Rampant Gentrification and lives of the ungentrified

Gentrification is a swear word, it goes side by side with rich toffee nosed people, people who've grown up with advantages throughout their entire life. Who had mothers and fathers in middle class or upper class jobs, they went into London to work or had their own business ran from the attic of the house. The underlying advantage to everything they have is money and the ability to use it to continue their advantage. Get decent baby sitters, take the kids to good schools because they bought a house in an area which was in the right catchment. Then they'll diligently discuss things with their children, find the time to play with them, ship them out to other well-to-do relatives during the holidays, perhaps even in another country where the kids can get some sun and learn the beginnings of another language in the place it should be learnt and not a class room. Whereas the working and lower classes fester continuously like overgrown rat populations, their poverty and neglect results in spite and biting off each others tails. Their insularness so short-sighted anyone who is different from them is looked on with suspicion. They are not given opportunities, their classes are full to the brim with kids to the point teachers are unable to teach. They are nothing but glorified baby sitting rooms where kids scream and shout for attention because they don't get it at home and in so doing prevent their peers from learning, they laugh when they can but they also learn to hate, to bully to create circles of social pressure as they try to find out who they are and what their life is all about. Guidance isn't even a blind man with a walking stick. For these kids are blind and can only feed of the knowledge of their own families mums, dads, uncles and aunts who have been raised in the same situations. No doubt some fall into a bad lot, some will have mental disorders their entire life, some will commit suicide some will be on the streets begging and the odd one may become a millionaire, because statistically given the numbers there will be successes. Just like populations and infectious diseases an exception will be immune.

Government policies create gentrification, policies which must have life times, policies which are like stones being dropped in a pond, the ripple and change the surface. They have a life time and then they die away. The problem is whether they have a long lingering death or not. The greatest and best policy ever was to create a welfare state in which financial and health care prevented the extremes of poverty and early death but even now under the current government of Teresa May this is being attacked and bitten away as the privatisation of the NHS is like piranah fish snapping and tearing away at a pork chop thrown into their water. The likes of Richard Branson who had managed to appear as a fun-loving entrepreneur are much more apparent as a vicious businessman out for himself, out to ensure he makes profit and to hell with the people. He is not a philanthropist he is a leech and the instance of Virgin East coast reneaging on their contract by successfully withdrawing without financial penalty because a Tory government decides to let them off the hook to the tune of hundreds of not billions of pounds. Money which came out of the pockets of tax payers, of workers, the workers who don't have tax dodging ways and find day to day subsistence difficult. The workers who may have to take a loan from a bank just to live. To get by and then repay with interest, the interest of which is plentiful as it goes into the pockets of the wealthy who in turn insure their losses via multiple financial instrutments as much as they disguise their profits. The workers support the toffee nosed pricks who see us as shit on their shoes, we are indentured servants to their needs.

Gentrification is a nasty word, for it now hits south east London and I see everyone getting in on the act. Compulsory purchase orders go up just down the road from me. Shops and houses being bought up so they can then be knocked down and better richer buildings put in their place. Buildings only well-to-do city types can buy or rent. Just so they can hop on the train and be in central London within 30 minutes. The working types can live on the streets or they can go and live in the outskirts of London they are not wanted here anymore. Fuck them. Those families lucky enough to buy their own house see the value increase with an incline greater than a ski jump. They raise their children and then find their children will never be able to afford a house near their own parents they will become a fractured family a diaspora with hundreds of miles between them. The kids will grow up remembering where they lived and realise how lucky they were to have been raised so close to London but also realise how unlucky they are not to live there again. Unless they can jump the social housing ladder, become vulnerable in some way, get pregnant be homeless and then compulsory housed by the local authority. But don't worry because if by some chance they make it good and do start to earn some real money. Their rented social accommodation will be taken away from them because the government have ensured future social housing tenancies are not tenancies for life, they will be tied into how well off the family unit is. Then they'll be shipped off to the outskirts of Mongolia, there they'll eventually lose their decent job because the costs of travel will be too much. But the best part of all they'll not live in London again and the rich would of taught the poor another lesson, don't have aspirations and think you can live toe to toe with us because you are scum and always will be. So goes the song of gentrification.

