Reply #19: on demonizing welfare

[sweetheart]

No mind ping poing, its a discussion, you have passion. In my time on DU, my
advise to any poster here, is to ping pong pong pong on the issues you feel in
your heart, and in that process, the rest of uz catch the fire. YOu clearly have
more knowledge and wisdom on the coal face of this issue, and in meeting minds, you
are explaining that to a less-aware person who's not experienced what you have.
Its very good stuff what you have written... please pong.

I live in one of these deprived areas, as an immigrant who moved in to a deprived
house that was borderline-collapsing, and fixed it up. I've spent years investing
my life in to a deprived area, and i notice other "incomers" do as well. The incomers want
to make it "not" a deprived area. The existing unemployed are ambivalent, as you
know in long-term british villiages, the locals go back hundreds of years and claim
a sort of gang-superiority over the community, no matter newer residents.

The newer residents bring ecomomic diversification to the area, often travelling
far and abroad on business matters, not purely local in the sheep markets, and this
mixture of professional classes and traditional working classes is happening all
over britain similarly.

I wouldn't wish anyone to leave their abode unless it's not working for them. Human
beings are nomadic creatures who have lives that are not dictated by a grazing ground
or a hunting ground. That is why we arn't animals. Why the political sense is that
we *ARE* animals and must stay on the same ground, i don't accept. If the ground sucks, leave.

A bad community will naturally rejuvinate when people who are successful in their
lives decide to make it vibrant. This is not by the tyranny of taxing those who do
succeed to finance the poverty shadenfreude no opportunity status quo.

Would YOU set up a business near a housing estate. Myself as once having sold a company
i formed in silicon valley, i would never form a dynamic new business near the crap
medicority of britsih housing estate life. It is so far from successful living in the
modern world, it has no place near a dynamic endeavour... and so we are stuck... as by
the sort of thinking you are saying, nothing is done, and the housing estate poverty and
19th centruy coal mining towns will stay poor because the 19th century is not coming back.

So i wholly support welfare, but with limits on time. I believe in paying mothers a living
wage to be home with thier kids until school age, but outside that, do not accept that a
working-age adult needs more than 2 months welfare to get a job, not a job in the mining
town with no opportunities, but a job in the UK. We are a wandering species, and if work
involves wandering, then i say the welfare agency has the right to ask a person to move.

It is not right for the taxpayer to finance long term pockets of squalor, and that is
basically what current policy has done... financing bad management (home and life management)
with squandered investment on mediocrity.