C4 Now - Rich Girl, Poor Girl

[steve99]

To be fair it wouldnt make a good tv programme if they picked...

(a) A well off, well brought up and educated middle class kid who also knew the value of money and how lucky they are relative to most people (ie most of that "category" of person)

and

( A "benefit class" individual who was making no effort to better their situation and just sponging off the state (ie A lot [but not all!!!!]) of that "category".

Good programme tho - now doing the obligatory "everybody learned something today" piece at the end!....

Edit - ignore the wink face - was supposed to be a b!

''(a) A well off, well brought up and educated middle class kid who also knew the value of money and how lucky they are relative to most people (ie most of that "category" of person)''

Actualy, the vast majority of well bought up, financialy secure girlies have nothing but contempt for the other kind of girl, and no concept whatsoever as to how lucky they are/have been in life. Have worked with such cows in numerous jobs, shared flats with them in the past and met many during my vast travels around the world. Sorry but you are wrong on that point.

And the rest are not by default 'The benefit' class sponging off the state. The vast majority of people that come from either poor or non working families actualy do have ambitions to work and do well in life, of course some dont, but unlike the girlies with silver spoons in thier ar*ses they dont have an automatic god given right to the vast array of lifes goodies, this also is something I have observed many times at close quarters. One lot gets opportunities by default and the other has to work for them with no guarantee of progress or reward.

[The Knimbies who say No]

I'm surprised there aren't more posts here.

I was so hoping it would be different.

To my mind - this was landmark in programme making.

There hasn't been anything of this nature on TV before - and it was raw but it was good.

And it does represent what is happening in society - and what has been happening in society since I was a kid in the 70's.

But it's just not got out until now.

I'm just staggered that those of you on this site with kids haven't either a) thought it worth watching or thought it doesn't apply to you and your kids.

To me, this was landmark TV - and I would like to see a next series of this progress - and I thought that the idea of the two kids on the same ends of the street in wealthy clapham - make it even better.

For me, it really did open my eyes on what poor kid had to deal with - of course as adult we all think our kids won't have to go through that.

But then you get the current climate and wealthy families going through a down-turn with mental health an issue - and it could all turn-tables.

But I love the idea that the phrase "chav" exists and represents something - in their world - and yet they both discover it means nothing at the end of the programme when they meet each other and look at each other individually.

Horray! - But please, please more of this.

I've travelled the world - and met with the Majahadeen - and all that stuff - and they are just people - with bizzare views - but still just people - and was bullied at 10 years of age etc - and all the kids (apparently) went to reform school - never understood why - they were just really hurt kids who lost their Dads in the war - they all put my head under the toilet saying "this is for my Dad who didn't come back".

I'm not Condy Rice - I don't know how we do this - but someone has to - and this was the first programme I've seen in my life time that tried to address it - it doesn't succeed - sometimes I was shouting at the screen - but it damned well tried.

I would like to see more programmes of this nature given our society - we now need to do this.

I don't normally join the C4 posters - but I will for this programme - because I thought it was damned good - it was bias - it had stuff I hated - but I admire it for doing what it's done - and want to see more of such programmes aimed at the young and what they think and feel and putting them in situations which when I was young was normal but now is abnormal.

That'll make a great acceptance speech at the next TV awards.

Edited November 14, 2008 by cheeznbreed

[dissident junk]

Okay, I am going to comment on this. And I am going to be harsh.

First up, the rich girl wasn't 'rich': her father was an accountant and her mother a school teacher. They were middle-class with upper middle class cultural attitudes. I don't class this as 'rich'.

Second, what came across was that the 'rich' family feel like they live in area surrounded by crime and murder. The girl had been mugged twice that year, one time outside her own house.

Third, it was blatantly obvious that the poor girl's situation was largely a function of her mother's inability to either parent, or do anything constructive. The idea that the mother allowed for her five year old son to sleep on that filthy sitting room floor in a sleeping bag, to me, constitutes neglect.

The poor girl knew this, and that is why she didn't want to answer questions about her brother not being in school, and why she finally said in the bathroom that she had had to look after him, and he didn't go to school because she didn't know he had to. She knew her mother was a disgrace.

