famous, rich and hungry for sport relief

[misstiredbuthappy]

Anybody watching ? I watched it last year realy hit a nerve with me.

Again a complete inability to deduce the root cause. Oh dear.

Gobby, reading some of these twattish comments Id go for dogged ideology.

I think today there is an attitude that everyone must live a certain way and their seems to be an inability to recognise that if your income goes down because you have lost your job or circumstances change you cannot go on spending the same as before.

Every month I look at our finances, what we have coming in and what our outgoings are. A few years ago when dp got made redundant and was out of work for 2 years, with 2 little ones to support we immediately cut back where we could. We ate beans on toast, egg and chips and bread and home made lentil soup. I can honestly say we were feeding a family of 4 on nearer £7 per week and not £7 per meal.

I am so scared of going back from where I came from that I probably am more tight with myself than I need to be and do feel like shaking people when I see people spending money on irrelevant stuff like smoking, drinking, eating meat, buying expensive clothes etc because I know a few months down the line they will be complaining that they do not have any money.

The woman who went to the food bank couldn't make ends meet because she had borrowed money to pay letting agent fees, deposit on house and removal company fees. At the end of the programme we saw that she was going to have to pay out for all of this again as her private landlord was going to have to sell his house.

We need to have more social housing in this country with affordable rents. People wouldn't have to find money for deposits and letting agency fees and they would be able to settle in the one place and be confident that their children won't have to move houses and schools. It would be much cheaper for the country too as the rent on the social housing would pay for the upkeep of the houses and fund further building. Housing benefit would be paid to the councils or HAs so the money would be kept in public use and not paying off private landlords mortgages.
I hate the system that allows private landlords to charge high rents knowing that some of that rent will be paid by housing benefit.

whineaholic stop banging on about the one topic. Most people would agree that benefits shouldn't be able to fund luxuries like smoking or sky tv. We've covered that now. What so you say about the capitalist system which allows interst rates of 90% as we saw last night. Or of amateur landlords who can make a fast buck through housing benefit and then be able to evict their tenants with little notice?

The woman who se landlord wanted the house back will get her deposit back and that would be a lump sum towards moving costs then it would be a case of finding out how much more she would need and selling what ever she had to make up the difference. But if she stays in the house untill her landlord evicts her then the council will have to rehouse her.

Well she may not get all of her deposit back. She will have to use that again for a new deposit. She'll still have to pay letting agent fees again and removal costs. Possibly top up her deposit. She may have nothing to sell. The council will have an obligation to accommodate her and her family but they could put them in B and B.
So she'll have to borrow more money and will be in a worse situation.

I wouldn't use foodbanks if i was smoking instead of eating.

So it isn't anyone's business.

Though I don't actually smoke because I can't afford to and luckily wasn't that addicted when hard times hit so gave up.

And they should come and film my bog standard one bed that I share with my 3 year old. If it weren't for generous friends it would still have bare untreated wood flooring etc. Im only allowed to bid on one beds as there is bugger all housing in the south at the moment. I still count myself lucky as I lived in a b&b for months before this and we went hungry most days.

But it's just so glamorous don't you know

The woman who has to move won't get her deposit back until she has noved out of the house. Yet a new landlord won't let her move in until they have a deposit. So you can't rely on your old deposit for moving costs and new deposit.

I don't know how people can see others living in these awful circumstances and not feel a bit of empathy. I doubt very much any of these single mums set out to raise kids alone. Most of us could be in that position quite easily. My marriage could collapse and I could lose my job. Then people could judge me too.

And just forget about the fags for now. It's not a clever way to spend your money whether you're on benefits or not!

What do you think of those who just lose their jobs? Maybe they could've prevented it so still deserve your vitriol? No?

Besides purposefully having kids you can't afford, what other choices actually force you into poverty? There really aren't many and when you look at a realistic breakdown of benefits the majority actually DO NOT go to feckless, smoking, single parents.

You do know that food tokens are in addition to some benefits don't you? Not instead of.

Annie I agree entirely. I see very few people who prepare for the unexpected, or take any steps to protect themselves from a change in circumstances. I am surrounded by people who work, who have decent incomes, and spend every single penny. They don't 'need' to, they choose to have a foreign holiday, or replace their car, or buy new furniture/make household improvements. They have no contingency fund. No idea how to live other than exactly at their means, not below. A rise in their mortgage/rent, or a cut in overtime at work, results in the shit hitting the fan immediately; and a temporary period of unemployment would cause them to incur massive debt.

There are some changes in circumstances that are utterly unexpected. But if you earn a decent wage, most people can build up a small financial cushion at least.

As for ending up a LP etc, it just reinforces how foolish it is of women to give up independence and earning power in relationships, relying on men to support them.

like

Well you have to take a bit of time off work to actually have the baby

And women usually get left holding the baby. If it were the other way around men would be just as fucked.

I cannot believe how many ignorant, bigoted people are on this thread.

But then this sort of stuff always did attract the worst of MN...

On a lighter note, I smiled when Jamie said 'what if the Aga, I mean oven, breaks?' Bless.

Mrssippie, yes, DH missed that little gem and I rewound it for him - hilarious.

I'm a bit worried that Rachel Johnson said she was doing this for research. Hope it doesn't mean we'll have to listen to her posturing as an expert on poverty from now on.

I thought it was clear that the parents cared deeply about their dcs and wanted to do their best by them (although I take the point that you should never make a child feel guilty for eating). Their circumstances seemed to have induced a kind of anxiety-ridden paralysis so it was hard for them to think in a cool way about how to act for the best. Some of the debt seemed to have arisen when money spent on dcs that the parent couldn't afford. Intellectually it may not have been wise to spend, but if you live every day feeling that you're failing to give your dcs what you want to give them and you love them and you want them to have things you can't have yourself - well, I can understand why a parent sometimes splashes out.

Spending money is an emotional choice as well as an intellectual one - can't we have compassion for what is driving people to make choices they wouldn't otherwise make? Can't you see how panic and despair and hopelessness (as well as hunger itself) might affect your ability to make decisions?

In terms of a call for action, it seems to me:

• crack down on the doorstep lenders
• have guidelines to stop banks acting like dodgy lenders (the Ethiopian woman's bank seemed to be acting unethically in terms of its charges)
• any time benefits are stopped or being reduced to repay a loan, have more stringent rules to avoid people being pushed into destitution
• a benefits system that encourages people to pick up little bits of work, thus building up their confidence and their work experience, on their way to becoming more self-sufficient, instead of a system where people find it very hard to take the first steps into work because they lose benefits immediately.

I loved the kid that Theo was visiting by the way - hope her future is so much future. For them all of course, but she reminded me of my dd and hit a nerve for me.

hope her future is better, I meant.

Some excellent points there bibliomania.
Especially about being able to take up a small amount of work without immediately losing benefits. There are so many jobs offered with zero or a very small number of hours contracts.

I thought this was just a terribly sad programme. At the end all I could think was how awful their situations are.

That poor young girl who said that she could see her mummy shrinking and shrinking infront of her eyes.

There are some horrid people on this thread peddling the Daily Mail view that these people made these choices. All this referring to choices and not circumstances. Shame on you all.

Rachel Johnson was such a buffoon. So proud of herself for producing a hearty meal for 4 adults for £7. I kept hoping she'd bung a large bag of lentils and more carots in it and make 2 or 3 meals out of it. Idiot.

I felt that these families could do with some practical help - budgeting, healthy and frugal cooking, debt reduction, support with stopping smoking, counselling. A bit like a life coach. Theo seemed to be offering his host some practical steps to make her money go further.

I will be donating.

I feel like I watched a different programme to many of you who felt that these silly people need to budget a little better!!

I have limited funds and need to budget as many do, but I do not live in poverty. However I have seen poverty of money, food and most of all opportunity. I was a social worker for many years, do you have any idea of what some people face every day to survive ,what they do to make ends meet and you begrudge them a few fags, and everyone they knows face similar difficulties and they live without hope, and this continues for generations.

