For the majority of the working poor in this country, it seems that the only way to make a decent living is to get into debt. The reality is whether we like it or not, there is a strata of earners who are defined by their income and so this does create a gap between the comfortable and the not so comfortable.

Even the well off get into some kind of debt but are not left financially vulnerable as those who I speak of as the working poor. Poverty has not left this country despite the dissapearance of class, it is just a known fact that there is poorer strata of people below the comfortable. How we each make money is as much to do with opportunity as it is to do with what we are given. Society likes people to have money but it needs people to be without it too if you are to understand how the basics of wealth are operated.

For the majority of working poor, their income is barely enough to create opportunity to recover from debt and to pay for training to get into better paid employment. I currently earn £230 a week after tax and my annual income is £15'000. I look for employment that reflects my skills and education and goals and yet I am still without the means to train to be more than what I would like to be. I don't earn enough in my job to pay for essential training to be an accountant or a first class administrator because my outgoings always exceeds my income.

People will argue that I don't budget enough, spend too much on going out etc etc. The truth is, I don't. I spend my hard earned money on rent, council tax, bills and national insurance and debt recovery for being in poverty in the first instance. This is how it is for the majority of working poor without a doubt. I can't even afford driving lessons, bus fayres everyday to and from work because it all goes out on water, electricity, council services, a place to sleep and everything that makes me a law abiding and honest citizen.

The government tells us that £5.60 an hour is a reasonable amount to live off. Yes, if you can shop on a budget of £25 a week on food!. I am astounded that they have no real idea that the cost of living has significantly risen since 1985 and yet they seem to be out with the times when they do their calculations. The poorest don't stand a chance of ascending up any career ladder let alone gain a few essential work place skills if they have to find the means to fund their learning. The only way is to get into some amount of debt and then get into more debt to pay the first one off.

Do the government really beleive that people are genuinely idle because they are poor and can't move up a notch due to ignorant budgeting abilities?. It appears that way if they do nothing to ensure that the working poor have direct access to learning that is free or affordable. Learn direct for instance, help thousands of inumerate and illiterate people every day to acheive their goals and remove barriers towards securing employment, but what about that people who are between basic and moderate in their learning needs?.

Every college course I have ever encountered in the last five years, now charge students anything from £60 to £1000 per course depending on what it is. I wanted to do bookeeping but my local colleges and training centres charge between £250 - £700 just to gain a nationally recognised qualification that will help manouver me into better working conditions and pay and yet I can't afford this kind of money unless I work an extra job on top of my 40 hour week as a mail room clerk. I did do an evening cleaning role recently but the company didn't pay me and treated me like dirt so I just had to leave.

My point is, is that how can life get better for people like me?. I have made my CV extraordinarily good and upgrading my skills on my own back with the limited resources around me and remain hopeful of a change, but I am limited in my abilities without money or access to training. I can see how it is that people get into debt and how they strive to make something out of their lives despite these obstacles known as poverty stumps. They are very real and not imaginary self imposed boundaries - people feel demoralized and fearful of what they feel impossible to challenge and are punished for this by being made to work in demeaning and low paid jobs that do nothing for self-esteem.

According to high society, there is no such thing as the working poor today. There is equality etc etc, and yet I fail to see what that is and what it means if all I encounter is a life a few shades more brighter than Victorian suffering. There are no slums and no work houses, but there are plenty of oppressors, low waged jobs and no means of getting out of poverty without the means to do so. This is not that far removed from times gone by if you closely at the whole picture and yet I would be called a cynic or something like this.

If the working and even none working poor were given a questionnaire on what life is like for them in poverty, I am sure that the conclusions would speak for themselves even though biased in some ways. It is the overall image that is important, the similarities in reactions. You cannot dismiss a blatant sore thumb unless you were either ignorant or blind and we all know that by now that opportunity comes with a price tag. It does not just appear from the wishings of a superb mind that can will it's own destiny or from books that teach how to train your mental abilities to draw wealth and prosperity towards you. For many ordinary people, this is only an elitist dream.

What are other peoples views on what I have to say?

I'm sorry- £25 a week on food? Your post is lacking in details so I don't know if you just mean for yourself but that's enough as far as I can see.

I'm not being funny with you but you truly can sort this out. If your other part-time job was rubbish- get another. Work in a bar (it's a free social life practically, tips are a help too), walk dogs, babysit. Got something you're really good at? Think of a way to sell your skills. Put just a little aside to pay a deposit on a bookeeping course, and pay a little a week into it. £15000 is more than a lot of people live on, my mother included, and she has a mortgage, a car and a kid at home. She's not in any significant amount of debt either- her salary's about £10500. There ARE ways to do it and I'm sorry but I simply don't agree that opportunity has to come with a price tag. I come from the @rse end of nowhere and my family have nothing but I have a full-time job, work for myself, am doing a degree (funded entirely by myself with no assistance) and I have no debt. Just attack it from all sides- there are people who can help you too; there are grants, volunteer schemes for training, government initiatives for skills developement etc. You will find a way to step up if you are prepared for a slog.

I don't see what is lacking?. Do you mean not technical and difficult enough to read or simply that you belong to the school of thought beleive that poverty was something entirely to do with history and nothing to do with modern day society?.

You are the fortunate one for having the means to afford your education without getting into debts. You would fall into a category of the minority because at least 75% of UK students are in debt and taken out student loans according to new current national statistics. My report is about poverty today, not about my own individual hardship. I used that to illustrate the extent to which people are in financial traps and nothing more, so you have misunderstood my essay. People can fight their way into something better, that is what equal opportunity is for, but it does not eradicate poverty and neither does it bring it into question.

