How poor is poor?

I am lucky like a lot of people on here have our own Bungalow have very good private pensions coming in but we did save very hard to get where we are

I think it depends on what those around you are able to do in comparison, e.g. friends, neighbours, family. For instance, we can't afford to take a holiday any more. This perhaps wouldn't bother me if I didn't see 'everybody else' going on one, two, maybe more exotic holidays a year in their mellowing years.

(and the thieving in charity shops is as rife as in any other shops)!

ethel the beauty of the charity shop I work in( R.S.P.C.A) is I also get 20% off anything I purchase I prob would never have gone to work in a charity shop but for the jobcenter "encouraging me" I love it, I have even been in 2 extra days this last week as its saves sitting at home having to put the heating on I wouldnt mind a aid job there!

Today I have wore a pair of Next leather boots nice n comfy that went with my jeggings...and cost me..........£3-20!

It sounds rather pejorative to me and seems to be being used in that way. Not necessarily on here but more widely.

I don't think it means that. I believe it was originally directed at twitter users who would jump on whatever bandwagon was currently popular and tweet their disapproval or otherwise without really knowing much about the subject at all.

I think that of low income families I have known , through work, there were also 'poor' families who genuinely could not afford a winter coat/new shoes etc. and who had to make a very limited amount of money feed the kids as well as themselves. it only takes a small event, e.g. dropping a pint of milk, to tip the balance from being fed to being hungry.
I think that single homeless are probably very vulnerable too as they are the bottom of the benefit list.

Re virtue signalling... none of us know much about what everyone might be/ not be doing in supporting causes they speak about! It seems like a media /political invention a bit like 'politically correct' or 'health and Safety gone mad' to put down people who think a bit differently or who the press/political groups want to undermine or denigrate.

I haven't read every post, so apologise if someone else has touched on this. I think it a national disgrace that this country has to have food banks, so that people can feed their families, when we are supposed to be a rich country. Also find the expression "working poor" offensive. There should be no such thing. If you're working you should be getting a decent wage. There's a lot of money around, but a vast amount is concentrated on a small percentage of the population.

I saw a child, aged about 10, in the supermarket today (in the chilled area). She was wearing a short summer skirt, a t-shirt and flipflops. She was shivering.
Now I started worrying about the child and wondering if a) was her family very poor and could not afford decent clothes for her or b) was she being stroppy and insisted on going out in those clothes and her parent let her.
She darted away before I could see who she was with.
I hope it was the latter, remembering that I did come home one very cold November day after Christmas shopping to find DD (aged 3) playing in the front (not allowed) wearing shorts and t-shirt. DH said 'but that's what she wanted to put on'

So many things that were normal to my DGPs where my mother and I mostly stayed in the1940s might indicate poverty today. The spotless outside lavatory, newspaper threaded on postman's string on nail in whitewashed wall; the galvanised bath used in front of the living room fire; the cold tap at the kitchen sink; beautiful Jack Frost fern patterns on the inside of bedroom windows on cold mornings.
On Freecycle sites now there are pleas from those who are 'desperate' for a silver fridge admittedly beside more genuine appeals and some generous offers.
Young people describe themselves as 'homeless' when things are bad at home, oblivious of relatives offering them (but not their friends!) food and a bed whenever needed. To me homeless is the the people queuing for a hot drink and sandwich handout on a cold nighttime city street
Essentials for a single childless young person moving into a flat seem to (in their eyes) include a washing machine. My mother had her first in the 60s, her first fridge a year or two later. I managed without a washing machine (with a school age child) for several years in the 80s.

In schools today a child whose family relies on benefits should be accessing after school clubs and trips and even get some uniform paid for. Schools receive additional funding for such children and are advised that this is what they could spend the money on.

Nannanoo, yes experienced it until I was given work in the convent which allowed me to start work after taking the children to school and finishing work before end of school day and all school holidays off on half pay, so didn't struggle for too long thank God. I now have the state pension and a very small police widows pension so I don't have to be cold or hungry but I cannot forget what poverty was like and all these years on I feel so for those living in poverty now because I have been there . What troubles me now is they also have to cope with being branded benefit cheats or lazy . Yes such people exist but to brand all the same is so wrong

Anniebach, you are SO right - that's poverty. It sounds as though you've experienced it, and though I don't like to dwell on past troubles, a lot of your post rang bells for me.
I have only my state pension now, so I'm not rolling in cash, but I can pay my bills, don't go short of any essentials, and I feel very content.
My dear children are all fairly well-to-do, thank goodness, and that gives me more pleasure than I can say. They have all worked very hard to get where they are - they certainly didn't inherit the 'wealth gene' from me!

