Lying BBC liars lying for their lying friends

The socialist BBC is putting out a child poverty and hunger puff.

In its column and the comments are at least three liars.

The BBC ‘journalist’ doesn’t question in any way the rose-food that the sob-sisters come out with. So this is unchallenged pro ‘hunger’ lobby’ and ‘child poverty’ lobby and Labour Government propaganda.

LIAR NUMBER ONE.

Penny Greenhough, a single mother of two young children, said the family was struggling on a food budget of £3 per head per day.

"I am having to compromise on a daily basis on quality and quantity. I used to manage, but it's getting harder and harder," she told BBC News.

Child benefit for two children is £33.20 per week, which works out at £4.74 per head for food if she spends some of it on feeding herself.

But she doesn’t just have Child Benefit.

If she’s on Income Support – which is the state benefit that single parents get because they just aren’t expected to look for work (currently) until their youngest kid is 12 , then she’ll get 100% of her Council Tax bill paid for by the Local Authority - read you, dear reader; always you – and all her private rent up to the maximum allowed under the Rent Service determination if she’s been renting since before April 2008, or under Local Housing Allowance.

Given this is the BBC; I’m going to guess they called a friend in London, so let’s look at Hounslow because this disgusting legal development prompted me to choose it out of all the others.

Assuming a £850 per calendar month rented 2 bed maisonette, Hounslow’s benefits calculator gives us this combined entitlement:

£13,236.46 per year Housing Benefit or £253.85 per week – capped to no more than £15 per week above local 2 bedroom rate, ie, £222.70

£5,022.40 £ 96.32 Child Tax Credit ,and add that to

£64.30 per week Income Support

…and you get a weekly income of £383.32, or £19,932 per year.

I don’t earn £19,932 per year even before tax, NI and pension contributions.

Note that under Local Housing Allowance, she gets to keep that extra £15 per week above her contractual rent paid in Housing Benefit.

Oh, and if she’s in council or housing association accommodation then she’ll get the full rent unless it’s got way too many rooms for a ‘family’ of three. It’s so cheap because it’s subsidized in either case, by previous generations’ taxes and all manner of maintenance grants.

Now there may be reasons why she’s only got £3 per day for food if that is literally (i.e., actually true, as compared with the other kind of true).

She may be in all kinds of debt due to her own (or equally likely due to an absent ‘partner’s’) fecklessness or disorganization, such as having to pay back overpayments of Housing Benefit or other benefits if he had actually lived with her and maybe had a wage, but if they never bothered to mention the fact to The Department For Work And Pensions or the Local Authority, or if he did not report a wage rise for months and years. She may be lousy at budgeting or recently abandoned by her useless sperm-donor ‘boyfriend,’ but none of these is in any way the fault of government mean-mindedness to single mothers or the evil taxpayers.

So she’s a liar or useless at living and possibly also a career sponger.

She’s not a victim of society; except inasmuch as she may have been brought up expecting to go on the dole as soon as she became pregnant, if not earlier.

The BBC has provided no context, but the stork doesn’t bring babies and kids there days know exactly where they come from as they are told about it constantly school. It’s possible the BBC chose someone who’s incredibly unlucky, but by the look at the small number of ‘selected comments’ allowed through, I’d say the BBC aren’t prepared to produce her and prove how unlucky she is.

If she’s in a mortgaged home then she’ll only get help with her interest and so it’s time she sold it; simple as that, or to get a job and accept subsidized child care and Housing Benefit disregards as a result of this.

LIAR NUMBER TWO.

Kate Green, of the Child Poverty Action Group, said that many families were buying less fresh fruit, vegetables, meat and fish, and consuming more affordable tinned and packet food that was often higher in sugar, salt and fat.

Not much sugar, salt and fat in cheap supermarket canned fruit and vegetables, or frozen – and trust me when I say low energy fridges are way cheaper than plasma screen televisions and many computer games. Which you will find in most such homes above rabid junkie levels of morality. Local produce - for instance that available in the most poverty-stricken of Pakistani neighbourhoods - is available in ethnic minority areas. It’s only dumb whites who insist on living on take-aways and junk food at home. Good food’s cheaper, but I don’t expect BBC ‘journalists’ shop around as they nip to Marks and Spencer at lunchtime or after work.

Government efforts had lifted 600,000 children out of poverty in the last 10 years,

Go Labour government. That’s so obviously an uncontroversial fact that the BBC need not challenge or qualify it in any way, is it, my three billion pound uniquely-funded chums?

but one in three still lived below the poverty line, she said.

The poverty line is pegged to something that moves: being the point below 60% of the average income.

