Skint.

Quality documentary, I know it doesn't represent the average estate dweller in this country but it does capture a way of life that barring Shameless hardly ever gets reported on the telly box. It reminds me of working in Union Street and living in the city centre back in the seventies and eighties, we knew anybody and everybody who could sell or do something on the cheap. Girls who worked in Jaeger would sell cheap clothes as would the girls who worked the department stores, makeup, underwear, kitchen implements, plus blokes selling car parts or food. I knew some blokes that worked in Dewhursts in Plymouth and they had a scam where they would take bones to work. They would then bone out a cow, take four pounds of steak out of the meat pile, stick their four pounds of bones in the other pile and as long as the two piles added up to the total weight of the carcasse beforehand it was all cool.
This country really does need to take a look at itself though, with the steelworks gone there are huge sections of the population out of work who in previous generations were happy to go and graft for a decent wage, large groups of scallies nicking bikes and riding them around whilst they should be at school is the future for an idle Britain, never mind the stocks and shares in Chinese and Indian companies are performing well and we can hire more dole inspectors to get these scallies into training schemes for jobs that aren't there. Broken Britain for all to see.

There is nothing new in any of that and stuff has gone on for ever throughout history. In my working life I could name loads of scams people did a number of which were in my navy days. People don't see it as that wrong and do see it as what they classify as perks. I remember the big catering scandal in the RN where individuals sold contracts for things like bread and spuds for example. They took a bung for awarding a contract. I know of a ships office that was pannelled out in wood for a couple of cartons of fags in the Dockyard. Stores that went walk about. Cooks who took a chicken home for Sunday dinner. It happens in all walks of life and always has.

Where do these people get the idea that it's ok? From the bosses who don't nick a chicken but go out to fine dine with other Company bosses in exchange for business or go on a holiday disguised as a business trip. They consider it perks but the oiks on the shop floor can't do that so they do something different. The only time people get on the moral high ground is often when it concerns the content of the till or safe or office petty cash. Cash is a no no but anything else that is a fiddle is ok which, when you consider the amounts involved sometimes is a bit strange. It's also funny how the people in the office get uptight when somebody on the shop floor takes something yet they never buy a biro of their own or roll of cellotape. I doubt there are many on this planet who haven't done something in their time if they were totally honest about it. It's something you will never stop and the ones who buy it if it's saleable are just as bad but happy to get something on the cheap.

I was recently told that teaching is the only sector where people steal from home and give it for free to their employers.

I didn't say there was anything new about it Sensi, in fact I used anecdotes from the seventies and eighties in making my post. I did however forget about the dockyard, one scam ended up finishing the building firm Garrets in Tamerton Foliot, they were getting supplied by the yard and in the seventies it went into a million and a half I think. Anyway my main point is that it is an interesting documentary, one that maybe pricks people's consciences a little too much to let them watch, but then I don't think many people have a conscience, divide and rule happened a long time ago.