ElephantBanjoGnome wrote:
The amount of money you have is irrelevant. So is the colour of your skin, background, or religion. I judge people on their observable behaviours. If you're observably a horrible chav, swearing, spitting, smoking (not even taking care to stub out and dispose of stubs even), it's really obvious that you're not a person I'm keen to know. Similarly if your attitude is that you can't be arsed to work, or that you're too good for McDonalds or a manual cleaning job, and you're living off the state by whatever means you can and worming out of attempts to get you employed, that speaks deafening volumes.
If you have no job, no private housing and expect the state to pay to keep you and your child while giving nothing back then yeah I probably do consider you amongst the worst of society.
But that's clearly not you Mimi. Whether you were once homeless or poor doesn't even factor in to it. What kind of person are you now? A nice one, providing for yourself with your husband. That's all that actually matters, imho.
But I was a nice person back then, too. I just ended up in a difficult situation and didn't have the support of family to help me through. I may have been ok if I did.
And I know that most decent people do not think that way, but some do, and I was unfortunate enough to meet some of them. Some preyed on the women I lived with to take advantage of their situations, because the women were so desperate to get by. Many with children, suddenly with no roof over their heads, and yet these same people hated the fact that these women that they took advantage of were part of their society and surroundings.
I'm sure you don't understand, or can't understand, because I can't understand it either, and can't see how anyone with any decency thinks and acts in that way.
Some times people end up in a bad situation because they've had their world ripped out from beneath them, look around and realise that they are actually alone. But then I also knew people who had just grown up in abject poverty and didn't know to ever hope for better. Being expected to get nowhere in life, it was a self-fulfilling prophecy for many. Too young, often poorly educated and not cared for by their own families, young girls pregnant and having children whilst still children themselves. Bad relationships and partners not sticking around lead to many single mothers, and many feel trapped by their children, who they love desperately, and feel they've failed them by not being able to give them what they want.
I don't understand the phone thing, or Sky TV, but maybe that's all these people have. What else do you do with your life when you have nowhere to go? I don't know. I can't even remember why I started this rambling post now
Back to topic a bit more: I don't think benefits should be such that people see having children as a way of obtaining money, or benefits as an incentive to have children. Taking these away will hurt many families, and yes the parents will feel that squeeze... But I worry it is the children that will feel it more. It's a lottery when you pop into the world whether you are born into s nice, well off middle class family, someone at the bottom of society that may have all manner of social ills upon them or a starving mother anywhere in the world. For a long time you can do nothing about this, you just benefit or suffer from your lot. By the time you can actually action any change in your future, many kids will have been 'taught' their place into society. They know the system favours the better off, that they can't compete with people not even born into high privaledge, but those middle class, or even those still on the breadline but with an actual council house, rather than an infested high-rise in East London. Nobody they know works in a library, or office, or finance. There are no role models or people who have paved the way before. Mum can't afford basic provisions, child has nothing to do, petty crime may follow, maybe teen pregnancy, cycle continues.
Gone off topic again. Wish I wasn't on my phone: no idea what I have been yabbering about since I started writing.
Anyway: I hope they don't take away or cap benefits for children already in this world at least. If parents are those that spend half of it in cigarettes and alcohol, and it's cut for those families with lots of children, that won't stop them buying the cigarettes and booze, it will just mean that the bit 'left Over' that usually goes on the kids is far less, or gone. The children will suffer, and how is it their fault?