To think no one is supprised by the shcoking poverty in the UK

[Itsgonnabeacoldone]

People act like it's a shock or something not expected. But you would have to be seriously out of touch to be surprised by this

www.theguardian.com/society/2017/dec/04/uk-government-warned-over-sharp-rise-children-pensioner-poverty-study

Who gets the tax revenue, it is like herding cats to get a uniform approach on this, and if you think its just as simple as just making them pay full corp tax is very idealistic and naive to say the least.

The sheer blind denial and excuses on this thread are sickening, even in the face of first hand, second hand accounts of poverty.

goldenshaker yes and as always with politics such people will wilfully continue to ignore the effects of such policies until those policies start to affect them.

Corporation tax is on profit NOT sales.

Yes karriecreamer I'm aware of that. My post was in reply to some delusional poster thinking amazon made a pittance in profit. I'm no mathematician but I'm sure the profit on £7b is not a pittance.

**

Intelligent response, you think its a simple solution so I just posed a typical scenario of how most multi nationals operate.

I didn't realise school was on holidays yet...

Some families however live in chaos, they have lots of children, they can’t cope with money, often the kids go without and the cycle perpetuates itself through the generations

Poverty like that is very visible. There are many 'respectable' people who are living in poverty but painting on a veneer that they aren't. You'd never guess.

Amazon make a fortune but their profit margins per product sold are incredibly low and on some things (like Kindle Owners lending library and Prime) they actually make a loss. It's a very smart business outlook.

Selling a shit tonne of product and making 1p per sale is better than selling a few things a week and making 50p per sale.

Kindle Unlimited, Prime etc are their loss leaders, they draw people into the whole Amazon experience so Amazon are happy to make a loss on them as it adds to their overall profit.

But yeah, they're not broke...

My DF supposedly claims poverty, lives in a complete pig sty, and chucked my DM and my siblings out many many years ago.

He claims he doesn't have any money, he was always secretive about his earnings. Moans about heating costs etc. Fact is - he lives in a 6 bed house in a snazzy part of West London. Its not in a great state but still..

I also agree with PP about the chaos some people choose to live in. Lets get back some sense of personal responsibility rather than blaming May, or even Thatcher who hasn't been in power for years.

I'm no mathematician but I'm sure the profit on £7b is not a pittance

"the profit on £7b (of sales)" is meaningless. Very easy to make a loss or tiny profit whatever your level of sales.

Yeah, that's the problem. All these lazy, disabled, alcoholic scroungers just need to get off their arses and work instead of skipping around with their Costa coffees all day.

And don't get me started on the self entitled millennials of today.

The sheer blind denial and excuses on this thread are sickening, even in the face of first hand, second hand accounts of poverty.

^

This with bells on.

Walk a mile in someone else's shoes.

'or even Thatcher who hasn't been in power for years.'

Yeah.. So totally not to blame, right?

Lynmilne65

And I work part time at the age of 75.....

Good for you.
My dad worked from the age of 14 doing mainly manual labour to provide for his family. By the age of 58 he started to struggle. The Arthritis in his spine was that bad that the joints in spine had started to crumble into each other. the bones in his hands were destroyed so that he could hardly grip. His hands most days were that swollen he needed help with zips and buttons.
By the age of 64 he could not manage any longer. He was now having injections into his spine and was on high pain medication to simply get out of bed and function. He could not walk without an aid and walked with a shuffle and a stoop. We went to try to get him help. A proud working class man having to explain to someone how sometimes he needed his adult daughter to help him with the fly of his trouser, how he needed help when out and about. It was heartbreaking.
His need for help was denied. He wasn't in need, he could still work, find something to do. we fought it and eventually he got the basic level of help and struggled to get it to cover bills , food and rent.
He then turned 65 in the July and got his long and hard worked for pension, finally things were looking up for him and my mum - who is disabled herself with a lung condition (who my dad looked after as well as working - sometimes up to 3 jobs) Finally there was a spare bit of money coming in.
He dropped dead in the street in December that year. He had less than 5 payments of his pension that he had worked since he was a boy for.
50 years of hard work and he died with less that £400 in the bank.

My mum gets a now widows pension and is now facing the struggle of trying to convince atos that the lung condition which is incurable and will kill her has not miraculously got better in the past 6 months. She lives in fear of overspending. She herself is on Oxygen and i would imagine will be dead long before her 70th Birthday after having too worked for over 40 years.

