Social Housing

[LMH]

Jo

Sorry if my posts hurt you. I'm just speaking from my own experience. It's just that the area in which I live was really nice, hardly any crime but since they have built affordable housing, there's some awful adults and equally awful kids.

I'm not calling all people who live on council estates - hey I'm married to one myself, his dad died very young in an rtc and his mum was left to bring up eight kids. No matter how short they were of money as kids, they never stole or abused people unlike some of them round here.

Lisa xx

 

[colin(bridgend)]

Jo-anne - there are good and bad everywhere and it would appear that you and your husband are to be admired for what you have been through and achieved. You are making the effort to provide for your children and to better the quality of you and the family life. My wife and I when we were first married had a Council staff house in the centre of a large rough estate. However the cul-de-sac we were in was mainly respectable tennants. The council developed a policy of putting a bad tennant amongst good hoping they would be ashamed and improve, unfortunately it was the rotten apple syndrome whereby they turned the rest bad.

In Bridgend we have three rough estates now all run by housing associations whereby the tennats are now coming from all over the UK. There was four but one estate became so bad that it was demolished - new houses built in the 1970s soon became a slum no-go area. Most of these tennants are out of work and quite a few have drug related problems. However there are two other areas whereby the tennants are very much law abiding and industrious.

As I said there are good and bad everywhere. I live in a small rural village just outside Bridgend with no social housing in the village. We still have trouble here and a few teanagers have ended up on ASBOs for what use they are. We have these Blunkett Bobbies patrolling the village twice a day on foot and the yougsters just laugh and mock them. They have no powers of arrest at all apart from the normal citizen's arrest.

Therefore in conclusion I must apologise to you if you have been offended by my previous postings as I know it is not fair to tar all people with the same brush. I have made my postings from local experience and assumed it would be general through out the UK. Please you accept this as a genuine apology.

 

[Lord Braykewynde]

jo-anne, having read again through the posts I do think you are taking it a little too personal. I can't see where anyone said all council house dwellers were scum. If I did I for one would have posted my tu'pennorth against that. I will never forget my roots having come from a working class mining background. I too started off in a rented property and eventually buying our council house. The reason we bought it was twofold. As an investment for our children and to move on up the housing ladder to a home of our choice, not what was allocated to us. The estate we lived on at the time was a nice estate but like many others throughout the country in these times has now gone downhill bigtime, even having it's own police station now. There are still lots of nice people living there, including our former neighbours, and I do feel sorry for these because they are trapped. I agree with Colyn, they did move the scum into nice areas and that means nice estates but it didn't work. Now these problem families make everyone elses life hell, it's like a cancer spreading throughout the land.

There are answers but in these politically correct, human rights times they cannot be applied.

The liberalists blame everyone else for the reasons they are work shy, drug depend scum saying more money should be spent on them because they are "disenfranchised".

As a full time mother jo-anne you have my full respect, I wish there were more like you and then maybe there would be fewer latch key kids roaming the streets.

 

[JasonR_374341560]

All respect to Jo-Anne.

None of us choose our parents or are starting point in life. As much as I respect Jo and many others like her and her husband how about a bit of respect the other way round.

My wife came from a rural farming back ground and her parents wanted their children to have a good start and decided to pay for a private education although they had a minimal income, I had a somewhat disjointed education.

My wife went to college and I did various jobs and ended up working my way up and became a manufacturing manager. We met when I rented a room in the same house as my wife and when we got together we both worked two jobs as private rents were high and Social Housing a non starter. My wife worked up until 3 days before our first child was born and we always had more than two jobs on the go whilst our children were young.

Wife's father died before we met so we also had lots of 90 mile round trips to help her elderly mother and often monthly 400 mile round trips to my parents for many years as they both suffered ill health.

Social services did not offer our parents much help as we made an effort and they owned their own homes. Apart from maintaining our own home, we also had the two other houses to maintain and keep gardens at.

I well remember driving slowly home late into the night as we had no money left for fuel at month's end, guys and gals that worked for me were fascinated by my lunch time salad sandwiches as they moaned about the council coming to put in double glazing or insulation. My lunch diet came from our home produce as despite running 4 jobs we couldn't afford to buy food for my lunch. So we grew it and made our own bread and bought and fitted the house insulation and double glazing.

Our first caravan would have gone to scrap but we got it free and refitted it and it became a cherished holiday home.

We worked hard and have no complaints for what we chose to do and were fortunate to have good health most of the time, but I do resent the lack of respect we and our late parents had from the likes of social service people and many who sit on fat idle backsides and snipe as we've done OK, when our son was young and got in with a bad crowd for a brief period even the police turned on us as we lived in an OK area and made the effort to make sure our boy got in no trouble.

Visiting my brother in-law who bought and ex council house I had my car keyed as it was considered up market by the scabs mixed in with good people on the estate.

I can't remember us ever taking any money or hand out, even when our first child was born the health visitors and district nurses gave my wife little help as we owned quite a nice small house and had a nice set-up. My wife's lack of experience with babies was just ignored and we were left to get on with it really as they ran off to sort out societies misfits.

But what respect have we ever had? F all most of the time!

On top of it all the UK has had generous ammounts from our earning put in the pot and many others are in the same boat and who listens to us and our concerns over how this country is run and our money spent.

 

[JasonR_374341560]

Jo

Sorry if my posts hurt you. I'm just speaking from my own experience. It's just that the area in which I live was really nice, hardly any crime but since they have built affordable housing, there's some awful adults and equally awful kids.

I'm not calling all people who live on council estates - hey I'm married to one myself, his dad died very young in an rtc and his mum was left to bring up eight kids. No matter how short they were of money as kids, they never stole or abused people unlike some of them round here.

Lisa xx

Well said Lisa

 

[smiley]

Hi Joanne

I grew up in a council house with 5 other siblings.. Our first house was in a good street and area, we never had a lot, but I went to a strict school, I was one of the babies and never let outside, my mom didn't want me to get mixed up with the wrong sort. But I now see and hear the news of that area as one of the worst in the town...

I have done what my mother did, my best for my children.

I am fortunate that I am able to choose where I want to be, but if all people where ever they live were nicer, polite, respectful, honest, helpful etc etc. There wouldn't be a social problem, what can I say !!!!!!!!

 

[Marc1]

Over the years I have lived in council properties and owner occupied ( for want of a better expression) and I can say with hand on heart that I have found no major differences with either set of neighbours. Whilst I can see that targeting unemployed in social housing might give this goverment a distraction from the ongoing headlines about its dodgy donations it fails to show the real problem, that a section of our younger generation are being forced out of the job market by the continual influx of migrant workers. I guess the housing taken from the unemployed can always be given to the latest batch of east europeans.

Marc