A life on benefits is not a life

After leaving school I spent a year on unemployment benefits, a year nearly to the day before getting a job. Getting the job was wonderful. I had self-esteem again and felt a hell of a lot better about myself, I had value to the world. However, there was difficulty making ends meet because it was less than minimum pay. 

I've also seen members of my own family live their lives on state benefits. There wasn't a role model to follow for us, there wasn't an understanding of how the world worked. They were capable and able to work, but didn't want to, they became institutionalized into the benefits system. I like to think some of this is because there has never been enough support to help unemployed and unconfident individuals back into work. There was no careers advice or a gentle guiding hand from the state, there was no encouragement or a discussion of options, but money was taken from the state to get by. Once I left school I was on my own and it was down to me to learn what the big bad world was really like. It was tough and I know living of benefits is not a life.

 As the years have passed the benefits system now has changed.   Too many people were in the situation of living their life endlessly and screwing the system, not contributing into it and just constantly taking out. Not paying taxes, not being part of society, living on subsistence levels, being ignorant and accepting they will continue in poverty for the rest of their life. The welfare state system was meant as a temporary safety net, not as a permanent solution and the constant strain now sees the UK in the place it is today. Those who are elderly, too young or sick either mentally or physically have reason to be on benefits, those who are able and capable should be working and in tandem to this there should be a universal career guidance and education system so career change is an option not an exception. After all it is pretty boring doing the same thing over and over again. The value of generalising and adapting knowledge has never been overtly imbred and accepted by successive governments. It's a shame for had it, this country would be a better place.

Employers are equally to blame.They do not train staff, do not have adult educational systems in place and expect employees to be job ready and productive from day one. Those potential employees who could run businesses and have the smarts but don't have the qualifications or the encouragement are passed on by. Whilst the arrogant, pompous likes of employees who went to private schools and education have continuous doors open to them, even if it is just in their ability to hold a conversation. Yet as with governments, such individuals are proven to do the walk but not actually fit do the job when they are in place. Further this can be witnessed in any workplace, it doesn't take much of a cursory glance to find dead wood or incompetent wood which has decayed inside out and is just waiting for the retirement clock to tick by.

It's not just about opportunities, but opportunities are right up there with qualifications, verbal literacy, self-confidence, both capability and ability. It's about living a life and a life on the dole is not a life for anyone.

 

Cemented head stunt worthy of the Darwin Award

A man believes his rescue by emergency service for the act of cementing his own head in a microwave was a worthy and justifiable use of those services. Of course this hit national TV and was shown by none other than the BBC as well.

Perhaps this is a new pastime for idiots of the world, maybe a new craze a little like the cold water challenge, where eagerness to take part was met by millions of videos of individuals having buckets with cold water and ice pored over them. Except no one needed to call out the fire brigade and get rescued for such a harmless even. So what did this man gain from it? Quite simply he gained the best publicity he could ever get and it was absolutely free. So it is Jay Swingler 22 years old of Wolverhampton should be nominated as the UKs best candidate to the Darwin award for 2017. If we are lucky he may even commit himself to a second try out and next time throw his entire body into it. He could then be put to some nominal use in supporting a motorway structure in perpetuity. A graffiti plaque would be perfect to commemorate him.

