Some weeks I'm lucky to make £500

December 5, 2010 11:45 AM

As the UK coalition government plans swingeing cuts and students take to the streets to protest, one mother asks us to remember the 'Nouveau Pauvre'. Some commentators react unfavourably to her impending 'austerity Christmas'.

For illustration: £500 per week equates to an annual wage of £26,000. The average salary in the UK is roughly this, depending on whom you believe.

posted by mippy (58 comments total)

The Daily Mail putting out reactionary linkbait? Wrap me up in surprised and throw me into the Sea of Shocked.
posted by i_cola at 11:48 AM on December 5, 2010 [15 favorites]

Holy entitlement, Batman! I mean, yeah, it sucks to economize. It's lovely to be able to splurge on nice things.

But the part where you're whining in the public press about living in a two-bedroom flat and being only able to buy trinkets as present--in a world where many people live on the streets and can't afford food, let alone trinkets--is just embarrassing.
posted by Sidhedevil at 11:49 AM on December 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

Sidhedevil, not to mention that the flat is in West London, so it's likely to be a fairly wealthy part of an already-expensive city. She can get back to me when she's in a queue for a council flat on the Old Kent Rd.
posted by Infinite Jest at 11:54 AM on December 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

I'm about three-quarters through her article, and I'm assuming it's extremely sharp (if not terribly witty) satire. It is satire, isn't it? Seriously, tell me it is.
posted by Jimbob at 11:54 AM on December 5, 2010

Translation for those like me who never heard of this word:

swingeing [ˈswɪndʒɪŋ] adj Chiefly Brit punishing; severe
posted by octothorpe at 11:54 AM on December 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

She could always send her children down the pit to haul coal, the tupence will add up.
posted by Iron Rat at 11:57 AM on December 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

Oh. Reading her Twitter seems to reveal that she's deadly serious.
posted by Jimbob at 11:57 AM on December 5, 2010

Yes, I've had to downsize to just the ten properties. What a twat.
posted by Lleyam at 11:58 AM on December 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

So, far from perusing the aisles of Harrods, I found myself checking out the bargains at Poundland.

Boo fracking hoo. Welcome to the real world the rest of us live in!

So how did this happen? Put simply, my partner and I started a new ­business four years ago, and we ­borrowed and borrowed and bought a country house alongside the two we owned between us in London. We practically rebuilt it while I fussed over the kitchen, oohing and aahing over Farrow & Ball paint and butler sinks. We moved to the Cotswolds and I even bought another cottage as an ‘investment’.

Uh, yeah. I stand by my previous statement.
posted by ArkhanJG at 12:04 PM on December 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

Nobody's that self-absorbed. I wonder if the DM pays columnists a page-view-based bonus.
posted by Leon at 12:14 PM on December 5, 2010

Perhaps I should clarify my last comment.

She and and husband decided to make an easy buck flipping houses in a boom market, meanwhile living the high life and spending money like water, while conveniently driving up the local housing prices for people who actually live and work there to unaffordable levels, while not taking the slightest measure to protect themselves from over-leverage that anyone with half a brain saw coming down on us, given the amount of warnings we had - and they got burned.

This is me playing a sad, sad tune on harrod's smallest, cheapest violin.
posted by ArkhanJG at 12:14 PM on December 5, 2010 [22 favorites]

The thing is, I do have some sympathy for her. It must be shitty to lose access to your previous lifestyle, even if your lifestyle was extravagant and your new circumstances are not that bad. It must be especially shitty if you're having trouble explaining the situation to small children. But I think people would react better to her piece if she showed a little bit of self-awareness or gratitude about the fact that her extra-super-bad poverty would seem like prosperity to a lot of other people.
posted by craichead at 12:14 PM on December 5, 2010 [4 favorites]

Not a bad effort in London media emptyheadery but not quite My Tornado Hell.
posted by Abiezer at 12:20 PM on December 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

"Yes, Christmas is heaven for the rich, but increasingly hellish for the less well-off."

It takes a rare kind of pure obliviousness to be able to write a sentence like this.
posted by hermitosis at 12:23 PM on December 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

Actually, craichead, I think the entire article should have been about how thankful she is for her relative prosperity in this holiday season compared to many who are much worse off.

