Outside Context

The state of Bri­tain today.……

A col­lec­tion of posts on a dis­cus­sion I am hav­ing on the web:

QUOTE(Crazy_Harry @ Jun 15 2006, 08:05 PM)

there’s always someone, no mat­ter what class you are sup­posed to be in, who thinks they are “entitled” to some­thing for doing noth­ing.

Man, you have one giant chip on your shoulder about class. Didn’t John Major tell you we are all middle class now?

QUOTE(Crazy_Harry @ Jun 15 2006, 08:05 PM)

Any­one who dis­agrees with that state­ment might want to spend some time try­ing to pay the rent and coun­cil tax while work­ing a “min­imum wage” job.

If you are on min­imum wage then you wont have your own flat , you will be on Hous­ing Bene­fit and the coun­cil will pay your coun­cil tax (or rather I will via my con­tri­bu­tion). This is called Coun­cil Tax Benefit.

What is hard is break­ing the cycle… why?, well you get a kid and sud­denly your *fruitcage*ed. You can­not break the depend­ency because you can­not work hard enough, nor make enough money, so why bother? Just get drunk on Merry­down cider and cheap wine, serve up the tur­key twislers and die young from smoking related illness.

There is only so much help you can get, in the end you have to:

a. Be good at some­thing.
b. Work you ######s off.

The rewards of get­ting out the trenches?

More work! So instead you will be crippled by house prices, pay tax, insur­ance and credit card bills forever, work 50 hours a week and spend all week­end get­ting ###### on Mag­n­ers cider and Cloudy Bay wine. You will have to kiss your bosses ass and finally you will die of drink related illness.

Take your pick, because I cant see much difference.

The only way to avoid a trap is to know that it exists. So, this is your trap:

LIFE.

How to avoid this trap? Simple, real­ise that the world doesn’t owe you a *fruit­cage* thing; there are people *fruit­cage* dying all over this world in abso­lute agony and all you have to do is find a com­fort­able niche in the god­damn top 3% of the world pop­u­la­tion (even higher if you have a web connection).

In other words: ENGLISH MEN! Stop feel­ing sorry for your­self already!

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Reply from Car­rion:

If you are on min­imum wage then you wont have your own flat , you will be on Hous­ing Bene­fit and the coun­cil will pay your coun­cil tax (or rather I will via my con­tri­bu­tion). This is called Coun­cil Tax Benefit.

hate to tell you this sonny but alot of coun­cils dont HAVE hous­ing any more. from torbay coun­cil you will only get a coun­cil house AFTER youve had a kid, and been wait­ing in a bed­sit for around 6 months.

also coun­cil tax beni­fit is a ###### to get, i know ive tried when i was earn­ing less than £100 a week. rent was 50 so go fig­ure if i deserved it or not. could i get any help could i bug­ger. all i got was well you could move back to your par­ents place ( i was 18 and the min wage at the time wqas 3.20 for me).

there were people on the dole actualy get­ting more a week than i was from basic beni­fits but becasue i was work­ing it seems most of them were closed to me and if i quit then i wasnt elig­able for any­thing at all. (there words)

as for that be good as some­thing . im guess­ing you live or work in lon­don . hers a hint you wages on AVERAGE are topped up by %20 for lon­don weight­ing in an area where wages are already higher than average.

some people are man­agers in the west­coun­try who earn the same as a bur­ger flip­per in lon­don. case point, a mate was a shift man­ager for tecos, he was ear­ing in torquay a whop­ping 6.50 an hour. 6.50 for being a manager.

people who are good at some­thing dont always get a job due to unem­ploy­ment, lack of opper­tun­it­ies (see also unem­ploy­ment) and gen­eral bad luck

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My reply :

QUOTE

a bed­sit for around 6 months.

So you are not on the streets then? Right, hous­ing, like I said.

QUOTE

also coun­cil tax beni­fit is a ###### to get

It is means tested, you obvi­ously had more means.

QUOTE

there were people on the dole actualy get­ting more a week than i was from basic beni­fits but becasue i was work­ing it seems most of them were closed to me and if i quit then i wasnt elig­able for any­thing at all. (there words)

Ah, well, here we are agree­ing with each other. It is far easier to give up and live the scum­mers life.

QUOTE

as for that be good as something .

Being good at some­thing. Like some­thing you can make money on. Could be any­thing. Make doil­ies, or paint walls, or dig drains, or run ICI; you know, whatever.

QUOTE

I’m guess­ing you live or work in london.

I actu­ally live in Essex, but I do work in Lon­don. But I know all about the Torbay area in par­tic­u­lar as my fam­ily comes from there and my Grand­mother, cous­ins, uncle and aunt all live there still. In fact I was there a few weeks ago.

QUOTE

some people are man­agers in the west­coun­try who earn the same as a bur­ger flip­per in lon­don.

A man­ager in Mc Don­alds earns 25K.

http://www.mcdonalds.co.uk/jobs

QUOTE

people who are good at some­thing dont always get a job due to unem­ploy­ment, lack of oppor­tun­it­ies (see also unem­ploy­ment) and gen­eral bad luck

There is plenty of career advice out there, not only that but there are Career Devel­op­ment Loans, appren­tice­ships and part-time Uni’ courses aplenty.

