Child poverty would reach a record high in 2023-24 under the Tories

OK Maizie, thanks, I'll read your link tomorrow and try to educate myself some more, no need for quite such a cutting response to a genuine question though is there?

I still don't think it can be as easy as you suggest though, or every country would be doing it, surely?

You are wrong, Opal. Try reading some economics.

Inflation would only occur if a) there weren't enough resources available to buy with the money and b) if the government didn't take excess money back through taxation.

And yes, the government has absolute licence to print as much money as it wants. Where do you think it suddenly managed to find £200 billion+ for quantitative easing in 2008, and some £60 billion to shore up the pound after the Brexit vote? It wasn't squirrelled away somewhere in a government rainy day piggy bank.

Try this site:

gimms.org.uk/

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once called poverty a “personality defect.” She said this in a 1978 interview Though not many politicians would go quite so far, this view that the solution resides with the individual is not exceptional. From Australia to England and from Sweden to the United States there is an entrenched notion that poverty is something people have to overcome on their own. Sure, the government can nudge them in the right direction with incentives –  with policies promoting awareness, with penalties, and, above all, with education. In fact, if there’s a perceived “silver bullet” in the fight against poverty, it’s a high school diploma (or even better, a college degree)."

Margaret Thatcher was, in so many ways, a very silly woman. People are not in poverty because they make bad or short-term decisions. And before you tell me you know a family, or once met someone please think, whatever the challenges that person had, how secure and provided for if they had been born into a wealthy family. We know how this is because we see it. It is not the person we should blame if they fail to rise out of real (not imagined) poverty.

thecorrespondent.com/4664/why-do-the-poor-make-such-poor-decisions/179307480-39a74caf

Ps the Tories don't make me think anything Gracesgran

I worked that one out for myself

Gracesgran I suppose it depends on your definition of wealthy.
If we are talking about the seriously wealthy then yes, some will be able to make other provisions to avoid paying tax.

If we are, as Jeremy Corbyn is, talking about people earning £80,000 pa, the that is not seriously wealthy. It may be very well off and far in excess of what we - or you - have ever earned, but in London and environs with rents, house prices, travel costs as they are, then it could be just about managing.

It needs a rethink, the manifesto should include what is essential and achievable, not grandiose schemes which people do not actually believe.

Opal, YOU go try to get benefits. Go on. My daughter applied after having a baby (after 18 years of paying full tax, national insurance, before you assume she is a scrounger). She waited SIX months. What would a poor family with no help available do? HALF a year!

In addition, I am fairly certain I pay around FOUR times as much tax as you. HAPPILY, because I’m a socialist and believe in supporting the less fortunate. Your assumption about Labour Party members is about as wrong as you could possibly be. Most of my Labour friends are professionals. Home owners. Nice car. Foreign hols once or more a year. BUT what they aren’t is selfish and self seeking.

GrannyGravy13 What a pile of absolute MERDE!!!! This is 100% my profile and I’m a long standing Labour member. As are MOST of my friends who fit that profile you fantasied up.

MaizieD "It can also issue as much money as it wants so long as it doesn't cause inflation." I don't claim to be an economist, but surely if it was that easy, every country would be doing it? The problem is, as soon as the Government issues money, it puts upward pressure on inflation, which in turn increases prices and interest rates, and so the cycle starts. Which is surely why Government don't just have a licence to print as much money as it wants? Happy to be corrected, but I think this is the general gist isn't it?

Opal says what I want to if I dared.

Oh dear GGMK3 if only you knew - our immediate family goes from multi-millionaire through “sickness benefit/carers allowance”(terminal illness) and “scrounges on every benefit going” whilst working cash in hand and putting two fingers up to the world!!!

The dispatches programme “Growing up poor” showed a few families who had fallen on hard times because of circumstances beyond their control they weren’t feckless people. But ultimately the state failed to support them when they needed help.

One family had lost a child to cancer, which meant the mother had to borrow to fund the funeral. Then she spiralled into depression. They lost their home. Tragic for both the parents and the children but not the parents’ fault and of course not the children’s fault.

