To think people who have never been poor, really do not understand it

[brasty]

Just that really. Big difference between not having enough money to do what you would like to do, and going months and years where you constantly have to scrape just to get by. And the impact this has on you mentally.

On the other hand the family jnit ws very strong in Nepal and all family members lived together and sjpport each other.

My dsd and sis are very wealthy and dont help at all as in our culture we are supposed to make it alone not support each other. Very odd indeed!

I did some voluntary work in Vietnam and have also in Sri Lanka

I too appreciate what we have what you describe above I to have witnessed, seeing children fight over scraps of food is the saddest thing and most shocking thing I have ever witnessed - it did and still has an impact on how I feel. Young girls openly trading their bodies for men to rape and abuse them and no one concerned for them its horrific

Family unit even!

I was poor as a child, but didn't know any different. Being poor as a parent supporting a family must be absolute hell.

Yanbu. I was mildly 'poor' for a time a few years ago. We got by but had to go into an arrangement with mortgage provider and other creditors. Had to really budget to the penny. No money for luxuries. I k ow it was nothing compared to what some people gave but the impact it had in me mentally was huge. I spent every second of every day thinking about money... adding up income v outgoings in my head then panicking at the lack of surplus to the point where I could think of nothing else! The frugality I developed has stayed with me though which is a good thing!!

5 years ago I went through about 6 months of having no money. It seemed i was getting into debt just by being alive: i moved to a city where my rent for a box room was more than my salary. I moved room to room, flat to flat. I eventually ended up paying someone 50 quid a week to stay on a mattress in their cleaning cupboard. I couldn't afford food and for dinner i ate reduced vegetables boiled in water and vinegar. Once we had a work party and loads of food got left in the fridge. I was living of this for days until some guy in the office decided to throw it out because he thought it was unhygienic. I was devastated. Someone must have noticed because after that I would have a daily piece of fruit left on my desk with a post-it note "from the feeder".

I eventually got a new job and by the end of the year I could pay my debts and afford a decent room and a beach holiday to Mexico. I went through a time when I had no money. When I think about friends growing up who never had food in the fridge or whose electric meter was constantly running out, who never did well in school because they were tired and hungry, and knowing that they still live like that now because they never had a chance to break the cycle... that's really where people don't understand poverty. It took me a long time to get my head around: "why don't they just do a course? Why don't they look for something better? Why have another baby? I compared it to my 6 month situation and thought well I got out of it so why can't they. But poverty is also the not knowing anything else to the extent it is somehow normal to live like that. Took me a while to realise.

There was a C4 documentary series way back when they put people like Matthew Parris and Edwina Curry into a basic place with the money the residents had to live on. For a week! I think Parris was the only one to say it was impossible to live and plan ahead and do what you could for your kids if you were down that far. Clearly heroes and heroines do but it's beyond tough. Is it worse in the countryside when getting to the local services costs more than you can afford?

Perhaps a time to put IDS and name your MP into the same situation for a month.

I don't think the average person doesn't have empathy but no they don't know how very grim it is.

I've been very poor both as a child (during the miners strike) and as an adult.

I'm now very well off (6 figure salary). Apparently this means that I have no appreciation of poverty and the associated issues and makes me a champagne socialist .

Despite having experienced poverty first hand, I feel like I'm no longer entitled to draw on my own experiences. It's like being well off somehow precludes me from understanding what it is like to be poor.

I think you're right OP. When dc was young we had no spare money but we had a roof over our heads and always enough food. Not necessarily as nice food as we would like but we always knew where the next meal was coming from.Definitely agree that it must play havoc with your health the constant stress of whether you could feed your children. Reading jack monroes book where she said about her little boy asking for some more breakfast and she didnt have it to give. It must be absolutely awful. I could empathise but I dont think I could fully understand what its like not having been there

My childhood is poor, but with/because of reckless parents. Very Elizabethan! :(

Really understand that feeling of getting into debts just to survive. Raised by feckless and jobless parents, any benefits went on their cigarettes and drink. I was so ashamed and remember showing that to disapproving adults to try and get their help - our area was "poor" but other kids lived with some standard of care. It was visible poverty and a real taboo - I felt like an outcast, adults could see what I was as trying to hide. And guess what, none bloody helped me (or siblings). They were disgusted and one or two even made a show of it. It wasn't my bloody fault!

Leaving that standard has taken all my effort and energy. And no not for a year, a few years. Every damn day. Because with feckless poor you're tied to those feckless people. You - immediately upon earning - get told to help them because they're so damn helpless

Anyway it hammered into me the idea of bloody making this nation have some semblance of a meritocracy and trying to help these kids. How you ensure benefits do benefit them, I don't know. It's not their fault they're in shit families, they might hate it as much as we do (except we can so easily ignore them, pass them off as like their parents)

I don't think (thankfully) anyone in the UK truly understands poverty.

There are people in the UK living in disgusting conditions, unable to feed their children, people who cannot keep clean, dry or cook, kids going to school with no clothes that fit them and no shoes. People who cannot afford to heat or light where they are. People whose health is seriously affected as a result of all of this...

