Times are tough and I understand so many people are struggling but you can make Christmas as expensive as you want it to be. You don’t need to buy a load of presents and spend £100s.
You can buy food cheap, as she is a single parent so a small chicken or even just some chicken breast would be enough meat for her family.
You could even buy presents from Facebook dirt cheap as some people are selling unopened toys.
I’d be skint if I had 5 kids and had to look after my brother.. which is why I have 2.
I don’t want to rag on someone who’s had a misfortune – but this just looks like poor life planning. I guess the only options is cheap food for Christmas.
So to all the 17 year olds out there, use this as a life lesson. You will be poor for most of your life if you have more kids than you can afford.
She has five children. We don’t know how old they are or the circumstances of their births. We also don’t know when and why her 16 year old brother came to live with her. Judging her for having more children than she can afford, although there is no indication she couldn’t afford them when she had them, is unhelpful. So is judging her for having her first child at 17.
What is true is that the social safety net has been stripped back. Before the conservatives came to power, she would have had far more substantial help.
Don’t breed if you can’t feed, let alone five. You get sympathy if you make one mistake, not when you made the same mistake five times.
Five fucking kids?? Half the “old” parents can’t afford this shit
I am a bit of a grinch but going broke because of Christmas is quite something. I have friends who stress about gifts and the like and I’m just wondering if going without this year would’ve been the easier and more sensible option.
Five children… ridiculous, and selfish. I’m prepared for the downvotes!
This is why the spectre of inflation needs defeating, it harms the poorest the most and the richest the least. Sadly many on Reddit want to stoke inflation over the longterm with the classic trap of short-term wage rises.
I notice the distinct and deliberate decision to not include in the article if, or what, she does for a living and how much it pays.
I know that sounds harsh, but I see so many of these BBC articles where I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop.
In the past fortnight alone I’ve seen one article where some tearful mother laments the growing cost of childcare and how ‘impossible’ that makes her life currently. Long, florid paragraphs about pain and misery before a postscript at the end informs you that her husband owns his own very successful building firm. The article was also illustrated by clearly recent photos of them and their kids on holiday in a tropical setting, and their brand new white SUV 4×4 in the background etc.
Another was a senior nurse lamenting that she’d had to take on a second job delivering pizzas to make ends meet. Yet once again, the article is festooned with pictures of her looking glum in her gadget popping modern kitchen in the house she owns, or standing next to her obviously very expensive BMW. It’s only right at the end we find out her basic salary is FORTY GRAND and that she’s struggling because she’s in mountains of consumer debt. She even admits herself she’s in dire financial straits because she never wants to say ‘no’ to her teenage children.
Yet a third had a similar story; A nurse tearfully making a cup of tea and moping around the kitchen lamenting about how she can’t afford basics any more, and what a tragedy it is that she’s only paid £27K/year. I agreed right up until the final paragraph of the story in which it’s revealed she chose to drop down to a three day working week to look after her children decades ago, and simply never had the will or desire to go back to a full time rota.
And my question is always ‘why?’ What is the purpose of this ludicrous kind of framing? This Motte and Bailey style tactic of reporting? The best conclusion I can come to is this;
The asset holding classes are attempting to crowd out the truly impoverished in this country, because they know eventually the state will have to intervene (as they did with energy vouchers) and they, the asset holding classes, sincerely, truly believe they ‘the deserving poor’ should have Daddy State step in and protect their assets at the cost of the truly poor, ‘the undeserving poor’, who must continue to be bullied and harangued into creating their own wealth and acquiring and protecting their own assets.
They’re actively attempting to redefine poverty as ‘Once I’ve bought everything I want, I have no money, so I must be poor and thus deserve and demand state assistance!’ as opposed to what poverty actually is, which is never even being in the position to make enough basic purchases to run out of money, indeed, not being able to make basic purchases at all.
I mean, if everybody is a millionaire, then nobody is a millionaire, so if everybody is poor, nobody is poor, right?
I’d love to tell that £40K/year senior nurse that she can shove my £17K/year full time work salary where the sun doesn’t shine if she’s so desperate money be extracted from my pockets to be dumped into her credit card repayments. I’m so poor I don’t even qualify for a fucking credit card.
I really don’t like these stories at all.
We don’t know the individual’s life story and therefore we shouldn’t judge.
There was an message on our local residents group last night from someone pleading for help because a sudden vet’s bill has blown a hole in their budget until payday. There are countless examples up and down the country right now.
The article knows exactly what it’s doing – equating those struggling as those who have made unfortunate life decisions. It’s stinks.