Domestic violence caused one family to flee, they were allocated a three bed flat. They were put on universal credit but it was delayed and they had to take loans out to cover food and heating. They were forced to walk two and a half miles to a food bank, then had to carry the heavy bags home. No money for heating so they applied for a fuel voucher but were turned down. The mum was planning to pawn her mobile phone which was needed to apply for jobs and universal credit. Their housing benefit was cut because the “Bedroom tax” meant they had more bedrooms than allowed. Even though the children were settled at school, the council rehoused them over a hundred miles away.

Marital breakdown meant one hard working family couldn’t afford to keep their family home. They were put in temporary accommodation. The dad had a breakdown and made multiple suicide attempts. The daughter was trying to revise for GCSEs with the family living in one room and worrying about the mental health issues of both her parents. She didn’t achieve well in her exams.

Some of the children in these families became unofficial carers for their parents. They were all lovely and it was difficult to watch the programme without tears in your eyes.

You should really watch this heartbreaking programme before saying “my parents were poor and they brought me up
properly”.

Labour has always played the rich are evil card!!!! Owning your own home, working your way out of poverty are things they do not like to see/know about.

Don't be rediculous GG13. Owning your own home, working your way out of being working-class - not poverty. For heaven's sake that is not rich. Unless you are very rich, and that will be very few on here, you will lose little and gain more. You are certainly either very full of what you have achieved or I have misread what you completely. You do seem to have a very high opinion of all the millions of people who had great advantages when we were young and have come out, for the most part, ahead of what they could have otherwise expected. Talk about inverted snobbery. Poverty indeed. I expect one or two on here have experienced it but most just got a bit better off and a bit more secure than our parents. But please, nothing out of the ordinary.

As for evil. I can't say that about anyone I don't know but selfish and judgemental can be clear from someone's posts.

The wealthy will either leave or move their money elsewhere.

They will not leave. If they go anywhere that feels familiar they will pay what we are paying here. The tax will not be exceptional, it's just the Tories making you think it will be Callistemon. Find the facts, not the propaganda.

I’m one who could tick most of those boxes Hetty58 and I know exactly how fortunate I am - but then I always did know that there were others much worse off than me as well and I never saw myself as a victim.

I wasn’t blessed with the brilliant intellect of so many on these threads but I always had the common sense and good health to know that it was down to me to make the right choices and not expect the state to look after me cradle to the grave.

I learned by watching folks who had more than us spend their money more wisely and thought, so that’s how they do it! A revelation!

Why do you think I am envious Opal. Can you only insult people? quizqueen's parents did alright. They were not in poverty at all they were typical working-class of the time and like most of our parents, they did better than those who came before them setting quizqueen off on a route to do the same. That is not the world of today for far too many.

If there is no job to get then what do you do? If you are too ill to work, what then. As I said people are working two or three jobs with poverty and insecurity their only reward.

There is no envy. I do not want what you have I just want each and every one of us to contribute enough to look after those who are in a bad place. If anything is "EVERYTHING that is wrong with society today" (I can hear the pearls being clutched) it is the greed and avarice from those who have used what others have paid for in the past but don't want to do so now they are comfortable.

Labour has always played the rich are evil card!!!!

It's not so much that the rich are evil, GG13 as the fact that this world holds finite (i.e. not a limitless supply) resources and there is no reason whatsoever for a small section of the population to hold the greater part of them.

Taxation doesn't fund spending, Callistomen. We've been over this before...

Government spending comes first, then the money is returned via taxation. The real economy can only grow if the government spends into it. The reason that austerity was such a bad idea was that cutting the amount of money in the economy by cutting public services has actually shrunk the economy. If the government cuts back on buying goods and services from the private sector (and it buys all of them from the private sector) and cuts back on paying wages & salaries, (all formerly spent in the private sector) the economy shrinks.

One of the prime factors keeping the economy afloat at the moment is record levels of consumer debt. And, ironically, government spending on 'Brexit preparations'.

Government 'borrowing' is usually in the form of bonds, for which there is apparently a big demand. They are safe (though not exciting) investments with a guaranteed return. It can also issue as much money as it wants so long as it doesn't cause inflation.

I am not making this up.

Still victim blaming I see! Try to imagine being brought up in poverty by parents who don't cope well and aren't 'sensible', add a few learning difficulties, being bullied, maybe abused, then being an easy target for the gangs and drug dealers. Are you beginning to see how fortunate you are?

Opal I think your post will in all probability be ignored.

Labour has always played the rich are evil card!!!! Owning your own home, working your way out of poverty are things they do not like to see/know about.

