Britain now officially in double-dip recession

Amp34 said:
Yes you can... Students and others do it all the time.

Minimum wage for a fill time job is what, about £10k minimum?

That is significantly more than I had to spend when I was a student (inc. bills, rent, food etc). The only excess would be council tax, which could be less than £200-300 a year if you live in a shared house, like a significant number of younger people do.
Click to expand...

Depends where you live I guess, living in a shared house can be quite debilitating, it's a bit different when your all a bunch of students sharing a house in the knowledge that it is a temporary situation on the way to a better life, down here most shared houses are full of druggies, alcoholics, jobless, workers just about hanging on, cheap shared accommodation for older people have a habit of attracting an element of society with a lot of problems, and landlords that accept them, and then you have to share a kitchen and bathroom with these people, loud music, parties, fighting etc.

For many unfortunate people my town that are in this situation this is what they have to look forward to for the rest of their lives, I lived in few of these places and it sent to me to drink, yes I and a lot of these people probably only have ourselves to blame but regardless it's not easy, we all make mistakes, you live in some of these places and it fills like a hole you'll never get out off, some don't.
 
Last edited:
Tyron said:
You need to try doing it on your own, impossible on minimum wage, and that's a fact.
Click to expand...

Not a fact at all.

I lived on my own for a year on minimum wage. Sure it's cheaper now I live with the missus. But I rented a furnished bedsit fed myself and managed to have a good standard of living.

It's all about how you value your life and what's important to you. Living with in your means is incredibly easy. You just have to realise what your means really are.

Sure it would be hard to rent a full house furnish it and enjoy some sort of a social life but it would be possible.

Try living in a house share on benefits that's harder. £65 a week goes no where.
 
lowrider007 said:
Depends where you live I guess, living in a shared house can be quite debilitating, it's a bit different when your all a bunch of students sharing a house in the knowledge that it is a temporary situation on the way to a better life, down here most shared houses are full of druggies, alcoholics, jobless, workers just about hanging on, cheap shared accommodation for older people have a habit of attracting an element of society with a lot of problems, and landlords that accept them, and then you have to share a kitchen and bathroom with these people, loud music, parties etc, fighting.

For many in my town living in this situation this is what they have to look forward to for the rest of their lives, I lived in few of these places and it sent to me to drink, yes I and a lot of these people are most probably to blame for their problems but regardless it's not easy, we all make mistakes, you live in some of these places and it fills like a hole you'll never get out off, some don't.
Click to expand...

You chose the wrong places to live then... I'm currently looking at shared houses as someone that has left uni and now working. A shared house is like a relationship in a lot of ways. You need to find one that fits your needs and wants. Generally people then get into relationships at some point in their lives and move in as a couple anyway, then you have two people to share the rent.

The same issues are found with young people. They solve it by clubbing together in groups with the same interests/social backgrounds and renting houses together/ bringing people they like in to replace outgoing tenants.

But on the other hand I can see where you are coming from. However I do also think if you are 40 and still on minimum wage what are you doing with your life? You must have some kind of skill that you can use to progress yourself up the chain? If so why have you not? Lack of motivation/work ethic? In which case living in those situations and being on minimum wage is a side effect of an underlying problem. That problem needs to be solved before just increasing wages.

That also includes disabilities etc, for which you can and should get benefits to help you survive.
 
Amp34 said:
TBH none of the UK parties could have done much better, unfortunately the biggest issue is the collapsing money pit called Europe. No matter what we as a country do our reliance on the EU recently has severely limited our growth potential.
Click to expand...

Yet our major markets in Europe have all shown greater growth than us. In fact, the Euroarea average growth is higher than ours. It seems pretty bizarre to claim that the Euro is the problem when countries like France and Germany who are actually within the Euro are outperforming our economy.

There's little prospect of us being in happy boom time with the world economy as it is, and the Euro problems have not helped us; however, make no mistake, this double dip is firmly made in Downing Street.
 
Amp34 said:
You chose the wrong places to live then... I'm currently looking at shared houses as someone that has left uni and now working. A shared house is like a relationship in a lot of ways. You need to find one that fits your needs and wants. Generally people then get into relationships at some point in their lives and move in as a couple anyway, then you have two people to share the rent.

The same issues are found with young people. They solve it by clubbing together in groups with the same interests/social backgrounds and renting houses together/ bringing people they like in to replace outgoing tenants.

But on the other hand I can see where you are coming from. However I do also think if you are 40 and still on minimum wage what are you doing with your life? You must have some kind of skill that you can use to progress yourself up the chain? If so why have you not? Lack of motivation/work ethic? In which case living in those situations and being on minimum wage is a side effect of an underlying problem. That problem needs to be solved before just increasing wages.

That also includes disabilities etc, for which you can and should get benefits to help you survive.
Click to expand...

Sometimes you don't have a choice where you live, you just have to take what you can get, I've lived in loads of shared houses and they all had problems, before that I slept on the floor in a tiny room in the middle of a house with a door on each wall and people would use that room as a walk-through, 5 years I lived in that room, from what I've observed a lot of these people including myself do have underlying issues, for many it is mental health issues, depression being a big one coupled with low self-esteem, lack of motivation.

Everyone in my last house had next to no qualifications myself included, many felt like they were outcasts in society, not worth much as human beings, non really had partners and were neither relationship material in their current circumstances and mental state of mind, I ended up becoming an alcoholic living there until in the end after being threatened with a knife and various other problems I swallowed my pride and accepted a handout from the government so that I could afford a flat in a normal area, nothing fancy, bottom of the market, it was either that I was seriously considering giving up and living on the streets as a drunk.

I feel a lot better now, I'm far from perfect but I am managing to save money, I'm not sure what for yet but I'm hoping I'll formulate plan eventually and I'll have the money to put it into action, It won't be education though as I tried that and it made me even more depressed not being able to understand anything while students around me coped fine.

