Uk Child Poverty Survey Exposes 'grinding Reality' Of Cold, Damp Homes

[crashmonitor]

Huge, draughty Edwardian or Victorian sash windows are often the worst culprits IMO. Mr B's folks had a large (by modern standards) Edwardian house with huge windows. Despite central heating the bedrooms were bloody freezing in winter - except for their own bedroom where they'd replaced the window. It made the most massive difference. But there was no way they could afford to replace them all.

And foresake the joys of sleeping in a warm bed in a cold room, my biggest headache is trying to get to sleep in a warm room. Not too mention those beautiful patterns we used to get on the sash windows, Jack Frost painting it and all that.

[Jeremy424]

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/oct/29/uk-child-poverty-cold-damp-homes-finances

Hmmm I wonder how many answered they had an xbox, flat screen tv, sky and how many of their parents smoke. I'd be interested to know what questions where asked in this survey.

Someone should do a Jonathan Swift on these 'not poor if have electronics' comments. One Xbox would feed a family of five, resistors make a nutritious and tangy accompaniment to baked beans on toast. I'd do it myself, but I'm too busy gorging myself on ipads...

[interestrateripoff]

Someone should do a Jonathan Swift on these 'not poor if have electronics' comments. One Xbox would feed a family of five, resistors make a nutritious and tangy accompaniment to baked beans on toast. I'd do it myself, but I'm too busy gorging myself on ipads...

Yes if only these electronic devices didn't need power....

[crashmonitor]

There is an idiosyncratic approach to poverty these days, especially in the leftwing media (Guardian/BBC etc). If you are on benefits and they are capped at £500 per week (equivalent of a £35k per year wage), then you are considered poor and everything should be done to stop you having to move out of Central London, however, if you earn £50k per year (take home approx £35k) then you are rich and need to have your benefits taken away and don't even think about living near to your work, it's the home counties for you and long, expensive commutes so you know the privilege of working!

Truth is it is probably people on low incomes who are outside the welfare system who experience the lowest standard of living. They don't get any media attention. Being entitled gets you noticed. There are the silent poor that just gets on with it and they probably don't even consider that beans on toast for the main meal and not putting the heating on is living poor.

[Dorkins]

Someone should do a Jonathan Swift on these 'not poor if have electronics' comments. One Xbox would feed a family of five, resistors make a nutritious and tangy accompaniment to baked beans on toast. I'd do it myself, but I'm too busy gorging myself on ipads...

+1

Poor people flood their brains with electronic entertainment and drugs (including alcohol) because it's a cheap way of escaping a fairly grim existence.

Fags, booze, electronic toys and betting shops are the symptoms of economic hopelessness, not the cause.

[slacker]

Poor people flood their brains with electronic entertainment and drugs (including alcohol) because it's a cheap way of escaping a fairly grim existence.

I suspect a fair few not-poor people are doing the same as the benefits they aspired to work for slip further away the harder they work.

[crashmonitor]

+1

Poor people flood their brains with electronic entertainment and drugs (including alcohol) because it's a cheap way of escaping a fairly grim existence.

Fags, booze, electronic toys and betting shops are the symptoms of economic hopelessness, not the cause.

Self denial has links to dragging oneself out of poverty. The test of putting a sweet in front of a child and promising two if they wait a given period is supposed to have some correlation to life chances. So behaviour can be a cause as well as a symptom.

[slacker]

The test of putting a sweet in front of a child and promising two if they wait a given period is supposed to have some correlation to life chances.

and when someone works 20 years to find someone else ate all the sweets years ago?

[@contradevian]

Is it even possible to buy a CRT TV now?

Yup £15-£26 in local British Heart Foundation shop. Loads of them.

[Errol]

Is it even possible to buy a CRT TV now?

I still have a 10yr+ old Sony Trinitron that is going strong.

[iamnumerate]

Is it even possible to buy a CRT TV now?

Get them for free on freecycle.

[crashmonitor]

and when someone works 20 years to find someone else ate all the sweets years ago?

Indeed anybody starting out on square one now is probably facing that possibility. Those that have already done a twenty year stint have probably had access to a privileged upper tier in life's Ponzi scheme.

[tomandlu]

Get them for free on freecycle.

Heh - that's how we got rid of ours. They came in a cab to pick it up and the driver helped carry it out. He was initially mystified by the whole thing - "so how does anyone make any money from this?" - eventually, the penny dropped (you don't, although I'm sure a few resell on ebay). He went away very excited - mostly about putting his own unwanted crap on it afaict.