The poor girl's mother had basically abandoned responsibility for everything. She didn't work, but couldn't even be bothered to clean the floors and left it up to her 17 year old daughter to paint her brother's bedroom.

No matter how poor you are, there is no excuse for living in such a state of squalor.

And as for being 'poor' itself .... they received £160 a week and lived in a two bed council apartment where rent and council tax were paid through benefits. When you tot it up, they are receive the same amount of disposable income a month as someone on a £16,000 a year salary would have after tax and paying out for CT and private rent -- and that private rent would have to be very low.

Can I just point out that £13,000 a year is the average starting salary for an arts and humanities graduate. And £16,000 a year is a bit more than you would get as a full-time GP receptionist band 2. And a pensioner in the UK has to get by on about £86 a week.

I've lived in inner city London on £13k pa, and paid private rent, council tax and large travel costs out of that as well. Yet, I could manage perfectly well and didn't think I was poverty-stricken.

The situation of that 'poor kid' was nothing to do with 'poverty' or a 'cycle of deprivation', but the fact that the household was headed by a useless woman who simply could not, and would not, run her life and those of her childrens, properly.

[msgin]

.

Fantastic post. Couldn't have put it better.

I have no idea why the "rich" family choose to live there, given the mother's beliefs and the fact that daughter has been mugged on her doorstep twice. Smacks of the same sort of lack of concern for her child as "poor" girls mother.

Edit :- that comes across as a bit snobby but is not meant to be. I just feel strongly, that if mother has those strong points of view, they would move their daughter away from it.

Edited November 14, 2008 by msgin

[Pindar]

First up, the rich girl wasn't 'rich': her father was an accountant and her mother a school teacher. They were middle-class with upper middle class cultural attitudes. I don't class this as 'rich'.

Second, what came across was that the 'rich' family feel like they live in area surrounded by crime and murder. The girl had been mugged twice that year, one time outside her own house.

They were rich compared to the poor family. Accountancy is very lucrative particularly in the city.

Third, it was blatantly obvious that the poor girl's situation was largely a function of her mother's inability to either parent, or do anything constructive. The idea that the mother allowed for her five year old son to sleep on that filthy sitting room floor in a sleeping bag, to me, constitutes neglect.

The mother is mentally ill. Still I'm sure social services could have turned a blind eye to any potential child neglect, they don't exactly have a good track record in this area. Are you a social worker?

The poor girl knew this, and that is why she didn't want to answer questions about her brother not being in school, and why she finally said in the bathroom that she had had to look after him, and he didn't go to school because she didn't know he had to. She knew her mother was a disgrace.

They were trying to get him into school but there were no places available locally. They even played the telephone conversation. He was also rejected on the grounds that he had a speech impediment and was therefore "special needs", for which the school in question could not cater.

The poor girl's mother had basically abandoned responsibility for everything. She didn't work, but couldn't even be bothered to clean the floors and left it up to her 17 year old daughter to paint her brother's bedroom.

I don't think you can make these claims. Particularly as she'd borrowed £100 from a loan shark to buy her daughter a birthday treat "to make her happy". It's too easy to judge somebody, the full details about whom you do not have.

No matter how poor you are, there is no excuse for living in such a state of squalor.

What was she supposed to do, obtain a magic golden-egg laying goose?

And as for being 'poor' itself .... they received £160 a week and lived in a two bed council apartment where rent and council tax were paid through benefits. When you tot it up, they are receive the same amount of disposable income a month as someone on a £16,000 a year salary would have after tax and paying out for CT and private rent -- and that private rent would have to be very low.

Big deal. Would you live in that dump? It's nothing compared to the money wasted by councils on gold-plated pensions and over-paid council "executives".

Can I just point out that £13,000 a year is the average starting salary for an arts and humanities graduate. And £16,000 a year is a bit more than you would get as a full-time GP receptionist band 2. And a pensioner in the UK has to get by on about £86 a week.

Well most pensioners have paid for their accommodation or they get topups from the state to pay their rent. The pension money is on top of this. It's still too little though IMHO. I don't see how quoting other people's salaries is relevant. It was difficult to live on £13,000 outside of London in 2004 (from experience doing a placement, and I'm frugal). Anybody trying to do so in London would need to have been living under a railway bridge.

