To think many mumsnetters have little or no understanding of life on a low income

[crocodilesarevicious]

It's going to be hard to know how to phrase this as I don't want to cause offence.

I've been hanging around for a while. One thing I've noticed is that benefit threads become angry very quickly because so many are quite loud and fixed in their view that the UK is full of starving children reliant on value baked beans from food banks to fill their hungry tummies.

However, if someone who is on benefits or a low income is searching specific advice! they are often given quite short shrift. I've noticed this a few times - they are told, often brusquely, to retrain as something at university - usually a teacher or a nurse. These are graduate professions yet they are chucked out as something anyone can do. Not everyone can go to college or university due to financial restraints but also, some people don't have the academic ability. This is dismissed and shrugged off - if people aren't on much money then they need to find a way to make more money, even if this isn't possible.

Childminding, or starting a business is also suggested. People who rent may not be able to do this. Again, this takes a certain amount of financial and business savvy not to mention starting up costs.

Cooking is another area people seem to have little understanding of. It's so easy to cook healthy, cheap nutritious meals if your kitchen is large and a pleasure to cook in and you can whiz in the car to sainsburys or Tesco. If you have a small, grubby, dark kitchen and the local Spar or premier shop it's a bit different.

I suppose what I'm getting at is that when talking about people in general terms, Mumsnet likes to be left wing and PC. Yet when it's someone specific, irrelevant and often patronising advice is given to them and then they are flamed when they can't act on it.

My own position, while I'm a graduate and employed in a professional capacity, is perhaps between the two. I've never been reliant in benefits but was homeless for a time in my 20s and am able to see how things that look simple often aren't.

I don't think childcare costs are meant to be taken off the take-home Jamaican. I didn't take any bills off mine, except council tax. It is very simplistic, because with the same income and number of kids, I suppose you would be much richer in social housing and with grandparents doing your childcare, for example, than in a private flat with childcare costs. It just gives a rough idea I guess.

Can someone link to the income test thank you.

I am in social housing

I know that you aren't supposed to take off childcare. Tbf I did it based on my normal income, but I'm currently signed off and on ssp so my income is about 1/3 of what I put in to the calculator

It's depressing

Caitlin Moran has written a lot on this. Will link to column, but here's an extract:

" There is one, massive difference between being rich and being poor, and it is this: when you are poor, you feel heavy. Heavy like your limbs are filled with water. Perhaps it is rainwater – there is a lot more rain in your life, when you are poor. Rain that can’t be escaped in a cab. Rain that has to be stood in, until the bus comes. Rain that gets into cheap shoes and coats, and through old windows – often followed by cold, and then mildew. A little bit damp, a little bit dirty, a little bit cold – you are never at your best, or ready to shine. You always need something to pep you up: sugar, a cigarette, a new fast song on the radio.

But the heaviness is not really, of course, from the rain. The heaviness comes from the sclerosis of being broke. Because when you’re poor, nothing ever changes. Every idea you have for moving things on is quashed through there never being any money. You dream of a house with sky-blue walls; wearing a coat with red buttons; going out on Saturday and walking by a river. Instead, you see the same crack in the same wall, push-start the same car down the same hill, and nothing ever changes, except for the worse: the things you originally had are now slowly wearing out – breaking under your fingertips, and left unreplaced."

skater that was quite upsetting

I think many Mumsnetters probably don't, but then it is a vast site and so it will not be a majority.

In a "I can identify with that" way, not that you are being upsetting

Great post from SKater

I think ya (a teeny bit) u
not on your title question though, I think many people don't know how dreadful and worrying lack of money and the security that goes with it.

but to the u bit: I think mn is incredibly helpful for those moments when you don't see the wood for trees, when you don't know how to tackle a difficult situation, where else help might be available.

Croc (and I feel a flaming coming on!) There are way round these things - what people used to do even relatively recently.

When I was younger I went to the laundrette - most rented flats didn't have washing machines - but I hand washed stuff too
A school friend of mine -one of 3 DCs - didn't have a washing machine - early 80s - I remember helping her mum carry the bedding to the laundrette - my mum with 4 DCs (twins in nappies) only had a semi automatic - where you have to lift the clothes out)
When my washing machine broke a few years ago I was without for a month (not due to finances) I found I reduced the amount of washing I did by 75% - I was more careful, made the DCs get changed, I sponged marks off - things I don't bother doing normally. (It did stay down for quite a while after too -sadly has crept up again now). I did a bit of handwashing too - underwear etc.
When I was hand washing DP offered to wash jeans - his mum (4DCs) didn't have a machine and hand washed everything - and when the boys were older they did their own...
My nearest laundrette is 7-8 miles away and even though I have a car (and it would be more than one bus ride) I managed to put it off for 3 weeks - later I was talking to an acquaintance and she said I could have just used her machine...
Maybe you could come up with a machine share - pay someone else - friend/neighbour - to use their machine - less than the laundrette but slightly more than the cost ...so they get something out of it, you save a couple of quid on the laundrette bill to put towards a new machine...

and ask on freecycle (I got one from there - they were refurbishing a kitchen of a holiday cottage, wanted matching appliances )...mine had died and I was having a new kitchen 8 months later and didn't want to get a new 'new' one until it was done. Plan was to freecycle it after but it died a month before - hence no washing machine (and no kitchen sink for 2 weeks...).

