2) that those you see were even eligible for the grant (it is only for those receiving income related benefits).
Note while not the nicest area of London suburbs the Job Seekers Allowance claimant rate is only 3% [1] with another 5.5% on Incapacity Benefit or Employment and Support Allowance. The vast majority of JSA claimants have been claiming less than 6 months rather than long term. [2]
There are particularly deprived pockets though but I question your ability to identify by pure observation outside a supermarket real income sources.
Not everything needs citation in the form of a survey or scientific paper. I doubt the results of it would be honest as the people who they would be surveying have an interest in lying about the things they have purchased with it.
Some things are blatantly obvious if you peel your eyes occasionally and observe humanity.
No, but in the UK there is a wind of judgemental tabloid nastiness in this area. Lies like this are made up daily, based on a very small minority, and huge chunks of people are tarred with the same brush.
So, yeah, where is the research?
Well, there is none, because apart from tabloid smearing lies, there is none.
What is "obvious" is how nasty people are in the UK towards the poor working classes, who are under constant attack.
What I see when I stand outside ASDA are a bunch of normal people, and then some poor people who struggle to buy food and pay their rent. I don't see fancy clothes and designer pushchairs, I see old tracksuits and second-hand pushchairs, I see people who don't have jobs and feel bad about themselves.
Demand for food-banks in the UK has soared. But if only they didn't spend it on fags and wide-screen TVs they'd be able to eat.
> The problem is not specific to one traditional "class".
Except it is, because it is only a problem by the implication that signs of wealth means that insufficient money must have been used on what is needed for the infant
Firstly it's not a fantasy unless you make it one. As someone brought up on a shoestring budget in one of the worst bits of London, I can assure you that in the real world, class is entirely irrelevant and ethics and morals are. There are people earning a quarter of what I do and three times what I do living either side of me and we're all on the same page, have the same ideals, hopes and goals.
There are no classes other than in the media.
Secondly, health is more important than purchasing branded and luxury goods. That is universally accepted as to shortcut ones health is to cause harm and the "golden rule" backs that up. To observe both signs of wealth and signs of poverty at the same time has certain obvious implications.
I know the differences, probably more than you realise.
I presented a hypothesis, which you can turn into a theory by sitting outside ASDA for a bit with a clipboard and a copy of SPSS. My suggestion was that you should try it.
Your original statement was "the maternity grant (until yanked by the government) was used to buy designer gear for the mother, ..."
That it's happened at least once, I have no doubt. But I think you mean to use the phrase "was used to buy" to mean that it happens often enough to base a policy decision upon.
The useful questions are "how often does it happen?" and more importantly "did yanking the policy lead to overall improved infant mortality rates?"
Those cannot be answered by "sitting outside ASDA [in Feltham or Hounslow] for a bit." As an extreme example, even if 100% of the people in those two places immediately pop into an off-license, use the money to buy liquor, walk outside, and pour it down the drain, you would need to see if that pattern is the same across the country.
In this extreme example, it might be that 0% of the rest of the country misuses their funds. There are 254,00 people in the London Borough of Hounslow. There are 62 million people in the United Kingdom. If no one else misused those funds, then an overall misuse rate of 0.4% across the entire country is rather good, and the appropriate policy decision would be to understand what is special about Hounslow and how that one region might be improved.
Thus, doing as you suggest would not provide sufficient information to establish an answer for my first question, much less my second.
While you write "Some things are blatantly obvious if you peel your eyes occasionally and observe humanity.", it's very hard to "peel your eyes" and see things when you aren't there.
Then you should know that your hypothesis remains unsupported by any data until that is done, and that it's not the job of people who doubt your hypothesis to do so.
Apart from that, the location itself would introduce a bias, and I'm curious how exactly you would recognize women in the process of spending the maternity grant.
Yes it is unsupported. I admit that. But it's clearly observable. I'm sure many people here observe it regularly.
You specify the problem the wrong way around.
The women got pregnant because the maternity grant was offered as is a cosy council house and a career of being pregnant. That's how it works here.
When you have three children like myself you spend a lot of time around parents and maternity units and the general consensus of the particular social stereotype is that a baby is a meal ticket and the £500 would go nicely on some Uggs and enough Silk Cut to get you through the first 9 months after it's born.
You can see the results of the maternity grant spending at ASDA which is basically the decked out in designer brand children being pushed around in their expensive buggy but the mother is buying £50 worth of cigarettes and her other three children are consigned to economy grade processed meat wrapped in breadcrumbs and some reconstituted potato product and some panda pops as their entire diet.
It's not down to poverty: just selfish idiocy, apathy and a complete lack of morals and ethics.
I'm sorry, but since your comment is entirely unsupported by a citation explaining philosophical fallacies or similar, your criticism remains unsupported, and hence it's not the job of the person you're responding to to satisfy your demand.
What a vicious circle we create by demanding citations for any claim.
1) that essential stuff has been forgotten
2) that those you see were even eligible for the grant (it is only for those receiving income related benefits).
Note while not the nicest area of London suburbs the Job Seekers Allowance claimant rate is only 3% [1] with another 5.5% on Incapacity Benefit or Employment and Support Allowance. The vast majority of JSA claimants have been claiming less than 6 months rather than long term. [2]
There are particularly deprived pockets though but I question your ability to identify by pure observation outside a supermarket real income sources.
[1] http://www.hounslow.gov.uk/local_economic_assessment_overvie... (p iv)
[2] Same report (p 37)