I've lived in inner city London on £13k pa, and paid private rent, council tax and large travel costs out of that as well. Yet, I could manage perfectly well and didn't think I was poverty-stricken.

When? 1974?

The situation of that 'poor kid' was nothing to do with 'poverty' or a 'cycle of deprivation', but the fact that the household was headed by a useless woman who simply could not, and would not, run her life and those of her childrens, properly.

That's overly judgemental and harsh. The woman clearly had problems as well as mental health issues. Why such vitriol for somebody you don't even know?

[BOOM=BUST]

Anyone watching this now?

This really is scarey TV.

Despite everything we've gone through ourselves - this is what kids now make of themselves?

Rich girl "so" annoying me.

Poor girl - loved her the moment I met her on TV - and has some real stuff to say about the way things are.

Phil & kirsty are back! Just seen the ad. That is scarey! The ad could have been posted on you tube as ironic comedy. Did notice Kirsy wasnt wearing a hat though.

[Y-QUERK]

Did notice Kirsy wasnt wearing a hat though.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=rkvWeGhFpqc

[peahead]

I couldn't watch the whole program as when you saw the poor little boy, on the floor of that hell hole I really couldn't watch any more.

Sorry, but it looked like a sad reflection on our collective society.

God, (?) help us all.

Edit: Poor spelling.

Have to agree... borrowing £100 as a present for daughter... having to repay £155... really really sad

[dissident junk]

They were rich compared to the poor family. Accountancy is very lucrative particularly in the city.

The mother is mentally ill. Still I'm sure social services could have turned a blind eye to any potential child neglect, they don't exactly have a good track record in this area. Are you a social worker?

They were trying to get him into school but there were no places available locally. They even played the telephone conversation. He was also rejected on the grounds that he had a speech impediment and was therefore "special needs", for which the school in question could not cater.

I don't think you can make these claims. Particularly as she'd borrowed £100 from a loan shark to buy her daughter a birthday treat "to make her happy". It's too easy to judge somebody, the full details about whom you do not have.

What was she supposed to do, obtain a magic golden-egg laying goose?

Big deal. Would you live in that dump? It's nothing compared to the money wasted by councils on gold-plated pensions and over-paid council "executives".

Well most pensioners have paid for their accommodation or they get topups from the state to pay their rent. The pension money is on top of this. It's still too little though IMHO. I don't see how quoting other people's salaries is relevant. It was difficult to live on £13,000 outside of London in 2004 (from experience doing a placement, and I'm frugal). Anybody trying to do so in London would need to have been living under a railway bridge.

When? 1974?

That's overly judgemental and harsh. The woman clearly had problems as well as mental health issues. Why such vitriol for somebody you don't even know?

Where did the programme say the mother had mental health issues? The flat was a dump because the mother didn't clean it, or bother to tidy anything. You could have given me £20, and I've have sorted it in a day. Even at the depths of her depression, my mum still kept a decent house.

And I lived in inner city London between 2000 and 2003 on £13K pa. A lot of people do, and they don't class themselves as 'poor', nor do they use it as an excuse. God, I even managed to save money during those years. 'Poor' in London is trying to live off single person's JSA (£56 a week back then) and getting HB and CTB -- that's when things get difficult.

You are making excuses for a woman who needs a kick up the **** -- she had worked before, she admitted it. She is ruining her daughter's life and her son's. The girl knew this, which is why she shouted through to her mother in one scene that "she needed to get a job". She couldn't even be bothered to engage with sorting out her son's primary education, leaving it instead to her 17 year old daughter. There was money to keep a dog and a cat, but no money for anything else?

And the primary school thing was precisely because the mother had disowned responsibility for her son's education. They couldn't get him in, because they had left it too late: why should all this be the responsibilty of a 17 year old? This is also a mother that allows her five year old son to stop going to speech therapy because he found it boring because they were "teaching him words he already knew, like apple" -- for heaven's sake, the child couldn't annunciate properly, he needs to go back to training his basic vowel and consonant sounds.

