14 million in poverty

[Whatmuff]

40 minutes ago, Jongwe said:

Spoke to a financial adviser last week and he is of the opinion that we are at the end of the longest running (10 years iirc) bull market for years and we should expect a bear market for some time given the current global and local concerns.

Yup my thoughts exactly, but I could be wrong and I'll happily eat my words but we cant be in a bull market forever and keep making huge amounts of money that actually doesn't exist, or get into any more debt. My money is certainly where I think it will benefit and well clear of any mortgage/stock/property.  People like Soros never loose as he has fund managers watching the markets 24hrs a day 365 days a year and can pull funds in a heart beat and of course he makes up most of the market. 

Edited November 15, 2018 by Whatmuff

[Jongwe]

6 minutes ago, Whatmuff said:

Yup my thoughts exactly, but I could be wrong and I'll happily eat my words but we cant be in a bull market forever and keep making huge amounts of money that actually doesn't exist, or get into any more debt. My money is certainly where I think it will benefit and well clear of any mortgage/stock/property.  People like Soros never loose as he has fund managers watching the markets 24hrs a day 365 days a year and can pull funds in a heart beat and of course he makes up most of the market. 

Makes sense.  Even with fund managers sometimes it can go wrong.  My pension is in a managed fund with Aviva and in the last six months, that has lost 2.71%.  Apparently one of the best investments at current is US Govt Bonds, or so I am told as I am no expert myself.

[Mice!]

5 hours ago, Mungler said:

The market is in for a downwards adjustment but it's not going to make much difference for most home owners - they have one home, they have to live in it and market adjustments don't manifest unless you are moving. So, people just sit tight.

There are bubbles around London that ought to burst - logic tells me that a 2 bedroom flat in Hackney can't really be worth £695k+ but a family detached commuter belt house in the South East near a station and a good school, well that's going to be fairly static as long as London as we know it doesn't disappear to Frankfurt or Paris.

 

very good logic, i have never understood how or why people would pay the sort of money they do to be in London £600k plus for a flat makes me cringe. I always think folk should want to sell up and move away??

[stumfelter]

The only true way to measure poverty must surely be down to TV size. I can't see how someone with a 32" can possibly be as wealthy as somebody with a 55" and on a personal note anything less than 49" and I'd make the wife shut the curtains after dark.

[Rewulf]

1 minute ago, stumfelter said:

The only true way to measure poverty must surely be down to TV size. I can't see how someone with a 32" can possibly be as wealthy as somebody with a 55" and on a personal note anything less than 49" and I'd make the wife shut the curtains after dark.

I think youre onto something there ...😃

[TIGHTCHOKE]

But what if you have more than one TV, is there a sliding scale that adds them all up?

[Rewulf]

8 minutes ago, TIGHTCHOKE said:

But what if you have more than one TV, is there a sliding scale that adds them all up?

Nah , add all the sizes together, then divide by number of tellys to get your average lol!

Any one telly over 60 inch and you definitely arent poor.
Or youre a damn good burglar 😉

[TIGHTCHOKE]

Just now, Rewulf said:

Nah , add all the sizes together, then divide by number of tellys to get your average lol!

Any one telly over 60 inch and you definitely arent poor.
Or youre a damn good burglar 😉

Or you have a strong Mate!

[grrclark]

Step out this thread for a wee while and it runs away 😳

Mungler, I think you highlighted a key issue, our decline in 2008 was predominatly down to lending being strangled, those with cash made buckets.

Of course lending was only strangled until the finance houses got their affairs in order then it was business as usual.

The system changed shape, banks built in a bit more reserves and found leverage in other areas and turned on the taps again.

Necessity (demand for housing/lending) drives innovation (new financial instruments) and the whole cycle goes again.

Some parts of our housing market have overheated, (although being sensible our entire market is really over valued), so some areas will cool, but broadly demand begets growth and so it will grow.

So yes, unless there is a world war, mega Spanish flu epidemic or mandatory contraception in the hot and sticky parts of the world (and council housing estates *controversial*) demand will always be there.

[Mungler]

Yep, who wouldn’t go back to the 1980s recession and buy a handful of flats in docklands, Wapping, Shad Thames? Now think about trying to go back in time and convince someone living in the 1980s to get buying 😆

 

[Nial]

If you take a step back does this ever increasing price of property do society any good?

Shortly after I started work I was able to buy a terraced house in Belfast for £33K (27 years ago). As a young engineer that was affordable, I was still able to live and enjoy myself. I sold that 5 years later for £80K, the profit on that, and the profit my wife had made on her flat allowed us to buy our current 5 bed house just outside the Edinburgh bypass, without hammering ourselves again.