And I will always have a go at fixing things myself - I repaired my previous washing machine countless times - it wasn't difficult - bodged or got parts from a local recycling charity at a third the cost of new - finally the bearings went -beyond me and the repair man said it would be £££. Other machine was likely (but not definitely ) the pcb which is a lot new and a common fault so not worth the risk getting second hand...

I did the income test - apparently 17% of the population are poorer than we are - but I think it is a bit rubbish. Doesn't take into account how much rent etc you pay etc etc. (I thought I was slightly above average)

I know what you meant, Jamaica

Full Caitlin Moran column on poverty here:

www.urbanhope.co.uk/blog/reflections/you-can-t-even-change-the-colour-of-your-front-door

Great post Skater.
I'm currently very strapped for cash, unemployed, don't drive and spend a lot of time in the rain, walking my kids to school in thunderous showers... but I'm not poor in the sense Caitlin Moran means, because although they may be more limited than I'd like, I have options. I can dream of retraining and saving for a car and I can look for work, because I am educated, with good qualifications and an expectation that I can make things work out because of these privileges.

I worked for years with families in Oldham, where poverty was ingrained. Most of my clients were on medication because poverty made them physically or mentally unwell. The hopelessness was extreme. It's not about money, it's about aspiration - or even, in many cases, the sheer possibility of aspiration.

Laundrette prices are ridiculous. Our washer conked out over Christmas, a few years ago, when we already had a laundry backlog, so we had no choice but to take a couple of loads of undies and kids' clothes down to see us through the week until we could get it repaired. Cost £14 to get 1/4 of a week's typical laundry washed and partially dried. Without the car, we'd have managed one load and the bus fare would have been £5 return. Just for me.

And that's something people also don't take into account - a lot of people in rural/semi-rural locations don't have access to decent fresh food in their own villages (and what there is can cost up to twice as much as an expensive supermarket) and also have poor, infrequent, unreliable and expensive public transport. It's £4.50 return from our village to the retail park where Tesco, Aldi, Home bargains etc are. There's a Coop in the next village, which is walkable if you're fit and have the time, but it's typically expensive and pretty tiny. And forget popping into Sainsburys at 8pm for the markdowns, unless you have your own transport. Even if it didn't cost even more on the bus when you've got kids to trail along, most of the buses have stopped by then. Not that there's a bus to our nearest Sainsburys any more, anyhow.

And I say this as someone in a family that's just above the middle in that quiz. Housing is dirt cheap here and we're mortgage free, as a result, so we're lucky enough to be very comfortable, even though our house is far from palatial. I'm usually pretty thankful that I can afford to fix stuff when it breaks, though. Faced with having to do 40-50kg of laundry every week, though (and it's hard to cut it down because the boys both get their clothes filthy and one is still in nappies and doesn't always hit the spot - and that's another expense because the NHS ones are totally unsuitable for his needs), Brighthouse would actually work out cheaper than the laundrette.

Even though I was at the use of "mumsnet" as symbolising a homogeneous mass of like-mindedness in my first post in this thread, I do agree with you, OP, and do think that it really doesn't take a lot to try and use your imagination and show a bit of empathy. Undoubtedly a lot less effort than lifting yourself out of a cycle of poverty and debt.

I'm lucky in that I have all the nice things I managed to buy when I got an inheritance, I paid off all the debt that my exh had accrued in my name and I have nice appliances and furniture, but that was when we were both working and had the cash to live on as well.

Now we just have child benefit, my PIP and my ssp which amounts to about 800 a month to pay all bills, rent and food. There just isn't enough money to pay for all these things. We have applied for tax credits etc and are waiting for a decision, so hopefully soon there will be some relief for us. But in the mean time it's stressful and exhausting trying to live on nothing

unlucky - I used to hand wash everything, as a student and washer-less unemployed new graduate. I can't hand wash anything more challenging than a hat, these days. My hands are knackered and the effort of doing things like squeezing water out of my clothes leaves me with stiff, bruised joints in my fingers, as they partially dislocate.

We had a load of ready meals for dinner, tonight, because I'd physically overdone it, taking DS2 to school then taking DS1 out for the day to do his Christmas shopping, as he was off school for a training day.

