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.

oh and good luck with the interview

Sorrento - I was not asking for help thankyou! (Or were you being sarcastic?)

There are probably more people than you think living below the 'so called' breadline, as described in this article. Some of whom are working on low incomes. My point was that the government seem to really have no clue, as they have no experience of this!

and the OU does courses that are "pre" diploma or degree level courses, ones to learn how to write essays (damn wish I'd see that one before I started this course LOL), and various other "basic" courses to get into studying.

OF COURSE people need to know about these things, and if they haven't been told then they won't know. - anyhow Sorrento - it's 10.30 - I believe we both have stuff we need to do

I lived not unlike this financially untill last September.

I feel very lucky though as I live in a decent area, in a privatly rented home with a garden, on a safe estate with playgrounds for DD to go to and no evidence of trouble at all.
DD is at a good school 4 minutes walk away.
I had a good education, I dropped out of Uni to travel though and came home with fiance in tow pregnant. He had a good job but left when DD was 6 weeks old. He's never paid a penny for her and only last year did I doscover I can go through the Australian CSA for maintenance which I am doing.

The reality of very little money was exactly the same as Louise though. I stuck to a budget of £20 a week for all the shopping. Occasionally I had a wee bet extra but not often.
I don't have a proper table either, I have a kids table that my neighbour gave me, my knees don't fit under it but we still sit and eat at it. It never occurred to me there was anything wrong with it. Before I had it we sat together on the floor.
I'm also lucky that I was brought up eating good food so I knew how to cook and make a decent meal from very little.
It's makes me sad to read all the nonsense about her having a phone and TV. I have a phone, I had two at one point (sold one for £20 when I had a bill to pay), I have a TV, my neighbour gave me it, I have a PC, my Dad gave me it, along with the couches, desk, slow cooker, Kenwood Chef, all the bedroom furniture from my room at home. My DD's bed came from a neigbour, she had the pull out bed from under mine until then.
Very little of what I have I bought but peopl still like to ask where it came from, after all folk on benefits should never have anything other than essentials.

It's a horrble way to live and the help isn't there, my Job Centre were worse than useless. I did eventually find out about free courses and have done 4 and I've just had my CV done by a lady from the Adult Learning Centre and she's said she'll help me with interview coaching for any job I apply for.
I do have a job now, I'm a waitresss and as much as I do hate it with a passion, I have to remember I am lucky to have a job and I'll hopefully never have to go back to the days less than a year ago when I literally had an empty purse for more of the week than having money, and to walking home in the rain because I couldn't spare £1.10 for the bus, and having to tell my DD she couldn't go to parties because I couldn't afford a present and all the other crappy things that come with a life on benefits.

I count myself extremely lucky to have the internet. Obviously for MN, especially since lovely people from here helped me buy DD's School Uniform last year but also for the company from the sites I use, the laughs, the debates, the tips (MoneySavingExpert is fab for budgeting), and the semblance of a social life it gives me.

I really do feel for anyone that isn't quite so lucky as me. I don't know how I would have coped if I lived on a terrible estate and my daughter was getting a rubbish education because I chose a bad father for her.

Lynette, she clearly has a freezer if she bought oven chips

the money doesn't add up, she getting 130 a week yet only has 20 for food even taking the bills the article mentioned into account that seems off. and like others have said, she could buy loads of fruit and veg for the price of the hotdogs, chips, biscuits and other shite.

when we were at our lowest moneywise we had about the same coming in and i made damn sure i spent alot more on food than that, my kids will never go hungry in favour of anything else. and we had rent to pay, alot more than the pittance you pay on a council flat.

as for phone credit, i have 3 kids and live in the middle of nowhere and need to have credit on my phone as we have no landline but i only put on about 10 every 5/6 weeks so she certainly doesn't need 5 a week for necessities

i'm not saying her situation is easy, i've been there and coping with next to no money is hideous.... but her kids shouldn't be the first to lose out by not being fed properly, the food should be her priority, sod the credit and the loans.

PinkTulip - I'll copy and past SeaShells post from last night for you - you'll see it makes more sense

Okay the benefits what she will get with two children

£85 IS
£50 CTC

She has already said that when she gets her CB she buys fresh food with it and makes meals from scratch if she doesn't have to buy clothes/shoes for the children which I presume would come from that too.

