Are Britain’s “poor” really poor?

(Weekend blog – I’m afraid this one may be ‘politically incorrect) Since 2010, the amount of British taxpayers’ money ladled out in welfare to the supposed “deserving poor” has risen from £111bn a year in 2010 to £113bn in 2016. It is expected to remain at around £113bn this year.

This is extraordinary. Why? Because the British economy has grown (albeit slowly) every year since 2010. Moreover, there are so many jobs available in Britain that around four million EU citizens have moved here to work – around half from Eastern Europe and the other half from the Club Med countries ruined by Adolf Merkel’s (sorry, Freudian slip, of course I meant “Angela Merkel”) ‘Germany First’ (Deutschland über alles) policies which have led to 50% youth unemployment in countries like Greece, Spain and Italy.

The British Government has tried to halt the relentless rise in welfare payments. There were howls of outrage from the usual lefty libtards in Labour, the Guardian, the BBC and Channel 4 when the Government introduced a ‘household benefits cap’ supposedly limiting the amount any single household could claim in benefits to £26,000 tax-free a year. Endless ‘suffering families’ were paraded in the press and on TV telling us how they and their (usually many) children would be unable to afford food, heating, clothing and schoolbooks on a ‘mere’ £26,000 tax-free a year.

Then there was even more outraged howling from the same idiots when the household benefits cap was further reduced in 2016 to £23,000 in London and £20,000 outside London.

I don’t know about you, but I’d be more than happy if someone from the DWP turned up at my home and told me I could have £20,000 a year tax-free for the rest of my life thanks to the enforced generosity those who can be bothered to get up in the morning and go out and do some work.

Anyway, a couple of days ago I had some indirect contact with the poor oppressed families who are apparently struggling to survive on just £20,000 tax-free a year in welfare.

I wanted to give four dining-room chairs and a sideboard to charity. Here’s one of the chairs and the sideboard:

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The chairs are I believe what’s called ‘Brown Furniture’ which pretty much every home had in the 1950s and 1960s.

OK, I admit the chairs aren’t too beautiful. But they’re in excellent condition and will last at least another ten years or more.

First I rang a couple of charity furniture shops. But Health and Safety rules meant they were not allowed to sell the chairs as the chairs had some fabric on them but didn’t have labels stating that the fabric was ‘flame resistant’ or ‘flame retardant’ or something like that. I suspect the chairs were made before the relevant Health and Safety rules were implemented. Anyway, the charity shops couldn’t sell the items.

But the charity shops told me about a local charity organisation that accepted furniture donations which they then gave out free to families in need. As the chairs weren’t being ‘sold’, this organisation could accept them. So I emailed a copy of the above photo to that organisation telling them I had four matching dining-room chairs, plus the sideboard if they wanted it.

A couple of hours later I got a reply. ‘No’ the local charity organisation couldn’t use the four chairs (or the sideboard) as they “aren’t in a style that is popular with our clients”. Apparently their ‘clients’ (who get everything free) prefer furniture “that is more modern”.

We’re constantly being lectured by the lefties about how the poor are suffering under the brutal rule of a Tory Government which only serves the rich and how the number of people dependent for their very survival on food banks keeps increasing:

But what struck me as strange was that these supposedly ‘poverty-stricken’ families saved from certain starvation by food banks are so particular about the style of furniture in their homes – furniture they could get for free – that they turned their noses up in disgust at Brown Furniture items like my chairs and sideboard.

That made me wonder how ‘starving’ Britain’s supposedly ‘deserving’ poor actually are.

And as for the Government’s supposed benefits cap per household – when our friends from the Religion of Benefits-R-Us (in which each man can have four wives and therefore four households) that gives each male up to £80,000 a year tax-free in benefits without ever having to work.

Yippeee! Maybe that’s why the welfare bill keeps rising even as more jobs are created and maybe that’s why around 200,000 of these good people pour into our country each and every year!

(If you click on the title, you’ll see from the comments that other people have also found that Britain’s “poor” are very fussy about what they’ll accept for free in their taxpayer-funded homes)