On Mon, 20 Feb 2012 13:56:53 -0800 (PST), Ste
wrote:

Rubbish! =A0I have bought most of my appliances second-hand and have
been very pleased with almost all of them. =A0Obviously you have to pick
and choose and wait for the bargains.

And where exactly do you do this picking, choosing, and waiting? The
only place I know of locally is a council-run 'recycling' outfit,
which many people are indeed now using - not least landlords of
furnished properties. Nevertheless, as I've said you can't be expected
to "wait" that long for essential household appliances like cookers
and washing machines - you have to pay the going rate in the end.

Go to your local pub or takeway that carries free copies of "Friday
Ads". I can temporarily use very basic cooking appliances while I
wait, and do my laundry in the bath. I have had actual personal
experience with being in such a situation, so don't try to tell me
that I have no idea what I am talking about.

=A0There are many reasons why
people want to get rid of perfectly good appliances. =A0A common reason
is that they were given a new appliance as a gift (Christmas, birthday
etc.). =A0Another is that they are rich enough to afford to buy the
latest appliances each year. =A0Or perhaps they decided to replace a
unit with a bigger or smaller model. =A0Or were conned into buying an
appliance that is more "green" than the one they had. =A0People moving
house often sell their appliances and get new stuff for the new house
- and in that case they are frequently "free to collector" because the
person is really only looking for a free removal service.

I would say the primary reason above all for getting rid of appliances
that I know of, is that they are faulty or that they are badly
defective in appearance.

Then you do not have the same experiences as myself. have you ever
actually looked for decent second-hand appliances?

=A0In other
cases a well-off householder had replaced a unit simply because it was
getting a bit grubby and it avoided a cleaning job.

Which is exactly what I said, that they are cheap usually because they
"lack quality in terms of appearance".

Well, if you are out of work yet unwilling to spend a one-off couple
of hours cleaning a good but dirty cooker, you really don't deserve
any help.

The skills required are minimal.

They are relatively straightforward to show somebody, but doing the
work safely is not intuitive to an inexperienced operator. In the end,
I have to look at the evidence, which is that most people who are not
professionals, have just enough skills to be dangerous.

Then they should learn. Sorry, but I have no time for people who moan
that nobody is helping them but are unwilling to do anything to help
themselves. If you cannot change a wheel, then either don't moan
about the cost of a call-out when you get a puncture, or don't buy a
car.

=A0If a person does not want to learn
some very simple skills, I put the blame squarely on that person.

That's ludicrous. Society is constantly telling people *not* to do
electrics, plumbing, and gas work themselves - for good reason,
because it is dangerous if done incorrectly by inexperienced
operators.

That's true if you are talking about a home rewiring. It is not true
if you are merely talking about fitting an electric cooker or washing
machine. It has become an excuse for being lazy and wanting other
people to do your work for you. What's next? Complaining that it's
too dangerous to get out of bed without a paid carer to help you up?

It is also the case that the poor typically lack the correct tools for
the job - which are not inordinately expensive, but would still
require expenditure.

There is no excuse in the UK not to have acquired set of very basic
tools by the time you reach adulthood. But if you haven't even
managed that, they are things that almost everyone will be able to
borrow from friends and neighbours. And the vast majority of people
know someone who will be willing to fit an appliance if they really
cannot manage the job themselves.

So you get them using improvised tools like
scissors and kitchen knives to strip cables that generally give a poor
result and which are liable to cause injuries to themselves in the
process - partly because the tools are unsuited to the purpose, and
partly because they simply lack the everyday familiarity and skill
with manual tools and are therefore prone to use the tools in ways
that experienced users would deprecate (either from painful
experience, or from cultural transmission of the painful experience of
others).

I wonder how such people manage to go to the toilet and wipe
themselves, never having had the opportunity to attend a
government-paid training course?

Look, Ste - IMO people need to get into the mindset that they *need*
to learn those basic skills to cope with modern life. It doesn't cost
anything, so you cannot blame lack of finances. if you have decided
that carrying out such jobs is beneath you, then you have to have the
money to pay someone else to do it for you. Otherwise tough titties -
I have zero sympathy.

besides, a cooker is about the only appliance that requires any sort
of skills at all - unless you count plugging a unit into the mains
socket a skill.

Cookers and washing machines are the most basic and irreducible of
kitchen appliances in today's society, and they are the appliances
that require the most skill. Even fitting a washing machine, will
often in practice require several tools and supplies.

Yes, extremely complex jobs. For a total moron, perhaps. My son
connected all the fittings for a washing machine in my kitchen when he
was 9 - and he even worked out how to do it by himself without any
instructions. Setting up a playstation or X-box requires *far* more
expertise, and most unemplyed people seem to manage that task OK.

