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No worries Rita, i took it as it was meant :-)
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Thanks Viv...that link is interesting!!
Interesting thread too.
Someone mentioned that perhaps mums need to be educated as to how/what to cook that is nourishing. But a lot of families that can't afford alot will have big TV screens and such. This is another big problem with people there is too much out there that they want instead of need:o((
jude:o)
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But, to be fair, when son was younger and i was in similar position, I DID have a large TV, computer, etc...they were given to me by a family member so cost me nothing, so it is not always an indicator that money is being spent unwisely, so i try to discount that when I see them in programmes like this, because I don't know how they were acquired.
Sometimes it is impossible to find the money for a bus fair to cheaper shops and one buys locally and often the 'better' food is more expensive there, but I certainly think it would be helpful if schools taught home economics from a young age to include cooking basic meals and how to manage finance generally.
MoneySavingExpert did a very good printout for teenagers, which went into schools I think?
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Why exactly shouldn't poor kids have television and computers and what not? They don't have holidays at home, let alone abroad. They don't have music lessons or other expensive hobbies. What are they to do with themselves when they're not in school? Be even more isolated and cut off from their world? Go work in a factory?
Why do their parents feed them rubbish? Well, in large part because our societies and economies are built on selling rubbish of all sorts to the people, and making large profits from doing it -- and spending lots of money to persuade the people to buy it. And also, especially in inner cities, fresh food is often expensive. Oops, Rose just said that. It's true.
There may be better ways of delivering social assistance, just as there may be better ways of delivering foreign aid. Successful development projects abroad are built around improving people's knowledge and skills so they have more self-sufficiency and more control over their communities. Maybe that's what's needed locally too, for one thing.
Decent housing is actually the very first step in improving people's lives, anywhere.
The city of Seattle on the west coast of the US has a 10-year plan to end homelessness (a huge problem in the US, where families live in cars). It is based on "housing first", and providing other services once people are housed. Other cities in North America are watching the plan carefully.
In the UK the problem isn't homelessness as such, but housing as substandard as those kids live in isn't exactly a "home". It's more like living in a refugee camp, where people live in crowded, unhealthy conditions and have no control over their lives or their communities, and no prospect of anything better in terms of where they live or what they do or what happens to them. They're just camped.
And the social problems that come with living conditions like that are hardly unforeseeable.
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Just on the other point, it would be nice if people stopped mixing up the "aid" given to countries like Pakistan and India, which almost all is *military* aid and is intended to buy those countries' political allegiance and favours, with genuine aid to people.
Yes, we should all stop propping up governments like Pakistan's. That has nothing to do with whether we should put money into development projects abroad.
And instead of pitting the poor at home against the poor abroad, maybe we could consider making it the poor at home vs. the rich at home.
The gap between rich and poor has steadily widened in the last decade -- in all of the western developed countries, the UK and Canada included. The gap is widest in the US, and is wider in the UK than in Canada (although Canada may have about caught up), and wider in Canada than in countries like in Scandinavia and western Europe.
This gap in incomes is called "income disparity".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/may/16/top-income-earners
"Are the rich getting richer? New figures show the richest 1% share of national income is rising to levels not seen for decades"
In the UK, in 2005, the top 10% of income earners earned nearly *42%* of income in the country. The top 1% earned over 14%.
In 1978, those figures were under 28% and under 6%.
The top 1% of income earners in the UK have more than DOUBLED their share of the national income.
So obviously, those in the lower-income groups are receiving less and less of the income earned in the country.
In the US, the shares that go to the top 1% and the top 10% are even higher. There too, the share received by the top 1% has more than doubled in 30 years.
The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. And are the poor somehow to blame for this? Not hardly. They don't set the tax rates, they don't make the rules that allow for foreign tax havens, they don't run the economy.
Nobody thinks that gaps like these might have some kind of impact on society? It does, trust me. It isn't poverty by itself that leads to social problems like crime and revolutions. It's the gap between rich and poor.
Does nobody think that it might be better to work on solving this problem, stopping the poor from getting poorer, than to blame the poor and make it a poor vs poor battle?
Instead of taking money from the poor in one place to give to the poor in another (and does anybody think that would really happen anyway?), why not consider taxing away some of the vast, huge, unimaginable wealth of that top 1% even, and using it to help the poor everywhere?
Help them by giving them decent housing, help them by using the money to create jobs.
Just stop pitting the poor against one another, and blaming them for the fact that their share of their society's benefits has been slashed and much of it handed over to the rich.
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When I said about teaching the Mums and Dads to feed the children better, I meant that they might not have had much guidance themselves, and think it's ok to buy a readymade sausage roll, probably with the cheapest reclaimed meat/gristle etc in the sausage meat rather than make a veggie stew or something more wholesome. If the cycle of ignorance over nutrition and value for money isn't broken, then this will never stop.
I think one family were paying for all white goods and tv on hp and had to put money in the tv for 6 hrs viewing for a £1, that apparently went towards the cost of all the goods. Sometimes that's the only way to get a cooker, washingmachine etc.
One little girl said that other children could go indoors and colour in pictures or do puzzles etc but they only had the tv therefore they weren't as well off as those children who had other things to do at home.
I know life is stressful but I do get annoyed seeing parents smoking and drinking alcohol when their kids should be better fed and clothed even if clothed from charity shops.
Lizx
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Thank you Janey for the very interesting facts & figures there.
i think another thing that is forgotten by the powers that be with regard to the housing is that whilst there 'may' be plans in process to demolish these places and re-house the tenants in better conditions, that is irrelevant to those children who are trapped there in the meantime.
it is all fine and dandy to say 'we are putting X million into regeneration by 2016' ( just a random date and something which may or may not actually happen anyway given the cuts) BUT those children have to live there NOW and their childhood is gone and their expectations and ambitions along with it.
One indicator of the level of recession/poverty is the rise and rise of loan companies and 'pay weekly' stores, I noted, as Liz did, the pay tv and that Sam's dad mentioned a particular loan company re if you borrowed £200 you paid back £300...and with that you get further and further down that slippery slope of 'juggling' money that you just do not have.
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every child deserves the best childhood possible
a decent home warmth and love
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