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.

With all due respect, I am in the uk a lot and have never seen or heard of families with children sleeping in car parks

Oh, you visit the UK and have never seen it? You should have said, we'll tell the people living it that they much be imagining it, because YOU haven't personally witnessed it.
Jolly good, delighted to know that no-one is poor in the UK now.

How can you use the phrase 'with all due respect' whilst accusing people of lying?

I was very poor in my 20s as a singleton and was proud to have bought everything I needed through charity shops. We now mortgage a house in a very middle class area and i have a professional part time job but still need to buy everything I need through charity shops because I have such a large family (4 kids). I'm still proud to use charity shops but I'm a total leftie and also environmental issues/recycling are important to me. We happliy have a very modest lifestyle.

There is some real poverty in the uk. Homelessness unfed children.

Homeless isn't directly related to poverty? With all due respect you're talking shit

Homelessness is related to poverty. It's quite easy to become homeless if someone looses their job/relationship and become homeless with no fixed address to claim benefits.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08ws37ctheweekthelandlordsmovein, but hey, those people should be grateful they're not kipping in a gutter.

I've never seen a family sleeping on the streets, but I bloody well know it happens. What an odd comment.

I've also never seen a man get stabbed but I well believe that also happens.

Some good info out today on how being poor scuppers your chances of being well off from a very early age!!!

www.gov.uk/government/news/an-analysis-of-2-decades-of-efforts-to-improve-social-mobility

You can't really compare cross-countries. How do you judge poverty? Healthcare (but look at the US where people can't afford insurance )? House size (Tokyo flats are tiny but the people living in them are rich) Education? (Most societies have free schooling for primary age). As i said in earlier post, poverty isnt a checklist of criteria you can tick off. Its also a lot to do with your social status in relation to your surroundings, which can lead to a loss of hope and a lot of closed doors so you become trapped. My husband is from a country that is poorer than the UK. He grew up in a communist panel building, one bedroom flat. Some people have bigger caravans in the Uk. And he never had his own bedroom or place for his toys, slept on the sofa his whole life. But he never describes himself as poor and once even said "thank god we were never so poor I had to eat tinned hotdogs". (Me with my princess bedroom grew up on those things).

Neutrogena brilliant post, thank you.

As long as we keep accepting the unacceptable, ie. Bailout of the private banks to the tune of trillions of taxpayers money, etc..life in this society is going to become unbearable for those at the bottom of the pile. The so-called "middle classes" are insulated from such poverty for the time being, but their wealth is subsidiary to the uppers who's wealth is insurmountable, and it may be short-lived in the coming times. Even some of the "haves" may come to see what it's like to "have not".

I could drive you to the car park, I can point to the spot they sleep in. the families move around more than single people, they are more hidden to stay together.
I've been in the a and e departments when the homeless have come in with frostbite. They've talked about the kids, they send paramedics to check on them as they won't go to hospital in case they get split up.

With all due respect this is uk in 2017