I know my place

Anya, I have not taken it to heart for myself, I was brought up to know 'I am better than no man and no man is better than me ' and .god loves us all. I just get cross when people are spoken of this way,

And it was said on national tv not by anyone from any council. The media are whipping up this poor/rich devide and some people are getting their knickers in a twist fighting for this so called bottom of society group. I have never known envy - well apart from thoughts towards Alan Rickmans wife ?, always been rich and poor, this is not going to change, it is we who have to change and stop this obsession with class divide .

I agree with paddyann here in SW.Scotland there is no distinction between those in council/private rent/private houses. In fact is there even such a thing anymore as a council estate, there cant be a street in any former council estates that doesn't have private and private rental properties.
Annie i agree with you too the term "bottom of society" is a disgrace and the media are the worst offenders.Money doesn't maketh the man or to quote Rabbie ( modern version) "a woman is a woman for aw that

I think this 'ladder' of society is horizontal, with all of us sitting on it, waving our legs, all at the same height. Any one of us could fall through the rungs at any time, or lose our place and have to shift onto a different part.

I am amazed that we have a whole thread about a cliché. I am quite sure we have all referred to ourselves or others "starting at the bottom of the ladder" when talking about a job and I just can't see it as offensive.

We now find that this was used on television for people the user of "the bottom of the ladder" (although it now seems to have changed to the bottom of society) was fighting for. Trying to get other people a fair deal has nothing to do with envy and it seems unlikely, as they were fighting for the people described this way, that it was in anyway pejorative in it's use.

Wrong GG, it started with the bottom of society , read the thread it may help you

I did. I do apologise I must have missed that. Probably because most posts concentrated on the ladder. Either way, if someone was trying to help the people concerned, I can't see a problem. Did they complain?

It was said in a tv programme where the fire was being discussed, not by anyone involved

I can only go by what you said.

The media are whipping up this poor/rich devide and some people are getting their knickers in a twist fighting for this so called bottom of society group.

I assumed you were referring to these people as the ones who said it. Enough now though - there must be better things in life than to quibble over a cliché as I said before.

Well I stated my life in a rental flat and we were over the moon when my mum and dad were allocated a prefab on a council estate when I was 7 ....I loved it , the best house I have ever lived in i played with all the kids, the mums looked out for each other, got the washing in for their neighbour if it rained, the dads were all at work I married into the forces and still lived in a nice social bubble in service houses and flats... when my marriage broke up I moved back home and was lucky to be allocated a council house and that's where I stayed until my nan died and left me her house I have never had any problem with looking upon my self as working class The fact that I had a good education, a profession and my own house has never made me want to be or indeed feel any different I have no problem at all in classing myself, so others have no need to.
When the prefabs were pulled down we went back to rental flats it worked the other way for me as my Dads family stayed in council houses all their lives My mums family owned their own house and my cousin ( all on dads side) classed me as a snob because of this and the fact I went to a smaller different school to them so they never wanted to know me
I have missed hearing this description on T V or news media and I have never heard people of council estates describe that way but it may be very different in inner cities to where I live in a small to middle sized town

I haven't heard the term "bottom of society" mentioned. I think what has been mentioned is that the disparity between the very richest/comfortably off and the very poorest impacts upon the way they are treated by those in authority.

This appeared to happen with regard to Grenfell Tower. Do you really think a complaint or concern raised by somebody with a lot of financial/professiona/political clout would be totally ignored by the authorities over a significant period of time? For one thing, those with money can afford to employ lawyers to represent them if their concerns are not addressed in a timely manner.

Of course, every person is of value but unfortunately not every person is treated as if they are of value. The very term "VIP" is emblamatic of the fact that society is comfortable with - and reinforces - the idea that certain people are naturally superior to other people.

Doesn't make it acceptable , well not for me , I don't think of people in that way

Annie
I'm just watching 'Policing London' I would say that most of the people featured ( other than the police) are what I would call 'the bottom of society'
I'm sure every one of them will have a pity party story to tell: but we all make choices in life and they made the wrong ones at the expense of other decent people.

Then who do you place at the top of society Petra ?

Oh dear.

Presumably people who never make choices at the expense of decent people? Oh, hang on a minute..we're talking about grenfall tower..

