To think having £211/week each after housing costs isn't poverty?

[PianoThirty]

It is according to the Social Metrics Commission.

They say the poverty line is £203/week for a single parent with one child, £422/week for a couple with two children. All figures are after** housing costs and childcare costs (if applicable).

I'd be over the moon if we had £422/week to spend, and I don't think we're anywhere near poor.

By claiming that almost a quarter of the country is in poverty, we roll our eyes and say “oh not this nonsense again”, and lose focus on the 5% or so who are suffering in real poverty

Indeed; but if you take a report from some institution founded to "develop new metrics for poverty" and throw in The Guardian (effectively the Mail in reverse), this is what you're going to get. As so often, it's not so much about addressing real poverty as providing another udder for those who suckle from the poverty industry

Ssdly there are still cases of desperate poverty in the UK and there's an urgent need to help. But there aren't enough to keep the ever-burgeoning industry busy ... so more must be created

Relative poverty and the general widespread perspective of poverty are completely different. I can remember where the article was but a rich society such as our own it would be expected a family would have this amount (as a UK AVERAGE) to be considered above the threshold of relative poverty, it allowed for basic entertainment, a bottle of wine and if I remember correctly a Annual holiday along the lines of a camping staycation. Abject poverty is not having enough to heat or eat. For a wealthy country it's quite shocking how many people are working but just scraping by and need to rely on topup benefits to do so.

END THE FREEZE!! The freeze even affects Children's money. Children's money to live on has been FROZEN by the government for years in the name of austerity. All the while the costs of actually housing, feeding, clothing, washing., and sending a Child to school, let alone the costs for them to go on trips etc .. has went up and up..

Wake Up people and make them end the FREEZE in 2020 as promised. People simply cannot take any more. Open your eyes.

We scrape by..
I think £100 goes no where...
Spend £30 on shopping £20 on petrol then say you need a prescription at £10 then a child needs some shoes £20 then you have £20 left,

We have a generous welfare state in the UK to provide people basics and then some.

I wouldn’t call the UK welfare state generous, Ive lived here 17 years but not from here. My family found your class system a struggle to get used to, and the resentment between the classes, fuelled by media and politicians, to be sad and unnecessary.
You don’t have a generous state, you have a muddled and ineffective system that gives far too much to some, and woefully inadequate support to many many others- the way you treat your elderly is shameful.
I personally want as many people as possible to have a happy life and be able to enjoy things that the middle classes take for granted- yes like Sky and a car. If you have more than you need, and so many in the UK have much more than they need, the extreme wealth is shocking to me, then you’re not supposed to build a wall to keep the less fortunate out. You’re supposed to build a bigger table, pull up some extra chairs and share what you don’t need. Now, my family could survive on that, but we’d be in debt quickly and it would be very hard. It’s not necessary in a wealthy country like this.

Our bills excluding childcare and mortgage, come to around £1900 so £475 a week not much more than is supposed to be defined as poverty, we don't live especially frugally, we run two cars from this , have a full Virgin package and do our food shopping at Waitrose, it includes Amazon prime, Deezer and Spotify premium, amongst the usual necessities, is not what I would consider poor. I don't think definitions like this are very helpful and allow minimisation of the poverty that actually exists.

If you have more than you need, and so many in the UK have much more than they need, the extreme wealth is shocking to me, then you’re not supposed to build a wall to keep the less fortunate out. You’re supposed to build a bigger table, pull up some extra chairs and share what you don’t need.

Jessica I absolutely love this.

After my housing costs I would then have to also pay bills. So take out rent completely and I would be in the middle with 2 DC around £300 per week?

I have 2 DC and my basic bills come to about £500 ish. Not including food or petrol. So sounds about right that I would have £180 odd per week for absolutely everything else for 3 people - food, clothes, toiletries, petrol, school dinner money, uniform, school trips, birthdays, car related costs (need one to work).

If Boris Johnson wants my vote - because I won't be voting Labour EVER again - he needs to address domestic violence and provide more state help to single parent families. And no, I don't mean those who have 7 children with 6 dads. I mean people like me who have been fucked over by the patriarchy.

I was on ESA which gave me £210 a fortnight so £105 a week.
I spent most of it on bus fares to hospital and some on a prescription pre-payment card (contribution-based ESA does not entitle you to free prescriptions or help with transport costs like income-based ESA does)
I needed a cheap mobile phone so the hospital and doctors could contact me, had no landline, so that needed some credit.
I had a council bedsit and no council tax at the time but still had all utility bills to pay.
(Not to mention debt that my ex had run up but that's a separate issue)

It's a good way to lose weight as I couldn't afford much food (our buses are expensive and the hospital, not close) and I definitely couldn't afford to smoke or go to the pub.

- he needs to address domestic violence and provide more state help to single parent families

Boris Johnson? Addressing domestic violence? Seriously?

I really can't see Boris addressing domestic violence and single parents. He has no interest in these issues.