Salaries have gone up a bit, but I pity a similar young engineer trying to get on the property market now, it's as if the people my generation and above have sucked the value out of the market, and they're paying for it. 

?

[TIGHTCHOKE]

Have a look at this story;

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-46152587

 

[henry d]

22 hours ago, Dekers said:

Nobody who smokes, drinks, has a 50" TV, wears designer trainers/clothes and walks around with a Coke in the hands whilst pushing a top of the range child buggy is in POVERTY, I can't afford all that, but see them all the time queuing up at the dole office!

Really? So everyone that is outside the dole office is like that, did you follow them home to check the size of their TV? Beggars belief the drivel that gets touted as truth on this site sometimes!

1 hour ago, TIGHTCHOKE said:

Have a look at this story;

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-46152587

 

Pretty depressing read

 

[Rewulf]

4 minutes ago, henry d said:

Really? So everyone that is outside the dole office is like that, did you follow them home to check the size of their TV? Beggars belief the drivel that gets touted as truth on this site sometimes!

Pretty depressing read

 

I dont believe you answered my question from the other day Henry.
You dont have to obviously, but do YOU think there are 14 million people living in poverty in the UK ?

[Whatmuff]

4 minutes ago, Rewulf said:

I dont believe you answered my question from the other day Henry.
You dont have to obviously, but do YOU think there are 14 million people living in poverty in the UK ?

Unless people are willing to interview and track down these 14million people, and then go through their finances, spending habits and look through their possessions then surely nobody can make that judgement.

[Mice!]

4 hours ago, Nial said:

If you take a step back does this ever increasing price of property do society any good?

Shortly after I started work I was able to buy a terraced house in Belfast for £33K (27 years ago). As a young engineer that was affordable, I was still able to live and enjoy myself. I sold that 5 years later for £80K, the profit on that, and the profit my wife had made on her flat allowed us to buy our current 5 bed house just outside the Edinburgh bypass, without hammering ourselves again.

Salaries have gone up a bit, but I pity a similar young engineer trying to get on the property market now, it's as if the people my generation and above have sucked the value out of the market, and they're paying for it. 

?

yep, everything more or less doubled over night and the only winners were the banks and a few folk who downsized or inherited.

[Rewulf]

12 minutes ago, Whatmuff said:

Unless people are willing to interview and track down these 14million people, and then go through their finances, spending habits and look through their possessions then surely nobody can make that judgement.

Someone did, then published it, and now there are many people out there who believe it to be the truth.
After all , its an 'official' report isnt it ?

[Whatmuff]

1 hour ago, Rewulf said:

Someone did, then published it, and now there are many people out there who believe it to be the truth.
After all , its an 'official' report isnt it ?

BBC News - Poverty causing 'misery' in UK, and ministers are in denial, says UN official
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-46236642

Your word against a professor, and apparently there is poverty across the UK. This news article should pretty much close this thread then. 

[Gunnut]

Poverty my a..., try one egg a week, and a *** of butter, and maybe a couple of slices of ham, if your lucky, mass unemployment, few benefits, the youngsters of today, don't know how lucky they are, national service, they would all be crying into there smartphones to mum, within a week.

[Rewulf]

1 minute ago, Whatmuff said:

BBC News - Poverty causing 'misery' in UK, and ministers are in denial, says UN official
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-46236642

Your word against a professor, and apparently there is poverty across the UK. This news article should pretty much close this thread then. 

Oh OK then, there IS poverty in the UK.
Who said there wasnt ?
But are there 14 million people in poverty ? Thats the question.
Of course theres poverty in this country, you can barely walk through a city street and not see someone sleeping rough/begging.
Ive seen people begging in every big city in every country Ive ever been to, Ive seen people dressed better than me with nice hair and manicured nails begging.
Ive seen people with arms and legs missing, lying in a gutter begging.
Ive seen people with nothing, with smiling faces and the dignity not to ask for charity.

But for the UN to get on the case, when there are wars , famine and misery in the less prosperous parts of the world, and for people to give them airtime, is totally and utterly pathetic.
They are a political organisation who bury there head in the sand when it suits them, and spring out of hiding when an easy target is presented, as in this case.

[Yellow Bear]

9 minutes ago, Whatmuff said:

BBC News - Poverty causing 'misery' in UK, and ministers are in denial, says UN official
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-46236642

Your word against a professor, and apparently there is poverty across the UK. This news article should pretty much close this thread then. 

Said Australian needs to look at his own country before slating others.  There is far more REAL poverty and misery among their indigenous population, not counting others than in this country.

