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 just for the record, there are people who work and earn less money than that "

if they are earning less than that they will get housing benefit and council tax benefits, and if they're working 16hrs a week they'll get WTC too.

You see in her shoes I'd sell the TV and get a computer and we sold ours for £25 recently before somebody pipes up about that.
A radio would be better too.
We have sky cos of DH and the bloody football and can honestly say most nights it's off after the kids are in bed because there's 57 channels and nothing on.

exactlt FAQ

well yes - wanting to sleep more often goes hand in hand with depression (or in some cases the opposute and being unable to sleep).

I don't believe anyone on this thread could honestly say they could lead a happy life where they spent every single night with no company, no TV, no-one to talk to - I think I can honestely say I'd lose the will to live doing that every single night

Sorrento - I'd be surprised if the TV sold for enough to buy a computer..and even if she did afford the computer - she's not going to afford the internet access is she?

FAQ, I know they'd get some benefits, but it doesn't pay completely for your housing and council tax.
All I'm saying is £136 isn't ideal but it's better than nothing, and if you've no rent or council tax to pay you only have day-to-day living costs to consider. And there are certain sacrifices which can be made.
Didn't anyone else wonder where the other half of her income went?
If I was her I'd also have the CSA chasing the dad for some maintenance. Some dads I know are hounded constantly if they're so much as a day late with the payment!

no if they were earning less than she gets they'd almost certainly be entitled to if not totally full, nearly full benefit.

"Didn't anyone else wonder where the other half of her income went? "

If you scroll down the thread there's an excellent post from SGM (I think?) and others explaining how the money "goes".

I am quite at how unreasonable a fair few suggestions are, re. cutting back...

a TV licence is under £10 a month
Chips...someone mentioned buying potatoes nstead...actually she also buys potatoes, doesn't she...but buys cheapo oven chips...and tbh, those could be healtheir than homemade deep fried ones, anyway...
drink Tapwater instead.....well, depends what area you live in, surely....if you live in a disgusting water area, well...I don't blame her...and tbh, to me british water is vile, or has been in all the areas we been living in....boak...

etc...
I think what people need to look at is, that this woman is hardly wasting money in general, and doesn't have treats, etc....and whilst reading is nice, so is TV...I mean isn't her life kinda miserable enough, why do people feel the need to judge her for the tiniest bit of " non-essential"!

ooops faq...you are kinda saying much better what I tried to say....

Jesus all you Lady Bountifuls out there. "She should get rid of her telly" "she should do xyz"

Why do you feel the need to stare and point at other people's trolleys?

You are all so bloody bad mannered

I bet if we all posted our weekly budgets and expenses, we could all pick holes in each other's choices. I'm sure we could all sneer at each other and tell each other what would be a more improving and virtuous choice. But why would we do that to each other?

BUt some people really are better and more deserving than other blebs people Bella...

are they monkey....

you can understand why it took so long to get ride of indoor relief like the work house in this country and go back to outdoor relief which had been about before as parish relief - we attitudes like this in 1850 and they havn't changed one bit It was thought then that the poor where wicked and therefore deserved to stay and suffer where they were, wear rough hessian sacking for clothing and put there ideal hands to work with hard labour.

A few magistrates were to turn on the workhouse governers for their appaling treatment of the poor and coroners to were to call for the workhouse to go easy on the poor as they were not criminals and should not be treated as such, for there was more than one case of overwork and death at the end of the day.

I was being sarcastic RAL - the absence of a question mark in your 'question?' (tho I am a notirious bad speller and gramaticus!) is just confusig me!! agh

attacking the mother is a way of dealing with guilt about the children. Those children have a crummy life and some of you begrudge any penny of your taxes going to help them so you have to suggest its misspent.

The children will be left out of playground life if they don't have a TV. And maybe its the only thing that stops the mother becoming so depressed that she can't carry on with her courses and her attempts to educate herself to where she can get a job.

Barbarianoftheuniverse - don't see why you shouldn't suggest a charity that might help people in this situation. Hopefully there may be more than 100 mumsnetters who would actually like to offer a hand up rather than a kick when you're down and the Guardian might get pretty fed up with all the requests

All this "why can't she read to her children?" is driving me barmy.

She can barely read!

You don't get on a course to improve your literary skills because you find Joanna Trollope easy enough but struggle a bit with Tolstoy.

You go on a course to improve your literary skills when you can't read much more than "the cat sat on the mat."

I don't know which posters are winding me up most on this thread, the Beadles-in-training (Useless mother, should be grateful for the crumbs she is given and use them as I decree) or the Marie Antoinettes (Why doesn't she get an allotment, a nice table from freecycle and make nutritious meals from my vegan cookbook).

LOL it's a difficult choice isn't it BS.

what is really sad about this article is the downward spiral the poor girl is in

her own mother had her young and was poor

she is living in poverty with her kids and not much future

her kids will go on to repeat her mistakes and then their children will end up living in squalor

maybe that story should be printed out and given to every 15 year old girl at school "Look, this is YOUR future, unless you do something about it"

We need to get rid of the mindset that thinks that it is acceptable for teenage girls to have endless children and to be supported by the state. That shouldn't even be a lifestyle choice, but sadly, for some girls it is.
It is a way of escaping their own miserable home situations.
Better sex education, more money spent on avoiding unplanned pregnancies is more preferable than children existing in such Dickensian conditions.

can I just point out that skinny six year old boys put more food away than you would BELIEVE?

They aren't being overfed, they simply have the same calorific requirements as an adult women, more so if very active (which a child walking everywhere will be, because they don't walk, they run!)

thank you colditz - someone that understands that my 5yr old really can eat that much n he's not skinny like DS1 (8yrs old) - you can see his ribs - urghh = - but he's certainly n ot fat either, infact when he had his starting school weight/height done he was actually bang on the weight/height correlation. I am certainly not over-feeding them.

And yes - they walk everywhere - it's just under a mile to their schools, and we walk it everyday, if we go to the shop on the way home it's just over a mile. Plus on a Sunday we go to church (walking there and back) - and it's next to infant school.

oh god Riven don't DS1 (and 2 actually) would easily do that now)

no it's ok - I see my brothers diet (now an adult - but not much different from when he was a teenager) - he has 6 wheetabix for breakfast (among other things)

Even he was amazed by how much my older 2 could put away last January when we stayed with him for a week LOL.