Poverty and Mental illness in families

I was sitting her thinking about why it might be that I have not seen my cousins for decades, in fact if I did see them I probably would not even recognise them. A conclusion I have come to is in two parts. Firstly, down to the social and cultural upbringing of my mother and her family. Which similarly applied to my father. When I and my two sisters were very young we barely if ever saw our uncles and aunts visit us, the main meeting point would be my mother's mother, or should I say my grandmother.  It would seem like most weekends, probably Sunday's we would go to their house, although I doubt now it was most weekends. At my grandmother's then we would see our cousins and uncles and aunts but no other times. It was our grandmother who in many ways bound us all together. The need for my own mother to see her and complain about the things she needed to complain about. More lately I thought my uncles and aunts grew up with my mother and they probably didn't get on with her so they probably didn't bother about seeing her. But this is not entirely true because my mother used to get on with her sisters. Her brothers were less so involved. Perhaps it was to do with the pecking order of birth more than anything else. As well they moved off and lived in other parts of London which were a couple of bus rides away, to say the least.

The second reason which I think is probably a large contributing factor is mental illness. My mother has in my opinion been mentally ill all her life. She has been unable to adapt and had difficulty raising three children. Her method of parenting was to shout at us, and to smack us when we were naughty. There was no reasoning with her. When we were young there were times when she would get into arguments with people on buses over seats.  She used to fight with my father, the fights were loud and aggressive and she'd resort to hitting him. I know she used whatever was available to her and at one time she used a high heeled shoe and managed to hit him in the head. He bled from it and never went to hospital. We were poor and lived in poverty but perhaps this was because my father was buying the house we lived in. He had to pay for the mortgage.  In those days 1960s, 1970s etc it was the thing to do. You bought your house. We had never lived in a socially rented property and I think for a short time may have lived with my father's mother. But I was so small at the time I am not sure if my memory is right. It's difficult trying to remember things that happened as a child.  The interaction of poverty and mental illness is of no doubt in my mind. At one point my mother tried to throw a brick at the next door neighbour. After this she was sent for a period to a residential mental health place. As kids we were farmed out to Uncles and aunts, except my smallest sister she was so very young then she was fostered for this period. It felt like the first time I saw her was when she must of been barely walking and running about. I just don't remember her at all as a baby and I should. So perhaps my mother did her brick throwing not long after giving birth to our youngest sister.

When I was the first child, life seemed good because I got a lot of love, but as soon as the other babies came along then it was like I didn't matter so much, or that was the way it felt. I can understand the term sibling rivalry very much.  My closest sister born about three years or possibly four after me I have never liked really. She has just been there. She has always had this depressivesness about her personality and now in her late forties it has not gone away. She lives with an alcoholic husband who in his turn has made their family life hell.  He can never seem to wait to get another drink, they live of welfare benefits and they are in poverty. As she like my mother has decided consciously never to work.

It could be my mother never had lessons in parenting, or just was one of those depressive type of people who just doesn't have the mental capacity to make the best of her situation. She is an awful cook, she never engaged in helping us to read or write or to show an interest in our studies. When I was a teenager I recall her once saying to me, she didn't know why it was I was trying to get exams at school, she wanted money, money on the table and I had to get a job to bring it in.  She said she would kick me out of the house if I did not give her enough keep money.  The thing was, this was not an idol threat, it was a real one, one which she meant very much. I'd witnessed too much of her behaviour while growing up to know this was not just something she said, to know it was real. Such as the time when my father got back from work and she locked the door and would not let him back in the house. She said she needed more money to live off and he was not coming back into the house until she had it. I remember his pleading through the door to let him in. The impact of episodes like this doesn't every go away, it's always there, it's part of my memory of growing up.

I understand, your chances in life as a growing person are severely limited when your parents don't have good parenting skills. When they don't understand the value of education or the value of mental resilience and overcoming obstacles. Poverty becomes the life, it suckers them down and they in turn through their constant strife suck their children down into the same poverty.  As much as this poverty is financial it is equally mental.  These were parents who did not understand it was possible to lift yourself out of this cycle, to fight against it, to be proactive and not let all your troubles drown you.

It was when I then left school I understood even more how my poor exam results meant I would be put on the scrap heap of career choices. Then I saw how employers discriminated by exam results who they would take on. It is a shame they could not look beyond them and understand someone who only had a D grade just didn't have the opportunities in life their A grade peers had.  Maybe if they knew a low grade kid probably had a different upbringing and had to go through a lot to get where they were just to achieve that grade. Maybe they wouldn't of been so discerning. This is something I detest employers for, their practice of not looking beyond what they think is the benchmark. There are other benchmarks in life which have some importance and could make a C grade employee the best they might have.  This is one fact, rich people have opportunities poor people never get another is poverty and mental illness go hand in hand to the extend the disadvantage becomes one perpetual disadvantage which is very difficult to break. 

