Comments by "Roger Smith" (@rogersmith8339) on "Channel 4 News" channel.

😅When I used to listen to some of the younger guys at work talking about their houses it was very clear why they were struggling with their mortgage. I remember describing my first actual house to one of them (a one bedroom starter home) and they couldn't believe anyone would want a place like that. Most had much bigger houses than I live in at present. I had the last laugh when I retired early with no mortgage, buying a yacht for the same as I paid for my house pretty much cash.
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Maybe if he had not been speeding he would still be alive?
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@missrockafella9432 People's expectations have become quite unrealistic of late due to the "entitlement" they think they have (often from watching too much TV / internet).
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Jet skiers with Stanley knives patrolling the channel and slashing the dinghies.
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The day before the magic "H" day - when you think that it is not the 4x2s country and was given to them and millions were given shelter across the world, why are they allowed to get away with this?
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Maybe the police should not have to look after druggies who risk their lives by taking illegal drugs.
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Just like the monkeys have been killing each other in London recently?
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@francescapowell1538 Too many poor people would be poor again in a month if you gave them 10k
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@etiennedelaunois1737 I guess you must be from the entitled generations who think the world owes them and everything they see on TV and in adverts is normal.
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You forgot the bit about destroying farm land and trees and when their dams give way (and they do) the flooding is bad. There is no problem with a small and controlled population in the right place, but in some places they are totally not appropriate. The numbers need to be controlled and could be a source of healthy meat and the fur could be made use of once again (totally renewable and biodegradable with little processing required). The dams could even provide small scale hydro-electric power.
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Well done! Like you, despite being from a very poor family, all 5 of us got off our backsides and now live very comfortably with no mortgages, two of us have two houses, and three of us either quite posh motor homes or in my case a serious sailing yacht.
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@thomasscharnott6236 People can do a lot to improve their luck in life, the problem is that too many people have become used to not having to help themselves. I blame the wrong sort of "help" being given in the past, much like many foreign countries that have had money poured into for years but are still poor.
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@clairemcmahon9392 I totally agree we should help the vulnerable, but you can only go so far in helping the poor. Some people would be poor if you gave them £1000 a week while others would be on their way to being millionaires in the first year.
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Why on earth did so many coppers turn up? Was it because it was a posh school. The other odd thing is the nature of the journalist and one of the people he interviewed.
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How many of these charities really do anything to fix the problem long term? Not that many, and the CEOs rake in the cash. Just "helping" many of these poor people may well not be helping them long term!
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That poor single mum with two children can hardly afford to feed herself, just look how skinny she is!
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Perfect they should refuse to treat these people unless they can prove they are innocent parties?
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In the next town along from where I live there is a town with apparently high levels of poverty. A short walk from the supposed worst area, I have never seen so many black berries growing. There is also a good amount of other wild foods just for the taking. Why don't these people pick it? The other point that comes across is the big families- I am from a big family, brought up in a council house in what would now be considered poverty but never went hungry and always went on at least 2 holidays a year. When I was young, big families were the norm but nowadays there is no reason for them.
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Same as every country in the world, I am afraid, possibly not so bad in Cuba though.
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Around the outskirts of the city where I live there are currently huge amounts of free, "wild" food just rotting on the branches. This city has areas where there is apparently depravation and poverty that are less than an hour's walk from all this free food. Why do people not at least try to help themselves?
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@casualbrowser407 You should have added not feeling entitled to the list of things that made society better.
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@Sam-oo1uo Why do you think so many charities exist? They are money making businesses that con well meaning people.
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@craighobbs3708 Well said!
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Lovely Christmas tree decorations?
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What you say certainly seems to be the case often. The big problem is that the wrong type of "help" has been given for too long. It always seemed to be that people in power thought giving people more money the more children they had would help stop poverty, but in too many cases it had the complete opposite effect. Education (of the correct type) is about the only way to break this cycle. Teach people how to look after themselves and to give them a useful skill and things will start to get better. Sadly to many do-gooders don't think this way.
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@Zizzy616 I think you are mistaking having a reasonable standard of living and poverty. Like my siblings, I went to a very ordinary school in a village. I ended up with a pretty ordinary job (albeit in a fairly specialized industry) I followed my older brother into the company where my father worked. Neither of my younger sisters went to university either. As I have indicated elsewhere, we have all done pretty well for ourselves.
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@Zizzy616 It sounds like what you consider to be a good job is so far from most people as to be a fantasy.
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@oldishandwoke-ish1181 It is funny that some people have instantly blame "the Tories " when both parties have been in power around the same length of time for most of my life. As I indicate elsewhere, much of the problem is due to the wrong type of help being given, albeit with the best intentions. You will never be able to "buy" some people out of poverty and often you will end up making things worse for them.
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@oldishandwoke-ish1181 What amazes me is the amount you of free food out there for the taking that goes to waste. Round here, there are orchards where the fruit rots on the ground because no one seems interested in picking it.
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More like "ordinary people" are out of touch with the real world!
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@maggieadams8600 A corrupt democracy will always be worse for the masses than an honest dictatorship.
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@missrockafella9432 Please get real. I could not dream of affording a house until I was about 25 (1983) and then it was only a studio flat which I needed a 3x salary mortgage for. I had no telly or even a phone. Thinking a little further back to when I learnt to drive, my first car was two years older than me! Even my first real house (1 bed starter home) needed a pretty big mortgage compared to my salary. You say about uni loans but you don't have to go to uni!
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That lovely stream for the Char would be badly effected if beaver got a chance.
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He is doing exactly what every other politician does as an election gets near and that is to make promises he has no intention of keeping. Go right back to the Ted Heath days when he promised to cut inflation at a stroke. That year inflation went through the roof and interest rates with it. Then there was Dunblane, where all the parties were trying to out do eachother, promising to make our streets safer by banning handguns, guess what the armed crime rate has gone up and our streets are even more dangerous than they ever were.
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The biggest problem these days is that what many people consider to be a reasonable house is so far above what my generation would have been more than happy with. That cannot be right.
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@raven-sf3di You got it spot on there, expectations aka entitlement. People think that they are entitled to all sorts of unrealistic things, just because they see them on TV / the internet. It is all part of the capitalist trap to feather the nests of the rich at the expense of ordinary people.
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All this so called rewilding is little more than creating a big safari park or theme park. Just image what will happen when the wild boar get really established, unless they are seriously managed. In parts of central Europe they are hunted heavily - many100s a year being shot, yet still they continue to multiply as they are not worried by wolves of bear that are getting more common as well. What about if some people get their way and we have European bison? No realistic predators for them either.
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There is a big problem with many charities, they do nothing to solve the problem long term and very often the CEOs are on very big money!
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@Sonyag1 It is a sad fact of democracy that people will sell their votes to the highest bidder without thinking about the consequences. If you think how much money could be raised if you put 1 penny on tax across the board and how little it would affect ordinary people it gives you a good idea of the situation. There is a big however though. It is how the current taxes are spent and what they are spent on that is the biggest issue.
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I hope you were being ironic or sarcastic with your remark? Otherwise you sound like you are probably a perpetrator!
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@heliotropezzz333 Very true but their whole way of thinking is very different from that in the UK. Sadly, their way of life is being ruined by people who do not share their mindset. Much like the French are finding out.
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@heliotropezzz333 To me, a good example of the different mindset is illustrated by a friend who worked in Denmark for a while. When he first went there he was surprised to find that the train fairs were collected almost on an honesty box principle. When he asked a colleague "What happens if someone didn't pay?" It was almost as if they could not understand why anyone would not.
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