Save the Children launches appeal for children in the UK

[Vagaceratops]

BBC link

And it will get worse :(

JoyfulPuddleJumper. I recon there's a business in that, can you set up some classes? I'd pay someone to teach me how to knit, you could then buy the wool and needles in bulk and sell them to your students. As a self employed person you'll be eligible for working tax credit, you can pick your own hours as well. Think of the possibilities.

You have to declare that and if it's over about £25/week, it will be deducted from her income support. Not declaring it is fraud.

This is a very good point where we have a benefit trap. And the new universal credit is a step in the right direction to removing this. Whether or not it will be flexible enough to cope with people with fluctuating incomes, time will tell but at first glance it's not going to be a magic bullet but it's better than what we have.

Again, it seems a sensible thing to do is not to dole out money willy nilly but to make some logical changes to the way things are currently done.

It's so easy to say that the poor could manage their money better, and it's easy to do that for one week, or one month, or even six months.

But do a whole year, and what do you do when clothes wear out, and your children do new ones? When there's a really cold winter and you need to keep the heating on all day, and your pre-pay meter charges you more per unit than the rest of us pay? When you go on, and on, and on, day after day, week after week, budgeting, managing as best you can, with no wriggle room in your budget for treats and nights out and children's parties and holidays?

And when there's only the most boring, soul-destroying, shittest jobs on offer, and hundreds of people are chasing them anyway - and most of them are part-time so won't pay you enough to live, and even the full time ones pay just enough to get you off benefits but not enough to get you out of the grinding monotonous just-managingness that you've had with benefits?

Poverty is not caused by fecklessness, or lack of get up and go, or any of the other 'moral causes' people talk about. It's caused by lack of money. And those people who think it's not so bad, should try it. Not for a week, but as if there were nothing, ever else to look forward to.

'think owning pennies to the 'paki' corner shop owner to buy cow's milk or eating only left overs dh brought from his working kitchen, also no TV, radio, land line never mind internet. Dh is British bt birth by the way. He had lost his 'entitlement' to benefits when he married me the foreigner.'

Please don't use that term to describe people from Pakistan or Asia.

And what a load of tosh! British people do not lose their entitlement to benefits for marrying a foreign person. Before I naturalised, my husband was a Brit married to me, a foreigner. A British person can claim benefits for themselves and their British children. They do not receive extra for a person who is not entitled to them is all.

niminypiminy 'oh yes I don't want to do a soul destroying job and I don't have the skills to do anything better oh well let's the hard working tax payer support me'. I'm leaving this thread now, good luck everyone!

Bye!

complexo - do you really think that the reason you had to work really hard is because of people who claim benefits? These people are doing the only thing they can to put food into their childrens mouths.

The real reason you are working so hard and have so little to show for it is because your employer was ripping you off.

Oh no, don't go Complexo - you've only managed to insult Pakistanis and the English, why not stick around, you might get the chance to share more of your delightfully racist opinions.

Racist? Ha. And I said feckless claimants. Remind me again why I don't post on these threads anymore.

niceguy - the article isn't about throwing money at a problem, it was about ensuring that people get a living wage which factors in the increase in the cost of living, particularly in food and fuel, which have hit over the past few years.

"Well but I'm in London where all the foreigners are getting job while the feckless English are complaining."

That is exactly what you said ^

Later you referred to your corner shop as a 'paki shop'.

Do you genuinely believe neither of those comment is racist?

Wonderingagain, yes it is. What they're saying is pay people more benefits and pay people more money. But like I say, no thought as to the causes and no suggestions as to how to fund said benefit/pay rises.

It's like me saying the answer to world famine is to give people more food. Of course it is. But the hard part is how to make it happen.

In short, we're all painfully aware that we do have people in relative poverty. It's not nice but so far this report is light on answers.

Why not copy parts of the US food bank system, specifically the pre-loaded debit card which can only be used to buy food and other necessities, and cannot be used for alcohol, tobacco, cosmetics etc...