Why should they be forced to move around involuntarily? =A0I know
several families with all members on long-term benefits and was in
fact thinking of them when I wrote my post. =A0The state pays for their
rent in very reasonable houses that they have lived in for well over a
decade. =A0Apart from moving to more suitable accomodation due to a
change in the size of the =A0family, or moving at the request of the
benefit receiptient themself, the main reason for being shunted from
place to place is if the family cause a nuisance wto their neighbours.

Indeed, and that is a particular cause of involuntarily moving
address. I know others who have moved because of harassment from
creditors, the law, etc.

Unless the harassment was unjustified you surely don't expect anyone
to be sympathetic?

And the reality is, if you have a particularly difficult or high-
energy child to raise, it's often the case that poor parents have no
ability or inclination to manage that. A lot of mothers in that sort
of situation genuinely despair of their children's behaviour (often
because it does have real consequences, like frequent changes of
address), but at the same time are loath to generate poor relations
within the family purely for the benefit of those outside the family -
in other words, whilst they might not always condone the behaviour,
they're not going to incur the psychological and relational stress
involved in effective discipline (which might be a very significant
undertaking when you have few rewards available to offer for better
behaviour, and no ability to spend money in order to change
circumstances or provide alternative leisure pursuits for the child),
when in contrast to those 'costs' the family itself will derive no
great benefits from the discipline (which mainly accrues to the
community at large). You're effectively expecing parents to become
prison warders of their own children, in a system in which they
themselves feel like inmates.

I expect people to refrain from having children until they are able
and willing to raise them properly. If that task is beyond them, put
the child up for adoption. You are describing situations caused by
the person's own failings, and trying to blame it on someone else.

=3DA0A basic microwave (if necessary borrowed from
friends or family)
How many people do you know who have spare cookers or microwaves just
lying around? I'm clean and creditworthy amongst my friends, and I'm
not sure any of them could easily spare me a microwave or cooker.

Not even for a week or two to tide you over?

What I'm saying is that it would basically involve the lender going
without the relevant appliance, since almost all people (including
myself) only have one such appliance.

Yes, and I have many friends who would be perfectly willing to suffer
a temporary inconvenience of being without an appliance if I were
desperate and, unlike them, had no alternative whatsoever. And of
course I would do the same for them - though these days I would
probably give my microwave to a friend who was in need and buy a new
one for myself. When the son of a friend of mine recently left home
to live in his own place for the first time, it was an excellent
excuse for me to de-clutter and give him lots of perfectly good stuff
I no longer used or wished to upgrade.

=A0As said, you can cook
everything you need to eat with just a microwave and a kettle (I've
done it). =A0It's not ideal, but it is perfectly acceptable while you
source other appliances.

It depends what sort of other support you have, and how long it takes
to source the other appliances.

In the UK it won't take long if you actually put your mind to it.

Yes, I can see that the sort of people who are dirty and dishonest
might have a more difficult time getting favours from friends and
relatives than clean, decent honest people. =A0Now how are you going to
blame that on the nasty rish businessmen?

Yes, because as I've said cleanliness is a costly pretense to maintain
(and its a habit that is built up over a lifetime - not switched on
and off at will), and so is honesty.

It's a matter of upbringing and personal integrity and pride. Poor
people simply have less ability to disguise those shortcomings than
rich people - but they are still the fault of the individual, and also
something that the individual is perfectly capable of correcting
themself.

Ste, I have actually *lived* in that situation, and so know *very*
well what I am talking about.

When exactly was this? And for how many *generations* had your family
lived in that 'situation'?

As a mature adult, I believe that I am fully responsible for my own
actions, so the situation my ancestors or even my parents were in no
longer has any bearing on how I behave or what I do. I survived on
practically sod-all income just after leaving school in the late 60's,
and again after leaving the country I had been living in the mid 70's.
Since then my fortunes have been up and down like a fiddlers's elbow,
and I have adapted to each change. When my fortunes take a downturn,
I regard it as a challenge to compensate, and thus far have managed to
maintain or regain a lifestyle that is perfectly acceptable through my
own efforts.

Whilst I am relatively well off now, I know quite a few people
of all ages who are out of work and have no assets. =A0i know *very*
well what's possible and what's not.

And what *are* you contending is possible? If we take the example of
how you contend it is "possible" to feed one's self in a kitchen to
contain only a kettle and a microwave, is quite a different question
from whether it is reasonable to expect it as a matter of routine in
our society.