Top government scientists have recently discovered that if you peg a line to something that’s consistently rising, then your line will consistently rise, too.

So, relative poverty will always be with it, along with the attendant need for all the ‘workers’ in the poverty and benefits industry. Including me.

Ironically, if benefits levels stay the same or even rise and the average household income falls due to some unexplained and possibly extraterrestrial phenomenon such as, ooh, I don’t know…say a massive radioactive alien economic crisis?, then relative poverty will actually decrease as the rest of the country’s income goes down the drain. So even in the hardest of times which we can fearfully expect, Labour will be able to claim to have reduced poverty!

Say, is there anybody else out there whose hands are making uncontrollable loading and aiming motions?

A selection of your comments:

LIAR NUMBER THREE.

I am currently on JSA of £121.00 every two weeks. With this money I am expected to pay ALL my household bills and feed my daughter.

Liar! If she has a child living with her there’s Child Benefit and Child Tax Credit and Jobseeker’s Allowance will get her 100% of your Council Tax bill paid and up to £15 per week over her contractual rent (though it may also be a little lower). Oh and any child maintenance for her kids is discounted in calculating her benefits, so there’s no point in being nice to her kid’s father and acting responsibly in your marriage, or even choosing wisely in the first place, now is there? Not now the CSA’s finally working a bit.

Since JSA’s £128.60 per fortnight, it seems she’s paying off some debt, too - probably overpaid benefits, which only happens if someone fails to inform the DWP or Local Authority about higher income in good time.

If it hadn't been for my family, who are in a better position than I, we would be starving by now!

Lois, Milton Keynes
So no, she may feel broke, but starvation isn’t an option unless she, say, smokes a lot or uses an expensive mobile and buys only new or designer clothes for herself and her daughter, or if she runs a 4 by 4 or something else stupid.

LIAR NUMBER FOUR?

It is all very well increasing child / working tax credits but unfortunately a majority of those on tax credits will also get housing / council tax benefits which are then reduced as any income is increased.
Only 65% of her whole income, including Tax Credits and Child Benefit is taken into account when calculating Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefits. Which means that the system is fixed to reward her to earn more until she’s off Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit altogether. Income goes up a chunk: Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit go down by only 65% of that chunk.

Labour’s as dumb as a fence post normally but somebody was probably sitting in the Brainy Chair when they figured out how Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit should be calculated, and…wait a minute…Wasn’t it the Conservative Party that brought those two benefits in? Okay, not a thing for Tories to shout about these days, but still…

So a lot of people (especially single parents as I am)…

Coincidence, that. The evil Tories took her boyfriend or husband away, probably.

.. will be no better off...If I went to work full time I would be even worse off as childcare is so expensive.

No, she’d be worse off than her current inflated benefit entitlement if she got a lousily-paid job. Something tells me that, from the educated tone of her prose, she’d be well able to get a good job to take her out of means-tested benefits altogether. I think this may be more like Eve.

Jane, Essex

Is Jane a liar or just plain ignorant? It’s hard to say.

What is easy to say is that the BBC has once more excreted a piece of propaganda.

There is no context to explain why and how there women became poor, but astute readers will notice that none of them claimed to be a widow, and maybe draw some conclusions. It seems to be more about Eve.

The BBC has pushed claims that poverty has been lowered under Labour and yet still rising at the same time (nice trick, guys), and does not seek to explain, for example, why foreign food has become more expensive, because this:

As the UK imports about 40% of its food, the weak pound has driven up prices. Unpredictable world harvests and a spike in oil prices last year have also played a part.

…doesn’t explain which economic factors made the pound fall.

Clue; he rhymes with Borden Town.

And “Rice costs double what it did last year” means that many more people in the Far East aren’t starving which is a good thing and what our foreign aid programme was supposed to achieve. They are working and producing things and getting out of poverty the old-fashioned way – the way these dopey women don’t seem to contemplate. Nor does our government. Nor does the BBC.

Any competent journalist who knew about, or even did a bit of internet research into the benefit system, would have put counter views and explained that there’s something deeply dodgy about the story told by “Penny Greenhough, a single mother of two.”

Not our beloved BBC.

Got to keep that narrative going, even if it is ‘Labour makes the poor better of, even when they’re getting worse off, and here’s a government minister to explain why they’re already well provided for despite that Labour’s looking for ways of doing even more.

Thank God; yes, I’m prepared to say it again, thank God there’s always an easy explanation for this apparently random story. And the BBC has it.

Treasury minister Stephen Timms said a raft of benefits due to come in on Monday would help struggling families.

Phew!

Lucky coincidence, that.

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Hat tip to Grimer of Biased BBC.