Leaves her with £135.50 per week.

outgoings are

£17 on loans
£5.50 on tv liscence
£10 on gas meter
£5 on leccy
£5 for mobile
£5 for nappies

Equals £42.50. This is what she has ticked off on her envelope. This leaves her with £93.

Is every one still with me? Good. Lets carry on then.

Water bill £5.50
Bus Fair £4
Money saved for xmas/birthday presents for her children £5
Top up rent and council tax £10.
Money saved to buy furniture £5

That all comes to £29.50.

So she had £93 left

and the loan to the council - she'll have no CHOICE in that matter - they'll take it out her benefits before she picks her money up. So that's only £7 she's paying back

wow, baby brain kicked in and i didn't realise this was 7 pages long, only read the first page

guess the discussions moved on a we bit?

[slinks back out with her head down]

lol PT - given your last post apologies for the harshness of my comments in the post where I copied and pasted

And even once you have factured in all the obvious things like laundry and electricity, it's all the little things.

Cooking healthy meals is going to be a whole lot easier if you have the pots to do it in for a start.

What if your child falls over and needs a plaster? What about sanitary things for yourself? Toothpaste, soap, shampoo? Calpol? All the things we take for granted and hardly notice we are spending money on.

What if there isn't an NHS dentist? (ours went private years ago) What about (as someone said) if you have to go to casualty?

I think a lot of those judging are either living in places very unlike estates, with far better facilities, or they are so used to being able to afford transport that they find it hard to envisage what it would be like, stuck in the middle of nowhere, with no cheap shops or indeed shops that sold any healthy food at all, where a simple trip to the GP to have a child's ear infection seen to will have to come out of the food budget.

Of course, I could do better on that budget. Because I have a well appointed kitchen, a washing machine, no electricity metre, and everything I need in the way of shops, doctors and facilities within easy walking distance. And enough books to last me a lifetime without the need for the TV that seems to have annoyed posters so much. (how much do you reckon she would get for that if she sold it? enough to keep the family for months? hardly)

But I couldn't do it in her situation. I honour her, because I couldn't do it.

can i just say though that there are major flaws in the maths there... if she's getting loans to buy uniforms she's hardly organised enough to put money aside for furniture and presents is she? she also states she doesn't spend the 4 bus fair as she can't afford it.

someone i know runs her machine without detergent, maybe she does the same.... the article does say she washes clothes in the flat so clealy doesn't go to launderette.

over here benefits can differ hugely from one person to the next, why so sure she doesn't get 85... the article would hardly make a mistake there as the whole point is to show how poor she is.

i know how little money it is to live on... my point is having been there feeding my kids came first.... nothing else was paid til i was sure my kids were fed for the week (healthy food, not hotdogs)

Pink Tulip - income support is a maximum of £60.50 now - old system was more, but as she's getting CTC she's obviously on the new one - which means no more than £60.50 - she's paying back a council loan - (budgetting or crisis) which is ALWAYS taken out of your benefits, so in actual fact if she's paying £10 a week for that then she'll only be getting a maximum of £50.50 IS - it's not guessing, it's fact.

If she washes clothes in the flat then that £5 she puts on her leccy must only have been to last until later in the week when she got her CTC and put more on. Because you cannot eek out £5 of leccy to last the week if you are running a washer. Even without detergent.

Maybe the loan was because her daughter fell over and ripped her trousers? Or grew quicker than she expected her to? Or outgrew shoes early? Or lost her gym bag? Or tore her coat?

And if she didn't pay the bank back, where do you think she would end up? I have been in Lloyds bank, crying my eyes out because they took £90 bank charges from my benefits and I had nothing to feed my children with that week. They didn't give a toss.

They told me, in uncertain terms, if I closed the account or stopped paying the rest of their charges they would take me to court and I'd get a ccj. If I didn't pay the ccj, the courts would send bailiffs. If there was nothing of value they could take, tehy would attatch my 'earnings' and take it before I even got my money.

Not paying the bank would put her in a worse situation than she is already in.

I would presume she uses the £4 to see her mum if she hasn't had to buy plasters or shampoo or buy extra nappies because the baby has had a bad tummy or any amount of other things that the £4 could be better spent.