I think that amount is barely breaking even - as others have said, once you've paid elec/gas/council tax/water/car insurance/petrol/food you don't have much left over, and we've not hit the necessary non-monthly spends yet - dentist, car and appliance repairs, clothes (and it's assuming you don't have a car loan)

Let alone the leisure stuff like hobbies/clubs/holidays/dinner out etc.

I have had a good month this month due to changing jobs and paid off most of my last outstanding debt. I cannot believe I will be debt free for the first time in my adult life (am 40). I have a very old car for work and we haven’t had a holiday in a long long time. I am always just grateful we have what we do have though, food in the fridge and the house is warm and we have enough of what we need in terms of I don’t struggle to buy toiletries and underwear anymore.

It could be so much worse. But it’s not the best way to live really, just being grateful you can eat and wear deodorant!

I agree that there's real confusion between wealthy lifestyles and living in comfort. Living in comfort should be attainable. Scraping by is the reality for so many people but we don't seem to have the right vocabulary for it.

Putting the heating on and not counting pennies to pay for the family's bus fares would be a relief to a lot of people, but we end up referring to it as a luxurious lifestyle and that can't be right.

The poverty line in the UK is defined as a household income below 60% of the average.
So the poverty line moves as average household incomes flux. All it takes is for a few billionaires to move into the country which moves the average household income up, pushing more children into poverty

• who weren't the week before. So it's a very weird way of defining poverty and probably utterly pointless.

That’s it. Without broadband a lot of people would be worse off too in terms of isolation and literally disconnected from the world around them that is now fully digital. I agree that a full sky sports package is a luxury but a lot of people live in areas where cheap broadband isn’t available - I don’t have fibre broadband and there isn’t much choice of supplier around. I also need a car for work and public transport for DC isn’t that cheap every day. I really find it sad that so many things people take for granted are told it should be a luxury to be able to get from A to B or use the internet as if we should be grateful this we are not living in 3rd world conditions.

‘Comfort’ should not be the level of basic food rations, basic heating and light with no leeway for changes in the weather, no mobile phone, no broadband, all your clothes and shoes from charity shops. It’s ok to have a mixture of those but this should not be our baseline of what poverty actually means. People who scrape by are grateful every day that this month wasn’t the one that broke them unexpectedly

So the poverty line moves as average household incomes flux

It does. And after the 2007 crash, average incomes dropped due to redundancies in the banking sector.

The knock on effect was that there were fewer people in poverty because the line fell below people who had previously been above it, despite their income not changing or possibly decreasing also.

So it could be that a person is no longer considered to be in poverty because a much richer person can't afford a big holiday, or fancy car this year.

As I understand it, the definition used for poverty in the UK is a relative one, not an absolute one: something like half average earnings. Not sure if this is pre or post housing costs. Nor what type of ‘average’ is used (if you use mean then average earnings is skewed by some very high earners). This means ‘poverty’ in the uk is nothing like poverty in many other countries. In the uk it is possible to have reasonable housing, sufficient food, fuel, clothing, education etc and be classed as living in poverty. It is more a measure of social division than need.

Oops should have rtft, I see others have got here first

I read through the report when it was in all of the newspapers after the EU sent their representative to the UK, to tell us how terrible everything is here. It was ridiculous, according to their figures we are living in poverty- two professionals who own a home; albeit with a bloody big mortgage, and take a holiday every year. We have nowhere near the level of disposable income they say you need to not be in poverty, but we eat every day, have clothes, heat etc. We are not in poverty! I have seen REAL poverty, in my father's home country. People who do not have enough food, kids without proper footwear, unable to go to school because they need to be earning money. It is an insult to people really struggling in real poverty when this garbage comes out.

Post by the conservative press office per chance?

Why is it always a race to the bottom on here? Oh I can survive on 10p using a chicken a week, walk everywhere and STILL have an abroad holiday.

It's not just parents. My brother is entitled to £251 a month after rent is paid as a 24 year old single male. He has to have internet to carry out his UC 'commitments' £27, mobile sim because he has to have a phone number £10.00 gas and electric £60 a month £10 towards council tax. £30.00 ish a week to feed and clothe himself plus get to any job interviews etc. He cannot hold a job, he has ADHD, nothing severe enough to warrant additional 'generous welfare payments' but bad enough that after a couple of weeks in a job and him being unable to retain information, follow instructions logically or just keep up sees him sacked. He managed to keep his zero hour contract at amazon for six months because it was just taking boxes off a conveyor and putting them in cages until after the Christmas period then they reduced his hours and then stopped giving approx half of them any hours at all but even jobs like that now are pretty non existent.

Is it any wonder today he has been given anti depressants by the doctor and an urgent referral for a support worker? This country absolutely sucks donkey balls.

@dadshere

The big mortgage is relevant though. Because often people are forced into poverty because of the cost of housing too.

@dadshere the issue is however that many other states in the EU with a similar state income as the uk manage to give a lot of people a better life - if heating and food are a luxury in a developed country , there is a serious problem. if kids go hungry at school, it might be notmal in a developing country, but its an absolute disgrace for a country like the UK who has the money, but DECIDES to spends it elsewhere.
just because others are worse off doesn’t mean people should struggle in the uk