Yes, a LOT of people in the UK understand poverty - real, grinding, horrible, relentless poverty. I am shocked anyone can think otherwise.

I am like HarryLimeFoxtrot. Grew up dirt poor (and briefly homeless), had years of grinding forward, am now affluent. I don't think that disqualifies me from commenting on poverty though. I know what it's like. It's real and it's shite.

I don't think it's very helpful to use third world countries as an example of why there isn't 'real' poverty in the uk...

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Notasbad_as

I have had very little money at times but there has never been a time in my life when my prospects weren't good and never a time when there weren't multiple people I could ask for help if stuck - even if that would have been embarrassing.

Nickel and Dimed in America by Barbara Ehrenreich is a really good book about trying to get by with no support.

She basically does a year of minimum wage jobs without any safety net (think she gives herself 200 dollars and her car and that is it) and ends up doing jobs in walmart, living in motels etc. She presumed that working in places like walmart doesn't take much mental effort and her intelligence and work history as a professor etc would be helpful for her and she found the opposite - the work was tricky and hard and she wasn't good at it and was helped out by people who hadn't finished high school to get by. It is a depressing but enlightening read.

Down and out in London and Paris and The Road to Wigan Pier are also very insightful

I can't talk about my work on MN
I can assure you that there IS real poverty in the UK

Anyone declaring there isn't is not as aware of poverty as they think seeing it on a gap year makes them

Due to some bad luck we're really poor at the minute and to the outside we're probably not as we had a holiday last month that was paid for with money that was left to dp by his dgm.
It's been a real eye opener, my mental health is already fragile and has worsened so I feel there is definitely a correlation.

What I have found hard is that neither parents will help us when both sets grew
up pretty poor and are now very comfortable, dp's more so.
I think some people forget how hard it is when no longer in that situation.

Hopefully ours is a short term issue but I will never ever take anything for granted again.

I was homeless at age seven, and had a feckless father who spent money fags, booze, nice clothes, etc. I remember my mum having to use the last of the petrol in the car so she could borrow money from her dad so she could buy food. Some of my friends who have grown up in nice comfortable middle class backgrounds think I am materialistic, but believe me when you have been poor knowing you live in stable safe accommodation with cupboards full of food knowing you can pay the electricity bill and no baliffs are going to bang on the door is a massive comfort!

I know the poverty u saw was on a gap year. I Class myself as poor for the UK. I scrape by barely, i worry about buying food. No luxuries, i am currently between short tetm contracts and im in debt. I sell stuff on the side to get by. Im a single mum on universal credit.

Am i poor by uk standards... yes. By developing world stsndards... no. But it is very tough indeed and the mental steain is huge

When I think about friends growing up who never had food in the fridge or whose electric meter was constantly running out, who never did well in school because they were tired and hungry, and knowing that they still live like that now because they never had a chance to break the cycle... that's really where people don't understand poverty. It took me a long time to get my head around: "why don't they just do a course? Why don't they look for something better? Why have another baby? I compared it to my 6 month situation and thought well I got out of it so why can't they. But poverty is also the not knowing anything else to the extent it is somehow normal to live like that. Took me a while to realise.
Well said ^

For a lot of children, it's when they grow up and move, then they realise how bad their homes and lives where. Seeing it on tv is alien and you have to witness it to believe it.

Yes you are right people who have not experienced being poor won't know what it is like folk can sympathise of course but don't really get it

I left home at 16, the next 5 years were tough. Sometimes because I wasn't organised and sometimes because I had no cash and no safety net. Potatoes were 5kg for 50p, while the folk at uni complained they had no cash to fill the car. Used to shoplift huge packs of eggs from supermarkets when I had no food/money.

Cupboards, freezers are always full now, I still eat a lot of soup :)

I'm staggered by the comment that no one im the UK really understands poverty.

Are people really that clueless?

Poverty is alive and kicking in the UK. There are people homeless, hungry and cold. People die every year in this country due to poverty.

What a sheltered life that poster must lead.

For those stating that being on benefits was not bad, I'm guessing this was prior to the Welfare Reform Act 2012

I think people compare poverty like it is a misery competion poverty in britain is horrendous it seems to be that it is not the right kind of poor for some folk though which is very frustrating

I left home at 16, the next 5 years were tough. Sometimes because I wasn't organised and sometimes because I had no cash and no safety net. Potatoes were 5kg for 50p, while the folk at uni complained they had no cash to fill the car. Used to shoplift huge packs of eggs from supermarkets when I had no food/money.

I have an almost 16 year old, a 17 year old and a 20 year old and can't imagine any of them surviving on their own in any degree of comfort. My heart goes out to your 16 year old self on her own. My children are truly privileged - we try to tell them but not sure how much you understand unless you really see the reality of the alternative.

We give a lot to homeless charities. but I wish there was a way to give to individuals who need a hand-up - a hand-up that won't mean much to us but would mean a lot to the person needing it. We are in the US and we overtip all the time - all we can think of.