I'm unemployed, my wife is working. There will be some gift giving and much celebration and thankfullness this year that we're not both unemployed.
posted by Splunge at 12:31 PM on December 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

If it was any other rag than the Mail I'd assume this was either satire or a deliberate wind-up. As it's the Mail I'm pretty sure it's for real.

And this is why Mail readers will be decorating the lamp posts come the glorious day, comrades. And I don't mean hanging Christmas tinsel on them.
posted by Decani at 12:33 PM on December 5, 2010 [9 favorites]

Metcalf's article is the nauseating British equivalent of all those horrid NYT Style section pieces in which some pea-brained twat waxes lyrical about how difficult it is, darling, when your income drops below 500k and you have to still pay the Ecuadorian nanny a living wage. It's such a trope in the UK that it's got a Private Eye column dedicated to it.

Ridiculous though they may be, the sad thing is that – as much as in the US – these sorts of people are the ones who are paid daft money by the British press to write columns. Were I the country's benevolent (or not) dictator, I'd obviously have Metcalf and everyone like her rounded up and beaten to death by feral council estate children, who would happily feed her to the nearest pack of roaming pit bull terriers.

Imagine: screaming, gibbering Daily Mail and Daily Express hacks running wild, packs of rabid dogs and/or socialists, foaming at the mouth, saliva dripping from their teeth, desperate to tear Thatcher-flavoured flesh from limbs, a glint in their eye, narrowing down their target area to those who like both Malcolm Rifkind's policies and Joanna Trollope's novels. It could be a beautiful thing.

Personally, I think it's time for a proper, old-school class war.
posted by Len at 12:37 PM on December 5, 2010 [12 favorites]

Well dear, I'm sure you'll be very welcome down at Crisis For Christmas... do a bit of cooking for the homeless and you'll probably get a free meal out of for yourself. Save a bomb.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 12:38 PM on December 5, 2010 [3 favorites]

This site is a good resource for "why cuts are the wrong cure"; national day of protest December 15.
posted by Abiezer at 12:53 PM on December 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

Before I even read the article I was thinking to myself "I wonder how many houses she bought?"
posted by Robin Kestrel at 12:55 PM on December 5, 2010

national day of protest December 15.

It's a shame that seems to be getting less press than Eric Cantona's Cash Machine Revolution on December 7th.
posted by dng at 1:07 PM on December 5, 2010

Can't compete without the French footie star power; we tried to get David Ginola to put on his black hoodie and bandanna for the day but he said possible damage to his hairdo might hurt future advertising contracts :(
posted by Abiezer at 1:11 PM on December 5, 2010

Of course, to some struggling to pay even basic household bills, this may all sound like another self-pitying whinge from someone who once had it all.


Yes, it may sound like that.
posted by Dumsnill at 1:21 PM on December 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

What is shocking, is that this woman has made a series of documentaries on poverty in Africa.

My experiences in Africa have had several effects on me, one is to realise that it's people not pounds that are important and, no matter how bad things get, I'm a hell of a lot better off than untold millions.

I honestly don't know how you can leave Africa and remain such an obsessive materialist. She has learned nothing.

Her argument, and defence, seems to be that money = happiness and you need more than the average wage to be happy or love your children properly. Her argument is not I lost my income and learned the value of love, it's more of where can I get me another husband to support me.
posted by quarsan at 1:22 PM on December 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

Can't compete without the French footie star power; we tried to get David Ginola to put on his black hoodie and bandanna for the day but he said possible damage to his hairdo might hurt future advertising contracts :(

I heard Graeme Souness was going to wear a bandana round his face but it would fuck with his 'tache. Instead he's happy with planting a student fees protest flag in the middle of Whitehall ...
posted by Len at 1:26 PM on December 5, 2010

The Government will be spending more money at the end of this Parliament than at the beginning, although in real terms there'll be a small decline. What we're really talking about is a shifting of spending from jolly stuff like education and the armed forces to horrid stuff like interest payments on the huge debt (up from £43bn to £63bn, for example) and other things to do with our ageing population and the priorities of voters, health and pensions.