What they want is for us all to be reliant on the State, the thought of state owned internet is horrific, real “big brother” territory.

Everything privatised, nothing working, unions holding the country to ransom........KEEP CORBYN/LABOUR OUT

GGMK3 's post was stating facts, why does it show everything that is wrong with society today? I feel quite insulted, I am a Labour member and don't believe I fit your profile Opal. Although I do feel for those less fortunate than myself and aim not to be too judgemental, particularly about those who do not agree with me.

GagaJo yes, the wealthy are avoiding/evading paying their tax, that is why I cannot see how Labour will fund all the proposals in their manifesto. The wealthy will either leave or move their money elsewhere.

Sure Start centres helped break the cycle that some children find themselves trapped in.

And that last post from GGMK3 pretty much sums up EVERYTHING that is wrong with society today. Insult hard working people. Envy politics. If you can't afford it, then why should anyone else have it? If you can't get a job, get benefits. If that doesn't work, join the LP, shout the loudest, call everyone who has a job and pays their taxes a fascist.

"Unionisation your parents could rely on?" Don't make me laugh, the unions were a law unto themselves, encouraged strikes instead of hard work, and brought the country to its knees. If you don't want to go back to those dark days, vote Tory.

I was born into a poor, working class family in the 50s. My parents chose to have one child, worked long hours in factory jobs they both hated, provided nice meals, a clean house and good morals and were never in debt because they didn't but things they couldn't afford. They wouldn't ever have considered it was the state or charity's responsibility to feed us.

Well shine your halo quizqueen you are obviously above the rest of us.

Your parents had jobs and, in the 1950 many people didn't feel they could limit their families and would have found it hard to get help to do so. Obviously, your wonderful parents must have had an insight others didn't. What if those jobs had been lost, or one partner had been lost, unlikely that a home would have been lost as the laws stopped people being thrown out or overcharged although housing could be squalid, and there was far more council housing.

Great that they didn't buy things they couldn't afford - no food, no heating for you was it? I despise that sort of holier-than-thou post from those whose small minds cannot see that things happen to take life out of peoples control. Jobs in a factory? You'll be lucky these days. An income you can be sure of? Not if you've hit rock bottom and hard work simply isn't enough.

In today's world, where the vast majority are earning their poverty with one, two or three jobs they don't have the unionisation in factories your parents could rely on to protect the worker. Our great move towards neo-liberalism, taken by the Tories, aided and abetted by some so-called socialists and liberals, has taken away that security.

Many lived as your parents did and felt their lives were better than their parents have ever been with the NHS, better pensions, and the post-war fighters who brought secondary education for all, including you, for free. Now when we want to move from free primary education, followed by free secondary education into free tertiary education the Tories say "no", not for the likes of you. You have to go into debt. We are not taking your education to a level that can compete with our own.

We are going back to abject poverty of a kind, so they tell us, than we haven't seen since Victorian time. And you come along and tell us these are bad people and you are an example of the good. You make me weep.

GGMK3 - if you read all my posts, you will clearly see I said I am concerned for people who "aren't doing ok", with the proviso that they are also unable to help themselves. They should be our priority. BUT, we are all aware, that there are many people in our society who claim every benefit going and never work a day, despite being perfectly able to work. I've worked in primary care, I've seen it. So has Pantglas - see her post above. You "pooh pooh" our arguments because you don't want to listen. I'm not saying that the poor in our society should not be helped, quite the opposite, but we do need a culture change to ensure that the funds provided by our taxes are used appropriately. Do you honestly believe that parents who buy their fags, alcohol and Sky TV, but complain that they can't feed their children, should not be challenged about their lifestyle choices? We all make choices in our lifetimes, and lots of us make wrong ones sometimes, I know I have, but to blindly carry on making the same ones and not try to change the system and direct funds where they are most needed is madness at best, criminal at worst.

Tell you one thing GagaJo - you certainly don’t hide your light under a bushel do you? Stop keep blowing your own trumpet. It’s not endearing in the least.
?

Quite right Gagajo and I've seen plenty of such children who are innocent victims by accident of birth.

Some of the criticism levelled at parents on here is so lacking in compassion. As I posted previously they love their children as much as middle class parents, and often work damn hard for basic wages.

Quite honestly if I lived under circumstances that some people have to put up with I'd probably take up smoking and probably drinking too.