The issue I have with cases like this is that being fluffy about it does bugger all. It consolidates the problem. These people have choices and change has to come from them. They have to get real -- the daughter knew this, which is why she got upset when issues were raised that revealed just how little her mother engaged with the practicalities of life.

I was brought up in a place and time when people were poor, where people really didn't have very much at all, during heavy economic downturns. No single parent families that relied on benefits were ever like this when I was young -- not even rougher families or disfunctional families were quite like that poor kid family.

Maybe it is time to start being more judgemental. Maybe it is time to start saying that other people manage on low incomes, that it shouldn't be an excuse to disowning all responsbility for your plight.

Maybe I am less likely to be sympathetic because I have been there and done it. I've lived on minimum wage salaries in inner city London. I know what it is like, and I know that this mother is using 'poverty' as a misnomer, as an excuse.

[Executive Sadman]

The mum was the real problem there, no money for paint, but enough for her fags and dogs. I mean having two bedrooms and not being bothered to use one for a number of years, you really get the impression theres something more than depression there. I can almost see the tumbleweed racing through the space normal people have for a brain. And wheres the dad for Kid no.2?

[Pindar]

Where did the programme say the mother had mental health issues? The flat was a dump because the mother didn't clean it, or bother to tidy anything. You could have given me £20, and I've have sorted it in a day. Even at the depths of her depression, my mum still kept a decent house.

And I lived in inner city London between 2000 and 2003 on £13K pa. A lot of people do, and they don't class themselves as 'poor', nor do they use it as an excuse. God, I even managed to save money during those years. 'Poor' in London is trying to live off single person's JSA (£56 a week back then) and getting HB and CTB -- that's when things get difficult.

You are making excuses for a woman who needs a kick up the **** -- she had worked before, she admitted it. She is ruining her daughter's life and her son's. The girl knew this, which is why she shouted through to her mother in one scene that "she needed to get a job". She couldn't even be bothered to engage with sorting out her son's primary education, leaving it instead to her 17 year old daughter. There was money to keep a dog and a cat, but no money for anything else?

And the primary school thing was precisely because the mother had disowned responsibility for her son's education. They couldn't get him in, because they had left it too late: why should all this be the responsibilty of a 17 year old? This is also a mother that allows her five year old son to stop going to speech therapy because he found it boring because they were "teaching him words he already knew, like apple" -- for heaven's sake, the child couldn't annunciate properly, he needs to go back to training his basic vowel and consonant sounds.

The issue I have with cases like this is that being fluffy about it does bugger all. It consolidates the problem. These people have choices and change has to come from them. They have to get real -- the daughter knew this, which is why she got upset when issues were raised that revealed just how little her mother engaged with the practicalities of life.

I was brought up in a place and time when people were poor, where people really didn't have very much at all, during heavy economic downturns. No single parent families that relied on benefits were ever like this when I was young -- not even rougher families or disfunctional families were quite like that poor kid family.

Maybe it is time to start being more judgemental. Maybe it is time to start saying that other people manage on low incomes, that it shouldn't be an excuse to disowning all responsbility for your plight.

Maybe I am less likely to be sympathetic because I have been there and done it. I've lived on minimum wage salaries in inner city London. I know what it is like, and I know that this mother is using 'poverty' as a misnomer, as an excuse.

The mother had suffered from clinical depression - this was mentioned a couple of times.

I'm not an apologist for this sort of behaviour but I know how debilitating clinical depression can be because I've seen a friend, a colleague and a member of my own family go down with it. It affects different people in different ways - one of them is to lose all perspective of what is important and what isn't. Loss of interest in things you would normally care about etc. Another is inability to handle everyday problems and deal with life itself - this is not always treatable since some peoples problems are so deep that not even strong medication works. The problem is only exacerbated by poverty.

It's digusting that people are able to get to this state and that there is seemingly little or no support for them. You know when somebody has lost all hope because they start to neglect their physical appearance - the missing front teeth are evidence of abuse, possibly from her ex partner. The clues were all there yet the support either hadn't worked, was rejected or simply wasn't there.

In a sense you are right about needing a kick up the **** - I acknowledge that a shock is sometimes what is needed to get people to care about themselves and their lives again though I think it would be very unpleasant for the son and the daughter to witness their legal guardian being sectioned and it might be more psychologically damaging than their current circumstances. If social services are involved, they should be ashamed of themselves and should be facing charges of negligence.

