General Chat

David Cameron is watching tv right now!

"Poor Kids" BBC1

"More than 3.5m children live below the poverty line in the UK, which has one of the worst child poverty rates in the industrialised world. Four youngsters explain what it is like growing up when a family has little money.

"You must be kind of bad to put people in houses like this," says 10-year-old Paige. She is talking about her home, a high-rise flat in the Gorbals area of Glasgow."


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-13632856

I just turned it over Rose. it is so depressing.....I can't believe that this country could allow people to live in such dreadful damp conditions.....And so he should be watching.

You hope you risk offending someone RR?

Eats shoots and leaves.


Not to be flippant.

We've had a documentary or two about kids in that area, shown on television here (with subtitles, thank heaven).

Extremely depressing, yes.

Was that the area where the renovate/redecorate boys decided to try to work their magic?

Gorbals is where my Wiltshire grx3 grandfather oddly showed up in 1841. Is it historically a depressed area, I wonder? Just curious.

Glasgow has always been left behind in the regeneration Stakes....... since I was little......I always remember it being depressing and the housing....you wouldn't believe the squalor......As the years went by....nothing changed.....It was like a place forgotten by the state.......in my opinion of course.......I first went to school there.....demolition was always going on but nothing cleared and nothing much done for the people.

The North is not the South and their voices are weak when it comes to anything being done for them......


Oh whoops....got carried away there for a moment ;-)

I hope that seeing these bright, funny, mature beyond their years, children looking up at the black mould covering the ceiling above their beds DOES offend people. I hope it offends people enough to make them wonder just how cutting benefits without a corresponding provision of jobs is going to help these children. Councils are going to have to cut 'non-essential' service...what, like repairing these atrocious buildings? making them even slightly fit for human habitation?

yes, it was where Colin and Justin did their redecoration programme and yes The Gorbals IS historically a slum area, the slums have just gone upwards now.

No you didn't get carried away Susan, "The North is not the South and their voices are weak when it comes to anything being done for them......" I think that is entirely true.

there should be no Slums in the UK.....The Gorbals have always been slums......When is something going to be done about it......I read of London slums in the 1800s and the depressing stories of those who lived there with no hope.....This programme shows that for Glasgow.....nothing has changed.

We are not a third world country......When will they do something to help all those who live this way?.....Be it Scotland or any other part of the UK.

For anyone interested

Googlebooks has the following

Richard Stenlake, 1996 - 112 pages
A must-have for anyone with any interest in the gorbals.....

Eric Eunson
0 Reviews
Richard Stenlake, 1996 - 112 pages
A must-have for anyone with any interest in the Gorbals, this is one of our best-selling titles and deservedly so. It includes two specially drawn maps by Ronald Smith showing the Gorbals in 1858 and 1910, plus about 200 photographs of this notorious and decimated area. The text covers the period from the thirteenth century to the mid-1990s, but while there are a few photographs and illustrations dating from before the Second World War (plus a dozen or so showing the rise and fall - literally! - of the 1970s developments), the vast majority of the pictures date from the 1950s and 1960s. They were commissioned by Glasgow City Council in connection with the redevelopment of the area and cover the Gorbals along with Tradeston, Kingston, Laurieston, Hutchesontown and Oatlands. Many of the streets, shops, factories and buildings depicted will be well-rememberd by former Gorbals residents.
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The north is not the south is very true BUT ithere are other difficulties in being poor within an affluent area.

We have been on benefits since my dad had his stroke.We do alright because I am mean and we have always lived on low wages.Local wages were always based upon agricultural wage rate which were usually supplemented by cheap housing, free milk and maybe other perks. also we have been in a councl house for nearly fifty years.

Houses are expensive and the local young people cannot afford to live here. Local shops are expensive because most local inhabitants will pay the prices they charge,likewise the pub.We are fighting to save the bus services which may be the only way to reach cheaper shops.

We have always been kind of beholden individually to the more affluent local people,doing there cleaning and tending their gardens. There is little chance to organize ourselves together like there is where many neighbours suffer a smilar degree of poverty. The community is geared toward the more affluent. This is why political unrest generally takes a long time to ferment in rural areas.

Susan thanks for the info about the book. Like many others I also had people who lived there, but I had been led to believe that the slum or poorer areas had been cleared away and better things put in for the community.

No first world country should have slums, it's a sad indictment on any country that enables this to happen, and no doubt happens in many countries. Not being biased as my own country also has the same areas and potentially worse...

I watched the programme and Rose, you described those children so well. I was impressed by the way they articulated their lives and the mature way they faced things.

Throughout the world there are slums, we have seen the way people live in Mumbai and Nigeria, ekeing a living from rubbish dumps and such but for a supposedly civilised country like Britain which constantly gives millions to these afore mentioned countries, we shouldn't then have children and families living in such dire housing conditions and playing in empty dangerous houses etc

I felt especially sorry for the lad Sam who had to wear his sister's blouse and trousers that were far too small for him. How smart he looked after his first haircut, paid for as his birthday gift from his aunt. That family were struggling partly because the teenage girl's Child Benefit had been stopped even tho she was still in full time education and only 16. How long winded Social Security was being in reinstating the payment and sending the amount owed them in arrears.

