Could you live on £7.50 a day?

[doodab]

To be honest its hypocritical of any of us to be pushing IDS to live on £53 a week when we ourselves have paid more than that for a steak on a Grub Club night out, as others have mentioned benefits is supposed to be the basic, an incentive for people to strive to earn more

But none of us have claimed we could live on £53 a week. Which frankly would struggle to make a dent in my coffee bill. I'm probably more like £50 a day, excluding rent and bills. And holidays. And gadgets. And stuff.

[SimonMac]

But none of us have claimed we could live on £53 a week. Which frankly would struggle to make a dent in my coffee bill. I'm probably more like £50 a day, excluding rent and bills. And holidays. And gadgets. And stuff.

If all bills paid I could, and in fact regularly do only live on £50 a week if all other bills are paid, however my point is we don't need to claim to see if we could, because we are what most would consider successful people (yes Suity I even include you in that one). And the reason we are in the position we are in is because we work

[minestrone]

If I was not working I could live off of 53 quid no problem, I think I have said similar on here before.

[aussielong]

If I was not working I could live off of 53 quid no problem, I think I have said similar on here before.

Easily done. Uk supermarkets are cheap.

Eat all meals at home. 2 pints on a saturday, stay in and watch TV , read library books. Walk everywhere, couple of trips into town on the bus per week. This is how lots of people live.

[EternalOptimist]

If I was not working I could live off of 53 quid no problem, I think I have said similar on here before.

It takes a lot of bottle to claim something like that

[Peoplesoft bloke]

What was grim about them?
I expect the answer to that is they didn't feed or heat them sufficiently - certainly Charles Dickens tales seem to bear this out.
No I think these days, in keeping with your idea of a "civilised society" we could have a better class of workhouse where food was edible and heating sufficient.

The aim would be for people to feel motivated to get out of them, but not to the extent of making them desperate to leave.

I cannot believe that any sane person is a serious advocate of workhouses - this has to be a wind up.

If as Dodgy asserts, "Lefties wouldn't like 'em cos they are/were practical" then, as usual he's delusional - the Victorians were perhaps at the pinnacle of hypocrisy (although Mrs Thatcher and Peter Mandelson would be good candidates - but that's a different tale).

If you had done even cursory research you'd know that, for example, some workhouses had crank handles which the residents were expected to turn all day. The handles didn't do anything, they just meant that the Victorian tossers who created them felt they had protected society from the extreme evil that would have otherwise accrued from people being protected (just barely) from starvation and not being required to do something pointless "in return".

I cannot begin to express my contempt for this "race to the bottom" punishment mentality - the entitlement culture is all too apparent - not amongst the majority of working poor and claimants, but amongst overpriviledged gits who talk bollocks about "wealth creation" as if they alone posses the magical skills to tulip money that serfs should be grateful to beg for.

The tragedy of this is that it invites daft dogma - IDS' reforms aren't all bad - the universal credit, is in principal, a good idea - but some of the other reforms are just class war and party dogma - just like (and no worse and no better) Tony Blair having a go at Fox hunting because it wasn't his core vote - nasty, spiteful and intended to appeal to the blind party automata of the "core vote".

[bobspud]

These places were so grim, people used to run away and starve or turn to prostitution to get out of them.

So at least they were getting paid for something the dumb and poor of today currently give away for free...

The biggest issue we have today is that people on benefits are alowed to have kids. Pregnancy on welfare should result in a forced abortion or withdrawn support. There should be no question of allowing the poor to have kids that they can't feed...

[KentPhilip]

I cannot believe that any sane person is a serious advocate of workhouses - this has to be a wind up.

Are you suggesting that Victorian society were collectively insane?
Funnily enough there was no BBC back then to inject its leftist venom into the public psyche. (OK of course radio and TV had yet to be invented).

If you had done even cursory research you'd know that, for example, some workhouses had crank handles which the residents were expected to turn all day. The handles didn't do anything, they just meant that the Victorian tossers who created them felt they had protected society from the extreme evil that would have otherwise accrued from people being protected (just barely) from starvation and not being required to do something pointless "in return".

I cannot begin to express my contempt for this "race to the bottom" punishment mentality

There is no desire to punish the workhouse residents. The aim is to create motivation for the residents to become self-supporting, and get themselves out of the workhouse. You can't do that if life in the workhouse is better than life outside.

In Victorian times they had to make the workers crank handles to create this motivation because life outside was pretty bad, so they had to make workhouses worse.
But nowadays life for someone who is self supporting outside is much better, so the only "punishment" that a workhouse would have to impose to create this motivation would be the lack of privacy etc that living in a workhouse would involve.

[vetran]

the other point you may have missed is that the cranks were the only work they could get them to do without screwing it up intentionally.

Fallen women shelters would be a sensible idea, get pregnant and you share a bunk with another female breeder. Stops them breeding again.

[istvan]

Sure, where is it allowed to pitch my tent in the city? Also I need a lucrative spot to augment this income... it would be nice to take a bath once in a month, whether I need it or not...