Trouble on the estate.

[Jellykat]

Anyone watching?

It was grim , I grew up on a scheme (estate) every house was a council house and nobody was like that people worked kids behaved and it was a great place to live
the mum who said she couldn't work because she was on anti depressants and had shopping and stuff to do really upset me, she looked scared and didn't know how to live any other way,

Yes I agree she doesn't know how to live another way.

The reason these people have no motivation and are depressed, or get addicted to drugs and alcohol, is because they can't see any other way to escape from the grim realities of a life where there just AREN'T any jobs that can support their family, they can barely afford to live properly (rather than just survive) on benefits, their priorities get skewed (mini motorbikes for the DC's when they haven't got a house in a sensible state of decoration) because they want their children to have what everyone else does.

I have lived on an estate like this, and it is a soul destroying place to bring your DC's up on. I was lucky - after 7 years, I managed to exchange off that estate to an estate that was totally different - simply because of better public transport links to the town centre, and more local jobs, with FT hours, that paid a tiny bit above NMW, due to the local industrial estate offering many more options for employment.

That is literally the only difference, but this estate has a totally different 'feel' about it, there's not anywhere as much ASB, and the only real difference is the opportunities for employment.

You want to improve estates like this? Give them something to aim for, drag employers into those areas, build a business park or industrial estate there, offer more FT ABOVE NMW jobs to the people living there. The difference is immense, and there isn't the same sense of helplessness and hopelessness.

Agree CouthyMow instead of treating these types of places like a circus.

This is what Thatcher did to the country, right here in front of our eyes. Bring back the steel works and factorys, bring back made in Britain. There needs to be jobs for people apart from cleaning.

Good posts Couthy.

I lived on an estate like this (my dad was a minister on one) and knew people like this. People ground down by generations of no work, of surviving hand to mouth, of no hope. It was almost in their DNA, a sense of not even being worth bothering, that if they did get a job they'd be worse off and their children would starve. It was terrible, really awful the state of some of these people's lives, homes. People go on about how they can afford cigarettes and alcohol but for some it's the only way they get through the day. Not a good thing, but ingrained in them, and it's too simplistic to say 'just stop drinking/smoking.'
If this latest government schemes for sending interveners in to actually help people develop skills and change things from within it would be good but I cannot imagine that this is the aim or even the idea. It's hard to imagine what could help, although what I saw help people was people being taught to believe in themselves, to change values and to see themselves as worth something.

More UK jobs and training schemes etc would certainly help. There's just nothing out there. It's incredibly sad.

Very depressing programme, but good to remind people how lots of British people live. I work on an estate just like Shadsworth, and I've probably met 100 Olwens.
There is nothing to be achieved other than bulldoze the place and diseminate the homes. There is no sense of community, no solidarity, no ambition, no pride. It's all they've ever known, how can they be persuaded that there is another, better way?

Well said Legoballoon

Whats the point of bulldozing places like that stressheaderic?

The problems that cause the issues in places like that will still exist.