1

C Le Verdic

So take that, poor people.

Crawl back under your stones and do without “smoking, drinking alcohol, telephone, internet and transport”.

If you think you might be about to die “when life cannot be sustained” through “starvation, cold and illness.there’s free hospitalisation” and if you are lucky enough to get out you can go cap in hand to “our wonderful parish system”.

“One can survive well on very little, albeit with a correspondingly lower standard” if the house is already paid for.

Well, that’s how it looks from this sheltered corner of St Ouen.

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3

R Tupman

The correspondent is right to some degree – I expect that the survey will eventually determine that poverty does exist in Jersey but to nowhere near the extent that it exists elsewhere.

I would be far happier if the States would look at the issue of inequality and put some controls in place to protect society as a whole from the real problem – people’s inherent greed.

We’re living with an economic system where the rich continue to get richer and the poor continue to get poorer and the gap between the ‘haves and have nots’ will continue to grow – it’s unsustainable in the real long term and impossible for people at the top of the pile to get richer without having a negative effect on people at the bottom of the pile.

How can it be fair that those with the best jobs earn 100 times more per hour than those on minimum wage? I’m not saying that advocates and doctors etc. shouldn’t earn a great deal more to reward them for their difficult jobs and all their hard work, but if there’s no limit to their pay, how can the people at the bottom afford their services fairly without assistance? It’s about time that governments of the western world introduced a maximum wage to protect the poorest in our societies and a limit to rising rents and house prices – if they don’t, the essentials such as housing and medical care will continue to move beyond the reach of those on minimum wage.

These are the reasons why much of the population can no longer afford to buy a house to live in or pay their own rent without assistance from the government or visit the doctor or dentist as much as they would like. And it’s such a shame, we live in one of the richest jurisdictions in the world and pay less tax than most other places, there should be enough money in our society to go around for everybody, if not in Jersey then nowhere else. But you wouldn’t think so when you look at the condition of our prison and States Housing. What sensible landlord would buy a property to let, and then let it run down to substantial repair costs because they couldn’t stretch to the cost of painting it every five years as they had intended. Sounds like an exaggeration – well it’s not, it’s happening now with States Housing. I believe there’s a £75 million funding hole needed to bring the maintenance of States Housing up to date.

As for #2′s reply – I would caution him against judging people on income support in this way. A person who is fit, healthy and intelligent may find it very hard to understand why some people can’t survive without assistance from the State, but the reasons are many and varied and it’s not for anyone to judge another until they’ve experiencing the very same difficulties themselves. Yes there are people who are abusing the system. But most are genuinely in need of help, some have severe illnesses and are now being asked to work when they weren’t expected to before because when the States discovered the £100m tax hole they looked first to cut where they were spending most (replacing sickness benefit with long term incapacity allowance) and so reducing payout levels to the least well off in our society rather than raising more tax from those who were better off. How can a person who has no concept of being in pain and discomfort every moment of the day judge another who has. We’re creating a culture where a person living off benefits is classed as a scrounger. Maybe more compassion and understanding is in order.

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5

R Tupman

#4 – well I’m glad you’re not guilty of that assumption personally, but there is an attitude developing within our society where anybody living off benefits is classed as a scrounger and that attitude is having a negative effect on people in genuine need.

The income support system has a strict requirement for recipients who can work to be either in work or actively seeking work. The idea that lots of people are abusing the system is a popular myth, there will be a few, but not many.

Unemployment figures are rising sharply with 1089 registered unenmployed in November 2009.

I have two friends who have been made redundant and it has been an eye-opener to observe how hard they’re both working to find jobs and still can’t find employment.

40% of the unemployed are under 24 and jobs for that caategory are very limited right now.

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7

M Stolmeier

Poverty is a poor way to live.

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