The BBC's "Growing up poor". Poverty seen up close

CKhalvashi

CWSmith wrote: »

Similar to ash28, I was brought up in what was (at the time) relative comfort, and was the norm for every family on the street, and in fact, everyone we knew .............. but by today's standards, it would be deemed (probably extreme!) poverty.

By that I mean the very cheapest cuts of meat a couple of times a week, hiding from the council rent man, bread and dripping for tea quite regularly, no heating beyond an open fire in one room of the house, wearing hand-me-downs until I was 12 ........... it didn't feel like poverty at the time. There were plenty worse off.

By the way, this wasn't 1900, it was in the early to mid 1960's,

We lived like this in the late 1980s in the Soviet Union, when I was growing up. It wasn't awfully bad, and we were better off than most, but things were still tough.

Something that I will also add here, is that people clubbed together, instead of going alone, which is less common in the UK.

CK

grizzly1911

CKhalvashi wrote: »

Something that I will also add here, is that people clubbed together, instead of going alone, which is less common in the UK.

CK

It wasn't like that so much in the past. As we became richer we became more insular (selfish?), that and fragment families as people moved away from home, permanently, for work.

GeorgeHowell

grizzly1911 wrote: »

It wasn't like that so much in the past. As we became richer we became more insular (selfish?), that and fragment families as people moved away from home, permanently, for work.

Citizens in the former Soviet Union probably clubbed together as a way of uniting against a common "enemy" -- ie the regime that oppressed them.

Typical citizens of modern Britain have nothing to unite them. They believe in nothing, beyond the quest for material gain, status, and short-term gratification. It is becoming a godless, soulless society, and the attendant social problems and divisions that are ever more evident are the unfortunate consequence.

zagubov

CRISPIANNE3 wrote: »

I felt really sorry for the girl from Glasgow. She had a 6 month placement working over 30 hours a week for less than £2.00 an hour. It looked to be in a small supermarket and at the end of the period she was not offered a job.

Surely this cannot be right. To me she was just being exploited and the company concerned should feel thoroughly ashamed of themselves.

In the mid-70s I had a summer job in a small Glasgow supermarket, On £17.59 pw, after taking off the bus/underground fares- a very expensive £5pw- I was £2 better off than the dole. Still felt I could hold my head up, and it made it easier to get the next (better) job.
Anything's better than being idle IMHO.

StevieJ

The guy from London had a funny accent, was it one of those trying to be black accents?

zagubov

StevieJ wrote: »

The guy from London had a funny accent, was it one of those trying to be black accents?

I think you've just encountered this.

John_Pierpoint

shaggydoo wrote: »

But half of the UK are net beneficiaries of the state so what are you suggesting?



http://www.thecommentator.com/article/1760/over_half_of_uk_households_are_net_beneficiaries_of_the_state

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-2215070/Are-contributor-burden-nations-finances--Squeezed-middle-increasingly-dependent-state.html

How many household include no wage earning participants?
As a pensioner, my household of two is working partime and bringing in less than someone on full time minimum wage.
However we are paying a hell of a lot more in tax than we get back in benefits.
I would like to think that in a life time what we pay in taxes is balanced by what we get back in benefits BUT it never works like this - someone has to pay the army of government administrators, the military and their failing ventures, and the grandstanding vanity projects.

Amazing system where the majority are being bribed with their own money.

GeneHunt wrote: »

They seemed very poor to me - their teeth! My God they were only 16 and their teeth were dark. The older people's teeth were terrible too and their skin - some of the mums/grans were only mid 30s and 40s. And thin - not in a California/gym way but in a "I can't afford to eat" sort of way. Poor people live 10 years less than everyone else.

And there was no wall paper on the walls - and mould everywhere.

And no flooring - no carpets, no laminate, no rugs - nothing.

They seemed poor to me.

I don't understand why you would deny they were poor?

By world standards, picking through garbage for the aluminium drinks cans, to make the price of tomorrows food, is poor but proud.

And before you ask, when my kids aged 13 - 15 came to me complaining they had spent their monthly allowance; that is what they were forced to do.
They got the message and the garbage strewn local verges got a little bit more presentable.
It is a pity that Tesco has backed out of its one point per recycled item offer.

zagubov wrote: »

I think you've just encountered this.

