David Cameron: It is your fault if you are fat and poor.

[FairyMum]

Has anyone commented on the David Cameron-speech on moral neutrality? He is a price-dick, isn't he?

Shite food is cheaper and easier but just because you can't afford waitrose is no excuse to feed your kids crap and blame the government because you are obese.

We are struggling at the moment and for the first time in my life I am finding it hard to afford to buy the food that I want to buy. Our diet is no longer as varied or tasty as it was but so far I have been able to put food in our bellies without resorting to turkey twizzlers.

We are only eating meat at the weekends and dh and ds are having tinned tuna, pasta and vegetables quite a lot with left overs for lunch the next day, if we don't have enough I have porridge or weetabix for dinner, we are not starving.

Great post, sixspot.

I agree that DC has absolutely not idea at all how most people live and inhabits a lovely Notting Hill ivory tower. The one infiltration of real life is having a disabled child, but money, while not altering the heartbreaking emotional difficulties can certainly cushion the financial, social and professional impact of disability letting them have an entire basement level of their house for their child and 24hour carers etc.
He and his wife and friends are ridiculously sheltered from the reality of most people's lives, let alone the lives of the poor. And the conservatives did oppose the minimum wage, which I think was shameful.
I still think that considering absolutely everyone to be a victim is not healthy.

The title of this thread is soo Daily Mail and completely untrue. I also love that you're all on your high horses because someone has had the temerity to suggest that poor people may be able to take responsibility for themselves and make choices to imporve their lives, and yet you're all ignoring a far more important thread about the secrecy of the family courts. Perhaps you could all devote some of the energy you're expending on this non-news non-thread into writing to your MP's about the shameful family courts system in this country.

It's funny isn't it, how the definitions of 'poor' are so wildly disparate in the West versus the Third World. In the Third World when you're poor, you can't even feed your family, especially now. Over here, poverty and obesity are seen to go hand in hand. Frankly if you can eat enough to get fat, how can you be poor??

Oh wannabe, how simplistic

Is McDonalds cheap though?
I must admit I have no idea
But I can't believe a mcDonalds for a family of 4 (or a kfc or whatever) is cheaper than buying the ingredients for a home-cooked meal. You don't have to eat caviar! Jacket potatoes don't cost a lot. Or pasta with a simple sauce. Or bean-based casseroles.

etc

Um, I'm on the family courts thread too. And poverty is important. And linked - the family courts pick on the poor disproportionately.

the third world doesn't have big supermarket chains or convenience food, for starters.

Not neccessarily victims, but products of society.

He's spot on IMO.

Why?

Two words: personal responsibility.

Yes Edam, you and three others.

WWW - I heart Polly Toynbee!

All fat people are lazy and eat chips. That's certainly true - I read it in the Dail Mail.

All poor people are poor because they don't try hard enough.

The unemployed don't really want to work.

David Cameron is right and it is time we said the truth. Which is that he and his rich friends are parasites we could well do without.

its easy to borrow money to buy stuff like tvs if you are poor

you get one with a box on it to put money in and ditto washjing machine etc or its on some appalling hp arrfangement

you pay a fortune for it because effectively you dont really own it

but it is sold you as opnly 2 quid a week or whatever

ditto electricity meters and provident loans

poor people can only spend cash and they often end up with tick at the corner shop so their choices are lmited

its just not the same as thinking of keeping chickens and growing veg and buying veg boxes

the problems are fundamental and polotics has a lot to answer for to get to change society that big business has created

its tesco and the like that sell cheap booze andf two for one on sausage rolls and stuff

I think processed crap always looks really expensive comapred to healthy food.

I agree with all of what he said, except the part about poverty - how can not having enough money be your fault, if you are working every hour god sends, and still struggling?

WilfSell I am afraid that nearly all of the things on your list, are your own fault with the exception of the Teeth and the high blood pressure.......

Most rich people I know have worked hard for their 'riches'. Rich doesn't necessarily equal parasite and poor doesn't equal noble.

I don't think it's simplistic at all.

I grew up in Africa where poverty exists. Real poverty. where people can't afford to feed their children - I mean really can't afford to feed their children. Where if you don't go out to work there is no money - none, because benefits systems don't exist in countries where there is real poverty.

But here in the UK one of the markers for being in poverty is not having a computer. .

CD I have no idea how much a mcDonalds costs either. But I certainly don't think that convenience food is cheaper on the whole, it's just more convenient.

6spot - I spent New Year's Eve with her!

Sixspot, this is good too, same premise but in America

Why is it so wrong to ask people to take responsibility for themselves?

As Jo Brand once said the reason she is so large is that one hole (pointing at her mouth) is bigger than the other (pointing at her arse!).

I don't buy this idea of being forced into buying cheap nasty food - water is cheaper than cola, porridge is cheaper that sugar coated cereals etc It takes some effort to produce a good balanced diet but it can be done and you don't have to buy fancy organic etc. Surely a jacket potato with cheese or beans is better than a burger and chips?

I just wonder what would happen to all these people if the state was not there to support them.

Can we just remember that the reason the welfare state was created in the first place was that millions of people worked their socks off, their lives were literally "work work work, hunger poverty and dirt" and they were STILL on the breadline, living in terror of losing their work or losing their health and being, literally, penniless. The welfare state and the NHS were created precisely because it was recognised that people could not, by their own efforts, pull themselves and their families out of poverty.

Can we all also (particularly those of us who can remember them) remember that in the early 1980s a Conservative government very deliberately set out to break the power of some of the organisations that did the most for working people - giving them a sense of solidarity and pride - namely the unions. The unions were not just about flying pickets and power cuts. They had a long and honourable history of educating working people and encouraging precisely the sort of self-help skills that we now - apparently - have Cameron advocating. Cue hollow laughter from me at any rate.

We need Custardo on this thread. Where are you Custy?

So Thatcher desroys communities, social problems multiply and the present Tories tell the poor it is all their own fault.
Nice.