This is why it is in the interests of the rich to stay rich, to ensure their belief of entitlement keeps them where they are and the poor never climb the ladder of social mobilisation. For rich people the world is best with injustice, and best to be kept that way.

Crack the Glass Floor

I was reading an article which makes the claim that stupid wealthy kids had more of an opportunity to get into well paid jobs than their smarter lower class equivalents.  This was the findings of a study by The Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission (SMCP), which has become termed the glass floor effect. It's interesting to call it a glass floor, a bit like the glass ceiling which prevents women from achieving higher success than they should. Glass must mean it is invisible but it's there, this glass however is probably toughened and even bullet proof. Such a glass floor or glass ceiling means social stereotypes remain valid stereotypes.  The parents of such stupid children have an advantage because of their social status and their money.  The findings are:

• They invest time and resources in their children's education.

• Better careers advice and guidance.

• Ability to move to the right catchment area to enable choice of school.

• Giving their children self confidence, making them resilient and guidance on how to lead.  

• The use of informal social networks to help their children into work.

• Help with unpaid internships.

In reading a press release it states there were a lot of soft skill sets which wealthier parents were able to instil their children.  When looking at these skill sets there are all basically psychological.  Self confidence, is perhaps one of the most valuable items an individual can have when needing to present themselves especially in an interview situation.  Without this what comes across is a train wreck of nerves. However, lower class and working class families do not always have this skill because they are so overly involved in making ends meet. The most predominant item on their radar is just being able to survive.  It is true there is a working poor in the UK, who just about live with the help of government subsidies in the form of  Working and Child Tax credits.  A support which is needed because wages are kept low, because labour is common in an employers market and because the skills needed to do a job are not what they have.  Being confident also means being able to be calm and collected when giving an answer to a question. Performance anxiety is more likely to affect someone who doesn't have self confidence than it does someone who does.

Lets also look at employers.  They clearly want the best employees they can get so they use the interview process and a cursory look at exam grades.  The first hurdle is to be shortlisted for an interview and this is what exam grades can help pass. As well as a competently completed application form. What an employer might look for is a set of grade "A" or grade "B" applications and then disgruard the applicants with grade "C."  They would not be able to see that perhaps some of those applicants who had these lower grades had a lot more to deal with in their family life than those who were advantaged enough to get higher grades.  Such as a manic depressive mother, or an alcoholic father or a parent with a disability and the child being a full time carer, or a large family with siblings where each child just does not get the time and attention needed.  Or being brought up in a household where poverty rules everything and forces choice on the family and especially children.  Opportunity is not afforded to these individuals because they do not get through the selection process. Whether they are motivated or not they must may not have the skill sets and the family support to raise out of their social class.  Some parents will even feel resentment if their children do better than they have done, get a better job or earn more money or get better grades. Their love comes with a barbed tail and spite veiled in what they say and do. Which is great for the self esteem issue as well.  They will deny such behaviours exist, but they would then be liars because I have seen it and experienced it with my own family.

Being lower class doesn't mean you are stupid, but it sure ensures you are at a disadvantage. When your peers think a good time is to sniff glue or get drunk, stealing is a socially acceptable act and rite of passage then the lessons you learn are dictators of your future.  The kids who fight against this  are considered outcasts and may even be bullied. For being different from the pack makes them an easy target. The in-group feel better about themselves and boost their own extraordinarily lacking self esteem. Working and lower class parents just don't have the time to help coach their children. They can't protect them and the bond which comes with small children is a lot easier to form than the bond which is needed to help a teenager become an adult. A teenager who is fighting against the system and fighting to understand who they are, where as those above the glass floor will have a lot more support.

Wealth brings opportunity and life chances.  Middle class kids are likely to have experienced holidays to farther places and had a diversity of life experience the working and lower class kids don't get exposure to, this can be seen in attitudes towards food.  The great frequenters of fast food chains are certainly not going to be rich kids. They will get the vitamins and minerals from foods they eat, so some will either have obesity problems or cases of malnutrition. Something again the more socially advanced families are sure not to have to worry about. Get a child from a working class family and show them a collection of herbs, then ask them to name them.  I bet the results would be startling when compared to the middle and upper classes.

This glass floor ensures not only is the country not run by the brightest people, it ensures the divide of the classes continues and continues in perpetuity.  For it is a strong family, especially one which sticks together where the glass floor which is really a glass ceiling is broken through.  This country we live in is not a meritocracy and this is a fact.

