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Default Metal theft. The biters bit

On Mon, 13 Feb 2012 11:31:56 -0800 (PST), Ste
wrote:

You may recall that I stated that a return to the traditional
one-worker family is IMO highly *desirable*, but I then lamented that
unfortunately present economics will not allow that to take place for
many/most families.


You also said that the problem was one of "expectations", asserting
your belief that the nanny state had caused or enabled this shift to
"irresponsibility", and then went on to say that you think it would be
beneficial to make close relatives strictly liable for the care of
family members. I hardly think people can be blamed for a state of
affairs where, by your own assertion, they cannot afford to be
"responsible".


Only in the case of supporting a fairly severely disabled relative
would one person need to stay at home. If the person needed support
simply because they were unemployed, there is no reason why anyone
would have to give up their job. The additional expense in supporting
such a family member is little more than the cost of food for that
person.

in addition, the premise is that were such a scheme adopted, the state
would save money and would lower taxes, thus giving every working
family more disposable income - hopefully sufficient to allow one
partner to be able to give up employment.

Whilst physical resources are necessarily finite, economic resources
are an artificial construct. =A0We presently have a situation in which
there are sufficient of many resources (especially all the essentials)
to supply everyone with as much as they would take if the resource was
completely free. =A0The very rich do not consume more food, for example,
than the poor in this country - and IME the quality is not
significantly different either (even though the rich person may pay
more for better presentation, preparation or packaging). =A0You will
find that physical comfort in the homes of the vast majority of people
in the UK is equal to the physical comfort in the homes of the very
wealthy in terms of temperature, air quality, the comfort of beds &
furniture etc.


It is easy to talk of what they have in common. Less easy, but
actually more interesting and relevant, to talk of what they do not
have in common.


What do you need that you do not have?

Whilst the wealthy may have larger homes, the average
person does not feel particularly short of room in their home.


If they have a home - and aren't paying an arm and a leg for it.


There are very few people above the age of 25 in the UK who do not
have their own home (rented or mortgaged). The cost of that home has
nothing to do with how comfortable it is.

=A0Whilst
the wealthy may have leisure and luxury facillities in their own home,
those same facillities are available and affordable to most people as
public facillities, and the real increase that having such facillities
in the home afford to a person's standard of living is largely one of
perception than reality.


Having facilities in one's home typically means more ability to
partake at the convenience of your own moods, and without spending an
inordinate amount of the day travelling elsewhere.


Sure, wealth has advantages and gives you convenience and flexibility.
But that additional flexibility and convenience provides only a minor
increase in a person's quality of life - and my point is not that a
wealthy person does not have a better quality of life than the average
non-wealthy person, but that the difference is not nealy as great as
the perception.

=A0In fact in many cases people *prefer* to
indulge in such activities in a public place than in their own home
because of the increased social interaction of the former.


Presupposing that you want such social interaction - either in
general, or at that instant. Quite regularly, I find myself wanting to
be left alone so that I can dedicate and maintain my mental resources
on some other important task, without having either undesirable
interruption from those in proximity, and without having to maintain
social nicety with those I might encounter.


Sure - and I suspect that you have a home where you can do exactly
that in just as much comfort as Bill Gates can in his home. In many
cases a wealthy person has *less* privacy than the average person,
because they will have various non-family members in the house most of
the day.

Anyway, the point is that the rich can choose whether they want social
interaction or not - the poor it seems must accept interaction whether
they want it or not.


That divide is in fact probably more on the side of the average person
than most wealthy people. I would go so far as to say that the
average person is socially more secure than a wealthy person, because
theiy can be reasonably sure that their friends and lovers are with
them because they enjoy their company rather than because they want to
enjoy their money.

I have a
fridge containing drinks, tables and chairs in my house, for example,
but I still visit pubs on occassion even though the same activity in
my own home would, if anything, be more comfortable.


Quite, but that for you is a matter of choice. You can choose what you
want to do.


It is a matter of choice for the vast majority of average working
people in the UK. Again, it is the very wealthy who are often trapped
into a situation where they cannot indulge in such things, because
wealth brings with it quite a bit of undesirable baggage.

Having experienced both camps, it is my belief that in fact there is a
relatively small difference between the actual quality of life of the
rich and the actual quality of life of the average person in the UK.
A person sipping a =A315 cocktail at the poolside of a =A31000 per night
hotel on an exotic tropical island is not gaining significantly more
pleasure from that activity than someone drinking a Barcardi Breezer
at the side of a hotel pool in Spain or Portugal - which is an
activity that the majority of the UK population is able to afford to
do at least once a year.


There is a certain point at which extra money does not buy extra
quality of life, I agree. Personally the most valuable thing to me is
*time* - and perhaps mental energy. It is these things that I too
often find I do not have enough of - indeed, the point about mental
energy is probably why I routinely find myself infuriated by the
workings of the free market which levy a constant high tax on this,
leaving less remaining for those things in life that are actually
interesting and productive.


Extreme wealth would in that case probably be very frustrating for you
unless you refrained from using it (in which case why would you want
it?) You will find that a great deal of time is taken up *managing*
all the various things that your wealth has brought to you. You can
mitigate that to an extent by hiring people to manage your money and
assets - but even then you will be required to make a myriad decisions
every week - and also spend time ensuring that your managers are doing
their job satisfactorily and that nobody is taking advantage of you
(which they certainly will if it becomes known that you are not
keeping an eye on all your affairs).

Anyway, the point is that for those who cannot afford a foreign
holiday at all, while others can, that causes a disconnect in common
experience and culture. If there is no culturally accepted alternative
to a holiday, then that is likely to cause a degree of both boredom
and stress directly, and its likely to cause a loss of closeness with
friends.


Almost everyone in the UK has been capable of achieving sufficient
income to afford a foreign holiday once a year for some considerable
time. Albeit that the present economic downturn might have seen a
temporary blip in that situation for a significant number of people.

Shared interests and experience are central to human relationships -
I'm again touching on the point about continuity in human
relationships, and how lacking this often is in today's society.


I believe that the level to which our social welfare state has risen
has played a very large part in causing the decline in social
interaction within the larger community.

=A0And having dined fairly often at places
where meal prices are in the 3 figure bracket per person, I can say
that if anything I enjoy a =A310 meal at Weatherspoons just as much if
not more. =A0And I can completely honestly state that I get no more
pleasure or satisfaction from washing my hands in a marble sink with
gold taps than I do in the typical batroom of an average home.


I'm not too bothered whether the sink is marble or ceramic. However, I
do prefer to wash my hands in bathrooms that are clean and
aesthetically pleasing, and I've been in plenty of bathrooms in poor
households that are neither, and at the end of the day the only remedy
usually is to spend money on improving the fittings (money that such
people do not have). Generally, old fittings are both harder to clean
(making people less like to clean them, other things being equal), and
harder to make look clean.


Oh come off it! Given that poor households are the ones most likely
to have unemployed adults living in them, the only reason for dirty
bathrooms is that the person is too lazy to clean. Perhaps you should
consider the probability that it is the person's laziness that is
responsible for both the dirty bathroom *and* their poverty rather
than trying to argue that economic inequality makes a person incapable
of picking up a cloth and applying a bit of elbow-grease.

And I can assure you that expensive ornate fittings are often far more
difficult to clean than an ordinary chromed bath tap, and that even
people living on benefits can get sufficient money to make basic
improvements and decorations to their home - in poorer households the
council will even do that for them completely free of charge.

I've been to the homes of people who are earning enough to spend on a
restaurant meal once a week and a foreign holiday twice a year, but
are living in a filthy pig sty. Conversely I have visited OAPs who
are struggling to get by on a state pension, but who have spotless
tidy houses. Cleanliness in the UK has very little connection with
wealth.

Probably the biggest difference wrt quality of life is the ability of
the wealthy to employ servants to carry out the boring chores that
most people have to put up with - though again, having been in such a
position myself, there are plenty of downsides to having servants that
are not necessarily compensated for by losing the need to clean the
floors or do the washing-up. =A0And these days many onerous tasks are
made a lot easier with affordable machines - heck, choose your clothes
wisely and you don't even have to use an iron all that often.


Indeed, labour-saving appliances are the key to eliminating boring
chores today. Though frankly, I find that just having a sink that is
big enough to fully submerge all items being cleaned (a grill pan
particularly), and store them on the draining board without careful
(i.e. mentally demanding) stacking, often makes the operation seem so
much easier - but again, it means having a sufficiently large kitchen,
and the money to buy a big sink, and the spare mental resources to
analyse that particular problem as I have done, and the power (either
as owner or secure tenant) to fit such a sink and get enough use out
of it to make it worth the investment.


But honestly - just how much would the quality of your life improve if
you had a big sink? I find that with most limitations, I only have to
figure out a solution once, and then make trivial changes to my
work-habits to accomodate it with little or no disadvatage. And if
such a change would, for you, make a significant improvement to the
quality of your life, I have little doubt that you would find a way to
get yourself a bigger sink (or a smaller grill pan!)

--
Cynic


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On Mon, 13 Feb 2012 13:10:01 -0800 (PST), Ste
wrote:

My other reply went off on a different tack, but I've just realised
what you were responding to. I didn't say the market economy was
soaking up people's wages. I said it's soaking up their *labour
power*. In other words, women's labour is increasingly sold on the
market, rather than bartered domestically.


I don't see how you can blame the "market economy" for that. IIUC it
all began when the *government* persuaded women to go out to work in
order to replace the male labour force that the government had just
removed from the labour market in order to fight its war.

Prior to that, the labour market was perfectly happy to use a
predominately male labour force, and women were happy to stay at home.
The market was *forced* to adapt to an increasingly female workforce
after the government removed a sizable chunk of the men - the jobs
obviously had to be filled or they would not get done. So when the
war ended and the men were once again available, they returned to find
a labour market that was pretty full and consequently soon became
completely saturated. Added to which the market was itself shrinking
thanks to a combination of increasing automation and the cessation of
military based manufacturing.

--
Cynic

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Default Metal theft. The biters bit

On Feb 14, 3:43*pm, (Cynic) wrote:
On Mon, 13 Feb 2012 13:10:01 -0800 (PST), Ste
wrote:

My other reply went off on a different tack, but I've just realised
what you were responding to. I didn't say the market economy was
soaking up people's wages. I said it's soaking up their *labour
power*. In other words, women's labour is increasingly sold on the
market, rather than bartered domestically.


I don't see how you can blame the "market economy" for that. *IIUC it
all began when the *government* persuaded women to go out to work in
order to replace the male labour force that the government had just
removed from the labour market in order to fight its war.


I wasn't "blaming" the market economy for bringing women into the
workforce, and I'm not saying they should be forced back out of the
workforce. What I am saying is that the labour market has adapted to,
and benefitted from (i.e. the rich have disproportionately benefitted
from), a supply of female labour. If you reverse the situation, there
will be a transfer of wealth and power from women to men, and from
rich to poor, so broadly speaking rich women stand to lose most,
whilst poor men stand to gain most.



Prior to that, the labour market was perfectly happy to use a
predominately male labour force, and women were happy to stay at home.
The market was *forced* to adapt to an increasingly female workforce
after the government removed a sizable chunk of the men - the jobs
obviously had to be filled or they would not get done. *So when the
war ended and the men were once again available, they returned to find
a labour market that was pretty full and consequently soon became
completely saturated. *Added to which the market was itself shrinking
thanks to a combination of increasing automation and the cessation of
military based manufacturing.


The rebuilding of the country provided a reasonable amount of work to
be done, whilst an increasingly fairer distribution of economic
production provided an increasingly higher living standard for the
average worker. Many ordinary people lived better during and after the
war, than they had done before it! I'm not aware of any labour surplus
immediately following WW2.
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Default Metal theft. The biters bit

On Feb 14, 12:56*pm, (Cynic) wrote:
On Mon, 13 Feb 2012 11:31:56 -0800 (PST), Ste
wrote:

You may recall that I stated that a return to the traditional
one-worker family is IMO highly *desirable*, but I then lamented that
unfortunately present economics will not allow that to take place for
many/most families.


You also said that the problem was one of "expectations", asserting
your belief that the nanny state had caused or enabled this shift to
"irresponsibility", and then went on to say that you think it would be
beneficial to make close relatives strictly liable for the care of
family members. I hardly think people can be blamed for a state of
affairs where, by your own assertion, they cannot afford to be
"responsible".


Only in the case of supporting a fairly severely disabled relative
would one person need to stay at home. *If the person needed support
simply because they were unemployed, there is no reason why anyone
would have to give up their job. *The additional expense in supporting
such a family member is little more than the cost of food for that
person.


Perhaps I was confused (and I'm not inclined to go back and check),
but I thought you were advocating full liability for "care", not just
financial liability for the unemployed. How exactly would your
proposal work where most or all family members are out of work?



in addition, the premise is that were such a scheme adopted, the state
would save money and would lower taxes, thus giving every working
family more disposable income - hopefully sufficient to allow one
partner to be able to give up employment.


Lol. Do you really think that the savings would be so manifest?



Whilst physical resources are necessarily finite, economic resources
are an artificial construct. =A0We presently have a situation in which
there are sufficient of many resources (especially all the essentials)
to supply everyone with as much as they would take if the resource was
completely free. =A0The very rich do not consume more food, for example,
than the poor in this country - and IME the quality is not
significantly different either (even though the rich person may pay
more for better presentation, preparation or packaging). =A0You will
find that physical comfort in the homes of the vast majority of people
in the UK is equal to the physical comfort in the homes of the very
wealthy in terms of temperature, air quality, the comfort of beds &
furniture etc.

It is easy to talk of what they have in common. Less easy, but
actually more interesting and relevant, to talk of what they do not
have in common.


What do you need that you do not have?


What I need depends largely on what other people have.



Whilst the wealthy may have larger homes, the average
person does not feel particularly short of room in their home.

If they have a home - and aren't paying an arm and a leg for it.


There are very few people above the age of 25 in the UK who do not
have their own home (rented or mortgaged).


I suspect the taxpayer will actually be paying, in part or whole, for
quite a few of those.



*The cost of that home has
nothing to do with how comfortable it is.


Of course it does. If homes are costly, then by and large poorer
people will be in smaller homes than would otherwise be suitable. And
so too, unless you own your home outright, then it can be difficult to
make that home particularly comfortable, without the risk of
forfeiting the cost of any improvements.



=A0Whilst
the wealthy may have leisure and luxury facillities in their own home,
those same facillities are available and affordable to most people as
public facillities, and the real increase that having such facillities
in the home afford to a person's standard of living is largely one of
perception than reality.

Having facilities in one's home typically means more ability to
partake at the convenience of your own moods, and without spending an
inordinate amount of the day travelling elsewhere.


