Edwina Currie on Stephen Nolan
Discussion
Back story: Edwina Currie questioned somebody on a phone in that no one in the UK is 'starving'. She's now in Brum' debating her viewpoint.
I'm listening now and she's got the right viewpoint that in the UK, there are not people starving. Some audience members are getting hysterical and taking it too far (as usual) that the living standards are getting lower, well, guess what, it's gonna get a whole lot lower.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0178ggy/Step...
I'm listening now and she's got the right viewpoint that in the UK, there are not people starving. Some audience members are getting hysterical and taking it too far (as usual) that the living standards are getting lower, well, guess what, it's gonna get a whole lot lower.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0178ggy/Step...
People are having to make tough decisions and may be eating less than the average person would reasonably like and many people are living in poor conditions because they cannot afford anything better.
OK, maybe people are not starving to death on the streets but I think EC is somewhat under estimating some of the hardship out there.
One of my friends works in adult social care and they recently visited a elderly man (at least 65) who was living in a dump and only had a tin of beans and milk in his fridge.
OK, maybe people are not starving to death on the streets but I think EC is somewhat under estimating some of the hardship out there.
One of my friends works in adult social care and they recently visited a elderly man (at least 65) who was living in a dump and only had a tin of beans and milk in his fridge.
Mojooo said:
People are having to make tough decisions and may be eating less than the average person would reasonably like and many people are living in poor conditions because they cannot afford anything better.
OK, maybe people are not starving to death on the streets but I think EC is somewhat under estimating some of the hardship out there.
One of my friends works in adult social care and they recently visited a elderly man (at least 65) who was living in a dump and only had a tin of beans and milk in his fridge.
A good point is that people are exaggerating their hardship: cars, cigarettes, alcohol, LCD TV's and the latest mobile phones are a common sight across the poorer areas of the UK. When it comes down to a budgeting decision of food or luxuries, people choosing the latter cannot compalin when they cannot afford the former. OK, maybe people are not starving to death on the streets but I think EC is somewhat under estimating some of the hardship out there.
One of my friends works in adult social care and they recently visited a elderly man (at least 65) who was living in a dump and only had a tin of beans and milk in his fridge.
A point she made as well and in the case of the elderly man is that he doesn't seem to be able to manage a household budget, I don't agree that's a fault of the states lack of funds in benefit payments it's something else that needs addressing, people like that have always been around and will continue to be, he'd be better off if the council could spend more money on employing someone to help him with that than simply giving him another few quid a week.
muffinmenace said:
Mojooo said:
People are having to make tough decisions and may be eating less than the average person would reasonably like and many people are living in poor conditions because they cannot afford anything better.
OK, maybe people are not starving to death on the streets but I think EC is somewhat under estimating some of the hardship out there.
One of my friends works in adult social care and they recently visited a elderly man (at least 65) who was living in a dump and only had a tin of beans and milk in his fridge.
A good point is that people are exaggerating their hardship: cars, cigarettes, alcohol, LCD TV's and the latest mobile phones are a common sight across the poorer areas of the UK. When it comes down to a budgeting decision of food or luxuries, people choosing the latter cannot compalin when they cannot afford the former. OK, maybe people are not starving to death on the streets but I think EC is somewhat under estimating some of the hardship out there.
One of my friends works in adult social care and they recently visited a elderly man (at least 65) who was living in a dump and only had a tin of beans and milk in his fridge.
A point she made as well and in the case of the elderly man is that he doesn't seem to be able to manage a household budget, I don't agree that's a fault of the states lack of funds in benefit payments it's something else that needs addressing, people like that have always been around and will continue to be, he'd be better off if the council could spend more money on employing someone to help him with that than simply giving him another few quid a week.
HOWEVER, not an iPhone or Galaxy. I saw a PAYG mobile for £7.99 the other day, £10 credit and you have a usable phone line with credit for under £20, should last months if not years if you are only receiving calls on it.
Computers can be used for free, for a period in libraries.
I agree that TVs, alcohol and cigs appear to be a priority for some people. So be it if that means they can't eat, where do they expect us to stop regarding funding them?
chris watton said:
I find it strange that one government department can state that owning a car, or even a TV/ TV licence and phone of any description are considered ‘luxury items’, yet another department state that they are absolute necessities – the former being the CSA.
