How the term 'poverty' has changed

It's that phrase 'isn't relevant'. I think it's very relevant., in fact essential to a rounded discussion, eg for our definition of the word 'poverty'.

Rubbish. You are simply not aware of what's going on. UC can take weeks to get paid out and Foodbanks only give 3 days emergency food and you need a Voucher to get it. It's not a free help yourself supermarket. People on zero hours contracts might get a full week's pay one week and only one or two days the next- how are they supposed to live?

It’s crazy how people cannot understand that there is poverty in this country. And to see the romanticism of it in the OPs post is really disgusting.

There are a lot of people struggling and it’s obscene that people can dismiss it as not happening.

Also OP, you’re only talking about British poverty (which, as I said earlier, is really bad for lots of people in the U.K.) but around the world there are people living in horrific conditions and sewing your clothing for 2p an hour.

For some people, poverty is much worse than whatever your grandparents experienced.

It's their fault that they choose to stick the boot in though.
I know people can't understand it.

I grew up very poor, I mean really really poor.

I'm now well off. I'm yet to meet anybody middle class who can fathom poverty. At all. It's like their mind is incapable of accepting it. I know lots of people who think they went without because they couldn't afford a school trip. They can't comprehend not having any money at all. It's like their brain can't process it. It's not their fault, but they don't realise how lucky they are.

That wasn't just poverty though. That was a completely avoidable crime of negligence by Trevelyan etc. I do see your point about it being all relative. But I have a problem with man-made famines being the benchmark of how we measure what poverty is. If you follow that logic, you might as well say only concentration camps are "real poverty". They aren't. They are something different (if also involving immense human suffering).

"Some people are still hungry and malnourished. Unable to sleep due to the cold"

This. Can't sleep because I'm hungry or cold. I posted about it (it being my experiences of poverty) once and was shot down in flames and was accused of my post being badly written , probably because I was upset by it all when I posted.

I wasn't believed by the lovely people on MN so I asked for it to be taken down.

People don't realise how bad it is.

I think what we have today is "relative poverty" rather than actual poverty. People are poorer than other people around them. Thanks to the benefit system people won't starve, they will have a roof over their head, children will be educated, and there is free healthcare. It's not the same as years gone by. We have good birth control so people don't end up with a house full of kids they can't afford (though many choose to have them anyway). Children might have to share rooms, but it's nothing like the 5 kids to a room sleeping under Dad's coat that froze to the wall in winter that my grandparents had to live with.

I know it's a cliche but I know a couple of families who plead poverty and use food banks when they all own iPhones, the kids have game consoles etc. It's often about priorities. What's essential and what's not. These things should be a luxury, not the first priority.

People struggle, of course they do. But the difference is they're not going to starve/freeze because of poverty like they genuinely might have done in the past.

I’m not Rees-Mogg, I think he’s a nasty “see you next Tuesday”

There is a safety net today except for the homeless who fall through the cracks.

On my side there is a lot of generational anger from how the English landlords treated the Irish during “the great hunger”, evicting starving people from their homes.

Um.. the op did.

Sorry, but now those claiming poverty now wouldn't consider letting out a room, working all day and night, making clothes and baking just to survive.

People used to make their own clothes and knit jumpers - most women could do both - because it was cheaper, so unless you could afford a dressmaker etc. they were essential skills.
During the first year at my first school, we had to have a specified overall to cover our uniform. You couldn’t buy them - they had to be made from a Butterick pattern. Obviously decades ago now, but it was fully expected that every family had at least one member able to make such a thing.

The wider availability of debt makes poverty different now

Just saw someone saying about fixing clothes etc- another example of a different era- a lot of clothes now wouldn’t survive mending- clothes were built to last then

God you’re making me think of my gps- my gd died when my dad was 15 so he and two of his brothers left school and got jobs ( you wouldn’t be able to get a ft job now), their mum worked as a manager in a shop and a cleaner and rented out a room in the house. Didn’t ask the sleeping arrangements but there were four boys and definitely not that many bedrooms. Tiniest bathroom in the world!

From the OP:

Sorry, but now those claiming poverty now wouldn't consider letting out a room, working all day and night, making clothes and baking just to survive.

That’s strongly implying to me that the OP thinks those who “claim poverty” could work to bring themselves out of it by letting out a room, baking and sewing their own clothes. And if they aren’t doing those things they’re not really trying.