While she has a brother living in the house, where’s the kids’ father? I feel really sorry for the 5 kids, they simply have no choice because of the bad (and selfish) decisions and life planning of their parents. Yes, down vote me as you wish.
“I went to the food bank so I could afford Christmas presents”
I’ll remember this next time someone tells me how people will literally starve without food banks. She’s using the money she saved to get a playstation lmao
Using a food bank to spend money on presents?
Noone wants any child to have nothing under the tree in Christmas morning, but did those donating really expect there to be money available that’s spent elsewhere rather than on food?
5 children plus a brother. Am in the only person who thinks wtf?
The comments on these articles are always so depressing. British people would rather blame poor people and immigrants instead of the horrible mismanagement under Tory rule.
5 kids is the issue, starting at 17 means she would of been just outta school without a solid job. Seriously I don’t understand how people can try to deflect and say “oh maybe she was in a high paying job”. Sorry no 5 kids in 13 years, that’s alot of time off on maternity.
A girl I went to school with is upto 7 kids to 4 dads in 15 years. She has never worked and will never work. Same with the girls mum she had 6 kids and has never worked. It’s a sad cycle of handouts, that is fueled by more children living in poverty. I don’t have enough fingers to count the amount of people I grew up with. Who openly admit to having more and more kids to avoid working.
The government needed to cap benefits to 2 kids for this reason. However they fucked up by not increasing the benefits for 2. That way people who breakup/lose their jobs can still properly support them. Benefits are meant to be a safety net for this. But you can’t carry on with this nonsense of deflecting as there are big families who fall on hard times. But from my experience of living in poverty, most people are by choice and not by breakups etc. Of coarse its common for people with 1-2 kids to spilt up. But we are talking about 4/5/6/7 kids here.
Christmas doesn’t need to be any more expensive than the rest of the year. People who think Christmas has to involve lots of expense are the same ones who think weddings need to cost the price of a new car.
Turkey became the traditional Christmas meal because it was cheap and bulky. If it isn’t any more, maybe we should change the tradition and switch to shepherd’s pie or spag bol?
If people start ignoring all the marketing, and hype, and go back to making their own paper chains and hats, and eating whatever fills you up for the least cost, they’ll still have a nice Christmas as a family, and stop playing into the hands of the billionaires.
I don’t know the ins and outs of having that many kids but I can guess it’s a struggle all year round just not at Christmas.
18 comments
Times are tough and I understand so many people are struggling but you can make Christmas as expensive as you want it to be. You don’t need to buy a load of presents and spend £100s.
You can buy food cheap, as she is a single parent so a small chicken or even just some chicken breast would be enough meat for her family.
You could even buy presents from Facebook dirt cheap as some people are selling unopened toys.
I’d be skint if I had 5 kids and had to look after my brother.. which is why I have 2.
I don’t want to rag on someone who’s had a misfortune – but this just looks like poor life planning. I guess the only options is cheap food for Christmas.
So to all the 17 year olds out there, use this as a life lesson. You will be poor for most of your life if you have more kids than you can afford.
She has five children. We don’t know how old they are or the circumstances of their births. We also don’t know when and why her 16 year old brother came to live with her. Judging her for having more children than she can afford, although there is no indication she couldn’t afford them when she had them, is unhelpful. So is judging her for having her first child at 17.
What is true is that the social safety net has been stripped back. Before the conservatives came to power, she would have had far more substantial help.
Don’t breed if you can’t feed, let alone five. You get sympathy if you make one mistake, not when you made the same mistake five times.
Five fucking kids?? Half the “old” parents can’t afford this shit
I am a bit of a grinch but going broke because of Christmas is quite something. I have friends who stress about gifts and the like and I’m just wondering if going without this year would’ve been the easier and more sensible option.
Public information film, Specials style.
https://youtu.be/rdu8VOWk3pg
Five children… ridiculous, and selfish. I’m prepared for the downvotes!
This is why the spectre of inflation needs defeating, it harms the poorest the most and the richest the least. Sadly many on Reddit want to stoke inflation over the longterm with the classic trap of short-term wage rises.
I notice the distinct and deliberate decision to not include in the article if, or what, she does for a living and how much it pays.
I know that sounds harsh, but I see so many of these BBC articles where I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop.
In the past fortnight alone I’ve seen one article where some tearful mother laments the growing cost of childcare and how ‘impossible’ that makes her life currently. Long, florid paragraphs about pain and misery before a postscript at the end informs you that her husband owns his own very successful building firm. The article was also illustrated by clearly recent photos of them and their kids on holiday in a tropical setting, and their brand new white SUV 4×4 in the background etc.