Comprehensive Spending Review
Background to the 2010 Spending Review (PDF)
posted by alasdair at 1:46 PM on December 5, 2010

Can't compete without the French footie star power; we tried to get David Ginola to put on his black hoodie and bandanna for the day but he said possible damage to his hairdo might hurt future advertising contracts :(

I bet comrade Gary Neville would be up for it...
posted by Infinite Jest at 1:49 PM on December 5, 2010

I'd never heard of Charlotte Metcalf before, but her previous articles for the Mail and the Spectator are pure comedy gold:

January 2010. Charlotte is having trouble with the weather. 'Being marooned in drifts of picturesque Cotswold snow was delightful - for 36 hours. Then it became an irksome obstacle in the way of New Year resolutions when I was trying to head for London in order to tackle my various post-Christmas stress disorders with a couple of new spa treatments.'

February 2010. Charlotte gets away from the cold weather and flies out to South Africa. 'Sitting waterside in the lushly carpeted Atlantic Grill, eating seafood and sampling Western Cape Sauvignon, it's easy to forget that we are on the world's most troubled continent.'

April 2010. Charlotte visits the middle-class families who are beating the recession by living in community housing projects. 'I ask what the 21 families here have in common. 'We're all pretty clever,' says Linda, without apology. 'You'll find loads of MAs, PhDs and a fair bit of Oxbridge.' Linda herself has an MA in Critical Theory and works as a singing teacher.'

June 2010. Charlotte writes about the hidden epidemic of middle-class alcoholism. The trouble, she explains, is that alcohol is everywhere. 'Two weekends ago, I was staying with friends in Somerset. My six-year-old daughter and I were the first guests to arrive on Friday night. I brought a bottle of Champagne, a de rigueur offering for any country weekend.'

August 2010. Charlotte reveals the plight of Britain's new middle-class poor. 'For many articles I write, I earn no more than £250 and often struggle to make £500 a week, just over what my rent is. When a friend invited me and my daughter to Scotland for the weekend recently, I accepted before I looked into what it would cost for the two of us to fly there and hire a car.' Luckily her friend agrees to pay for the tickets.

September 2010. Charlotte flies out for a family holiday in Italy. 'We ate on a white terrace looking towards the sea over flowering gardens lush with citrus and banana trees, tropical palms and 400-year-old yuccas, and had such good scallop and prawn carpaccio that my daughter begged for more.'
posted by verstegan at 1:59 PM on December 5, 2010 [12 favorites]

The Daily Mail putting out reactionary linkbait?

Daily Mail, huh? Obligatory link to the Daily-Mail-O-Matic -- straight from Qwghlm so you know it's good. Or at least galvanick.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 2:02 PM on December 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

Solidarity to the 'struggling' rich!
posted by knapah at 2:07 PM on December 5, 2010

the huge debt
Surely you mean the debt that's by no means out of line with historical levels, nor particular large compared with our peers? The comprehensive spending review's been criticised as an ideological gamble with the well-being of millions. Or as David (sadly not Danny) Blanchflower put it:

Every other country will be watching, he said, to ensure they don't repeat the same mistake as George Osborne's wildly unnecessary, misguided, doctrinaire and potentially dangerous spending cuts. They've let the Chancellor jump off the cliff first.

Everywhere I go around the world, I encoun­ter the same sense of astonishment among economists and policymakers (and I talk to many of them) that the UK government would ignore the risks and proceed to slash public spending and raise taxes during what is a once-in-a-hundred-years financial crisis.

posted by Abiezer at 2:10 PM on December 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

Housing benefit cuts that will be protested on the 15th, front and centre on abiezer's link - cut from £2000 a week maximum down to a maximum £400 a week for a four-bedroom property and £250 a week for a two-bedroom home.

I'd love to get £250 a week housing benefit to pay my mortgage on my flat. It's more than double what I actually pay! But then I work a 45 hour week and got married, so I'm expected to pay 45% odd of my income in income tax, national insurance, fuel duty to get to work, VAT, VAT on fuel duty, so someone on low income can live in a house I couldn't ever possibly afford.

