Author Topic: 300,000 more pensioners living in poverty  (Read 31228 times)

Michael Rolls

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Re: 300,000 more pensioners living in poverty
« Reply #240 on: Jan 06, 2020, 12:41:02 PM »
but nor has the level of need for food and shelter. Many of these people are NOT POOR - they just don't have as much as they want - totally different state of affairs and one in which I existed for many years
Mike
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em

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Re: 300,000 more pensioners living in poverty
« Reply #241 on: Jan 06, 2020, 12:59:40 PM »
but would you like to turn back the clock 80years? (yes,I know it was wartime so obviously a more difficult period for everyone)

Michael Rolls

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Re: 300,000 more pensioners living in poverty
« Reply #242 on: Jan 06, 2020, 01:05:08 PM »
Of course not - but please, please let us stop confusing 'less than one would like' with genuine poverty, of which there is still too much, but which is hidden behind a smokescreen of those who want more than they have
Mike
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em

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Re: 300,000 more pensioners living in poverty
« Reply #243 on: Jan 06, 2020, 01:09:39 PM »
Believe it or not,Michael,I totally agree with you!

sparky

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Re: 300,000 more pensioners living in poverty
« Reply #244 on: Jan 06, 2020, 01:21:24 PM »
While our lifestyles are way beyond anything my Parents/Grandparents could hope for, I can  imagine for many pensioners living alone, it can be a bit of a struggle from week to week, managing everyday expenses.

zoony

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Re: 300,000 more pensioners living in poverty
« Reply #245 on: Jan 06, 2020, 01:38:10 PM »
but nor has the level of need for food and shelter. Many of these people are NOT POOR - they just don't have as much as they want - totally different state of affairs and one in which I existed for many years
Mike


  I grant that there are many 'poor' who might fit your definition but there are also many, mostly elderly, who quietly just try to survive week after week with whatever money they have left. They don't make a fuss or draw attention to themselves, they merely get by, slowly deteriorating, for as long as they can without any friends, relatives or support to call on, something they're too proud to do anyway, until they quietly die. "But we didn't know!" comes the cry from the vaguely guilty. "But you never asked or checked." Is the silent reply.
"Listen to the wind, it cleans the mind."

"Never use money to measure wealth, son"

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Michael Rolls

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Re: 300,000 more pensioners living in poverty
« Reply #246 on: Jan 06, 2020, 03:48:23 PM »
Believe it or not,Michael,I totally agree with you!
Thank you!
Mike
Thank you for the days, the days you gave me.
The older I get, the better I was!

Michael Rolls

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Re: 300,000 more pensioners living in poverty
« Reply #247 on: Jan 06, 2020, 03:50:54 PM »

  I grant that there are many 'poor' who might fit your definition but there are also many, mostly elderly, who quietly just try to survive week after week with whatever money they have left. They don't make a fuss or draw attention to themselves, they merely get by, slowly deteriorating, for as long as they can without any friends, relatives or support to call on, something they're too proud to do anyway, until they quietly die. "But we didn't know!" comes the cry from the vaguely guilty. "But you never asked or checked." Is the silent reply.
Zoony
I agree - and I have known some such folk - but we are being force feed with a false definition of poverty which is designed to make us all feel guilty whilst doing nothing about the real problem
Mike
Thank you for the days, the days you gave me.
The older I get, the better I was!

zoony

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Re: 300,000 more pensioners living in poverty
« Reply #248 on: Jan 06, 2020, 04:04:59 PM »
Yes..Another case of biggest gob gets most help?
"Listen to the wind, it cleans the mind."

"Never use money to measure wealth, son"

                                           cowboy wisdom.

Goingtoseed

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Re: 300,000 more pensioners living in poverty
« Reply #249 on: Jan 06, 2020, 05:33:59 PM »
While our lifestyles are way beyond anything my Parents/Grandparents could hope for, I can  imagine for many pensioners living alone, it can be a bit of a struggle from week to week, managing everyday expenses.

So if poverty should not be measured by 'what they would like' then could or should it not be measured by comparison to 'how it was'?

If I look back at my childhood when my grandparents where my age - 1961 I was 12.
They did not have electricity, 'town' gas nor a public sewer.
Heating including that for water came via a coal range. The only toilet was out in the garden in a stone built shack with the waste being collected by a large metal container below the hole in the wooden toilet seat. A tin bath for the weekly soak and washing clothes by hand in a tub.
Lighting was provided by calor gas.  Cooking was via a paraffin run range.

