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?

That looks very interesting, WWW.

Bundle .

gosh yes 6spot, I remember the soup kitchens for the miners, both in the northwest where i come from and in south wales where i went to university. those were bleak days for many families. I wasn't sad to see the back of the Tories.

So Mrsruffallo - and our present government...???

SSb - well said.

(Ime, the poorest people don't eat McDonalds or whatever. It's far too expensive)

Wannabe is right. And my point is that if you can get fat, you have enough money to eat enough to get fat and you are therefore NOT BY DEFINITION POOR. I am most certainly not denying that there are people in this country who are struggling desperately, can't afford to feed their families properly and most likely do not have who don't have Sky/Computers/cars/smoke fags. Those people are poor and those are the people we should be worrying about. Someone on this board talked about 'poor' people opening their freezers; the idea that you can be poor and automatically have a freezer shows how much the very definition of poverty in this country has been utterly skewed over the years.

Present govt not helped much, but they are not making these comments

my dd gets a lot of stuff from her corner shop because when they have no money he lets them have stuff and pay another day

but he doersnt sell fruit and veg

and she doesnt get home from work and picking up her ds till nearly seven

i can see the dilemma and she does woirk hard

none of them are fat but they are young and struggling with debt asnd you have to pay more for things if you dont have the resources eg electricity on a meter is expensive and the first amount you put in pays off your debt before you even get electricity

she will come right in the end because she has education and family and support and knows more than a lot of people do

if you are completely mired in poverty then the will to get yourself out is extremely hard

it is government policies and ecomonics that do make a difference we just dont realise it

and politicians themselves are pretty bad at seeing long term effects of their policies and world events too ie the credit crunch

people often want things to be better but dont like paying for them either

ie richer people dont like pasying for different policies

ie the people that david cameron wants to vote for him hence his speech

Re the definition of poverty - the Rowntree Foundation have just published an interesting survey.

They asked real people - not boffins or policy wonks - about what they feel constitutes an acceptable standard of living.

Link here if anyone is interested.

zippi, I don't think many people realise you pay more per unit if you have a pre-payment metre for your fuel.

So are we now thinking there are two types of "poor"....

There are the poor as defined by that recent report as those who do not have Sky TV and a PC.

And then there are the truly poor - probably many OAPs - for whom life is a daily struggle - who regularly trawl supermarkets for the food at the sell be date, who make do and mend?

I absolutely agree - if you are obese you are not poor. Let's be frank - there are not many obese people in the worst parts of Africa are there?

Poverty isn't just about money. If you don't have much education, dysfunctional family relationships, are in overcrowded housing, no real career prospects, or no self esteem to attempt a career then you are living in poverty of choice.
It's allvery well blaming people who can't defend themselves. Sitting in an airy spaciuos office in your large house in a nice area is incomparable.

Most rich people I know have worked hard for their 'riches'>> if someone has 1000 times as much money as his gardener that means he worked 1000 times as hard yes?

agree about poverty of choice.

well said mrsruffalo

Mercy - you have highlighted a very important point - that the poor are often penalised by their circumstances - that fuel is more expensive that is you pay from direct debit, that not having a "proper" bank account stops you taking advantage of many things etc

the shops you have acess to are different if you are poor in the uk and tbh it is the uk we are talkign about in this context

you only have to get a bus out into suburbs and the shiops are totally different

you pay to get a cheque cashed and you spend the cash there

I am bewildered at the argument that if you are obese you can't be poor.

Well you can't be short of food can you?

SSB - I think people are getting confused between poverty and famine!

so to be poor you have to have no food?

I have lived on bugger all
my flatmates ate shite
I cooked proper things for myself

I wouldn't vote for DC
I am not a tory
But I do agree with some degree of personal responsibility. No-one is going to hand you stuff on a plate (unless you are a trustafarian and with that comes all sorts of personal responsibility issues too of course, they rarely seem happy or useful IME)

So either you give up
or you do something about it.

Clearly there are those who don't have the mental or physical ability to do that, that is why we have the welfare state. But for able-bodied people with a brain I just cna't understand why they would want to waste their lives/bodies

Not no food - but as previous posters have said processed foods high in sugars, fats and salt are generally more expensive than grains, pasta, vegetables etc.

When I was poor all I ate was toast and jacket potatoes. I could not contemplate burgers, chips, sugary cereals etc as they were too expensive.

So you are only poor if you are starving?
Bit silly

i think people get confused between living in the uk and living in other parts of the world

tho in some parts of the uk there is such a massive difference that it is in some respects another part of the world