Rich House Poor House - Channel 5 - Review

We have watched both episodes of this new series on Channel 5, despite the adverts and the ultra-annoying "summary of the program so far" that is shown after each break.

The premise of the program is a sort of fish out of water idea. They get a very poor rabble family, like us Kremlins, who are in the bottom 10% of British income and then a rich and well-to-do family, like Lord Topp's, and make us swap our circumstances for one week. The poor people go to the mansion and have thousands of pounds to spend on whatever they want and the richies have to go and live in the poor people's house and subsist on next to nothing.

Part of the program's pseudo-scientific idea is to see whether money makes people happy, although really of course it is just nosy spying on poor people given a brief taste of the high life, alongside Poshos forced to see what reality is like for the rest of us.

As you'd probably expect, the format is pretty much identical each week, despite it being a fresh set of poor people and richies.

1. Poor people arrive at mansion where they'll be staying. They are thrilled and dazzled by the excess. "Cor blimey! 'Ave yer seen in 'ere yet? Cor it's massive! They got gold taps look! Blimey kids there's a garden! etc...."

2. Richies arrive at council house were they'll be staying. They put on stoical faces and make coded comments. "Well we're very close to the neighbours, so that'll be good for erm...community...I suppose", "What a lovely COSY little house!", "Oh they do have a bathroom - look!" etc.

3. Poor people enjoy rich life. Are shocked and outraged at how much budget they have loose. Just lying around spare. Pocket money. They buy some consumer gear they haven't been able to buy before. They go to sports clubs and do activities and like it. They complain that they're not able to have much life normally.

4. Rich people stoically go about poor life. They are especially stoical about how little money there is ("We'll just have to make a few economies, that's all!") and are grimly determined to show just how easy and simple it is to have a marvelous time without any funds at all ("Come on kids! Let's see who can catch a cockroach!"). It is clear they do not want to be seen as spoilt brats.

5. Rich people reminisce about how the poor area and house is just like their old mum used to have when they were growing up. Imaginary flat caps are donned, cut glass crystal vowels are replaced by hammy Yorkshire accents. Look we're not flash harry richie winkers at all! We're just honest, down to earth, regular yorkshire folk who just happen to have a few bob. That's all.

6. The experiment is over! Poor people and richies return to their own lives. For the richies it has been an eye-opening experience. They have realised that the poor people actually try very hard and work very hard for long hours and little money. Apparently this has come as a shock to them. They go on a bit about it and some even become a little tearful about what a terrible hard time the poor people have. "It must be simply beastly for them!"

7. Richies give the poor people a large gift of cash or consumer goods, presumably in order to assuage their posho guilt. Poor people are overwhelmed with gratitude! They're proper toffs those richies. Gord bless 'em one and all!

8. Credits roll.


The only variance last night was that the tightwad richies miserably failed with the gift giving at the end, despite both the poor people standing around hopefully for a while in front of the richies whilst grinning and twisting their flat caps in their hands and me and Ciff at home chanting "Present! Present! Present!" at the TV as the end of the program approached. They gave them not the steam off their pish this episode. They pretended not to notice and singularly failed to put their hands into their pockets. Nothing. Tight gits.

I know we have many richie rich types on here and wondered whether perhaps there might be some who'd be interested in pairing up with us Krems for an appearance on this show?

We'd only want a moderate sized financial gift (just to sweeten the pot for us a little) and you of course would get to appear a wonderful fellow who's entirely down to earth and knows all about poor people and is not at all a vain, spoilt deadweight on humanity.

 

"Richies" are constantly giving gifts to the poor, its called taxes .
Someone who earns £90k a year pays 10 times as much tax as someone who earns £20k (£30k vs £3k).
I volunteer Rookery Dad to pair up with you

 

Was your cousin a goodie or a baddie.

Sorry, I mean a layabout loafer or an enterprising creator of wealth.

 

Uh huh. Is that why the likes of Warren Buffet and Prince Charles (a drop in the ocean by way of examples) manage to get away with paying a lower rate of tax than their servants?

 

Apparently Troy Deeney has been arrested for stalking Buffet.

 

It’s a mathematical certainty unless you want to tax the act of saving.

The rich are taxed higher on income. Everyone is taxed equally on consumption. The difference is the rich don’t spend all of their post tax income each month so can save it. Unless you want to put VAT on putting money in the bank your point will always be the case if you look at percentages rather than tax contribution.

If you want to ramp up income tax or have a wealth tax then fair enough but it is obvious why consumption v savings will skew percentages.

 

That puts me in mind of Kerry Packer's famous quote, made when being quizzed in Australian Parliament about tax evasion in 1991:

"I am not evading tax in any way, shape or form. Now of course I am minimizing my tax and if anybody in this country doesn't minimize their tax they want their heads read because as a government I can tell you you're not spending it that well that we should be donating extra."

