...to feel slightly annoyed when people claim to be "living in poverty"

[ihateconflict]

...and have huge TVs/smoke/drink/have a holiday abroad each year/wear designer clothes and shoes and handbags, and have all the latest electronic gadgets. In contrast, as a "middle class" (hate this label) professional living in an expensive area, i cant afford any of the above (dont smoke or drink, so dont include those). We havent had any holiday for 5 years, let alone one abroad. AND, when DCs were at school, their friends with EMA allowance were the ones who had driving lessons for their 17th birthday, and cars for their 18th birthday. My DCs had to pay for own driving lessons, and didnt get cars until they finished uni and were earning. I am full of sympathy for those in "genuine" poverty, but somewhere priorities and definitions seem a bit wrong

MM, Not everyone on benefits is in your position. We only get about £100 a month towards our housing costs because we don't rent. That also means we don't have a landlord to pay for any repairs to our house. The costs of heating a house on a 20th century estate are not equivalent to the costs of heating a damp 19th century terrace which has no gas supply. The costs associated with raising teenagers - school uniforms, text books, sports kits and sports shoes, school shoes, travel and so on are much more than the costs of a toddler if you are unemployed so have no childcare costs. Everytime one of my children's feet grow each of them needs three new pairs of shoes just to meet school requirements. Benefits for a two parent family are not much more than for a single parent but a there are a lot of costs for that extra adult in food, clothes and transport.

It is great that you were able to live to a reasonable standard on benefits but not everyone has the same costs to meet.

kendodd Funnily enough that was the original idea, as I'd been in communication with a tutor who wanted to pay me a small rate to take his own lessons there, but it never panned out unfortunately. I can't play, I can tinkle some notes out. I can't afford piano lessons.

funnysinlajardin I sure did have a hooooj tv. A 15 year old Sony Trinitron analogue :D

I won't be buying a big new tele, I don't like them.

expat Thankyou, and yes I am already looking into DROs.

and the benefits have been frozen at 1%. now you'd have to pay some council tax, too, and possibly part of your rent.

My friend is on benefits, she smokes, drinks and has a big flat screen.

She is also the survivor of the crappiest and most abusive chikdhood you can imagine. Its left her with severe mental health issues. So she smokes as it makes her feel calmer, she drinks the odd glass of wine and watches her TV to forget life for a while.
She is agoraphobic so finds ot hard to get out......naturally she enjoys the TV.

But yeah....she spends her benefits on shite .

Not everyone has the same costs OR THE SAME LIFE CHANCES!

This thread is making me really blummin' down, can someone inject some humour. Usually in times of national crisis, a whole spate of appropriate and thoroughly un-PC jokes are born. But can you make a joke out of debt and poverty? Probably not. It might take my mind off things briefly though.

expat I've heard that about council tax, I'm going to go and google that in a bit. Plus the bedroom tax will affect me in April (I have two children under 6 of each gender) but although my house is rented as a two bedroom it has a third room off the bathroom probably big enough for a small single bed.

I already pay £75 towards my rent each month. That's always been the case, making up the shortfall.

Lucyellensmum95- it's not the semantics i been getting worked up over, it's the way some people make it out like i hate the poor and blame them for the world when all i was doing was proving how poverty doesn't exist in the UK. The UK is somewhere people come to escape poverty. Saying that doesn't mean i don't see or believe there are many people in dire straits in this country or that they are in the awful situations that people are describing in this thread - no one is denying that, of course there are thousands of poorer people in dire need.

But in this country we do have free healthcare, free schooling, help with shelter, clean running drinking water and a safety net (even if it's not much it's still better then being chucked in the streets to die of poverty) of benefits to help people. When the UK don't have these things then yes, i will say there are people living in poverty.

How do you know these peoples circumstances and their actual income?
How do you know there freezing?

This is a blatant way to start a row about people on benefits....

But chocolate according the the government, me and goodness only knows how many others ARE living in poverty.

JeeanieYuss i think what it is is everytime someone with 16 kids, 12 dogs who smokes 100 fags a day whilst downing lager at the same time pops up the media blow the story up which fuels people to think that everyone on benefits must be low life scroungers.

Fact is we all know someone/some family on benefits who appear to be drinking and smoking their life away whilst sat in front of their 50" telly all day but that doesn't mean all people on benefits are like that and most are normal hard working families.

And since when have we believed everything the Government told us....

