[Mistwraith]

Originally Posted by Yahwe

I was having a bit of a booze with my mates down in berkshire in a place called the pelican inn and we thought what'd really solve the problem would be to have a system that topped up wages in proportion to the price of a gallon loaf...

aside the gallon loaf remark ..

theres tax credits.. while your child is at school, once it leaves and you work less than 33 hours .. you get nothing!

so .. basically if you work from 16 hours to 32 hours a week you can get no money from the government at all
but you can get housing and council tax benefit, so you can be poor but not homeless !