I asked my kids "what sucks most about being poor". Answers below in no order.
"Kids making fun of me because I didn't know what a PlayStation was".
"It's always cold".
"You're never able to afford anything nice".
"People are constantly mean about everything".
"The government is always trying to kill you".
"I don't know it's just horrible".
"You can't get enough food sometimes".
"The barking dog and the car alarms, the fighting and the creeps outside... And when there's broken glass".
I am so incredibly tired of writing posts about what actual poverty looks like only to get replies saying words to the effect of put a jumper on, eat porridge, how dare you have any source of entertainment or pass-times, a dangerously bad home is still a roof over your head, if you were actually poor you wouldn't have a car, etc.
It's ignorance masquerading as informed perspective, it insults the intelligence of >14 million UK residents and it's blamey as fuck.
I've no patience with it.
My kids are angry at me because Daddy was going to take them swimming today and I said no.
The youngest has a bad cold and I don't want the middle one in the pool and the changing rooms alone.
I said Daddy could take them to the nice warm indoor cinema, provided the kids wear masks but Daddy didn't rate any of the films available as worth the fee or the inconvenience so Daddy has left without them and they are staying in.
No one is talking to me beyond a grunt 🙄
BBC News have written an article called "Staying Warm; What does an unheated room do to your body?"
A healthy male journalist was connected to medical monitors and the impact on his body documented as the room fell from a cosy 21c to 10c-the average winter temperature of an unheated room.
It's interesting, but it's bland data without context and lived experience, so let me tell you what it's actually like to inhabit a space that's not warm enough...
12. I'll just leave you with these figures:
"More than one in five of the UK population (22%) are in poverty– 14.5 million people.
Of these,
8.1 million are working-age adults, 4.3 million are children and 2.1 million are pensioners."
11. Don't expect your health to clear up overnight once you have heat again.
If I had to suggest a typical aftermath of having been FF for a spell it would be abdominal pain/ organ pain, pins and needles in your extremities, athletes foot, the flu and a bit of a rasp, bruises like a Dalmatian, a slide toward depression and weight gain.
No biggy then 😱
10. Your social circle and support system may well break.
Think about it- you're being boring staying indoors, you're ravenous, dressing like the Michelin man, preoccupied with temperature, unhappy, moving awkwardly from the varied impacts on your muscles, your skin is not looking great and you have cut down on baths/laundry.
(Why laundry? Because the one warmest thing you own is all you'll want to wear you'll try to wear it for days and you'll be sleeping in your second best thing)...
9. MOULD.
MOULD EVERYWHERE.
(That is the whole toot.)
8. Hygiene.
No one wants a bath or shower when their home is FF.
In normal circumstances after a winter walk you might shower to warm up but if your home is FF the hot shower or bath competes with the FF air which feels horrid in a blotchy way, then your body temperature plummets, even if you dry yourself fast.
Bathing means intensified suffering.
More clothes means more skin cells, germs, sweat, etc. In days or weeks you're likely to develop skin problems like chaffing and athletes foot.
Shazan
