Panorama( Young families Struggling)

[dottydodah]

Did anyone see this last evening? A lady with 2 small DC and a husband working as a Research Scientist was struggling with bills .Another young Mum in tears as her energy bill was so high.A third lady (working as a Nurse) not able to run a car. How will they manage to keep going? Surely Govt could do more?

Cost of living should hit red wall disproportionately so they should lose a lot of votes there. They mostly drive (petrol) and their wages are not likely to increase in line with inflation.

I hope you're right that it will change votes, but the 'red wall' (or the part of it that turned blue) isn't really the problem - it's the deep sea of blue almost everywhere else in England except London which needs to have a rethink.

I can’t say I don’t get frustrated with the Boomer Tories. What’s that saying about if your life is comfortable, vote to make other people’s lives comfortable? But they don’t. They vote to continue feathering their enormous nests, while taking the U.K. back to their ‘glory years’.

The lady with the shop is semi local to me. The shop was being advertised for sale on Facebook today.

@Antarcticant yes of course people only have children because they want them, there is no other reason.

One or two is enough though. Why this craze for having 3? It may not be excessive but it is, I think, a large amount.

Plus if things go pear shaped in the future it is, obviously easier to try and manage with just 1 or 2.

@Antarticant it's still strongly correlated with age. Younger people tend to live in cities where the jobs are and even when they move out to start families, they tend to be sprinkled across the blue constituencies. There are some constituencies who have been changed by the millenial emigration like St A and Amersham but by and large, the grey vote is still very strong. We are an ageing population.

@mydogisthebest 'craze for 3 children'
Wtf ? I have 3. Hardly anyone has 3 or more now, 3 is the 1990s '4'

In London I'd say it's 40% 1 child 48% 2 child
2% 3 children (never met anyone in London with

The stories are quite shocking though there usually seems to be a twist with the families they choose for this sort of programme... the research scientist for instance, exh is one so im aware of the salary scale but the wife had a shop loosing money, if she sold up and worked 25 hours a week in a shop she would be fine. Ditto larger families - the problem is they have more children than they can afford or single parents where the dad doesn't contribute.

I wish just for once they would feature a typical 2 parent family (one full time one 25 hours a week) not in the expensive areas of the country and not with lots of old debts. Are they struggling? If they are then something does need to be done, but illustrating with non typical situations for effect bugs me

[quote mydogisthebest]**@Antarcticant yes of course people only have children because they want them, there is no other reason.

One or two is enough though. Why this craze for having 3? It may not be excessive but it is, I think, a large amount.

Plus if things go pear shaped in the future it is, obviously easier to try and manage with just 1 or 2.[/quote]
I don't think there is a 'craze' for three children. A small minority of people have three (or more) children. Doesn't mean they deserve to live in poverty as punishment! Pretty sure the birth rate will be declining even further in the UK as the cost of living rises.

@gogohm is a 2 parent family even typical? Thought the divorce rate is 50%..and London + SE already account for 18 million out of 67 million people so 26%. And London is no 9 on the list of unaffordable cities, a lot of places in the SW are pretty unaffordable when measuring cost of housing against average income and even more so than London. So actually so many people in the UK live in expensive areas/are in single parent families that I don't think you can say that people who fit that description are outliers....

it's the deep sea of blue almost everywhere else in England except London which needs to have a rethink

Not in the northern cities though.

I've just watched this... a few things struck me as I'm a single parent with kids.
Firstly....one of the kids was eating Branded food before eating a meal, a nurse is on good money and she could work more hours but chooses to use a childminder. The self employed woman with her shop...she opened it 6 months ago in a time of financial uncertainty. If she's that stressed....work another job. Who works in an art gallery? Seriously if you're struggling get a full time job or work more hours. £75 a month going to £240....they weren't paying enough to start off with so that wasn't just the increases.
There are a lot of options to help and I do think this show didn't really represent the right people.

The stories are quite shocking though there usually seems to be a twist with the families they choose for this sort of programme...

Quite

@Organictangerine

I can’t say I don’t get frustrated with the Boomer Tories. What’s that saying about if your life is comfortable, vote to make other people’s lives comfortable? But they don’t. They vote to continue feathering their enormous nests, while taking the U.K. back to their ‘glory years’.

This boomer has never voted Tory in her life. She’d rather drink bleach. HTH.

That’s why I said Tory voting boomers, Blossom. Not all boomers.

@Smileyaxolotl1

I don’t doubt that it is going to be very difficult for people with rising fuel and food prices but the nurse worked 3 days a week. It’s not surprising that she couldn’t run a household on that few hours and as usual no sign of a man anywhere to support the three kids.

