“I’m on universal credit as a single parent and I’ve been working full-time for two years. I work anywhere between 30 and 50 hours a week. I’m living with my two children – Beau, who’s nine, and Stevie, who’s eight. I haven’t been able to take them on holiday ever. And that’s definitely not going to happen now.
“I’ve been living in what I consider the effects of austerity for quite a while. Skipping meals in order to feed my children. I relied heavily on food banks for a long time. When I got back into work, it did get better. My income went up, but then my rent went up. My bills went up. Now we’ve got the cost of living crisis on top. One income certainly isn’t enough to live on.
Could there be a reason for that human practice of pair bonding?
Could there be a reason for that human practice of pair bonding?
Well, guess the race of this miserable single mum’s children:
https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/tesco-parcelforce-tell-bristol-woman-818231
Many such cases. Sad!
“I’ve been living in what I consider the effects of austerity for quite a while.”
The rest of us consider it the effects of your stupidity.
She says she’s been skipping meals but it doesn’t show: start of a double-chin – and the cat looks well-fed too. We should habitually take anything the Grauniad says with a Siberian salt mine
This classic bullshine line is fed to her by the interviewer, Say that “We’re the sixth richest country in the world”.
So the Guardian looks like it’s interviewing someone who thinks Finland is a low income country and Monaco is in absolute poverty.
Obvs policies to make energy and housing cheaper are what we want, and for couples to not be worse off if staying together.
She and the kids should make a short boat trip to a nearby country then straight into a 4 star hotel. That’s the way these things work under the ECHR isn’t it?
Interesting though that getting a job seems to have made things worse in some ways. Might our benefits system be a little bit buggered up?
Ah, Guardian Concern Porn. Just in time for the holidays.
Two questions:
1) Where’s daddy/daddies?
2) Ever thought of using contraception or, failing that, keeping the ol’ legs closed?
Consequences can be a bitch, eh?
“I’ll put candles on now instead of lamps, which just sounds ridiculous.”
It certainly sounds ridiculous: unless you keep bees or are knitting them from your own earwax, the light from candles is far more expensive than electric light (even with the increased cost of leccy).
These articles never mention what happened with the father. That usually means the mother made irresponsible decisions but isn’t a strong enough person to admit it. If you’re a guy the media can twist your words into oblivion, but a woman searching for publicity can name her terms. This lady’s having her cake and eating it too.
This whiner lost me at being on government income and not being able to take her kids on holiday. I grew up in a 2-parent home, although my father was a layabout who quit his dependable job but found alternative ways to put clothes on us, some food on the table, and keep the lights on. There were no holidays, no TV, no meat, not much food, but luckily my mom had a prolific Catholic sister with a brood that kept us clothed in hand-me-downs. Good grief – I am supposed to feel sorry for this well-fed person? I’ve only recently been able to take holidays, after decades of hard work and long hours, and those holidays only involve visiting friends in another state that I can drive to, not jetting off to foreign parts.
Seconding the comments wondering where the father is in all this.
“human practice of pair bonding?”
And who have you pair bonded with?
The wife?
This is the second such shoulda-kept-your-legs-closed moaner they’ve featured this week. It would be more instructive if they had a married couple alongside saying “we’ve had to cut back on a few things but we’re getting by”, then use that as a warning to make him use a condom, cos if he blows his beans up your muff love, you’ll find you can’t afford that holiday. But no it’s someone else’s fault.
And why is a full time worker on universal credit anyway?
@Chris Miller
“It certainly sounds ridiculous: unless you keep bees or are knitting them from your own earwax, the light from candles is far more expensive than electric light (even with the increased cost of leccy).”
I actually think it’s possible this is a person who just doesn’t understand money. Spending it on all the wrong things is a good way to get screwed over when money is short.
Local news showed someone who was also “having to skip meal” to ensure her children could eat, showed her monthly financial plan and she was spending hundreds of pounds a month on her car finance (if you’re in so much trouble that you’re having to skip meals, just buy a couple-of-hundred-pounds car?) and also she had two TV subscription services.
Anon,
You’re right. I have no sympathy until I’ve seen their budget spreadsheet.
I doubt many of these types have budgets. Or spreadsheets.
Budgeting is a lost art. The idea of buying on HP as a bad thing was embedded in me by my family. My wife from a former communist land thinks the same. Yet we are surrounded by people driving fancy cars, wearing fancy clothes, living in expensive houses and without pay to match. It’s not hard to extend this down the income scales to those who drive but “can’t afford to eat”.
The incentives are to ask for more and society no longer has the power to condemn. We are lost.
@John – “a short boat trip to a nearby country then straight into a 4 star hotel”
That sort of thing is what a number of very stupid people keep saying, presumably in the hope that if they say it often enough it’ll persuade more people to try coming here. The reality is that the short boat trip is followed by detention and accommodation in far inferior conditions. Note that what makea a hotel 4 star is not the mere building, but includes the service provided. Even if paying guests experience a four-star level of quality, that does not mean that everyone accommodated there will too – that’s a matter for the terms on which the hotel was contracted to house people.