Protest the education cuts, fair enough, those are incredibly regressive. Protest the changes to unemployment benefit, punished through no fault of their own. Fault the government for freezing NHS funding, an effective cut with the rising cost of elderly care and drug patent costs, no problem with that.

Defend someone getting £9000 a month for housing benefit, with much of that money effectively coming from taxes on low and middle income workers? That, I can't get behind.
posted by ArkhanJG at 2:12 PM on December 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

Due to the chronic shortage of council homes in the capital, the private sector is being used to house families, with The Times reporting that private landlords setting "rents £1 to £2 below the maximum allowed by the Department of Work of Pensions which has led to rents of almost £2,000 a week".

Westminster Council one of the councils which as seen its housing benefit rocket with 26 families currently living in accommodation costing £1,600 per week, and 900 families on £500 a week rents. Westminster has written a letter to the Secretary of State which underlines the councils concerns at the current system:

"We are, therefore, extremely concerned that the current local housing allowance system fails to offer taxpayers value for money.

Indeed, a system which can support families to live in accommodation costing at least £500 per week, which makes it beyond the reach of an estimated 96% of working households in the UK, should be regarded not only as unsustainable but wholly unfair and plainly wrong."
posted by ArkhanJG at 2:16 PM on December 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

I'd love to get £250 a week housing benefit to pay my mortgage on my flat

As far as I understand it, housing benefit doesn't cover mortgages. Well, not unless you're an MP.
posted by dng at 2:21 PM on December 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

Of course the press always find a few outlier cases to create a sense that it's all going to put people up in luxury while you struggle to pay your rent - but about a million households will be affected, 450,000 of them families with children. Here's the DWP report that Guardian story was based on.
Of course it is shit that lots of our money is lining the pockets of often dodgy private landlords, but that's because a previous Tory government made a similarly ideological attack on social housing that contributed to the present homelessness crisis (not that Labour did anything to reverse it).
posted by Abiezer at 2:22 PM on December 5, 2010 [3 favorites]

As far as I understand it, housing benefit doesn't cover mortgages

It covers the landlord's mortgage quite nicely. Which is the problem in a nutshell.
posted by Leon at 2:33 PM on December 5, 2010 [4 favorites]

I'd love to get £250 a week housing benefit to pay my mortgage on my flat. It's more than double what I actually pay!

You don't live in London, though. £250/week for a two-bedroom here is not at all excessive (I'm paying 900/month for a one-bed in Brixton).
posted by Infinite Jest at 2:37 PM on December 5, 2010

Here in the States, there are some very bad cuts to social services. These cuts ought not be happening. Not when people honestly can't find work. Mow this lady and her article makes me sick! I only had a relatively short period of modest prosperity. She would have considered my modest prosperity as grinding poverty. I had to work hard for it and I really resent peole like this lady.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 2:45 PM on December 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

Some help dealing with the Daily Mail:

A Firefox addon to block their content and replace it with tea and kittens.
A Chrome extension that grabs their links and links to a proxy instead, denying them hits.

The 'squeezed middle' is a great big pile of bullshit. It's just about creating a victim complex in the minority who bother to vote.
posted by liquidindian at 2:47 PM on December 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

leisurely afternoons in Harrods...pot of gold-lidded lusciously scented body cream...Farrow & Ball paint...moved to the Cotswolds...Even Boden...glossy, fat-berried holly wreath...a spicy brine full of expensive Maldon sea salt, ­cinnamon sticks and maple syrup...buy ribbons from VV Rouleaux...

If you pick up a copy of the Mail on Sunday and shake it, and then assemble the leaflets that fall out in a random order, you become god, create life, and bring into this world a golem that can write this article again, and again, and again, and again, and again.
posted by reynir at 3:07 PM on December 5, 2010

You don't live in London, though.

I used to, and paid my own rent on a pretty crappy wage. I have friends there too, who struggle to make the rent. My sister and her husband used to live in Oxford, despite them both working in central london and commuting a hell of a way daily because they couldn't afford a house in town suitable for them and the baby.

My point is, £1800 a month maximum rent going straight into the pocket of some wealthy private landlord doesn't seem that harsh a limit to impose.