And the idea that the people are worse off than miners in the 20s? Do you realise how dumb you sound? I’m sure if miners had been spending money on cars, internet, trainers, take aways etc then they would have been hungry too rather than on a couple of bits of coal and some meat and vegetables.
Unfortunately there are far more things that we all see as essential now which take up large parts of our income and the difference is that we don’t expect to have to live frugally like they accepted then. Things like internet and phones have become essentials.

That's ridiculous. I don't think the issue is people having internet do you!

@Lennybenny

I've just watched this... a few things struck me as I'm a single parent with kids. Firstly....one of the kids was eating Branded food before eating a meal, a nurse is on good money and she could work more hours but chooses to use a childminder. The self employed woman with her shop...she opened it 6 months ago in a time of financial uncertainty. If she's that stressed....work another job. Who works in an art gallery? Seriously if you're struggling get a full time job or work more hours. £75 a month going to £240....they weren't paying enough to start off with so that wasn't just the increases. There are a lot of options to help and I do think this show didn't really represent the right people.

If the nurse works more hours won't her need for a childminder increase even more?

I'm not entirely sure I understand your point

I've always been completely paranoid of being skint and bills increasing. I'm a nurse but stuck with having two kids when I wanted 3 because I couldn't afford it. People make choices!

Right, so if someone were to have one child and then twins, they didn't 'plan' their life sufficiently well and deserve whatever bad happens to them, and the kids. Got it. /sarcasm

The thing is showing a family earning say £42,000 net family income but living in Redhill is not atypical, no more so than showing a family living in Preston and earning £33,000 net family income. Given the huge disparities in mortgage or rent— the end results of what you have to spend are roughly the same. Unless you are mortgage free or don’t pay rent or are lucky enough to have social housing that’s a given . I think one thing these programmes don’t show is debt— it’s very possible people have quite a bit of previous debt they are trying to keep up with and don’t want the world and his mother knowing that or they get a certain amount of housing benefit if they rent , but it’s minimal because the ‘allowance’ is calculated on much lower rates than they are actually indeed paying. It’s easy to say just move then, but if you are in private rented that means large amounts up front before you get anything back on current place or you may well fail the kind of punative income calculations a lot of agencies have or they won’t allow anyone who has ‘any’ element of benefits— even if working and you can end up stuck even if your circumstances have changed . There are many practical reasons people are stuck in what seem to others as illogical situations, although I do think the lady with the failing shop needs to have a think on this— there is no point running a business unless it’s making money or has great potential to do so and certainly not if it’s causing this level of financial issues— better to do 30 hrs a week at M&S or something. Nurses are not on great money to the person who said that and certainly not if you are having to use childcare and pay rent. My FIL nearly fell through the floor when he saw our rent and also our sons too in a London flatshare. Many older people (and I’m 60 ) simply don’t get the amounts needed to house yourself and then wonder why we can’t save for deposits on mortgages— and given 10% deposit in most areas in south east can be 40- 50k it’s not peanuts and you would also need to be earning around 100k between you to get a mortgage too. I had a look in a few towns/cities up north and many of those were not that cheap either if you were being at all fussy

A fifth of working age adults are economically inactive and we have the highest disability rates on the planet.

Why is that though?

Is it a) childcare costs limiting parents from working b) the poor mental health epidemic c) something else? I dont see why we would have higher disability rates than (for example) france or any other European country.

One or two is enough though. Why this craze for having 3?

What craze? 😆

@moimichme

Right, so if someone were to have one child and then twins, they didn't 'plan' their life sufficiently well and deserve whatever bad happens to them, and the kids. Got it. /sarcasm

Very few people with 3 children had a single pregnancy followed by twins.

well my cousin & 2 best friends did. All only wanted 2 dc. Obvs anecdotal but that seems to be taken as fact 🤷🏻‍♀️

Who works in an art gallery? seriously the dumbest question ever posted- it was probably the only job that worked around school hours, essentially it’s a retail job- get a grip.

The nurse definitely must of had some other finicial debts or a very high mortgage. £30 isn't extortionate for shoes.. I can't believe she tried to fix them. The shoes were dangerous and I'm surprised the school didn't step in.
She worked 30 hours not "very part time". Childcare is capped I'm not sure what the figure is for 3 kids... but I know UC will only pay upto £648 a month for 1 child.

Again the couple with the shop... it was nice but it was located in the wrong location. Rice from a fancy shop like that.. I don't know anyone personally who purchases their groceries from anywhere like that. I can see how there was only 1 customer during the whole week.