Sure, wealth has advantages and gives you convenience and flexibility.
But that additional flexibility and convenience provides only a minor
increase in a person's quality of life


It seems to me Cynic that if wealth provides so few advantages for the
wealthy which are of minor benefit only, then why on Earth are they so
keen to retain those advantages, and so keen to maintain disadvantage
for others?

I'm sure I had this one with Ricardo I think the other week, where for
all his claimed view on wealth and poverty, his political
prescriptions and personal behaviour suggested quite the opposite view
to the one claimed.



- and my point is not that a
wealthy person does not have a better quality of life than the average
non-wealthy person, but that the difference is not nealy as great as
the perception.


It really depends on what perception we're talking about, since we
seem to be talking about the perceptions of unidentified third parties
rather than our own.

I would certainly assert that, between more equal and more unequal
*societies as a whole*, the differences in quality of life are quite
significant, although I am quite content to concede to you that
inequality erodes the QoL of the rich as well as the poor - but it
erodes the QoL of the poor moreso, and so in any given society, it is
always better to be rich.



=A0In fact in many cases people *prefer* to
indulge in such activities in a public place than in their own home
because of the increased social interaction of the former.

Presupposing that you want such social interaction - either in
general, or at that instant. Quite regularly, I find myself wanting to
be left alone so that I can dedicate and maintain my mental resources
on some other important task, without having either undesirable
interruption from those in proximity, and without having to maintain
social nicety with those I might encounter.


Sure - and I suspect that you have a home where you can do exactly
that in just as much comfort as Bill Gates can in his home.


I do, but I am reasonably satisfied with the standard of comfort in my
own home, and generally speaking I have the money to rectify any
deficit.



*In many
cases a wealthy person has *less* privacy than the average person,
because they will have various non-family members in the house most of
the day.


I'm not sure that is necessarily the case, nor does it necessarily
follow that the presence of such people is unwanted.



Anyway, the point is that the rich can choose whether they want social
interaction or not - the poor it seems must accept interaction whether
they want it or not.


That divide is in fact probably more on the side of the average person
than most wealthy people. *I would go so far as to say that the
average person is socially more secure than a wealthy person, because
theiy can be reasonably sure that their friends and lovers are with
them because they enjoy their company rather than because they want to
enjoy their money.


Yes you may well be correct, but once again, the rich have the
*unilateral choice* to give up their money, if it becomes an
inordinate burden. The poor do not have the unilateral choice to
become rich. Once again, it seems to me that you're in danger of
arguing in support of redistribution, when it does not seem to be your
general intention to do so.



I have a
fridge containing drinks, tables and chairs in my house, for example,
but I still visit pubs on occassion even though the same activity in
my own home would, if anything, be more comfortable.

Quite, but that for you is a matter of choice. You can choose what you
want to do.


It is a matter of choice for the vast majority of average working
people in the UK.


Indeed, most people can still choose to go the pub, but I'm making a
more general point there are lots of basic choices that are
increasingly enjoyed only in proportion to one's wealth.



*Again, it is the very wealthy who are often trapped
into a situation where they cannot indulge in such things, because
wealth brings with it quite a bit of undesirable baggage.


Why don't they give it up then? That is the question that your line of
argument seems to raise.



Having experienced both camps, it is my belief that in fact there is a
relatively small difference between the actual quality of life of the
rich and the actual quality of life of the average person in the UK.
A person sipping a =A315 cocktail at the poolside of a =A31000 per night
hotel on an exotic tropical island is not gaining significantly more
pleasure from that activity than someone drinking a Barcardi Breezer
at the side of a hotel pool in Spain or Portugal - which is an
activity that the majority of the UK population is able to afford to
do at least once a year.

There is a certain point at which extra money does not buy extra
quality of life, I agree. Personally the most valuable thing to me is
*time* - and perhaps mental energy. It is these things that I too
often find I do not have enough of - indeed, the point about mental
energy is probably why I routinely find myself infuriated by the
workings of the free market which levy a constant high tax on this,
leaving less remaining for those things in life that are actually
interesting and productive.


Extreme wealth would in that case probably be very frustrating for you
unless you refrained from using it (in which case why would you want
it?)


I *don't* want extreme wealth. And it is not that I begrudge material
goods to others who do want them - the point is that economic wealth
is a source of power, and what I do not want is for that excess power
to be used against my interests, and the powerful almost invariably do
use power against the powerless.



*You will find that a great deal of time is taken up *managing*
all the various things that your wealth has brought to you. *You can
mitigate that to an extent by hiring people to manage your money and
assets - but even then you will be required to make a myriad decisions
every week - and also spend time ensuring that your managers are doing
their job satisfactorily and that nobody is taking advantage of you
(which they certainly will if it becomes known that you are not
keeping an eye on all your affairs).


I find it quite funny how you can refer to the wealthy fearing being
"taken advantage of", when taking advantage is what most of the
wealthiest are doing.



Anyway, the point is that for those who cannot afford a foreign
holiday at all, while others can, that causes a disconnect in common
experience and culture. If there is no culturally accepted alternative
to a holiday, then that is likely to cause a degree of both boredom
and stress directly, and its likely to cause a loss of closeness with
friends.


Almost everyone in the UK has been capable of achieving sufficient
income to afford a foreign holiday once a year for some considerable
time.


The point about holidays is that one has the power to afford them *in
addition to* other normal cultural activies, not instead of them. I'm
not sure that "almost everyone" can - and indeed, where the vast
majority can afford something, the deprivation becomes even more harsh
on the minority who cannot, because there are less likely to be
socially acceptable alternatives where only a minority cannot afford
to participate in the mainstream activity.



*Albeit that the present economic downturn might have seen a
temporary blip in that situation for a significant number of people.


I would say so, although I'm not so sure that it's going to be that
temporary.



Shared interests and experience are central to human relationships -
I'm again touching on the point about continuity in human
relationships, and how lacking this often is in today's society.


I believe that the level to which our social welfare state has risen
has played a very large part in causing the decline in social
interaction within the larger community.


No, it is the level to which market forces and inequality have risen,
that have played the largest part in causing that decline.



=A0And having dined fairly often at places
where meal prices are in the 3 figure bracket per person, I can say
that if anything I enjoy a =A310 meal at Weatherspoons just as much if
not more. =A0And I can completely honestly state that I get no more
pleasure or satisfaction from washing my hands in a marble sink with
gold taps than I do in the typical batroom of an average home.

I'm not too bothered whether the sink is marble or ceramic. However, I
do prefer to wash my hands in bathrooms that are clean and
aesthetically pleasing, and I've been in plenty of bathrooms in poor
households that are neither, and at the end of the day the only remedy
usually is to spend money on improving the fittings (money that such
people do not have). Generally, old fittings are both harder to clean
(making people less like to clean them, other things being equal), and
harder to make look clean.


Oh come off it! *Given that poor households are the ones most likely
to have unemployed adults living in them, the only reason for dirty
bathrooms is that the person is too lazy to clean.


I didn't say the unemployed lacked the time to clean them. I said that
they were *harder* to clean, and harder to make *look* clean. In other
words, you will put more effort into cleaning older fittings, and they
will look comparatively dirtier even after having put that effort in -
I've seen plenty of bathrooms that look worse when clean, than mine
does when moderately dirty, and I can only assume that the vast
majority of people (including those who are forced to accept old
fittings) make a similar assessment as I do of bathroom quality.

And whilst you may assume that the unemployed poor by virtue of their
lifestyle have plenty of effort and willpower to spare, the reality is
likely to be quite the opposite, that increased financial stress,
increased consequential demands on physical and psychological effort
across the board with everyday activies, and fewer pleasant everyday
experiences, are likely to leave them sorely depleted of willingness
to exert effort.

I know when I feel stressed, even if I otherwise have a surfeit of
time, I find myself *less* inclined to do unpleasant tasks or
difficult chores, not moreso. I have no reason to think other people
generally behave any differently - nobody I have ever known, has ever
said to me "cor, I feel extremely tired and stressed at the moment, I
think I'll go and do a few hours of unpleasant work". More often, they
either say that they do not want to do anything at all, or else they
say they want to engage in activities that they find recreational -
and indeed that is exactly how I think too.



*Perhaps you should
consider the probability that it is the person's laziness that is
responsible for both the dirty bathroom *and* their poverty


I don't observe that. This seems to be an instance of how all this
imaginary work abounds in the economy, and how, since the recession, a
million people suddenly got lazier (for reasons that are never made
entirely apparent by the people who offer this line of reasoning).



rather
than trying to argue that economic inequality makes a person incapable
of picking up a cloth and applying a bit of elbow-grease.


Of course, I did not say anything so simplistic.



And I can assure you that expensive ornate fittings are often far more
difficult to clean than an ordinary chromed bath tap,


I accept that, but garishly ornate fittings are increasingly less
popular these days - especially in working households where money is
available but time is at a premium.

Personally, I was recently looking at commercial-quality hands-free
taps for my bathroom sink (so as to completely do away with moving
parts and intricate details where muck tends to accumulate and which
are particularly difficult to clean), and next time I'm tempted to
have the tap and pipework wall-mounted instead of sink-mounted - so
that you do not get the unpleasant accumulation of water and scale
around the base of the taps, and wiping the sink clean can be done in
pretty much one swoop of the hand.



and that even
people living on benefits can get sufficient money to make basic
improvements and decorations to their home - in poorer households the
council will even do that for them completely free of charge.


I know several people who have struggled to get repairs done by
private landlords. Even so, it is one thing to throw up some wallpaper
or lash on some cheap paint, another to fit a high-quality kitchen to
a property in which you have no real security of tenure.



I've been to the homes of people who are earning enough to spend on a
restaurant meal once a week and a foreign holiday twice a year, but
are living in a filthy pig sty. *Conversely I have visited OAPs who
are struggling to get by on a state pension, but who have spotless
tidy houses. *Cleanliness in the UK has very little connection with
wealth.


I certainly agree there is no perfect correlation - some people will
always be content with dirt, and others will always try to polish mud
floors, meanwhile the standards of the vast majority of people are
sensitive to the physical and mental effort required to maintain those
standards. It wasn't all about cleanliness anyway - I also mentioned
aesthetic (and unfortunately no amount of cleaning makes a worn green
or brown bathroom suite look acceptable), and I don't know about you
but I really do prefer to use modern, quality bathrooms.



Probably the biggest difference wrt quality of life is the ability of
the wealthy to employ servants to carry out the boring chores that
most people have to put up with - though again, having been in such a
position myself, there are plenty of downsides to having servants that
are not necessarily compensated for by losing the need to clean the
floors or do the washing-up. =A0And these days many onerous tasks are
made a lot easier with affordable machines - heck, choose your clothes
wisely and you don't even have to use an iron all that often.

Indeed, labour-saving appliances are the key to eliminating boring
chores today. Though frankly, I find that just having a sink that is
big enough to fully submerge all items being cleaned (a grill pan
particularly), and store them on the draining board without careful
(i.e. mentally demanding) stacking, often makes the operation seem so
much easier - but again, it means having a sufficiently large kitchen,
and the money to buy a big sink, and the spare mental resources to
analyse that particular problem as I have done, and the power (either
as owner or secure tenant) to fit such a sink and get enough use out
of it to make it worth the investment.


But honestly - just how much would the quality of your life improve if
you had a big sink?


If I was using the sink several times a day for cooker fittings, or
draining a high number of items on the draining board, it would make a
significant difference I think to have a sink area that was of a
commensurate size.



*I find that with most limitations, I only have to
figure out a solution once, and then make trivial changes to my
work-habits to accomodate it with little or no disadvatage. *And if
such a change would, for you, make a significant improvement to the
quality of your life, I have little doubt that you would find a way to
get yourself a bigger sink (or a smaller grill pan!)


I'm not quite sure I understand your point.
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Cynic wrote:
On Mon, 13 Feb 2012 13:10:01 -0800 (PST), Ste
wrote:

My other reply went off on a different tack, but I've just realised
what you were responding to. I didn't say the market economy was
soaking up people's wages. I said it's soaking up their *labour
power*. In other words, women's labour is increasingly sold on the
market, rather than bartered domestically.


I don't see how you can blame the "market economy" for that. IIUC it
all began when the *government* persuaded women to go out to work in
order to replace the male labour force that the government had just
removed from the labour market in order to fight its war.

Prior to that, the labour market was perfectly happy to use a
predominately male labour force, and women were happy to stay at home.
The market was *forced* to adapt to an increasingly female workforce
after the government removed a sizable chunk of the men - the jobs
obviously had to be filled or they would not get done. So when the
war ended and the men were once again available, they returned to find
a labour market that was pretty full and consequently soon became
completely saturated. Added to which the market was itself shrinking
thanks to a combination of increasing automation and the cessation of
military based manufacturing.


Christ on a bike but you don't half talk ****e. You and you brain damaged
****ing mate there. Employment does not create unemployment, relationships
as a partnership of equals does not destroy families.


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On Tue, 14 Feb 2012 13:44:27 -0800 (PST), Ste
wrote:

Only in the case of supporting a fairly severely disabled relative
would one person need to stay at home. =A0If the person needed support
simply because they were unemployed, there is no reason why anyone
would have to give up their job. =A0The additional expense in supporting
such a family member is little more than the cost of food for that
person.


Perhaps I was confused (and I'm not inclined to go back and check),
but I thought you were advocating full liability for "care", not just
financial liability for the unemployed. How exactly would your
proposal work where most or all family members are out of work?


My proposal was that the state would only give aid (of any sort) to
people who *don't* have any relatives capable of supporting them, and
that people become obliged by law to provide support for family
members. Obviously it would need a fair number of details sorting
out, but that was the bare bones of the proposal. Basically it
extends the responsibility that we have for the wellbeing of our minor
children to a larger family circle.

in addition, the premise is that were such a scheme adopted, the state
would save money and would lower taxes, thus giving every working
family more disposable income - hopefully sufficient to allow one
partner to be able to give up employment.


Lol. Do you really think that the savings would be so manifest?


It would only happen if a substantial tax decrease was specifically
made part of the new proposal - which it would have to be in order to
stand any chance of being accepted by the voters.

It is easy to talk of what they have in common. Less easy, but
actually more interesting and relevant, to talk of what they do not
have in common.


What do you need that you do not have?


What I need depends largely on what other people have.


That is true, but does not answer my question. What, right now, do
rich people have that you do not have that causes you to feel that
your general quality of life is significantly worse than theirs?

There are very few people above the age of 25 in the UK who do not
have their own home (rented or mortgaged).


I suspect the taxpayer will actually be paying, in part or whole, for
quite a few of those.


And? We are talking about the relative quality of life between rich
and poor, so the question of who pays for what is irrelevant. In the
case of wealthy businessmen, their customers are no doubt paying for
their home - and if their main customer is the government, that means
that the taxpayer is effectively paying for their home as well. So
what?

