Everything is wrong in this country

Ah! I think I know where the 2015 date came from. Apparently, the money the government borrowed in 1833 to compensate the slave-owners was finally paid off in 2015.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/12/treasury-tweet-slavery-compensate-slave-owners

Some huge % of the national income ( half or more I think) was used to compensate slave owners when the emancipation act was passed- the owners made a huge fuss about how they’d all be ruined by the ending of slavery and the government ( many of whom were beneficiaries) gave them massive payouts. A lot of our stately homes were built by the proceeds.

The one immediately is an article in the Mirror and David Olusoga. I can’t do links. Dated Feb. 2018.

I have seen something more academic but can’t find it yet. I’ll keep looking.

Oh yes I do I’ll have to re look. I read so much I forget where I see stuff.

Do you have a source for that?

University College, London has done a huge amount of research on the people who were compensated for freeing their slaves. My understanding was that the payments were completed in the mid nineteenth century. The taxpayer paid for them and the amount was huge. (I can't remember the exact details). Some of the taxpayers were, of course, the same people who were compensated.

www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs//

UCL has also done research on what happened to the money. Much of it stayed in the UK and can be traced to all sorts of people today. Some of the people who were compensated "owned" slaves, just as people own stocks and shares.

Some of the money was used to fund the industrial revolution and some of was spent on philanthropy. One of the ancestors of the TV chef, Ainsley Harriot, was compensated.

There are certainly people today who can trace family wealth to compensation for slave ownership, but I'm interested to know how anybody was still receiving payments four years ago.

A bit of information concerning compensating the wealthy.

I was at a dinner party over the weekend, and the talk turned to the way successive governments have looked after the very wealthy, and one utterly astounding thing is the fact that compensation for the ownership of slaves was paid to “property ownership”. The final payment was made in 2015, which made that descendants of this “property” were paying the slave owners.

I find that utterly incredible and quite frankly sick. Presumably there are people in this country who were receiving money from the government up until 4 years ago.

How can they live with themselves?

Everything is stacked in favour of the wealthy

I agree that UBI will have its day. Let's just hope we are not under a Tory government as we will be well behind the curve when other countries have done it.

Luckily it didn't happen.

I think you will find it did Dinahmo. Not in 2015 but 2017. The Labour Party have said they will ditch it. It's a wicked policy. I feel quite concerned that you were so unaware you put something on here that is misleading.

Tory two-child benefit limit 'will put 266,000 more kids in poverty this year

www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/tory-two-child-benefit-limit-20798633

In the near future it will have to be recognised that there isn't enough work for everyone to do when the robots are brought in.
There has to be a Universal Basic Income paid for everyone.
And why not?

Ever since the Enclosures Act it has been impossible to stay alive without paid employment.
In fact the Tory b*st*rds who took the land should pay out a basic wage to all.

As well as the need to start taking care of the planet it is time to stop judging the poor as un-deserving and instead give everyone enough to survive.
Then those who prefer to work and have a creative, meaningful life can do so without needing to attack those whose ambitions remain low.
The children of the unemployed deserve to be given the education and opportunity to make their own lives better. Not fed from food banks and ridiculed as feckless because of their parents.

Just been listening to Daily Politics and a reference to the 2015 election when the Tories proposed that benefits should be capped at two children. Luckily it didn't happen.

We are all mongrels of varied mixtures in our family - very proud to be. Non mongrel to me sounds a bit 'inbred' ;)

My grand-daughter is very blond and blue eyed- and grandson has Irish-Scottish looks. They both have 3 races, and about 11 nationalities running in their blood in last few generations. Nothing pejorative about that from me, for sure.

And another thing (very funny) is that, when they moan about the lazy lot on benefits, they totally forget to include themselves. If you receive a state pension, you are on benefits!

chestnut of course there will always be people on benefits who try to play the system, just as there are tax dodgers at the other end.

But the point is that governments should not make policy on the actions of a tiny minority.
Post war governments were wise enough to recognised this.

The rhetoric from this government tells us differently.

MaizieD, apparently, some people really do care about 'pedigree' - those with a superiority complex who feel that they're naturally entitled to first dibs of anything going.

They resent anyone (else) getting handouts but seem to forget that the majority of benefits go to working families. I, myself, resent benefits going (ultimately) to greedy landlords and payday loan companies.

gI think you are taking offence where none was intended, 3nany6

'Mongrel' is only pejorative if you want it to be,. It describes a person or animal of mixed pedigree. Nothing at all wrong with having a mixed pedigree. Who cares about 'pedigree,' anyway, in this day and age?

inkcog There are plenty of charities that work well with the poor - Shelter, which provides safe places for young people on the streets and Save the Children, which does a lot of work in the UK.

Chestnut I was a volunteer for Save the Children for about 20 years. One thing we learned was that it is never the child's fault that it is in the the situation that it is in. That's why the charity exists - to help those children. Some parents may be feckless (but a tiny minority) but the children need helping.

When I was a volunteer often people would not contribute on the flag day because they thought all the money went abroad. This is not the case. At 30% (back in the nineties and noughties) was spent in the UK on a large range of projects.

Dinahmo

Chelsea Tractors in the city? They are driven around everywhere and anyway isn't a bus larger and that drives on the road.

Oh are you now saying you are a mixture of nationalities and you have dropped the idea that you are a mongrel. Go
back to one of your own posts it was you who said "U. K citizens are mainly made up of mongrels as a nation"

I find you write confusing posts and when asked about them
you backtrack on yourself and change the agenda.

So how would you identify this "feckless underclass"? Should their children just be left to rot?

growstuff - no-one thinks the poor are all responsible for their situation, but there is a feckless underclass who won't work and keep having babies in order to live off the welfare state. These people are leeching off the system and many of them think the state should be responsible for bringing up their children. Most people limit their children to the number they can afford to support but these people have a completely different take.

Not really thought it through! Perhaps HQ could deal with it? The Trussel Trust maybe?

Blimey I remember the “speenhamland system” from my school days. Can’t remotely remember what it was about though.

Those must reads are beginning to pile up.

J.B. Priestley's "An Inspector Calls" should be essential for everybody who thinks the poor are responsible for their own demise.

Before the 1834 Act, poverty was the responsibility of individual boroughs, so they were responsible for their own poor. Committees decided who was worthy. Reading records of those committees is fascinating. In the early nineteenth century there was something called the Speenhamland System, which gave people poor relief related to the price of bread. When prices were high, the ratepayers had to pay more, which they didn't like, but it meant they didn't have to raise wages. (Does this sound familiar?) However, the system was more localised and people could carry on working.

The workhouses had local overseers, but the system became much harsher (as has been described above) and was controlled by central government. It was the beginning of the benefit system we have today.

juel ? welcome

Would GNHQ run it? Not sure how else it would work.