Look what addiction did to some our best boys and girls at an age when they
should have been happy with their lives....SO SO SAD...
Peter Green ....still with us but ...
Paul Kossoff. Brian Jones???? Jimi Hendrix. Amy Winehouse
to mention just a few great people from the music industry.
Glen, they are much the same in the end. Both are addiction, many aspects of both are similar and neither a very clever road to go down. I took a few tabs too many and spent years trying to get rid of another problem, but for over 40 years unless absolutely pressed I won't get near a headache pill let alone anything else. Like you I went to funerals and visited a few inside. I have also seen them go from drugs to alcohol and vice versa. None of the ones I knew were ever squatters though.
Brian, ultimately we are a mere part of a millimetre apart in philosophy except that I have a different view on what makes or does not make people criminal. Ultimately it is that kind of difference that keeps debate alive and, at the end of the day, gives society a chance of maintaining some kind of order.
interesting ....
How some of us refrain from the lure of drugs.
So many times I have been close to people who have not enjoyed my feelings
for the stuff.As far as I was concerned drugs were evil and not for me.
Many people in the late sixties seemed to drift on the drugs and end up squating, dealing
and finding their means of sustinance.
This is not labelling it is an association facts.
Brian, without exageration, I have been subject to those same, or at least comparable, stresses. Early in my career a large part of my work was in vast squatter settlements on the edge of Lima. I was studying migrants specifically, ironically those who packed up and went home mainly. However, hundreds of thousands of hopeless, landless, mainly hungry people headed to Latin American cities. They not only built their 'shanty' towns on the edge of cities but filled in every conceivable space in the cities, every empty building and even (well documented) the sewers. I was there at a time when there was a right wing military regime that was not sympathetic. Part of what I did to know how to look after people was rescue and emergency training back in Cambridge and I would be the first to indemnify what you say about the people in those services.
What was around me there was overwhelming, the risks I took were stupid to the extreme but the people were good inside and I could not lose faith in them. It was a question of life and death many days, not every by far. But a military 'death' squad (often an exageration but they do tend to shoot before giving out warnings) in the neighbourhood does not have a special spotting mechanism for nosey foreigners like me who work where they happen to be going to round up some 'commies'.
The authorities told them they were bad, the wealthy hegemony and the comfortable middle classes told them the same. They were all branded criminals and worse. How can I look on the people in England and Wales in an entirely different way and wholesale write them off as all bad? Not everybody who grows up on a grim council estate is bad, I did and am glad I turned my back on it for selfish reasons, but I do not brand the people as potentially anything.
The Moslem question you use as an example is a dogmatic sign of the times that people even think of that example. To even think it in any context is for me an abberation. To classify people is to deprive them of hope of changing their situation. If I made an off-the-cuff remark, that was a fair question anyway, then it is part of a two way trade between human beings, or not? That is how it should also be with the squatters before consigning them all to a so-called criminal class or do you disagree?
Well I thought that perhaps it may be nice to see London again...
Some of your oldest friends are there...
Maybe just a little peep for the Nastalga.
I go there for the same reason.....when I go..
When those good old friends come to visit they need taking care of....hotel service.
...and I thought it was all about the uniform!!!
Sorry, don't follow. I have never said anything about going 'home'. Or do you just mean Carol? I am not even sure where that is. I mainly lived in rural East Anglia, but also on the Gower. I have travelled the length and breadth of the UK for one reason or another, partly curiosity about my own NE Scotland origins. I have seen many other countries. France is actually a compromise reached to please more than one person. As for London, well many of my oldest friends are there, will stay and end their lives there. Once I was happy in a large metropolis, and London is small compared to some I have been in, but now I am uncomfortable in Bergerac let alone larger. However, I knew London very well at one time and now most of that is just nostalgia. I know London is there if I need it, I am not sure what for, bar a few galleries, museums and perhaps concert hall. But then I feel more or less the same about Paris.
Brian I would interested to know how you feel about it now....London that is.
Maybe it is better to see it for yourself.
Carol I have seen a lot of UK ....mainly as a child.
Have not, however lived outside London so know/knew it very well.
UK as a landscape ... lovely in parts....however I really do not like High rise buildings...
London ones, Birmingham ones, Paris/Bordeaux ones and certainly not Costa Del sol ones.
You want to go home.
I will stay here....certainly for now.
The very concepts to which the criminal classes also belonged and to which common grave the notion should be consigned.
Barbara, I left London to study. Apart from a few months staying with my sister I have not returned since 1966, other than as a visitor for a day or two. I really do not know about life in London other than what I am told.
