I know my place

grr. some sum

I've only just learned them Ana. They some things up beautifully. I could say you produced a straw man argument but I have no doubt you would complain about that too, but they mean the same thing.

I shall leave you to cogitate as you are obviously unable to address yourself to my actual post.

I haven't asked what if, only asked if 'we' was a group of posters or the royal 'we'

Yes Ana it is, and a close relative of gfery, both terms are now used with great gusto by a few posters.
Doesn't sound right though does it? Certain words should be left to the young.

What does 'wrap yourself in whatifery mean'? In fact, what on earth does 'whatifery' mean? Is it another MN import?

That is absolutely not a comment on the substance of my post Annie. I took the time to explain my view and I will reply to you when you have the good grace not to wrap yourself in whatifery.

Is that the 'Royal we' or a collective voice GG? Who are you speaking for when you say 'we can tell you what we think?

offensive as offensive

I was referring to 'the bottom of the ladder' of course which is what I picked up on previously. The bottom of society is also a useful handle on how our society is structured. I don't want to see anyone at a bottom to far from the top, and I seriously doubt you can had a society with no structure, sadly, but that still does not make the use of the phrase "deeply offensive". People do take offensive at many things however and, if anyone has been offended by the ephemeral person you indicated in the OP using this phrase I feel sorry for them.

No AB. I honestly don't understand your post. That may be me or it may be the way it is written but it seems to have no bearing on who you are referring to when you say

Will someone who has excused this deeply offensive remark

I just asked who had done that - nothing to do with earnings on a 40 hour week which does seem to be a reference to another thread; something GNHQ are getting fairly heated about elsewhere. Why bring that up? It is just confusing. Simple question. Who has, as you call it, 'excused' what?

Presumably, by "deeply offensive remark" you actually mean this simple, well known and often used cliché used in what you consider to be a deeply offensive way. Who did that? The remark, in and of itself, is not offensive in the least. As I have said, it is commonly used when entering a new job and I would certainly be happy for anyone who chooses to, to use it there. I imagine most people would be. That is unless half a dozen people are going to complain about it's use within a job hierarchy.

A cliché is a cliché, useful in some circumstances. Any remark can be used unpleasantly. It is its use that you should then condemn not this useful although limited cliché. To me, this all seems be a fuss over nothing unless you can point us to the person using it unpleasantly. Then we can tell you what we think of that usage.

Memory lapse GG?

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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!

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.

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

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

Oh dear.

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

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.

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