To think some people have their heads in the sand about poverty in the UK?

[MrsFlannel]

On here we see a lot about "Don't have children you can't afford" etc.

this article in the Guardian really brings home the effects of poverty today and it's really breaking my heart.

By rights I should be among those who are struggling so badly...and in one way we are...but because I managed to get a degree and get my DC into a school which is good despite living in a very poor area, we're not quite in the trouble many people around us are.

We live in a council estate...all around me is quite terrible poverty. The upsetting thing is that whilst DH and I have decent work...it's not enough to be able to donate to food banks etc....we only scrape by. I'm sick of the people who deny that there's a problem...or shove blame onto "feckless parents"

From an outsider I do fail to see why there is poverty in the UK at all. If a family are in a difficult position, there is assistance from the government by way of claims, somewhere to live (maybe not fancy, but a bed none the less) etc.

What i see everyday is people living in real poverty. And by this i mean that they have no income whatsoever, no home, no food. And not always through their own doing (although some of the time it is I am sure - addictions etc). When you see a mother with a baby on her back, eating food out of your dustbin which is in the road for collection - I say this is poverty. Then along will come a man with a trolley to take away all the plastic bottles he can - will push that trolley ALL day, miles and miles to the recycling plant, where he will earn enough money to buy a loaf of bread and maybe a litre of milk.....

I do however, think that when assistance is there, that poor parenting is to blame a lot of the time when children appear to be unwashed, dirty clothes etc. I am quite sure that the house that the children live in, has water, and there is sufficient money or assistance available for a bar of soap and washing powder.

'Some of the problems we see with poverty was and is down to fecklessness, selfishness and simple neglect'

Absolutely right. Lack of care rather than just lack of money. But its not the whole story and neither is the other side, which expects everyone to just magically lift themselves out of poverty through hard work. There absolutely has to be personal responsibility but there must also be a safety net for people who need it. The answer is somewhere in the middle.

PHANTOM, I feel similar to you. DP and I work in public service jobs and earn above the average salary but we're not rich. I still feel like I live the life of Marie Antoinette compared to some people. I very much agree with you in principle about cooking lessons in school, and yet more and more and more and more gets piled onto schools' shoulders and I don't see how it can be done.

And yes OP, some people do have their heads in the sand, and think that there is no poverty in this country because 'everyone' has Sky TV and a mobile phone etc etc, conveniently forgetting that some people can't afford food or basic fuel.

Iwas
I would imagine those dc are still living mainly in poverty sadly and only a small percentage will have left that life behind

I know, it breaks my heart really , it really affected me working there especially as I left to have our first baby and saw the stark difference between how our baby would be raised and how these kids were. They will be parents themselves now and their kids lives will be as bleak as theirs were. History does repeat itself. Hopefuly there will be some who succeeded despite their woeful childhoods. I'm glad that you to some extent broke the cycle. You are right that education is the key, it really is.

I used to work in a job which meant contact with a lot of people who where on benefits

Unfortunately there is a core of people who either
Get more money on benefits than working
Don't know any better it's what their parents and grandparents did and therefore see nothing wrong with it
No matter how much money you give some of them. Drink drugs electronics gadgets or tobacco will always come before bills , food and childcare.

Believe it or not some just want to be the way they are and be given money. They have no desire or ambition.

I have also been in food banks as part of my previous employment and people still turn their nose up at non brand non luxury items . They have no idea how to cook from scratch and don't want to know .

There is little empathy around because the media keep on about the small minority that 'play' the system and seem to like to fuel a debate 'scroungers v hard working folk'. I would like a bit more balance. Its not all as black and white as people like to think.

It's not just the media, posts on MN show people encouraging others to have children they can't afford as the state will step in and help. Lots admit to being a SAHP and claiming benefits to do so. Others say they won't do more than 16 hours as they gain more than working whilst others say they can't be expected to work as they are a parent.

To believe people only claim benefits as an absolute last resort is nonsense, whilst they can choose to do so nothing with improve.

Better education, better working role models etc are far more beneficial than simply handing people more money.

I am a primary schoolteacher and it is shocking. But, it is so very complex. I truly have no idea where we go next as a country to help. Education is the key but many children come in Primary 1 already 2 years behind their affluent peers. More money into services for the 'first 1000 days', maybe? I think the English Sure Start system was based on this. The reality is, in a globalised world, the unskilled jobs are crap and they associated pay is well below a living wage. Housing costs are ridiculous.

The problem seems insurmountably huge.

That article upset me quite a bit. I'm not rich and I'm a single parent but I am qualified, employed and get maintenance and tax credits. We rent a nice house with a garden in a leafy suburb. Dd1 goes to an affluent primary school where I suspect the free meals uptake is very low (not an indicator of a good school, just local wealth). We have a holiday caravan And a reliable car. I buy the dc clothes from boden and never worry about feeding them. I have to plan big expenses carefully but I never run short for food and bills. If I was made redundant I would easily pick up agency work until I got a permanent role. That article makes me feel incredibly wealthy and lucky though I am neither.
Dd1 goes on a trip with school once or twice a term to the theatre or similar. Been thinking a while about anonymously funding a child who cannot go or doing something like this

I think the move from manufacturing to service based jobs has meant alot of people can't get work because they don't have the skills for the jobs available. We need better vocational education and jobs that pay more than benefits.
Don't know how or if this is going to happen. Can't see the tories investing in this if they get on again.

It is very depressing, and the feckless angle makes it more so because so many know how to screw the system, who are they screwing - the people who are really needy.

