The U.K. in 2019 -

Many of the comments on this thread condemning the parents remind me of the Victorians and the deserving and undeserving poor. I thought we had moved on from that and recognised that the only way is to help families because this means those children will have a better future.

GracesGranMK3
The thing that makes me really angry about this sort of post is that generally, while the writer is quite capable of learning about the challenges of being close to destitution in the 21st century, they just talk about their own self-perceived superior morality and chose not to even think about what it actually means to those trying to organise their lives in the chaos inflicted on them by this government

Whilst the government departments have some culpability with employing agencies to conduct a tick box approach to the benefits system, I do not think that this is the core problem.
There is a major societal question to be asked and addressed.

What might they be JN?....Why feckless mothers have loads of babies and scrounge off the state? That kind of thing?

Or why poor people can't get on a bike and get a job like my Grandfather did? That kind of thing?

joelsnan I think that you might find it has been answered in various academic studies.

Lily65
Typical response.
You know nothing of my life to be judgemental regarding my responses.
I believe in a social state however i also believe in social responsibility. I have within my extended family people who consider themselves fully paid up socialists who enjoy a good march to show their sincerity who have never put a penny into to the social pot but have taken every available penny out. I have socialist family members who will only work part time and then will stop working so they get all taxes refunded.
I feel sad that we should encourage people to come and work here and pay taxes to keep people like my family members better off than those currently paying taxes and millions like me who have worked continuously since 16years of age, experienced true poverty in the early years, but worked our way out of it. The workers of my family wonder where we went wrong. I may come across jealous, I am not. I am sad for hard working taxpayers especially those who work full time but who do not claim benefit. I am sad for the truly sick and disabled who are now having to go through the hoops to prove their illnesses because the feckless spoilt it for them. I am sad that taxpayers have to support the low paid in work when it should be an employers responsibility to pay a decent wage.
I think the breakdown of community and family is sad and has impacted severely on social cohesion.
I am very grateful for contraception, but the reduction in family size has resulted in prince and princess children with overblown sense if entitlement (and often waistlines). This is not just UK, The single child polucy led to many entitled overweight children.
I am sad that our grandchildren are not having resilience built into them, I worry if they cannot cope with life now how they would cope if we ever had another war. I am sad how advertising and peer pressure is turning much of our society into Sheeple and that true freedom to be different is being suppressed in favour of 'offence of the month'.

What would your answer be?

Well JN, we don't get off to a good start with " typical response".

I feel anger and shame that the 4th/5th richest country in the world has poverty. This is not some made up point scoring. I think we can assume that those who write the reports on child poverty know what they are talking about.

You also know nothing about me. I have never in my life attended a socialist march and taken money from the state. I have worked and my husband worked very very hard for 40 years. My 2 sons have never , ever been without employment, possibly as a result of having it drilled into them from an early age that there is no such thing as a free lunch.

I don't see entitled overweight children. I see the gap between rich and poor widening,those who have, sitting at home gloating over TV programmes like " Can't Pay, we'll Take it away". I see very little social mobility.Please, how can a child who isn't fed and spoken to and loved possibly " compete" with one from the higher echelons?
The state has a duty of care, a duty to provide a leg up , to care, to give hope. Not to batter down the products of our rampant consumerism and spite even more.

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Kindly provide examples of my sanctimonious comments or remove your nasty post.

Many Thanks.

Lily65
But the problem has become 'blame the state'.
Many have lost the sense of self responsibility.
Yes we might have one of the highest GDPs, but we have one of the highest populations in Europe. We provide schooling, healthcare and social security from taxes received. In many countries education is not free and healthcare is either private or co-pay.
The state is us, you, me, your sons and every other taxpayer. We elect representatives to distribute our taxes fairly.
Can we ever solve social deprevation? We have tried for centuries but still there is a core who, no matter what support is offered cannot thrive. There are some very well educated in abject poverty and some high flyers from slums, you cannot equate poverty with educational attainment, this relates more importantly with parenting and the drive of many parents to improve their and their childrens social status. I remember a programme about millionaires being philanthropic and a British Indian dentist went to the slums of Mumbai she tried to help a lady who worked on the rubbish tips. This lady did not want to change her status so the dentist just chose to buy her gold bangles which she could sell if she was desperate.
A taxi ride through Mumbai shows true poverty.
Yes we should offer good assistance to the truly needy, but should those on benefit expect to have the same level of home comforts as the workers who are providing for them?

