Poverty?

[DeppityDawg]

I knew that but fear of asking a question goes against my life mantra which has always been - feel the fear and do it anyway! In any case I have found that when a question is really followed through answers are often made clearer. Anyway my Daddy told me always ask if I wasn't sure...!   

I guessed that this thread would follow the familiar pattern of "cannonising" the poor into a single homogeneous mass of unfortunates who can do no wrong and are of course, all victims to the last man and woman.

Think of it this way. Imagine you put 1000 people chosen at random onto a remote (but habitable) island, gave them basic tools and implements and an equally divided method of exchange, and left them to their own devices for 50 years. In other words, they all began with equal wealth and opportunities. At the end of those 50 years, you could bet your house that 10% would own 50% of the wealth, and that the bottom 10% would blame everyone else for their position. That's not to say poverty is always self inflicted, it's an observation that "poverty" isn't always inflicted by others either.

Asking what actually constitutes poverty is a real good question Toots. Just that knowing what this forum is like, it's probably not the best place to ask 

[Borg Refinery]

Independent foodbanks are giving out more than 13,000 emergency food parcels a week as demand soars during the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, data shows.

Demanding
Some 340,994 three-day food parcels were distributed by 189 independent foodbanks in the UK between April and September, according to the Independent Food Aid Network (IFAN). This is the equivalent of 13,043 parcels a week – or 1,863 a day.

IFAN expects the number to pass half a million before the end of the year, with demand continuing to rise and an anticipated spike expected in the run-up to Christmas.

The network surveyed 134 independent foodbanks about their activity in 2019 and during the pandemic, and received data from an additional 55 foodbanks from April. This represents less than a fifth of the 961 known independent foodbanks and does not include those run by the Trussell Trust – meaning the true scale of food poverty will be much higher.

Recent Trussell Trust figures showed its network of 1,300 centres distributed more than a million parcels in the six months to September.

Rise
The IFAN data shows that overall, 426,958 three-day food parcels were distributed between February and October by the 134 foodbanks – an 88% rise from last year.

The number of emergency food parcels given out soared during the first lockdown, before falling slightly over the summer.

In April and May there was a 156% and 155% rise in the number of food parcels distributed compared to the same months in 2019. This figure then dropped between July and September, but was still on average 70% higher than the same period last year.

Since October, demand has crept up again with foodbank managers anticipating a steep rise before Christmas as families struggle to meet additional costs.

More people to help
Foodbanks are seeing more families needing help, including the newly unemployed and those on benefits who cannot afford essentials.

People who managed to keep afloat during the summer are now struggling to pay high energy bills that come with heating their homes, IFAN said. Foodbanks are also seeing people who have been struggling for some time but have resisted coming forward.

The most common reason for need was people's benefits being insufficient to enable them to afford food, according to 51 organisations running 125 foodbanks which recorded reason of use.

In September, 92% of these foodbanks said this had affected 10 or more people who they had helped that month.

Some 63% of the foodbanks cited changes to existing benefits causing a delay to payments in at least 10 people helped that month, and 65% said demand was from people who are newly unemployed and waiting for Universal Credit.

There is also an increasing need among people who are living in poverty despite being employed. More than half (51%) of the foodbanks said this was a factor in at least 10 people they helped in September.

Food bank user numbers rise
Independent foodbanks are giving out more than 13,000 emergency food parcels a week (Charlotte White/PA)
The lowest paid families
A government spokesperson claimed:

We have always been committed to supporting the lowest-paid families.

That's why we have provided billions of welfare support this year, including the £170 million Covid Winter Grant Scheme to help children and families stay warm and well-fed during the coldest months, and a further £16 million funding for food distribution charities.

Charlotte White, manager of the Earlsfield foodbank in south-west London, said it is currently helping between 90-100 households per week, up from 20-25 this time last year. She said:

Of this increase, the majority are people who have never used food banks before and we've noticed a significant increase in households with children. Many people are coming to us because of delays or problems with benefits or Universal Credit, and we're also seeing a big increase in people with low income – often zero-hour work.

