POVERTY?

Feb 21, 2018 -- 8:18AM, lfc1971 wrote:

what a load of nonsense, no one in this country is in poverty, no one is cold, no one is hungry, everyone has free education, everyone has free health care, everyone has the greatest opportunities and freedoms of any people in any country at any other time in historyThey and people like studyform should pipe down and stop whining and say a little prayer of thanks, silly fools

LFC you are clueless.
The biggest load of nonsense is pretty much everything you type.

You type with the highest amount of ignorance.
And then let it run away with you.

Only the most selfish of people would write something as stupid as Poverty doesn't bother me.
If you're fishing. Or even if that's an excuse, then it just compounds your idiocy.

As always, with this sort of thread. The poor are confused with the scroungers or career benefits claimants.

Because you don't know anyone who's poor doesn't meant they aren't there.
There are millions of them. With hardly anyone to speak for them.

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

They are not the majority!

The majority are either alone or sometimes couples.

And fat

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.

I'll ask again. Is 50p enough to feed a child breakfast (see the OP)?

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.

As I say annie. They don't go out much.

It doesn't mean they don't exist.

All you EVER see is assumptions about how other people live and how there are no people in poverty, because "I don't know any and refuse to believe it".

Fundamentally. you've found a story and chosen not to believe it.
I should imagine you choose to believe several, but not this because it doesn't fit in with your core beliefs.

Watch Panorama at 8.30.
See if it shows anything you don't believe.
fwiw, In all MY life I've met several, as well as some who've abused the system.

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

Study and any others on here who personally know 5 families who can't afford to feed their kids:

Give me details and I'll personally pay their food bills for a month.

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.

Ok, let's meet up Study. You can bring details of 5 families and if they can't pay their food bills I will do so for 4 weeks.

Agreed?

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

btw, when I say my son works with them, he volunteers and not through a charity. Only G4S and charities get any money.

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

Injera... I've now responded to your 50p-breakfast question twice. The first time I politely suggested that it is an utterly irrelevant question - even the blogger is saying that two can be fed for a week off a tenner (that's less than 50p per meal, btw).

Because you ignored that and went instead for "I'll ask again" toddler-esque petulance, I gave you a straight yes/no answer.

Now that I've given you the asnwer you were dying to know (in fact, I'll go so far as to say you can get own-brand Weetabix for 6p each) are you going to tell us what you are trying to argue? Is it that someone who has very publically said they've made meals for 20p meals says they can't make a meal for 50p?

Jomo - apologies. I haven't read the whole blog. I was discussing annie's original post where the child requests bread and jam (50P's worth perhaps??) and the parent implies there's no money left.

I'm not convinced that this person is unable to give the child breakfast given that it costs so little.

Maybe the sentence (in the OP) shouldn't be taken quite so literally?

Loads of people are really struggling.  We paid something like three quarters of the cost for someone's boiler to be fixed because they couldn't afford to fix it themselves and their son has cystic fibrosis.  We arranged for it to be fixed and lied to them about how much it cost.  A boiler breaking down is all it takes for some people to put them in financial difficulty.

Indeed, Clydebank.
And, if you hadn't, the outcome could have been awful.
Poverty, as I keep saying, is relative.

Injera... ok. But can you really contemplate the fact that someone on £90 a week, with a kid, in the UK, could run out of money to buy food at some point?

Redundancy. No-fault evictions. Daddy been touching them up so ran away from home. Can't get credit for a cot or something so go to a loan shark - there's a whole host of situations why people in the UK would get to the point of not being able to afford food. Googling food banks or standing outside Cash Converters/the own-brand Weetabix aisle at Tesco would enlighten you more than I ever could.

In this specific example, tho, it appears annie's exposed a benefits fraud - the Dad's got an MBE. Case closed.

surprised at annie


no fun been skint

£90 a week with a child

some on here lose that per hour

Obesity in this country is at it's highest ever levels.
A nonsense to talk about widespread poverty.

Being skint can't be fun Capt_F and it's a long time since I was in that position.

Simply, the system doesn't work.  It is success for a very few and the rest of the heap struggle on like mugs propping up the whole facade.  It has always been like it. That is your system.

Visit a country like Cambodia (amazing place and people)

if you want to see real poverty, parents sending out kids at 5 or 6to go begging and sell tourist stuff to try and earn $5 a day, which is very good money.

Average yearly wage only $1,200 -$1,600.

Then those spending all benefits on choc bars, mcdonalds etc might not claim true poverty.

Jomo - that depends. What's left to pay for with the £90?

We all know of people who are doing very nicely on benefits. Flats/houses, cars in some cases. I know of a pensioner who owns her own house but the council paid for a new boiler as she was on pension credits. Around here there are many single mums all housed, fed and watered.

We're a fantastically generous country but of course some fall through the net.