When you look at the technology we have at our hand, the ability to find out anything we need through amazing things such as google, the fact that 1st world countries the world over can't accurately track there population and apply benefits/taxes/healthcare in a fair and systematic way just seems ridiculous. didnt we spend millions on a completely failed IT project for healthcare recently? How?

LoisWilkersonsLastNerve that is very much the cause, if you didnt have a good education there were still many roles that you could do in manufacturing to support a family, up to management level as well. Those roles have reduced to a level that many find difficult to live with especially with such a low wage.
The education system when manufacturing was in boom time was shoddy to say the least, it is (despite its problems) a million times better now so surely there will be some improvement in the overall ability of the population to move into these roles?
My realy bug bear at the moment is the use of 'working class' as a catch all phrase. 3 generations of family who have not worked are not working class, they are an insult to working class.

Masses of empathy from me and YADNBU. I grew up in this kind of poverty and have never forgotten the worry about food and bills, never being able to have friends over, constantly feeling inadequate. My saving grace was a mother who cared deeply about education, and getting into grammar school.

But articles like this are way too simplistic, and are based on the assumption that it is a zero sum game ie soak the "rich" a bit more and nobody needs to be in poverty. Some poverty is generational and some parents are feckless and irresponsible. The reasons for child poverty are much more complex than "bastard Tory austerity'".

The biggest sticking point is that it will take a generation to fix - there are no 'quick results' that can be tangible for a while at least, that is why the really necessary hard work is not done.

For the base problems of lack of direction, aspiration, self worth and self belief and good grounding in education (being able to read, write and do basic maths, not necessarily going on to further ed - not everyone can or indeed wants to) to take hold, it will take years.

It will never happen because no single party will be in power for long enough - to truly fix the broken cycle, all parties must agree a very very long term strategy that will be stuck to and fully resourced.
School is the best focus as all children can access it.

While there will be a few people ignorant of the poverty that exists in this country, I think most vaguely educated people will be able to acknowledge that it exists.

But people don't all agree on what the solution is, or even on what measures could be taken to limit it's effects. Sometimes people have other equally important issues they care about more, and will direct their charity in a different direction.

The rhetoric about Tories I being heartless and having no empathy doesn't do the cause any favours. It just encourages people to look the other way if they aren't a lefty liberal, because they're going to be accused of being uncaring either way.

Christ that article was the most Grauny-tastic hand-wringing I've read in a while.

High private rents, benefit suspension often for ridiculous reasons, and high costs of gas and electric through meters, all put real pressure on people who are earning low incomes.
There is also a reduction in support services for disabled people, which makes anyone living on a low wage have a much harder life if they have a disabled child or adult in the family.
The number of people living and begging on the streets has also went up, just as it did last time the Tories were in power.

Why is current DV always brought out on threads about poverty?

Many abused parents may be poor due to fleeing or financial abuse but DV is no more likely to occurs in a poor household than it is a comfortable or rich one.

DV is not a class issue it spreads across every and all income groups and every social group

Because financial abuse is common, in households with DVD, across all incomes.

Its not my area but I know people who work in education and social services here in Scotland who say cuts on public spending are undoing alot of good work and projects set up to help reduce child poverty. The services for the disabled and those with SEN are suffering too. Its the going backwards that's depressing.

I mean backwards from the late 90's/00's.

There are other radical changes which affect the ability of poor people and their children to improve their lives through 'hard work' as well.
One is student loans. I went to university 30 years ago and the state paid me - students got grants, not loans on the grounds that academic study for academically-inclined young people was a general Good Thing. Nowadays univeristy is pretty much unaffordable for the children of poor families even if they haven't grown up with a horror of debt.
The other is the 'internship' culture and the absolute devaluing of all creative work. To get a 'good' job, nowadays (it used to be just in the creative industries but it's spreading to all white-collar work now) you have to be prepared to work for free for months and even years, and you still may not get a paid job at the end of your internships. You'll just be replaced with another unpaid intern.
Art/design/music/writing/photography used to be ways for bright-but-broke people to earn extra money: now no one will pay writers, artists or photographers in anything other than 'experience' or 'exposure. So, once again, only the comfortably-off can afford to do this kind of work, which makes the gap between comfort and poverty even bigger and contributes to the idea of poor people as subhuman feral scum who have only themselves to blame. Because, when all media and art is being produced by people who are not poor, it becomes easier and easier to disregard anythng the poor might have to say and dismiss them as lazy and stupid and beyond help.

The reasons for poverty are complex indeed, but ultimately, it is a disgrace that food banks need to exist in 21st century Europe. The Green Party have reported that 900,000 used a food bank last year .

I also don't like the idea that people should reserve empathy for some people in poverty. To me, it smacks of 19th century notions of deserving and undeserving poor. Yes, there is a minority of feckless people out there, but they are the exception, not the rule, and too many people seem to lack understanding of that. Aren't all human beings worthy of compassion?

Couldn't agree with you more lois. And the right wing rhetoric of it being no use to "fling money at the problem" really boils my piss.

Sure Start Centres cost money. Which is why they've been cut. Mental health services cost money. Which is why they've been cut. Drug and alcohol treatment schemes cost money, which is why they've been cut. EMA, to enable poor students to continue their education, cost money. Which is why it's been cut. Student tuition fees have rocketed- a huge disincentive to the poor to enter higher education.

Yet this whole "flinging money at the problem" attitude seems designed to imply that if you spend money in an attempt to reduce poverty it's somehow going to go exclusively into funding wide screen TVs for the feckless .