It doesn't take much to ask whether those fire fighters could of been put to better use. In fact, it may well be worth asking was there any other emergency at the time they might have been attending. Such as a pile up on a motorway where a family would have appreciated their skills in cutting them free from the tangled mess of metal cars. Indeed, this inspirational act of cretinism cost the tax payer thousands of pounds. It's not free having a fire service and lets say this probably took at an hour from their day if not more to rescue him. Swingler argued it was not a waste of time because they had saved his life. Yet should a Darwin candidate such as Swingler be allowed to prevent non-Darwin candidates from having their lives saved. It wasn't just reckless, this act of self publicity of looking for national attention and coverage should be worth of a crime and prosecution by the Crown Prosecution Service. Swingler had a choice whether to be stupid and put his head in poly filler in a microwave. He didn't have to, he could of had mates on standby with cutting tools ready to rescue him. He didn't. He wanted to look like a twat and he does. Yet in doing so it can be argued any person with an iota of a brain would see there to be a consequence and to do something without good cause which puts your own life at risk goes beyond stupidity. It goes beyond the requirement of a brain. It is scandalous and malevolent against those who needed the help of emergency services at the same time he was encased.

Swingler has to justify what he has done, he has to justify it to every tax payer and as it is so apparent his act cannot be justified he needs to be punished. His YouTube account closed down, every image of his face deleted from the internet and then made to pay the full costs of all public services involved in his rescue. The reality however is, the emergency services should of advised him to attend a hospital, where he could of waited in excess of 4 hours before being seen. Then the doctors could of asked a hospital porter to set about freeing the idiot with a microwave on his head, the idiot who is guilty of a crime. Not because it was a stupid act but because his very stupidity and conscious knowledge of it may have resulting in the subsequent death of real people in a real emergency situation.

I can't listen to a Trump

I count myself very lucky not to be American, because in my entire life there has not been a worse leader than the Trump. Who likes to vent a lot of hot air, who is a cretin and I would not follow him or give him the time of day for any reason at all. So now when he is on TV I'll mute the volume or I'll change channel. When he reads from a script he desperately has had prepared by individuals with higher verbal reasoning it is painful to watch, because he clearly can not read coherently. Further being president is for him a ticket to ever greater self publication, self advertisement and self appraisal, because lets face it there are very few people who would appraise him.

Yesterday a terrorist drove his van along a cycle path killing a number of people and injuring more. When the video was shown of a man who was in the process of running, it was evident he hadn't planned where he was about to run, he had the look of a confused person and the look of someone who may have a mental health problem. In the meantime I hear a senator wants this individual to be treated as an enemy combatant so he can be questioned without a lawyer and no doubt can be legally tortured. There was no talk of lets examine the individual, find out his intentions, his mental well being and what went wrong, then lets say whether it was terrorist related. The man we know had got his green card in 2010 was married and had a family. Knowing this, it becomes more reasonable to ask what was his motivation? To any sane individual going on a murder spree will mean it's unlikely you'll see your own children grow up and they may well suffer as a result of your actions. For what's now to stop the Trump administration removing the citizenship of him, his partner and his children and making them effectively stateless.

Given this 29 year old, Uzbekistan man by birth and American by of state lottery had done this dastardly deed I can't help wonder whether he really adopted his new country at all. For how could such a man be a citizen and have taken these actions. He had self radicalised and why would this be? Perhaps because there is no adoptive Americanisation program for immigrants. What is sure, is Trump will do anything to stop all immigrants but particularly those of Islamic persuasion from entering America. Yet in this scape goating paranoia of immigrants we don't see the same for indigenous nationals. What comes to mind is the mass murder by a man in Las Vegas, who was white, christian and American right through his DNA. His murder of many more persons snows that Trump thinks it's fine to own guns but it's not fine to be Muslim.

It is a tragic event in every way, but Trump should not be the person talking on behalf of America, someone the world has respect and acceptance for should be up front. So yes, I'll read about the event but will not hear a word spoken by a moron who sadly is president.