Dont give me the “its tough at the bot­tom, you don’t know” as I come from the poorest fam­ily you can imagine.

WORK YOUR VERY SOUL TO DUST TO GET ON IN LIFE.
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Crazy_Harry’s reply:

yeah, basho, not sure which coun­try YOU’RE liv­ing in, but you don’t get a coun­cil house because you’re on min­imum wage. Tony and Mag­gie sold them all off, remember?

Neither do you get a coun­cil tax break. You still have to pay coun­cil tax if you are rent­ing a flat based on soul-or-relationship-based occu­pancy from a landlord.

And yes, I have a GIANT chip on my shoulder about class, its called Being an Edu­cated Englishman.

We’ve a cul­ture that encour­ages people to believe they are entitled to some­thing for noth­ing, largely because of the class sys­tem. When you’ve a bunch of fat toffs liv­ing off what are eseen­tially state bene­fits, and the fat­test one being Her Madge, its no won­der that we gen­er­ate a soci­ety that thinks the same way.

You go some­where that has a mon­archy that actu­ally WORKS for a liv­ing, rather than just stag­ger through their days mak­ing utter arses of them­selves, and you’ll see a bit of a dif­fer­ence in terms of society…

Its all very well using the old Tory BS of “no job? get on your bike!” but I’m from a poorer-than-poor back­ground, and both my par­ents did that, and so did I, but you know what, its STILL tough at the bot­tom, and every time YOU get one step up from it, there are ten people who YOU tread on to get there.

Sorry, I just do not buy the BS that every­one can achieve the same as every­one else in life– if that was the case, who’d pick up after you?

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My Reply:

QUOTE

…but you don’t get a coun­cil house because you’re on min­imum wage.

…Neither do you get a coun­cil tax break.

…You still have to pay coun­cil tax if you are rent­ing a flat based on soul-or-relationship-based occu­pancy from a landlord.

These three things are demon­strably wrong.

QUOTE

And yes, I have a GIANT chip on my shoulder about class, its called Being an Edu­cated Englishman.

Really, then you should know that class is simply an illu­sion, based on familiarity.

QUOTE

We’ve a cul­ture that encour­ages people to believe they are entitled to some­thing for noth­ing, largely because of the class sys­tem. When you’ve a bunch of fat toffs liv­ing off what are eseen­tially state bene­fits, and the fat­test one being Her Madge, its no won­der that we gen­er­ate a soci­ety that thinks the same way.

Ok, you are mix­ing a whole pot of things here.

QUOTE

We’ve a cul­ture that encour­ages people to believe they are entitled to some­thing for nothing,

People are entitled to a “hand up” out of des­pair. People are entitled to some­thing for being an Eng­lish per­son who needs the help.

Of course this is abused, and typ­ic­ally it has grown into an organic mess. People should be firmly pushed in the dir­ec­tion of becom­ing a usu­ful mem­ber of society.

QUOTE

When you’ve a bunch of fat toffs liv­ing off what are eseen­tially state bene­fits, and the fat­test one being Her Madge, its no won­der that we gen­er­ate a soci­ety that thinks the same way.

The Queen/king was once the leader in all the endevours of the coun­try.. sadly, now they have much in com­mon with Jordan. How­ever, there have been times that the Queen has done great good in her pos­i­tion and it is clear to me that she takes the job VERY ser­i­ously. I would hardly accuse her of being lazy. Does the mon­archy have a place in Eng­lish future? Well, frankly I don’t like the idea of people like Blair being head of state, do you?

QUOTE

You go some­where that has a mon­archy that actu­ally WORKS for a living

Mon­archy, per­haps. Mon­arch, no. The Queen and Philip are def­in­itely work­ing mon­archs. Her diary is all online and she is one busy grandmother.

QUOTE

Its all very well using the old Tory BS of “no job? get on your bike!” but I’m from a poorer-than-poor back­ground, and both my par­ents did that, and so did I, but you know what, its STILL tough at the bot­tom, and every time YOU get one step up from it, there are ten people who YOU tread on to get there.

What can I say, I too am from a sim­ilar back­ground and I don’t feel I have had to “tread” on any­one to get where I am. I don’t quite know in what con­text you mean?

QUOTE

…every­one can achieve the same as every­one else in life[?]

Every­one WILL achieve the same in life; every­one will die and every­one will have lived.

How small is the life of a man, how plain and how short? I don’t really think “pos­i­tion” mat­ters in the end. Life is life. Drink it in. Fight your fights and stand up for what you wish to stand up for. You do not judge the worth of someones life by their wealth do you? Or their mater­ial worth? or their fame?

Or even their achievements?

A man who lives the whole of his life in a cave and speaks only the bats that haunt the dark recess lives EVERY BIT as worth­while a life as you or I.

When you real­ise that there is no score, no leader board and no tally at the end, you real­ise that you are actu­ally liv­ing your life just for you and your in built value sys­tems. So love, if you can, hate, if you so wish, but real­ise that you are born alone and you die alone the bit in the middle is life.

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More to come I am sure!