The proper solution is of course affordable, decent quality social housing. Personally, I blame the councils who on getting a windfall from Thatcher's right to buy (allowing long term council tenants to buy their home at a discount) didn't invest it back into more council housing - and governments of both stripes for allowing the situation to get to this over the last 20 years.

I feel sorry for the people who will be forced to move; it's not their fault. But equally, it's not the council tax payers fault either. How many families who don't get housing benefit have not rented or bought one suitable for their family, because their tax bills were too high? How many families have had to move to somewhere that was within their means, or had to find new work elsewhere because they could not afford the bills, including their taxes? Taxes are there to support those in need, and provide the services we all use. When people are living in places that are completely unaffordable to the vast majority, is it fair that it should be those same taxpayers who foot the bill?

From the same guardian story:

"The report begins by claiming the policy is necessary to bring down the overall cost of housing benefit, which has risen from £11bn in 1999-2000 to £22bn today. It says that in 80% of cases the shortfall between the new benefit level and rent will be less than £10 a week."
posted by ArkhanJG at 3:10 PM on December 5, 2010

£250/week for a two-bedroom here is not at all excessive

I pay £120 per week on a double room in a shared house. I am not on a bad wage by anyone's standards, save the 'nouveau pobre' (indeed, I would love to know where she can rent a two-bed place on an income of £500 a week in Shepherd's Bush). I am now in my late twenties and long to have somewhere where I can have pets, guests and choose the colour of my walls without permission, but with the average deposit on a London flat standing at about twice my annual salary, it's no surprise that many people my age are considering the possibility of a mortgage as they would the possibility of a luxury tour of the world's capitals.

Sure, I do feel a twinge of sympathy for this woman - I don't have the expense of a child to look after, and as one's outgoings somehow expand to fill one's income, she's involved in some kind of race to the bottom with regards to the competitive consumption within her social circle - but when my dad lost his job, my mum had to look after the family on about £200 per month. And I can bet there were and are people worse off than that. You don't know 'poverty' until bill collectors come and take an inventory of the items in your living room, including your wastebin.
posted by mippy at 3:19 PM on December 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

Her argument, and defence, seems to be that money = happiness and you need more than the average wage to be happy or love your children properly.

This is what got me most. Oh dear your daughter wants an iPad, and you can't afford to get her one? This one is easy. Is she younger than, say, 16? She doesn't need a fucking iPad, she's your daughter, teach her some fucking manners and not to be such a spoilt brat. Is she older than 16? Tell her to get a bloody job and earn the money to buy it herself.

A teenage boy won't wear "anything but the latest Nikes"? Tell him he'll wear whatever goddamn shoes you buy him and he doesn't learn some fucking respect he can go barefoot.

There are some deep, deep psychological and social issues hidden that article, not least that of a completely self-absorbed parent who feels it's completely reasonable to try and buy their child's love instead of nurturing it.
posted by Jimbob at 3:21 PM on December 5, 2010 [10 favorites]

Also, Boden is bloody expensive. I have a nice knitted dress from there, but it was bought at very deep discount, and it comes out only for meetings.
posted by mippy at 3:21 PM on December 5, 2010

Arkhan - agree about the proper solution, but I think you've got to put the social housing in place before you make these kind of cuts and put those families at risk.
Also, do remember that councils were expressly restricted from investing the money they made from the right to buy sales in new social housing, so they can't be blamed for that.
posted by Abiezer at 3:24 PM on December 5, 2010

> 'Sitting waterside in the lushly carpeted Atlantic Grill, eating seafood and sampling Western Cape Sauvignon, it's easy to forget that we are on the world's most troubled continent.'

"Fun, too!"
posted by The Card Cheat at 3:30 PM on December 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

Also, do remember that councils were expressly restricted from investing the money they made from the right to buy sales in new social housing, so they can't be blamed for that.

Fair point, I didn't know that. That was a bastard move by the tories indeed.
posted by ArkhanJG at 3:30 PM on December 5, 2010

> I know I have not yet had the courage to work out the exact discrepancy between the cost of my current lifestyle (albeit much more modest than before) and my income.