We have to pay all rent as DH gets a £650 quid student loan and we get child tax credit and benefit it works out under £1000 a month of which is what rent, council tax and power takes up the majority food and travel to uni takes up the rest.

I am not entitled to JSA as we get £3 a week to much to qualify. The job situation is dire too. I have applied for everything from customer service where i have experience to cleaning and mcdonalds yet not even interviews!

So what did i do start my own complimentary therapy business. I had to borrow to do the course and have of yet made no money.

I have one DC and 1 on the way. Just because i live in poverty does not mean we wont to stay there but has been already said its not an easy situation to be in at all its tough but its our life and we have to make the best of it. Do we occasionally make crap decisions on money yes but whoever said benefits/low income is loads of money to live on and you do not struggle does not have my life!

Chocolate cake, I really don't understand your point. There are international definitions of poverty which include people in developed countries like the UK. The things you are mentioning - clean water, access to healthcare etc are development indicators; these are only part of what constitutes poverty.

Poverty in the UK has an impact on life expectancy so it is a serious issue.

Not saying we should believe everything they tell us, but by their definition, people are living in poverty.

Surely of we say no one in this country is living in poverty, because it's not as bad as other countries, then that logic should apply to everything else as well,
Eg, I'm not really sick because someone else is worse
Or, I'm not fat, because the lady down the road is bigger

I am making a big deal of it because i actually think branding the word poverty around in the UK (when we have the things we do) is actually a really big f*cking insult to people in real poverty who would swap lives with anyone in the UK in a flash. It's just my opinion, if you disagree - fine.

We have pensioners who die of hypothermia (and some people who are not pensioners) because they can't afford to heat their houses. I doubt many people with any empathy anywhere in the world would object to defining them as living in poverty.

And we are also the only place in the world who give pensioners heating allowences.

If people really cannot see what we have have in the UK then i throw my hands in the air and give up.

chocolate, have you heard of absolute and relative poverty?

In the UK we have relative poverty so many will have poorer life chances simply because they were born into families who live in poor housing, have poor employment (or no employment) and who have less hope of doing well as a result.

When all is said and done the baby born to a family in the lowest social economic class is likely to have poorer health and have less life expectancy than the baby born into social class 1. Is that clear enough for you? The baby born into social class 5 is deemed to be in poverty. It's an internationally defined and recognised situation......,those who have more do better than those who have less.

Example 1... The poor family
So a family with a baby in a one bedroom flat which is covered in mould which the baby breathes in is suffering simply because they have no ability to change their situation, the baby breathes in mould spores, the baby has frequent admissions to hospital with bronchial infections and is set up for a childhood full of respiratory problems. He misses lots of school as a result....

Example 2 the rich family
The family in social class 1 might also be in a one bedroom flat.....it might be mouldy too but they have the money to sort out the underlying issues or move. Their baby does not have to endure months of breathing in mould spores......his childhood is therefore less likely to be tainted by respiratory infection.

Does that explain it well enough....yes they might both have enough to eat but in example one it's less likely to be as good as in example 2.

Not representative of every family in each class but a good reason why there might be differences.

We have a reasonably supportive benefits system in the UK I am glad to say but poverty is about so much more than finance. It's about education, hope, self esteem, self belief and confidence in being able to change your lot.....all much easier if you have some money behind you.

...and despite the heating allowances pensioners STILL die of hypothermia. I wonder why that would be? Anything to do with massively increased heating bills perhaps?

If i tell you i was the example baby in the poor family from example 1 i will be shot down and told i shouldn't use my own childhood as an example.

I've already said that I was frankly shocked when I found out I'm classed as living in poverty, how can a family with a house with heating, clean running water, access to education and healthcare etc be classed as living in poverty? But we are! fact. I know other people on similar incomes who would say they live in poverty, it's not my place top tell them they don't.

I'm bloody grateful that we live in a country with the welfare system that we have.

So was I chocolate, some of us are fortunate enough to get away. I am just saying it is much much harder to get away when you are born into this situation.

To add: not saying i had lots of frequent admissions to hospital with bronchial infections but we had no money to move. Don't really know what to say to that one?

There are universally accepted definitions of poverty:

Absolute poverty is when people live on $2 or less a day (this applies to over third of the world's population, 2.44 billion people in 2008)
Relative poverty occurs when income is less than 60% of the median income (not mean income). This is generally considered to be the level of income where people become socially excluded.

You cannot apply your own definition of poverty; you can't say "That's not real poverty".