The Conservatives

[MammaBrussels]

I cannot believe someone, even someone in the Conservative Party, would say this.

How can anyone support them?

You don't have to be on benefits to be poor. I know many people who have two jobs and are caring for family with disabilities - dome people I work with do a night shift, care for disabled lived one, snatch a few hours sleep and go back to work. Many run cars on a shoe string. There's no room for manoeuvre though, any unexpected expense can tip you into debt, two unexpected events - car breaks down, cannot get to work, lose job, cannot pay rent -and all the bread and water, cut price chicken and eggs and walks in the fresh air won't help.

Fact is nobody in the UK is without education, healthcare, food and shelter. The UK talk of poverty because they don't have what the people who work have, not because they are poor.

Are there no homeless people in the UK then?

Homeless and without shelter are two different things.

So if they live in a cardboard box they're not living in poverty then?

Mammabrussels hyperbole

Fact is nobody in the UK is without education, healthcare, food and shelter.

So that's not a fact then?

Mammabrusses moves her argument from hyperbole to straw man. What next ad hominem?

We are certainly ery luckly to live here and the poor are very lucky most of the middle classes still buy into the welfare state and are prepared to contribute to it. I am . However people are better off than even when I was a child when central heating etc was rare.

Tu quoque Novack

Exactly how old are you Xenia? You talk about Dickens as though you knew him, personally

Homeless and without shelter are two different things Novak, what do you mean by this?

To be fair, there are various states of homelessness - sofa-surfing, for instance, where you have nowhere to live but kip on a succession of friends' sofas. Not really a sustainable solution as eventually you run out of friends and end up on the streets. Or in B&B accommodation - at least you have a bed to sleep in but not a home, nowhere to cook or store food, no loo or bathroom of your own.

These days it's hard to afford central heating even if you have it. That's another thing which can blow your £71/week out of the water.