Cut foreign aid!!!! Spend it on our own!!!!!!

Hard to disagree with that john92 I think it'd be a pretty long thread if you posted those words as a title

I don't know if this is a coincidence but I had alot more secs when I was poor

of course and a little bit of love, that's all anyone needs

wonderful, poverty doesn't worry me

this should be our goal for Britain, leave school at 15 or 16, be able to get a secure job and to be able to leave home at 17 at the latest
that should be the norm for 99% of our young people, and that would be a happier society and solve many problems.

there is nothing worse than being a poor, young unemployed person
but this is allowed to continue year after year after year, its madness

Embarrassing ^

theres another selfish individual who doesn't care about the poor, how reprehensible

some familys are in poverty with the husband working and the wife looking after the young kids ,rents are sky high in london  and if the husband has a low paid job there is precious little left after rent,electricity, gas ,water, food and other exes .

no one living in London is in poverty

You're only in poverty if you're on rations and 8 to a bedroom, toilet outside shared by 16 flats, Foyles.
Loaded if you happen to own a mobile phone and smoke the odd rollie up these days..

Injera... the person annie's quoting went on to make a bit of *ahem* dough - initially through doing a blog about feeding her and the kid for £10 a week, so not a particular problem with budgeting or prioritising money - the point they were trying to make is that, on the benefits she was on at the time, there were times she didn't have 94p for bread and jam from Tesco.

If her and the kid were on the £90+ annie surmises, the great brains of chit chat could easily put together a budget that would cover all the basics that would prevent absolute poverty in something approaching its truest sense ie. food, water, clothing and shelter (which, in this country, would come with built-in sanitation provision).

Imo, though, I don't think you can compare what poverty means in Africa to what it means in Britain. In Britain, society wants those benefit scroungers to get off their fat, processed Weetabix-filled erses and go get a job, right? For that they'll probably need a suit. And get there and back to the job interview. And if they get the job they'll have to find the travel money to get there and back five times a week before the first wages drops. Things like this might sound like complete non-blockers to many reading this, but if you expect someone on £90 a week, with a kid, in the UK, to not have money issues that means they might not be able to feed themselves at points, then you're just ignorant.

The bottom line is that poverty in the UK obviously cannot be compared to poverty in Africa. So what annie's doing in questioning someone in the UK saying they're in poverty is just semantics.

How about if we agree that you can only be in poverty if you have to walk 20 miles to the Weetabix shop... is that a win/win for everyone?

How come the majority of people who plead poverty and struggle to put food on the table are fat and have fat kids ?

The majority are either alone or sometimes couples.

The Mail and its followers, many of whom won't have it any other way and post on here say the same sort of thing, dan.

People with no kids who cannot even pay current ridiculous rents, can't afford new clothes or to pay their bills, to stay warm. Or maybe too old to easily get a job, or maybe are unqualified for any, but for any number of reasons aren't wanted.
Victims of illness or caring for others with illness.
Ex-soldiers, ex-miners, ex-anything which has gone really.
The thing is they are not good press, they don't make good telly and they don't get in your way.

So, you don't think they exist much, therefore you don't care.

And there's a whole thread of it.

Me, I'll take the sympathy and trying to help route, rather than the criticising route.

lfc - no-one could be THAT stupid. So you must be a troll.

Reacting on the blog, Monroe said: "I took exception to the Conservatives holding me up as some kind of role model because, it was their policies that left me hungry, cold, almost homeless, moving house seventeen times with a child under my arm."

Monroe challenged the original tweeter to live on just £10 a week for three weeks running, but added: "You won't even start to experience the daily grind of living in poverty.

"Poverty isn't just having no heating, or not quite enough food, or unplugging your fridge and turning your hot water off.

Her father has an MBE and was a fireman for thirty years and her mother was an ex nurse and she has three siblings - what they didn't help their daughter and grandchild when they had no heating, no hot water, no food?  I can't see it myself.  She was also on £27000  a year when she left to have a baby. 

In all my life I have never met anyone who has lived like she says she has, but I have met loads who abuse the system.

Injera... yes. Now can you put round peg in round hole before daddy get back from worky worky?

Don't make glib statements, my son works with these people.
People who are at the behest of G4S in a hostel, with 2 mealtimes a day (miss them, don't eat), no TV's, no school, curfew.
And they're all over the country.
G4S makes it's profit though.

In this country, (compared to most DEVELOPED nations) we have the smallest living spaces, the highest rents, the highest travel costs, highest utility bills, one of the meanest benefits systems (I'm not talking about chav scroungers), drink and cigarettes and fuel are most expensive.

Wages aren't anywhere near the highest.

I reckon most people are just one wage packet away from bankruptcy.

I've met some of these people through my son Injera. I will genuinely enquire as to their absolute position and if they cannot afford dinner, I'll let you know.

If they CAN, I still wouldn't say they're not in what, most of us should consider to be, poverty

Fair enough. Let me know. It's a genuine offer.