Poor Kids

# My mummy's got no money

# My mummy's got no money. #

The gap between rich and poor in the UK

is now wider than at any time since the Second World War.

It doesn't get any better. It gets worser and worser as the days go on.

We asked four children to show us what life is really like

growing up in Britain today below the poverty line.

Shopping, debt, shopping, debt,

shopping, debt, shopping, debt, shopping, debt, shopping, debt.

There's all sorts of things that happen bad round here in my life.

Money is the main priority.

I always worry about it.

Hello! Hello!

All the children in this film have their parents' permission to talk to us. They live at home,

and they speak for the 3.5 million or so kids who are living in poverty in Britain today.

This is their story.

My name's Sam, I'm 11 years old and I live in Leicester.

He scores and the crowd go wild.

Sam lives with his dad and older sister.

His mum walked out on the family on Sam's second birthday.

The poverty line for Sam's family with one parent and two kids

is just over £1,000 a month after housing costs.

But they have to get by on far less than that.

I think I'm poor because I only get 420 quid a month.

That goes on what we need...

..and not what we want.

We have to spend it on food

and electric and gas.

The electric is put on a key, which goes into a box, and Dad puts a fiver on it every so often.

And when we run out of electric, the whole house goes...

Everything just shuts off.

Except for battery-powered stuff and candles.

The gas, when that runs out...

the whole house is freezing.

You see me running upstairs, getting my camis, which is on my bed.

I'm just sitting there going like this - brrrrr!

Right, you've got to do it like this.

HE WHIMPERS

Sam's half-brother, Kaleb, lives part-time with the family,

though he mostly stays with his mum up the road.

KALEB CRIES

KALEB SCREAMS

What have you done to him?

KALEB WAILS

Where did you bang it?

There...

Do you want me to look after him while you cook dinner?

You're supposed to be changing into your pyjamas, aren't you?

I'm sending Kaleb up to go and get changed into your pyjamas, OK? OK?

Come here then, little man.

-Send Sam down here, please.

-Yeah.

Sam! Dad wants you downstairs, mate.

-I've got changed.

-Why isn't Kaleb changed then?

-I've been trying to tell him.

-I expect you to have a bit of care

for your six-year-old brother.

I don't expect you to sit there and watch him hurt himself.

-What?

-OK.

That's it, you can go.

For the last ten years I've been daddy, mummy, friend, enemy, the entire spectrum.

We have Child Benefit, which is £20.70, I think.

I get child tax credit of £51,

then I get my unemployment benefit every fortnight, which, at the moment, is £66.

A deduction has been taken, so...

that's the amount that we have coming in at the moment.

Not a lot.

It's about £70 - £80 a week as you break it down.

Three quarters of all children in this part of Leicester live in low-income families,

but money is especially tight for Sam's family

as they lost £13.40 a week in Child Benefit when Kayleigh turned 16.

At the minute Dad's having to finance me

and my brothers using what money he gets.

He doesn't get paid for me any more, even though he's supposed to cos I'm in full-time education.

With every penny accounted for, the family have no choice but to rely on credit for many household items.

We have to put money into the TV otherwise it won't work.

And it has to be one quid, one quid...

six hours.

You're not actually paying for the TV.

You're paying for a household item, say the fridge, the cooker or the washing machine.

They'll give you a set amount to pay off each week, two weeks or month.

Ours is set on round about £50 a month at the minute.

Like all credit, this form of payment incurs interest,

costing extra money Sam's family can ill afford.

It stinks! I'm not going in there!

Urgh! It smells of poo in here, we can't play in here. Come on.

'My name is Courtney, I'm eight years old and I live in Bradford.'

-Courtney lives with her mum and her three sisters.

-Stupid thing.

Four out of five children in this part of Bradford are in low-income families.

Whoa, look at these big cabbages!

This estate also has one of the highest levels of families dependent on tax credits.

There we go, picked them all.

People with more money, they'll have, like,

more stuff to play with in the garden and more detail in their house.

When people ain't got nowt to do and they're bored outside

they can go in and do puzzles and colour and everything and we can't do that.

When we're bored outside, we've got to go in, sit inside and watch TV.

Hai-yah! Hai-yah!

THEY GIGGLE

Courtney's parents split up three years ago,

and since then her mum has had to look after the children on her own.

With no chance of getting a job with such young kids,

the family is living well below the poverty line.

Do you like my sandcastle?

How mad am I, playing in the sand with my children?

Activities that involve spending money,

like going swimming or even taking the bus are out of the question.

I can't afford it on my own.

I can only just afford to eat sometimes.

Do you like my little dinner?

-Your little dinner?

-Yeah.

What's for tea then, sand?

A bottle of pop...and some dinner.

For dinner we have a big version of a sausage roll.

What did you have for breakfast?

Nowt.

Because I sometimes forget to make myself some toast or something

or we're going to be late for school.

Do you ever go without lunch?

I go without dinner when I'm at home,

but when I'm at school I get dinner.

I have tea when I'm at home, but I sometimes go without dinner.

My mum hasn't got enough money...

..and she owes people money.

One in five low-income families report skipping meals.

Kids living with single parents are twice as likely to go without.

Bath oil, don't use it all at once.

-Medicine.

-I've got eczema.

For itching, cream for your legs.

Don't lose it.

More cream.