SSSS I am not here but, Lloyds bank are not allowed to do that, go back and complain you should get that money refunded and tell the DWP what they did, go to the CAB if necessary !

if you go to CAB in absolute dire financial straits they will always tell you to at least pay something towards your debts, not just to ignore them.

Ignoring them is foolish to the extreme if you ever want to have any hope of ever getting out of the cycle of debt and deprevation so imo she's doing the right thing slowly reducing them.

lol Sorrento - I'm not here either

Oh and they always threaten court, how much do you think that would cost them even if they won, it's not worth their while and I have seen judges tell them to fuck off in situations like that, it's bulling tactics.

They told me they were allowed to do it because they sent me a letter to give me 30 days notice that they were taking the money.

But because I live in rented accomodation and move a lot my bank is still registered at my mums address, incase I forget to change the address if I move. So I didn't get the letter because she forgot to pass it on to me.

Because they gave me the notice, they were allowed to take it. If I had phoned them when I got the letter they might have agreed to take smaller payments.

I did tell the DWP when I applied for the crisis loan to feed my dd1 that week. I also stopped getting my benefits paid into the bank and agreed to pay a set amount to pay off the other charges into the account each week. Probably what Louise has done.

Oh and I also am not here. I am washing up, in order to make Salmon fishcakes for lunch for me and dd2.

lol @ all of us posting that are "not here"

if you have hardly any money coming in though the bank is obliged to work out a payment strategy that you can afford... even if that means they only get £1 a week. fol did this so know for a fact it can be done, he told the bank 'i'm living on the dole and EURO 1 is all i can afford, take it or leave it' and they accepted it... think he's still apying it 8 years later but it's not cutting into his money so doesn't bother him, and he had more money coming in and no small kids to care for.

she's getting £100 a weeks by ye're reckoning right?

£7 on loans (could be reduced if she went to the bank)
£5.50 on tv liscence
£10 on gas meter
£5 on leccy
£5 for mobile (necessary?)
£5 for nappies

£32.50 leaves her with £67.50

Water bill £5.50 (would she pay this in council flat?)
Bus Fair £4
Top up rent and council tax £10.

£19.50 leaves her with £48

you can feed your kids more than hotdogs for that, even accounting for unexpected expenses and the miscellaneous non food stuff.

even pasta and sauces and mountains of veg would be better for her kids, would fill them up more too.

she can clearly cook if she can do lasagnes and stews from scratch so that's not her excuse.

again, i'm not saying she has it easy, fuck knows she doesn't by any stretch of the imagination, i just feel that her kids could have a proper meal with that money.

the sad thing is though she probably doesn't even realise that, i doubt she was taught budgeting and no one is taking her aside and saying... look love if you did xyz you could manage a little better.

never mind computing classes, think what a differance could be made if these girls were fofered basic life skills classes, budgeting, meal planning, that sort of thing.

Can you do a week's nappies on £5 if you're unable to get to a big shop? In the small shops they tend only to do small packets, which work out far less economical, also they may not do the budget ones.

oh well, perhaps she can

i thought the article said the small local shops were replaced by huge morrisons and iceland?

I do agree with some of what you are saying though PT, but I think you have missed the point a little. Lousie is coping the best she can the only way she knows how, because no one has showed her how to do it any other way.

I am not rich by any stretch of the imagination, but my children eat well. Because I live close to a decent and cheap butchers and I know that fresh meat is loads cheaper in butchers than Morrisons. Do you think Lousie does? I know that if I walk down to my local health center on a wednesday I can order two huge bags of locally sourced fresh fruit and veg for a fiver, from my local food co-op. Do you think Lousie's estate has that available to her? Or that she knows about it if it does?

We are having salmon for lunch because dd1's school is close to a fishmongers and I know that it is cheaper buying fresh fish there than in Morrisons. We eat fish a lot because we live in a fishing town so some of the fish sold at the fishmongers is stupidly cheap because its caught and sold fresh with no shipping costs. Do you think Lousie has that available to her? Or would even know what to do with a whole fish, head, guts and all?

She could do better if some one showed her what was available to her. But that is my and other posters points. Things like this aren't necessarily available to her, because she lives where she does and doesn't get the help or support that you and me might do, if we were in her shoes. That is what real child poverty is about and that is what needs to change.