Brian, I asked a question, I said something about 'policement having their own folklore about people don't they?'. It does not necessarily include you, I have no evidence either way. It certainly would not include all police men and women. However, I have had terrible experiences with the police when bailing out students (as tutors often get stuck with that great privilege) and hearing what is said of them. Not very nice things sometimes. I have also seen some good officers saying "Son, make sure you don't get caught next time" with a wink and smile. I am assuming that all squatters are dismissed as some kind of deviants when clearly that is not 100% the case and that the myth of father to son type of notion is which handing on some kind of criminal baton is part of a class structure exists is unsubstantiable.
Alcoholism and drug dependance are bad choices then Carol. I thought they were illnesses which have proven extemely difficult to treat.As to the rest I think you are getting perilously close to the idea of the deserving and the undeserving poor which so engaged the local worthies in the nineteenth century.
hmm....can see what you are saying Jo....but honestly? if my OH and I work our backsides off for 40 years, which we did, and if we owned 3 homes...which we do...one holiday flat here which we rent out of holidays, a small pied a terre in the UK for our regular visits and my part time living in the UK...and our main residence here...would I consider if fair that someone who doesnt work thinks its ok to walk into my home and start living there...not paying rent...then absolutely not! Ive had experience of working with homeless people in the largest hostel in West Berkshire.....and honestly....out of the nearly 200 people I came across living there over the time I worked at the hostel...I would say probably 2 were unfortunate. The rest made very bad choices, including losing jobs due to alcoholism, drug use or violence. We had lots of 18 - 30s who had never worked...never chose to go to school...and I know they were probably or most likely victims of their upbringing etc (there are now some families with 3 generations that have never worked)...but the expectation with the vast majority, were that society owes me. The expectation that society would be their parent and feed them and clothe them for ever was prevalent. The way to improve this is education, but its also showing that private property is private property....and being jealous of what other people have wont get them what they want. I agree that huge organisations buying up huge amounts of buildings and letting them rot is not right...but that should be tackled legally...two wrongs dont make a right. We need to change the law.
No, I'm here because my wife is from here.
Did you never live outside of London Barbara? interesting that you compare living in the depths of the Dordogne and living in London. I moved from London at 24, and only go back for shows, museums and galleries....and enjoy those visits. But we lived in leafy West Berkshire for 30 years...and we found a good deal of tranquility in a little village there....now we are going back we are looking at Devon as a likely spot...or maybe Somerset...and really, when I see councils spending unwisely or getting madly stupid salaries...makes me keen to stand for election...the only way to change things like that is to fight your corner...leaving the building so as to speak...is not going to improve anything.
ownership is decided in the courts, if after the 10 years has passed without the owner prooving to everyone involved, that he can occupy the land usefully.
so would I, Ian. there are two victims in that scenario and they should stick together and not be divided into landlord and tresspasser.
CaroI think you've missed my point, or I didn't explain myself enough. How would someone who needs to squat ever buy a house and in the UK especially? I was suggesting that with so many unoccupied houses, having NO MEANS whatsoever to ever be able to buy anything (ie me, for example, having spent years as a volunteer with no inherited property) makes it just and proper that if a landlord is no longer interested or capable of using his resources for the community, then it should be occupied and repossessed.
You're forunate to be in a position to choose to live here despite it being more expensive. I chose to live here because I thought I might one day be able to have the choice of mobility via being a property owner. That is, owning my own accomodation, which makes it possible for me to move closer to where there is work available. This hasn't happened. I could never afford anything livable in and I have never had a salary big enough for a mortgage either in the UK or here. In fact, I'm now disabled and battling with the pole emploi to find a training course.
I wasn't suggesting the cost of living as a motivation for moving here, I was suggesting that all the brits I have ever spoken to, admit to the price of housing being a major, if not THE major factor in them exploring the option, and that once installed here, they perhaps discover the cost of living is offset by other advantages, usually to do with mortgages, tax, and investments. So they stay, or not. I wonder what the percentage is of those who go back?
What is wrong with the possibility that the labelling of social classes is wrong then? I do not believe in such a thing as a criminal class, you do. Indeed, I am one of the 'liberal classes' who cannot accept anything as neatly packaged as class theory. As far to the left as I may be politically, it is where I disagree with conventional Marxist analysis. Given that deviance is in all its forms common to all social strata and that lord or lady is as likely to be a 'thief' as someone from the 'lower' classes, I really cannot see how such a classification can be justified. To repeat Carol and myself, seeing a man of such questionable qualitie,s who by your reasoning belongs to a 'criminal class', has been given a senior post in government, does it all not implode?