Set up to fail in life

The UK has been a place where the classes knew where they stood. The poor, the workers, the middle and the upper classes. Even though some may argue there is no such thing as class and will require a definition, something they can put their finger on. Yet in doing so this is an excuse to detract away from the reality of poverty in Britian. A reality you could only know if you lived in this country and come from the poor, the working or even the middle classes. Anyone in the upper echelons of society would have no idea, would not know what it is like to want for something when the thing wanted is a basic requirement for living. So it is. Those who are born in the lower classes have less opportunity and chance to thrive than those in the upper. And by thrive I don't mean go out and procreate because the best thing for upper classes is to see the masses of poor get bigger for they then stand on an even larger step, and those little ones will be the future debtors upon the rich will stand and prosper from. The point here is, without really understanding it, but certainly feeling it I'd say at least 80 to 90 per cent of the British people have been set up to fail. Set up to stay where they are and not given the chance to become socially mobile, not given the chance to excellent education, to physical and mental care to the freedom of a life they should live.

Young kids know no better they are happy with what they are given because this is life and they don't question whether it should be any different, whether it should be better. In recalling tea time during my childhood, one of Mum's favourite teas was spaghetti.  She had a thing about Spaghetti in tomato sauce, I ate it but it wasn't my favourite by any shot. She'd heat it up on the stove and we'd have toast with the spaghetti ontop. That tin fed four. One adult and three children. This is the late 1960s and the 1970s now. I'd scoff it down as quickly as I could, now I realise I was always hungry always and on the lookout to get the first dibs on a plate of food. The inevitable words 'it's ready' were shouted then there would be a race to the table and at the sight of the plates a mental arithmatic, calculating  which plate was the biggest. I could guarantee the same thing happened with my sisters. It's funny but if I was late for tea because I'd been out playing or it had been cooked earlier than usual then there was nothing to judge. Just the single plate of food there and I'd be happy to eat it even though it would be cold. And it did get could quickly for my mother didn't understand and didn't care about warming up plates. One of the basics of food delivery, put hot food on a cold plate and the food will go cold quickly as well. You don't need to be a scientist to realise this. So to get something hot meant knowing lunch time and tea time and being there ready before it got dished out.

Kids grow up. As they always do, they also get a thirst, it's the want for new things as they compare themselves to other kids who have stuff. This in turn puts pressure on parents as their sons and daughters ask for things they cannot afford. Things which have to be saved up for and be kept in mind for a birthday or christmas. Which no doubt are always expensive. Those families who live in social accomodation, that is council housing or housing association properties would have more to spend than those whose parents were trying desperately to buy their own house. When it comes down to it, it is about available income after all the essentials had been paid for. Today with the drastic reduction in wages and an employers galore market place, employees have to take what they are given. Accept their wages, do their job and be expected to make ends meet. Yet again though like the era I recall it's possible to see the same poverty permeating society, dragging down those poor into the deepest poverty they have every been, making those working classes worker longer hours than they every have. It's acknowledged the UK is the least productive EU nation. It's true, it's the only come back workers have, though it may not be intentional, if you are going to make the poor work like slaves you might find they decide they are not going to be working like a slave and actually slow down their productivity, be creative in the sabotaging of work output. Whether consicous or unconsciously this will happen.

So it is the poor and working classes are not given opportunity, they are given little financial support and the financial support they are expected to claim is changed and re-evaluated by uncaring governments. Why is it under Universal Credit a claimant will actually be less well off than had they continued to claim the individual benefits they were previously entitled to? Why is it politicians think that simplificaiton of six benefits into one makes things easier? It doesn't. I can tell you every family is different, every family has different circumstances and the benefits they get relate to those circumstances. The roll out of UC has pushed more families to be evicted than every before, there are more in emergency short term accomodation than there ever has been, more people on the street begging than ever before and it is getting worse.

When I say some are set up to fail, it is through experience and knowledge of the system of social support of social education and of the social ladder. The ladder which has been covered by grease by some toff who happened to think it was a great idea. In the meantime same toff presses the button for a lift, here it comes. What's that in their hand? Oh yes one of those exclusive toff club key cards, just to ensure only they get access to it. After all they don't want any waif and strays entering their club on the higher floors. If they do, it's through the back entrance. Yep, amongst the shit and they better clear it up after them even tho it belongs to those ontop.

