Debts and the era

Maybe in some cases money spent on tattoos could be used on more essential items. Just saying!!

MissAdventure

Did they say why?
A cocaine habit?

I would suggest it was the porn sites he was watching. The type of stuff he was looking at wouldn’t be cheap.

I didnt know that MerylStreep. He was like a walking time bomb.
I think if you want people to work then items such as a phone and access to the internet are a necessity, I dont think it's useful to compare to the fifties, it's a completely different world.

I agree, Galaxy. Things that we may not have had in our younger days (or had, but considered to be luxuries) simply aren’t the same any more. Relative poverty, as opposed to absolute poverty, compares UK citizens to other UK citizens, not those in third world places with dirty water and not enough food. Not having a smartphone cuts people off from various aspects of life - socially, educationally and in terms of job-seeking etc. It’s not just an inconvenience, like it used to be, and it’s not a luxury as it might be in cultures that don’t depend on it.

Many people seem to really resent people with not much money having large TV’s, for some reason. Yes, a colour TV was once a status symbol, but not any more, and they provide cheap entertainment, education and company for a lot of people who can’t afford to go out as much as they might like to. Tattoos are not my ‘thing’, but they are a way of showing identification with others in the same way that hairstyles and clothing do. If someone saves for one, why shouldn’t they be able to choose their own ‘look’, like everyone else?

Do we want people to have nothing at all before they can be considered poor?

Before we get into the smart phones, broadband criticisms, it is important to know that many job centres have closed and that claimants have to do everything online now. Apart from home educate their children over the past year to so of course. As some have eloquently explained, debt is easy to slip into, especially with the frequent imposition of moving home. The 1950s may have been a time of poverty for many, but at least most had a secure council tenancy with no risk of your landlord wanting to sell up. Thus, communities are established, families help each other, even, if you wish, vegetables can be grown in gardens which are effectively your own. It is unfair to compare very different times, it is not all about tattoos, false nails and flat screen tvs, despite what some newspapers peddle

I would not want to go back to living the life I led in the early seventies, it was basically just surviving, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
I agree, things were different, my tenancy was secure as long as I paid the rent, and we weren’t going to starve.
But I had no money for anything, i took a certain pride in managing, but if I hadn’t been young and optimistic that it wouldn’t be for ever, it would have been very hard to live with.

Poverty is, I suppose, relative to the 'normal' of the time - so a very different thing now, compared to the 1950s, when there was so much less to have or even strive for.