Misunderstanding those less fortunate

We live in a quiet village in Wiltshire.  A few doors away from our house - on a road where the houses range in value from about £200,000 to £300,000 - so not hugely expensive given property price in general - we have a row of houses owned by a housing association and let to housing association tenants.


3 of the houses have decent, ordinary people living in them.  We know most of them and their kids, the same way we know our other neighbours.

The biggest house, however, is occupied by a family of the most abhorrent individuals.  A month or so after we moved in, the man of the house smashed up his own back windows - all of them - on a drunken rampage.  The five children in the house, all of school age and less, regularly shout abuse from the back garden.  For the past few nights, the man of the house has been steaming drunk and yelling abuse into the wee small hours from the back garden.  He's just finished with a flourishing "I know where you live, you fucking cunts."

I grew up in a council house and at times during my childhood by Dad was unemployed and took state benefits to keep his family alive.  Back in the 70s and early 80s, that's all you got - enough to keep you alive.  I remember the gnawing cold as we had the gas fire on for maybe an hour a day and then switched it off and huddled in blankets.  I remember eating bran for breakfast.  I remember the tears of my father as his frustration at not being able to find work filled his every waking moment.  We were homeless once - for about 2 days, in B&B accommodation.  4 of us on the floor in a room no bigger than my spare room now.  Getting up for school the next day having not been able to shower or bathe.  Worrying about my mum, wondering if we were going to find a house to live in.

We found a house.  It was on a council estate, and we were surrounded by others in the same boat.  A great sea of desperate people living on the benefits the state afforded them.  As I said - just enough to keep us alive.  But almost without exception - decent people.

The family - if you could call them that - in the house a few doors from us have in the past year spent money on a trampoline for the kids which we estimate must have cost at least £1,000, probably more.  A £200 play house has just been delivered and the children enjoy the fruits of the state benefit system daily.  Luxuries abound.

They also, unfortunately, get to 'enjoy' the results of the man of the house pouring taxpayers' money down his throat every night.  When my Dad's family lived on state benefits, I don't remember him drinking - I don't remember him or my mum having any luxuries.  I remember the feeling as a child of crushing disappointment at Christmas - but the reality now, as an adult, is that they did the best they could - and more.  Christmas was filled with happiness, actually, looking back now.  

There was so much love in the house.  I grew up in a tough time and got lucky that I was bright enough at school to go to the Grammar school and go on to uni.  So I know how tough it is to be society's poor.  I know what life is like when you have barely the money to feed and warm yourself, and I know how it feels to live close to poverty.

But what my father never did was to lash out at the world around him for that.  He got angry occasionally, sure.  But - and you can see it in my brother and sister now - he brought his children up with respect for others.  

I can't begin to describe how cheated I feel by these people.  I pay about £1,000 in taxes every month.  As a citizen, I respect the fact that those taxes are required by the state to keep people alive - and I'm sort-of paying that back now. The government helped keep my family alive in the 70s and 80s... now I pay back, I'm fine with that.  I respect that I'm paying for the poorest in society - those people who really cannot work and find themselves in such a situation that they need to ask for help.

I am angry, though, that I have to help these people.  A drunken, violent man with no desire to work.  A fat woman who clearly can't keep off the pies.  5 children with no discipline in life, ready to take the next stage to lap up the luxuries of state benefits.  

I'm no Tory - Cameron makes me sick, Johnson scares the living daylights out of me and I am still scarred by the misgovernance of Thatcher and Major.  But these people make me want to vote Tory simply to hurt them.  Being part of a society imposes certain responsibilities on you - *try* to work, if you can't work then the state will help you.  Go back to work when you can.  But don't sit on your obese arse and hurl drunken abuse at your neighbours and wake their children.  You do not have that right.

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The ownership of children

Sorry, but I'm going to start by going all serious on you.

It occurred to me today that our very language permits a whole bunch of nonsense around children.  We talk of "our children", "my daughter" and "their kids".  We assume an ownership of the children we have mothered or fathered and I believe that's a very wrong and dangerous presumption.

At its very worst is the apparent aching desire of the IVF couple who believe it is their right to have children - to own them.  None of us, surely, have the right to bring children into this world.  It's a part of a natural process, the survival of the species but which one of us can claim an absolute right to create new life?

On another level, it brings out the disgusting farce of custody battles.  Not one of the custody battles currently making their way through our legal system have at its heart the actual welfare of the child - parents will protest they are doing it in the best interests of "their" children but what is really at stake is the ownership - the possession, the controlling interest.  An entirely selfish desire to be the dictator and define the process and future of something which is perceived to be owned.

I speak as the father of a one-year old daughter who I absolutely know would bring me to the brink of madness should a custody battle ensue.  I detest that, though, as it's only societal constructs around me that have brought me to that level.  At a basic human level, all I should need for her is for her to be safe and happy.  And that shouldn't necessarily be with me.

Over the past 15 months I've struggled one way and another with my emotions over the arrival of this new person into my life.  People said I should feel overwhelming love from the moment I set eyes on her; I did not.  You know, I will explain that on here and soon, but there is a truly annoying lie peddled to prospective and new parents that this will be the case; and many feel guilty and disappointed that they don't 'fit in' and keep those feelings to themselves, not even allowing their partner to share the burden.  I do love her enormously - but that has not always been the case and I need the honest truth to be told.

It's also the most soul destroying process I've been through.  I've never felt so low but required to be so high.  And yes, it's selfish stuff - the sleep deprivation, the struggling with the enormous expectations put upon us as parents in the early 21st century.  Yes, I'm whinging about something I have no right to whinge about - I am blessed to have this opportunity.  But it is worth being honest so those that are sitting there feeling guilty about feeling this way; those that are in the first months of pregnancy who are struggling with their emotions; and those that are contemplating parenthood but are blinded by the gushy nonsense of the earth-mother/father brigade - we can all get some perspective, I hope.

And I hope to put my point across in a measured way.  I hope you may find it useful or at least will give you food for thought in some way.

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James Metcalfe
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