Politics of self-preservation

Both British and American politics is suffering an illness, it's called being a member of the Self-Preservation Society. An elite grouping of powerful people who band together to ensure and maintain their power at the benefit of only themselves even when their position of power has been determined by the voter. The Maybot Denier of Truth Teresa May and Duck Face Ginger Ball Bag Donald Trump are extreme examples of this. May like Trump has surrounded herself with far right win lunatics whose taste for power and ruling is so strong they don't care about harming the country they allegedly serve. The press is hot on the 25th Amendment where Trumps own cabinet can effectively take him out of power, perhaps because they think he might destroy the planet with the last world war. Similarly, May could face a crisis of confidence in her government were a vote of no confidence to take place. In the background a whisper sounds, it says 'power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely' here and now the world is witnessing this. In North Korea it is Little Fat Faced Rocketman Kim Jong Un is the closest living thing to a god so it is alleged, like Trump he is not being recognised by the world for his sanity and reason or treatment of his own people. So like Trump he is having a tantrum and postures, threatening the world with his own nuclear weapons. Then there is the Nobel laureate Ang San suu Kyi, who once came across as a woman of peace, a woman seeking justice in the world and fought desperately for it. Now this wool pulling over the eyes' protagonist is being seeing in her true glory as a Muslim hating power-crazy loon who doesn't give a shit about the Rohingya Muslims and denies her military have tried out their very own ethnic cleansing. She is appearing nearly as bad as the power crazed oldies who run the biggest communist state in the world and who the business organizations of the Western world dare not say a single word of dissatisfaction just in case all those factories and slave labour camps which give us such high tech goods were to suddenly stop. They would still produce the goods, but everything would be stolen and resold with a different logo. Notice the lack of naming here, for you never know who reads a blog.

It is disastrous the UK has like the US freely elected in power persons who are so self-serving they'd sell their own mother to continue sitting in the same high chair they have now. Individuals with such power should not of been voted into office in the first place. Maybe we've been lied to as we always are as voters. Mays maiden speech as she just about won the last election did for five minutes make every voter sit up and consider here is someone who will try and help us all. But they were just noble words and likely words she did not write herself. Words have no meaning unless the actions congruent with those words take place. In May's case they haven't and they never will because there is no will. Now it is a depressive political situation, British politics stinks so much even the journalists at Westminster have to carry their own vomit bags. Even the right win press is beginning to doubt their own party's capability. Much like the Americans.

It feels like we are on a precipice, but this precipice is the most disastrous one ever. The continued painful struggle with BREXIT makes the Tories look ever more incompetent. The worst part of this is their incompetency will bring about the fall of the entire UK business and finance sector. They are in complete denial. We've been in a recession since 2008, near a full ten years and there is no sight of recovery for each day the national debt increases now it is 1.7 trillion pounds. May tells us at the dispatch box the deficit is down but never utters a word about the debt, then in predictable fashion like a yellow streaked sibling she throws insults at Labour. May must go, Trump must go for all our sakes. It would be so good of they both fell on their own swords but people with dubious mental faculty wouldn't do such a thing. Their motto is self, self, self otherwise it's way too crowded in this phone box.

Viewpoints filled with hate

It seems like the world is going insane. Turn left, turn right, open a news media website and there will be one or more likely several items which have hate filled agendas. If it is not one section of a community it is another, viewpoints abound which could be considered extremist. They are hate filled and the warriors behind these views have no insight into what this does. I see it, I recognise it and I've felt it myself, then, I changed my mind. It is part of the growing up process. Further this process is not physical it's mental, it is understanding the world has many people in it, and let others live how they want to live, for why get bothered?

