Themuleous said:
Just please have a little symtathy for those who saved and saved and managed to scrape together enough for a deposit to by their first aquarium in...2007 and are now facing a lifetime of never being able to upgrade.
Sam
Sam. Forgive me, I have every sympathy for those who have lost out here.
What I can't stand are the people who complain about today's world, blame Thatcher, say My parents had to scrimp and scrape and then don't weigh up the rest of the facts
🙂
Today's society is not the same as that of our parents. Our parents only bought what they could afford, they prioritised, They weighed up needs against luxuries and budgeted.
Totday's society doesn't They think Sky, 50" TVs, Designer Clothing etc are all needs these days. when they complain that the cost of living is ridiculous they include what our Parents would see as luxuries and say the government needs to help them.
Reality check guys.
My families income (before the foolish red's implemented throwaways) is circa £800 in the hand.
We can easily live on that and have more percentage left over than my Parents ever had even though my Dad had a pretty good job.
Rent (Council Aquarium) is £220 per month - If you decide you don't want to live in a council area then that is your choice and therefore not to be moaned about.
Council Tax is $100
Gas/Electricity is £100
Water is £40
TV Licence is £12
That makes a leftover of £328 for groceries. That is a lot unless you have to have all thr trimmings, luxuries etc. Not necessaities.
I have included the TV licence but in reality TV is not a need. Extra channels or service s is not a need.
Having a Car is not a need, having a relatively new car is most definately not a need.
Having broadband, telephone, mobile phones are not a need.
These are all luxuries. and that leftover is BEFORE £550 of tax credits and £140 of Child benefit!!!!
So anyone that ever moans and suggests things are hard for this generation need a reality check and re-assess exactly what we are spending 'our' money on and calling 'cost of living' in comparison to our Parent's generation. Similar to our hobby you have to compare like for like.
Ask your parents what they did in times like these and they will look at your bank account and gasp with shock. they will not believe how much credit this generation has. They ask why, Tut, shake their head and go away in bewilderment
They will say they bought 5+ year old cars and kept them for many many years. they didn't push the boat out and buy 2-3 year old cars every 2 or 3 years.
They didn't HAVE to have £30 mobile contracts with the latest all singing and dancing phones to do things that they could do on other items they already own (i.e. Internet on computers, music on a cheap Mp3, photos on a camera etc. If mobiles were available back then they would not have done this. My Mum and Dad have mobiles but they are on PAYG and they add £5-10 each year. They are for emergency only. they do not understand our need for mobiles and neither do I when thinking about it.
They would not have moved into their first aquarium (rented or bought) and had to have it filled up with furniture as quickly as possible.
My mum and Dad take great pride when they tell us that they used Orange crates for chairs for the first few months when they moved into their first home. After those first few months guess what? They got second hand furniture either bought for pennies or given to them. This is incredibly common of our Parents generation.
They had little spare unlike us who splash out all the spares on non necessities and for years did not have money to go out for drinks nor restaurants nor anything else. Couple this with the ethic of mother's staying at home and single income in those 'bad old days'.
I lost my job and my wife went full time, however it isn't through laziness nor lack of motivation that I will not work now. I receive no benefit from not working. It is because I insist to my wife that if I work she must stay at home and be house wife. She won't so I do it instead and take the flak from a monetary and material obsessed member of the modern generation!!!
So if you want to compare our generation to our Parent generation compare them like for like. Take on their mindset and when times are hard tighten the belt. If we were our parents and times were getting tough we would have cancelled the mobile contract, given up the Sky, got a cheaper car and used it less etc but we don't so please stop moaning and/or blaming Thatcher.
You'll be blaming Cameron soon for the very same reason. The present Goverment is having to sort out a bankrupt country after years of money given away to buy votes.
That £550 tax credits and £140 child benefit is unneeded in reality even at our low income of £800 a month. It is our generations problem or not living within our own means and prioritising needs and waiting for things if we want them that makes these giveaways seem necessary.
Cameron is too soft IMO. I would've wiped out all of the tax credits and told those who both lent too much recklessly and those who borrowed too much recklessly to make settlement and give up what they were foolish enough to both lend/borrow. I would have this country get real and learn to deal with what our Parents just accepted without question.
If you want something and cannot afford it save and then buy.
Stop complaining guys. We are the ones who made these choices and until we as a society return to the 'grounded' level of our Parents, remove this obsession of image and materialistic vanity then we have only ourselves to blame.
This isn't really the place for politics or discussion of this type. I am heavily into politics. I watch lots and lots of it. Io read all sorts of articles. I can read through half of the 'diplomacy' for what it is and not what the media try and suggest it is or whip up a frenzy on. These subjects are unbreakably intertwined to the point that there are always different opinions from all around the loop. More often than not that cannot see the whole loop and their opinion is based on a small part of the loop.
We don't want to be getting into this sort of depth on here, because it takes a lot to be able to see the whole of this loop and when you can you see that A is because off Bwhich causes C etc right through to Z causing A and so the loop continues along. Think inflation, pay rises, strikes etc.
Thw whole loop is people want more money but want to spend less and this is basically is the driver of the loop. It affects all aspects yet people only understand certain areas of it and then complain when their part of it affects another part of it which then alters their part and they are not happy.
Chill out guys. Get rid of your luxuries, Ask your parents for advice on every aspect of life and then try and say you are worse off than they were!!! Then weigh up how much the government gives you for no return against what they gave your Parents. 100:1 or more ratio after factoring inflation in I would suggest!!!
If you do want to get on the ladder then get on the council home list, get your home, live in it 5 years, get your whopper of a discount and wahey you're on the ladder. You then have to live in it for 2 more years before oyu are aloowed to sell it for profit.
Are we all too posh? I think it was the best decisions I ever made and I live in what I formerly knew as the worst stree on the worst estate in the city having been brought up in very respectable areas then followed that with the areas I private rented being very well respected areas.
Tom Bar would call this a trade off.
dw we don't need more houses, we have plenty. We need less people (demand) also less snobbishness so people don't HAVE to live in 'brand name' areas with the added problem of returning morality and ethics to areas that have in the past decade or so turned into areas of ASBO champions that are out of control. When there are so many empty abodes then why do we need to build more.
One key would be to return the border area to the perimeter of our island rather than the tunnel being used to say the border is the Mediterranean and the Ural mountain range. And this comes from someone who 'paired up' with a recent addition to this LFS!!!! So I see both sides of the coin here.
Whilst our LFS is filling up from stock arriving from other LFS's those other LFS's are having to restock from their former colonies and that just adds more fish to spread around. Our LFS is now part of a chain store of which we are one of the most opoular and therefore we will be having to look for larger premises if this restocking continues too much further.
AC