"Living" on £53 a week

So the generous and kind-hearted Ian Duncan Smith believes that he could easily live on £53 per week, what a load of bullshit.

My husband and I are both on Job Seekers Allowance which means as we are over 25 years old and a couple we get £110 per week to live on. When I say live, I mean survive. So that's £55 per week each. We have been like this for just over 6 months now, so things are starting to wear out.

I thought I would provide IDS with an example of what his £53 would need to cover based on my own experience.

I will work with monthly figures (per person) and assume that a month is 4.5 weeks.

Income - 4.5 x £55 = £247.50

Out goings excluding food/toiletries etc -

Electricity - Winter £45 / Summer £22.50 / Average £33.75
Water - £15
Internet/Telephone - £20 (required to complete job searches)
Mobile phone - £13
Credit Cards/Catalogues - £30

TOTAL - £111.75

Remaining money to spend on food/toiletries/travel/etc - £135.75 (per month)

Which is £30.16 per week for food and travel etc, all those other things that are needed.

OK with £30 you can feed one person for a week, if you are sensible, but it has to be well thought out and planned in advance.

If I need to get a bus in Bristol it will cost me £4 per day, so walking it is unless absolutely necessary.

Or what if my jeans wear out, even in a charity shop you are looking at a fiver for a new pair.

Gods forbid that my washing machine breaks or something like that.

Also the electricity figures, they are spending the bare minimum on electricity, I don't have the water heater on, too expensive, and we had next to no heating on during the winter, and none on since the 1st March, it's been freezing. My house has been roughly 10C throughout the winter. To stay properly warm I would probably need to spend £60 per month on electricity during the winter, pushing the average up to £41.25.

We don't have TV, so there is no TV licence needed, that saves us about £20 per month (I think, not had a telly for years), so £10 per person.

Also if IDS has a spare room or two he would need to find 15-25% of the rent, so for my house I would need to find £37.50 - £62.50.

So if I included these extra expenses in the calculations my monthly outgoings would be between £166.75 and £191.75, leaving me with £55.75 to £80.75 per month (£12.39 to £17.94 per week to live on). I doubt that anyone could buy enough food, toilet paper, toothpaste with that pittance to live or even survive on.

Please IDS try it and see for yourself, TWAT.