Of course it's true.

£30k a year gross is about £24k a year net, so £2k a month.

Average rent in London is £1.5-1.6k conservatively with utilities and council tax on top - that's your £2k basically done.

Even if you find somewhere for £1200 PCM on rent, you're leaving £300 a month for travel, food and essentials. Impossible.

If you have kids or dependents the numbers make even less sense.

That whole argument is also centred around this idea that people doing jobs as important as nursing or firefighting should be happy saving lives all day for money which does not afford them any sort of social life, hobby or luxury. Is that a reasonable expectation?

"Yeah you may do life saving work, but if you ate nothing but oats and pasta 7 days a week, you wouldn't need the food bank!" is not the win some people seem to think it is.

At the same time as demonising key workers for being poor and not being able to budget, our Lee claims £223k a year in expenses on top of his salary.

Edited by EverybodyDannsNow (09 Feb 2023 4.49pm)

And the old age pension is under £10,000 PA so all these life savers will find it a lot tougher when they've retired.

And what about Housing benefit?

My point is that unless we see a payslip what benefits they claim what rent they pay and what their debts are it's all speculation. You have not provided facts you have provided an example not quite the same thing.

If people don't want to back up their claims I quite understand but then the BBC should stop making claims they cannot prove.

I am not saying that no fireman or nurse has ever gone to a food bank what we don't now is why?

If somebody was in debt due to gambling that is the reason why they visited a food bank not because they are a nurse.

That is why you need specific examples to identify people who really did need to go to a food bank as their salary was insufficient.

Yeah, who wouldn't volunteer to that - go and broadcast to the world how poor you are so you can have everyone pick apart every life decision you make.

What do you mean if the facts support me... I've just typed out the facts - if you don't agree, what would you challenge in the numbers?

Include child benefit if you'd like and tell me how you'd make the money work.

'HS2 is so expensive because ‘we are more responsible builders than the French and Chinese'.

How ridiculous.

Only when I 'larf.

Then we read that 'responsible' HS2 is discharging raw sewage into the River Colne already 5 times this year.

Only the basic still applies to HS2, it will connect Birmingham to Euston everything else has been discarded, and it may not actually reach Euston until 2038.

Its nothing more than a gravy train for a rich elite, its analogue in a digital age.

That's what happens when you contract out to a Swedish firm.