[R K]

Seems like nothing much changes then.

I grew up in a cold damp council house, no central heating. In winter ice forming on the inside of the window sills and the all too often power cuts even denied us use of the 2 bar electric heater. I remember loads of us 'poor people' queing up at a local government building to be issued with a winter coat - either a pea grea parker or 5h1t brown duffle coat.

That feeling (almost a fear) of been freezing cold has never left me and in some ways neither has the feeling of being 2nd class and poor. We were marked by the coat (and itchy woollen trousers).

I can't judge too harshly poor people having a few nice things like a decent T.V or an XBox because what else is there?

Single malt.

Weird how having a tv these days makes you a target of the Daily Mail haters who seem to actually want people to live in damp squalid sh1tholes. I guess that's what reading the Hate does to people.

[Dorkins]

Self denial has links to dragging oneself out of poverty. The test of putting a sweet in front of a child and promising two if they wait a given period is supposed to have some correlation to life chances. So behaviour can be a cause as well as a symptom.

This is not factually true anymore, especially if you are in the middle to lower end of the labour market.

Save while in work and you will have less spending power, then when you lose your job the benefits system will expect you to live on your savings while your also-sacked coworker who spent everything they earned qualifies for everything.

Plan your family so that you have kids when you can afford them, meanwhile your neighbour who had kids whenever they felt like it is working 16 hours a week for NMW plus tax credits and taking home more than you make in 40 hours.

Decide not to take on a mortgage you can't realistically afford and so rent in the shambolic UK private rented sector instead, meanwhile on the other side of town some idiot who was willing to sign whatever a mortgage broker put in front of him is sitting in a nicer house while the government hands your taxes to the bank that lent him the mortgage so that it doesn't have to liquidate its bad investment.

The system punishes self denial.

[rantnrave]

This is not factually true anymore, especially if you are in the middle to lower end of the labour market.

Save while in work and you will have less spending power, then when you lose your job the benefits system will expect you to live on your savings while your also-sacked coworker who spent everything they earned qualifies for everything.

Plan your family so that you have kids when you can afford them, meanwhile your neighbour who had kids whenever they felt like it is working 16 hours a week for NMW plus tax credits and taking home more than you make in 40 hours.

Decide not to take on a mortgage you can't realistically afford and so rent in the shambolic UK private rented sector instead, meanwhile on the other side of town some idiot who was willing to sign whatever a mortgage broker put in front of him is sitting in a nicer house while the government hands your taxes to the bank that lent him the mortgage so that it doesn't have to liquidate its bad investment.

The system punishes self denial.

Excellent post - as is TMT's first comment.

Good thread. I'll not ruin it further...

Edited October 29, 2013 by rantnrave

[19 year mortgage 8itch]

The system punishes self denial.

That's exactly where we are folks.

[morbotheterrible]

Yep, apparently is now worse in the private rented sector than social housing sector and worst amongst working families (hence the new phrase "working poor") than amongst those totally reliant on benefits. The thing with classification of poor is that many consider people on benefits automatically poor because of the historical association but these days families on benefits can get a lot, especially when they get satellite benefits in kind, they can really add up (housing benefit, child benefit, child tax credits, income support, free school meals, subsidised childcare, subsidised bus travel, reduced water bills, warmfront grant, uniform grant, milk and fruit vouchers etc). The benefit poor end up often being better off than those in PAYE after travel expenses, council tax etc plus they don't have to go out to work.

Yep, and amongst those on benefits there is the polarisation of those who the Daily Mail seems to be able to sniff out, the immigrants living in a South Kensington Mansion worth £x million, and those who are largely ignored, living hopelessly desperate lives of humiliating, grinding poverty.

I sometimes wonder whether there isn't a deliberate tampering with the system in order that it creates absurd results in order that certain sections of the press can seize these anomalous instances and create a false impression of those on benefits. I say this, because I know someone who is a friend of a friend who is entitled to disability vehicle allowance because he has three disabled children. (I'm not sure what these disabilities are, and that is a separate debate.) Apparently you get a sum per child, and so this person has ordered a brand new Volvo V70 business edition with sat nav, lane departure, adaptive braking etc. and these cars are insured, taxed and serviced.