The Tax office took him to court over an alleged $40m tax debt. The case took seven years to resolve - towards the end, the Tax Office realised they were losing and said they would settle for just $30. Packer refused, the courts found in his favour - he paid zero tax on $1 billion of income. I think that stunned most of the population, who mostly agreed with his argument but not that he should get away with paying nothing.

 

Ahh, so he wasn't "evading" tax, he was "minimising" it.

They make me smile with their insistence on very fine points of grammar and word definition when it comes to their selfish and greedy behaviour. They're "efficient" with their tax and "economical" with the truth - sounds so much better than dodging their responsibilities to society and then lying about it.

 

Hardly “finer points of grammar”. It’s the difference between being in jail or not.

 

Tax avoidance is legal (structuring your earnings/business in the most efficient way, offsetting allowable costs etc)
Tax evasion is illegal (tax being legally due but not paying it, seemingly the case with most Sth American football megastars in Spain !)

 

Rich people wouldn’t have more than anyone else to pay in taxes were it not for the ordinary people who labour to produce their wealth. Elon Musk, for example, would barely have a bean more than you or were there not thousands of individuals developing and manufacturing, coding, accounting, warehousing, distributing etc etc on his behalf. He had ideas, capital, took risks, good for him, but it’s worth the square root of FA without others to make it grow.

So the least he and others can do is pay to ensure a good standard of health and education for those who make him king.

 

Sounds ghastly. What on Earth possesses people to make and be on such a show?

 

Or, indeed, to watch it?

 

True. And likewise those individuals might not have homes, cars, holidays etc were it not for the fact that they are employed by him and paid by him. Win-win, capitalism at is best.

 

Any semblance of balance is being eroded by the diminution of state provision in health, education, care and housing and the land grab of the well off and wealthy of social assets like housing.

 

I havn't watched the show but the couple from the first episode who are vets are friends of a friend. They are lovely people, both very caring and play an active role in the veterinary community. Over recent years more and more vets have succumbed to mental illness, and they play a leading role in a vets support group. At the end of the day it is not their fault that they have found themselves in a strong financial state and are in a position to help those who require it.

 

I suspect it is very much their fault in that they have probably studied hard and worked hard to get where they are. Selfish so and so's.

 

If you think that caring about poverty requires that sort of attitude then I believe you are very wrong.

 

Hush man. In the years I've been on this forum if I have learned one thing it's only the rich who are hard working and only the hard working are rich.

 

Having an ISA is avoiding tax.

All above board.

I’m still mulling over the offer, brokered by TUT, to swap with the Kremlins.

Would compromising on a Wife Swap arrangement be totally inappropriate?

 

I don’t recall Kerry Dixon as being particularly hardworking & I imagine he is quite wealthy.

 

This is not a channel which we or our acquaintances watch so the proposal appears completely risk free.

 

.......for a tramp

 

What a perverse way of looking at life.

You post as if those "ordinary people" are "labouring" out of the goodness in their hearts, whereas they are effectively selling their labour, experience, ability to the highest bidder. The likes of Musk provide a market for them. All perfectly acceptable, but don't try and make out that those employees have any more right to claim a moral high ground any more than employers. They are all the same (excepting, of course, there will be good and bad employers, and good and bad employees).

 

I might be wrong, but I think the point that moose is making is that there is a structural requirement for poverty, without which it would be impossible for Elon Musk to become super wealthy.

By the same token, even the poorest brit exploits this in the agricultural labour costs of imported food, consuming goods manufactured in China etc etc.

I think the requirement of poverty is a pretty interesting moral question

 

There is no structural requirement for poverty, but in any sustainable system there has to be inequality as people are not equal in what they strive for, or what they are content with, or what they put up with. We are billions of individuals with billions of personalities. What is there in his example of Musk suggests that his employees live in poverty? They may all be very well paid!

Even the "definition" of children living in poverty in the UK is based on where their household income compares to the median household income (from memory I think if it is less than 60% of the median income, then the children are deemed to be living in poverty). No reference to how they are fed, housed, clothed or cared for, and no reference to their expenditure.

Absolute nonsense.

The left are too quick to equate inequality with poverty - they are far from being the same thing. It comes across as jealousy and envy.

 

Which side do they want you to represent?

 

Do I recall that you have a second home?

Maybe the HHs could represent both parties.

Your opulent self could award your oppressed self a handsome guilt payment which of course would be cash neutral.

 

Apologies, or rather commiserations.

Btw, are we using ‘richie’ to refer to rich people or Richarlison?

I imagine his house would contain a 100 inch tv, a PlayStation & not much else. Maybe many pairs of new trainers.