=A0The cost of that home has
nothing to do with how comfortable it is.


Of course it does. If homes are costly, then by and large poorer
people will be in smaller homes than would otherwise be suitable. And
so too, unless you own your home outright, then it can be difficult to
make that home particularly comfortable, without the risk of
forfeiting the cost of any improvements.


The comfort of a home does not improve significantly with its size, so
long as it is big enough not to be overcrowded. My degree of comfort
whilst watching TV, lying in bed or sat at my computer is unconnected
with how many rooms the house has or how big its garden is. Comfort
largely consists of having comfortable furniture and a comfortable
temperature in the home. I also see no problem with buying and doing
things that will improve my everyday comfort and convenience in a
rented property (and have frequently done so) - and it is often
possible to make all necessary improvements in a way that does *not*
mean they are forfeit if and when you move. It seems stupid to me to
put up with discomfort just because making an improvement might end up
benefitting the landlord. The only question for me is whether the
increase to my comfort or convenience is worth the money and/or
effort. You might also consider that even if you own your own house,
very little of the money you spend on it will end up increasing the
selling price significantly, so that money is equally forfeit when you
move out. In fact, a homeowner must spend quite a lot just to
*maintain* the value of the house, and that expense is something that
a person renting a property does not incur, so it's very much swings
and roundabouts.

Sure, wealth has advantages and gives you convenience and flexibility.
But that additional flexibility and convenience provides only a minor
increase in a person's quality of life


It seems to me Cynic that if wealth provides so few advantages for the
wealthy which are of minor benefit only, then why on Earth are they so
keen to retain those advantages, and so keen to maintain disadvantage
for others?


I have not come across any wealthy people who are "keen to maintain a
disadvantage to others". Many (but not all) people are indeed keen to
become wealthy themselves - mainly due to the *perceived* advantages.
If they achieve that goal, they often find that the reality of the
situation is not nearly as great as they imagined (although there are
obviously some real advantages), and in many, many cases the wealth
brings far more disadvantages. Achieving "fame and fortune" has ended
up killing quite a few people at a young age by one means or another.

- and my point is not that a
wealthy person does not have a better quality of life than the average
non-wealthy person, but that the difference is not nealy as great as
the perception.


It really depends on what perception we're talking about, since we
seem to be talking about the perceptions of unidentified third parties
rather than our own.


I think your own perception affords wealth rather more advantages than
the reality. I have experienced both poverty and moderate wealth, and
whilst I can certainly state that I prefer wealth to poverty, it is
also true that my happiness and quality of life have not been
associated in any way with my bank balance. Indeed, the most content
and happiest period of my life so far was during a period when I
didn't even have a bank account.

I would certainly assert that, between more equal and more unequal
*societies as a whole*, the differences in quality of life are quite
significant, although I am quite content to concede to you that
inequality erodes the QoL of the rich as well as the poor - but it
erodes the QoL of the poor moreso, and so in any given society, it is
always better to be rich.


Again, apart from *extreme* poverty and *extreme* wealth, the
difference in QoL is, I mainatain, more a product of your perception
than reality.

Sure - and I suspect that you have a home where you can do exactly
that in just as much comfort as Bill Gates can in his home.


I do, but I am reasonably satisfied with the standard of comfort in my
own home, and generally speaking I have the money to rectify any
deficit.


Does that mean that you regard yourself as a member of the "rich"
class? In the UK, the vast majority of people have the ability to
rectify any significant deficit to their comfort.

=A0In many
cases a wealthy person has *less* privacy than the average person,
because they will have various non-family members in the house most of
the day.


I'm not sure that is necessarily the case, nor does it necessarily
follow that the presence of such people is unwanted.


Of course it is not *necessarily* the case, but people who live in
large homes *need* to employ staff for everyday cleaning and
maintainance, for example. The presence is obviously not unwanted in
one sense (they were hired to do a job), but you do not have privacy
whilst they are in your house. You probably wouldn't(for example) pop
to the kitchen dressed only in underclothes or less when there is the
probability of passing a cleaning lady on the way.

Anyway, the point is that the rich can choose whether they want social
interaction or not - the poor it seems must accept interaction whether
they want it or not.


That divide is in fact probably more on the side of the average person
than most wealthy people. =A0I would go so far as to say that the
average person is socially more secure than a wealthy person, because
theiy can be reasonably sure that their friends and lovers are with
them because they enjoy their company rather than because they want to
enjoy their money.


Yes you may well be correct, but once again, the rich have the
*unilateral choice* to give up their money, if it becomes an
inordinate burden. The poor do not have the unilateral choice to
become rich. Once again, it seems to me that you're in danger of
arguing in support of redistribution, when it does not seem to be your
general intention to do so.


To say that a wealthy person could simply get rid of their money if
they don't like the disadvantages it brings is as simplistic as
arguing that a fat person could simply stop eating so much if they
don't like being overweight, or that a poor person could simply get a
job if they don't like being poor. Yes, it is possible, but it is far
from easy.

People born into wealth are also born into a culture that is different
to the culture of average or poor people, and so getting rid of money
would entail a change of the person's cultural identity.

Wealth also carries quite a few responsibilities. A typical wealthy
person will be supporting several families by employing members of
those families, and will also have formed various social attachments
that would not (for very real social reasons) be possible without
having money. Therfore giving up wealth will mean breaking off strong
social attachments as well as harming a few other people.

Whilst a person who aquires wealth suddenly - such as in an
inheritance or lottery win would *at that time* be perfectly able to
give the money away, almost all people will at that stage perceive it
as being of great benefit to them - and by the time they discover that
money also has downsides they will have formed the abovementioned
bonds.

Also, in our culture money=success and poverty=failure, and so there
is the person's self-esteem at stake as well. added to which many
wealthy people have become obsessed with making money to the point of
addiction, and consequently devote all their time to the task - which
ends up destroying their family and social life and means that they do
not actually take the time to relax and *enjoy* the extensive fruits
of their labours.

It is a matter of choice for the vast majority of average working
people in the UK.


Indeed, most people can still choose to go the pub, but I'm making a
more general point there are lots of basic choices that are
increasingly enjoyed only in proportion to one's wealth.


We are discussing the situation in the UK. I am therefore not
considering people who are so poor that they have to sleep on the
streets and cannot afford to eat. I am also not including the very
top extremes of wealth, such as people who can afford to buy a
tropical island and set up their own society and live completely apart
from the rest of the World.

=A0Again, it is the very wealthy who are often trapped
into a situation where they cannot indulge in such things, because
wealth brings with it quite a bit of undesirable baggage.


Why don't they give it up then? That is the question that your line of
argument seems to raise.


See above. On balance most people will find being wealthy preferable
to being economically average, and I do not pretend otherwise. my
point is only tyhat the difference is a heck of a lot less than most
people's perception, and there are downsides involved that most people
either do not consider at all, or do not appreciate how much of a
downside it will end up being.

Extreme wealth would in that case probably be very frustrating for you
unless you refrained from using it (in which case why would you want
it?)


I *don't* want extreme wealth. And it is not that I begrudge material
goods to others who do want them - the point is that economic wealth
is a source of power, and what I do not want is for that excess power
to be used against my interests, and the powerful almost invariably do
use power against the powerless.


Very few wealthy individuals exert power over the general population
to any extent whatsoever. If power is what you fear, then direct your
attack toward governments that have far more power, and moreover wield
it routinely against the general population.

=A0You will find that a great deal of time is taken up *managing*
all the various things that your wealth has brought to you. =A0You can
mitigate that to an extent by hiring people to manage your money and
assets - but even then you will be required to make a myriad decisions
every week - and also spend time ensuring that your managers are doing
their job satisfactorily and that nobody is taking advantage of you
(which they certainly will if it becomes known that you are not
keeping an eye on all your affairs).


I find it quite funny how you can refer to the wealthy fearing being
"taken advantage of", when taking advantage is what most of the
wealthiest are doing.


You are very much mistaken if you believe that it is all a one-way
street. The more you have (or are perceived to have), the more people
there will be trying to take it from you. There will also be people
trying to deliberately harm you because of jealousy. If you owned a
car worth over Ł100K, you would soon learn to be very fearful of
parking it in the average public place because of the very high
probability that it would suffer malicious vandalism.

Almost everyone in the UK has been capable of achieving sufficient
income to afford a foreign holiday once a year for some considerable
time.


The point about holidays is that one has the power to afford them *in
addition to* other normal cultural activies, not instead of them. I'm
not sure that "almost everyone" can - and indeed, where the vast
majority can afford something, the deprivation becomes even more harsh
on the minority who cannot, because there are less likely to be
socially acceptable alternatives where only a minority cannot afford
to participate in the mainstream activity.


As said, it is not all that helpful to discuss the small minority of
people at the extreme ends of the financial spectrum - they are
special cases that require special treatment. From what I have
experienced in the UK, even the average unemployed council estate
citizen has managed to find the means to get to Spain for a week or so
each year without impacting their ability to have a pint at the pub a
couple of times a week for the rest of the year. It is more likely to
be the businessman who cannot spare the time from his business to take
a decent holiday.

=A0Albeit that the present economic downturn might have seen a
temporary blip in that situation for a significant number of people.


I would say so, although I'm not so sure that it's going to be that
temporary.


We may indeed be at the start of a general lower standard of living
ratherr than a temporary hiccough. Which means a depression. If
inflation and our present high taxation continues into a depression
era, we will end up with riots and civil unrest that will force a
radical change. The government will have to re-learn that the
population must be given their bread and circuses - and both
commodities consist of far more than they once used to.

I believe that the level to which our social welfare state has risen
has played a very large part in causing the decline in social
interaction within the larger community.


No, it is the level to which market forces and inequality have risen,
that have played the largest part in causing that decline.


We will have to agree to disagree on that point. For me, the fact
that the government is taking my hard-earned money and giving it to
the 17 year old single mother next door gives me far more reason to
decide she doesn't need any further help from myself than the fact
that the CEO of Tesco is earning a 7 figure income. YMMV.

Oh come off it! =A0Given that poor households are the ones most likely
to have unemployed adults living in them, the only reason for dirty
bathrooms is that the person is too lazy to clean.


I didn't say the unemployed lacked the time to clean them. I said that
they were *harder* to clean, and harder to make *look* clean. In other
words, you will put more effort into cleaning older fittings, and they
will look comparatively dirtier even after having put that effort in -
I've seen plenty of bathrooms that look worse when clean, than mine
does when moderately dirty, and I can only assume that the vast
majority of people (including those who are forced to accept old
fittings) make a similar assessment as I do of bathroom quality.


Most rooms can be made to look nice if the effort is made without
needing to spend any significant amount of money.

And whilst you may assume that the unemployed poor by virtue of their
lifestyle have plenty of effort and willpower to spare, the reality is
likely to be quite the opposite, that increased financial stress,
increased consequential demands on physical and psychological effort
across the board with everyday activies, and fewer pleasant everyday
experiences, are likely to leave them sorely depleted of willingness
to exert effort.


I see. Which is a long-winded way of saying that they are lazy.

I know when I feel stressed, even if I otherwise have a surfeit of
time, I find myself *less* inclined to do unpleasant tasks or
difficult chores, not moreso.


There are plenty of things that I feel "disinclined" to do, but
nevertheless I still do them. Its how people who are *not* lazy
behave.

I have no reason to think other people
generally behave any differently - nobody I have ever known, has ever
said to me "cor, I feel extremely tired and stressed at the moment, I
think I'll go and do a few hours of unpleasant work". More often, they
either say that they do not want to do anything at all, or else they
say they want to engage in activities that they find recreational -
and indeed that is exactly how I think too.


So you go and watch the TV and leave the dirty dishes stacked in the
sink for yet another day. I know. It's called "laziness".

=A0Perhaps you should
consider the probability that it is the person's laziness that is
responsible for both the dirty bathroom *and* their poverty


I don't observe that. This seems to be an instance of how all this
imaginary work abounds in the economy, and how, since the recession, a
million people suddenly got lazier (for reasons that are never made
entirely apparent by the people who offer this line of reasoning).


Laziness might not be the reason they are out of work, but it *is* the
reason that they have a dirty bathroom - and if the bathroom indicates
that they are lazy then laziness *might* be the reason for the lack of
a job as well.

And I can assure you that expensive ornate fittings are often far more
difficult to clean than an ordinary chromed bath tap,


I accept that, but garishly ornate fittings are increasingly less
popular these days - especially in working households where money is
available but time is at a premium.


I did not state that they were prevalent in such places - I was
refuting the statement that cheap fittings are more difficult to clean
than expensive fittings.

Personally, I was recently looking at commercial-quality hands-free
taps for my bathroom sink (so as to completely do away with moving
parts and intricate details where muck tends to accumulate and which
are particularly difficult to clean), and next time I'm tempted to
have the tap and pipework wall-mounted instead of sink-mounted - so
that you do not get the unpleasant accumulation of water and scale
around the base of the taps, and wiping the sink clean can be done in
pretty much one swoop of the hand.


If you would really like such taps but cannot reasonably save the
money to buy them from a showroom, there are several places where you
could try to find perfectly good second-hand products. Then borrow
some tools and fit them yourself.

and that even
people living on benefits can get sufficient money to make basic
improvements and decorations to their home - in poorer households the
council will even do that for them completely free of charge.


I know several people who have struggled to get repairs done by
private landlords. Even so, it is one thing to throw up some wallpaper
or lash on some cheap paint, another to fit a high-quality kitchen to
a property in which you have no real security of tenure.


A kitchen is either fit for purpose or it is not. If not, the
landlord has a duty to fix it. It would appear that you have fallen
victim to the sort of marketing that you claim to abhor. There is no
reason whatsoever why a traditional kitchen should be more difficult
to work in than a modern "fitted" kitchen (which seem to be comprised
of overpriced and badly made glitzy chipboard and plastic units that
damage easily).

What, exactly did you have in mind when speaking of a "high quality"
kitchen? The kitchen appliances are quite correctly the tenant's
responsibility - and remain the tenant's property.

I've been to the homes of people who are earning enough to spend on a
restaurant meal once a week and a foreign holiday twice a year, but
are living in a filthy pig sty. =A0Conversely I have visited OAPs who
are struggling to get by on a state pension, but who have spotless
tidy houses. =A0Cleanliness in the UK has very little connection with
wealth.


I certainly agree there is no perfect correlation - some people will
always be content with dirt, and others will always try to polish mud
floors, meanwhile the standards of the vast majority of people are
sensitive to the physical and mental effort required to maintain those
standards. It wasn't all about cleanliness anyway - I also mentioned
aesthetic (and unfortunately no amount of cleaning makes a worn green
or brown bathroom suite look acceptable), and I don't know about you
but I really do prefer to use modern, quality bathrooms.


