6 pounds an hour for a child who lives at home doesn't have a car and doesn't drink? UNless she's supporting Jaqui she should be fine... Wait, Jacki said that she was 20 quid better off a week because of Harriet Jones. that sounds like a benefit or a subsidy.
It's pretty obvious that Rose was supporting Jackie as of "Rose." Presumably Rose's going off to live with the Doctor eventually forced Jackie to get a job.
I'm obviously living on the other end of the spectrum than you two,
.... excuse me? Because we happen to pick up on some clues about what Rose's and Jackie's living situation would realistically entail in real life and you didn't, that means that we're "obviously" living on the other end of the spectrum?
Could you possibly be more insulting?
and consider a lot less to be enough to live on, but if you can put food on the table, pay the power and not get kicked of what seemed to be a council flat, it's not exactly the worst life in the world.
No one said they were starving or experiencing the worst life in Great Britain. What we said was that they're low income or poor. "Poor," for the record, doesn't inherently mean that they're starving to death -- it means living below the legally-defined poverty line and, usually, being economically unstable.
In particular, what I argued was that Rose was poor and had no real future in consequence of her dead-end job and her having dropped out of school.
Poor to me is sleeping in a doorway owing your pimp money, or living under the burden of some other incredible debt, or dubious obligation.
You have an unrealistically extreme definition of the "poor" -- one that seems designed to exclude people who actually are poor from being acknowledge as such. Many, many people live in poverty without becoming that desperate -- but that doesn't mean they're not poor. Poor just means living below the legally-defined poverty line. It sounds to me like you've never actually been poor.
Here's the definition of
poverty in the United Kingdom according to Wikipedia:
Poverty is defined by the Government as ‘household income below 60 per cent of median income’. The median is the income earned by the household in the middle of the income distribution.[1]
In the year 2004/2005, the 60% threshold was worth £183 per week for a two adult household, £100 per week for a single adult, £268 per week for two adults living with two children, and £186 per week for a single adult living with two children. This sum of money is after income tax and national insurance have been deducted from earnings and after council tax, rent, mortgage and water charges have been paid. It is therefore what a household has available to spend on everything else it needs.[2]
In other words, if you're a two-adult household, you're poor in the UK if you have £183 per week in disposable income.
In "Rose," Rose was 19 and clearly supporting her mother, so it was a two-adult household. Rose was working at Henrik's, and, as
Jim Steele noted (I don't live in the UK, but I'll presume that this is accurate), she's lucky if she's making six £6 per hour. Assuming that Rose was working full time (defined as 40 hours per week), that means that, before tax, Rose would have been earning £240 per week, or £12,480 per year, before tax. That means that unless Rose and Jackie were able to pay their income tax, national insurance, council tax, rent, and water charges all out of the £57 per week that separates her before-tax income from the after-tax poverty threshold, they're officially living below the UK poverty line.
For the record, the 2007-2008 income tax allowance was £5,225. £6 per hour equals £12,480 per year before tax, meaning that Rose would be liable for £7,257 per year. Let's transfer the poverty line figure into after-tax income per year so that we're using per-year figures all around. £183 per week equals £9,516 per year. So you're poor if you don't have more than £9,516 of after-tax, after-rent, and after-water income per year.
So, Rose has tax liability on £7,257 per year. (Actually, it would probably have been more in 2005 when "Rose" is set, but we'll go ahead and use that tax allowance number to minimize the amount of money that would have been taxable for the sake of argument.) The
UK income taxation rate is currently as follows:
Income Tax rates and taxable bands
2007-08
Starting rate: 10% £0-£2,230
Basic rate: 22% £2,231-£34,600
Higher rate: 40% Over £34, 600
So she would fall into the basic rate of 22%. 22% of £7,257 is £1,596.54.
National Insurance contribution rates listed here say that Rose would owe 11% on her £240 per week, meaning she'd owe £26.40 per week or £1,372.80 per year.
Rent. I searched a long time for rent rates for London council flats, but couldn't come up with anything solid. One person on
Yahoo Answers reported £58 per week for a two-bedroom council flat, or £3,016 per year, so let's go with that. That's in Newcastle, though; I imagine it would be higher in London. But we'll use that.
Water charges. According to
this, the industry average for water bills in the UK for 2005-2006 was £134.
Council tax. I'm not gonna lie, I couldn't make heads or tails of the information I found on council tax rates, so I won't even go there.
So, to sum up:
Rose's pre-tax income per year: £12,480
After-tax poverty line: £9,516 per year
Income tax liability per year: £1,596.54
National Insurace Contribution per year: £1,372.80
2-bedroom council flat rent per year: £3,016
Average water charge for 2005-2006: £134
Total Charges per year sans council tax: £6,119.34
Rose's after-tax income (£12,480 - £6,119.34): £6,360.66 per year, or £122.34 per week. And, remember, in reality, her weekly after-tax income would be lower than that; I just couldn't figure out what her council tax rate would be. And that's the money they're supposed to
eat off of.
Difference between Rose's after-tax income and the poverty line: £3,155.34 per year (or around £60.68 per week).
So at £6 per hour before tax -- which, you'll recall, is a very optimistic assessment of her income -- and even not including a major tax she'd owe (council tax), Rose made £3,155.34 less per year than she would need to for her and Jackie
not to be poor. Even giving Rose all the breaks possible given what we know about her situation, she and Jackie still fall
well under the poverty line -- she'd need to make, in essence, around £61 more per week to not be legally poor.
So.... Rose is poor. Sorry if that bothers you, but there it is. She's very poor, she's in a dead-end job, she's supporting her dead-beat mother, and she never completed her education. Rose, quite frankly, is about as low as she could get without experiencing absolute destitution; she has no real hope for a real future. Now, as fun as it was to play the numbers game, I can tell you right now that as someone who has been there and seen it -- and who is successfully climbing out of it, with great, great difficulty and in a country that doesn't have a major class bias like the UK -- the signs of poverty in Rose's life were immediately apparent to me. I would like to suggest that if you couldn't recognize them, you're, frankly, a little bit tone-deaf about what poverty looks like and need to get out and meet a few poor people.
For more information on poverty in the United Kingdom,
this seems a pretty good source of information.
Seriously some people have too much time on their hands!
