The Lemon Fool

Today, the same day I was hearing lots of news of people not having enough money to feed themselves and their families, I also read about parents agonising about the cost of school proms and more to the point, the cost of dresses (and presumably suits worn by males too). The dresses seem to cost anything from £200 up. Prom tickets are a snip at between £25 and £50.

I understand the peer pressure to attend these event, but they were cancelled due to Covid, so why shouldn't they be cancelled at times of financial crisis?

I could write a long list of similar things which seem to take unreasonable priority, and maybe if such a list were to be widely publicised, some of the nonsense could be stopped.

The BBC feature struggling poor people. Most of them seem to have cars; some of them are struggling with things like expensive activities for their kids.

When I hear such features, I always wonder whether the journo has an Agenda. If the publication is the Mail or the Telegraph then we naturally expect them to find "poor" people who most of us will find thoroughly undeserving, and "poor" only by First World Entitled standards. When the BBC do it, one has to wonder ...

And of course they've been crying "wolf" for as long as I can remember. It's all about playing to their audiences.

Bminusrob wrote:I understand the peer pressure to attend these event, but they were cancelled due to Covid, so why shouldn't they be cancelled at times of financial crisis?

I wouldn't know. Can you cancel puberty? Or maybe just postpone it until the government says the economy is back on its feet?

BJ

UncleEbenezer wrote:The BBC feature struggling poor people. Most of them seem to have cars; some of them are struggling with things like expensive activities for their kids.

From my perspective, you cannot credibly play the poverty card if you:

1) Have an annual holiday overseas, or
2) Have a big-screen TV with satellite and streaming service, or
3) Own and run a car, or
4) Eat out at restaurants, or
5) Pay for tattoos, piercings or fashion items, or
6) Drink wine, smoke tobacco or use recreational drugs, or

. . . well, you get the idea.

When pizza parlours ,takeaway shops , tattoo parlours and nail bars start to close down , then we'll know finances are tight.

It's the difference between a Fool and a fool

As I mentioned elsewhere the other month, my niece was worrying over getting heating oil and not using the underfloor heating as it costs too much, and how much it would cost to get their van sorted so they can go to festivals (they make their living on festival stalls).

In the meantime they're still using the hot-tub, watching Amazon Prime and other streaming services, have an Alexa, i-phones, a couple of TVs (one for each lounge) 2 other cars,.
And a gardener.
I mentioned this to my sister, she said wearily "just don't" and sighed.

There's plenty in the village moaning about the cost of fuel, whilst driving the 1/2 mile round trip to the shop or school every day blissfully unaware that the extra 40 miles a month is costing them about £120/year.

The thing is, it has been this way for the last 60 years or more. People borrow for new and shiny, whilst not saving for essentials. The term "Fur coat and no knickers" dates back to the early 1960s, updated by my dad in the 1980s to "2 cars on the drive and bugger all in the fridge".

Paul

DrFfybes wrote:It's the difference between a Fool and a fool
Paul

Eny fule kno the two are not mutually exclusive

bungeejumper wrote:

Bminusrob wrote:I understand the peer pressure to attend these event, but they were cancelled due to Covid, so why shouldn't they be cancelled at times of financial crisis?

I wouldn't know. Can you cancel puberty? Or maybe just postpone it until the government says the economy is back on its feet?

BJ

What has puberty to do with it? Puberty happened for these kids six or seven years previously. This is nothing more than an excuse to be even more profilgate than their frinds (or at least more profligate with parents' credit cards) Is it really necessary to spend money like there is no tomorrow, just for a party and a few illicit drinks and drugs?

Bminusrob wrote: just for a party and a few illicit drinks and drugs?

Id imagine the illicit drink and drugs are not AT the party, but afterwards when the party/prom has finished.

In the same way that 40 years ago we had no prom, but went to the pub and sat in the corner, drinking beer illicitly.

Bminusrob wrote:What has puberty to do with it? Puberty happened for these kids six or seven years previously. This is nothing more than an excuse to be even more profilgate than their frinds (or at least more profligate with parents' credit cards) Is it really necessary to spend money like there is no tomorrow, just for a party and a few illicit drinks and drugs?

Perfectly good grump there, and a nicely sharp follow-through.

My point was rather that, although I can't personally identify with the expensive school proms thing at all, it does seem to be one of the ways that modern 18 year olds choose to dress up and impress the opposite sex, and generally behave like adults once in a while, instead of in their usual guise as stroppy teenagers. My own daughters' school proms seemed like an exercise in weirdness - the girls in big taffeta, and the boys in rented dinner jackets. Whereas my schoolmates and I would have just turned up on our motorbikes and tried to get the girls onto the pillion seats.

But hey, a £250 school prom is a one-off rite of passage, and (as you've noted) peer pressure is an insidious thing, and who are we to say it's wrong just because it doesn't fit with our own ideas? I'd be much more in agreement with you about the absurd sums that spotty youths spend on trainers, or on so-called "gaming computers", which for £2000 and upwards will get you to level eleventy-seven of Ultimate Thermonuclear Obliteration, but won't make your maths homework any easier than a Lenovo at a tenth of the price.

Poverty line? Hah! We'd tell them to forget the car and cycle to school, like we did. Except that they're carrying too much expensive kit in their bags, and it gets broken whenever they fall off, like we did. And another thing. Have you seen the price of Costa Coffee? Blimey, you could get a quart of cider for that!

