OVLOV JAY:
The problem isn’t how little she earns, it’s how extortionate the rents are in London. About time something was done to stop squeezing the working classes out
Well, I was kinda thinking it’s both really…
Joe Bloggs 1 to Joe Bloggs 2 :
“i’m really struggling to pay my rent at the moment,”
------JB2 to JB1:
------“sorry to hear that, how much do you earn if you don’t mind me asking?”
“£640 a month”
Anywhere in the UK people would think “i’m not surprised you are struggling”, which is I think one of Carryfast’s many excellent points. Now i’m not for a minute suggesting that this single mother of two children absolutely ought to be earning more money, I respect her for working at all as there are of course plenty of others in her situation who would be wholly dependent on the state.
i do not take any issue with Tracy Strassburg herself as I do not know anything like enough about her overall situation or what her actual thoughts are on her situation, I take issue with the BBC, precisely because we are given none of this info and also because I think Tracy Strassburg is such a rubbish example of someone struggling to pay their rent that it borders on parody.
In the original article, the first example (now mysteriously deleted) was of a woman earning £1500 per month struggling to live in Wokingham with rent and council tax of £1057 per month. This first woman has taken the first sensible step of earning what some at least would consider a reasonable wage and she has also taken the second sensible step of not living in london, so when I saw she was struggling to pay her rent she certainly had my sympathy. yes, she too could consider moving to a cheaper area, but what she saves in rent she might lose in income, whereas Tracy Strassburg could clearly give up her job altogether and still be better off in many parts of the country
It’s just dumb that someone who earns £640 a month and has a rent of £1400 a month is (now) the BBC’s main example of one of these half a million people referred to here:
According to the housing charity Shelter, there are now half a million people in the UK in the same situation: people who have jobs, but who still have to borrow money for the rent.
I mean what next? maybe someone called Tarquin struggling to pay £7000 per month for a flat in Knightsbridge on his £250 a month income as a professional gambler?
Juddian:
You heartless beast KTM , that poor woman works her fingers to the bone averaging 80 hour weeks with pick and shovel at the yoga face,
■■■■, didn’t realise that Juddian, starting to feel quite bad now
Carryfast:
Typical BBC propaganda agenda.Shocker average single wage earner can’t afford to house themselves let alone a family in London and the South East and Landlords aren’t housing charities and housing benefit isn’t an unlimited infinite resource when that should be the job of income protection insurance.Let alone for a single wage earner with the non job wage of a ‘Yoga teacher’.While anyone born and bred in the region knows that’s been the same for almost 40 years if not more…
…On that note the obvious answer in this case is how did she end up in the situation of being a mother of two children and a single wage earner.Let alone a single wage earner with a low paying non job like Yoga teacher and why then add to the problem of that by wanting to stay in the worst of all worlds of living in one of the crappiest and most expensive,if not the crappiest and most expensive,parts of the country.
Could not have put it better myself.
Carryfast:
cav551:
I’ve got it, the advice to this woman from those who presumably quite like twiddling the wheel their belly is resting on, while not really concentrating on what is going on t’other side of the windscreen
is: move and get a proper job.
Not do a job you are good at and like doing, but leave whatever friends and family you have and move to the other end of the country, because when you get there you will if you are really lucky, find a job you actually hate, which pays less than you had before, but you will find some hovel for 1/4 of the rent so everything is tickety boo. It won’t matter that your kids get bullied at school because they can’t speak or understand u’t local Scouse, Geordie or whatever dialect.
Wow.
Ironically much of the problem is caused by people happily leaving other parts of the country,or even other countries and presumably their friends and family there,to move to London.Thereby helping to create the unsustainable population levels and resulting over demand that’s causing the high housing costs.
Having said that it’s doubtful that the job and single wage of ‘Yoga Teacher’ would even get close to enough to cover the mortgage or rent on anything better than a small high rise flat wherever it is in the country…
I don’t know enough about this woman’s situation (or her thoughts on her situation) to offer advice, the fact that practically none of the complex issues around this subject are examined by the BBC in the article being one of the main reasons I consider it to be a rubbish article. I am not actually saying that she herself should move out of London (she could for example perhaps pool her resources with her mother who is also in London) what I am saying is that someone earning £640 a month struggling to pay a London rent is not newsworthy as it would be of no ■■■■■■■ surprise to anyone !!!
Not sure what the amount of attention paid to the road ahead while driving has got to do with any of this - but if you insist - perhaps the advice given to this woman from those who consider looking through the windscreen at all to be very much of secondary importance to the much more essential browsing of the guardian website and Jeremy Corbyn’s twitter feed would be to lobby her MP to pressure the government to increase income tax by 5 pence across the board, so that UK taxpayers who have themselves either left London, other parts of the UK or indeed other countries for economic reasons (i.e. they couldn’t afford to live there anymore) can subsidise anyone who lives within 30 miles of Islington to do whatever job they like (e.g. basket weaving, upcycling tea crates into bedroom furniture) for however many hours a week they feel like for whatever they can get a month for it…