TBH the appearance of a functional room such as a bathroom is of very
little concern whatsoever, though a pleasant appearance is better than
a shoddy appearance. It is its functionality that affects the quality
of life however, and just about every bathroom in the UK has similar
functionality. If the difference was between having a hot shower
available and having a galvanised cold water bath in the living room
rather I would agree that it is a difference that would affect quality
of life. While I very much prefer the bathroom in the house I am
currently renting (which is big enough to hold a dance) to the house I
was renting last year (which was small and cramped), it is not
something that I could say affects my quality of life to any extent.
A shower takes just as long and gets me just as clean in both, and I
can't say that using the toilet is a noticeably different experience.

There are plenty of ways to make a shabby room look better that does
not involve spending a great deal of money. Just take a wander around
your local pound shops and charity shops to get lots of ideas of
things that can be put on walls and floors to cover up wear and tear
and make the room look brighter.

But honestly - just how much would the quality of your life improve if
you had a big sink?


If I was using the sink several times a day for cooker fittings, or
draining a high number of items on the draining board, it would make a
significant difference I think to have a sink area that was of a
commensurate size.


So *if* you were doing those things I would expect you to find a
practical solution. I doubt it would take mne a great deal of thought
to come up with an idea if I were actually in such a position.

=A0I find that with most limitations, I only have to
figure out a solution once, and then make trivial changes to my
work-habits to accomodate it with little or no disadvatage. =A0And if
such a change would, for you, make a significant improvement to the
quality of your life, I have little doubt that you would find a way to
get yourself a bigger sink (or a smaller grill pan!)


I'm not quite sure I understand your point.


My point is that the things that *do* make a significant difference to
your quality of life are capable of being fixed by even poor people,
with only a moderate amount of thought and effort.

--
Cynic


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On Feb 15, 6:18*pm, (Cynic) wrote:
On Tue, 14 Feb 2012 13:44:27 -0800 (PST), Ste
wrote:

Only in the case of supporting a fairly severely disabled relative
would one person need to stay at home. =A0If the person needed support
simply because they were unemployed, there is no reason why anyone
would have to give up their job. =A0The additional expense in supporting
such a family member is little more than the cost of food for that
person.


Perhaps I was confused (and I'm not inclined to go back and check),
but I thought you were advocating full liability for "care", not just
financial liability for the unemployed. How exactly would your
proposal work where most or all family members are out of work?


My proposal was that the state would only give aid (of any sort) to
people who *don't* have any relatives capable of supporting them, and
that people become obliged by law to provide support for family
members.


So I interpreted your position correctly the first time around! I
think it is absurd from any reasonable political perspective - quite
out of kilter with your usual standard of reasoning.



Obviously it would need a fair number of details sorting
out, but that was the bare bones of the proposal. *Basically it
extends the responsibility that we have for the wellbeing of our minor
children to a larger family circle.


Even that responsibility does not exist in practice, except at the
will of the parents (by which I mean their choice to continue caring
for a child they have already delivered, as well as their choice over
whether to conceive a child at all).



in addition, the premise is that were such a scheme adopted, the state
would save money and would lower taxes, thus giving every working
family more disposable income - hopefully sufficient to allow one
partner to be able to give up employment.

Lol. Do you really think that the savings would be so manifest?


It would only happen if a substantial tax decrease was specifically
made part of the new proposal - which it would have to be in order to
stand any chance of being accepted by the voters.


As I've said to you before Cynic, all this combination of proposals
does is erode the redistributive mechanisms in society. As with the
poll tax, lots of people supported it, until they suddenly saw how
much they were personally going to pay, once the inequality in the
initial market distribution of incomes was left completely unfettered
by redistributive taxation.



It is easy to talk of what they have in common. Less easy, but
actually more interesting and relevant, to talk of what they do not
have in common.
What do you need that you do not have?

What I need depends largely on what other people have.


That is true, but does not answer my question. What, right now, do
rich people have that you do not have that causes you to feel that
your general quality of life is significantly worse than theirs?


I'm not currently in dire want of anything that the rich have. Most of
the things that I do want and which would benefit me, such as bridling
or abolition of the market mechanism, would benefit the rich also to a
degree (but also incidentally harm them by the erosion of the benefits
they derive from the market generally). That is, from a purely
personal point of view, it's not that I want something from them that
they have - it's that I want something for everybody including myself,
that will incidentally involve the rich becoming poorer.

Take the example of theft crimes. When I was in Cyprus, I left a water
pump and several tools out in the street (bit of a long story). When I
came back from the pub later, nothing had moved, and I was quite
surprised to find that they had not been taken - in Britain, you'd
expect to find similar things taken away in short order, either by
unruly kids or actual thieves. I'd benefit from a reduction in crime
in Britain, and a reduction in the fear of it and the preventative
measures that I have to constantly take against it (so much so that I
don't even think about routine behaviours like always locking cars and
not leaving things on display in them, and certainly not leaving tools
in the street). The rich would also benefit from such a reduction in
crime. But the solution would inevitably involve a reallocation of
wealth from the status quo, and the rich would lose *far* more to that
reallocation, than they currently lose to crime - all the money they
spend on security systems, bodyguards, bulletproof cars, ransoms,
etc., all pale into significance compared to their collective loss
from political redistribution.



There are very few people above the age of 25 in the UK who do not
have their own home (rented or mortgaged).

I suspect the taxpayer will actually be paying, in part or whole, for
quite a few of those.


And? *We are talking about the relative quality of life between rich
and poor, so the question of who pays for what is irrelevant.


Yes, and since your proposal is to *reduce* tax, it is going to have
an impact on relative quality of life surely.



*In the
case of wealthy businessmen, their customers are no doubt paying for
their home - and if their main customer is the government, that means
that the taxpayer is effectively paying for their home as well. *So
what?


The point is that tax is redistributive. Whenever any individual
succeeds in gaining a higher share of overall economic production via
the market mechanism, the taxation mechanism then disgorges that gain
somewhat. At the lower end, whenever any individual fails to achieve a
sufficient share of overall economic production via the market
mechanism, the 'taxation-credit' mechanism then steps in to supplement
that income. By the state taking more in from the rich than it pays
out to them, and correspondingly by paying more out to the poor than
it takes in from them, individual incomes are brought more into line
with the economic average.



=A0The cost of that home has
nothing to do with how comfortable it is.

Of course it does. If homes are costly, then by and large poorer
people will be in smaller homes than would otherwise be suitable. And
so too, unless you own your home outright, then it can be difficult to
make that home particularly comfortable, without the risk of
forfeiting the cost of any improvements.


The comfort of a home does not improve significantly with its size, so
long as it is big enough not to be overcrowded. *My degree of comfort
whilst watching TV, lying in bed or sat at my computer is unconnected
with how many rooms the house has or how big its garden is. *Comfort
largely consists of having comfortable furniture and a comfortable
temperature in the home. *I also see no problem with buying and doing
things that will improve my everyday comfort and convenience in a
rented property (and have frequently done so) - and it is often
possible to make all necessary improvements in a way that does *not*
mean they are forfeit if and when you move. *It seems stupid to me to
put up with discomfort just because making an improvement might end up
benefitting the landlord. *The only question for me is whether the
increase to my comfort or convenience is worth the money and/or
effort. *You might also consider that even if you own your own house,
very little of the money you spend on it will end up increasing the
selling price significantly, so that money is equally forfeit when you
move out. *In fact, a homeowner must spend quite a lot just to
*maintain* the value of the house, and that expense is something that
a person renting a property does not incur, so it's very much swings
and roundabouts.


I don't disagree with any of what you say, I just think you miss the
point I was making, that the sorts of people I'm talking about don't
have the sort of income where they can justify improving their
"everyday comfort" if that might only erode their bargaining power
further versus their landlord (by sinking money into the property).
Admittedly the range of people I have in mind, suffer basically from
lack of fittings, not square footage. You and I do not incur financial
discomfort in risking "benefitting the landlord", whereas the sorts of
people I'm thinking about would incur financial discomfort and cannot
afford to subsidise landlords.



Sure, wealth has advantages and gives you convenience and flexibility.
But that additional flexibility and convenience provides only a minor
increase in a person's quality of life

It seems to me Cynic that if wealth provides so few advantages for the
wealthy which are of minor benefit only, then why on Earth are they so
keen to retain those advantages, and so keen to maintain disadvantage
for others?


I have not come across any wealthy people who are "keen to maintain a
disadvantage to others".


There must be half a dozen such people on this group who talk about
the "feckless poor" and "penalising success", etc.



*Many (but not all) people are indeed keen to
become wealthy themselves - mainly due to the *perceived* advantages.
If they achieve that goal, they often find that the reality of the
situation is not nearly as great as they imagined (although there are
obviously some real advantages), and in many, many cases the wealth
brings far more disadvantages. *Achieving "fame and fortune" has ended
up killing quite a few people at a young age by one means or another.


But you haven't answered the question. If you are so blase about
wealth (and again I don't entirely disagree with your account of a
wealthy lifestyle), why don't you support more redistribution, since
even by your own account the rich will forfeit little, the desperate
poor will be silenced, and in the meantime there ought to be a social
and economic surplus created for everybody by the reduction in social
tension.



- and my point is not that a
wealthy person does not have a better quality of life than the average
non-wealthy person, but that the difference is not nealy as great as
the perception.

It really depends on what perception we're talking about, since we
seem to be talking about the perceptions of unidentified third parties
rather than our own.


I think your own perception affords wealth rather more advantages than
the reality. *I have experienced both poverty and moderate wealth, and
whilst I can certainly state that I prefer wealth to poverty, it is
also true that my happiness and quality of life have not been
associated in any way with my bank balance.


I don't even believe you when you say there is no association "in any
way". I think you're describing the perfectly legitimate position that
additional tens or hundreds of thousands don't make much positive
difference once you've got a reasonable basic amount by prevailing
social standards, and in fact it can become hard and displeasurable
work just to achieve such inflated income - I agree. Where I think you
go wrong, and where I question what sort of poverty you could possibly
have observed or experienced, is where you assert that having
appreciably less than prevailing social standards also has no impact.

So for example, if you couldn't afford a bus ticket, clean clothes, a
restaurant meal, a pint in the pub, or anything else of the sort for
months or years on end, you're alleging that this would have no impact
"in any way" on your happiness or quality of life.



*Indeed, the most content
and happiest period of my life so far was during a period when I
didn't even have a bank account.


I know, I hear the Robinson Crusoe anecdote at every opportunity, and
there is still no satisfactory explanation within your own terms, for
why you chose a life of comparatively unhappy wealthiness instead, or
why you tend to promote a mode of social organisation that is
completely at odds with the lifestyle you claim to have enjoyed so
much.



I would certainly assert that, between more equal and more unequal
*societies as a whole*, the differences in quality of life are quite
significant, although I am quite content to concede to you that
inequality erodes the QoL of the rich as well as the poor - but it
erodes the QoL of the poor moreso, and so in any given society, it is
always better to be rich.


Again, apart from *extreme* poverty and *extreme* wealth, the
difference in QoL is, I mainatain, more a product of your perception
than reality.


But the extremes *are* what we are talking about. The real difference
between a Ł30k-a-year man and a Ł100k-a-year man is not that great,
whereas the difference between a Ł3k-a-year man (i.e. long-term dole)
and a Ł30k-a-year man is astronomical - in the latter case, there will
be little if any common culture, outlook, or everyday experience of
life, especially if the effects have been experienced over several
generations.

We could of course go on to talk about the established super-rich on
the opposite end of the scale, who will have had no real concern in
their entire lives about finances or work, but I don't think I need to
labour over describing that side of the coin.



Sure - and I suspect that you have a home where you can do exactly
that in just as much comfort as Bill Gates can in his home.

I do, but I am reasonably satisfied with the standard of comfort in my
own home, and generally speaking I have the money to rectify any
deficit.


Does that mean that you regard yourself as a member of the "rich"
class? *In the UK, the vast majority of people have the ability to
rectify any significant deficit to their comfort.


I'm certainly not rich. I'm not saying 'the majority' of people suffer
with the material comfort in their home. Speaking of the majority, I'd
be more inclined to focus on their working conditions as being
something that is increasingly adverse.



=A0In many
cases a wealthy person has *less* privacy than the average person,
because they will have various non-family members in the house most of
the day.

I'm not sure that is necessarily the case, nor does it necessarily
follow that the presence of such people is unwanted.


Of course it is not *necessarily* the case, but people who live in
large homes *need* to employ staff for everyday cleaning and
maintainance, for example.


Oh come on! I honestly thought you meant guests that they were
required to entertain. It's hardly a significant mental toll to have
your own staff tending to the house - it's like saying the maids in a
hotel are terribly bothersome.



*The presence is obviously not unwanted in
one sense (they were hired to do a job), but you do not have privacy
whilst they are in your house. *You probably wouldn't(for example) pop
to the kitchen dressed only in underclothes or less when there is the
probability of passing a cleaning lady on the way.


No, you'd surely tell the butler to do so. Anyway, the routine of
putting a dressing gown on is something that most of us do as a matter
of course anyway. You really haven't made out your case that the need
to be polite to friends, acquaintances, and miscellaneous strangers in
public places, is akin to having paid house staff discreetly moving
around completing their tasks.



Anyway, the point is that the rich can choose whether they want social
interaction or not - the poor it seems must accept interaction whether
they want it or not.
That divide is in fact probably more on the side of the average person
than most wealthy people. =A0I would go so far as to say that the
average person is socially more secure than a wealthy person, because
theiy can be reasonably sure that their friends and lovers are with
them because they enjoy their company rather than because they want to
enjoy their money.

Yes you may well be correct, but once again, the rich have the
*unilateral choice* to give up their money, if it becomes an
inordinate burden. The poor do not have the unilateral choice to
become rich. Once again, it seems to me that you're in danger of
arguing in support of redistribution, when it does not seem to be your
general intention to do so.


To say that a wealthy person could simply get rid of their money if
they don't like the disadvantages it brings is as simplistic as
arguing that a fat person could simply stop eating so much if they
don't like being overweight, or that a poor person could simply get a
job if they don't like being poor. *Yes, it is possible, but it is far
from easy.


Yes, because the fat person wants food more than they want thin, and
it's pointless the fat (or their sympathisers) telling us about how
food is so overrated and that it really would be better to be
starving, as they guzzle down another plate of food. It's not that I
think it is 'easy' for the rich to give up wealth - my contention with
you is that you are in danger of denying that the rich are even
addicted to wealth in the first place, quite apart from arguing how
difficult it might be to undergo withdrawal.