My grandmother could still remember the trauma of being taken, as a little girl, to a fancy shop in the west end, where someone suddenly whipped out a pair of scissors and cut her plait off. All the girls in the family had had their hair washed and plaited, and then taken up west by the oldest sister, who had arranged to sell their hair. They had to because their dad had been injured, and the family were in dire straits. It was the only thing they had to sell.

Life without a safety net is very scary. And unfortunately, we are heading back that way because of choices made over the past few decades.

People in poverty don’t struggle to eat or heat their home??

Have you seen the threshold figures?

I'm delighted we live in a country where that extreme poverty is gone, but there are a lot of people who work bloody hard and still have pretty awful lives. The cost of living and housing and the government need to do a lot more to get those costs falling relative to income. There are a group who are happy to live off the state and whose expectations rise over time, I have little time for them.

There weren't 'no benefits' in the 1910s.

The Liberals under Lloyd George brought in the 1911 National Insurance Act which provided various 'benefits' for the poor & unemployed.

Poverty that caused high infant mortality/disease spread through overcrowding and inadequate clean water & sewage systems has decreased but that isn't to say poverty no longer exists.

There are still malnourished kids sleeping on bare mattresses in damp homes.

There are still elderly people getting hypothermia because fuel is so expensive.

but that is the comparison she is making. It doesn't mean that another comparison might show something different (except it doesn't) but that is the comparison that she is making. And she can make it without - and I don't think she is - denigrating or minimising poverty today.

So you don't consider people poor unless they are committing wildlife crimes? 😂

This thread is batshit. Is that you Rees mogg?

Nobody is poor apparently unless they're eating hedgehogs they have caught on the local park, dressed only in sacks without access to any footwear at all, and have taken up residence in a stick house by the bog, and shit outside.

If poor people lived like this you would be the first to complain! 'hello officer there's a strange unwashed barefoot man, with his unspeakables barely covered by his loin cloth, roasting a moor hen on an open fire he's started down by the canal. What no I don't want to be tranfered to the rural crimes department! Somebody think of his 7 children!'

Is that what you want the streets to look like? Or would it be okay because you live in a noice neighbourhood and they would take all the dirty plebs off to some workhouse, or encampment. Where you could be ensured they suffered appropriately for the crime of being skint.

Back in the real world, outside of these Dickensian novel stereotypes, poor people are allowed to enjoy some quality of life. Poor people are allowed to wear clothes. Poor people are allowed to buy a 1.50 cake from Asda bakery. Poor people are allowed mobile phones. It isn't a moral failing to be poor. These things are not wreckless indulgences. These people would not somehow become rich or able to afford to better themselves if only they went without food/shoes/clothes/heating/a phone. If poor people spend money on apparently anything at all, it's considered a waste. Tell me what would you spend your hard earned threpence on instead of these things?

Was that directed at me? I'm not convinced that the IFS has any "skin in the game" here. The absolute same can be said about you - you are using your experience and extrapolating it to draw conclusions more broadly than it justifies. This is why we need studies, including those by independent organisations like The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (one of the ones that I linked to above, and which was behind the first ever report on childhood poverty) and the IFS. Does more need to be done? Yes. But that doesn't mean a great deal of progress has been made and has not been undone. Could it be undone in the future? Yes, but it hasn't been yet.

Where in the UK have slums returned to?

In the United Kingdom, poverty is defined as when a household's income is below 60% of the median income for that year. This is known as relative low income

So as median income goes up, you'll have "richer" poor people

Destitution - Households in destitution are defined by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation as those who have to go without two or more essentials in the past month because they couldn't afford them, or if their income is extremely low (less than £95 a week for a single adult). Essentials are defined as having a home, food, heating, lighting clothing, shoes and basic toiletries.

https://trustforlondon.org.uk/news/what-is-poverty/

Then you can consider a weeks holiday as a measure...
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2010-11-19/debates/10111964000004/Holidays(Low-IncomeFamilies)

The Government already use the lack of a one-week break away from home as a measure of poverty, and the Office for National Statistics provides the shocking figures that tell us that more than 2 million families with dependent children—almost one in three families—cannot afford a simple holiday.

Does any of this examine closely what people in poverty spend their money on? There'll be some stats somewhere about % spent on rent etc.