Well, there's your problem. At this point, the best present she could get her daughter for Christmas is a book of Aesop's fables which includes this story.
posted by The Card Cheat at 3:52 PM on December 5, 2010

Charlotte, I feel bad for you, and I'mma let you finished, but Liz Jones is still the most self-absorbed newspaper narcissist OF ALL TIME!
posted by Sidhedevil at 4:46 PM on December 5, 2010 [5 favorites]

Presumably, the argument is that rents will fall if the housing benefit is cut?
posted by bystander at 5:41 PM on December 5, 2010

I was actually feeling sorry for her, until i remembered i've got feck all to live on - so i must be a bit daft.

I will join the bold len on the barricades : )
posted by sgt.serenity at 6:08 PM on December 5, 2010

She's clearly new poor.

The children of old poor are used to hearing "that's too expensive", and won't ask for something again after being told that.

I knew that you never ask again if mom seems hesitant. And a 12 year old kid I was tutoring was hesitant to accept the inexpensive Christmas present I got him, because of the cost.

Kids shouldn't have to learn these things as harshly as he clearly has. But it's not a bad thing to learn the principle.
posted by jb at 6:13 PM on December 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

The Daily Mail putting out reactionary linkbait?

Of course, and they had some great fishing here on Mefi.
posted by Neiltupper at 10:17 PM on December 5, 2010

It's nice to see the Daily Mail turning its ire on a deserving target for once.

Oh. Wait. We're supposed to sympathise with a serial house flipper who can't afford to shop at Harrods any more?

As much as I regret our species tendency to find it hard to empathise with anyone who is not visibly bleeding, caked in filth or shivering in the snow, this kind of thing makes for serious GRAR. It's not quite as egregious as the US professor moaning about his six figure salary, but it's in the same ballpark.
posted by Happy Dave at 1:42 AM on December 6, 2010

London's going to have a property boom next year. I've started hearing lots of stories of how hard it is to find decent places to rent for affordable amounts, and banks won't lend to people without substantial deposits. E.g. this article in The Standard last week.

Cue lots of established private landlords looking for new properties to buy and rent out at extortionate rates.

(This woman Charlotte is clearly an idiot, by the way. She gambled on the property market, lost, and can't see that she has had to change her own lifestyle as a result of her own actions)
posted by DanCall at 1:51 AM on December 6, 2010

We live in a new world, my fellow droogs.

A world where, if you douchebag your fellow commuter, shopper, or coworker, you risk being outed to the entire world in a matter of days - or even hours.

A world where asshattery can no longer don impunity through anonymity.

A world where you can be held accountable, and publicly denounced, for publicly denounceable behavior.

In short, the world has become our own small town. Those of us raised in a small town are familiar with this rule: be respectful of others, or they will shun you. And "shun" is a much more powerful word than it seems.

From the Japanese dog poo girl, to the recent Judith Griggs implosion, rude halfwits are being held accountable for their behavior.

As Jesus said, "Karma - it's a real bitch, man. Be cool to one another."

Some will complain that this new age is subject to vigilanteeism, another, uglier side to small town dynamics. However, the internet offers one thing that small town gossip does not: the chance for the facts to be aired.

Suppose that this article were not in fact written by Charlotte Metcalf - or that it had been heinously rewritten by the editors. It would be simple for such a wrongly-accused innocent to "let the facts be submitted to a candid world". No, it's not as simple as that; some will never believe, some will instantly believe, and most will take a while to be convinced. But "the truth will out", and false accusations in the internet age, villifying lone individuals, are as likely to be villified as any other misdeed.

Politics will continue as usual, in many ways. Research has shown that Democrats innately condemn Republicans and absolve Democrats, whilst Republicans are equally faulty in the opposite direction (and you may apply this brain research to your own country's political parties, of course).

But as for you, and I, and the people we meet on the street, pass in traffic, and encounter in business, the deal has changed. We are now more accountable than ever before, since the dawn of mass transit.

Karma - it's a real bitch, man. Be cool to one another.
posted by IAmBroom at 11:34 AM on December 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

There are the time-honoured rituals, like the annual visit to the local pantomime or to a London show, that are now out of the question.

Well at least there's an upside to it.
posted by nTeleKy at 2:03 PM on December 6, 2010

A weekend eating Poundland food
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 9:10 AM on December 9, 2010