[Rewulf]

3 minutes ago, Yellow Bear said:

Said Australian needs to look at his own country before slating others.  There is far more REAL poverty and misery among their indigenous population, not counting others than in this country.

"Philip Alston, special rapporteur on extreme poverty, said despite being in the one of the world's richest countries he had encountered "misery".

A fifth of the population, amounting to 14m people, are living in poverty and levels of child poverty are "staggering", the Australian said."

During his 12 day tour he interviewed and inspected the hovels of ALL 14 million of the poverty stricken wretches.
Shared in their meagre rations of chicken nuggets and  full fat coke.
Some still only had 40 inch TVs and drove vehicles of up to 5 years old !
'I dont know how you live like this' he told Stacey, 21 and a mother of 7 . 'Theres nothing I can do' she replied, 'Until I get my weight down to 25 stone, I cant get a gastric band on the NHS, Im starving ! '
 

[Whatmuff]

2 hours ago, Rewulf said:

 

So let me get this straight..... 

Philip Alston, special rapporteur on extreme poverty, a professor, works for the UN, who's job it is, to report on such matters, had reported that there is infact poverty in the UK and has visited some of the worse areas of the UK and seen with his own eyes and spoken to the families, is actually speaking complete and utter hoop. And Gunnut, Rewolf and Yellowbear from pigeon watch know better and can define poverty better than he can and have seen Stacey who has a 5 year old car and lives off chicken nuggets has a better understanding than him??? 

If you can't trust a professor and a news article with facts from a professional then who will you trust. We could argue all day that the 14 million may be of different levels of poverty but why loose sleep over it and put them all into one basket of being benefit thieves or compare now to being on rations during WW2? 

[Whatmuff]

59 minutes ago, Yellow Bear said:

Said Australian needs to look at his own country before slating others.  There is far more REAL poverty and misery among their indigenous population, not counting others than in this country.

Please explain why you think an Australian would know any less based on the Country he was born in? Does that make him any less knowledgeable in the subject area? Does he have to be a Brit to make him worthy of a view?

1 hour ago, Gunnut said:

Poverty my a..., try one egg a week, and a *** of butter, and maybe a couple of slices of ham, if your lucky, mass unemployment, few benefits, the youngsters of today, don't know how lucky they are, national service, they would all be crying into there smartphones to mum, within a week.

Great argument. The "in my day it was so much harder" chat.

Try living in the stone age, when we had to use rocks for fire and hunt for our food????! When does that become relevant to living in today's society? 

Edited November 16, 2018 by Whatmuff

[Rewulf]

4 minutes ago, Whatmuff said:

So let me get this straight..... 

Philip Alston, special rapporteur on extreme poverty, a professor, works for the UN, who's job it is, to report on such matters, had reported that there is infact poverty in the UK and has visited some of the worse areas of the UK and seen with his own eyes and spoken to the families, is actually speaking complete and utter hoop. And Gunnut, Rewolf and Yellowbear from pigeon watch know better and can define poverty better than he can and have seen Stacey who has a 5 year old car and lives off chicken nuggets has a better understanding than him??? 

If you can't trust a professor and a news article with facts from a professional then who will you trust. We could argue all day that the 14 million may be of different levels of poverty but why loose sleep over it and put them all into one basket of being benefit thieves or compare now to being on rations during WW2? 

Damn straight.
He comes over here on some politically motivated 'mission' from the UN from Australia, spends 12 whole days here on an all expenses paid trip to find a pre determind bunch of facts , that just happen to mirror the findings of our own recently published think tank report.
Ooh let me see, hes a 'professor ? Of what , UK poverty  ? No law.

"Alston also directed a project funded by the European Commission, which resulted in the publication of a Human Rights Agenda for the European Union for the Year 2000 and a 1999 volume of essays (The European Union and Human Rights). Many of its recommendations were subsequently implemented by the European Commission and the European Council. He also is one of 29 signatories to the Yogyakarta Principles"

Now maybe Im being a little overly suspicious, but does he have an agenda that actually has nothing to do with poverty, more media sensationalism to prove how bad the UK is doing overall ?

Put it this way, whilst he could be dealing with real poverty in some African , South American or Middle Eastern country, hes decided to target one of the poorest countries in the world...err the UK .
Says it all really.

7 minutes ago, Whatmuff said:

Please explain why you think an Australian would know any less based on the Country he was born in? Does that make him any less knowledgeable in the subject area? Does he have to be a Brit to make him worthy of a view?

He spends 12 days, Ive spent 50 years here , case closed