On Mon, 20 Feb 2012 14:20:02 -0800 (PST), Ste
wrote:

Perhaps you should be taking issue with the behaviour of the tenants
in that case instead of moaning about the landlord?

I don't recall "moaning about the landlord". As for the behaviour of
the tenants, again to take pride in your surroundings, you have to
have some degree of security, some degree of personalisation, and some
sense that it's of a commensurate social standard. So too, whereas
middle class partners might replace any crockery and fittings damaged
in a plate-throwing argument, the poor cannot generally afford to do
so (their income was not sufficient to have afforded those fittings
even in the first place).

Perhaps people who cannot afford replacement plates should not be
throwing them at each other in the first place? Or do you believe
that it is an unreasonable thing to ask people not to do?

I think I have thrown one plate in anger in my entire life (and that
was at an inanimate object), so I know full well that it doesn't take
a huge amount of self-control.

Are you really as comfortable in a house with no doors on the kitchen
cabinets and tiles falling off the wall, as one with a sound kitchen?
Or is it just double standards?

I have two hands and a brain, and would most certainly be able to
effect sufficient repairs to make a vast improvement.

I'd be quite interested to see you fit a kitchen with nothing but your
fingernails - and no prior experience.

Anyone of adult years has no excuse for not having such basic skills
if they are living in a situation where such skills are very
desirable. I would be able to acquire a bit more than my fingernails
in the UK, no matter how poor I was.

All I can say is, for people who have survived on basic income support
(i.e. not disability benefits or any of the other considerably higher
benefits) for a significant period of time (possibly all their lives,
possibly generations), and without working on the side or receiving
other consistent subsidy from wealthier friends or relatives, I do not
observe their homes to be of any reasonable standard.

Every able-bodied adult of at least minimal intelligence is able to
find a way to achieve more than basic income support in the UK, so
there is no excuse for anyone to live that way for any length of time
except by choice.

As I've said, some of the worst cases I'm describing are not even
friends or relatives of mine, and they are actually families of ill
repute in the local community - in some cases, I've seen the inside of
their homes only because I've entered the property with the landlord,
not because I have any personal relationship with them whatsoever.

And yet you think the blame lies elsewhere? Incredible!

--
Cynic