People born into wealth are also born into a culture that is different
to the culture of average or poor people, and so getting rid of money
would entail a change of the person's cultural identity.


I accept culture would have to change.



Wealth also carries quite a few responsibilities. *A typical wealthy
person will be supporting several families by employing members of
those families, and will also have formed various social attachments
that would not (for very real social reasons) be possible without
having money. *Therfore giving up wealth will mean breaking off strong
social attachments as well as harming a few other people.


This only really applies to individuals. If the rich all take a step
down at once, it's unlikely that any strong attachments will be
suddenly made impossible.



Whilst a person who aquires wealth suddenly - such as in an
inheritance or lottery win would *at that time* be perfectly able to
give the money away, almost all people will at that stage perceive it
as being of great benefit to them - and by the time they discover that
money also has downsides they will have formed the abovementioned
bonds.

Also, in our culture money=success and poverty=failure, and so there
is the person's self-esteem at stake as well.


It doesn't help when that same person is a promoter of that very idea.
I don't have much sympathy for people who claim to be enchained by the
very social restraints that they advocate.




*added to which many
wealthy people have become obsessed with making money to the point of
addiction, and consequently devote all their time to the task - which
ends up destroying their family and social life and means that they do
not actually take the time to relax and *enjoy* the extensive fruits
of their labours.


So we should step in and help them?



It is a matter of choice for the vast majority of average working
people in the UK.

Indeed, most people can still choose to go the pub, but I'm making a
more general point there are lots of basic choices that are
increasingly enjoyed only in proportion to one's wealth.


We are discussing the situation in the UK.


So was I.



*I am therefore not
considering people who are so poor that they have to sleep on the
streets and cannot afford to eat. *I am also not including the very
top extremes of wealth, such as people who can afford to buy a
tropical island and set up their own society and live completely apart
from the rest of the World.


Neither was I. To give one example of what I was thinking about in the
UK, most people on the dole don't have a car, in a society that
depends heavily on cars for work and leisure.



=A0Again, it is the very wealthy who are often trapped
into a situation where they cannot indulge in such things, because
wealth brings with it quite a bit of undesirable baggage.

Why don't they give it up then? That is the question that your line of
argument seems to raise.


See above. *On balance most people will find being wealthy preferable
to being economically average, and I do not pretend otherwise.


I think you've tried your best to pretend otherwise henceforth.



*my
point is only tyhat the difference is a heck of a lot less than most
people's perception, and there are downsides involved that most people
either do not consider at all, or do not appreciate how much of a
downside it will end up being.


Which is perfectly true, but I think you've overstated your case,
since in your final analysis you conceded that people prefer wealth,
and that was my position to start with (and nor was my position so
extreme as to suggest that being wealthy was all milk and honey).
Frankly, I think you've gone down the same dead-end route that Ricardo
or JNugent (or one of the other crackers) did the other week, in
suggesting that my views arise from some desire on my part to join the
ranks of the rich, when on every occasion I can't be clearer that my
desire is not a change of my position within this society, but a
change in the system itself that would deliver benefits for everybody,
though the cost of that change to the present rich would be the loss
of their relative social and economic position.



Extreme wealth would in that case probably be very frustrating for you
unless you refrained from using it (in which case why would you want
it?)

I *don't* want extreme wealth. And it is not that I begrudge material
goods to others who do want them - the point is that economic wealth
is a source of power, and what I do not want is for that excess power
to be used against my interests, and the powerful almost invariably do
use power against the powerless.


Very few wealthy individuals exert power over the general population
to any extent whatsoever.


I didn't say they did. The wealthy as a class do.



*If power is what you fear, then direct your
attack toward governments that have far more power, and moreover wield
it routinely against the general population.


I do! I have similar views to you on the police, the security
services, the judges, the moral backbone of politicians, etc.



=A0You will find that a great deal of time is taken up *managing*
all the various things that your wealth has brought to you. =A0You can
mitigate that to an extent by hiring people to manage your money and
assets - but even then you will be required to make a myriad decisions
every week - and also spend time ensuring that your managers are doing
their job satisfactorily and that nobody is taking advantage of you
(which they certainly will if it becomes known that you are not
keeping an eye on all your affairs).

I find it quite funny how you can refer to the wealthy fearing being
"taken advantage of", when taking advantage is what most of the
wealthiest are doing.


You are very much mistaken if you believe that it is all a one-way
street.


It doesn't have to be "all a one-way street". It is just relatively
more streets toward their direction than away.



*The more you have (or are perceived to have), the more people
there will be trying to take it from you. *There will also be people
trying to deliberately harm you because of jealousy. *If you owned a
car worth over Ł100K, you would soon learn to be very fearful of
parking it in the average public place because of the very high
probability that it would suffer malicious vandalism.


Quite, but we're back to square one again, why do the wealthy spend
all their time getting such a large slice of the pie in the first
place, if it only creates conflict as others try to recoup it?



Almost everyone in the UK has been capable of achieving sufficient
income to afford a foreign holiday once a year for some considerable
time.

The point about holidays is that one has the power to afford them *in
addition to* other normal cultural activies, not instead of them. I'm
not sure that "almost everyone" can - and indeed, where the vast
majority can afford something, the deprivation becomes even more harsh
on the minority who cannot, because there are less likely to be
socially acceptable alternatives where only a minority cannot afford
to participate in the mainstream activity.


As said, it is not all that helpful to discuss the small minority of
people at the extreme ends of the financial spectrum - they are
special cases that require special treatment. *From what I have
experienced in the UK, even the average unemployed council estate
citizen has managed to find the means to get to Spain for a week or so
each year without impacting their ability to have a pint at the pub a
couple of times a week for the rest of the year. *It is more likely to
be the businessman who cannot spare the time from his business to take
a decent holiday.


Who needs to take a holiday, if you're doing something all the time
that brings you a great deal of satisfaction? No one is forcing such
businessmen to behave in that way, and so far as social and cultural
pressures on him are concerned, I'm all for change!



=A0Albeit that the present economic downturn might have seen a
temporary blip in that situation for a significant number of people.

I would say so, although I'm not so sure that it's going to be that
temporary.


We may indeed be at the start of a general lower standard of living
ratherr than a temporary hiccough. *Which means a depression. *If
inflation and our present high taxation continues into a depression
era, we will end up with riots and civil unrest that will force a
radical change. *The government will have to re-learn that the
population must be given their bread and circuses - and both
commodities consist of far more than they once used to.


It would be a cinch to solve it by redistributing wealth. Look at
Greece - it has no social or economic problems, other than the fact
that external creditors now have too great a claim on its economic
output and are refusing to relinquish it. So too in this country - the
only problem most people are labouring under, is the weight of their
debts owed to those who were wealthy enough to have capital to lend in
the first place.



I believe that the level to which our social welfare state has risen
has played a very large part in causing the decline in social
interaction within the larger community.

No, it is the level to which market forces and inequality have risen,
that have played the largest part in causing that decline.


We will have to agree to disagree on that point. *For me, the fact
that the government is taking my hard-earned money and giving it to
the 17 year old single mother next door gives me far more reason to
decide she doesn't need any further help from myself than the fact
that the CEO of Tesco is earning a 7 figure income. *YMMV.


Yes, because I see the money given to the CEO of Tesco as being a
claim on my hard-earned money also. More importantly, the single
mother would probably be quite content with the offer of a Ł30k-a-year
job, whereas the CEO of Tesco would be outraged at the expectation
that he take such a step down, so it is obvious where the real
political problem lies and where the pressure to maintain the status
quo comes from.



Oh come off it! =A0Given that poor households are the ones most likely
to have unemployed adults living in them, the only reason for dirty
bathrooms is that the person is too lazy to clean.


I didn't say the unemployed lacked the time to clean them. I said that
they were *harder* to clean, and harder to make *look* clean. In other
words, you will put more effort into cleaning older fittings, and they
will look comparatively dirtier even after having put that effort in -
I've seen plenty of bathrooms that look worse when clean, than mine
does when moderately dirty, and I can only assume that the vast
majority of people (including those who are forced to accept old
fittings) make a similar assessment as I do of bathroom quality.


Most rooms can be made to look nice if the effort is made without
needing to spend any significant amount of money.


I disagree.



And whilst you may assume that the unemployed poor by virtue of their
lifestyle have plenty of effort and willpower to spare, the reality is
likely to be quite the opposite, that increased financial stress,
increased consequential demands on physical and psychological effort
across the board with everyday activies, and fewer pleasant everyday
experiences, are likely to leave them sorely depleted of willingness
to exert effort.


I see. *Which is a long-winded way of saying that they are lazy.


It was a long-winded way of saying that they live more strenuous lives
than you do.



I know when I feel stressed, even if I otherwise have a surfeit of
time, I find myself *less* inclined to do unpleasant tasks or
difficult chores, not moreso.


There are plenty of things that I feel "disinclined" to do, but
nevertheless I still do them. *Its how people who are *not* lazy
behave.


Rubbish. I simply do not believe that you become *more* inclined to do
unpleasant tasks with increasing stress in your lifestyle. Isn't part
of the reason for paying huge salaries to bankers, supposedly to make
up for the stress of their lifestyle (since, logically within this
argument, without the compensation the stress would make them
disinclined to do such jobs)?



I have no reason to think other people
generally behave any differently - nobody I have ever known, has ever
said to me "cor, I feel extremely tired and stressed at the moment, I
think I'll go and do a few hours of unpleasant work". More often, they
either say that they do not want to do anything at all, or else they
say they want to engage in activities that they find recreational -
and indeed that is exactly how I think too.


So you go and watch the TV and leave the dirty dishes stacked in the
sink for yet another day. *I know. *It's called "laziness".

=A0Perhaps you should
consider the probability that it is the person's laziness that is
responsible for both the dirty bathroom *and* their poverty

I don't observe that. This seems to be an instance of how all this
imaginary work abounds in the economy, and how, since the recession, a
million people suddenly got lazier (for reasons that are never made
entirely apparent by the people who offer this line of reasoning).


Laziness might not be the reason they are out of work, but it *is* the
reason that they have a dirty bathroom - and if the bathroom indicates
that they are lazy then laziness *might* be the reason for the lack of
a job as well.


Then why is it that "lazy" bankers are being paid millions of pounds a
year to overcome their disinclinations? You can't have it both ways,
where the poor are told to pull themselves up by their bootstraps,
while the rich are told they need "motivation" of a financial kind.

I also refute the idea that the correct response to an unacceptably
low rate of pay, is to either accept less money than someone already
in work (so as to replace one decent position that somebody else is
filling, with a less decent one than you are filling), or work harder
and produce more value than someone already in work for no extra pay
(with the same effect as previous). If people did that as a matter of
routine within the market mechanism, and never refused to work at any
rate or on any terms however poor, then the four yorkshiremen sketch
would be rendered true to life.




Personally, I was recently looking at commercial-quality hands-free
taps for my bathroom sink (so as to completely do away with moving
parts and intricate details where muck tends to accumulate and which
are particularly difficult to clean), and next time I'm tempted to
have the tap and pipework wall-mounted instead of sink-mounted - so
that you do not get the unpleasant accumulation of water and scale
around the base of the taps, and wiping the sink clean can be done in
pretty much one swoop of the hand.


If you would really like such taps but cannot reasonably save the
money to buy them from a showroom, there are several places where you
could try to find perfectly good second-hand products. *Then borrow
some tools and fit them yourself.


But that means knowing a secound-hand outlet, and knowing someone with
the tools who is willing to lend them, and it takes expertise to fit -
which most people don't have.

Hell, I have the tools, expertise, and knowledge of suppliers, and
even I don't know where you'd get such taps second-hand, and I've only
relatively recently started seeing them in newer commercial bathrooms
- because indeed, the demand for such easy-clean, high-cleanliness
devices, and the ability to provide the technology at a reasonable
cost, is relatively recent.



and that even
people living on benefits can get sufficient money to make basic
improvements and decorations to their home - in poorer households the
council will even do that for them completely free of charge.

I know several people who have struggled to get repairs done by
private landlords. Even so, it is one thing to throw up some wallpaper
or lash on some cheap paint, another to fit a high-quality kitchen to
a property in which you have no real security of tenure.


A kitchen is either fit for purpose or it is not. *If not, the
landlord has a duty to fix it.


I'm afraid not. No landlord, even a decent one, is going to replace a
kitchen sink, because your grill pan cannot be completely submerged at
once.



*It would appear that you have fallen
victim to the sort of marketing that you claim to abhor. *There is no
reason whatsoever why a traditional kitchen should be more difficult
to work in than a modern "fitted" kitchen (which seem to be comprised
of overpriced and badly made glitzy chipboard and plastic units that
damage easily).


Comparing my current kitchen to what it replaced before it (1970s
local authority), and setting aside the increase in size achieved by
the demolition of a wall, one of the main benefits is smooth
continuous worktop surfaces that wipe clean easily and have fewer
difficult joins/corners where water, mould, and crap used to
accumulate and which might require several passes of a cloth to clean
plus occasional replacement of silicone (which became more frequent as
the fittings deteriorated due to water ingress).

So too with the cooker, grease and food can no longer splash/fall down
the sides or back of a free-standing unit, or splash up the wall
behind it (there is now a stainless splashback for the hob).

The list goes on really. I don't claim that the chipboard is more
durable than the solid wood units that they replaced. What the kitchen
is as a whole, is aesthetically more pleasing (it has simpler lines
and a more consistent appearance) and easier to use and maintain on a
daily basis.



What, exactly did you have in mind when speaking of a "high quality"
kitchen? *The kitchen appliances are quite correctly the tenant's
responsibility - and remain the tenant's property.


That depends on the contract. Anyway, that wasn't my point - the point
was that the very poor do not enjoy the same quality of household
fittings as you or I can, because they cannot afford them, and that
imposes additional burdens across the board.



I've been to the homes of people who are earning enough to spend on a
restaurant meal once a week and a foreign holiday twice a year, but
are living in a filthy pig sty. =A0Conversely I have visited OAPs who
are struggling to get by on a state pension, but who have spotless
tidy houses. =A0Cleanliness in the UK has very little connection with
wealth.

I certainly agree there is no perfect correlation - some people will
always be content with dirt, and others will always try to polish mud
floors, meanwhile the standards of the vast majority of people are
sensitive to the physical and mental effort required to maintain those
standards. It wasn't all about cleanliness anyway - I also mentioned
aesthetic (and unfortunately no amount of cleaning makes a worn green
or brown bathroom suite look acceptable), and I don't know about you
but I really do prefer to use modern, quality bathrooms.


TBH the appearance of a functional room such as a bathroom is of very
little concern whatsoever, though a pleasant appearance is better than
a shoddy appearance. *It is its functionality that affects the quality
of life however, and just about every bathroom in the UK has similar
functionality.