Thank you grannyactivist and Jen for explaining

Wilma I think it does sum up poverty and thank you

James Bartholomew explains that what he terms "virtue signallers" use words instead of actions to indicate that they are more caring than the next person. That seems pretty rich to me coming from someone who presumably earns his living from writing "mere words". Presumably he feels his own opinions are worthy of expressing but those of some other people are not.

He accuses Mishal Husain of insinuating that if Nigel Farage himself is not racist then some of his membership is. I can't understand why that means Husain was "virtue signalling" to indicate that she belonged to that part of the "liberal media elite" which despised UKIP. I'm sure there are many people who live quite ordinary non-elite, non-media lives who also have very strong reservations about some of UKIP's policies.

He says that people who say "I hate the Daily Mail" are signalling that they care about poor people and those on benefits. Could it just be that they hate some of the lazy, divisive and rabble-rousing journalism that the Daily Mail is famous for? And what exactly are the people who say they hate the Guardian signalling?

I think that the Sun's page 3 pictures were degrading and embarrassing so according to James Bartholomew I - and men who express the same opinion - are virtue signalling, as is expressing admiration for Mary Beard. My goodness, it seems there is very little we are allowed to express an opinion on without being characterised as insincere, shallow show-offs.

According to James Bartholomew, it is the sort of people who look after their elderly parents rather than "sticking them in a home" or who stay in an unhappy marriage for the sake of their children who show real virtue. Quite a judgmental remark I would say - and I wonder how virtuous this man is in his own personal life.

It seems that he feels those who are unhappy about the current government have no right to express that view unless they are personally feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, etc. etc. (and, anyway, what evidence has he that such people are not, as the saying goes, "putting their money where their mouth is"?). Surely, though, most of the social progress that has been made through the centuries has been arrived at when more and more people have expressed dissatisfaction with a particular situation and governments have been, sometimes reluctantly, driven to respond?

expresses concern

Sorry!

understand. Not 'newsstand'

As I newsstand virtue signalling, it is when a person concern for the plight of others without really feeling that concern. The flaw in that is that no one can really know what another is feeling.

Why do you think it would give people 'pride' to live on state money?

Anniebach I think your description of poverty is a good one.

Re virtue signalling. My understanding of virtue signalling would not include the examples from Annieback and grannyactivist. It's a subtle thing and more about the way someone says something (and so can be perceived as showing off), rather than the bare facts of what they are saying. I don't want to point out the examples I think are on this thread, so please can we drop the subject as it's off topic anyway?

was for

If the money, in Brazil, as for sending the children to school, why were they spending it in local shops? (Just by the by)

Where are you going to get all this money jd? Take it willy nilly from the people who have worked hard, used their brains, and been successful in their lives? That smacks of communism to me. Are you a communist?

There will always be people who have more intelligence and more ability to be financially successful. I do not think they should be penalised unfairly for that. Pay appropriate Taxes, yes. And on the whole, they do. And they create jobs for others.

There have never been completely equal societies. Certainly not in communist Russia.

There are people who care about social issues and there are people who do not.
Quite often if you say you care about one thing you get accused of being a single issue campaigner. If you say you campaign about lots of issues, then you get called a virtue signaller.
Some people think the Green Party is a single issue party, as is the NHA. However, they are multi-issue parties just like all other parties.

I was just reading a conversation between Brian Eno and Yanis Varoufakis where they discussed basic income, where you give people a certain amount of money whether they work or not. You avoid the crushing poverty of people who have no money and you stimulate the economy because when people have money they buy things.
They tried it in Brazil. They gave the people in the favellas about $1000 for sending their children to school. So the people had that money to spend in local shops, so even more people benefited.
People at the top in this country seem to think there is something inherently wrong with giving poor people enough money to live on, and for them to have pride.
Why have we created a system that gives the biggest rewards to the greediest people?

I think that it describes people who say something to indicate they are virtuous, but don't actually do anything. If I'm honest I'm not altogether sure - and I haven't quite understood the negative aspect of 'signalling virtue' by means of denigrating something.
So, for example, if I say I care about the situation of homelessness in this country, but don't actually 'do' anything about it personally then that may be perceived as 'virtue signalling'. However, if I really do care, but can't do anything about it because my time is taken up with another matter I really care about, campaigning about the environment for instance, is that still virtue signalling in regard to people who are homeless?
I discussed it with a (very knowledgeable and informed) friend recently and asked her if she thought I was guilty of virtue signalling and she laughed at me. Her view is it's all about whether you are actually doing something about the issues you 'say' you care about and as I spend a great deal of time working with homeless people she was quite certain that I am not guilty m'lud, but when I gave her the example above she became very unsure. I think it's perfectly possible to genuinely care about a whole raft of social issues without getting directly involved in all of them.