Poverty in the UK - disappearing according to Boris

Just how do you define poverty? The wages people earn reflect their skills. Someone who has worked hard at school and gained qualifications has the right to a good wage and a high standard of living. A less well-educated person has to accept a lower standard.
The minimum wage should be enough to live on but without luxuries.
I live in an area of low wages but people are able to afford to smoke, drink and play bingo. That's not poverty in my book.

ladymuck, it is words and views such as you have used in your post @21:17 today that brought about the Russian revolution in 1917 and many other civil wars since that time. Would you therefore wish the same to befall the United Kindom so as to preserve your views?

You also sound and hold exactly the same views as a member who left the forum some weeks back and was always informing us of her wealth, her five privately and highly educated sons and her marriage to a very wealthy and successful Banker?

Of course, that was someone else.

It bugs me when some people relate hard work to earnings .

In my very humble opinion, it is usually not the case.

Ladymuck, how do you know that they are smoking, drinking and playing bingo? Do you have any stats , evidence, to support your claims?
How would you define poverty?
Working families are increasingly forced to claim benefits. The gig economy is thriving, although it's workers are not
Why do you think that 'less educated ' people have to accept a 'lower standard '?
I really struggle to understand your rationale

Someone who has worked hard at school and gained qualifications has the right to a good wage and a high standard of living

Seriously? What an awful way to think. And I say that as someone who worked hard at school, went to Oxford and has never eared a great deal because I had a severely disabled son (& now work in an area related to disability).

TBH leaving aside my mega wealthy friends a lot of my well off friends learned a trade (& no doubt have worked hard over the years).

Why equate good wages to being something ‘deserved’ by those who have been born with an academic brain, or (like Johnson) been privileged enough to attend a school like Eton.

IMO the people who work with my son ‘deserve’ to get paid a lot more than many of the mega wealthy who work with my son. Some have few academic qualifications and some have degrees - Whatever - the fantastic (hard) work they do with him has been life changing for him (& is). What a pity some people don’t see the value in it.

And as for Johnson - he is clueless. And he probably despises a lot of the people who voted for him.

Typo. Obviously the mega wealthy don’t work with my son. They wouldn’t be mega wealthy if they did.

The minimum wage should be enough to live on but without luxuries?

Why?

And further, if someone is working in order to get the minimum wage, what, in your view, should those who are unemployed be given? Not enough to live on?

If someone is working in the 5th richest country in the world, don't you think that they should be able to have some luxuries in their life? As Shakespeare wrote in King Lear, hundreds of years ago: 'Allow not nature more than nature needs/Man's life is cheap as beasts'.'

Do you honestly believe that working hard at school is enough to set someone up for life? That is a lot of reward for a couple of years of 'work'.

Someone with qualifications is likely to get an easier job than someone without. They are likely to have more autonomy, better working conditions and more job security, as well as better chances of promotion with a career structure. Do you think that they should also be the only people to have luxury in their lives?

What do you consider to be a luxury anyway? No more than 'a basic standard of living'? So a bed, table, chair and a roof, but no carpets? Enough food, but gruel, not chocolate, presumably? A book but no TV? Soap but no perfume? Who decides?

Why should anyone work and make profit for someone else in order to stay alive but without any pleasure in their life?

'the wages people earn reflect their skills' do they? If only life were that simple!

Grandad I too was reminded of someone who left.
We aren't all born with great academic brains.
Some people work very hard at school and don't manage to achieve good exam results. If they work hard they should never earn enough to have any luxuries, or ever have any fun? They should just exist?? That's a very caring attitude.

I think it's a disgrace that our PM doesn't know how UC works. What a shame about the bonus. Greggs would be better treating the workers to a night out.

Poverty has diminished but use of food banks has increased. Hmm..

ladymuck Have you seen these people's bank accounts? Do you know for a fact that the ones you see drinking and smoking (and no doubt owning top end iphones and TVs) are earning no more than minimum wage? Even in low wage areas, there are those who are earning more than minimum wage. How much do they spend playing bingo? Do you really think that's something the rich do?

Are you aware that there are many who will never earn more than minimum wage - for all sorts of reasons, not necessarily because they don't work hard. Are you really suggesting they deserve no more than a bleak existence for their whole lives? Having a drink, a smoke and a few games of bingo hardly seem like the trappings of wealth. Try suggesting to any Tory MP that they should give up their expenses in exchange for a few packets of cigarettes, some alcohol and bingo!

No doubt you have been entirely self-sufficient, have slogged your guts out for 12+ hours a day in dismal surroundings and have overcome all sorts of hardships to live in the muck in which you now reside.

PS. Johnson earned over £800,000 from writing and speeches last year, in addition to his MP's salary. Do you honestly think that's a fair exchange for the work he does, compared with somebody working hours in uncomfortable conditions doing unsociable shifts?

Especially given the Jeremy Vine story of Johnson recycling speeches blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/06/my-boris-story/

You must all be Labour supporters who don't believe that children should have an incentive to do well at school. Qualifications should mean a higher paid job.
Does an equal society mean that the better-educated earn the same as the illiterate? How unfair is that?
No wonder Labour did so poorly at the election!

ladymuck Your last post has a very different message from your first. If you can’t see that, you would not pass even a GCSE in English Language, History, Sociology or any essay-based subject.

real poverty was in the 50s in the slums of liverpool, ask me how I know. Me and my 6 siblings were given aspirations by our parents and we all gained good professional qualifications but then again we had 2 parents who worked very hard and who looked after us well without holidays apart from a day out now and then. Was a good life in many ways, 5 girls in a bedroom, we are very close now, all of us

We knew how to make a little meat from a pigs head stretch a very long way. One dress each plus one sunday spare, one pair of shoes. My parents never wasted money and sometimes sixpence was all they had

ladymuck were your comments a wind up?? There are many people who worked hard doing long hours in not very good conditions just to keep their heads above water. There are those who work hard but shorter hours in nicer conditions. The first group maybe because they did not have the advantages of the second group who maybe had many more advantages through their life with a helping hand from parents, and the people they know. If you are in the second group just be thankful and dont run down people in the first group. Maybe a drink,a game of bingo and a smoke is all they have in their life to make it bearable.

Very touching story, craftyone, but the question in my mind is, 'Would you expect people to live like that now?

Is it necessary that some people should be grindingly poor and a few people be extremely rich?

Maybe 7 children nowadays isn’t the norm.

I’ve never read such tosh as spouted by those who blame the poor for being poor. Social mobility has declined in the U.K. and inequality has increased. Nothing to do with whether or not people worked hard at school - what a simplistic generalisation. Some kids don’t work hard at school and are extremely well off due to being born into an already wealthy family with connections. Some kids work very hard at school but remain in poverty because of innate disadvantages - disability or illness or the need to care for similarly disadvantaged family members. But never mind its much easier to say the wealthy are well off by merit and the poor have only themselves to blame for making bad choices. It means we don’t have to care about those worse off than ourselves and feel smug about our own good fortune.

I'm always amazed at how people take credit for their own good fortune and conveniently victim blame those in poverty.

Yes, we had pockets of severe poverty in the past. Yet we also had a good education system and work opportunities, peace, local food supplies and a thriving economy.

Those blessed with good health were fortunate to grow up in that optimistic climate.

HumanProgress.org is an organisation following/mapping humans worldwide. According to them there is 10% of the worlds population in poverty.

What is their defintion of 'poverty', GG13? 10% sounds very low to me.

That is why I put the link so people could see for themselves, sorry it hasn’t worked, will try again later when I get home.