[Converted Lurker]

Okay, I am going to comment on this. And I am going to be harsh.

First up, the rich girl wasn't 'rich': her father was an accountant and her mother a school teacher. They were middle-class with upper middle class cultural attitudes. I don't class this as 'rich'.

Second, what came across was that the 'rich' family feel like they live in area surrounded by crime and murder. The girl had been mugged twice that year, one time outside her own house.

Third, it was blatantly obvious that the poor girl's situation was largely a function of her mother's inability to either parent, or do anything constructive. The idea that the mother allowed for her five year old son to sleep on that filthy sitting room floor in a sleeping bag, to me, constitutes neglect.

The poor girl knew this, and that is why she didn't want to answer questions about her brother not being in school, and why she finally said in the bathroom that she had had to look after him, and he didn't go to school because she didn't know he had to. She knew her mother was a disgrace.

The poor girl's mother had basically abandoned responsibility for everything. She didn't work, but couldn't even be bothered to clean the floors and left it up to her 17 year old daughter to paint her brother's bedroom.

No matter how poor you are, there is no excuse for living in such a state of squalor.

And as for being 'poor' itself .... they received £160 a week and lived in a two bed council apartment where rent and council tax were paid through benefits. When you tot it up, they are receive the same amount of disposable income a month as someone on a £16,000 a year salary would have after tax and paying out for CT and private rent -- and that private rent would have to be very low.

Can I just point out that £13,000 a year is the average starting salary for an arts and humanities graduate. And £16,000 a year is a bit more than you would get as a full-time GP receptionist band 2. And a pensioner in the UK has to get by on about £86 a week.

I've lived in inner city London on £13k pa, and paid private rent, council tax and large travel costs out of that as well. Yet, I could manage perfectly well and didn't think I was poverty-stricken.

The situation of that 'poor kid' was nothing to do with 'poverty' or a 'cycle of deprivation', but the fact that the household was headed by a useless woman who simply could not, and would not, run her life and those of her childrens, properly.

you're right it is a harsh summing up, but not unfair.

[frankief]

I see a lot of 'poor' people on British TV documentaries.

They always seem to have money though, and are spending it on drugs or booze or fags or burgers or hair extensions.

They always have accommodation, paid for by others.

Some of them even have a car - VW Golf, or they 'look after' a pet - eg. pitbull terrier.

Some wear jewellery.

Some of them are very overweight.

Can we redefine poverty, there might be some forum members from India reading this?

[Young Fellow]

I always have fun with silly girls like Alice.

All you need do is feed their vanity and self-obsession, and then when they are least expecting it sneak-in with a cutting remark.

I think the poor girl's "ponies" line and laughing at the fact that the rich one thought putting up wallpaper was a highly skilled art that only men with white coats could do did more to put Alice in her place.

I thought the programme was a bit flawed a long the lines that other have already said:

1. Alice is middle class, not rich in the astronomical sense, but very well-off.

2. Picking on the most silly of the rich and the most sobber of the poor is not objective.

Ground breaking show, I'm not so sure.

Edited November 15, 2008 by Young Fellow

[gavp]

First up, the rich girl wasn't 'rich': her father was an accountant and her mother a school teacher. They were middle-class with upper middle class cultural attitudes. I don't class this as 'rich'.

If a family that send their kids to Eton and own a 6-bed house in Clapham aren't classed as 'rich' then there must be very few rich people in this country.

[godless]

I see a lot of 'poor' people on British TV documentaries.

They always seem to have money though, and are spending it on drugs or booze or fags or burgers or hair extensions.

They always have accommodation, paid for by others.

Some of them even have a car - VW Golf, or they 'look after' a pet - eg. pitbull terrier.

Some wear jewellery.

Some of them are very overweight.