This should kill two birds with one stone by preventing those who rely on the out of work benefits from frittering their money away on scratch cards and fags (hopefully ensuring that more of the money we already give them gets spent on the right things), whilst demonstrating to the rest of society that an indefinite life on benefits is clearly not a better option than a life of work, however poorly paid it may be.

And stigmatise people.

Well firstly judgey that would only help if you make the assumption that people are in poverty because they are blowing their money on fags & beer. Some clearly do and for them you could argue this could help focus their minds.

But like previously discussed, some people are in need because of other issues.

Plus if I remember correctly, food tokens have been tried. Some time ago the government issued tokens to asylum seekers. What they did was sell them.

Same thing would happen here albeit on a bigger scale. There'd be a huge black market in food debit cards and the idiots with the wrong priorities would still waste their money.

Plus there are grey areas to what constitutes a 'necessity'. For example if I go into Tesco then I assume I'm ok buying food and drinks. But not alcohol. What about new plates? A new ironing board? Is that not allowed if my last plate/ironing board was broken? Hardly living the life am I?

anyway the issues with food tokens is like the issues with healthy start vouchers, cheaper places like markets etc dont sell them, so it is not actually useful, it is forcing people to but more expensive stuff sometimes.

Asylum seekers would have to sell them to get nappies, toothbrushes, sanitary towels and the like as you cant buy that with food tokens.

MrJudgyPants one of the biggest problems with food stamps is that food inflation is much higher than 'general' inflation.

I think one of the biggest problems is the cost of fuel. The price of gas and electricity has risen massively over the last ten years. Plus, the poorer people are, the more likely they are to use prepayment meters which are even more expensive. That is something the government should look into.

Also housing. The cost of housing is too high. We need more houses, and not the estates of 'executive' homes which seemed to pop up everywhere in the early 00s, but proper starter homes and small family homes so that people aren't losing an entire income to their landlord or mortgage company.

I wouldn't lose sleep over the stigma of using a different type of debit card any more than I currently lose sleep about the unemployed facing the 'stigma' of compulsory visits to the Job Centre on a regular basis.

The Americans give their poor a card which has money credited to it on a regular basis (I think the Aussies are rolling out their version of this system too) - as long as the individual qualifies, it keeps getting loaded up; fail to comply with the T's & C's and the money stops getting loaded onto the card. If you sell that card you will be out of pocket whilst a new one turns up. If you try and use a card which you have no entitlement to use you would be prosecuted for fraud. Sometimes it's easier to just comply!

I take your point about what constitutes a necessity and what constitutes a luxury - perhaps closer examination of the American and Australian systems would reveal how they get around this issue.

As for businesses not being able to accept these cards, surely the backbone of the current chip and pin system could be utilised as a cheap and effective way to encourage take up. I appreciate that not all market stalls accept cards at the moment, but this stance is bucking the high street trend and this sort of idea could be the catalyst for change.

MamaBrussels "MrJudgyPants one of the biggest problems with food stamps is that food inflation is much higher than 'general' inflation."

Food price inflation is a problem whether money is handed out as cash, food stamps or a pre-paid debit card. It isn't an argument in itself to not change the system though.

Sometimes I think some of your are moles from Tory HQ.

It is totally wrong IMO to punish children from their parents actions. Yes, some parents are shit with money and that's why their DC are in poverty, giving them LESS to live on, which is largely what the WRB has done isn't going to magically make them better at dealing with money!

Targeted social work to help those kind of families is helpful, but no one is throwing money at that right now either.

I'm not a big Labour supporter but their record on reducing child poverty was actually very good, I'm not surprised that this has happened in the wake of cost of living increases and benefits and services cuts.

You might not lose any sleep over it, but a lot of people would. Why should the working poor - who are already struggling - be stigmatised even more by being marked out in this way?

Where is the evidence people on benefits waste their money?