I'm really not sure what the answer is, whether we like it or not there is an element in society that just seem to find it very hard to integrate and motivate themselves , if I had to pin the blame on anyone else other than myself it would be the education system, I feel that they didn't do enough to help me, I think pupils with learning problems need to be recognised at an early each and a specially formulated curriculum and support package set up to help these people, I was made to feel worthless in school not being able to keep up with everyone else, your put into the 'thicky' group not because your going to get extra help, but because your holding the rest of the normal students back so they take you out.
 
Last edited:
You were there for 5 years, but did you search for a new place to stay in that time? You also say you swallowed your pride eventually, so essentially your problem was self made due to pride and not wanting a "handout"? You were the prime example of someone who is supposed to be caught by the system and helped, however to me it brings something else up. If you didn't want that help then what can be done?

I don't think your situation is quite the norm for single people though (at least I hope not)?

When you say education do you mean academic or do you mean any education? For example a trade or physical apprenticeship like landscaping?

How do we motivate the people that don't want to be motivated, not through "laziness" but in situations like you were in? That needs sorting first as I said before. :)

And also I didn't realise the ONS statistics were so questioned?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/...t-have-double-dipped-back-into-recession.html
 
Amp34 said:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/...t-have-double-dipped-back-into-recession.html
Click to expand...

The first published figures are always subject to error, even the later figures are subject to error. I wish they'd error bar these things more explicitly (although that may just be dumbing down by the news). I'd note that a revision down is as likely as a revision up though.

The fact is, though, that the UK economy is certainly not doing very well. At best it's effectively flatlining rather than actually in recession again. Recessions are kind of arbitrary measure, anyway.
 
Mr Jack said:
The first published figures are always subject to error, even the later figures are subject to error. I wish they'd error bar these things more explicitly (although that may just be dumbing down by the news). I'd note that a revision down is as likely as a revision up though.

The fact is, though, that the UK economy is certainly not doing very well. At best it's effectively flatlining rather than actually in recession again. Recessions are kind of arbitrary measure, anyway.
Click to expand...

I know stats are revised, just didn't realise the ONS ones were seen to be fairly poor.
 
Amp34 said:
You were there for 5 years, but did you search for a new place to stay in that time? You also say you swallowed your pride eventually, so essentially your problem was self made due to pride and not wanting a "handout"? You were the prime example of someone who is supposed to be caught by the system and helped, however to me it brings something else up. If you didn't want that help then what can be done?
Click to expand...

I agree, I am under no disillusion that I could have done something about it but at the time you just feel you deserve what you get, it's almost like self punishment, it's very complicated and hard to explain tbh, there are many things I have done and don't understand why, the only thing I can say is that in my mind it feels like a constant force is pushing against me so doing the right thing, even simple things feels like a very big task, I even changed my bank so I didn't have to fill out paying in slips as they just stressed me out so much as I kept making mistakes on them.

I don't think your situation is quite the norm for single people though (at least I hope not)?
Click to expand...

Probably not no, but in the places that I've lived in it felt like it was all around you, I met my landlords daughter for the first time a few weeks back, married, normal women, polite, seemed quite well educated, it actually felt like a breath of fresh air meeting her, I sometimes forget normal people out there exist.

When you say education do you mean academic or do you mean any education? For example a trade or physical apprenticeship like landscaping?
Click to expand...

I'm talking primarily academic education, but even apprenticeships scare me, there isn't a lot you can do really, like you say unless we try to get help what can you do, it's why I think it's important to try to attack this problem at a young age in the education system, you may be able to stop a lot of these problems if you can inject some self-worth into these people at a young age, hopefully they will leave school with better results and a better outlook on life, I know my problems are my own but I definitely feel the school could have done more, they never engaged me, never asked me what my problems were or why I was struggling so much, I was stupid and that was that, from a young age I knew was leaving school with poor grades and probably going to work in a poor job for the rest of my life.
 
Last edited:
Mr Jack said:
They're not "fairly poor"; they're preliminary. They're based on 40% of the total returns.
Click to expand...

Again, yes I know. However I think you appear to be missing the point. These preliminary figures do not appear to be trusted as much as other preliminary figures...
 
Amp34 said:
Again, yes I know. However I think you appear to be missing the point. These preliminary figures do not appear to be trusted as much as other preliminary figures...
Click to expand...

No, not really. People are worrying over it since it sits on the recession, not recession border. The predicted rise was 0.1%, the figure -0.3% - that's a small difference that normally wouldn't attract so much attention, it's not that this figure is less trusted than usual; it's that the difference has arbitrary symbolic significance. Personally, I'd back data over opinion.
 
Its no surprise really,I mean what can we expect from our current government?

Its never going to get better...as long as they are okay in their expensive home(s) and have plenty of money in the bank what do they care.
 
Nevakonaza said:
Its no surprise really,I mean what can we expect from our current government?

Its never going to get better...as long as they are okay in their expensive home(s) and have plenty of money in the bank what do they care.
Click to expand...

Is that what you really expect from your Government?

Do you think that they are really that lazy?

If so - well I don't know what.
 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18187354

Quite a few people were saying that these were just the preliminary figures which would definitely get adjusted upwards because the government are doing such a good job. Wrong, the UK economy shrank by even more than the preliminary figures suggested. What worries me now is what's going to happen in this quarter? Yesterday a massive drop in retail sales for April was announced because of the panic buying of petrol in March.

It's time for the government to listen to reason, the IMF have called for a Plan B of fiscal stimulus, now is the time to implement it.
 
Austerity isn't working, theres a surprise, idiot tories think people are going to go out spending racking up debt when they are earning less and being cut left right and centre
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom