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Just a wee thought, I suppose we all have a different idea of what constitutes a poor person in the UK today.

What is it for you?.

Lets try and talk instead of nasty comments.

A person with a full-time job getting screwed by employers who have them on zero hour contracts, the minimum wage and as a result have little or no free money for luxuries like food, gas and water. In my city we have 2 huge food producers who have got rid of something like 3000 permanent salaried jobs and replaced them with agency workers who are treated like shit. Many of these people are worse off than those on benefits who get 2 of the largest bills, rent and council tax subsidised.

Nasty comments like this, you mean?



I must say I admire the hypocrisy of this given your non-stop, content-free insults of Number 6 for heaven knows how long.

At this rate you will be providing spiritual guidance to forumites in the near future.

Poor people. IMO generally anyone on less than the average wage or London living wage.

That a average wage which you're pushed to find anyone actually recieving.

If you consider that the basic standard of living involves a roof over your head, enough food, enough money for bills, enough money to purchase new clothes at semi-regular intervals, enough money to fill your home with the essentials and pleasure type things most people would want (TV, kitchen items, etc), enough money for a certain amount of leisure and social activities, then anyone who falls below that is poor, and anyone who is above that line is either reasonably well off, quite well off, very well off, etc, depending on how far above the line they are.

You have all those things is you have an income, often topped up by tax credits and Benefits you may get whilst working - or if you live solely on Benefits and manage your money properly, namely view food and essentials as your priority and the other things as secondary (they can be afforded if you manage your cash properly as I've said) then you are either at that line or above it so you do not qualify as 'poor'.

You see programmes on TV about people going to food banks and I honestly believe that those people either aren't managing their money properly or they are in limbo for a brief time whilst awaiting a Benefits decision. There are 'hardship' payments you can apparently get in such limbo circumstances anyway. I've seen two programmes on TV in recent weeks about food banks and there was one woman who went to a food bank as she was apparently skint - but she owned a car. This was not essential, like someone with young kids who needs to ferry them around, this woman's kids had grown up and had left home she said, she still had a motor though (which is obviously costly to run, even before petrol). She apparently needed to go to a food bank however for bags of pasta which cost a pound in the supermarket and for cans of soup which cost about the same. This makes no sense.

There was a guy who had been kicked off Benefit. No one gets kicked off Benefit if they play by the rules. They never said why he'd been kicked off but it would most likely have been either him not turning up, not returning forms in time that they had sent him, or maybe working on the side and he'd been busted. He had no dole but he DID have hardship payments (this was said on the programme). He said he was so stressed-out over the fact he'd been kicked off the dole that he needed to smoke more, so he spent his hardship money on tobacco, thus leaving him broke so he had to go to a food bank! This was ridiculous and he deserved little sympathy.

I've always found it odd how the poorest areas of Britain, they are called 'poor' as they are the bottom of the economic totem pole (so relatively speaking they are 'poor') have the highest number of people as a proportion of the local population who smoke, drink and gamble. If you were to go to a small supermarket on one of these estates and ask the person behind the counter whether sales of alcohol or tobacco products have dropped in recent times they would say 'no' , I am sure. Yet people claim they can't afford ?1.00 for a can of soup, bread or pasta. This makes no sense to me. Should people who can afford ?8.50, either daily, or every second day, for a packet of fags be taken seriously when they say they're so skint they have to go to a food bank for items costing ?1.00? No they shouldn't.

Play by the rules laid down by the Benefits people and you'll get regular money for an indefinate period. View food, essentials and bills as more important than fags, beer and trips to the bookies, then you'll be able to eat every day and won't need to go to the food bank.

I'll pitch 2 arguments Max.

Food Banks. My colleagues used to take food and volunteer at our local Salvation Army Food Bank. They have now stopped for 3 reasons. 1 most of those turning up were drunk or on some other substance. 2 the recipients were more than not smokers.....and 3 we found out the parcels were being taken outside and sold for.....roll the drums....fags and booze.....