They are not an alien species who just need to try harder, there is often no ladder out of this lack of opportunity, it seems to suit society to have a 'bottom' layer which they feel better about themselves as they are better, they work harder and apparently never make mistakes.

If you have numerous issues in your life , you are surviving which takes huge energy you don't have the energy to deal with everything. Yes they may be part of their own problems ,but aren't we all? I can still sympathise and empathise with a multi-millionaire whose wife leaves him, I can surely sympathise with families who have nothing.

I want to know what the people who took part in it were paid. Did they take a fat media fee to go on TV spongeing off people who don't have enough? (because they were put up by them and used their houses, sheets, etc - who paid for all that, even if they notionally contributed pro rata to the food?)

imo the best thing that could come out of this would be some focused lobbying on a change of law wrt to loan sharking, and tenants' rights.

At the end when there was a preview to the next ep - Paphidis (is that his name? ) was saying "if I were in govt it would be illegal" - I hope he was talking about usurious loan rates and I hope something is done about this.

I couldn't bear Johnson's hectoring of that woman over the accounts. "Why didn't you tell me that?" erm, why does she have to? Who put her in charge? She doesn't have a clue. She doesn't know how to cook cheaply and she dares to lecture on how they could do better.

It seems that everyone in that show had come a cropper at some point by a spiral of debt / finance costs. In one case, unavoidable moving costs and a usurious loan; in another, an unpaid electrcity bill having to be paid back and no doubt the meter has ramped the actual costs of electricity up beyond all fairness; in another, bank charges. There should be some way of the costs of finance being put back in their box. I am not arguing that people don't have to pay their electricity bills, but once you don't (if you have been ill, for instance, like this guy) and then you owe, there should be some sort of decent cap as to the extent you can be punished for it and the rate of paying it back.

I was the child in the programme, not eating well while my Mum smoked 40 a day and drank Special Brew. We ate potatoes and tinned tomatoes for a number of meals each week, along with a meal I invented which was spaghetti, topped with a sauce made by heating up a tin of tomato soup. We lived in the country, meaning the nearest shop was a "corner shop" and it was a long way (10 miles) to a supermarket for cheaper food.

I remember how angry my mother's fags made me. It was the late 80's and fags were, relatively speaking, fairly cheap then. However, she would take the wrapper off a pack of fags while telling us that we would need to go to the shop with money earned from part-time jobs (my sisters were 14 and I was 16) to buy dinner. One year, I bought a microwave by saving all my money and "surprising" her with it.

It is a shit life. Yes, she was depressed and miserable (and, it became clear, an alcoholic). There was no pressure to work back then and, in any case, my youngest sibling was still in primary school. We didn't mind helping to pay for food but it was galling to be doing that so that she could support 2 horrible and expensive habits.

I do think there ought to be more funding made available to people who need deposits / new cooker / fridge and that kind of thing because these unexpected costs are a bugger. I was still paying my mother's bills for years after I left home - she just couldn't manage her money at all, having "fallen" from affluence when my parents divorced. But, there was always money for cigarettes - never a question that those would be bought, along with the wine / beer. Then she would spend what she had left on food and bills.

I would certainly like to see doorstep lending being made illegal. Such loan sharks actively target the poorer members of society, such companies do not actively target wealthier areas. Same with the payday loan companies; notice the proliferation of them in "poorer" towns and cities.

I live in what is regarded as quite a wealthy SE town but there are pockets of poverty here; its hidden but it does not mean to say it is not there.

Also unemployed people in many urban/rural areas do not have ready access to credit and banks; they are regarded as a poor risk so become
easier targets for money lenders with their extortionate rates. Debt also keeps people trapped in the cycle. There are no supermarkets within easy walking distance (convenience stores tend to be more expensive and have less choice) and transport costs are generally expensive. Pre pay meters for gas, electricity and water cost more to run.

There are less banking facilities and fewer cash machines in such urban areas; I've noticed too that cash machines were put in by some companies in such areas deemed "poorer" in terms of overall demographics to charge people for withdrawing their own funds.

People do make bad choices but that does not mean to say that they should not seek help or feel ashamed about seeking help. It takes a lot to seek help in the first place.