Psychoactive Substances: Rolling UK Politics in The Neo-Con Era

Which means what exactly?

I don't think moralising is helpful.

It's a moral issue though afaic. I don't loathe scounger-bashing rhetoric because I think it's sub-optimal from the point of view of economic efficiency.

Largely sympathetic documentaries

lololololololol can see why you wanted yr name removed from that one

Largely sympathetic documentaries xpost

― AlanSmithee, Wednesday, July 15, 2015 12:43 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

gee what happened there

what did?

2

it's easy to sneer, BB, but Britain's Scroungingest Rob-Dogs was a balanced look at the issues facing unemployed people in marginalized communities today

Iin the last couple of weeks I've seen both How to get a council house, and Jaywick Benefits on Sea (admittedly Channel 5).

Neither of these showed living on benefits as something that anyone would want to do. The benefits claimants were shown sympathetically. The council housing was shown to be of a low standard. The story of a Romanian highlighted the fact that if he had had access to council housing, he would have been able to keep his job, but because he did not he could not. Their lives seemed challenging, and interactions with local government and various regulations demonstrated a power imbalance. The Jaywick programme especially showed the efforts that the local community were making to try and help themselves, through establishing soup kitchens, demonstrating to parliament around street lighting.

There certainly is demonisation of benefits claimants in the media, but it's much more in the press than these documentaries, despite their lurid titles.

There are many many many more TV programmes that demonise lower-class people and benefits claimants - from Jeremy Kyle to Benefits Street. They might show a sympathetic side on occasion for the sake of balance, but it's point-and-shame TV all the same.

Oh aye, Jeremy Kyle is awful.

Which means what exactly?

I took the fact that you were boasting about your own handling of violent crime as a way of chastening another poster to indicate that it was no longer an especially sore point for you

Enjoying ogmor's new "John Harris is away" routine

I don't think there's any way to read Tom D's post as an exhortation to Man Up - quite the opposite in fact.

a sense of justice is not the only condiseration re: victimhood & bigotry, & i think morality is too blunt an instrument, and not often well-received

Yes you're right moralising sometimes makes people look like dicks

UK ILX is alive and well!

And fractious, as befits a day when the Tories are taking a chainsaw to unions.

considering this started with a "kill the poor" post i think it's been pretty even-tempered

I don't watch Channel 5 for any reason, but have seen the two How To Get A Council House programmes so far.

The untidy couple having landlord issues: at no point did the programme makers chime in with 'actually, no matter what else is going on between the two parties, a private landlord must give 24 hours' notice before visiting tenants at a let property'.

The ginger-beard housing officer was really brilliant at his job and handled idiots kicking off about 'the immigrants' about as well as can be expected.

There was a female, blonde housing officer who, after being told about applicants' genuine issues, showed them total shitholes in exactly the setting and position they'd expressly said would exacerbate their issues further. In any other situation, that would be some kind of constructive move an applicant could challenge.

My own application process nearly 10 years ago was marked by a recognition of my needs and a lot of help with proving same. My borough is relatively sane about housing policy and is still very Labour, but I have friends waiting for a move who are going to suffer when they try to rewrite the allocation rules later this year - 23,000 people might fall off the waiting list including a close friend who's been on it for almost 10 years.

wow suzy your friend sounds like violent scum

The programme demonstrated clearly the lack of agency of the benefits claimants; they had very limited scope for choice or challenge to the process.

The housing that the family with a dog moved into (the only other option being homelessness) was in very poor condition.

It very much did not fit the narrative of people on benefits living a luxury lifestyle at the taxpayers expense; if anything the overall message was the lack of acceptable quality social housing in Portsmouth (and more widely).

I took the fact that you were boasting about your own handling of violent crime as a way of chastening another poster to indicate that it was no longer an especially sore point for you

You're aware you're making a complete arse of yourself?

:-8

I doubt George Osborne or Iain Duncan Smith ever got a kicking for wearing a trenchcoat instead of a tracksuit

You're aware of the story of a young Michael Gove having the shit kicked out of him in Aberdeen I presume? Can never bring that one up enough.

tragic tale of gabardine in aberdeen

:-o

Ha, yes, I am aware of that one. Gove is the one politician who I could buy being motivated by beatings and humiliations experienced as a youth.

these people are psychopaths

Just imagine the mouth that adolescent Gove must've had on him. Where can I find that story?

Re: council housing, I was and still am boggling at the nerve of the housing woman.

Homeless applicant: "Hi, I'm fairly open to living wherever you put me, as long as it's not the scary place I lived in for six years, the place that sent me crazy."