Of course there are always reasons to get bothered about stuff. To get bothered about the Nazi who walks through your door and no matter how hard you want to say feck off, you can't because they are a member of your family. And if they just didn't have this particular view on life then they'd actually a very OK person. I might want to change this person and have tried to combat their views but as they are still a teenager they have to make their own way in life, their own mistakes, and they get upset if they're told nazism is wrong and toxic. The choice then boils down to whether I want this member of my family in my life or to disown them. Then I think back to being their uncle and having lots of fun playing with them and do nothing. I want to believe behind this extremist aspect of their personality is just a vulnerable human being, an ordinary person who's had a life of bad cards. One hand after the other has just been unfortunate. Unfortunate to have an alcoholic father, a depressive mother who only thinks about herself and to attend a school to find they are in the ethnic minority in their own country. There is no accounting for the experiences other people have, choices are made out of those experiences and taking a step back helps understand this.

We are all human beings. What makes us intolerant is poverty, poor education and lack of exposure to others. When I was a kid there were many taboos. Sexuality being one of them. It wasn't until my twenties I witnessed homosexuality. It was on a holiday to Germany. Two men dressed in complimentary leather trousers and jackets walked down the street holding hands. I was taken aback, I'd never seen this kind of behaviour in the UK and I'd lived just outside of London. I knew of homosexuality of both gays and lesbians but to see this simple behaviour in real life was my first experience of it. To tell the truth I have never been bothered about it, but I have felt the opinions of others encroach on my own self and wondered if I should agree with them and their views. At the time I just simply didn't have any view at all. So perhaps this is why I just simply accepted people were different but they were still just humans. It was my contact with the religiously minded which I found to be intolerant of sexuality. Intolerant of the behaviours of others. Yet the constant question is why on earth should the observer be bothered? If these behaviours are not harming them why should they mentally think they are? Maybe it is better to feel good knowing they are part of the in-group and those there gays, are without doubt in the out-group, in more ways than one. So fecking what. I will state though on record, my encounters with lesbians, which isn't something I go out of my way to do in any sense has also been implicitly hostile. It seems to me they just don't like to converse or have anything to do with men, or certainly heterosexual men. They are standoffish and will not engage in conversation at social gatherings, will not even acknowledge my presence, I might smile but will not get a smile back. No doubt they have their own hang ups and probably meeting a normal hetererosexual who just wants to have an ordinary chat about the weather or some other banality is a no no. It's probably written in the 'How to be a Lesbian Handbook' which I just would not be allowed to get my hands on. Due to the sign on the book shelf saying 'not for men'.

My perceptions of the world and of people have changed, I wouldn't say enormously, but rather subtly to the principle of let live. Hate and bigotry upsets me, but my recognition of it is because I know what it is like to be a bigot and to hate as well. I hate extemism and I'm bigotted in my view about this. I also very much dislike the right wing political agenda in any form it takes because for some reason it is a self serviing agenda and poses as anything but self serviing to hijack the vote of the unsuspecting gullible types. Effectively the right has encouraged bigotry and hate by poor education and the constant allowance of poverty. For the right a divided society makes the right strong, the right needs hate and ignorance to survive. And it's the highest levels of right wing politics who reap the benefits and riches of society. I know hate, for I have hated my upbringing by my own mother and her failure to be a mother a support. I began reducing my emotional reliance and bond with her at the age of five. It wasn't a great childhood and so I cry when I hear of children who also have bad upbringings or experiences. The reality is some people in this world are unlucky, like the nazi relative, they just get dealth duff cards and then don't know how to make the best of them.

Hate and prejudice stems from an inability to look inward and an inability to engage with those contrary thoughts to your own, or those people the hate is directed at. The sum of our experiences and the sum of how we perceive those experiences is what makes us who we are. I can continue to confirm my mental attitude by reading biased literature or I can challenge it and expose it to alternative reasoning. Then I may well find I am wrong at which point a lesson has been learnt.