Frank: Yet they always have money for alcohol, tobacco or gambling, not to mention take away food and other consumer wants that are hardly a necessity.

The poor in this country (and other developed nations) are fat and have televisions. If a Vietnamese family can come over here on a boat with nothing, not even a word of English, and make something of themselves, then the white (and black) trash in this nation can get off their backsides and do the same. I have no sympathy for 99% of the poor in this nation because they're a pack of bludgers who waste what money they get and then expect someone else to pick up the tab for their children. Likewise, I'm sick of people making excuses for them.

I have known poor people, and I've worked in schools where kids come from poor families. Likewise, some members of my own family have chosen to avoid being the next generation of white trash, whilst others have not. I am acquainted with poverty, but I chose not to make excuses for it, let alone elevate it to the status of national icon.

Shorbe

I wrote about the estimated half-a-million Australian kids (minimum) growing up in poverty and your straight-from-the-heart response was: "Yet they always have money for alcohol, tobacco or gambling, not to mention take away food and other consumer wants that are hardly a necessity." I must tell my homeless friends that joke when I catch up with them outside Scotch College.

You have "no sympathy for 99% of the poor in this nation because they're a pack of bludgers who waste what money they get and then expect someone else to pick up the tab for their children."

As one who was charged with being "without sufficient means" when I was three and placed in an orphanage ("An Orphan's Escape", Lothian 2005) I take exception to your callow and callous dismissal of poor people as deserving everything they don't get. How was I going to have the means to get to a private school? Mine is only one story of hundreds of thousands of Australian stories about children growing up in grinding poverty (See Senate Report "Forgotten Australians" 2004).

They've stopped charging children with the crime of poverty these days but my grandfather died in gaol while he was serving a six-months sentence for being "without sufficient means". Nice symmetry, eh? People like you hate poverty being in-your-face. In the old days you locked us up. Nowadays you just slander us as undeserving and bludgers.

I don't make excuses for people living in poverty. I want them, and especially their children, to have a reasonable chance to get into the opportunity structure where they can mingle with decent folk like you...or do I?

frankgol, why would you want them to be able to send their children to private school? Surely the best education in all Oz is to be found in the public system. Private schools only churn out ignorant right wingers who by their vary being cause poverty. The system of public socialism aka the welfare state, is the only way to make the able pay. Careful sir, or they will be calling for your leftoid badge and you'll get the boot from the marxist book club too. :-)

As the man says, in the morning give the poor a dollar and it will be in someone elses pocket by noon. Money is not an equalizer. Money is no different than any other commodity. If it means everything to you, you will find a way to acquire it by the barrow load. A study of the richest men in the world some years ago showed many had less than a year 8 education. What they had can't be taught or given. It must be earned old school with sweat and stick-to-itness. Most of them came from poor to "middl'n" families. They did have one common trait. They at no time considered themselves victims of society. Those poor stupid fools. And they got rich to boot.

Aquaviravis

I don't get your behaviour - Attack a poster for outlandish comments that they DIDN'T make. Then pat yourself on the back for taking posters to task for the ridiculous comments that YOU made.

How about responding to what was said rather than attacking someone for what they didn't say.

By the way, can you give us a reference for that 'study' you're mentioning? It will just give it a bit more credibility given your already over-the-top comments.

Thank you Liz.

aqvarivs, I think you don't read too well - did you go to a private school by any chance? I don't hanker to send my children to private school because, I agree with you, the best education is to be found in the public system. Many private schools exist to transmit privilege, to train children for the ruling class, not to educate them.

You say: "A study of the richest men in the world some years ago showed many had less than a year 8 education. What they had can't be taught or given." Is that why the thich rich rush to get their kids into the 'best' schools and to buy a university place? Stupid buggers wasting all that money - if only they knew that leaving at Year 8 is the secret elixir of the rich and infamous. Now that you've put me right I know why the ranks of the rich are so full up with kids whose parents were too poor to buy them privilege.

I just love your logic aqvarivs. I'm sure you must have been trained in a private school.

"I don't get your behaviour - Attack a poster for outlandish comments that they DIDN'T make. Then pat yourself on the back for taking posters to task for the ridiculous comments that YOU made."

Aqva seems to be well known for that. I'd say either he is
involved in politics, so dirty is what its all about, or
perhaps he learnt it at that good little Catholic school he
attended. :)