Functionality is typically related to matters of aesthetic. In
particular, if one of its "functions" is to appear clean when cleaned,
then a bathroom that continues to look dirty (for example, with mouldy
silicones and stained grouts) is not functional in encouraging such
cleaning.

So too, a bathroom with lots of complex surfaces, older materials that
retain dirt, exposed pipework, deep corners, etc., all of which
requires more time and particularly mental resources to clean (because
the cleaning behaviour is more complex), discourages that cleaning or
anyway consumes a disproportionate amount of available effort.
Therefore again it is not "functional", whether it goes uncleaned or
whether it consumes limited psychological resources that are better
spent elsewhere (such as on child-rearing).



*If the difference was between having a hot shower
available and having a galvanised cold water bath in the living room
rather I would agree that it is a difference that would affect quality
of life. *While I very much prefer the bathroom in the house I am
currently renting (which is big enough to hold a dance) to the house I
was renting last year (which was small and cramped), it is not
something that I could say affects my quality of life to any extent.
A shower takes just as long and gets me just as clean in both, and I
can't say that using the toilet is a noticeably different experience.


Presumably you don't bother cleaning the thing much, then, because you
can't be simultaneously unconcerned about bathroom aesthetic, yet
concerned enough to actually clean it.



There are plenty of ways to make a shabby room look better that does
not involve spending a great deal of money. *Just take a wander around
your local pound shops and charity shops to get lots of ideas of
things that can be put on walls and floors to cover up wear and tear
and make the room look brighter.


Lol! Perhaps I have a keener eye for the built environment than you
Cynic, but then again it has been my trade. I can tell you now, I
instantly see through the sorts of charades you're suggesting, and if
anything the sorts of frills you have in mind violate the principle
today that the areas should be visually clean and minimally complex
(not just because of its purely functional benefit, but because if
nothing else it unburdens the mind with processing unnecessary
stimulation).



But honestly - just how much would the quality of your life improve if
you had a big sink?

If I was using the sink several times a day for cooker fittings, or
draining a high number of items on the draining board, it would make a
significant difference I think to have a sink area that was of a
commensurate size.


So *if* you were doing those things I would expect you to find a
practical solution. *I doubt it would take mne a great deal of thought
to come up with an idea if I were actually in such a position.


In reality it's not a huge problem for me, which is why I haven't
remedied the situation. As I say, if I was using the grill every day
for a family, I'd have had a bigger sink by now in which to soak it I
think - not because it alone makes some massive difference to my QoL,
but because this and all the other little bits of time and effort
spent organising the house and circumventing its inherent defects
would add up to an excessive mental burden that would impair both my
work and my leisure (which is, as I say, why these tasks were left
specifically to women in the past).



=A0I find that with most limitations, I only have to
figure out a solution once, and then make trivial changes to my
work-habits to accomodate it with little or no disadvatage. =A0And if
such a change would, for you, make a significant improvement to the
quality of your life, I have little doubt that you would find a way to
get yourself a bigger sink (or a smaller grill pan!)

I'm not quite sure I understand your point.


My point is that the things that *do* make a significant difference to
your quality of life are capable of being fixed by even poor people,
with only a moderate amount of thought and effort.


The problem is, when you put in a moderate amount of further effort
again, you realise that your conclusions the first time around were
quite wrong. In the end, besides quibbling about the specifics of
particular situations (when it was designed only to give substance to
the point in general), your "fix" was to tell the "lazy" poor to pull
themselves together.
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In message 4f3a485f.166483843@localhost, at 11:44:10 on Tue, 14 Feb
2012, Cynic remarked:
I have a fridge containing drinks, tables and chairs in my house, for
example, but I still visit pubs on occassion even though the same
activity in my own home would, if anything, be more comfortable.


The societal sea change in the last generation has been exactly that -
homes becoming more comfortable than pubs, rather than vice versa.
Although some pubs try quite hard to keep their comforts ahead of the
game, that's often at the expense (no pun intended) of pricing
themselves out of the market.


Exactly my point - the average home is just about as comfortable as it
is possible to get, and that aspect would not improve significantly if
you won the lottery. You go to a pub for the *social* aspect, not the
comfort


Thus fragmenting their customer base, with the "comfort" aspect having
to move its focus upmarket from "drinking" to "eating".
--
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In message 4f3ba867.49843812@localhost, at 18:18:01 on Wed, 15 Feb
2012, Cynic remarked:
A kitchen is either fit for purpose or it is not. If not, the
landlord has a duty to fix it.


There's a huge gap between "unfit for purpose" and "functional but
depressingly dilapidated". Landlords are also prone to install very
cheap appliances, which are functional, but much less use than the ones
an owner occupier might select.
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On Feb 17, 2:22*pm, Roland Perry wrote:
In message 4f3a485f.166483843@localhost, at 11:44:10 on Tue, 14 Feb
2012, Cynic remarked:

I have a fridge containing drinks, tables and chairs in my house, for
example, but I still visit pubs on occassion even though the same
activity in my own home would, if anything, be more comfortable.


The societal sea change in the last generation has been exactly that -
homes becoming more comfortable than pubs, rather than vice versa.
Although some pubs try quite hard to keep their comforts ahead of the
game, that's often at the expense (no pun intended) of pricing
themselves out of the market.


Exactly my point - the average home is just about as comfortable as it
is possible to get, and that aspect would not improve significantly if
you won the lottery. *You go to a pub for the *social* aspect, not the
comfort


Thus fragmenting their customer base, with the "comfort" aspect having
to move its focus upmarket from "drinking" to "eating".


Quite true! I don't go to the local boozer at all anymore, but I eat
out as a matter of routine - where, indeed, I am keen to dine in
physical comfort.


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On Fri, 17 Feb 2012 14:26:49 +0000, Roland Perry
wrote:

A kitchen is either fit for purpose or it is not. If not, the
landlord has a duty to fix it.


There's a huge gap between "unfit for purpose" and "functional but
depressingly dilapidated". Landlords are also prone to install very
cheap appliances, which are functional, but much less use than the ones
an owner occupier might select.


IME most people over 25 have bought their own appliances and do not
live in accomodation furnished by the landlord. The cost need not be
all that great so long as you buy second-hand and are prepared to wait
for a bargain.

--
Cynic

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On Feb 17, 9:49*pm, (Cynic) wrote:
On Fri, 17 Feb 2012 14:26:49 +0000, Roland Perry
wrote:

A kitchen is either fit for purpose or it is not. *If not, the
landlord has a duty to fix it.

There's a huge gap between "unfit for purpose" and "functional but
depressingly dilapidated". Landlords are also prone to install very
cheap appliances, which are functional, but much less use than the ones
an owner occupier might select.


IME most people over 25 have bought their own appliances and do not
live in accomodation furnished by the landlord.


It is quite common for a fitted hob and cooker to be provided by the
landlord, and I've known several landlords to offer fully-furnished
family-sized properties at the bottom end of the market.

You make it sound like appliances are a once-in-a-lifetime purchase,
that once you have them they follow you around for the rest of your
life. In reality they require removal when moving house, and often
require replacement within several years, so the poor do not
necessarily carry a full set of high-quality appliances around with
them.



*The cost need not be
all that great so long as you buy second-hand and are prepared to wait
for a bargain.


Lol. How long are you typically prepared to wait with an empty stomach
and dirty clothes? There is actually more of a market in my experience
for *landlords* to make the capital investment in reasonable second-
hand appliances, and then add it onto the weekly rent, because other
than eliminating the up-front cost for those who have little money,
landlords are usually in a better position to have contacts and
knowledge, easy transportation, etc.
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In message 4f3ecae0.21919921@localhost, at 21:49:49 on Fri, 17 Feb
2012, Cynic remarked:
A kitchen is either fit for purpose or it is not. If not, the
landlord has a duty to fix it.


There's a huge gap between "unfit for purpose" and "functional but
depressingly dilapidated". Landlords are also prone to install very
cheap appliances, which are functional, but much less use than the ones
an owner occupier might select.


IME most people over 25 have bought their own appliances and do not
live in accomodation furnished by the landlord.


That depends on their circumstances, and what the landlord has provided.
For example, the dishwasher my landlord has provided is driving me crazy
(so that explains it - ed) but I can't bring myself to put it in storage
and buy a secondhand replacement when I know that in a year's time I'm
moving to a different house that has a very good dishwasher in it
already.

Similarly, the oven is cheaper than I ever knew ovens could be (it works
perfectly to specification, but that spec is minimal). But I don't think
I should be ripping it out of the cabinets and replacing it at my
expense.

The cost need not be all that great so long as you buy second-hand and
are prepared to wait for a bargain.


It's not just the electrical appliances, there are tiles falling off the
wall, doors falling off the cabinets and so on.
--
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On Fri, 17 Feb 2012 14:06:27 -0800 (PST), Ste
wrote:

IME most people over 25 have bought their own appliances and do not
live in accomodation furnished by the landlord.


It is quite common for a fitted hob and cooker to be provided by the
landlord, and I've known several landlords to offer fully-furnished
family-sized properties at the bottom end of the market.

You make it sound like appliances are a once-in-a-lifetime purchase,
that once you have them they follow you around for the rest of your
life. In reality they require removal when moving house, and often
require replacement within several years, so the poor do not
necessarily carry a full set of high-quality appliances around with
them.


I know. Nor does the landlord carry a warehouse full of replacement
fridges and cookers. Perhaps you think he should?

I manage all my cooking very well in an inexpensive combination
microwave I acquired for free and a counter-top hob - though I
recently bought a small oven/grill (Ł27 Argos 883/3516) to make cheese
on toast. You can get second-hand microwave ovens and hobs for under
Ł10 each without waiting too long. If you don't have Internet to
look, Friday Ad is free.

=A0The cost need not be
all that great so long as you buy second-hand and are prepared to wait
for a bargain.


Lol. How long are you typically prepared to wait with an empty stomach
and dirty clothes?


Don't be such a drama queen. It's all part and parcel of preparing to
live in a new home. A basic microwave (if necessary borrowed from
friends or family) is sufficient to make meals, and the local
laundromat or mummy will clean your clothes - or wash them in the bath
as people used to do if you're really stuck.

There is actually more of a market in my experience
for *landlords* to make the capital investment in reasonable second-
hand appliances, and then add it onto the weekly rent, because other
than eliminating the up-front cost for those who have little money,
landlords are usually in a better position to have contacts and
knowledge, easy transportation, etc.


If they did that, you'd be complaining about them profiteering from
the poor. You can indeed rent kitchen appliances instead of buying,
but it is not terrifically cost-effective IMO. Renting electonic
goods such as TV and computers makes a bit more sense in order to
upgrade to the latest and greatest every year.

--
Cynic


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On Sat, 18 Feb 2012 13:01:40 +0000, Roland Perry
wrote:

It's not just the electrical appliances, there are tiles falling off the
wall, doors falling off the cabinets and so on.


Those things *are* the landlord's responsibility if not caused by the
tenant, as is reasonable redecoration. I appreciate that many
landlords drag their heels, but any tenant should be able to get it
done with persistance. In any case those things can usually be tided
sufficiently to not be an eyesore, and do not make the place less
comfortable.

--
Cynic



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On Feb 19, 3:56*pm, (Cynic) wrote:
On Fri, 17 Feb 2012 14:06:27 -0800 (PST), Ste
wrote:

IME most people over 25 have bought their own appliances and do not
live in accomodation furnished by the landlord.


It is quite common for a fitted hob and cooker to be provided by the
landlord, and I've known several landlords to offer fully-furnished
family-sized properties at the bottom end of the market.


You make it sound like appliances are a once-in-a-lifetime purchase,
that once you have them they follow you around for the rest of your
life. In reality they require removal when moving house, and often
require replacement within several years, so the poor do not
necessarily carry a full set of high-quality appliances around with
them.


I know. *Nor does the landlord carry a warehouse full of replacement
fridges and cookers. *Perhaps you think he should?


No, not particularly. My part in this discussion arose from pointing
out that the poor must typically accept the fittings provided by their
landlord, and those fittings will usually be of lower quality than
ones we here might select for ourselves. Your suggestion that
landlords actually have a legal duty to improve such fittings if they
are of low quality, has been refuted.



I manage all my cooking very well in an inexpensive combination
microwave I acquired for free and a counter-top hob - though I
recently bought a small oven/grill (Ł27 Argos 883/3516) to make cheese
on toast. *You can get second-hand microwave ovens and hobs for under
Ł10 each without waiting too long. *If you don't have Internet to
look, Friday Ad is free.


I'm not really sure what relevance this has to my position on the
matter. I must say I wouldn't be too keen in general to make use of
second-hand cookers and microwaves - the reason such second-hand goods
are cheap relative to new, is precisely because nobody wants them and
because they lack the quality (typically, in terms of appearance) of
new goods.

Nevertheless, I can think of several people who are making do with
second-hand kitchen appliances - in two such cases, I was called upon
to fit them purely out of the goodness of my heart (which I did not
begrudge).

In a further case, I was asked by the landlord of the property to
replace a cooker as a favour to him. When I did so, I found the wiring
of the old cooker in a dangerous state, and I indulged the boyfriend
of the tenant who was bragging that he had fitted the last one
himself; I return to my point about most people lacking the necessary
skills to fit appliances themselves.



=A0The cost need not be
all that great so long as you buy second-hand and are prepared to wait
for a bargain.

Lol. How long are you typically prepared to wait with an empty stomach
and dirty clothes?


Don't be such a drama queen. *It's all part and parcel of preparing to
live in a new home.


Cynic, exactly what class of people do you have in mind here? The
sorts of people I have in mind, are being forced to move around
involuntarily, and they are typically families who have been in long-
term receipt of benefits.



*A 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. In
fact, it's more the case that I'd be called upon to spare one for
others, but I would be extremely reluctant to spare my relatively
expensive appliances to people who do not have the same standards of
cleanliness as I do (or security in their home, or honest social
circle, etc.), and it would be a pure act of charity which I'm sure
any reasonable person would be embarassed to grovel for.

I really do think you're living in a completely different world to the
one I live in Cynic. At the very least, you don't seem to be facing up
to the reality of life in poor *communities*, where it's not just a
case of isolated individuals suffering temporary hard times who can
survive for a while on the charity and goodwill of those who are
comfortable, but where the balance of those who are quite comfortable
in a social group is far too little to possibly subsidise all those
who are not, and where those who are not comfortable will, given the
general trends in society, probably become more uncomfortable with
time rather than less.



is sufficient to make meals, and the local
laundromat or mummy will clean your clothes - or wash them in the bath
as people used to do if you're really stuck.