We can give people food but food poverty is a symptom of the problem, not the cause. Until we tackle the underlying structural problems, the situation will worsen.

IFAN co-ordinator Sabine Goodwin said:

Independent food banks are picking up the pieces yet again as more and more people struggle to pay the bills. There needs to be a realisation that we cannot continue to provide an emergency response to a long-term crisis.

The Government's £170 million funding has huge potential to support people through a 'cash first' approach and the provision of cash payments by local authorities instead of food bank referrals.

But ultimately it's the social security system and the payment of adequate wages that need our attention to end food poverty for good.

IFAN is calling for the government to make the £20 uplift to Universal Credit permanent, remove the benefit cap, and end the five week wait before people can receive their first Universal Credit payment.

https://www.thecanary.co/uk/news/2020/12/11/foodbank-use-increased-almost-90-this-year-as-benefits-not-covering-basic-survival/

[papasmurf]

I feel an uncontrollable urge to find a cripple and kick him.

That unfortunately is an all too common occurrence, for which  I blame a disablist government ably assisted by the Daily Heil.

[Borchester]

Yeah right. Here we go. Same bloody hobby horse.


Fact: all those ideas Ian Duncan Smith sought so useful were invented by Gordon Effing Brown and it is not the right who use denying a man the opportunity to work as a way of imposing political will

I see myself as a decent enough sort of chap. And if I can help the sick, the lame or the needy then I will. But every l Read one of Pappy's posts I feel an uncontrollable urge to find a cripple and kick him.

[johnofgwent]

Because they don't have enough income to cover their necessary out goings, a situation made worse by ten years of Tory Austerity and the Tory hostile environment towards poor and disadvantaged people.

Yeah right. Here we go. Same bloody hobby horse.


Fact: all those ideas Ian Duncan Smith sought so useful were invented by Gordon Effing Brown and it is not the right who use denying a man the opportunity to work as a way of imposing political will

[Sheepy]

Wasn't that an attempt to stop landlords charging sky high rents on the assumption that they would be paid no matter what?

Dunno but something you said earlier, rung a bit of a bell, about wanting people to snap.

[papasmurf]

It does not matter what is done the Pappys of this world will moan because, frankly, being a self pitying miseryguts is all they have.

I was brought up to defend those who cannot defend themselves I would rather be a misery guts than a callous bastard. (I don't pity myself at all.)
I am far better off than at least 14 million people in Britain who are one payday away from being in serious financial problems.

[papasmurf]

Wasn't that an attempt to stop landlords charging sky high rents on the assumption that they would be paid no matter what?

It didn't work.

[Borchester]

The full rent used to be paid direct to Landlords. That was screwed up by Iain Duncan Smith and cuts to Local Housing Allowance which does not cover rent by a very long way. (70% of 70% is a very long way short.)

Which more or less sums it up.

It does not matter what is done the Pappys of this world will moan because, frankly, being a self pitying miseryguts is all they have.

Not wishing to be schmultzy, I reckon that poverty is about how you feel about things. For my part, I am an elderly old gentleman living on my pension and wits, both of which are hopelessly inadequate. but the other day I went down to Fortnum and Mason and bought Madam some biscuits. They cost about 100 times as much as a charabanc full of custard creams from Sainsbury's and tasted pretty much the same. But when she saw the F&M carrier bag her happy, mad little face lit up like the Blackpool illuminations and that made me feel as rich as Croesus.

[T00ts]

The full rent used to be paid direct to Landlords. That was screwed up by Iain Duncan Smith and cuts to Local Housing Allowance which does not cover rent by a very long way. (70% of 70% is a very long way short.)

Wasn't that an attempt to stop landlords charging sky high rents on the assumption that they would be paid no matter what?

[papasmurf]

OK so what you are saying is that there are those who put their money towards the wrong things and delays are the cause for others, not that there is necessarily too little. For those incapable perhaps they were better off when rents were paid direct to the landlords, but there does seem an argument for kids to have financial management training before they leave school. Even at uni they need to manage their funds. Would you agree that that might be a way forward?