Re overweight entitled children, i was referring to the one child policy in China. Travelling on the subway in Beijing at that time brought that fact into focus.

The population of UK is around 66 million now,About 5 million are immigrants.

Joelsnan Quote [There is a major societal question to be asked and addressed.] End Quote.

Yes, Joelsnan, there is a major societal question to be answered within our society, and its roots are to be found in today's world of work.

Many workers have to support their families while on zero hours contracts or (even worse) while being employed in the Gig Economy to which one in every five members of Britains workforce are engaged on those terms of employment today.

The above means that these workers and their families have no guaranteed weekly/monthly income and should the wages they receive fall below their calculated subsistence level in any week/month; they then have to wait for "benefits" to make up the difference which can take weeks.

So, I would ask, how are people in such situations supposed to budget for food, clothes, rent or almost anything that makes up daily life needs.

Of Course, too many these people are "scroungers" who do not wish for "proper work" and want to live on benefits and in that, raise their children in neglect. However, they are very often parents who can be called into work at almost any time for an unknown amount of hours and pay, and child care often has to be very quickly fitted around that.

In my view, what desperately needs changing in our society is to witness an end to the Gig Economy and further restrictions on zero-hours employment contracts.

Unfortunately, the above is very unlikely to happen under this Tory government.

Grandad1943
When I returned from working overseas I was truly gobsmacked, disappointed and enraged by the state of employment contracts that employers have been allowed to get away with. Before I left one or two zero hour contracts were being adopted which I did not like then, but goodness me, we talk of the EU mainaining employment rights! It has not stopped the decimation of them here. I could write a tome on the decline of unionism and the stripping of hard won employment rights. This is not a single party issue, sadly unions did become too strong but the pendulum has firmly swung the other way and workers are trapped having little voice for help. Labour no longer supports the workers as its inception intended.

I suppose I would like a situation where ( very simply expressed here) the government was making some attempt to provide opportunities for change, hope , social mobility. I'm thinking of schemes such as Sure Start, the Youth Service, after school clubs, breakfast clubs.

There will be a core of wasters to put it bluntly ,but there are people with a foot in the door and the door gets slammed on them.

Lily65 I agree about breakfast and after school clubs we are fortunate here that the majority of schools (primary and senior) have them.

Virgin care has taken over part of our community nursing/midwifery but to its credit has kept the family centre open.

I think the problem any government has, and it is also down to the front line staff to determine who are in need and who are taking the P!!!.

There are families who are 2-3 generations on benefits working in the “grey” economy extremely proud of getting something for nothing.

Of course those with disability whether physical or mental or a long term/life threatening illness should get help and I know of 2 families getting extremely good support and monetary benefits.

Students love the gig economy and zero hour contracts as they can work round their studies.

Andrew Neil reviewing the latest employment figures........UK has more people in work than France, Canada &
USA who make up 3 of the top 5 Countries.

2.5% currently employed are on zero hours/gig economy and 50% of those are happy to do so.

Be a little sceptical about the employment figures.

You are classed as being employed if you only work one hour in two weeks by this government.

We will be seeing a lot of the “good news” before the elections

I think you are right about the employment figures Whitwave. It is not the "lived experience" of anyone I know. It will be interesting when another party gets in and we find out what has actually been going on.

Those dratted immigrants- coming here and taking all our stones. We need a referendum

www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47938188

any update on my sanctimonious posts please?

