Oh it’s clearly not going to accomplish anything and it’s pretty poorly executed - but as a waste of £2,000 I can assure you there are more important wastes to direct your attention to, and the people complaining about some “threatening, condescending” card are apparently looking at a different one to me. It just gets a “duh, obvious statement is obvious” from me.
To the people who are ranting about how this never actually happens - go get involved in community politics in the UK and deal with housing issues that come to the council. Then come back and we’ll talk about what causes people to get behind on their rent and stay there. Sure, there are some long-term rent delinquents who don’t have a drug or alcohol problem… but they’re the minority. This card isn’t going to help any, but neither is pretending the problem does not exist. Currently the only legal basis for the council to act is to evict them and chuck them into a rehab programme as the only housing offered, so at least the council is thinking about alternatives to this, however ineffective this particular attempt might be.
Perhaps it’s time the war on drugs becomes a war on the existence of poverty? (edit: Poverty of our relationships to family, community, and nation too, not merely monetary. As commenters have pointed out, there are plenty of people who have plenty of money who may well be the most poverty-ridden in other respects.)
Go get involved. Deal with them. Look for yourself. Don’t find one sob story and build your world view around that - pick up all the cases that come in for a couple of weeks. Then come back, and if you’re still willing to say that, we can have a discussion about it. I’m fully aware that chemistry is not the root cause; addiction is a mental health issue, not a physical one, and it creates a destructive feedback loop that prevents people from getting out of it, because they’re too out of their head to do anything about their problems. At the same time, the biggest problem in society is alcohol not heroin, and rat studies on morphine are not making you more aware of how that works.
This particular argument is a lot like philosophers arguing about whether fire can exist. It might be very well-argued… but for anybody who has actually gone and looked, it’s painfully out of touch. One does not demand a peer-reviewed study about whether a house is on fire, or the guy sitting there with a vacant expression and track marks up his arm is addicted to something that’s going to kill him. Arguing that it’s not the drug’s fault won’t make him any less dead.
(Hint: they’re not “downtrodden” or “lazy” or “feckless” or “betrayed” - they’re uneducated, unskilled, not particularly intelligent, and despite the best efforts of various people to help them it hasn’t worked, almost always due to mental health issues, which are almost always addiction - and what exactly are you going to do about it? I know what I’m doing about it. Instead of arguing that they don’t exist, go do something.)
I’m not arguing that addiction doesn’t exist. I’m arguing that the causality is largely not in the direction you think it is. Since you’ve largely ignored the evidence I provided in favor of repeating yourself ad nauseum, it’s not worth my while to continue. Good day.
That would be because the “evidence” you provided is not only fairly irrelevant, as covered earlier, nor do rat studies equip you to understand what’s going on, but because it is bloody obvious to anybody who has gone and looked at the problem that you’ve got the wrong answer. The house is clearly on fire, and if you were to provide an elegant proof backed with decades of research and evidence that it can’t possibly be on fire, then yes, I’m going to ignore it, because I’ve looked and already know you’re wrong.
(Hint: you’re caught up on the idea that “causality” matters. In a self-destructive negative feedback loop, it does not matter one whit whether the chicken came before the egg: they both feed each other and anybody who’s been out in the real world has seen that.)
Better solution: Offer residents a minor discount for paying their December rent early. You get more payments without having to waste time and money hassling individual tenants, residents save a couple bucks that they can apply towards a little holiday cheer in what may be an otherwise bleak month. Win/win.
I’m betting you would see mostly the people who aren’t behind on their rent snapping up this opportunity and the people who are behind not bothering.
Given that this is social housing, a good percentage of the tenants would be unable to do this anyway, since they won’t have the money for the rent until they get their paycheck at the end of the month. This is yet another example of why it is so expensive to be poor, you can’t even take advantage of money saving discounts like this because you don’t have savings to pull from.
I’ve never seen or heard of them used for anything but overeating, and overeating is rather perfectly covered by “overindulgence”.
I mean, it’s still paternalistic and insulting against people that really shouldn’t be getting snide insinuations for Christmas, but I completely fail to see the alcohol angle.
It’s sort of an old-timey hangover remedy, but they still explicitly advertise it for that purpose: http://www.alka-seltzer.com/asmr/
A lot of the old Speedy commercials make pretty unmistakable hangover references too, although they don’t come right out and say “You sure got swozzled last night, kiddo! Try some Alka-Seltzer for speedy relief!”
I’m not insensitive to the difficulties of poordom. I my sister and I grew
up poor, raised by a single mother, who did have to rely on some social
services for our survival. That said, she busted her ass working very long
hours and made sure the rent was always paid on time (though often with
tears). I got a better lesson from that then the lesson I would have gotten
had she occasionally let the rent slide or month or two so my sister and I
could have toys for the holidays. There are many charities offering toys
and other goodies for the holidays, but my mom was resourceful enough, and
kept our expectations low enough, that she never had to rely on them. The
consequence of what was modeled to me is that the family head now, which is
decidedly middle class, has never been in debt and never missed a payment
of bills or rent. We live modestly, don’t own our home, and we are above
water. I credit my mom’s prioritizing for that.
Yes, because you would have developed the resentment, hostility, and victim
mentality that often accompanies people living in shitty situations. It’s
everyone else’s fault, life isn’t fair, and other kindergarten solaces.
Telling the people you have a responsibility towards to fuck off won’t get
you far in life, unless you’re Johnny Rotten.