Now looking back at those days no one ever complained about what they didn't have or wanted. We had enough food to feed us albeit that nothing was shop bought including bread.

Do I see pensioners today living in those conditions? I doubt it. 

zoony

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Re: 300,000 more pensioners living in poverty
« Reply #250 on: Jan 06, 2020, 07:40:05 PM »
Comparing poverty in different ages is pointless. We all see it differently and few not at all as it's mostly hidden but to blithely deny it exists is just foolish.
"Listen to the wind, it cleans the mind."

"Never use money to measure wealth, son"

                                           cowboy wisdom.

mick607

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Re: 300,000 more pensioners living in poverty
« Reply #251 on: Jan 06, 2020, 07:50:02 PM »
So if poverty should not be measured by 'what they would like' then could or should it not be measured by comparison to 'how it was'?

If I look back at my childhood when my grandparents where my age - 1961 I was 12.
They did not have electricity, 'town' gas nor a public sewer.
Heating including that for water came via a coal range. The only toilet was out in the garden in a stone built shack with the waste being collected by a large metal container below the hole in the wooden toilet seat. A tin bath for the weekly soak and washing clothes by hand in a tub.
Lighting was provided by calor gas.  Cooking was via a paraffin run range.

Now looking back at those days no one ever complained about what they didn't have or wanted. We had enough food to feed us albeit that nothing was shop bought including bread.

Do I see pensioners today living in those conditions? I doubt it.
Your grand parents were not unique living in those conditions To some extent it was the norm for countless working class families.
The first time I had access to an indoor toilet & "bathroom was in 1975. We even had the luxury of central heating too. You were not hard done by GTS & you certainly aren't with the amount of benefits you claim.

em

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Re: 300,000 more pensioners living in poverty
« Reply #252 on: Jan 06, 2020, 08:19:08 PM »
My grandfather was born in 1850,repeat 1850,in rural Ireland (before the potato famine) My father was born in 1890,served in WW1.Think of the changes since then.

Michael Rolls

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Re: 300,000 more pensioners living in poverty
« Reply #253 on: Jan 06, 2020, 08:52:02 PM »
So if poverty should not be measured by 'what they would like' then could or should it not be measured by comparison to 'how it was'?

If I look back at my childhood when my grandparents where my age - 1961 I was 12.
They did not have electricity, 'town' gas nor a public sewer.
Heating including that for water came via a coal range. The only toilet was out in the garden in a stone built shack with the waste being collected by a large metal container below the hole in the wooden toilet seat. A tin bath for the weekly soak and washing clothes by hand in a tub.
Lighting was provided by calor gas.  Cooking was via a paraffin run range.

Now looking back at those days no one ever complained about what they didn't have or wanted. We had enough food to feed us albeit that nothing was shop bought including bread.

Do I see pensioners today living in those conditions? I doubt it.
Oddly enough, I also was 12 when we moved into our house in Hampton which had no electricity, no bathroom, an outside toilet - unlit but with running hot and cold spiders! - gas mantles to light the two main downstairs dooms, with candles for upstairs and the kitchen. However - we weren't poor - but we became poor when dad became bedridden three years later and died at 49 after two more years. Before he became bedridden he had had electricity installed and a bathroom created.
Mike
Thank you for the days, the days you gave me.
The older I get, the better I was!

crabbyob

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Re: 300,000 more pensioners living in poverty
« Reply #254 on: Jan 07, 2020, 04:57:38 AM »
i think loneliness is a big factor in pensioners demise...
when i first came to Doncaster in a new housing estate built solely for miners
in the centre of the estate they built pensioners cottages/bungalows
i was so impressed that these people could be so caring of their elders, and hopefully the pensioners themselves looked after their neighbours..
to me it was a lesson soon forgotten... how many old men or women live all alone in the family home while their family live hundreds if not thousands of miles away?
lets get some single bedroom homes built in a circle with a cafe/canteen community centre in the middle
how many of us go from one day to the next with only tv for company
let those among us who may or may not be community leaders take note
just consider how many family homes could be released if one of these communities were built..

“Life may not be the party we hoped for, but as we are already here we may as well dance”