Housing officer: "We have an offer for you in the scary place that sent you mad, and if you don't take it I'll declare you intentionally homeless." *tight smile*

There is always one person in every housing office like this, and woe betide you if that's your case worker. Also irritating: housing officers that piss time up a wall by taking half your appointment to explain the amount of people on the waiting list as if you don't already know this, and your place within that.

Gove is the one politician who I could buy being could only have been motivated by beatings and humiliations experienced as a youth.

http://www.mayorwatch.co.uk/ignore-the-spin-boris-is-keeping-is-water-cannon-because-theyre-unsellable-scrap/

Meanwhile in London...

Fp'ed that Cardamon post, all that shite about dramatising a feeling or whatever seems like a poor excuse for just simply letting rip with what is currently a very prevalent type of UK class bigotry. I deleted my angry post this morning because I am trying cut down on being a dick, but I still find the sentiments in the op appalling and unjustifiable and am calmly registering my dislike of it for the record.

these people are psychopaths

― conrad, Wednesday, July 15, 2015 1:56 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^this

xp you can buy em on alibaba now anyway http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Howo-bulletproof-Anti-Riot-Water-Cannon_60141793692.html?spm=a2700.7724857.35.1.urfNhr

i dont' think anyone (other than matt dc) really understood what cardamom was really saying in his post but never mind, keep piling it on.

really

Fp'ed that Cardamon post

I found it more bizarre than reprehensible tbh.

xp yeah i mean his point was supposedly seeing where a certain kind of bigotry comes from and resisting his own tendencies towards that, right? tho i don't particularly buy into his thesis, or see it as anything but a tiny particular aspect of the much broader daily mail style demonization of the working classes etc etc

The whole anti-chav thing became a formalised meme (if you can call it a meme) around 2002 IIRC? That's well before the Tories got in, but it seemed to popularise (and legitimise) a lot of face-value classist sentiment that continues today. The only time I saw a backlash to anyone using it as a term prior to around 2007 was on ILE.

Yep. A cheap cash-in book on the 'chav' phenomenon around 2003 was subtitled 'A guide to Britain's new ruling class' iirc.

There used to be a bit of an argument as to whether it was a term of class hatred or just a new term for yobboes, but I guess that debate is pretty definitively over by now.

i believe it started as a regionalised term for yobs and grew to a national expression of class hatred.

Isn't it used blankly as "someone uncultured"?

ie that if they are hardworking or not isn't the defining attribute.

yeah i've never thought chav was synonymous with someone on benefits.

xp i dunno, i'm always quite surprised when i come across it these days, not to mention alarmed. it's a bigoted pejorative term nowadays no denying.

It's a bit old (Burberry) hat now, isn't it?

Chavs

But before that there was...

charvers

The bullshit bit of the Cardamon post was the 'should we judge these attitudes too harshly?' bit when the answer is 'of course we fucking should', especially given the minuscule overlap between anti-welfare bigotry and people who have actually been beaten up by gangs of thugs.

i dont' think anyone (other than matt dc) really understood what cardamom was really saying in his post but never mind, keep piling it on.

― cod latin (dog latin), Wednesday, 15 July 2015 15:21 (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ok

That's a teenage girl being kicked to death by kids who, let's be honest, came from families that were long-term benefit claimants and who, had they not been sent to prison, would have just continued along those lines

are people who've been in real conflict with real scum to be forgiven or not for hating 'people on benefits'?

I think I understand these bits where instantly and bizarrely the perpetrators of a terrible crime, and another less terrible crime ('real scum') are defined as the progeny of 'benefit claimants' as though that is of key importance.

What I'm saying is that due to getting me head kicked in, I can relate to some extent with what such people are doing, the idea of getting revenge on the benefits people (who have been melded with 'violent people') is indeed a potent drug.

I think I understand this totally vile sentence too! Just because he frames this as part of a (genuinely sad and horrible) story of something that happened to him doesn't mean that relating to this kind of thinking should be in any way ok.

I dunno, based on the reactions here, you lot must either have had similar experiences but nobly forgiven and never want revenge just a little bit, or just never had similar experiences?

Pretty sure I understand this dumb sentence too. The responses to these posts have been fairly mild considering they essentially amount to 'I know it's wrong to want to wipe out the poor but I do fantasize about it and I understand people who do actually want it and if you don't then I guess you are either the luckiest person alive or some kind of saint'.

Anyway I'll shut up now, there's an important conversation about 'chavs' to be had.

things are pretty fucked up everywhere eh