Blaming poor people

Too frequently people who aren't themselves poor, have never themselves been poor, imagine they know what poor people are doing wrong.

Food
Poor people should buy cheap food and cook it slowly, some cheap cuts taste marvelous after 5 hours slow cooking. Better off people who give well meaning advice like the above just don't know what they're talking about. ''Should poor people really risk getting their gas or electricity cut off when they can't pay their fuel bills? After cooking cheap food slowly for 5 hours at a time that could too easily happen.''

Poor mothers know what their children should eat but can't get their children to eat healthy food or can't afford it. Poor mothers play safe getting their children something they know the child will eat. If they risk something different and the child refuses it mother has to throw food away. Then money that could otherwise have gone towards, say the next gas or electricity bill gets used up paying for something different that the child will eat.

Real hunger in the UK
In the UK in the 21st Century there are unfortunate people who can't feed themselves or their families. A computer malfunctions, there's a slip up at an office so a benefit check is late bureaucrats who aren't themselves poor delay processing a benefit claim. For people already on the breadline that type of trouble means no money and no food till the problem is sorted and that can take a long time. Even people in low paid work sometimes need to get food from food banks if there isn't enough money coming in. "Many parents tell of going to bed hungry themselves in order to feed their children. Gove would call that reckless parenting." Welfare cuts under the present Conservative and Lib Dem government have increased the numbers of people needing Food banks by 175% which is a lot. Those who don't get to food banks go hungry together with their families. When children go hungry the UK government likes to blame the parents and ignore how their policies contribute to the hunger problem.

Bad housing
A desperately poor refugee lived with her children in a substandard rented flat. The air was damp, there was mold on the walls, her children had continual breathing problems. A Guardian reporter tried to get the council to help her and her children because frequent complaints the mother had made herself got her nowhere. "They [the council representatives] stated that they witnessed first-hand that the windows were shut and they saw a pan on the hob boiling food and generating steam. As you are aware, this is not conducive to a healthy house and will have a negative impact on the property." None of this was the unfortunate refugee's fault, she needed to cook for her family. (Incidentally when poor people buy more expensive, unhealthy junk food instead of cooking themselves they are also blamed for their predicament.) This impoverished mother also needed to keep the windows closed because otherwise she couldn't have kept her flat warm. This article was written in April 2013 and March 2013 was exceptionally cold in the UK.

Council officials with comfortable salaries and comfortable housing either don't understand or don't care about someone on the breadline.

Televisions
"Far too many poor people waste their Money on large television sets they don't need!" So say people who don't understand poverty. Even in Developed countries poor people can't afford many entertainments that better off people take for granted. If you can't afford much entertainment except television you get the best television you can manage. Some poor people get televisions on credit and struggle to pay for them, others have televisions which they got before they became poor or which kind relatives gave them.

Then there are those rich people, the most important entertainment decision they are taking is, whether to buy a completely new outfit for their next evening at the theatre of whether to risk their upper crust friends seeing them in the same outfit they wore last time. The rich people imagine they know what poor people should and shouldn't do with their televisions.

A desperately poor US university professor
Margaret Mary Vojtko was an adjunct professor at Duquesne Roman Catholic University before she dies in extreme poverty. They paid her far less than people with her qualifications usually get. They provided no health insurance, when Margaret Vojtko developed Cancer she had to pay for expensive treatment herself. Margaret Vojtko did a night job to try and pay for her treatment, she couldn't pay to repair her boiler and couldn't heat her home. She tried sleeping during the day in her office at the university which at least was warm. The university got the police to remove her. A few months later the university decided she was no longer an effective teacher and terminated her contract without severance pay or anything. Letters were sent to Duquesne University explaining Margaret Vojtko's plight but those letters were ignored. Supporters of Duquesne University say she was allowed to live free on campus with meals provided for a few weeks but this must have been humiliating for an old lady used to some respect. Providing medical insurance and a decent pension so Margaret Vojtko could afford to live with dignity in her own home would have been better. All Margaret Vojtko got was "intermittent charity and prayers". The fact that Margaret Vojtko needed charity indirectly shows how shabbily the university treated this lady who had worked conscientiously for decades there.

When desperately poor people can't look after themselves it is generally assumed they are at fault rather than that they can't do better with limited resources. Anyway it became clear Margaret Vojtko wasn't looking after herself properly and she was referred to an adult protection service, she got a letter saying she looked after herself incompetently and had to see a protection worker or face legal action. This final humiliation was too was too much for Margaret Vojtko the stress caused her a massive heart attack and she died without recovering consciousness. It looks like the pious Hypocrites of Duquesne Roman Catholic University could do well to listen to what Pope Francis has to say about poverty and show more compassion to their own staff.