That's the reality of my family.
Just because you have been dealt a different hand in life does not mean others have been so lucky.

This thread is getting very silly with some posters trying to out do each other in terms of hardship.
Or pointing out the reality of our situations.

Tbh if the Government actually closed all the loopholes allowing people to avoid billions in tax we could keep the services which support those in poverty instead of shutting them down for lack of funding,

It's sad that posters feel the need to justify their entitlements and position in life.

I've been drawn into it before but tend to shy away from such threads now. There's always one smart ass who believes they know better than you how to run your life based on a few snippets of info from an online forum. Those kinds of people will never understand what it's like at the bottom, struggling to make ends meet. The concept is too alien to them.

It's just a shame that it's those kinds of people who are running our country.

I'm sure someone will have an answer but if life on benefits is so easy, why are so many people dying because of sanctions and cuts?

www.theguardian.com/careers/2017/feb/23/disability-employment-gap-sanctions-cuts-and-death-after-fit-to-work-tests

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/benefit-sanctions-lead-claimants-to-self-harm-crime-and-destitution-warns-damning-report-a7047211.html

I don't think many people are surprised but as evidenced in this thread people can be looking at the same situation and coming up with different conclusions. We can all read the same studies, statistics, reports, see the homeless and the foodbanks etc. Some of us think that's poverty right there and others might think that's not poverty but poor personal choices.

Justanothernameonthepage - Kansas does not "prove" trickle down doesn't work. Like always in economics there are two sides to the argument: www.mysanantonio.com/opinion/commentary/article/Don-t-blame-Kansas-woes-on-trickle-down-11234144.php

The debate we are having here (and in parliament) is what services do we want as a nation, and how should they be funded. I don't believe any party is pro poverty, hunger etc whatever some here would have you believe.

The Tories don't tax enough, put through tax cuts for the rich and have held back spending too much, trying to reduce an almighty deficit left by Labour and the economic collapse which occurred on their watch.

The Corbyn plan will likely fail too - targeting the most mobile capital in the economy (the rich and corporates) will just see an increase in offshoring from both and not raise the money expected. Plus I wouldn't trust him and McDonnell to oversee a massive investment in spending when they've never had responsibility for a budget of any real size in their lives. They're not qualified to lead it.

The others are electoral non-entities unfortunately.

For my taste, there would be modestly increased spending vs the Tory position, funded by increased income tax across the board. We do need to address the deficit in spite of what MMT would have you believe. I would leave corporation tax where it is. I would try to work out how to extract tax from the tech giants and their ilk without trashing the regime for smaller businesses (not easy at all - why all countries wrestle with it). And I would look very hard how to stop housing benefit being a government subsidy to landlords without exacerbating the homeless problem.

In my view no party has this right. Equally, do we have it right? How many of us can say there is no more we can do to help those around us? Why should we just put there for the government to do - why can't / won't the citizenry do more?

Tbh if the Government actually closed all the loopholes allowing people to avoid billions in tax we could keep the services which support those in poverty instead of shutting them down for lack of funding,

Which loopholes are those exactly? Which laws would you change to ensure that all those billions in tax were collected, and went on being collected into the future?

Well thank god when the country had a chance to vote the majority chose the Tories over Labour.

Well thank god when the country had a chance to vote the majority chose the Tories over Labour

I didn't realise the majority chose the Tories, is that why they had to bung the DUP a couple of billion because they were the only political party still prepared to touch the disastrous conservatives with a bargepole?

Okay.

Well thank god when the country had a chance to vote the majority chose the Tories over Labour.

Which election did you watch?!

Which election did you watch?!

The one where the Tories won by a landslide JacquesHammer obviously

Unless a child is an orphan then they have parents who should be ensuring that their chid is not in poverty. If they won't what does that say about them? It's not the states fault regardless of which party is in power.

Yellow have you missed all those minimum wage jobs and the lack of affordable housing?

Just wondering.

I'm sure many people who are currently in poverty or teetering right at the edge could be helped by changes to current government policies. Of course you can't save everybody but the aim should be in helping as many people as possible.

The one where the Tories won by a landslide JacquesHammer obviously

They still won, they way FPTP and our electoral parties are set means no one has had a majority for decades, those that didn't vote cannot be included into any side.

Brown was also willing to bung money to the DUP, that was out in the open in 2010 when he tried to form a minority government, if you are an advocate of PR then any future governments will have to make deals with third parties, you only have to glance at any nation in Europe to see this.