Do you have to be "representative" to represent?

[Huguenot]

You may be right Karrie, but I don't think it's the homeless that are running gang culture at all.

I don't think the kids in gangs are lacking shelter, food or clothing. I think that's, for want of a better word, bullshit.

I don't think the squitty little idiots stopping me a few years back on East Dulwich Road to steal my watch were doing it in some Robin Hood food for the poor act of altruism.

In fact, quite the opposite. I think they were greedy, arrogant and over-indulged. I think they were spoilt and thick.

They didn't avoid going to school because there weren't places for them or they were eating cardboard. They didn't go to school because it was too much like hard work when they could gang up and steal whatever they wanted. They probably had rubbish parents, not poor ones. The government can't replace the parents, and giving them more money isn't going to make them less rubbish.

It may well be that duck house buyers are on a different planet, but it's also pointlessly inaccurate to suggest that 'general society' is made up of the starving poor with fingernails bleeding on their outstretched hands.

General society is more like the ED massive - well meaning slightly left-of centre family types who work hard, pay off the mortgage, tend the garden, have well-behaved if mischievous kids, and save up enough every few months for the odd treat.

These are the guys that government represent. Their core voter base. The majority. The ones who don't shout loudly at all, but just get on the best they can.

Genuinely, Karrie, I think your viewpoint is clouded. Government legislates, councils oversee. Both of these have set up institutions that help the impoverished to the benefit of all society. These institutions cover everything from the welfare state, healthcare to council housing. It's to these you must focus your lobbying. They're absolutely great, amazing, really WOW, if not perfect.

In creating them, the government and the councils have achieved something absolutely incredible, worthy of an ovation.

However, none of these institutions are there as angelic philanthropists. They're there paid for by you and your neighbours, and they have limited budgets accordingly.

When you talk about trashing the system because its not serving you, then just like any greedy ingrate you're proposing killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.

Whilst I accept that there are some people outside the system, I believe there's a far larger majority that should stop asking what everyone else (not government) can do for them, and instead ask what they can do for everyone else.

[Karrie]

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