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Slum Britain 50 years on


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Old 09-12-2016, 08:15
theid
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http://www.channel5.com/show/slum-britain-50-years-on

Did anybody watch this documentary? The photographer who took the pictures 50 years ago kept using the word "hopeless" about the feelings of the people he visited.
Looking around today I think this word has taken on even more relevance.
Homeless and hopeless. Just about sums it up.
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Old 09-12-2016, 08:45
Dotheboyshall
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It was real poverty in those days, today's homeless and slum dwellers don't know they've even been born.
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Old 09-12-2016, 18:30
theid
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Still looked pretty grim to me - and, as a couple of the participants pointed out, so many people are just a couple of steps away from being homeless due to the fact that very few people can afford to have "something put away for a rainy day". "Rainy day" meaning being made redundant or simply not having enough income to cover the basic outgoings.
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Old 09-12-2016, 18:34
Lyricalis
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It was real poverty in those days, today's homeless and slum dwellers don't know they've even been born.
How about you give it a try and then tell us how cushy it is now?
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Old 09-12-2016, 18:50
Caxton
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The house I was brought up in my today's standard would have been slum. No electricity, windows and doors that did not fit, damp and mould on the walls, no bathroom, outside toilet, no running hot water. My parents brought me up in a house like that just after the war, the waiting list for a council house was huge.

I remember dad going down the coal yard to get coal dust to mix with cement and make briquettes, I cannot remember if it was because no coal was available of we could not afford to buy it, but that was all we had.

No holidays, and basic food and no soup kitchens

But we were not alone in the area we lived in of terrace houses, most lived in very similar conditions. Nobody moaned about there lot they just got on and lived their lives the best they could. My trousers were patched, my socks darned and my dad repaired my shoes when I wore the soles off them.

But compared to today, most people were very happy, we were happy with what we had.
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Old 09-12-2016, 18:56
bspace
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It was real poverty in those days, today's homeless and slum dwellers don't know they've even been born.
I think you've got it completely the wrong way round, and that's a point made by at least one of those ex slum dwellers in the program. I grew up in the 50s and 60s in a slum. Luckily for me in one of the better streets but people in the next streets to me lived in conditions every bit as bad as shown in the photographs. As the guy in the film says, we didn't really know we were poor, certainly not in the same way as it's drilled into people today.

One thing I know for sure, it was wrong then and it's wrong now.
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Old 09-12-2016, 19:05
Penny Crayon
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The house I was brought up in my today's standard would have been slum. No electricity, windows and doors that did not fit, damp and mould on the walls, no bathroom, outside toilet, no running hot water. My parents brought me up in a house like that just after the war, the waiting list for a council house was huge.

I remember dad going down the coal yard to get coal dust to mix with cement and make briquettes, I cannot remember if it was because no coal was available of we could not afford to buy it, but that was all we had.

No holidays, and basic food and no soup kitchens

But we were not alone in the area we lived in of terrace houses, most lived in very similar conditions. Nobody moaned about there lot they just got on and lived their lives the best they could. My trousers were patched, my socks darned and my dad repaired my shoes when I wore the soles off them.

But compared to today, most people were very happy, we were happy with what we had.
My childhood was very similar - terraced house, outside toilet no bathroom etc.

As kids we were happy because everyone else living in the direct vicinity were in the same boat. The thing is - we were happy with what we were given for Christmas/Birthdays etc. We knew there were others who got far more but weren't envious or avaricious - it was just as it was.

I know there is such a thing as 'relative poverty' but - people's expectations of having all the latest and most up to date stuff are so high. If people haven't got it all (or able to give all to their kids) it makes them unhappy and discontented. I've worked in very rough/poor schools and seen parents put themselves into terrible debt in order to buy what they simply cannot afford.

It's a sad world - full of greed and envy fuelled by mass advertising and expensive readily available credit. I do sometimes yearn for the 'simpler' days. People really were much happier (and nicer too).
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Old 09-12-2016, 19:08
Phil 2804
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The house I was brought up in my today's standard would have been slum. No electricity, windows and doors that did not fit, damp and mould on the walls, no bathroom, outside toilet, no running hot water. My parents brought me up in a house like that just after the war, the waiting list for a council house was huge.

I remember dad going down the coal yard to get coal dust to mix with cement and make briquettes, I cannot remember if it was because no coal was available of we could not afford to buy it, but that was all we had.

No holidays, and basic food and no soup kitchens

But we were not alone in the area we lived in of terrace houses, most lived in very similar conditions. Nobody moaned about there lot they just got on and lived their lives the best they could. My trousers were patched, my socks darned and my dad repaired my shoes when I wore the soles off them.

But compared to today, most people were very happy, we were happy with what we had.
Would you like to live that way now though?

Compared to the victorian era post war housing was a vast improvement. Essentially that is the point though that a country with a £2 Trillion economy really ought to have its housing in order and decades of neglect on this front coupled with stagnant wages and in some regions stagnant economies has seen the gradual but widespread return of slum housing.
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