So we go back to what I said earlier, about the everyday life of the
poor being actually quite a bit more strenuous and demanding (at least
if they follow your prescriptions), but simultaneously less rewarding.
Even within your own terms Cynic, if a certain behaviour is harder and
less rewarding, you must surely agree it is less likely to be
exhibited.



There is actually more of a market in my experience
for *landlords* to make the capital investment in reasonable second-
hand appliances, and then add it onto the weekly rent, because other
than eliminating the up-front cost for those who have little money,
landlords are usually in a better position to have contacts and
knowledge, easy transportation, etc.


If they did that,


They *do* do that.



you'd be complaining about them profiteering from
the poor.


The biggest claim such landlords have is on the public purse via HB.
Nevertheless, I don't know many small landlords living the high life
today - the real beneficiaries, as always, are those who were richer
to start with, and the main losers those who were poorer, and with a
sliding scale between.



*You can indeed rent kitchen appliances instead of buying,
but it is not terrifically cost-effective IMO. *Renting electonic
goods such as TV and computers makes a bit more sense in order to
upgrade to the latest and greatest every year.


It probably is not cost effective, but it solves people's problems in
the short term, at the expense of long-term finances. Normally what
people do in the long-term, is start giving up their social and moral
pretenses in order to shed stressors and shed financial costs. So for
example, people stop paying the rent and do moonlight flits, etc.
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On Feb 19, 4:02*pm, (Cynic) wrote:
On Sat, 18 Feb 2012 13:01:40 +0000, Roland Perry
wrote:

It's not just the electrical appliances, there are tiles falling off the
wall, doors falling off the cabinets and so on.


Those things *are* the landlord's responsibility if not caused by the
tenant, as is reasonable redecoration. *I appreciate that many
landlords drag their heels, but any tenant should be able to get it
done with persistance.


It's often necessary to simply withhold the rent to get repairs done,
and people who I know in that position simply don't want the risk of
upheaval if the landlord decides they are too much hassle or too
demanding and so terminates their tenancy.

And from the other side of the coin, landlords are often loath to make
repairs to properties that the tenants do not take any real care of,
and themselves cause either careless damage or wilful damage in the
course of arguments/fights and such (though not necessarily the same
damage as the disrepair complained of), which the tenants themselves
are in no financial position to make good.



*In any case those things can usually be tided
sufficiently to not be an eyesore, and do not make the place less
comfortable.


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?
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In message 4f411c10.146911734@localhost, at 16:02:08 on Sun, 19 Feb
2012, Cynic remarked:
It's not just the electrical appliances, there are tiles falling off the
wall, doors falling off the cabinets and so on.


Those things *are* the landlord's responsibility if not caused by the
tenant, as is reasonable redecoration. I appreciate that many
landlords drag their heels, but any tenant should be able to get it
done with persistance.


Six months wasn't enough at a house I rented in 2005. The landlord was
living in Italy and the agent would do nothing without contacting him,
which appeared to be impossible.

In any case those things can usually be tided sufficiently to not be an
eyesore, and do not make the place less comfortable.


The current landlord allowed us to repaint the kitchen in magnolia
(instead of bright green). Whether bright green is "less comfortable"
I'll leave as an exercise for the reader.
--
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In article , Roland Perry
scribeth thus
In message 4f411c10.146911734@localhost, at 16:02:08 on Sun, 19 Feb
2012, Cynic remarked:
It's not just the electrical appliances, there are tiles falling off the
wall, doors falling off the cabinets and so on.


Those things *are* the landlord's responsibility if not caused by the
tenant, as is reasonable redecoration. I appreciate that many
landlords drag their heels, but any tenant should be able to get it
done with persistance.


Six months wasn't enough at a house I rented in 2005. The landlord was
living in Italy and the agent would do nothing without contacting him,
which appeared to be impossible.

In any case those things can usually be tided sufficiently to not be an
eyesore, and do not make the place less comfortable.


The current landlord allowed us to repaint the kitchen in magnolia
(instead of bright green). Whether bright green is "less comfortable"
I'll leave as an exercise for the reader.



Magnolia is the rented accommodation standard colour dontcha know;!...

--
Tony Sayer

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On Sun, 19 Feb 2012 14:40:34 -0800 (PST), Ste
wrote:

I'm not really sure what relevance this has to my position on the
matter. I must say I wouldn't be too keen in general to make use of
second-hand cookers and microwaves - the reason such second-hand goods
are cheap relative to new, is precisely because nobody wants them and
because they lack the quality (typically, in terms of appearance) of
new goods.


Rubbish! I have bought most of my appliances second-hand and have
been very pleased with almost all of them. Obviously you have to pick
and choose and wait for the bargains. There are many reasons why
people want to get rid of perfectly good appliances. A common reason
is that they were given a new appliance as a gift (Christmas, birthday
etc.). Another is that they are rich enough to afford to buy the
latest appliances each year. Or perhaps they decided to replace a
unit with a bigger or smaller model. Or were conned into buying an
appliance that is more "green" than the one they had. People 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. In other
cases a well-off householder had replaced a unit simply because it was
getting a bit grubby and it avoided a cleaning job.

Nevertheless, I can think of several people who are making do with
second-hand kitchen appliances - in two such cases, I was called upon
to fit them purely out of the goodness of my heart (which I did not
begrudge).


In a further case, I was asked by the landlord of the property to
replace a cooker as a favour to him. When I did so, I found the wiring
of the old cooker in a dangerous state, and I indulged the boyfriend
of the tenant who was bragging that he had fitted the last one
himself; I return to my point about most people lacking the necessary
skills to fit appliances themselves.


The skills required are minimal. If a person does not want to learn
some very simple skills, I put the blame squarely on that person.
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.

Don't be such a drama queen. =A0It's all part and parcel of preparing to
live in a new home.


Cynic, exactly what class of people do you have in mind here? The
sorts of people I have in mind, are being forced to move around
involuntarily, and they are typically families who have been in long-
term receipt of benefits.


Why should they be forced to move around involuntarily? I know
several families with all members on long-term benefits and was in
fact thinking of them when I wrote my post. The state pays for their
rent in very reasonable houses that they have lived in for well over a
decade. Apart from moving to more suitable accomodation due to a
change in the size of the family, 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.

=A0A 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? As said, you can cook
everything you need to eat with just a microwave and a kettle (I've
done it). It's not ideal, but it is perfectly acceptable while you
source other appliances.

In
fact, it's more the case that I'd be called upon to spare one for
others, but I would be extremely reluctant to spare my relatively
expensive appliances to people who do not have the same standards of
cleanliness as I do (or security in their home, or honest social
circle, etc.), and it would be a pure act of charity which I'm sure
any reasonable person would be embarassed to grovel for.


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. Now how are you going to
blame that on the nasty rish businessmen?

I really do think you're living in a completely different world to the
one I live in Cynic. At the very least, you don't seem to be facing up
to the reality of life in poor *communities*, where it's not just a
case of isolated individuals suffering temporary hard times who can
survive for a while on the charity and goodwill of those who are
comfortable, but where the balance of those who are quite comfortable
in a social group is far too little to possibly subsidise all those
who are not, and where those who are not comfortable will, given the
general trends in society, probably become more uncomfortable with
time rather than less.


Ste, I have actually *lived* in that situation, and so know *very*
well what I am talking about. Perhaps it is yourself who is placing
too much reliance on the veracity of hard-luck stories you have been
told. 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. i know *very*
well what's possible and what's not.

is sufficient to make meals, and the local
laundromat or mummy will clean your clothes - or wash them in the bath
as people used to do if you're really stuck.


So we go back to what I said earlier, about the everyday life of the
poor being actually quite a bit more strenuous and demanding (at least
if they follow your prescriptions), but simultaneously less rewarding.
Even within your own terms Cynic, if a certain behaviour is harder and
less rewarding, you must surely agree it is less likely to be
exhibited.


I was discussing the *temporary* situation after the person has just
moved in to a new unfurnished home. Yes, it will indeed be more
demanding during that time. Some 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. Others will see it as a challenge and get stuck in
to improve the situation for themselves.

=A0You can indeed rent kitchen appliances instead of buying,
but it is not terrifically cost-effective IMO. =A0Renting electonic
goods such as TV and computers makes a bit more sense in order to
upgrade to the latest and greatest every year.


It probably is not cost effective, but it solves people's problems in
the short term, at the expense of long-term finances. Normally what
people do in the long-term, is start giving up their social and moral
pretenses in order to shed stressors and shed financial costs. So for
example, people stop paying the rent and do moonlight flits, etc.


I don't see "black" work as being immoral. Nor smuggling for tax
evasion purposes. Both are artificial crimes that have been created
due to the inadequacies of the state-imposed systems. HB rent is paid
direct to the landlord, so there is no opportunity to avoid paying it.

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On Sun, 19 Feb 2012 14:48:44 -0800 (PST), Ste
wrote:

It's not just the electrical appliances, there are tiles falling off the
wall, doors falling off the cabinets and so on.


Those things *are* the landlord's responsibility if not caused by the
tenant, as is reasonable redecoration. =A0I appreciate that many
landlords drag their heels, but any tenant should be able to get it
done with persistance.


It's often necessary to simply withhold the rent to get repairs done,
and people who I know in that position simply don't want the risk of
upheaval if the landlord decides they are too much hassle or too
demanding and so terminates their tenancy.


In which case they would probably benefit from moving to a place with
a more reasonable landlord, as much of a pain as it will be.

And from the other side of the coin, landlords are often loath to make
repairs to properties that the tenants do not take any real care of,
and themselves cause either careless damage or wilful damage in the
course of arguments/fights and such (though not necessarily the same
damage as the disrepair complained of), which the tenants themselves
are in no financial position to make good.


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

=A0In any case those things can usually be tided
sufficiently to not be an eyesore, and do not make the place less
comfortable.


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.

In any case, I think it is yourself who is being completely
unrealistic in your scenarios, because I have visited many homes of
people who have no money and are surviving completely on state
benefits, and have not seen any homes in anything close to such a
state of disrepair. I concede that they no doubt exist, but put it to
you that they are very much the exception (except in places where the
people deliberately damage their own homes - to which I say nobody has
any duty whatsoever to make it better).

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On Mon, 20 Feb 2012 11:28:10 +0000, Roland Perry
wrote:

It's not just the electrical appliances, there are tiles falling off the
wall, doors falling off the cabinets and so on.


Those things *are* the landlord's responsibility if not caused by the
tenant, as is reasonable redecoration. I appreciate that many
landlords drag their heels, but any tenant should be able to get it
done with persistance.


Six months wasn't enough at a house I rented in 2005. The landlord was
living in Italy and the agent would do nothing without contacting him,
which appeared to be impossible.


IIUC, after allowing a reasonable time for the landlord to do
something, the tenant is lawfully permitted to get the job done
himself and take the cost out of the rent. So long as the tenant has
reciepts to verify that the amount is accurate, the landlord/agent
won't be able to contest it.

In any case those things can usually be tided sufficiently to not be an
eyesore, and do not make the place less comfortable.


The current landlord allowed us to repaint the kitchen in magnolia
(instead of bright green). Whether bright green is "less comfortable"
I'll leave as an exercise for the reader.


Some people like very bright primary colours, especially in a kitchen.
one person I know painted his bedroom completely black. I've not yet
come across landlords who have refused to allow a tenant to
redecorate, though I could understand it if a landlord was wary of the
tenant's DIY skills and feared that they would do more harm than good.

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In message 4f4245e8.223171531@localhost, at 13:19:06 on Mon, 20 Feb
2012, Cynic remarked:
In which case they would probably benefit from moving to a place with
a more reasonable landlord, as much of a pain as it will be.


Such a strategy has its downside. Not just playing whack-a-mole with the
Royal Mail redirection, but until you've settled somewhere three years
getting credit is more tiresome.
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In message , at 12:17:17 on Mon, 20 Feb
2012, tony sayer remarked:
The current landlord allowed us to repaint the kitchen in magnolia
(instead of bright green). Whether bright green is "less comfortable"
I'll leave as an exercise for the reader.


Magnolia is the rented accommodation standard colour dontcha know;!...


That's why we picked it, no possible reason for the landlord to
complain. If we'd picked dayglo purple (as a contrast to the dayglo
green) it might have been more dubious. Remember, I'm trying to avoid
conflict here!
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In message 4f424864.223808031@localhost, at 13:27:56 on Mon, 20 Feb
2012, Cynic remarked:
Six months wasn't enough at a house I rented in 2005. The landlord was
living in Italy and the agent would do nothing without contacting him,
which appeared to be impossible.


IIUC, after allowing a reasonable time for the landlord to do
something, the tenant is lawfully permitted to get the job done
himself and take the cost out of the rent.


I got quite close to that after the boiler had been out of action for
three weeks in February. But we must pick our battles, and there were
worse things going on.
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On Feb 20, 1:08*pm, (Cynic) wrote:
On Sun, 19 Feb 2012 14:40:34 -0800 (PST), Ste
wrote:

I'm not really sure what relevance this has to my position on the
matter. I must say I wouldn't be too keen in general to make use of
second-hand cookers and microwaves - the reason such second-hand goods
are cheap relative to new, is precisely because nobody wants them and
because they lack the quality (typically, in terms of appearance) of
new goods.


Rubbish! *I have bought most of my appliances second-hand and have
been very pleased with almost all of them. *Obviously 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.



*There are many reasons why
people want to get rid of perfectly good appliances. *A common reason
is that they were given a new appliance as a gift (Christmas, birthday
etc.). *Another is that they are rich enough to afford to buy the
latest appliances each year. *Or perhaps they decided to replace a
unit with a bigger or smaller model. *Or were conned into buying an
appliance that is more "green" than the one they had. *People 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.



*In 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". That's not to say I don't know
anyone who has appliances of poor appearance - the point is that their
whole houses and even their person, typically reflect their lack of
concern with appearance. That is something that you seem to suggest
reflects badly on them, rather than being a reasonable response to the
unaffordability of keeping up appearances.



Nevertheless, I can think of several people who are making do with
second-hand kitchen appliances - in two such cases, I was called upon
to fit them purely out of the goodness of my heart (which I did not
begrudge).
In a further case, I was asked by the landlord of the property to
replace a cooker as a favour to him. When I did so, I found the wiring
of the old cooker in a dangerous state, and I indulged the boyfriend
of the tenant who was bragging that he had fitted the last one
himself; I return to my point about most people lacking the necessary
skills to fit appliances themselves.


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.



*If 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.

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. 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).



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.



Don't be such a drama queen. =A0It's all part and parcel of preparing to
live in a new home.

Cynic, exactly what class of people do you have in mind here? The
sorts of people I have in mind, are being forced to move around
involuntarily, and they are typically families who have been in long-
term receipt of benefits.


