AIBU to be sad and shocked by this article?

[LittleDorrit]

Have just been reading this:

www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/mar/18/child-poverty-labour-eradicate-promise

and I am shocked by the conditions this family is living in, but in particular how little/what sort of food they are able to afford.

It's not so much an AIBU issue, but just wondered whether others in similarly difficult circumstances think this is typical, or whether the mother could try to buy other types of food (e.g. rice, lentils, etc.) or perhaps be able to afford to spend a bigger proportion of her budget on food... £20 is very little.

ahhhh...janos...why did you say that...now i feel like an even bigger tart than i thought possible

sorry idtcs, i was busy snorting the coke and partying with fio to spot your comment

which translates as i was cooking dinner for my kids and watching a film with them, as well as feeling hugely dismayed at the state of my house again

i was drinking coke tho

i mostly cook freshly prepared food and the bills are still horrendous

my children have hollow legs

i didnt cook from scratch today tho because i was tired, so we had a ready made quiche

i've already said, i think if the dads do not pay the maintence they should be imprisioned.

the father has equal responsibilty in my mind.

"But the majority of people living on them are nice people. They have a better sense of community than most middle class areas imo."

One of the highlights for me was looking out of my window at 12am to see the toddler being walked back from the local club with his mum and dad, dad calling him all the names under sun as they staggered home.
Then there was the night the lad next door pounded on my front door about midnight, I opened it and he fell in shut the door screamed at me to call 999 as a bloke with a gun had chased him through the streets after the money he owed him for drugs.
Police helicopters were regular background noise, openly smoking drugs as if they were a ciggie in the local shopping center.

It was never boring I'll give you that.

surely this girl gets- child benefit £30 a week for 2 kids and child tax credits-I would imagen somewhere between £40-60 pw. she obviously gets alot(if not 100%)of housing benfit and council tax benefit so thats two big bills out the window.
so thats around £70-90 pw, she spends £20 on gas and electric,£5 on phone and £20 on food, so thats £45, so wheres the rest of the money going? Her story doesnt add up imo, and thats not coming from someone who doesnt know what living well below the poverty line is like. I have a friend who lives like this, no job etc 1 child and spends £20pw on cannabis. I think shes doing well to live on what she does, but I dont see that her finances add up tbh.

That's great JeanPoole, you are lucky to be in that position because you have a supportive husband/partner.

How do you know this woman didn't? Maybe she had a nice life planned out, with her staying at home to look after her children and her OH buggered off?

It could happen to anyone and often does.

Sounds like a scene from 'shameless' sorrento!!!

i think i may hide this thread , which will be a first for me

louise, single mum living on benefits, doing her best, just as the other one reported on seems to be, signing off

we support each other.
we work together.

That's not the experience I had. The local drug dealers sister gave me old baby clothes for dd1 and the next door neighbours let my sister sit and have a coffee with them while she was waiting for me to come home, as we had arranged to meet, but I was running late.

They argued in the street at midnight though.

I don't live on a council estate now, but near one. Maybe it's not that grim up north afterall . None of the council estates near here are like how you describe, not even the roughest one.

StudentMadwife - read the article - she's paying back a loan to the council (presumably a budgeting or crisis loan) and bank charges/overdraft too - £17, plus she's allocated herself £5 for nappies and there's £5.50 for TV Licence too, - that's another £27 on top of the 45 you've added up. - that's £72, I presume she also has to pay her water bill as well - no idea how much that would be - I pay £30 a month.

no at all.
i would return to work when dd goes to school.

not at all.

Oh and how could I forget the lady, the same one I sold the buggy to for her not yet born to her 16 year old daughter, who wouldn't give me my baby back.
It was funny DH had come to pick me up to go on a date but i'd told my mum I didn't fancy him so I wasn't going and wouldn't need a sitter. Anyway DH turns up and I decide I do fancy him after all and the lady downstairs hears me on the phone to my mum begging her to pick DD up for the night.
Very kindly she says why don't I have L at your flat and you go out for the night, so we go for a quick meal and dash back.
Anyway DH and I sit on the sofa, make woman a cup of tea and ask how DD is, she says fine but I took her over to her flat and her daughter is looking after DD.
So I ask for my daughter to be returned and she says no DD is asleep she'll bring her back in the morning my brother and Dh had to threaten to kick the door down. Dh had never seen anything like it in his life and was very keen for me to move in with him

This article took me back 15 years. My eldest two were a baby and toddler. I lived in a council flat and my and OH were seperated. I was living on about £60 a week. It was pretty much gone by Tuesday.
You bought stamps for everything . Stamps for phone, tv licence etc. Then they bought in keys for lecky and gas. You had to get them charged up and it was more expensive than 'normal' lecky and gas. It wasnt too bad until they started shutting the pay points and you had to walk miles to get your keys charged.

I the bit of rent I had to pay, water rates, electric, gas. I went to Quiksave for my shopping and bought the week's food. The food was dreadful and all the special offers where on vile stuff. The fruit and veg were all class 3. No cheap good quaility supermarkets then.

I used to sit tight till the next week and hope to God that the kids didnt lose a shoe or something would break. My DD scribbled in a library book and I broke down because I was terrified they would charge me the full price for it. I will never forget how awful that felt.

It WAS grinding and hard work. Queing outside jumble sales to get the kids clothes, grubbing around for things. Buying from catalouges knowing you were being ripped off. You couldnt cheap clothes in supermarkets then.

I had a job to go back to and me and OH sorted ourselves out. We now have our own house and are ok. We are still on a low income due to OH's disability and things that have happend in the last few years. But its nothing like it was then. It is one of my biggest fears that we might be plunged back into that awful, horrible, grubby poverty again.

Poverty is boring, hard work and scary. You feel like the scum of the earth. Poor people love their kids and want the best for them just as much as everyone else.

Of course this woman charges her phone. How else can she keep in touch with family etc. She could've had that tv for years. She wouldnt get anything for it if she tried to sell it and then what would she do for entertainment? So her house is untidy. Maybe she does what most of us do and wait until the kids are in bed to tidy up.
She sounds like a sensible, loving mum who is doing the best she can.

Shamless they were

As are you SSSS accepting baby clothes off the local dealer they could have been filled with heroine, you could be in the Bangkok Hilton right now !

bloody hell sorrento...where do you live?

And my furniture came out of skips because I didnt want to get in debt by taking out a loan from the council.

JeanPoole - DH isn't currently paying me mainenance - should he then be imprisoned?

He's on benefits just now (well once they finally put the money into his account) so it supposed to pay me £5 a week.

I'd actually rather he sees his DS's regularly as he's done since he moved out than pay me that £5. £60.50 a week to live on with only your council tax paid isn't much really.

I know he'll pay me more once he's working again - but right now I'd rather see the father of my children being able to feed himself (and them when he has them) than give me that £5. We;; actually he's been staying over here when he's "got" the DS's - as he has no furniture in his house at the moment (but that's kind of irrelevant).

I used to live in Chelmsley Wood in Birmingham/Solihull boarder, it's not the worse part of Birmingham either.

Chegirl things have changed a lot in 15 years, my friend had a daughter in 1994 and things were a lot worse for her then.

If you put all the men who don't pay maintenance in prison, you'd have to jail an awful lot of people.

Who are you going to let out of prisons instead? Murderers? Armed robbers? Or would you be prepared to pay a lot more tax to build more prisons and pay more staff?