I would love to help those who seriously need a few quid for the basics.

I don't know of any of these people "who are doing very nicely on benefits" hard to imagine anyone could live well on £90pw, might be able to manage a month or so if you're only buying food but most peole have other living expenses to eventually pay for. And isn't benefit capped at £23K for a couple so that'd hardly be 'very nicely' in many peoples books.

Sure there are a few rotten apples who'll milk the system for all they can get but you'll find those sort in all walks of life and the ones in the city can milk hell of a lot more than £23K a year out of the system. Sadly the poor and working classes are always their own enemy looking for someone lower down the ladder to mock so they can feel superior, all egged on by the likes of the Daily Mail and Channel 5 so they can reinforce stereotypes to the masses with cheap TV programs.

Well said Joe, although this lot are all Mail fans.

The majority of benefits are claimed by those in work....they call them working tax credits...makes it sound a little better don't it.

I don't know any of these people either, Ghetto Joe.
They are just occasional stories made for cheap journalism, they are the exception rather than the rule.
I've been saying this for years. You are dead right about the superiority thing.

But we never see the really poor people. The ones who don't spend their benefits (IF THEY GET ANY) on McDonalds and choc bars.

No it isn't Cambodia, nor is it most of Africa or Asia which are poor.
The UK is supposed to be a 1st world country. So, it's all relative

There is plenty of poverty.
Just because there is widespread obesity doesn't mean there isn't.
A strange parallel to have made imo.

Well said Ghetto Joe

Wish I had 23k a year.............suppose I could but that would mean getting a job

The welfare bill is £264 Billion...How much higher do peeps want it to be???

The £23k cap is of course net. So 27k ish gross. And it's also for doing nowt.

There's millions in unclaimed benefits as well!!

Studyform, I have nothing against welfare or benefits.

Quite the opposite I thinks its hugely important.

Maybe those who have paid taxes for years and fall on hard times should get more than lets say people who have never looked for a job in their whole lives. And no benefits to anyone coming to the UK without 5 years of work and tax paid. That would deter the wrong type of immigration and promote positive immigration of the type of people we would gladly welcome into the country.

Even when out of work start on x amount and every 6 months the amount falls so as to encourage going back to work.

Jail sentences should be given for those who abuse the system to deter others from stealing from the system.

The current system isn't right, and the money should be distributed much more fairly.

Just recently got letter how my tax was spent and how much I paid (2016-2017 tax year)

The figures show your employers amount of National Insurance contributions, but are not inc in the figures of "your" tax.

The highest amount was Welfare, which I don't begrudge, but knowing how much is wasted and conned does irk a little.

Again national debt interest seems high and that should definitely be reduced, as its the 4th biggest take out of your tax! Even more than defence!

Most of the welfare bill goes on pensions

no pensions was 2nd on the list, so is a separate entity

3rd on list sorry

health was 2nd most

Injera,
The welfare bill is not just benefits. In fact out of work benefits form only a little piece of it.

Pensions is top, then the healthcare not attributed to the NHS, (carers, disabled people, etc).

You are wrong Studyform

the list is:

1/Welfare
2/Health
3/State Pensions
4/Education
5/National Debt
6/Defence
7/Public order and safety
8/Transport
9/Business and Industry
10/ Govt administration
11/Culture eg sports, libraries, museums
12/Enviroment
13/Housing and utilities eg street lights
14/Overseas aid
15/UK contribution to EU

That list is according to HM Revenue and Customs

I looked at a breakdown of Welfare alone. On fact check.
Admittedly it was a couple of years old, so doubtless the benefits part is reduced by now.

no that is total government spending, this is about DWP spending which pensions is top

I'm talking about the part of welfare which constitutes benefits.

i knoW SF , im trying to answer maleuk

So was I

btw the national debt aspect SHOULD be reduced. Problem is, the national debt keeps increasing

https://fullfact.org/economy/guide-economy-debt/

Fullfact is a brilliant site - independent and non-political.

You are going to have to work until you are 80 to fund this reckless spending, good you deserve it

Its a giant Ponzi scheme, started by Bevin not Madoff

nobody works , that is the problem, there are millions on state benefits and thre are millions who don't leave school until their mid twenties or later
the system needs people to be starting work at least 10 years earlier, 16
and working for at least 50 years, not skiving!

Not even worth replying with anything sensible.
You need to check some facts, lfc.

that's a pity, I love and honour facts. Here,s a fact for you
We,re broke

well we have run out of money a long time ago, and printed more
Well that makes us all poorer, and sooner than you think we are going to have to pay it back

Yes and getting more broke all the time.
the debt has nearly doubled since 2010.
The blame is neatly placed with Benefits scroungers, immigrants, etc etc and not with the incapable politicians.

Again you're spouting crap and writing snippets from the daily mail.

