have it. Needing or asking for help is shameful and a personal failure. Which is why so many people who struggle with (especially mental) health problems or disabilities don’t tell anyone and, tragically, so many back in ‘your day’ (and still do) take their own lives, rather than tell anyone. Do you know how many people who are homeless on the street have ‘deaths of despair’?

OP, there’s nothing shameful about asking for help. We all need help from time to time. Some of us more than others. People claiming benefits aren’t jetting off on holiday or buying luxuries. They’re pensioners, many of whom don’t want to feel like a burden and so remain isolated and impoverished, rather than ask for help or claim what they’re entitled to. Or people struggling to afford rent, bills and food while supporting a sick child or partner undergoing hospital treatment, such as for cancer. Or caring for a disabled/sick child, partner or parent at home, as all caring families should. Or struggling with their own health (physical or mental) or disabilities.

The measure of how civilised a society is, is how compassionate and kind it is to people in the above situations.

There but for the grace… and all that. Feel grateful it’s not you.

Completely agree, although there’ll be 25% (according to votes so far) who believe the opposite and call us realists all the names under the sun!
H and I have worked really hard from nothing (and I mean nothing) and are more than happy to help people via taxes in genuine need but the present system is plain daft and skewed.

This is the nub of the problem - to have profitable businesses you need a working class to exploit.

In the past this was possible because living costs were less. My parents and their friends were couples both in lowish paid jobs but who still bought houses, went on holidays, raised children etc.
The ability to do that has diminished over the years until now the same couples would be working & claiming benefits or not working at all for fear of losing their housing benefit & thus their house.
And their houses would now be rented.

We'll never know....
That chance was whipped away from us.

When care in the community was suggested the powers that be overlooked the fact that some people irrespective of disability, MH or other issues simply cannot live in the community with or without support and need the facilities to live with people who can care for them. Tragic incidences like this and others where MH issues or even religious issues have resulted in innocent people being injured or killed. There will always be a need for specialist facilities - expecting people to manage in the community when they are clearly unable to do so - what there is available is not even enough to touch the sides - the whole scenario needs looking at and financing properly.

Well, yes if you say so. 🤨

People that live in supported living/homes are allowed out on day trips. It would be cruel to deny them the chance to experience the things we take forgranted.
Even people sectioned in hospital can get leave.
They are not prisoners.

😂

Tough times make for strong people. Strong people make for easy times. Easy times make for weak people. Weak people make for tough times.

We are currently at the junction of weak people making for tough times, but a refusal to recognise that we are entering tough times.

For example the belief that only if the PM was Burnham and not Starmer when in reality it will make little difference - debt cannot be increased, taxes cannot be increased without slowing the economy and there is no political will to cut Gov spending. So we continue with a slow managed economic decline.

I want to highlight something important about the shame of asking for help: it has not been a historical norm. Almost never. Almost anywhere.

I'm not doubting that this was your experience by the way. Not sure how old you are but my DM grew up working class in the 60s and 70s and had very much the same experience and values. She used to say that those who didn't work hard or look after their homes were looked down upon by families like her own, and that even though her family had little, there was no excuse to drop standards or go whining etc. However my mum's family also experienced the cruel side of this when her dad died whilst she was still young, and her mum could not manage the care for a profoundly disabled sibling by herself whilst also becoming the breadwinner. My grandmother was judged and at times shunned for the hard decisions she had to then make. So ultimately state-funded care and state-funded retraining opportunities were crucial to my grandmother getting by and therefore to mum's family being able to endure this situation. It was also only through state-funded opportunities in education and the creative arts that my mum was able to become a successful, well-educated person herself who could fulfil at least some of her potential. So whilst I respect my mum's values around self-sufficiency and independence to an extent, I do think there is a need to acknowledge that it wasn't true self-sufficiency for her and her family.

So onto history... In every documented historical epoch there are people complaining about the lazy and feckless poor. This isn't a new social concern. The Romans complained about the decline in values among the poor, as did people in Medieval England and Georgian England and Victorian England... There have always been some people who have not been able to stand alone through no fault of their own and have needed help; likewise there have always been those who become alcoholics or addicts or criminals of some kind and fell out of the boundaries of conventional morality as a result, or who generally could not or would not play by society's rules. This is as old as time.

In Roman times, a patronage system operated whereby many poorer people received money and support from wealthier people in exchange for supporting them in various ways. Our word 'patronising' comes from this, because of course a lot of people don't like the idea of being in the pockets of the wealthy and needing them to survive, but it reflected the reality of that society. In Medieval Europe peasants most frequently owned no land and had no prospect of ever doing so but had to complete acts of service for wealthy landlords in exchange for the right to feed their families. Those who became too sick to work would die unless members of their family or wider community supported them, and it was also for that reason that charity provided by monasteries was so important. In the age of industrialisation, early trade unions would collect money from everyone whilst they worked in order to distribute it around to keep everyone alive during strikes or to support the families of those who became sick. Early building societies were communal organisations where a group of people who couldn't afford houses agreed to pool their money together, draw lots for who would get a house first, and kept going until every member of their organisation could afford one of their own.

And more recently... well so many working class families have had intergenerational support and informal support from neighbours and friends. My own DH, who grew up in poverty and with largely absent or unwell parents, experienced so much informal, unquantifiable support that helped him to build a good life. There were the parents of school friends who encouraged him; the library he could access that opened his mind; the mental health services who supported his parents; the distant family members who mucked in to look after the kids when his own parents couldn't do it. Hardly self-sufficient, and thank goodness, because without those things, where would he be now?

Rant over... I think. I'd be interested to know what you think.

Well OP clearly didn’t mean you either did they?