1 in 4 households are struggling

patchwork_cat

The_White_Horse wrote: »

why should you pay more council tax the more expensive your house is??? do the people in those houses cost the council more money? I bet not. I bet you take the family in the £1m house and take the family in the council flat and the one in the flat will cost the council 10 times as much at least.

This country is hateful in the way it steals from those who do well, save, try to improve themselves, to give it all to !!!!less layabouts, teen mothers and immigrants.

wake up people of Britain or you will be fiddling with you copy of the Guardian whilst the country burns.

Well everybody does - it is banded based on the price of your house, so as that is the way why is it not ok to add in extra bands for more expensive houses?

sjaypink

im doing alright tbh. but then ive always been 'poor' so it doesnt bother me

i see people laughing at my [STRIKE]skip[/STRIKE] car when i drive by. so what? i dont have £300pm coming out my account every month for a loan for a new one just so i can feel flash. plus ill get more for it in scrap value than what i bought it for- no depreciation worries there :cool:

people are surprised when they ask 'have you been watching lost?', and i reply no. another £40 odd quid that stays in my account. thats decent beer money so i can go out and socialise intead of staying in watching !!!!!! american telly

and, to top it off, when friends are off to waitrose, im ringing orders to family and friends to go over the farm or down the beach fishing... 4 partridges in the oven as we speak

so, no, stingy households arent struggling i dont think :T

apparantly those on benefits are though (transcript from q&a session about welfare reforms)

q: I would like to know why, in this climate of excessive prices for food, petrol,gas,electricity etc etc inflation etc why we are still have no increase in our rates of social security- how do you expect us to live if the average man in the street can’t?

a: I’m slightly confused by your question - social security rates do go up, in line with prices or earnings for Pension Credit.
But you’re right to say that prices are going up which is why we’ve tried to do more to help - higher Winter Fuel Payments and spending a billion pounds in the last Budget on helping families with children.

The_White_Horse

the average man on the street works. if you don't work (and aren't medically unable to - I work with a blind person who comes in on the train each day and I have worked with someone with a condition akin to Prof Stephen Hawking) then you should get NOTHING bar an initial 6 months help.

PasturesNew

Fire_Fox wrote: »

I struggle to imagine many British adults have not come across the Energy Saving Trust's TV campaign,

Eh? The what?
Seriously, never heard of it.

A couple of years ago it was possible to 'Eat Healthily on 50p per day' (Old Style board, Weezl74).

But not everybody has the time (they're working full-time), space/no garden to grow stuff, nobody's donating things to them (family/friends from their allotments) or a freezer.

While some people can live healthily on 50p a day, it does require all/most of the above to achieve it. Oh - and a love of lentils I think.

sjaypink

PasturesNew wrote: »

While some people can live healthily on 50p a day, it does require all/most of the above to achieve it. Oh - and a love of lentils I think.

huge stack of those salad and coleslaw snack pot things in the chiller at morrisons for 2p each last night. 25 of them would have done me alright for today. or maybe like 6 of them and a chocolate bar, no lentials in sight

PasturesNew

sjaypink wrote: »

huge stack of those salad and coleslaw snack pot things in the chiller at morrisons for 2p each last night. 25 of them would have done me alright for today. or maybe like 6 of them and a chocolate bar, no lentials in sight

Bargains are a one-off that can't be relied on though. If somebody isn't working full-time, or are working locally, they have the time to find out the best times to go. The max one could have bought of those at 2p would have been 3 really. One for last night's tea, one for lunch today, one for tea tonight. Then you'd probably never ever see them at 2p ever again.

Yesterday I picked up some cheapo bananas (because I wasn't working full-time so was out and about). 4p each they worked out at. The thing is, with bargains, you have to be there - and you have to be able to store them long enough to make use of them (aka a freezer).

I went shopping today too, so with my bananas yesterday I've now got enough food for a whole week for £7. Eggs, bread, cheese, bananas, butter, sausages. So that's lots of sausage sandwiches and cheese omelettes for me.

The thread on the other forum says 50p/day healthily... I've never managed to actually find the details as it's so full of fluff and chat (like ours are)

lostinrates

Thats true PN, about a freeer. Its such a shame you don't have room for one.

I like lentils, and I've been really craving fish paste sandwiches since yesterday. Thats quite cheap, I might get some in the weekend shop tomorrow.

Things that might help flat dwellers would be window boes for cut and come again lettuce or greens of some sort. Spinich? I've grown tomato plants as house plants too. My neighbours thought they were something else though.

sjaypink

no, i know, your first post was correct- it takes a lot of homegrowing/ scavanging/ searching to do 50p pr day

that thread is about a couple, so they have £7 per week to spend on food- i think theres a lot of difference in how many youre feeding

easier to spend £4 per day to feed 8, for example. £2 to feed 4 sounds a lot tougher, 50p for 1 is near impossible

i probably spend £1.50 pp, per day

StevieJ

Sir_Humphrey wrote: »

People do spend money on all sorts of silly things. That is the free society we all live in.

I personally do not buy coffee for £2 unless it is served by a waiter, in a china cup and preferably on a nice shaded terrace somewhere in the south of France. I think Starbucks and the like are an outrageous rip-off.
..

My sister was in Italy last week and a cup of coffee was 12 euro :eek:

lostinrates

StevieJ wrote: »

My sister was in Italy last week and a cup of coffee was 12 euro :eek:

Horrendous! Where on earth did she go? The only place I can think would be San Marco in Venice, my coffee near La Scala cost 90 cents, or under DH's office costs 1E10 Dh's fancier brew costs 2E, behind Duomo in Milano. ETA: she must have sat down, I guess, they do charge extra for that.