to think there is no such thing as poverty in the uk?

[spottyzebrahasthelurgy]

i mean no one is really starving to death are they?

find the river - I get Income Support, council tax benefit, child benefit and CTC (don't currently qualify for HB or any other housing costs help) - so pretty much the same as most of the other non-working poor on MN - or perhaps I'm not considered poor because I can afford to eat healthy food and smoke my rollies???

I am merely responding to your 19.21 post where you give two options

two families living on the same amount of money

you make it sound like it's an "either or" situation"

As an aside I've often wondered how those on low incomes (working or benefits) manage to feed themselves crap/junk food and claim they can't buy healthy food - I find it totally implausible - on the rare occasions I "treat" us to junky/crap type food it costs a lot more than the healthy meals I generally cook.

Of course there's poverty here in the UK! My parents and siblings (and myself to a lesser extent, being the youngest) had no central heating - used paraffin heaters, hand me downs in clothes and furniture, living in an overcrowded house and so on. Compared to the Caribbean country we're from we were rich, but not rich enough to help those we left behind as we were taxed to the hilt and the cost of living is so high, especially in London.

It's all on a scale - whether you've not got running water or cannot afford to have hot water when your boiler's on the blink.

OP are you fucking taking the piss, or are you a troll, you ignorant, insensitive, ill informed person. Poverty does not mean JUST financial circumstances, it is when the parents choose to not provide for their offspring, and choose to beat them and neglect them in order to satisfy their own addictions. UNLOVED AND UNWANTED CHILDREN are living in poverty as they have no love, no cuddles, nobody to smile at them and tell them how much they mean to them, nobody to give them guidance. Children eat out of fucking bins, because they have a natural survival instinct. You are a fucking ignorant flame inducing troll. Fuck off and get a life, even better, move out of Knightsbridge and into any inner city deprived area and have a child and then fucking post on here you fucking insensitive excuse for a human being.

Mamaloves - nice post.

I shouldn't have reads this

but marypoppins, surely you have not starved any of your children to death?? those are the people soultaken was writing about, not ''the poor''.

Where is the OP then..... Are you going to answer any of us???? Or are you too busy drinking champagne and snorting cocaine whilst your nanny is taking care of YOUR UNWANTED children.... after which they were born you obviously had a tummy tuck and a fanjo op. Twat of the highest order. How dare you post such a thread??? Answers please, come back and try and and answer all of us

Or she could be drowning her sorrows in Special Brew and smoking 20 fags. You never know do you in a chat room?

Well, yes she did Morocco (and I quote again!):

"By soultaken on Sat 18-Oct-08 00:33:25
people do starve to death in the UK.

Nearly all of them children.

And I don't think they come from affluent families. They come from poor, ignorant uneducated lazy immoral underclass families."

I do believe "They come from poor, ignorant uneducated lazy immoral underclass families." is pretty much unequivocally writing about the poor.

Well hf128219 (complicated name but i loving you, is yoo new, is you a mummy, me love new mummy's!(in the tone of cookie monster). Further to your recent post (as above) I agree with your perception of said 3rd party (i.e flame inducing troll) and wish to inform you that I have come to the same conclusion (police uniform emoticon!). Therefore, in an effort to protect all users, namechangers and genuine parties that love mumsnet for the support it provides and the lovely people that anyone can meet - I conclude that the OP (i.e hairy fanjo twat) is a non conforming member of this community and should be excluded from any further involvement in our community. We give the OP 5 minutes to defend itself, otherwise we will come to the conclusion that the OP is a flame inducing, outsider twat that has no interest and no reason to be here other than to express her hateful and incorrect views on modern life. C. U. Next. Tuesday. OP

OK 5 mins up - show yourself you trollistick hatred inducing over priveleged 4x4 driving, binge drinking, anorexic, bleached hair extensioned, over tanned, under nourished, fake boobed,beaaaaach. (that is bitch in hip hop speak grandma.

I usually post on Forces Sweethearts - you get sense there.