Another was a senior nurse lamenting that she’d had to take on a second job delivering pizzas to make ends meet. Yet once again, the article is festooned with pictures of her looking glum in her gadget popping modern kitchen in the house she owns, or standing next to her obviously very expensive BMW. It’s only right at the end we find out her basic salary is FORTY GRAND and that she’s struggling because she’s in mountains of consumer debt. She even admits herself she’s in dire financial straits because she never wants to say ‘no’ to her teenage children.
Yet a third had a similar story; A nurse tearfully making a cup of tea and moping around the kitchen lamenting about how she can’t afford basics any more, and what a tragedy it is that she’s only paid £27K/year. I agreed right up until the final paragraph of the story in which it’s revealed she chose to drop down to a three day working week to look after her children decades ago, and simply never had the will or desire to go back to a full time rota.
And my question is always ‘why?’ What is the purpose of this ludicrous kind of framing? This Motte and Bailey style tactic of reporting? The best conclusion I can come to is this;
The asset holding classes are attempting to crowd out the truly impoverished in this country, because they know eventually the state will have to intervene (as they did with energy vouchers) and they, the asset holding classes, sincerely, truly believe they ‘the deserving poor’ should have Daddy State step in and protect their assets at the cost of the truly poor, ‘the undeserving poor’, who must continue to be bullied and harangued into creating their own wealth and acquiring and protecting their own assets.
They’re actively attempting to redefine poverty as ‘Once I’ve bought everything I want, I have no money, so I must be poor and thus deserve and demand state assistance!’ as opposed to what poverty actually is, which is never even being in the position to make enough basic purchases to run out of money, indeed, not being able to make basic purchases at all.
I mean, if everybody is a millionaire, then nobody is a millionaire, so if everybody is poor, nobody is poor, right?
I’d love to tell that £40K/year senior nurse that she can shove my £17K/year full time work salary where the sun doesn’t shine if she’s so desperate money be extracted from my pockets to be dumped into her credit card repayments. I’m so poor I don’t even qualify for a fucking credit card.
I really don’t like these stories at all.
We don’t know the individual’s life story and therefore we shouldn’t judge.
There was an message on our local residents group last night from someone pleading for help because a sudden vet’s bill has blown a hole in their budget until payday. There are countless examples up and down the country right now.
The article knows exactly what it’s doing – equating those struggling as those who have made unfortunate life decisions. It’s stinks.
While she has a brother living in the house, where’s the kids’ father? I feel really sorry for the 5 kids, they simply have no choice because of the bad (and selfish) decisions and life planning of their parents. Yes, down vote me as you wish.
“I went to the food bank so I could afford Christmas presents”
I’ll remember this next time someone tells me how people will literally starve without food banks. She’s using the money she saved to get a playstation lmao
Using a food bank to spend money on presents?
Noone wants any child to have nothing under the tree in Christmas morning, but did those donating really expect there to be money available that’s spent elsewhere rather than on food?
5 children plus a brother. Am in the only person who thinks wtf?
The comments on these articles are always so depressing. British people would rather blame poor people and immigrants instead of the horrible mismanagement under Tory rule.
5 kids is the issue, starting at 17 means she would of been just outta school without a solid job. Seriously I don’t understand how people can try to deflect and say “oh maybe she was in a high paying job”. Sorry no 5 kids in 13 years, that’s alot of time off on maternity.
A girl I went to school with is upto 7 kids to 4 dads in 15 years. She has never worked and will never work. Same with the girls mum she had 6 kids and has never worked. It’s a sad cycle of handouts, that is fueled by more children living in poverty. I don’t have enough fingers to count the amount of people I grew up with. Who openly admit to having more and more kids to avoid working.
The government needed to cap benefits to 2 kids for this reason. However they fucked up by not increasing the benefits for 2. That way people who breakup/lose their jobs can still properly support them. Benefits are meant to be a safety net for this. But you can’t carry on with this nonsense of deflecting as there are big families who fall on hard times. But from my experience of living in poverty, most people are by choice and not by breakups etc. Of coarse its common for people with 1-2 kids to spilt up. But we are talking about 4/5/6/7 kids here.
Christmas doesn’t need to be any more expensive than the rest of the year. People who think Christmas has to involve lots of expense are the same ones who think weddings need to cost the price of a new car.
Turkey became the traditional Christmas meal because it was cheap and bulky. If it isn’t any more, maybe we should change the tradition and switch to shepherd’s pie or spag bol?
If people start ignoring all the marketing, and hype, and go back to making their own paper chains and hats, and eating whatever fills you up for the least cost, they’ll still have a nice Christmas as a family, and stop playing into the hands of the billionaires.
I don’t know the ins and outs of having that many kids but I can guess it’s a struggle all year round just not at Christmas.