People that are employed in the Gig Economy are classed as "self-employed." Fifteen percent of the UK working population are currently working in that category.

The above figure has risen rapidly since the millennium when Gig Economy terms of employment first began to be propagated in UK employment. Therefore the real numbers that are employed on Gig Economy terms of employment are hidden in the self-employment figures.

I do not believe that this government has made any attempt to extradite figures for people employed on Gig Economy terms from those who are " genuinely self-employed workers.

But then this government would not wish to do that, would they?

The above figures are separate from those people who work on zero hours contracts.

There are families who are 2-3 generations on benefits working in the “grey” economy extremely proud of getting something for nothing. GrannyGravy13

This is a favourite of politicians especially Iain Duncan Smith. I do wish there was a law which said that politicians have to tell the truth and have to be able to produce evidence to back it up.

This is from an article entitled "The Power of Stupid Ideas" "One of the most avid propagators of this claim is Iain Duncan Smith, Minister of State for Work and Pensions. Although students imagined that ‘there must be loads of data to back it up’, his response to a Freedom of Information Request enquiring about the evidence for his (and others’) assertions about this was that ‘statistical information on the number of UK families that never work is not available.’ Rather, he explained, his views were based on ‘personal observations’."

The author goes on to explain that, being scientists they decided to do "rigorous research". Not a single family could be found. As he says, this does not mean they do not exist. "Some people believe in fairies or Yetis, and one cannot prove they do not exist. We can say, however, that it is highly improbable that they do. Or, if they do, their numbers are infinitesimally small."

He goes on to point out that it was "quite a predictable conclusion" as three generations takes us back to the 1950s or earlier and we are looking at families where "no one has worked" in this time. The article goes on:

"The UK welfare state has become tougher and tougher over this period, particularly in the last few years. We have very tight ‘conditionality rules’ and ‘activation tests’; recipients of unemployment benefits must provide evidence of their worthiness for these on a weekly basis. It is difficult to imagine a person being able to defraud the state for the whole of his/ her working life – and then his/ her son or daughter doing the same and then his/ her son or daughter after them, for sixty years."

There is more but I will put a link at the bottom. He does say that we need to understand "what purpose these myths serve and why they retain their power" perhaps a discussion for another day. There are a few suggestions here:

workingclassstudies.wordpress.com/2015/05/11/the-power-of-stupid-ideas-three-generations-that-have-never-worked/

The Trades Unions have been challenging Gig Economy terms of employment against a number of employers who use those terms through the courts. They have so far won every round through various courts in recent months. However, the Supreme Court is due to rule on the whole overall concept of Gig Employment shortly, and if that ruling is in favour of the trades unions, then that will mark a huge change in employment in Great Britain, and become a Landmark ruling for many in British employment.

WW2
Those dratted immigrants- coming here and taking all our stones. We need a referendum
???
What's that got to do with this thread.
The majority of the UK population have no problem with controlled imigration where it is used to fill an employment need, it has obviously been going on for millenia. we must have needed the expertise of Mediterranian builders to erect Stonehenge. Just as our experts continue to ply their trades throughout the world. Check out Sheikh Zayed Mosque in Abu Dhabi...fabulous and designed by an Brit!

Thank you for the link gg3

It reminds us that what should be constantly reintegrated is that we must learn to question everything we are told, even if it “fits” with our own working philosophy.

If we don’t question and question again, until we are satisfied that what we are being told is based on truth and not myth we will be led up the garden path by people whose agenda may be very different to our own, and who are hoping to manipulate us into doing what they want, like voting for them.

I wonder why we do not have challenges from the left about the whole idea of paying of benefits to employees. Why not pay them to companies who can then pay workers a very good salary. Sanction them if they don't make attend meetings with those who could help them become more profitable. Sanction them is they don't report regularly on their takings and outgoings and claw back from any profits if they overshoot the actually can afford to pay properly.