Can we redefine poverty, there might be some forum members from India reading this?

thesaurus results for: poverty

abjection, aridity, bankruptcy, barrenness, beggary, dearth, debt, deficiency, deficit, depletion, destitution, difficulty, distress, emptiness, exiguity, famine, hardship, impecuniousness, impoverishment, inadequacy, indigence, insolvency, insufficiency, lack, meagerness, necessitousness, necessity, pass, paucity, pauperism, pennilessness, penury, pinch, poorness, privation, reduction, scarcity, shortage, starvation, straits, underdevelopment, vacancy

take your pick

how many of these can define the lady being mentioned, then how many can define the lady of more means?

Either way this time it transcends education, money and geography and shows that it is a consequence of ideological favouritism (artificial darwinism) and is political. The truth may be that the rich girls parents, as the rich girl pointed out in the show, has much further to fall than the poor girls mother, a very interesting observation I thought and only possible in such times as this. It seems that they are both in the same boat(as in the show), equal in ignorance and attitude yet separated by ideological difference driven by a class-based structure with political connotations. They are in reality the same and they really are just on opposite sides of the same street! I hope that they along with their generation can come closer together and question the status quo presented to them by there parents and other sources of dubious intent. I believe this generation will as many have before, but the forces entrenching them are very strong and only a rebellious and fearless attitude will stop the ticking time-bomb of social disharmony that will, if unchallenged, shred the already tattered fabric of our society.

I really fear for the stability of our country, with severe social flaws now emerging against a backdrop of economic calamity that we seem so ill-prepared for, I feel systemic collapse is a very real possibility. And I'm an optimist

[VacantPossession]

Sure, but in this program the girl clearly used it in the context of somebody who is underpriveleged. Being trapped in a cycle of welfare dependency as millions are, this is poverty by modern standards - it's just that we've become better at disguising poverty for the benefit of those with jobs and the wealthy who see "them" as an eye-sore.

In a broader sense and certainly my own interpretation of the word I would agree with your description of somebody attracted to bling and showing little or no concern for the bigger picture of politics, morality and the welfare of others. The origin of the word "chav" is uncertain - but is commonly thought to be an abbreviation of "Cheltenham Average". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chav

So, I would argue that by modern standards in a world in which it's possible to produce food cheaply and distribute it widely, where we can mass produce homes and basic essentials, the poor were always going to become less impoverished over time, even if it meant only getting the leftovers of the affluence of the rest of society.

Everything is relative. History also serves to illustrate that given human nature - it's probably impossible to make everybody equal, we can only lift everybody equally, meaning those at the bottom of todays heap are, by Dickensian standards, quite well off.

When the world moves in ways that are difficult to predict, through advances in medicine, science and technology, we may find that todays middle class are tomorrows "chavs".

As far as education goes, the state doesn't try and educate its subjects, it only indoctrinates them as much as is necessary to keep things ticking along. This is why it was so suprising to see somebody who had been privately educated adopting the ignorant attitudes of somebody you might believe to be uneducated. This is evidence for the influence of popular culture (electronic communications, TV, internet etc.) being stronger than schooling or parenting since the parents appeared to be very middle class.

I agree with most of your reply, which I think is highly intelligent and thoughtful. I agree that poverty has to be assessed in relative terms and is a permanently changing state according to the wealth "standards" of a particular nation or society. I think the outstanding relevance of poverty in the UK largely relates to access to decent housing, since you have to be really unlucky to actually be starving, or possess nothing but rags to clothe you. The shift in poverty indicators, as you imply, has changed away from food and other traditional measures, since basics for survival are infinitely cheaper than they were say 100 years ago relative to income. The incredible cheapness of high tech gadgets and even cars (you can pick up a perfectly good second hand, road worthy, taxed car for well under £1000) also distorts the perceptions of what poverty really means.

It is the quality of accomodation that, as a general rule, indentifies the difference between the haves and have nots, in addition to access to medical care (private/public) education (private/state), and other differences which accumulate to give a good overall picture. But outstanding among these differences are, again as you imply, connected with real education, or rather awareness since I agree with you that one can be "educated" but still unaware. The most telling indicator of modern poverty and modern comfortability can be a simple image of the living room of the "poor" then the "rich". The new poor will possess very few symbols of education: Books. The poor often have a complete absence of books, substituting them with DVDs, games and gadgets. This is a dangerous statement I concede, but I see it so many times I think it is a partly representative flavour of what we are discussing.

