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

[DeloresJaneUmbridge]

As a health visitor I worked with many families where both parents were working but were still stuck in damp housing. In some cases the mold was so bad that plaster was falling g off the walls and yet the families did not earn enough to get out of their accommodation. That is poverty...the reality for many families in the UK.

It got to the stage where I would photograph the damp and mold then upload it to the children's electronic record so that if in future they had long term respiratory issues there would be some come back.

That is the fault of the Government of the day...and I include Labour and the Coalition in that because nobody tackled poor housing. As far as I am concerned allowing children to live in such conditions is immoral.

So nobody can tell me that this is down to the parents. Working or not they lived in poor housing and could not afford to change that situation. Fine if you have the money to buy a house and do it up.....these parents did not have that luxury. Waiting for the landlord to do anything (social housing landlords were better) was a nightmare.

As a child I lived in cold and damp housing....trust me it was miserable and no child should have to experience that. It wasn't the fault of my parents that housing was substandard. Likewise due to poverty they couldn't afford to move elsewhere.

But do carry on blaming the poor for the crime of not earning enough won't you.

[Frequency]

There were 770,000 job vacancies for March to May 2017

For February to April 2017, there were:

1.53 million unemployed people, 50,000 fewer than for November 2016 to January 2017 and 145,000 fewer than for a year earlier

It's all well and good stating that everyone should support themselves but, well, maths...

www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/uklabourmarket/june2017#unemployment

If every job in the country was filled there'd still be 760,000 able bodied people out of work. I mean starving them is one way of dealing with them, I guess. It's not the kind of country I'd like to live in, but each to their own.

[Justanotherlurker]

Unfortunetly Frequency there are far too many variables to have 100% employment, unless you want to bring in the gulags.

[JonSnowsWife]

Yes of course I do. So do the DUP. That's why they changed their tune PDQ.

metro.co.uk/2017/06/11/a-dup-poster-from-2010-has-resurfaced-and-it-hasnt-aged-well-6701339/

[JonSnowsWife]

Hold on yellow. So even if it's the states fault the parents are now on the bones of their arse financially it's actually the parents fault? Unless they've also had a hand in drafting the legislation required to being about such austere policies that's hardly likely is it?

[blacksax]

It's very easy to blame Amazon etc for the woes of the world, but nobody ever comes up with a good solution. They already do pay tax on the sales they make in this country, it's called VAT

Sorry but this completely wrong and is a fundamental misunderstanding of how VAT works. VAT is not a tax on business income. In the simplest terms it works as follows:

Company A sells goods to a customer for £100. They are obliged by law to charge VAT of £20 on sales so the price to the customer is £120. Only £100 is Company A's income as they are acting as tax collector for the rest.

They customer (ie: a member of the public) pays Company A the £120.

Company A receives the money from their customer, keeps their £100 and passes the £20 VAT to HMRC.

The VAT does not form part of, nor is it a tax on their income at all - they merely collect it from the customer and pass it on to HMRC.

[LouiseBrooks]

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 usually 'can't", not "won't".

And in my case, it says this: that my father, through no fault of his own, contracted an incredibly rare disease when in his 40s; that my mother had to be his full time carer until he died 12 years later; that without the help of relatives (clothes for us, food hampers for Xmas, etc) God knows how we'd have survived.

As for what your comment says about you: beneath contempt covers it in my opinion. I cannot express how angry I am that people who are so utterly clueless dare to judge those less fortunate than themselves.

[Justanotherlurker]

Company A receives the money from their customer, keeps their £100 and passes the £20 VAT to HMRC

And as I stated earlier, with it being a multinational getting countries to agree is like herding cats, even inside the EU

So that company A has headquarters in country 1, manufactures in country 2 and sells in country 3, who gets the tax take?

[Justanotherlurker]

Company A receives the money from their customer, keeps their £100 and passes the £20 VAT to HMRC

And as I stated earlier, with it being a multinational getting countries to agree is like herding cats, even inside the EU

So that company A has headquarters in country 1, manufactures in country 2 and sells in country 3, who gets the tax take?

[JonSnowsWife]

LouiseBrooks there are certain posters who are well known for their misguided opinions on these sort of threads.
Take no notice.

[blacksax]

Justanotherlurker Are you talking about VAT? if the companies are in the EU then EU VAT rules apply, if any of the companies are outside the EU then the transactions will be outside the scope of VAT altogether but will attract customs duty as applicable.

Corporation tax for multinationals is another matter altogether, and I would agree with you there - far too many loopholes.

If you really want a scandal to know where our money is going, I suggest you look to the European Union, as their auditors in Brussels have been unable to complete audits and have refused to sign the accounts off for years...

[latebreakfast]

Company A receives the money from their customer, keeps their £100 and passes the £20 VAT to HMRC.

Thanks for the accountancy lesson. The point I was trying to make is that the government get a cut of their turnover. Which they do.

[Justanotherlurker]

blacksax

No, it wasn't directed at you in general, just the nebulous crys of "just make Amazon/Google etc pay more tax" it's a simple populist 'solution' with no understanding of a globalised economy and think it's some Tory conspiracy.

[LouiseBrooks]

Jonsnowswife thank you. I do know that, it's just that sometimes it still gets to me almost 40 years later. It never leaves you.