I loved the way the young girl was so happy with the new house they moved to, and hope they will go from strength to strength now they have a better home environment.

Lizx

In a society where we are virtually controlled by advertizers we have very little help or education in controlling money.Nobody could read until they were taught so why would mamaging money be any different.

Supermarkets are not above exploiting the poor.BOGOF on bumper bags of crisps is not a bargain,it is a very expensive way to buy spuds.Probably,had the poor boy's mother been taught how to manage her finances more efficiently,he would not have had to wear his sister's old shirt.

Hi Rose,
Not offending at all, I think it is a total disgrace that anyone should have to live like that now days, shame on the government of Scotland.
If the Scottish government have not done anything to correct all the disgusting housing, can you imagine what it will be like if and when they are self governing.
Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't Glasgow awarded the European city of culture in 1990.?
Whatever organisation that awarded that looked at Glasgow with their eyes shut.
Glasgow is very much like Chicago, there are nice parts, but go just outside where all the money is spent on making the city look nice and you enter areas of object poverty and ghettos.

I believe Glasgow also has above the national average of people with drink problems, that doesn't help.

Foggy

Perhaps we would have more money to go in the right directions if we stopped paying huge benefits to so-called asylum seekers etc., caught benefit cheats (although they do appear to be catching more of them) and stopped paying disability benefit to drug addicts whilst genuine claims are turned down.

I object to paying millions to both Pakistan and India. They may have needed it in the past but not now.

I was talking to Dan after the programme last night, he'd watched it too and I was telling him that Gorbals had always been a poverty ridden area, I can remember when I was a child my mum mentioning the Gorbals, in relation probably to the depression and the national strike when SHE was a child. And now I am talking about the same thing to Dan and it seems too little has changed.

Decent housing has to be the basic requirement, because without that you are trapped in a cycle of need...you have no where to dry clothes so you dry them on the heaters, that makes the place even damper than it was, the electric or gas bills go up so you go without other things to pay them, or get into debt where you are forever paying off just the interest.

Your house is damp and mouldy, so your belongings are the same, your health is affected so the health service costs for area go up..less money into other services. You are poor and in an area of poverty the 'means of escape' too often lies in a bottle or a syringe, and even when it doesn't your circumstances erode any hope you have of something better.

I don't know what the answer is economically, but I know there HAS to be one.

Chris, "so-called asylum seekers" ARE asylum seekers and do not get benefits until their case is proven, that's a different concern.

Make no mistake there has been enough money in this country to have changed those slums, in the decades when this country was doing well and not in recession, it has gone to fat cats who haven't a clue how living in those circumstance is NOT just a case of being idle or failing to "get on your bike" to get work.

I am blaming ALL political parties, but as in my op, what to do about it now is down to DC, if we are in the worst 5 (was it?) for child poverty in Europe then he must know that taking money from people, both in benefits, money for services, and in failure to make a stable economy with industry and jobs ( and those all at one sweep in effect ) he will tip even more parents and children into those circumstances...witness the imminent 19% rise in electricity prices!

People who are just 'scraping by' at the moment will fall further down the poverty ladder, people losing jobs will lose their homes ( house re-possessions "repossessions will probably rise from 40,000 this year to 45,000 in 2012.").

It makes ME angry Rita, that money is spent on huge bonuses to bankers that have run the country into the ground, it makes me angry that we are renewing Trident when it is totally redundant, it make me angry that people think it has to be 'either/or' charity at home or overseas...

AS I said in my previous post, this is nothing new...the people below the poverty line in this country haven't suddenly appeared in these awful conditions ( though they are increasing) they have been there through successive governments and at periods when the Govt of the day was not giving so much 'away' to other countries, when we weren't in recession, when 'times were good' and there were enough jobs ( at least south of the line) ).

When the Clyde ship yards and other industries closed leaving no jobs, where was the investment into that area from Govt, where has it been since then? before our 'immigration problem', and international recession became the issues of the day.

it is not lack of money that has kept these areas so poor, it is lack of will and caring, for decades past.

For anyone interested 2 books for you:

The Real Gorbals Story by Colin MacFarlane
Gorbals Diehards by same author.

OH says he couldn't put these books down, says they
should be read in sequel, thinks Diehards is first.

Emmax

and I would say, that though this poverty in our country is appalling, it still is not to be compared with a child dying before it is a year old from hunger or disease that can be prevented with just clean water, which even the poorest here DOES have.

A school in Kenya ( according to the girl who is giving half her win on Deal or no Deal to building them ) can be established for 6k , if money goes there to educate, then that country or any other will cease to need money in the future...money given is securing the future not just for the people of whichever country, but also our own...we cannot live in isolation...that is what the 'rich South' of the UK has thought of the 'poor North' for generations..."Nothing to do with US here,, different people there, all flat caps and funny accents!"

That may be Rose, that is if the money given to these countries gets to where it is meant to go.
Huge amounts of it is syphoned of by the governments of those countries, the same as the money that is donated to charity's.
To many people dipping their hands in the till. same as our politicians.

I personally don't see any difference between the south and the north, I think its all down to the way we live and our values.