Try lobbying your MP against HS2 - or the Trident replacement - MP's salaries and expenses, or giving money to banks, etc etc, or any of the other serious wastes of money they preside over.

Don't blame poor people.

Ah where have I blamed poor people study, you really must stop making things up

nobody works , that is the problem, there are millions on state benefits and thre are millions who don't leave school until their mid twenties or later
the system needs people to be starting work at least 10 years earlier, 16
and working for at least 50 years, not skiving!

You're referring to rich ones then?

Oh, and MASSIVELY exaggerating stuff that's not true.

mmps salaries? too high, teachers  salaries ? too high, doctors salaries ? too high
there is a whole list of salaries that are too high
That is what you don't understand

To be fair, lfc hasn't blamed poor people. He said they don't exist!

Excellent post Study (21:11)

mmps salaries? too high, teachers  salaries ? too high, doctors salaries ? too high
there is a whole list of salaries that are too high
That is what you don't understand

think should be a limit
say 30
post's per day

per forumite

look studyform, I am referring just for a start to 50% of young people who never seem to leave school,
I am referring to millions of people who don't have a working life of at least 50 years
so pipe down about poor people
There are none

I'm not dignifying such tripe with a response.
You know nothing... about anything.

well that would be better, its easy if you stay  silent. more enlightening

Of all the people to post that?!?!?!

well I felt I had to, of course, now when you manage to find those poor people let us know

Any examples, maybe just one
you see I like facts

thegiggilo    22 Feb 18 18:49 
There's millions in unclaimed benefits as well

Billions actually.


The total unclaimed amount for the DWP’s estimates alone – pension credit, housing benefit, jobseeker’s allowance, income support and employment and support allowance – is £13bn a year.

The problem isn't wages are too high, lfc, if anything they're far too low for the majority of workers to live on. I grew up during the Thatcher era and things were bad then but much worse now. We have working populations having to survive on benefits because of low wages and all it acheives is to allow  employers to have a cheap workforce topped up by working families tax credits paid for by taxpayers all kept dangling on zero hours contracts. We're a rich country we dont need lower wages to allow the rich more we just need a fairer distribution of earnings. Can't be many better ways to keep your population or employees under control when you can cut off their income and send them destitute with the stroke of a pen.

As an aside I used to work in the housing benefit sector years ago and the majority of fraud is committed by landlords not tenants.

As Study says National debt doubled under Cameron. Think it's over £1.5 trillion.

We were borrowing £9bn a month and now I believe it varies between 5 and 6. That's how much the public sector needs to exist in its current state.

So we somehow need to generate £6bn more a month to break even and stop the national debt from rising further.

I totally agree, Ghetto Joe.

You cannot blame single mothers and others in the same situation whereby if they went to work they would only earn slightly more than staying at home doing nothing.  The minimum wage rate should be increased substantially.

As you said I feel sorry for today's working generation.  The cost of housing, among other things, has meant even if you have a good job it is still a struggle.

My post was about the fact that I cannot see how someone who has their rent and council tax paid and gets about £90 on top a week can find themselves with no food, no heating etc.  She also said that she moved about seventeen times, what was that all about?  The council has a duty to house her, so what happened?

She is a left winger who writes in america as well, telling them about this.

If the minimum wage increased along with other low pay work it would create inflation in rents and mortgages. Estate agents would milk it like never before. Where I live flats sell for 200k.

The housing boom which has existed for decades was/is never regulated. It's free market capatalism at its worse, hence the need for tax credits and housing benefit (for those IN work!)

It's economic madness to allow this to happen.

She made her fame from saying she fed her son and herself on just £10 a week, but now says she didn't have anything.  And if she did feed her son on £10 a week then did her heating bill come to £80 a week?

Annie... maybe some weeks she didn't have £10 a week to spend on food?

Are you on a fishing trip re the non binary thing, being obtuse, or do you genuinely think £90 a week just needs to go on food and the heating?

No, I said non binary as that is what the person wants to be known as.

Of course I don't think the £90 is just for food and heating but I cannot see how she cannot manage on it to the extent that her child goes hungry and cold.  So what did she do with the money?  I am sorry but saying your child went hungry and cold is a bad reflection on you, not the state.

annie... ok apologies re non binary. I guess it's just you saying "the non binary protests too much" could be interpreted as being slightly facetious.

Could I ask, tho: if you don't think the £90 (your figure) was just for food and heating, then why did you suggest her heating bill came to £80? What about rent, water, clothing?

I was being sarcastic,JOMO about the heating being £80!

And, as I have said before on this thread the £90 does not include rent as that would be paid by housing benefit.

Is rent always covered in full by housing benefit?

Well if you want to live in an expensive flat then no it would not be covered.  But if by choosing to live there it  meant your child was hungry and cold with no christmas presents and no tree, she said, then you wouldn't , would you?