Just when I was thinking I had mastered a passable version of Estuary English (Princess Diana style;)) the zeitgeist moves on.
jewnowotImeanlike?

zagubov

John_Pierpoint wrote: »

I would like to think that in a life time what we pay in taxes is balanced by what we get back in benefits BUT it never works like this - someone has to pay the army of government administrators, the military and their failing ventures, and the grandstanding vanity projects.

Amazing system where the majority are being bribed with their own money.


Just when I was thinking I had mastered a passable version of Estuary English (Princess Diana style;)) the zeitgeist moves on.
jewnowotImeanlike?

Well to be fair, either that or we'd be paying for the profits of all the private industries who make arms for them, or trainers for our ridiculously fancily-shod offspring and mobile phones so we can [STRIKE]talk mince [/STRIKE]communicate with anybody but the people around us or vehicles for the conversion of our remaining hydrocarbon treasure trove into puffs of smoke and greenhouse gases.:eek:


Most of us would probably deserve to be on Douglas Adams Third Ark for all the useless people and we're not all necessary for the functioning of society no matter what sector we're working in. I recommend we all eat some humble pie and listen to
Ry Cooder's It's the Taxes on the Farmer that Feed Us All

and remind ourselves we'd all be put to the test if the farmer took a rest.:D

GeorgeHowell

zagubov wrote: »

I think you've just encountered this.

The multicultural London accent is usually considerably irritating to listen to, especially as it also embraces the Australian soap opera inspired "moronic interrogative". It does savour of whites trying to emulate blacks -- a truism that David Starkey was so widely reviled for uttering. Nevertheless we must accept the reality that spoken language is ever-evolving and this is now becoming a "standard". More important is that everyone knows how to express themselves properly in standard written English, and in these days of almost universal texting and social networking I'm not sure to what extent that is the case.

John_Pierpoint

zagubov wrote: »

Most of us would probably deserve to be on Douglas Adams Third Ark for all the useless people and we're not all necessary for the functioning of society no matter what sector we're working in. I recommend we all eat some humble pie and listen to
Ry Cooder's It's the Taxes on the Farmer that Feed Us All

and remind ourselves we'd all be put to the test if the farmer took a rest.:D

For an antidote to the entitlement culture, I found this uplifting:
Seventeen-year-old Flossy from Somerset runs her family farm even though she's still at school. Flossy is still a novice when it comes to farming solo but she has full responsibility for going to market to buy cattle, medicating the animals and rearing the sheep.
Every day involves juggling farm work with school work, and with her exams approaching the pressure is on.
George from Cheltenham works all hours juggling looking after his flock of sheep, running his own firewood and fencing business and making time for his important social life. He's keen to prove to his mum that he can handle lambing season on his own and do it well.
And 18-year-old Lewis, the son of an organic dairy farmer, is in his third year studying agriculture.


http://www.channel4.com/programmes/first-time-farmers/4od


Sad to say 2 out of the three seemed to have no father on hand - the curse of the 21st century?


I cannot agree with you about the subsidies given to "farming", the CAP is actually a subsidy given to land ownership. Most farmers get confused about their role as farmers and their role as landlords of their farming business. We are now in theory in the midst of reforming the CAP, for the last 15 years it has been a simple subsidy to land owners. When the present system started England had about 45K farmers doing a "June Return", a sort of annual Doomsday check on their farming enterprise. Then the decision was made that the subsidies could be paid on a acreage basis and all sorts of land owners with pony paddocks and tennis courts came out of the woodwork. The number of "farmers" more than doubled and this, coupled with satellite technology accurate to a sheet of A4, caused total chaos for the English government.

As first year economics students learn, put a subsidy on something and prices rise somewhere, in this case land prices and tenants rents.


I checked out a neighbour's operation. He and his wife are tenants and work pretty hard raising beasts, and sell meat for the freezer directly to the public. They were getting a subsidy payment of about £1,500 a year, Unfortunately the European court of human rights has ruled that the government telling tax payers where their taxes are going is a gross invasion of privacy - so I cannot check the latest figures.
But here is a flavour:


http://farmsubsidy.org/GB/


Number 4 in the list is actually Primark in disguise.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dz_rMvIPEDI&playnext=1&list=PL1EDF4A829F61569D&feature=results_video

http://www.farmersguardian.com/home/business/business-news/uk-farm-incomes-rose-by-25-per-cent-in-2011/46701.article