Benefits Britain come and get it

It is easy to get annoyed at some things, so this is what happens when I watch a TV program about people claiming welfare benefits who admit there is no incentive or desire to work because they get enough money from benefits.  The program on Channel 5 which is freely available on catch up TV is called "Benefits Britain" and each program follows the lives of benefits claimants who seem to enjoy the monies they receive through UK benefits but not contribute the same to the UK tax system as they take out of it except for paying VAT on goods they have to purchase. . 

 I saw a woman who was a refugee from Iran complain she did not have enough money to buy clothes and she wanted a bigger house, because in Iran her house had six bedrooms and servants, she never had to think about the cost of anything. Her husband who would smoke a packet of cigarettes every day in Iran would have to make one packet last four days.  They are too ill to work in the UK and are lost in the memories of what life used to be like, before she had a death warrant put on her.  Of course the one thing she did not say was she'd preferred being poor to being dead.  For this once rich family the benefits system they are claiming from is not generous enough.  Another woman living in Poland had her husband send money to her while he worked in the UK, he claimed child benefit for his son and this was sent to Poland.  She only sees her husband three or four times a year.  This is a family which is divided but is financially supported by a different country because the UK is in the EU.  Lastly was the case of a Romanian man who works in the UK and claims benefits because he has a wife and family in Romania.  The benefits he gets for his children in the form of Child Benefits and Child Tax Credits goes to rebuild his home in Romania.  The program showed this man return to Romania and help to supervise the improvements.  He boasts that in the next two or three years he expects to get about £50-£60k in benefits.  This is a phenomenal amount of money and is more than most people can earn. This is also very much the reason why there is an underlying and almost racist anger which is building up in the UK against the EU member states and membership of the EU.

Although facts and figures about what is put in by other non UK tax payers in to the tax system indicate more is contributed in than is taken out. This is not what such TV programs show.  They don't investigate the financial side and explain this, but they do sensationalise and therefore contribute to the anger indigenous UK inhabitants feel.  Therefore come a date in 2017 we may actually see the possibility of the UK people deciding or not whether to sever ties to the EU something many business people are unhappy to consider.

As for people taking advantage of the benefits system, this program shows there is something wrong with the entire system. There should be supporting authorities which train and help people into work, education for adults should be free, they need to be given self-esteem, help and shown they can be useful members of society.  Given all the possible opportunity they could have and then if they fail to take this chance they should be penalised.  The benefits system is wrong but so is every other societal system which which allows it to perpetuate.

Rebecca Minnock and child abduction

In the last week mother Rebecca Minnock has been plastered all over the news. All because she decided to run away with her three year old son Ethan.  She flagrantly went against a court order which had decided Ethan's father should have custody.  But in her own little mind Rebecca thought by running off with Ethan she would get publicity and the right to have her son back living with her.

This hardly makes sense to any normal thinking individual.  For the first thing which went through my mind was why on earth would the courts decide this little boy is better off with his father (Roger Williams) than his mother.  For in a way it is unusual, it was not shared custody as they had previously gotten, it was sole custody.  What the public is not privy to are the details of why the court heard in the father's favour. Gradually small snippets of information appear in the press, they are crumbs which lead to explain why the court made the decision they did. There is not much substance to them in any form at all but we are told Rebecca Minnock would not allow Ehan's father to see him. She made up stories, again what the allegations are we don't know however, we do know one social worker reported her as not "emotionally safe," what is meant by this is not elaborated. It does sound as though this woman has mental health issues. Certainly if she can not reason a small boy needs a father as much as a mother so should have shared custody then she has lost the plot. Further to this before giving herself up she then gives an interview to a right wing tabloid kiss-and-tell paper.  Of course they must of been jumping for joy in getting the interview, but it does her no good.  She had run from the police and from a family court order.  Yes there is no doubt she loves her child, but there are certainly question marks over why the authorities had decided she was not suitable to have shared custody of her own son.

The Rebecca's mother was jailed for obstructing the police search and so was a friend. When looking at the above picture you can see a very happy Roger and Ethan however when watching the tabloid video of Ethan with his mother and she has him sat on her knee asking him to kiss her which he does repeatedly it is like little Ethan is following cue as asked by mum.  Not because he wants to kiss her of his free will.  Thankfully Rebecca is now seen in an even worse light with the authorities, the abduction of her son has been nothing more than a big publicity stunt and I can't help think it has gone wrong for her or caused more suspicions than she anticipated.  Unfortunately her actions may incite other parents to be copy cats, but in their cases they may not get as much air time and even if their causes were legitimate the water and public sympathy has already been muddied.