The full rent used to be paid direct to Landlords. That was screwed up by Iain Duncan Smith and cuts to Local Housing Allowance which does not cover rent by a very long way. (70% of 70% is a very long way short.)

[papasmurf]

. Are we as a nation more conscious of poverty and where does that line start?

Tory MPs seem to be in denial that poverty exists at all. Such cognitive dissonance is unacceptable and shows they don't have a clue what is happening in their own constituencies.

[Borg Refinery]

There is real poverty in the UK and all too often it is not the parasites that know how to milk the benefit system or the feckless that get themselves into trouble through their own wilful stupidity.

The DWP's own figures say that 'fraud' accounts at most for 3% of the direct payouts they make. That is virtually nothing and could even be much lower as it's within their margins for error of the estimate. From memory, if you deduct the amount that they wrongfully underpay or fraudulently deprive people of, they almost cancel each other out anyway?

The real poverty is that of those that work or try to work full time or more but find themselves trapped between the rock of zero hours contracts or other low wage rates and the hard place of sky high rip off rents.
This poverty is real as those trapped in it have no other options and find themselves at the mercy of both the worst employers and the lousiest landlords.

We were all brought up to believe that you should work hard and that if you do, that work pays. Sadly this is no longer the case and that a few are able to become fabulously wealthy on the backs of it is a national disgrace. This is not a party issue as the roots go back to the nineties (if not earlier) and we have had governments of all colours and hues in that time.
The trouble is that too many of our law makers are directly benefiting from the status quo or are advocates for those so doing. Expect a lot of handwringing from all sides but mysteriously, very little happening to make change for the better.

That's it. The problem is that they want to deliberately keep people on low pay to have a cheap workforce for the employers  - who's bidding they operate on.

They have said publicly that wages are too high - Priti Patel and Several others in their book Britannia Unchained, they said we should be like Chinese workers. And Boris said we should become singapore on thames...

[T00ts]

I have family in many differing countries toots , the USA , France, Scotland , England  , Northern ireland and many others  , and poverty rates and perception of poverty doesnt seem to be much different in many of them.

Sure they all have problems specific to their location and culture and of course governance , but i just get heartily sick to death with this portrayal of everywhere else being great and scotland and england being shite.

Seems to be the same problems in many of the countries across the western world , with the same arguments and same naively idealistic solutions.

Did your relatives just all escape or were they shipped out? Whoops - sorry I couldn't resist!  I worry that degrees of poverty are ignored - there must be degrees - in favour of a lump sum to give the worst overall picture.

[Sheepy]

I agree with this , and this in particular is a problem in england( dont know about wales)

Remember in scotland the labour party voted against things like the scot gov providing free school meals for kids in the first few years of primary , and then voted against things like ending right to buy.

Then they stand and scream about tory austerity , and their cheerleaders like smurf was on our old forum bragging years ago how he sold his ex council flat in buckinghamshire and made a mint out of it now on here bleating about the poor under the tories when that old can't is part of the problem.

Quite happy to take adavantge of thatchers disasterous right to buy scheme which played a long term part in what we see today , but less willing to take personal responsibility , prefering to cast all blame at the tories.

Tell me sampan , has labour ended poverty in wales despite being in power since 1999?

As we find with many of these lefties , easy to carp about the poor from the sidelines  , but less easy to provide solutions when in power.

we did a crackng thread on housing problems in the uk , on the old forum a few years back ,and john of gwent in particlur made some great contributions from memory.

Well, a bit of a double-edged sword that one, Thatcher gave people the right to buy, followed with a huge recession and destruction of industry on behalf of the bankers and an awful lot of people ended up repossessed, followed with Labour boom and busts, followed with a worldwide crash caused by subprime mortgages and they all lost their homes and pensions. The bankers made a killing either way. Followed with Dyno, somehow thinking he has an edge on understanding economics. Even austerity was weighted one way.
As for poverty, I don't have cardboard for shoe leather these days but I do see a lot of people caught between a rock and a hard place. What the point is of creating more, I have no idea.