Why should they be forced to move around involuntarily? *I know
several families with all members on long-term benefits and was in
fact thinking of them when I wrote my post. *The state pays for their
rent in very reasonable houses that they have lived in for well over a
decade. *Apart from moving to more suitable accomodation due to a
change in the size of the *family, 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.

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.



=A0A 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.



*As said, you can cook
everything you need to eat with just a microwave and a kettle (I've
done it). *It'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
fact, it's more the case that I'd be called upon to spare one for
others, but I would be extremely reluctant to spare my relatively
expensive appliances to people who do not have the same standards of
cleanliness as I do (or security in their home, or honest social
circle, etc.), and it would be a pure act of charity which I'm sure
any reasonable person would be embarassed to grovel for.


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. *Now 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. There's no point being
scrupulously clean and honest simply in order to gain charity from
friends and relatives, if the cost of the cleanliness and honesty
outweighs the reputational benefits. And in communities that are poor
as a whole, there are going to be relatively few people in a position
to give - there's no point having excellent creditworthiness, amongst
friends who have no credit to offer.



I really do think you're living in a completely different world to the
one I live in Cynic. At the very least, you don't seem to be facing up
to the reality of life in poor *communities*, where it's not just a
case of isolated individuals suffering temporary hard times who can
survive for a while on the charity and goodwill of those who are
comfortable, but where the balance of those who are quite comfortable
in a social group is far too little to possibly subsidise all those
who are not, and where those who are not comfortable will, given the
general trends in society, probably become more uncomfortable with
time rather than less.


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'?



*Perhaps it is yourself who is placing
too much reliance on the veracity of hard-luck stories you have been
told.


Rubbish. None of what I am saying is second-hand. Some of the poor
characters I have in mind when giving accounts here, are no friends of
mine, and are actually the sorts of people who *cause problems* for
friends and relatives of mine, so it's laughable the idea that I'm
just swallowing what I'm being given to swallow.



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. *i 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. It is "possible" to feed children on flour and banana
skins - but it is not reasonable to do so for any significant period
in a society where the physical and mental effects of doing so would
put them at a significant disadvantage and will make them less
socially useful; a stunted idiot is no use to himself or anybody
else.

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.



is sufficient to make meals, and the local
laundromat or mummy will clean your clothes - or wash them in the bath
as people used to do if you're really stuck.

So we go back to what I said earlier, about the everyday life of the
poor being actually quite a bit more strenuous and demanding (at least
if they follow your prescriptions), but simultaneously less rewarding.
Even within your own terms Cynic, if a certain behaviour is harder and
less rewarding, you must surely agree it is less likely to be
exhibited.


I was discussing the *temporary* situation after the person has just
moved in to a new unfurnished home. *Yes, 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.



*Some 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. *Others 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.

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'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.



=A0You can indeed rent kitchen appliances instead of buying,
but it is not terrifically cost-effective IMO. =A0Renting electonic
goods such as TV and computers makes a bit more sense in order to
upgrade to the latest and greatest every year.

It probably is not cost effective, but it solves people's problems in
the short term, at the expense of long-term finances. Normally what
people do in the long-term, is start giving up their social and moral
pretenses in order to shed stressors and shed financial costs. So for
example, people stop paying the rent and do moonlight flits, etc.


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.



*Nor smuggling for tax
evasion purposes. *Both are artificial crimes that have been created
due to the inadequacies of the state-imposed systems. *HB 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.
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On Feb 20, 1:19*pm, (Cynic) wrote:
On Sun, 19 Feb 2012 14:48:44 -0800 (PST), Ste
wrote:

It's not just the electrical appliances, there are tiles falling off the
wall, doors falling off the cabinets and so on.
Those things *are* the landlord's responsibility if not caused by the
tenant, as is reasonable redecoration. =A0I appreciate that many
landlords drag their heels, but any tenant should be able to get it
done with persistance.

It's often necessary to simply withhold the rent to get repairs done,
and people who I know in that position simply don't want the risk of
upheaval if the landlord decides they are too much hassle or too
demanding and so terminates their tenancy.


In which case they would probably benefit from moving to a place with
a more reasonable landlord, as much of a pain as it will be.


It's a question of finding such a landlord. In the end, a competitive
rental market and a competitive society, is not going to yield many
"reasonable landlords", because it is always more profitable to be a
Hoogstraten.



And from the other side of the coin, landlords are often loath to make
repairs to properties that the tenants do not take any real care of,
and themselves cause either careless damage or wilful damage in the
course of arguments/fights and such (though not necessarily the same
damage as the disrepair complained of), which the tenants themselves
are in no financial position to make good.


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).



=A0In any case those things can usually be tided
sufficiently to not be an eyesore, and do not make the place less
comfortable.

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.



In any case, I think it is yourself who is being completely
unrealistic in your scenarios, because I have visited many homes of
people who have no money and are surviving completely on state
benefits, and have not seen any homes in anything close to such a
state of disrepair. *I concede that they no doubt exist, but put it to
you that they are very much the exception (except in places where the
people deliberately damage their own homes - to which I say nobody has
any duty whatsoever to make it better).


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.

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.
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In message
, at
13:56:53 on Mon, 20 Feb 2012, Ste remarked:
I have bought most of my appliances second-hand and have
been very pleased with almost all of them. *Obviously you have to pick
and choose and wait for the bargains.


And where exactly do you do this picking, choosing, and waiting?


eBay, Gumtree, Freecycle...

Postcards in the newsagent's window, newspaper small ads...
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In message
, at
14:20:02 on Mon, 20 Feb 2012, Ste remarked:
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.


I was the one with the dodgy kitchen cabinets, and I have tools and
experience. Indeed I have repaired several of them (the most easily
fixed problem being one of the two hinges having had its screws pull out
of the chipboard).
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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.

--
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On Mon, 20 Feb 2012 15:03:18 +0000, Roland Perry
wrote:

In which case they would probably benefit from moving to a place with
a more reasonable landlord, as much of a pain as it will be.


Such a strategy has its downside. Not just playing whack-a-mole with the
Royal Mail redirection, but until you've settled somewhere three years
getting credit is more tiresome.


The sort of people being discussed in that scenario will not *have* a
credit rating that needs protecting.

I've moved twice in the last 18 months, and did not have any need to
get my mail redirected either time. I simply notified everyone who I
needed/wanted to be notified of my change of address, and have no
desire to receive mail from anyone else. How many people and
organisations communicate with you by snail-mail these days?

--
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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!

--
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Default Metal theft. The biters bit

On Mon, 20 Feb 2012 12:17:17 +0000, tony sayer
wrote:

Magnolia is the rented accommodation standard colour dontcha know;!...


It is considered to be a "neutral" colour that will not put off
prospective tenants or buyers.

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In message 4f43b57f.16838437@localhost, at 15:21:38 on Tue, 21 Feb
2012, Cynic remarked:
In which case they would probably benefit from moving to a place with
a more reasonable landlord, as much of a pain as it will be.


Such a strategy has its downside. Not just playing whack-a-mole with the
Royal Mail redirection, but until you've settled somewhere three years
getting credit is more tiresome.


The sort of people being discussed in that scenario will not *have* a
credit rating that needs protecting.


That's typecasting tenants a bit, isn't it?

I've moved twice in the last 18 months, and did not have any need to
get my mail redirected either time. I simply notified everyone who I
needed/wanted to be notified of my change of address, and have no
desire to receive mail from anyone else. How many people and
organisations communicate with you by snail-mail these days?


A hundred or so (plus Xmas cards). But address these days isn't so much
to mail you things, but part of your online "identity". eg The address
you quote has to match the one they, or Experian or whatever, have for
you.
--
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On Tue, 21 Feb 2012 16:43:09 +0000, Roland Perry
wrote:

Such a strategy has its downside. Not just playing whack-a-mole with the
Royal Mail redirection, but until you've settled somewhere three years
getting credit is more tiresome.


The sort of people being discussed in that scenario will not *have* a
credit rating that needs protecting.


That's typecasting tenants a bit, isn't it?


We were discussing tenants who *you* stated were being forced to move
frequently because they were being harrassed by creditors. Thus that
is the subset of tenant I was referring to. Are people who are being
forced to move for that reason (a) likely to have a credit rating or
(b) likely to *want* mail from their creditors to be redirected?

I've moved twice in the last 18 months, and did not have any need to
get my mail redirected either time. I simply notified everyone who I
needed/wanted to be notified of my change of address, and have no
desire to receive mail from anyone else. How many people and
organisations communicate with you by snail-mail these days?


A hundred or so (plus Xmas cards).


If you are not going to communicate with a person before next
Christmas, I really don't see why you would want to receive their
Christmas card. If you need to impress visitors with how popular you
are, buy some cards yourself to hang up, or use last years' cards.
How many of your "hundred or so" people and organisations that you
claim communicate with you by snailmail (seems extrordinarily high) do
you actually *want* to receive mail from? To reach that figure, I
assume you are including all the junk mail you receive. Do you
*really* want the post office to redirect offers from double glazing
companies and book-of-the-month clubs?

But address these days isn't so much
to mail you things, but part of your online "identity". eg The address
you quote has to match the one they, or Experian or whatever, have for
you.


You will no doubt have informed your bank, utility companies and every
other organisation that you have current financial dealings with. The
change will filter through in due course. You could also inform the
two credit rating companies if it is something that is important to
you. When you order any goods via the mail from your new address, you
would update any address held by the mailorder company as a matter of
course. Untill then you will lose out on their marketing fliers - is
that a problem?

--
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In message 4f44f04d.97428390@localhost, at 14:02:51 on Wed, 22 Feb
2012, Cynic remarked:
On Tue, 21 Feb 2012 16:43:09 +0000, Roland Perry
wrote:

Such a strategy has its downside. Not just playing whack-a-mole with the
Royal Mail redirection, but until you've settled somewhere three years
getting credit is more tiresome.


The sort of people being discussed in that scenario will not *have* a
credit rating that needs protecting.


That's typecasting tenants a bit, isn't it?


We were discussing tenants who *you* stated were being forced to move
frequently because they were being harrassed by creditors.


No, I was only talking about being on the receiving end of dilapidated
fixtures and fittings.

Thus that is the subset of tenant I was referring to.


So most of the rest you wrote is at cross purposes

How many people and
organisations communicate with you by snail-mail these days?


A hundred or so (plus Xmas cards).


If you are not going to communicate with a person before next
Christmas, I really don't see why you would want to receive their
Christmas card.


Because they often include a "family newsletter" that's our main way of
keeping in touch. It's also a common way for them to tell me about a
change of address.

If you need to impress visitors with how popular you
are, buy some cards yourself to hang up, or use last years' cards.


This Xmas I didn't hang any up.

How many of your "hundred or so" people and organisations that you
claim communicate with you by snailmail (seems extrordinarily high) do
you actually *want* to receive mail from?


Pretty much all of them. I can think of one catalogue company that won't
take "no" for an answer, but the rest are quite welcome, albeit often
only an annual statement of some kind.

To reach that figure, I assume you are including all the junk mail you
receive. Do you *really* want the post office to redirect offers from
double glazing companies and book-of-the-month clubs?


I get almost no addressed junk mail. Perhaps that's because I opt out of
the electoral roll public list and never fill in questionnaires (not
that I get many).

But address these days isn't so much to mail you things, but part of
your online "identity". eg The address you quote has to match the one
they, or Experian or whatever, have for you.


You will no doubt have informed your bank, utility companies and every
other organisation that you have current financial dealings with.


Yep, that's where a lot of the 100 people come from. It's amazing how
they mount up (I just signed up for four different railway ticket
smartcards, so that's another four to keep updated).

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On Wed, 22 Feb 2012 17:53:40 +0000, Roland Perry
wrote:

If you are not going to communicate with a person before next
Christmas, I really don't see why you would want to receive their
Christmas card.


Because they often include a "family newsletter" that's our main way of
keeping in touch. It's also a common way for them to tell me about a
change of address.


How many of your "hundred or so" people and organisations that you
claim communicate with you by snailmail (seems extrordinarily high) do
you actually *want* to receive mail from?


Pretty much all of them. I can think of one catalogue company that won't
take "no" for an answer, but the rest are quite welcome, albeit often
only an annual statement of some kind.


Mail redirect only operates for a couple of months or so, so you still
have to actually inform all those people of your change of address.
Seeing that you have to inform them anyway, it is just as much effort
to inform them *before* you move as afterwards.

I've substituted email for snailmail whenever possible, and find it a
heck of a lot better. Albeit I was pretty much forced to do so
because I was living on a boat (not having a letterbox). Most bills
and statements can be switched to email these days. Consequently I
don't get any more than 1 personally addressed letter every two weeks
or so. It helps save trees as well (not that I care).

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On 23/02/2012 15:04, Cynic wrote:
On Wed, 22 Feb 2012 17:53:40 +0000, Roland
wrote:

If you are not going to communicate with a person before next
Christmas, I really don't see why you would want to receive their
Christmas card.


Because they often include a "family newsletter" that's our main way of
keeping in touch. It's also a common way for them to tell me about a
change of address.


How many of your "hundred or so" people and organisations that you
claim communicate with you by snailmail (seems extrordinarily high) do
you actually *want* to receive mail from?


Pretty much all of them. I can think of one catalogue company that won't
take "no" for an answer, but the rest are quite welcome, albeit often
only an annual statement of some kind.


Mail redirect only operates for a couple of months or so,


Rubbish!

You can do to for twelve months and then renew it. However, given the
gross incompetence of Royal Mail, they may not bother to redirect your
post even when you've paid for the service!

so you still
have to actually inform all those people of your change of address.
Seeing that you have to inform them anyway, it is just as much effort
to inform them *before* you move as afterwards.

I've substituted email for snailmail whenever possible, and find it a
heck of a lot better. Albeit I was pretty much forced to do so
because I was living on a boat (not having a letterbox). Most bills
and statements can be switched to email these days. Consequently I
don't get any more than 1 personally addressed letter every two weeks
or so. It helps save trees as well (not that I care).



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In message 4f465398.188383281@localhost, at 15:04:50 on Thu, 23 Feb
2012, Cynic remarked:

Mail redirect only operates for a couple of months or so,


You can start off with a year, and extend it for a second year. Once
upon a time you extend it further, but they don't allow that any more.

so you still
have to actually inform all those people of your change of address.
Seeing that you have to inform them anyway, it is just as much effort
to inform them *before* you move as afterwards.


I think you might be saying "why don't you inform them before you move".
That's easy - yes you can tell the more prolific ones but they won't
necessarily action it immediately. And then others crawl out of the
woodwork.

I've substituted email for snailmail whenever possible, and find it a
heck of a lot better.


I've swung the other way. Too many online accounts are very difficult to
manage, and far too often they delete old statements too quickly.

--
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