Tax Credits are the biggest evil. Your wage should be sufficient to pay for a basic lifestyle. Subsidising shit wages means employers can screw hard working staff to low wages and crap contracts. Many moons ago I worked in a factory that made car parts. The shop floor workers, who did 6-2 and 2-10 earned a decent wage. The equivalent of at least ?20k in modern money. Overtime and bonuses were also paid. Supervisors made at least ?5k more in 2014 money. Our largest local employer now pays its shop floor workers the minimum wage, sends them home early if work is quiet and expects them to be available for work at 30 mins notice. They are a stock exchange listed business who supply prestigious high street stores...the poor staff also get zero shift allowance (wheras I know 2 local multinationals whose shift premium is 50%) so their gross wage is just over ?220 a week or in real terms half what the automotive supplier was paying in the 90s....

Max obviously thinks all poverty or all 'poor' people are that way because it is self inflicted??? To put him straight only in the minority of cases is poverty self inflicted. Minorities are not the majority (unless you have deep seated prejudices).

Just because one millionaire evades tax doesn't mean all millionaires are tax evading scum.

Most ridiculous post on this forum this year. Can anyone beat this ridiculous post?
So everyone on benefits is living it up and certainly 'not poor'. Lol. Everything you see on TV isn't true either.

Food Banks. My colleagues used to take food and volunteer at our local Salvation Army Food Bank. They have now stopped for 3 reasons. 1 most of those turning up were drunk or on some other substance. 2 the recipients were more than not smokers.....and 3 we found out the parcels were being taken outside and sold for.....roll the drums....fags and booze....."

What you say there more or less chimes with what I said in my comment, namely fags and booze seem to be the priority for lots of people and food is secondary. How can people who can find ?8.50 for a packet of cigarettes, either daily or every other day, be expected to be taken seriously when they say they don't have ?1.00 for a can of soup or some pasta. They clearly should not be taken seriously. Why has there not been a drop in fag and booze sales in the poorest parts of Britain since the hard times began a few years ago? People clearly have enough money, they just don't prioritise.

"Tax Credits are the biggest evil. Your wage should be sufficient to pay for a basic lifestyle. Subsidising shit wages means employers can screw hard working staff to low wages and crap contracts. Many moons ago I worked in a factory that made car parts. The shop floor workers, who did 6-2 and 2-10 earned a decent wage. The equivalent of at least ?20k in modern money. Overtime and bonuses were also paid. Supervisors made at least ?5k more in 2014 money. Our largest local employer now pays its shop floor workers the minimum wage, sends them home early if work is quiet and expects them to be available for work at 30 mins notice. They are a stock exchange listed business who supply prestigious high street stores...the poor staff also get zero shift allowance (wheras I know 2 local multinationals whose shift premium is 50%) so their gross wage is just over ?220 a week or in real terms half what the automotive supplier was paying in the 90s...."

I agree that tax credits give employers an excuse to underpay the staff. People should have a lot more security in their jobs and things like zero-hour contracts should be scrapped. The thing you mention about people being on-call and having to come in at 30 minutes notice should not be allowed. People being able to be laid off if there's not enough work, therefore not being able to predict how much money they'll have earned a week or two ahead, is wrong.

I can look back over a working life spanning over 25 years and I've experienced all kinds of abuse - just like most people would have. I've done long-term tempting placements where you can be sacked at one seconds notice. You could literally be there and they say to you at 10.17am: "get your coat you're leaving because there's less work than we expected". You're permanently worried this might happen and you feel the need to suck-up to the people you work for all the time.

I've turned for a job, having not only been promised it but been told that they're so relying on me now I've told them I'll be coming that I must turn away any other jobs I might get offered - and I have done - only to find out on the day I show up that it's been cancelled and no one has bothered to tell me. I am just told this in a matter-of-fact way when I arrive, no apology or anything, and you are so angry you almost want to punch the fucker for what they've done to you.

There is no much abuse in the workplace. It's interesting how EU directives bought in holiday pay for temps and also much stronger rights for temps after they've been in the job for, I think it is, 3 months, yet zero-hours contracts and the ability to let staff go on the spot are still in place. It is scandalous that there is so much scope for abusing staff in the workplace still, and so little legislation to prevent employers doing it.