Shirley you're not factoring Christmas presents and a tree into the £90 weekly budget, annie?

You are making a lot of assumptions, annie.
She may not have been granted full rent and council tax, maybe she has a TV licence or has to buy clothes, pay for food for a week, as JOMO says, water, sewage, gas AND electric. Bus and other travel fares? Or should the poor have to wear rags and walk everywhere.
Or have the temerity to smoke. Is a phone a luxury?

Should people truly have to give up even what we would - these days - consider basic living items, in order to satisfy the rest of us?

Maybe she's paying a loan taken out to enable her to move into her flat.
Maybe she's moved so often because the council only had short term places to live in.

Whilst the council does have a duty to house people, they often don't have enough houses!

The funding for the building of council houses was stopped by central government after "right to buy" came in.
Prior to this  -  From 1945 to the late 70's - councils built more houses than the private sector.

So many were bought up, then no replacements built and plenty demolished, so housing is now short.

‘I remember the cold bloody winter sitting in a flat with no heating, the Christmas Day spent by myself because I realised my son would have a better time at his father’s than in a freezing cold flat with no tree and no presents — as I lay on my sofa without him and sobbed, alone.’

As a single mother, she was claiming benefits, but made no secret of the fact she thought the money she received from the government paltry, and says she sold her son’s belongings to make ends meet.

‘Johnny’s toys, that was quite hard, to see all the things I’d chosen for him go. I had to tell him that Mummy had had a tidy-up,’ she says.



No matter how many assumptions I might make, STUDYFORM,  can you really believe that it was necessary to sell her son't toys to make ends meet?  And now we find out that the child spent time  with his father, further easing her 'burden'.  And of course the father would have had to make contributions to his son't upkeep.

I just find it difficult to believe a decent mother would not have had money to feed her child at christmas and save enough to buy some toys.  Millions of other single mothers on benefits do.

She makes a good living at being a 'poverty campaigner'.

And the bit about the 'freezing cold flat' is rubbish.  Energy providers cannot cut off where vulnerable i.e children are present.  She can also get a crisis loan and pay back without interest.  She could also go to a food bank.

sounds fun

Capt F, she gets, as a single mother almost the same as a couple where the man works in a poor paying job.  I don't see any of them saying their children go hungry and they can't buy them presents at christmas.

She has made a nice living out of saying how poor she was when she was on benefits.

I don't see how the government could have given her any more money as then she would be 'earning' more than someone in a job working forty hours a week.

Are you trying, annie, to make the point that; there is no poverty? Because you don't see it personally, doesn't mean there isn't there, you know.

I keep saying. Not necessarily about THIS woman. But that there are millions of people in this country who are ignored, have no voice, are unnoticed and were it not for charities, would be starving. Plenty are very hungry and cannot afford bills of any type and it's bad enough for people with kids, but even worse for those without.

It wasn't all that long ago I was selling my belongs to raise some cash just to afford necessities and I have more than £90 a week coming in.

So all that's happening on this thread is some of us are saying "how awful, it's hard to be in poverty" and some of us are saying "there's no poverty".
Which means it'll go on for ever.

I just don't believe that there are millions of people sitting in freezing flats with no food, not in britain.  Yes they might find it difficult budgeting but can we really give people more or the same as people who have to work forty hours a week and spend extra hours each day commuting?

Why didn't you just ask that question at the start, annie?

prob not millions no
but possibbly 1000.s

Well, on that basis, we reach an impasse. You don't believe it so it ain't happening. I maintain it is. In the millions - or we wouldn't have food banks.

The problem isn't that we "give people more" it's that worker's wages are too low. No-one has enough.
Austerity doesn't affect the people who maintain it.

All the poorest people in this country don't get enough. The proportion of expendable income for everyone but the richest is the lowest it's been in modern times.

We should not increase benefits, they should be reduced to below the level of the lowest wage. Increase wages? no, wages must rise or fall as a natural consequence of the economy of the country. If you try to artificially set a level for wages, by introducing a minimum wage for example then you make people poorer not richer

also studyform the fact that there are food banks does not mean that there are millions of people in Britain sitting in freezing flats with no food, that is just another idiotic thing that you seem to believe, without any facts or evidence or indeed even common sense

I'm not going to attempt reasoning with you any further, lfc.
I have plenty of facts and evidence. I don't need to prove anything to you. You basically (and I mean basically) type snippets of stupidity. and, I think you're a bellend.

you don't have any facts or proof do you studyform ? :)

^

now if there are millions of people in Britain freezing and unable to buy food you will be able to give examples, until then it is reasonable to believe that you are making up things, again
you may not be, just one example perhaps go ahead anythings possible

Now of course I don't deny that some people are stragglers and down at heel and it is reprehensible to ignore them
they should be forced into work, that at least is good for them