It's about struggle, to get out.....that is the point!. If you have to apply for loans, grants, help to get out of poverty and get assistance or to work on low wages and just accept your fate, that means that there is a huge divide between those with money to spare and those who struggle. You must understand this before you can anything else and is a fundamental fact of life in our society. I agree with you entirely that people can get anywhere if they slog themselves hard enough and I do beleive that the rewards definitely outweigh the hardship, but then why should people struggle from the bottom end when there are millions of thousands in the Lottery fund.

This is my issue. How and in which ways wealth is distributed. The lottery sets out to didvide people and further widen the feeling of being alienated socially as well as economically. It is demoralising and degrading for money to be used in a way that does this. How anyone thinks of people winning such outrageous sums of money disturbs me when we have schools, communities that desperately need that money to build a better future and to get out of the poverty and the ensuing crime that young people are finding themselves getting into. £90 million for instance, could create 250 youth centres, training for the long term unemployed, better healthcare facilities etc etc.

I don't understand how anyone is not getting the point here?. Why is society not dividing it's money equally and fairly and to causes that are so important?. Getting better job skills and engaging young people in activities is far more important than giving away £90 million to one individual or family who will splash most of that away on things they don't need or want or give to more undeserving causes. This money needs to go where it should go, no one deserves that amount of money whoever wins it. Poverty and deprivation are still with us in the 21st century and the cost of living is rising, how are the poorest commuities, most disadvantaged masses going to get out of this without the allocation of money?.

Hey I don't disagree with you but ultimately it isn't going to change. The theory of equal distribution and fairness was basically called communism and I'm sure you know how that panned out.

People struggle or they don't. People accept their fate and complain, or not. Yes, people get into debt (and that is the majority of students, you are quite right) but they earn the skills to command a good income and that money is returned in the end. It's a matter of investing in oneself and each other. Debts are obviously not ideal but if you don't happen to be in a situation where there's another way, then since uni grants were dropped that is simply how it's done.

I personally am with you 100% when it comes to the lottery and other frivolous allocations of cash, but it would always be the decision of some suits around a table where to put that cash instead, and how can anyone honestly decide the pecking order? Policing, community support and integration, the care system, the NHS, employment support and training, schools... The problem here is for every one person who deserves the support, there are 50 people who abuse the faith shown in them to make things better. It's not quite the same point but if we took the entire lottery fund and somehow found a way to reallocate it to various slices of society who need it, then a depressing proportion would be given to benefit cheats, drug addicts, repeat offenders, people with ASBOs who apparently need a million-pound grant for anger management etc. It wouldn't go where it should, it never does. Poverty and deprivation is every bit as destructive as ever and causes a lot of problems, but this is honestly at the core of society and human nature as much as anything makes the difference. Every community has its muggers and smackheads but they also have local kids who made good, rags-to-riches stories, and acts of community spirit and support. It's what people make. Some people believe that life should hand them a better deal, and these are dragging down those who are striving for better. I totally agree it's not fair, but it's the way it is and all anyone can do is wring every drop out of the opportunities and options they do have.

I have to stress it- I agree with you that it isn't right. All I'm saying is that it IS a choice- to pick yourself up, dust off and slog it out, or rage against the hand you were dealt without trying to change it. People make the choice every day.

Let me post an intresting fact about sir Alan Suger, I am sure he would not mind me saying he knows what it is to be poor, when a boy he could not afford a bycycle so he built his own out off an old frane and some scrap parts, he did not ringe about his lot, but got on and made the best off it, attitude is everything, yes we have a lousy government and the economy is lousy, but instead off running it down we should all be asking what WE AS INDIVIDUALS can do to make things better, we should work together more and ringe a lot less, I agrea, the minimun wage is lousy, but to push it up will only add to the small shop keepers problems as he or she tries to make the business pay,, I think there should be an arrangement ware people on the dole can earn say upto £30 a week without effecting there benefits and this would encorage them to take part time work and at the same time help the small shop keeper and small businesses who would be able to take on part time workers with out the worry of burocracy, this would help the economy to grow at the low end off it and so help to lift people out of poverty as well as helping them to gain work place skills and to be more employable.

In the long run we may all have to take a long hard look at the way we live and the way things are done, things have to be economically sustanable as well as environmentally sustanable, Ghande was correct when he stated ' There is enough for the needs of man but not for the greed of man' (the British put him in prison for encoraging his fellow people to make there own salt from the sea by evaporation of sea water, what could be more sustanable then that?)

I use to be a Liverpool driving instructor and to Prime Minister Gordon Brown I say this, stop looking down with your one eye at your idelogical steering wheel, start looking up the road instead and learn to plan and scan and think outside the box, I do not care if you did get to uni at 16, so what?, if you cannot see what is in front off you or have the bottle to do what has to be done then make way for someone else who can, that takes imajanation, creativity, and leadership, ideology and politicle spin never solved anything, if it did, the problems we face today would have all been solved long ago, I challenge you to publicly comment and would like to hear the views of others..

For myself I am about to start work as a Liverpool Taxi driver, people bin off the driving lesson before the weekly run to Sainsburys, they agonise about affording driving lessons but call a cab at the drop off a hat, i will be in work long after there are no more learners to teach, I am not winging, but simply being practicle and pragmatic.