lowem wrote:A boy is sitting at the staircase playing by himself. In his "house", actually, an apartment unit in a public housing estate, the lights are out. Their electrical meter had run out. Apparently the household is on a pre-paid scheme where instead of receiving a monthly bill, they have to slot in money at the meter to keep it going.
No money, no electricity. It's sad
Last I heard, unless they've changed their mind in the meantime, an updated system somewhat like it is going to be rolled out
nationwide. No nation of deadbeats here.
No money, no electricity.
It's kind of brutal. You know, as in, brutally efficient. Should we as a nation leave it to market forces to work out little details like these and claim the moral high ground of capitalism or laissez-faire or whatever it is called, or should we be more compassionate towards the less well-off? I wonder.
Here in remote Australia they have the card prepay system in welfare housing; have done so for many years.
Especially where i work in Aboriginal communities it is the norm that the locals houses have the prepay while the white contractor houses have a quarterly bill.
Recently I was working in a community outside of Alice Springs in Central Australia. The Government was building new houses and among the 'modifications' was the installed 3kw split system aircon (x2 per house).
These were put in to replace the evaporatives which have always done the cooling in this very hot dry place.
No insulation was put in.
These houses get up to over 50 celcius (115F) every day for months during summer.
Most occupants are welfare dependent.
There is no way known they can afford to run these new aircons.
In Singapore I was shocked how much rent people pay; when compared to wages, rents there are absolutely outrageous. The prepay electric system is another lever to push people out. When they can't pay the electric they certainly won't be paying rent.
Strangely though there are far fewer homeless in Singapore than in any city in Australia. (at least visibly)