I maintain that it is possible to do so *and* remain happy and have a
perfectly adequate standard of living. i have done so and I see other
people doing so today. Obviously having something more is *desirable*
but it is not *necessary* in order to enjoy a perfectly good and
comfortable life. If you speak to a millionaire, he will no doubt say
that becoming a billionaire would be desirable and allow him an even
better quality of life.

So far as it is "possible" to live in poverty for generations, and
maintain the same cleanliness, honesty and moral uprightness, optimism
and cheeriness of the 'middle class', I'm not sure I can think of any
examples of this. Even if such characters exist, their sheer rarity
may well prove my rule that it is not possible to maintain those
behavioural traits under the conditions of extreme poverty and the
exclusion from the normal culture of society that comes with it.

In the UK, the poorest people are at the same standard as the
middle-classes in other countries. So of course it is possible. It
is also possible to get from very poor to poor, and from poor to
nearly-average in the UK without a particularly huge amount of effort
or luck.

I was discussing the *temporary* situation after the person has just
moved in to a new unfurnished home. =A0Yes, it will indeed be more
demanding during that time.

Which, given the upheaval of moving house, is probably going to be the
least reasonable time to impose such demands. Anyway, I don't think I
was saying that I'm aware of anybody having any particular problem in
being without a washing machine for a few days while they move house,
so you are not really addressing any relevant point with this
alternative interpretation - I quite reasonably assumed that what you
meant was that they should be washing their clothes in the bath as a
matter of routine, not as an exceptional stop-gap.

Then you misunderstood. In the UK today it will only ever be
*necessary* as a stop-gap. Not that it is all that onerous to do so
all the time - I hand-washed my clothes for several years without
regarding myself as being hard done-by. Your state of mind is mainly
due to your perception of what is and what is not reasonable rather
than the actual "hardships" you are subjected to. At the time I was
living on a small (31') cruising yacht, and hand-washing was an
accepted part of life for we yotties. As was doing *all* cooking on a
two burner paraffin stove and having no appliances (and no mains
electricity) whatsoever. As said, despite having none of the things
you regard as being absolutely essential, it was honestly the happiest
period of my life.

=A0Some people will sit on their arse, buy
some cheap cider and moan about how unfair everything is whilst not
bothering to wash the home or themselves properly, or even get out of
bed before noon. =A0Others will see it as a challenge and get stuck in
to improve the situation for themselves.

But failing to bargain for better social terms *won't* improve the
situation - it will actually get worse, the more people compete for
dwindling rewards.

The resources are available to everyone in the UK. The serious
hardships could be overcome with a bit of effort, and so I regard them
as being self-imposed.

And those with a bit of get-up-and-go are just as likely to become
organised criminals - I know many people with determination and
backbone, and the justice system intends to give them no leniency
whatever for trying to improve themselves. In fact, evidence of
significant rewards, is likely to attract stiffer punishment.

That is certainly one way to choose to go, and probably the fastest
way to improve your position, albeit carrying a high risk. I do not
even condemn many type of such crime as being immoral, though other
types of crime cause a great deal of harm to other people and so I do
not condone it.

That's the problem in the end for people who talk about "getting stuck
in" - they end up having to say "but only within the rules", and then
that raises the question of who exactly had the greatest input into
those rules and why those rules should not be changed.

Yes, depression and "getting into a rut" are very real things. The
point is though, that they are both more a state of mind rather than a
physical reality. The solution lies within the person, not outside.

I don't see "black" work as being immoral.

Neither do I, but in reality it is sanctioned if detected - and I
understand the new real-time PAYE system means that benefit claimants
who work are detected almost instantly.

Then it is important that they don't get caught. But of course, the
sort of people you mentioned earlier who are unwilling to learn how to
use a screwdriver *will* get caught, because they are just as unlikely
to make an effort to remain undetected as they are to learn or use
simple DIY skills. Most people are caught because they made very
elementary mistakes.

=A0Nor smuggling for tax
evasion purposes. =A0Both are artificial crimes that have been created
due to the inadequacies of the state-imposed systems. =A0HB rent is paid
direct to the landlord, so there is no opportunity to avoid paying it.

HB is paid direct to the tenant in the first place now, and only after
a history of mis-spending the rent might it be paid direct to the
landlord. Also, people who move between work and benefits are in a
position at times to avoid paying the rent out of their own earnings.

Frequently moving between work and unemployment is a situation that
the present system is least satisfactory, as is being employed in work
that is "on demand" and so does not produce a fixed wage. Smart
people try to find ways to benefit from the bad system rather than
become disadvantaged by it. Learn exactly what the rules are, and
find a way how a person in your situation might use them to your
advantage. it is, after all, what the very wealthy people do wrt
their tax liabilities.

--
Cynic