If I was skint, I've no idea what we'd do with no washer and fuck knows what I'd have done for dinner, taking into account the boys' individual eating limitations (both have ASD).

ouryve could you not borrow a friends or family member's machine and offer to pay a bit? ... I never thought about doing that until this (lovely) person said I should have said...don't think she would have taken hard cash but sure I could have repaid someway or another
And I would now offer if anyone I knew told me their machine was broken...so no need for handwashing
and could you not get your DP or your DCs to help?

Great post skater - love that quote.

I've been poor and didn't have much growing up, and have had literal rain-soaked limbs after a particularly bad week once when I didn't have money for a bus for 4 days so had to walk to and from work, and it poured down with rain that week. It was awful.

BUT I have never had the figurative rain-sodden limbs Moran talks about as whenever I've been in those situations I've had the sense, deep within myself, that this is temporary, that things will get better, and have had the tools to make it so. By tools I mean education, financial literacy, and support networks and so on.

It simply wouldn't be fair for me to then turn around and tell people who are still poor and have the deep rain-soaked poverty that I now have plenty of money, they could do as I did and improve themselves and so on. Because that sort of poverty - which I've seen in other's before but never quite had the right name for it - is different than simply having to walk in the rain for a week because I didn't have bus money.

I don't have family sufficiently locally, unlucky, so, if I was in that position (which thankfully I'm not - we're quite comfortably off, as I explained above) I wouldn't have that option. I don't have any friends close enough to ask them to let me to 8-10 loads of laundry per week, indefinitely. I'd have to live in their house to manage that. I've had help while I've been waiting for a repair, in the past, but only for a week or so.

My DCs are 8 and 10 and have SN, btw. They're about as much help as kids half their age. DH works FT. I'm lucky that in my case, DH is out of the house 7:30-5pm and get paid reasonably well. When he gets home, he takes over with the kids so I can make dinner. Last week, he went up to make the bed that I'd stripped off but can't make myself and I turned round from chopping veg to find DS2 peeing on the carpet. That's how much he is unable to be helpful.

Transfer that so someone who has moved away from family because they had to get away from family, or an abusive partner, and is new to an area, so doesn't even know someone well enough to get through the wait for a repair. It's lovely when you know someone well enough for them to be helpful without you feeling too much like you're imposing on them. Not everyone has that support network (and where the hell would it be for those people who have been told to move to somewhere cheaper because they can't get their rent covered by HB where they were born and brought up?)

I think YABU because I'm not convinced that the left wing liberal types are the same as the people who have this lack of understanding of poverty at all.

Most of the people who are the quickest to jump on benefit bashers and talk about goats and wide screen tvs are not at all the type of people to tell others that everyone can cook from scratch and walk 8 miles to Aldi. In fact they probably flame those who suggested things like that as much as they flame the benefit bashers.

I stumbled accross likened whilst searching for cheap meal ideas, needless to say I couldn't make any poultry last a week and lentils are disgusting, so yeah I stuck with Kiel weetabix with boiled water and a splash of milk for my hot evening meal.

mumsnet**

lidl* sorry typing with snoozing baby in arms.

"they are told, often brusquely, to retrain as something at university - usually a teacher or a nurse. These are graduate professions yet they are chucked out as something anyone can do"

I got this on a thread i started back in September and it wasnt even a benefits thread. It was absolutely NOTHING to do with benefits.

Jamaican

I cried for joy when we received tax credits, the weight that was lifted was instant.
Good luck to you.

I sort of agree. I agree some people do not move from their circles enough to be able to see that some people really aren't in a position to do things that are perfectly possible in their's. I don't mean that as a very narrow thing, either. I mean , if you're the old 'middle class', as in , you work hard, but don't have much leftover at the end of the month. Large mortgage but nice house in nice area, car's a necessity as you can't get to work. Some of your family members may rent and you feel that they're 'poor' because they can't afford a mortgage at all. They couldn't meet their rent one month and had to use a food bank, they're trying to retrain but don't feel they can spend the £ but they COULD possibly find a way-that's your 'poor'.

Only it isn't, there are many with far fewer options and far poorer circumstances.

The poorer you are, the fewer options for social mobility. Some people are similar money wise but their circumstances are completely different. Some people really are so different in their abilities that anybody who hasn't lived in that circle needs to really look hard to see it.

Some people genuinely could do more to help themselves, some are defeatist (people of ALL classes/backgrounds/abilities!) but sometimes It's so much harder than 'the other half' to imagine.

I don't think It's black and White 'They have more than I have so they don't understand'.

I have seen this sort of discussion on Mumsnet, and I have thought the same on occasion and It's definitely not JUST Mumsnet, or just on the internet.

I have to say (and I hope this doesn't sound snobby) , I was born of a certain background and through my work, my eyes have been opened over the years. I realised how different my circumstances were to certain people. If you work and frequent industries where you mix only with your own 'kind' I can see how easy it is to not realise how different some folk's circumstances are.