BJ

bungeejumper wrote:Whereas my schoolmates and I would have just turned up on our motorbikes and tried to get the girls onto the pillion seats.

Well, I hope you didn't plead poverty while doing so!

the absurd sums that spotty youths spend on trainers,
BJ

My parents had an excellent solution to that. They explained to us before we reached the age where peer pressure affects trainers or any other clothes the concept of "fashion": you pay many times the price for a product that is no better than the cheap version, and sometimes inferior. I've never had cause to disagree with that, and I've gone through life avoiding anything that smells of "fashion", from overpriced trainers to iphones.

Poverty line? Hah! We'd tell them to forget the car and cycle to school, like we did.

Poverty was when I couldn't afford to replace a broken brake cable or a broken chain on my bike, because either new part would've been several weeks food budget. Lots of walking.

UncleEbenezer wrote:Poverty was when I couldn't afford to replace a broken brake cable or a broken chain on my bike,

I broke my first ever bike chain last week riding to work

Must have burst the quick link as neither part of it was to be found; chain was on the ground about 5m behind me on a bike path with two other cyclists standing over it going "never seen that before"
Can't work out how it happened?!

Packed it up, got the train the next couple of miles towards work and picked up another (and a spare) when the local shop opened at 8:30
- suffered terribly from transport poverty for about half an hour

-sd

UncleEbenezer wrote:Poverty was when I couldn't afford to replace a broken brake cable or a broken chain on my bike, because either new part would've been several weeks food budget.

You could feed yourself several weeks for the cost of a brake cable???

There must be a TV programme in that... stardom awaits you...

V8

88V8 wrote:

UncleEbenezer wrote:Poverty was when I couldn't afford to replace a broken brake cable or a broken chain on my bike, because either new part would've been several weeks food budget.

You could feed yourself several weeks for the cost of a brake cable???

There must be a TV programme in that... stardom awaits you...

V8

Core of a week's food: one bag of lentils, two and a bit of value-line pasta. That's less than £2 even at today's prices.

Bit of luxury if feeling rich: add some good flavours like onions, mushrooms, tomatoes, chillies. Fry them (it's quick, so very little energy cost). One meal a day.

Plus what one could gather. In my worst year (2003) I was collecting blackberries right into the second half of November, fully two months after they'd ceased to be good enough to want to eat now that I can afford to buy food.

Nor is that as unusual as you'd think. I've met others in that kind of position. Real poverty happens when you fall outside the benefits net. Or - I expect - to kids whose parents have expensive problems.

As for stardom, that slot is kind-of taken by a lady called Jack Monroe, who is a lot more on-message than I'd be.

UncleEbenezer wrote:In my worst year (2003) I was collecting blackberries right into the second half of November, fully two months after they'd ceased to be good enough to want to eat now that I can afford to buy food.

Nor is that as unusual as you'd think. I've met others in that kind of position. Real poverty happens when you fall outside the benefits net. Or - I expect - to kids whose parents have expensive problems.

Totally agree. Without wanting to play the Four Yorkshiremen game, I was once down to a small bag of potatoes to last me ten days. I was alone in Berlin, and my bank had screwed up my money transfer, and because we weren't in the European Community at that time I had no support rights whatsoever - and certainly no right to a work permit. (The ever-obedient Germans wouldn't have dared to give me even a casual job without the right official stamp in my Ausweis.)

The last of the chillies and onions had gone since long, and so it was just me and the boiled potatoes. Nobody ever tells you how much proper hunger makes your belly hurt, but it's a bit of a shock when you find out.

Sometimes I think the world would be a better place if everybody experienced just a few days of hunger. Would put a few things into perspective, that's for sure. It's a great leveller.

BJ

didds wrote:In the same way that 40 years ago we had no prom, but went to the pub and sat in the corner, drinking beer illicitly.

When I was in sixth form, most of us went to the pub Friday lunchtime. The geography teacher always used to brief his class Friday morning on where the teachers were going that day. Just to ensure the two groups didn't turn up in the same pub, as that would have been embarrassing for both.

Gryff

When did 'proms' become a thing in the UK anyway?
When I were a lad (left school '83) it was school discos (which I avoided)
My sister's year (6 yrs behind) had some sort of low-key final ball, but not a prom

AleisterCrowley wrote:When did 'proms' become a thing in the UK anyway?
When I were a lad (left school '83) it was school discos (which I avoided)
My sister's year (6 yrs behind) had some sort of low-key final ball, but not a prom

We had a "leavers dinner", I think...
I do remember it clashed with a gig by the Psychedelic Furs

In my student days (many moons ago) the Scottish Universities still had Meal Monday holidays - an extra day to allow the students to return home to pick up a replenishment of oatmeal for their accustomed diet of porridge.
Apparently this was abandoned in the 21st Century. Presumably you can now get it delivered using an online order.

AleisterCrowley wrote:When did 'proms' become a thing in the UK anyway?
When I were a lad (left school '83) it was school discos (which I avoided)
My sister's year (6 yrs behind) had some sort of low-key final ball, but not a prom

Wasn't it because of that programme " Beverly Hills 98911" or whatever its zip code was.

Back in the day, we were expected to do the Valeta when everyone wanted to step on some fella's blue suede shoes and rock around the clock all night.