I suggested that this could not be right be right, it was probably an exaggeration, you probably get a lump sum to buy a vehicle and then maybe a sliding scale for the rest of the children, but apparently it is true. (this friend of a friend was originally considering a Q5 or Q3 or something.) My friend is not usually a jealous person and supports the idea of a welfare state, but thinks that a basic vehicle would suffice, and it is just wasteful to throw this sort of money about. He is so bothered by this that he was calculating what that car would cost to own. To get it on a 20k mile a year lease = £550 per month with a £5.5k deposit. (£5.5k deposit = £1.8k per year for three years). Lets say insurance £1000, tax £400, servicing £400? He reckons it's worth £10k a year, which would be £14k worth of taxed income.

I imagine there is something underhanded going on with lobbyists for these lease companies, but still surely this cannot be normal? I suggested my theory to him that it was the old Malcolm X idea of getting you to side with the oppressors against the oppressed, by deliberately causing absurd results as this is not my understanding of the usual position of people on benefits. Someone on this site recently posted half a dozen links to people who had been mistreated by the ATOS administered system (including one who had set himself on fire).

[olliegog]

Yep, apparently is now worse in the private rented sector than social housing sector and worst amongst working families (hence the new phrase "working poor") than amongst those totally reliant on benefits. The thing with classification of poor is that many consider people on benefits automatically poor because of the historical association but these days families on benefits can get a lot, especially when they get satellite benefits in kind, they can really add up (housing benefit, child benefit, child tax credits, income support, free school meals, subsidised childcare, subsidised bus travel, reduced water bills, warmfront grant, uniform grant, milk and fruit vouchers etc). The benefit poor end up often being better off than those in PAYE after travel expenses, council tax etc plus they don't have to go out to work.

+1

the 'passported benefits' add up to a lot of tax-free money.

would also add listening to the pundits talking about 'how to keep warm' (since when did Angela Knight move to Energy guru)

there was the usual guff about wear extra sweaters - obvious isn't it

there is lots of help out there (with your bills) - no there isn't - only if you are on certain benefits - if you are not you get no help at all.

(this is not to negate the winter fuel payment which is non-means tested but all the other 'help for the cold'iis only for those on means tested benefits.

Edited October 29, 2013 by olliegog

[Venger]

We spend 4K+ on fuel of varying sorts to heat/power the house.

It's always cold, we stopped fighting it and now we keep upstairs at 12C min.

Cutting the TV, mobilephones and xbox for the year would raise temp upstairs by 5C for a month.

That's a lot of money.

[winkie]

Truth is it is probably people on low incomes who are outside the welfare system who experience the lowest standard of living. They don't get any media attention. Being entitled gets you noticed. There are the silent poor that just gets on with it and they probably don't even consider that beans on toast for the main meal and not putting the heating on is living poor.

Soooo true in so many cases......the proud reliant and strong that just get on with it, accepting what is thrown at them they carry on without complaint or any feeling whatsoever of entitlement.

[richc]

We spend 4K+ on fuel of varying sorts to heat/power the house.

It's always cold, we stopped fighting it and now we keep upstairs at 12C min.

Cutting the TV, mobilephones and xbox for the year would raise temp upstairs by 5C for a month.

Do you live in a very large greenhouse?

I'm really not sure how it's possible to spend that much on heat and power. The house I previously rented was a large, rambling Victorian with walls that were about 1" thick. It would be completely freezing in winter if unheated, but we never spent anywhere near £4k a year on gas and electricity and it was generally tolerably warm (electric blankets definitely helped at night, though).

[GloomMonger]

Do you live in a very large greenhouse?

I'm really not sure how it's possible to spend that much on heat and power. The house I previously rented was a large, rambling Victorian with walls that were about 1" thick. It would be completely freezing in winter if unheated, but we never spent anywhere near £4k a year on gas and electricity and it was generally tolerably warm (electric blankets definitely helped at night, though).

We live in a 3 bed semi, electric everything (storage heaters) and last year our bill was £4300 :angry: Now I'm hoping that most of that was due to a faulty immersion thermostat, so the element was always on, as bills dropped to £100 per month over summer after getting immersion fixed in April.

[Si1]

Many of the poor's homes will be cold and damp because the quality of the housing they reside in is incredibly poor in itself.

Yes that is true

[wonderpup]

I thought we were discussing economic trade off's, heat the house or buy an ipad etc....

Not so long ago we were classed as one of the richest nations on the planet- now we debate if it's possible for some people to both watch TV and be warm at the same time.

It seems a bit odd.