[custarddinosaur]

The point I was trying to make is that the government get a cut of their turnover. Which they do.

Sorry, but no, they don't.

Turnover is calculated net before VAT is added on.

[KathArtic]

And DeloresJaneUmbridge as a HV you will also dealt with a large number of children open to CIN and CC's where in the majority of cases it is the parents lack of responsibility affecting the outcomes of their children.

[CitrusSun]

Read a statistic today that 1 in 5 live in poverty, I know stats are flimsy in fact, but it has to be true that poverty is more prolific now than it has been for decades, yet nothing is being done, prob doesn’t even feature on Tory to-do list because it’s not something that will ever affect them so no priority

[Justanotherlurker]

Citrus not every Tory is rich, some just see a different approach to fix the problem.

Also as you don't believe in stats, even before the Tories changed the metrics of measuring poverty, the same report said that poverty reduced in the wake of 2008 global crash.

"It must be true* is nothing more than blind partisan cheerleading, might be time to get your news from other sources other than the canary/independent ?

[FloweringDeranger]

Just wanted to say grins I'd back you on that. I was very disappointed that Corbyn and co said nothing about raising taxes across the board. Many if not most of us could afford a little bit more without facing the hardships that are normal for the poorest.

One of the many problems I have with government (of whatever colour) over the last few decades is the way they have destroyed what there was of a conceptual relationship between tax and services. Taxes are there for a purpose, to create a communal pot of money that can be put to communal infrastructure and safety nets, it's not just the state taking it away for fun.

[Justanotherlurker]

Many if not most of us could afford a little bit more without facing the hardships that are normal for the poorest.

What??

Did you miss the "I'm prepared to pay more tax to help the poor" crowd squeal when he targeted those earning above ~75k, it was prevelant on here, and it was no way the minority of Tories on this site filling up 1000 posts as labour being unreasnobable.

People virtue signal online, up until the point when it will actually hit them in the pocket and then every single one has specific circumstances as to why they should be excluded.

[KathArtic]

I'm prepared to pay more tax to help the poor

That always pops upon here, but I've yet to hear of ANYONE actually phoning their tax office asking to pay more.

Being prepared is one thing...actually doing it is another.

[JonSnowsWife]

You're welcome LouiseBrooks. The only thing that brings people like that back down to earth is a cold hard dose of reality. Kind of like Katie Hopkins who is technically, currently unemployed, ironically.

[DeloresJaneUmbridge]

Not as many as you might think KathArctic

Some children yes but not the majority. None of the "damp housing cases" I can recall had children who were deemed at risk.

Yes I dealt with plenty of children she were deemed at risk of neglect etc, all had parents who had also been known to social services as children. They had many problems....poverty was just a small but significant part and tbh not really what this thread is about.

Poverty affects more than just families who are chaotic.

[meditrina]

You can overpay your taxes. So if you'll happily pay more, set it up.

People aren't shocked, as per title, because in absolute terms, poverty in UK has fallen.

The reason relative poverty has risen is because the median wage has risen. That's more to those is the middle doing better, than the effect of the very rich.

So reducing (or holding steady) the median whilst the tail catches up is also an important aspect. But are most people up for more austerity and pay restraint?

[GreenRut]

I don't think it's fair to say that those willing to pay more tax aren't doing anything about it. I agree with higher earners paying more tax and would be happy to do so if a new bracket was introduced. But I'm hardly going to ring hmrc now and say take x more off my wages please. That's not going to help anyone?

Aside from that this thread is really sad. I was raised in poverty, and actually it was due to my df's alcoholism and his emotional abuse of my dm. My DM wouldn't have known how to get us out of the situation. These days I'd say she'd have more chance, but back then it was almost impossible. Some might say she made bad choices etc but I saw her banging her head off the wall each night and telling us how to hide from the provident man once a week. This is not a life style choice.

What to do? I'm not a politics guru (did fancy myself as one at one point though as lots of teenagers do ;) I would get rid of free school meals for ks1 and review the general fsm policy to be looser across the board so that more children in poverty were fed one good meal a day throughout their school life. I would get rid of the new 30 free hours of childcare and do something similar, use that money to get more children from poor families longee free hours in nursery settings. There are people in my circle who as a couple both earn just under the threshold for 30 hours, so get this benefit, when they are in a joint income of not far off £200k. It is crazy to me when these people can afford childcare. Yes for some it is still a stretch but not having the 30 hours is not going to put them into poverty.

Overall I feel one of the issues is the people circular nature of people in poverty. So you're raised in poverty, you yourself go on to raise your children in poverty etc etc. We must do more as a country to raise people's expectations. That starts with all the basic rights people should have. A right to decent housing, health care, education. Until people in poverty are stopped being left at the bottom of the pile and treated like shit just because they don't matter or they matter less, they themselves won't belive they are worth anymore than just falling into line with their own backgrounds. It was literally by the grace of God (or whoever I believe in!) that I didn't repeat my own childhood because I came close many, many times. The overwhelming feeling that no one gives a shit if you succeed or not is with you from an early age. From leaving a damp ridden house that the council won't fix on an empty stomach, to passing the local homeless people taking refuge in the flats communal stairs having to step over them to get out, to getting to school and no one taking you to the side to say hey let's think about giving you some extra work that might help get you to university. The list goes on.