This can go around in circles, how do you know all the people in the tower were so called decent people ?

annie
I'm afraid I can't give an answer to that question. I don't put people at the top of society. All I do know is, to put it in its simplest terms that there are some very bad people in our society.
And if some of you have never encountered them, you are very lucky.
MissAdventure
My comments had nothing whatsoever to to with Grenfell Tower.

Elegran is right about social housing not intended for the poorest in our society. It was originally created to meet the housing needs when urban areas grew as a result of the industrial revolution. It replaced the original Victorian slums. Then, in the 20th century new building programmes started in the 1920s because the public housing stock was no longer fit for purpose.

The main change came in the late 60s and early 70s when once again the Labour government realised the huge cost of maintaining the housing stock. That's when home ownership started to be encouraged and it was the Labour Party who brought in special mortgages to buy a house.

But then Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister brought in the real game changer. The Right to Buy. From 1979 local authorities were discouraged from building council housing. The money raised was ringfenced and could not be used to build new properties to replace those sold because the intention was to pass responsibility for property maintenance from the State to the tenant as the new owner. Any new council houses that were built were built had smaller room sizes and fewer facilities because the standards were abolished. The Right to Buy resulted in the move of some of the best stock from public tenanted to private owner occupation.

Then New Labour came to power in 1997 and it allowed councils to sell their housing stock to Housing Associations. But some of the stock was in bad condition and couldn't be transferred. Also, tenants had to vote for transferring the housing stock to a Housing Association and some areas voted against transfer. So then New Labour brought in the option to bring in a management company to manage council properties (this is the situation in K&C).

So the stocks got smaller and smaller and lists grew longer and longer. People started looking around for someone to blame when they couldn't get a council property. In recent years this government has raised the question of council houses being for life. It has proposed several ideas including an income cap. In fact the proposals cover all social housing, not just local authority housing.

This is where we find ourselves today and I hope I've got all this right. It's been a long time since I have had to think about the history!

To answer Annie's question, I think it meant some of the poorest and most disadvantaged people in our society lived in Grenfell Tower. The two big disadvantages a lot of the tenants have are that English is not their first language and they don't have the benefit of a good education.

I was brought up in North East Scotland in a council house and never thought about owning a house. Getting married and having children yes, but not owning a house. Nobody in my family owned their homes and until I went to secondary school, nor did any of my friends.

My Dad came to England for work in the 70s and my parents hoped to get a council property under a special scheme between councils. But when my parents saw the council properties and estates down here, they were shocked at how rundown they were. In fact, a lot of the private properties were worse than council housing where we came from. This was probably due to the fact that our council in Scotland was still building large numbers of new properties. So they ended up borrowing money from my grandparents to buy a house.

But it was not a good time for them because if you remember, interest rates went sky high up to 15% IIRC and they really struggled. This is the big difference between owning a propery and renting a social housing property. The security of a roof over your head if you pay your rent which doesn't go up and down according to how well the economy is doing.

They survived the storm, but it still stays with me as a bad time in my family. When my DH and I decided to live together, I'd been on the council waiting list long enough to get a nice flat in a decent area. When we bought a house my Mum came to visit. She sat in the car for 5 minutes crying because her child owned a house. That makes me very sad.

Annie I will be working class until I die. I believe with all my heart in universal publicly owned housing. I don't think your personal circumstances are relevant, although if you're a millionaire tenant, then you have to live with your own conscience. This is why I support Corbyn. He proposed to start a huge building project to provide good social housing and create jobs.

Sorry for such long posts tonight.

Will someone who has excused this deeply offensive remark like to tell - who do you place at the top of your society ? If you can accept there are people at the bottom there must ve people at the top

When I was a child we lived in an area full of council flats and some private houses. We lived in a small (horrible) private house. My parents were Irish immigrants and my mother had inherited enough money to buy our small house - three bedrooms, 7 children and 2 adults. Due to my father's alcoholism and the fact that he hardly ever worked, we were one of the poorest, worst dressed families in the area. We never had holidays, days out etc but the children from the council flats did. Some of their parents even had cars. I would have given anything to be one of the children in the council flats with 'normal' parents. We own our home, have a car etc butI consider myself as a working class person who, desite the upbringing, has managed to make a reasonable life for myself and my family.

Who has excused it AB? I have seen no real proof of it's usage yet.

Did you phone HMRC or ACAS when I gave proof of earnings on a 40 hour week on minimum wage?

If that is to me AB, I'm afraid I don't know what you are talking about.