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Carlow Kilkenny General Election 2016

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    #422
    cameramonkey
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,220 ✭✭✭cameramonkey


    inthehat wrote: »
    This comment really made me laugh as it brought me back to my childhood in a 3 bed corporation house in KK city - when my mam and my unemployed dad rented out two of the bedrooms to lodgers in order to boost the family income. So me and my siblings slept on couch-beds and shared beds and just got on with it, - it was case of survival. But we never felt poor. My parents grew their own spuds and veg in the back garden, Mam knitted jumpers for us and stitched the Boot factory shoes (rem that?). We finished our education and went on to college and got good jobs, - as did hundreds of our friends and peers who came from similiar backgrounds. There was never a "hand-out" mentality. It's so different now sadly. People seem to have lost their sense of pride and self sufficiency.

    Did you father not get unemployment assistance? Did your family not get children's allowance? Did you not get a 3 bed corpo house at a subsided rate so that your family could have somewhere to live?

    These were all part of our welfare state and are the things that many on this thread seem so exercised about, they helped your family at a time when they needed it and stabilised the families living conditions so that you could eat, have a roof over your head and attended free education.

    You now choose to call them" hand-outs" when other people avail of them.

    Its a funny old world.


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    #423
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 0 ✭ [Deleted User]


    I take your point cameramonkey - indeed our corporation house was at a realistic rent but it wasn't reduced when my father became ill and unable to work, - the rent remained the same. And education wasn't free at the time, all secondary schools charged fees. Neither was my college education free, - I got a loan which I repayed once I started working. My father's disability payment was abyssmal in those days and couldn't possible have educated us to third level. My point is that I think people at the time were more willing to do everything in their power to better themselves before they looked for assistance.


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    #424
    cameramonkey
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,220 ✭✭✭cameramonkey


    inthehat wrote: »
    I take your point cameramonkey - indeed our corporation house was at a realistic rent but it wasn't reduced when my father became ill and unable to work, - the rent remained the same. And education wasn't free at the time, all secondary schools charged fees. Neither was my college education free, - I got a loan which I repayed once I started working. My father's disability payment was abyssmal in those days and couldn't possible have educated us to third level. My point is that I think people at the time were more willing to do everything in their power to better themselves before they looked for assistance.

    I also take your point, some people over use the welfare system, I think that anything that is given free can be sometimes not appreciated. I think depending on the state to be a provider of your needs is not a good position to be in and in fact can become a trap. I speak as someone who was on the dole for a time in my younger years.


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