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Being 'poor' in modern Britain is a long way from being poor in medieval Britain - No one "owns" you, rats aren't eating your dead children, you will not die of plague and sun-up to sun-down backbreaking labour is only for wealthy farmers.
This disparity of welath is largely perceptual.
Just because Clyde over there studied and passed his A-levels, does not make him filthy rich. Especially as you, Derrick, spent most of high-school getting high and *****ing about how 'oppressed' you were.
Want does not equal need. Need does not equal entitlement.
Many of the people (black, white, asian) who lived on the same council estate I did, were 3rd and 4th generation "wards of the state".
They were always banging-on about their rights, and what the state should be doing for them - but never about their responsibilities or what they could do to change their situation..
Always what others owed them.
Granted they were inculcated with this ideology from an early age, but at some point native wit has to take over and an individual has to realise that the ultimate reasponsibility for his or her life is theirs alone.
Always the hardest-working people I saw were first or second generation immigrants from somewhere truly awful and they despised the laziness, cynicism and FU attitude of the local 'victims'.
Gangs of yuppies from Hampstead did not get on trains or buses, come to Hackney and piss in the stairwells, break windows, assault girls or burn cars.
My father's family was dirt-poor in a neighbourhood where dirt was cheap. He and his 'kind' were the n*****s of the time.
His cockney accent marked him as 'not one of us'.
Nevertheless, he studied hard and got a scholarship to Oxford.
Even in the middle of the depression he got a job.
These opportunities exist even more-so today, especially with 'positive descrimination'.
However 50 years of socialism and a culture of victimology has convinced generations that 'the system' is to blame and they somehow stand apart.
All this will blow over. The weather will change and everyone will go back to working, theiving, scroungeing or whatever.
To those who propose a more 'socially equitable' system of economics:
Do you honestly think that the rioters would be any smarter, more resposible or more affluent under any other system?
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