And that's where the Orwellian proles come back into the equation. The proles are depicted, exaggeratedly of course for the purposes of drama and fiction, as mindless and manipulated victims whose only interests are booze, sex and temporary comforts. It is clear what Orwell is describing here: a whole class of people about whom the government pretends it cares, but is actually more interested in keeping them mildly controlled by feeding them disinformation, inventing a common "enemy" and giving them no opportunity to emerge from the morass they inhabit. To me that has quite stark parallels with how successive UK governments treat their citizens nowadays. It seems society has become a club, and most are NOT a member of it. But you cannot blame just governments, because the huge amount of energy and motivation required to rise out of the morass seems to be an achievement beyond the vast majority of the new "poor" in the UK. I have said this before, but one of the ways to at least attempt to encourage the poor to rise up and be counted without resorting to violence or revolution, is the provision of proper adult education, not pretend adult education which masquerades as real currently, and which is free and easy to access.

VP

[Saberu]

Not a bad program. Love some of the reactions of folks on here, we are so fugged as a nation.

First off, I'm going to stand up for the rich girl. They are both young and ignorant of each others lives, the poor girl having to struggle for an existence and the rich girl trying to protect her bubble created for her by her parents. The rich girl had little understanding of the hardships of life and how to perceive anything other than the best start in life. The poor girl had spent her life trying to fight for some sense of worth having started with nothing and remaining with nothing through the burdens of poverty.

The rich girl upon realizing that there is a world outside her purpose-built bubble embraces the concepts of the actual struggles of the poor girls reality and a conversation develops that unites each other in mutual understanding. This conversation unwittingly challenged the status quo that this government has created and wishes to not to be discussed as it would bring about awareness on both sides of many streets in this country. The imbalances of a system of which the sole aim is to keep people divided via hypothetical superiority and actual inferiority. Whether it was intended to create such divide or was simply a mistake is open to interpretation. I felt very sorry for both girls and truly hope that they can both grow stronger from each others encounter and that they strive to live in the same community on the same street rather than different ones.

The poor girl doesn't need pity or support she just needs a chance at life and an opportunity to raise her from the poverty she was born into. The rich girl doesn't need disrespect or vitriol she also needs a chance at life, not one of protection and academia but one of ideas and adventure. The fact that both have been so damaged by the generation before and by a system that propagates a centralized theorem while practising division in an almost eugenic fashion is enough to make me become enveloped with rage. The disharmony in society, the corruption of ideals and the corrosion of ethics has turned Britain simultaneously into a seething mass of disaffection and of outrageous avarice. I hope that one day this damage can be repaired and that the next attempt at classistic hegemony doesn't create such destruction that is about to befall us all in the near future.

Nail on the head, I don't think I would have addressed the concepts as well as you did let alone worded it so well. Thankyou, great post Sadly the points you made are the tip of the iceberg for our society which is why I'd rather put my head in ther sand in future and want to even try visiting this site less and just get on with my life. Ignorance is bliss, let's not worry about the problems of society but just do the best for ourselves, our friends and family

[jonpo]

Been watching about 2 mins - poor girl seems unseemingly intelligent

i didn't see the program but the picture im getting is that a more acurate but less entertaining title would have been

smart girl, dumb girl

[Young Fellow]

Don't call the rich girl dumb! ...silly and immature yes, dumb no

I'm relying on a constant supply of very silly girls to keep me entertained - well with all the doom and gloom there has to be some release.

[dissident junk]

If a family that send their kids to Eton and own a 6-bed house in Clapham aren't classed as 'rich' then there must be very few rich people in this country.

Depends when you bought the 6-bed house in Clapham.

You know that left-wing comedian Mark Thomas? He owns a house on Clapham Common, bought back in the early 90s it when Clapham wasn't a 'nice place to live' and house prices had crashed. A house in an particular area isn't necessarily a pointer as to wealth.

The 'rich kid' family were more what people used to call 'well-off'. To be rich, to me, means that you can permanently live off the income from your assets and investments ... that you do not need to swop your labour in exchange for tokens. This didn't look to be the case in the 'rich family's' household.

[Young Fellow]

I think the rich girl has a comedy career in her - a kind of brat-ish cher from clueless type