Captain Haddock
- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 8,000
Today I thought I ought to do something about poverty.
Whilst my 'on line persona' might appear uncaring, in real life I am quite kind and thoughtful donating a substantial sum each month to various charities which try to make life for bipeds marginally better.
Apparently there are 1.2 billion people still live below the $1.25 threshold worldwide.
Unable to think of anyone in the Dover/Deal area living in this state I decided that I must cast my net wider.
The definition of poverty generally used in the UK, as in the rest of the developed world, is set at 60% of median income.
That median UK household income at the moment is £23,200, which means the official threshold for poverty in the UK is £13,920.
Bloody Hell! Looking at my latest bank statement I find that since I am surviving on a pension (though not yet eligible for the state pension) not substantially far above 'poverty'!
Interestingly 15 per cent of outright home owners (me) and 17 per cent of people with mortgages are in 'poverty' - I didn't realise how close the leafy suburbs of Deal were to downtown Mogashishu!
Fortunately the Green Party have a solution!
£80 p/w to all (including asylum seekers and prisoners!).
Doh! This merely raises median income so we end up with roughly the same percentage in 'poverty'.
The only sensible solution is to reduce the dreadful inequalities of pay in the UK.
Why should anyone get paid more merely because he works better and more productively than those who due to 'issues' are able to give no positive input into society?
I'm seriously thinking of putting my name forward for election next May.
I think my slogan will be ' Marginally less eccentric than Vic Matcham yet slightly better argued than UKIP (or is it the other way round) - Maoist faction'
"We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out"
Dr. Hunter S Thompson
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Everyone has a different idea on what constitutes poverty, on another thread a family think they hard up on £.580 per week and will be thrust into penury if £80 of that is taken away. I have known of people who have 3 foreign holidays a year complain that they have to cut one out because of hard times.
Guest 653- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,540
They do indeed Howard. I appreciate I am not poor, but there equally many people who think they are poor and some who know they are poor.
There are also those like you mentioned above who spend copious amounts of their benefit money on so called luxeries, like SKY TV, tats, baccy etc.
Differentiating the genuine from the cheats can sometimes be difficult and so the genuine ones comes off worse.
Roger
Guest 977- Registered: 27 Jun 2013
- Posts: 1,031
"Those with less than 60 per cent of median income are classified as poor. This 'poverty line' is the agreed international measure used throughout the European Union." Quote from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
Acceptance of this definition means you will never eradicate poverty, by this definition even some of the millionaires in Monaco are living in poverty.