Can you provide some more context?If there are people living in genuine hardship in the UK then the first thing to go really should be the foreign aid budget. So next time your village idiot is going on about his grinding poverty and how we really all should go and occupy something in protest, ask him if he would slash the foreign aid budget to improve his lot in life. f
king retards.
Anyway it's not poverty. I'm in rural Thailand at the moment and in the market just up the road there's people sitting on work out sacks on the ground selling bugs. If they make £5 they've had a good day. They're not even in grinding poverty, they have food, shelter and clean water, and everything else is a luxury.
king retards.Anyway it's not poverty. I'm in rural Thailand at the moment and in the market just up the road there's people sitting on work out sacks on the ground selling bugs. If they make £5 they've had a good day. They're not even in grinding poverty, they have food, shelter and clean water, and everything else is a luxury.
Asterix said:
'Can be'?
Maybe some of these people should do a bit of travelling to Africa, Asia etc... to see what real poverty is.
Lots of them have already been to Thailand, on daddy's money, during their gap year. They got their dreadlocks here.Maybe some of these people should do a bit of travelling to Africa, Asia etc... to see what real poverty is.
I've met these pillocks at the airport, or in Kanchanaburi. They've spent a week in a Muay Thai camp, done tour of a Temple and read Lonely Planet, and they like, really, like get Thai culture, and they're Buddhist, man.
Except they don't get the ordinary, day to day reality of living on less money per day than their pizza on Khao San road cost, and working dawn to dusk in a rice field for less than they've spent on beads and bangles that day. It's even easy to go and teach English in some rural village and be paid a pittance by western standards, yet enough to be catapulted high up the social heirachy. I've done it myself, so claim no great moral high ground, but nor do I claim to be Buddhist, understand Thailand or have lived the life of the 60 million or so ordinary Thais who live a life that the poorest man in Britain can not imagine.
Let alone those in the surrounding countries who pour over the border daily and make Britain's immigration problems look trivial by comparison.
The old cliche about travel opening the mind is definitely true, but in my view easy travel, paid for by daddy, is almost a bad thing. It allows thick, lazy people to feel a sense of moral self righteousness based on nothing more demanding than a package tour to Magaluff. These imbeciles then go home and claim they know all about the third world, about poverty and suffering, and they like, really want to do something to change it, man.
Possibly the most disgusting man I have ever met in my life was some UN functionary, based in Vientiane in Laos, and charged with clearing land mines in a site some 300km to the north. He had never visited the area he was responsible for, had learned nothing of the language or people in two years, and didn't have the slightest sympathy for the ubiquitous victims of the blight that underpinned his livelihood. He did however have a shiny new Toyota Landcruise, with driver, a generous salary (think 20 times the average wage in Laos) and an encyclopedic knowledge of the brothels and karaoke bars of Vientiane, with particular attention paid to where it was possible to take an underage girl at very reasonable rates.
He also had a very strong and considered line of argument as to why foreign aid and UN contributions were close to Godliness.
I live in Thailand and am no stranger to some of life's less savoury characters, but I really couldn't stand to be in the company of this individual for longer than it took me to make a reasonable excuse and leave.
All of which brings me to the main point of my rambling argument; Nobody wants to help the genuine, deserving poor more than they themselves do, and an unfortunate byproduct of life is that there is no better way to do that than long hard hours in difficult and uncomfortable labour for the most reward you can get. All of the political, NGO and charity interference in the world will not provide the average family with as much help as a day's graft, and anyone who claims otherwise is either hopelessly naive or a liar. Usually the latter in my experience.
This applies in Laos, and it applies in Ethioia. It applies in Greece, and it applies in Gateshead and Tottenham too.
The only difference is in Greece you have the Germans to bail you out, and in Gateshead and Tottenham you have the ordinary tax payers down the road to bail you out. But don't be fooled, those tax payers and their elected (or otherwise) representatives are not subsidising you out out of the goodness of their heart but out of their own self interest, and the moment their interests no longer lie there they will drop you like a hot potato.
The poorest people in Britain are still very far from the sharp end of this harsh reality, and indeed even the people of Greece are nowhere near it yet. It may or may not come knocking at a door near you soon, but in the mean time anyone who claims grinding poverty while lapping up the abundant fruits of the UK benefit system is not only spoiled beyond all reason, but is also playing something of a callous joke on those for whom real hand-to-mouth existence is a daily reality.
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