Are you filth?

chuckle!! No, just Mnet filth!!!! I work against the wrong and protect the innocent {A team emoticon}. So where i the farkin beaaaatch then??? Yooo Hooo????

FIND ME A RIVER?????? where are you??????? Oh dear, seems OP has FARKED ORF!!!!!!!!!!!!

I used to work in a pub, we'd regularly have the same people waiting to get in at opening time on benefit days, in the school holidays they would leave their children outside whilst they were getting drunk, I knew they were on benefits because I would see them outside the post office before they came to the pub. I also worked with a health visitor for a while, families who were being investigated by social services for not looking after their children, most of them with a big TV and SKY. You can't tell people what to do with their benefits. It's not alot, I was on Income Support for 2 years when ds was born.

Pensioners do still die from hypothermia in this country every winter. And I'm not talking down and outs, but ordinary elderly people who cannot afford to heat their houses.

There are various types of medical treatments that are not to be had on the NHS. If we had not been able to pay a chiropractor dd would have been left unable to walk for long periods of time.

People are still dying because waiting lists are too long in the NHS and they cannot afford to go private.

It is also a fact that food tends to be more expensive on poorer estates and there is a much less wide range of healthy foods. Electricity becomes more expensive if it's on a metre. Cooking cheap nutritious meals becomes harder if you are living in a bedsit or your landlord will only give you limited access to the kitchen; also, if you cannot afford to keep the cooker running for long.

Living economically is a lot easier if you've already got money.

soultaken on Sat 18-Oct-08 00:45:02
"I mean come on you lot, how many barristers/surgeons children get starved to death by their parents?"

Here we are talking about child abuse, not poverty. And social status is no guarantee that you will be safe from that. Starving a child deliberately happens when a parent suffers something like Munchausen's syndrom by proxy. This is not a class thing, happens at all levels of society. But thankfully is not very common.

I wish i hadnt opened this thread. By the fith post it was all the underclass and working classes fault because they abuse their children

great mumsnet

If some of you moved out of your comfortable middle class existence maybe you would realise that most people are actually the same as you. They are just financially poorer. But hey ho, its your loss

Looking around my own spacious kitchen, with its cupboard well stocked with herbs and spices and other groceries, not shared with any other family, not at risk from having all my food nicked, all the pans and pots any cook could want, a cooker which is not metered and which I can have the sole use of any time I like, a capacious fridge/freezer to store food in (again only for my family), and knowing that I live within an easy walking distance of several well stocked and reasonably priced shops- well, I think I do see why it's easier for me to turn out interesting meals out of a couple of spuds and some cheap offal than it would be for somebody living on benefits in a B&B.

It's not because I'm a genius.

Poverty in the UK is defined has having less than 60% of average income. There is usually around 20% of the population meeting this definition at any one time.

Defining it by shelter, heat, food, clothing is much harder because for these things, there is an element of choice.

For example, you can say that some people do not eat healthily, but they do get plenty of calories. It's just that the parents are educated enough to prioritise buying healthy food and it is easier to buy processed.

One of the interesting things I learnt about the Old Age Pension recently was that it was designed to keep the retired person out of poverty, not to provide a comfortable income - it was always expected that the majority of people would prepare for their retirement, and the pension was no more than a safety net.

I live in a generally affluent town in a generally affluent county. (I'm a poor relation compared to most people round here.) Yet there are people right here in my town who don't have enough to eat, according to the Salvation Army. And they should know.

There's an 18 year gap in life expectancy between the villages in the Lake District where well-off people go to retire and nearby Barrow in Furness. A 20 year gap between Great Yarmouth and the rural hinterland around it.

Yes, there are people who suffer in countries like Zimbabwe. It's even more shocking that a rich country like ours can leave people in poverty. Inequality has been growing for the last thirty years as governments of both stripes have chased Thatcherite economic policies - and we all know where they have taken us. A little more socialism, a little more social justice, and we'd ALL be a lot better off. A far society benefits everyone.

Food snobbery is just a way of sneering at the poor. Chips are cheap and filling. It's a rational choice for a family that struggles to afford enough to eat and to pay the bills.