Thomas Cook make profit from childrens death

These beautiful two children died whilst on a holiday in Corfu. A holiday which was arranged through the company Thomas Cook.  In an incident that happened 8 years ago - October 2006.  The Shepherd family were on holiday taking a half term break when the chalet they were in was flooded by carbon monoxide fumes.  It was odd the day before the children (6 and 7 years old) were complaining of not feeling well, and the next evening they died. Their parents also suffered from monoxide poisoning but were rushed to hospital and managed to pull through. The hotel they stayed at was not owned by Thomas Cook just subcontracted to Thomas Cook, it was the Louis Corcyra Beach Hotel. The holiday had cost Mr and Mrs Shepherd £2000 and the lives of their children. Thomas Cook had not taken any liability for the condition of this chalet, but they of course don't mind taking the profit from selling the holiday.

A gas engineer examined the boiler to the chalet and described the boiler as being "bodged and botched" a safety valve which would automatically kick in if fumes were leaking had been purposefully short circuited, because of this it would not automatically cut off.  There was no flue connection to the outside, so effectively these toxic fumes had no where to escape other than through a wall adjacent to the children's bedroom.  They were gassed to death. It took these 8 years for Mr and Mrs Shepherd to bring this case to the Wakefield Coroner's Court the children's mother Sharon Wood also attended the court hearing.

Thomas Cook in turn sued the owners of the hotel for this event.  They were awarded damages of one million pounds.  They did not divulge to the Shepherds of the legal action they took neither did they offer any form of compensation to the Shepherds.  In effect Thomas Cook appear to have gained £3.5 million from the death of two little children and thought they had got away from any liability. To add more despicable behaviour they will be giving a bonus of nearly £11 million to Harriett Green the previous Chief Executive of the company during this tragedy.  Green refused to see the parents of these children and sees herself as having a completely clear conscience.  Funny how it used to be that the buck stopped at the top, in reality the buck has nothing to do with anyone at the top. They just carry on business as usual, or not in this case. But still drawing their immensely large earnings, which Green did even though she had a period of gardening leave. Green should be up for manslaughter charges it is about time the buck and responsibility did stop at the top. This is one person who puts a value on life that is her own and no one else. If they are children she has not comment and just does her best not to be exposed to any kind of publicity.

The inquest 

I hereby vow, I will never go on a Thomas Cook holiday in my life for what can only be deemed as profiting from the deaths of young children. If I can personally ensure that any other potential Thomas Cook customer does not go with Thomas Cook because of their actions over this news article I will.

Danny Alexander and the people of Inverness

Danny Alexander has been a pretty fortunate man, he is a member of a minority political party which is unlikely to return to political power again for the next 70 years. I say 70 years because it was 70 years prior to now when they were last in power.  He has had the backing from the people of Inverness, but his power in parliament has been disproportionate to his actual authority.  At the next election the people of Inverness will decide whether he continues in power. Quite frankly it would be terrifying if looking at the Liberal Democrats record to think he can return.  This is a man who should never be allowed back into politics again and should be booted out for good. In effect the Liberal Dems have supported a nearly completely Tory government to power and to let them stay in power.

People of Inverness a vote for Danny Alexander is a vote for David Cameron, you might be liberal minded but you have to ask yourself are you actually Tory minded.  Were I living in Inverness I would support the party which most represents me, and it is far away from London's seat of government.  I'd vote SNP, don't be a tory by proxy be your own person and wave good bye to Danny Alexander.

Virgin Trains now monopolise all rail into Scotland

I once went on a Virgin train to Scotland, they have the West coast line. It was a flashy new train and at first I thought it was good but as the journey progressed I realised some pretty awful shortfalls existed. I never travelled on another Virgin train again, instead ensuring I took the East Coast line.  What I didn't like was the lack of luggage space, the lack of seating room there was no refreshments trolly, the very inferior upholstery of the seat, hermetically sealed train doors and cramped, cramped conditions. It felt like the European version of what getting on a train is like in India.  Virgin trains were designed not for passenger comfort, they have been designed for making money for Virgin. However in future I will have no choice, as there will be no other method of travelling to Scotland than being sat on uncomfortable and ultimately unsafe Virgin train. For all the old rolling stock which is presently quite spacious will be scrapped for new chicken farm rolling stock to ferry passengers from one destination to another at a price. 

This is ludicrous! Virgin have a monopoly on travel to Scotland by rail and it should not be allowed, there has got to be something absolutely fundamentally wrong with this. It has got to be illegal, why has it been allowed to continue? Why has this not been looked at? Is this Tory government nothing but a corrupt group of toffy nosed rich lads scratching each others backs and any other itch they find needs revealing? For the way I see it they have failed the people they represent on many fronts. They have allowed what has got to be an illegal monopoly to take place.

Something should be done about this!!!