Every time I get mad with my mum I sneak upstairs and scratch it

and scratch it and scratch it and scratch it

until it bleeds because it makes me feel calmer.

'My name is Paige. I'm ten and I live in Glasgow.'

At least I got out of the damp houses.

Paige lives with her mum and dad in a tower block in the Gorbals.

Glasgow is arguably the poorest city in Britain,

with every single family living below the poverty line in some areas.

Here in the Gorbals, 82% of children are growing up in poverty.

Right, I'm getting off of this.

No, don't jump!

Ow!

Sometimes it's hard to survive on what we've got.

Sometimes you run out of money and you can't get what you want to get.

When you go out on your bike and all that and you scuff your shoes off, and you get holes in your shoes,

it's hard for your mums and dads to get new shoes, or go out for a family meal or something.

It's hard when you've not got a lot of money to do that.

I don't know how my mum and dad do it, but they do.

And I think that's very good.

I'm going to jump.

I fell off that wall, you know.

I've never even cried.

We've got, like, the park,

but if you had to walk past it a lot of people would think,

"Oh, that doesn't look like a very good place to stay."

The pitch is just there where the boys play football,

but the pitch has been ruined and all.

How are you meant to play football? It's seriously out of order.

You can't play football in here.

There's Housing Association that put us in these houses.

You must be kind of bad to put people in houses like this.

The other day me and my friends found needles, in the chippy,

in the chippy bins, a big bag of them.

And it's not very nice to see that at our age.

I'm only ten and we're seeing stuff like that when we're out to play.

It's not very nice.

-Whee!

-But the thing that affects Paige's day-to-day life most

is the damp that permeates her flat and many others in these blocks.

My house is really damp. My house is damper than your house.

Ah, it's sore!

My house is damper than yours.

They make the outside of the blocks look nice

and the insides just look terrible.

It's very small and damp and wet and you can't put much of your furniture up at the window

cos it will get all your clothes all mouldy.

And a few times my mum and dad had to buy new clothes because of the mouldiness.

It really annoys me because some people will bully you

because your house isn't all fancy like theirs.

How would they feel if they were in a house like this?

They wouldn't really like it.

It's not like our fault it's a mess, it's just the way the dampness is.

You can't put wallpaper and paint and all that

because if you do the dampness is going to show through and it's a waste of your money.

There's the wallpaper here that my dad's had to rip off.

And up there it's all damp, and on Christmas night our ceiling fell on top of us.

And now this is...

My dad hasn't pulled any of that off, it all fell off itself.

And the state of that and that, the windows are disgusting as well.

Paige's family was already living with damp before moving here,

so when this flat became available her mum jumped at the chance, hoping things would improve.

It was soaking, man. Soaking.

Along the ceilings was all icicles, man. I was like that.

I'm one of these people that the harder things get,

I just keep getting on with it, you know what I mean?

My blinds are really, really mouldy.

They've got mould all over the place, my blinds.

They've got all these little black circle damp things.

As you can see I've been trying to cut these black circle damp things off.

This was green fluff with black all over it.

I cut this this way,

and the other night I was going to just cut all the blinds off.

I can't sleep up my top bunk because sometimes the dampness spreads along the way.

I'm lying like that and it will go on...it will hang in my chest.

So I can't sleep up my top bunk.

Although kids really like to sleep up the top bunk, I can't.

It's really disgusting.

No wonder your mum and dad feel sick and all that all the time.

And I feel sick, it's because the other day, I felt really sick. I really wanted to go to hospital.

I was crying to my mum I wanted to go to hospital because this house is so bad.

So, it's just... It's ridiculous.

It's not just asthma that's linked to damp living conditions.

Children in flats or houses with mould

are two and a half times more likely to suffer from nausea and vomiting as well.

Paige's friend Courtney also lives in the tower blocks.

Everybody in my house is getting not well.

When I pick my sister up, she always smells of mould.

When I cuddle her it actually gives me illness as well.

She's always not well.

I can't go to school usually cos I have chest infections.

Imagine you'd be sick every single day cos of the mould.

Come on, I'll show you.

Look.

PAIGE GASPS That's terrible, isn't it?

Look at the ceiling.

My toilet isn't as bad as this.

No way!

That is really bad under the mattress, and that's just dampness as well.

I mean, look at your walls.

Have you just painted your room?

It's showing already.

It makes me feel really bad because it's not good for kids.

It's not just the look of the house,

it's inside the house as well.

It can give you so many diseases and stuff.

That's really bad.

Paige's only hope of escaping the damp of the Gorbals

is if her family can be rehoused out of the tower blocks.

I'm just hoping to have a better house than this, and feel more comfortable.

Bye.

In Leicester Sam's dad is keen to find a job that might fit around childcare.

Wow, it says no jobs found.

I'm actually quite surprised that you've managed to do two searches and nothing at all has come up.

That is how the job market is at the moment, Kay.

Computer says no.

The computer says no.

It's not easy for people to look for jobs now

because for every five people there's one job.

So it's a lot harder to find jobs.

People are taking jobs that he needs.

Almost half the children in this part of Leicester live in families without work.

Sam, like Courtney, sometimes goes without meals as a result.

Until Dad has a job, we don't have any money.

Sometimes I don't even get lunch.

But then I go, "Nah, I'm not hungry, I'll save."

And then...

I save up my hunger

for when dinner comes,

I've eaten it all.

Last job I had I was earning nearly £400 a week in it.

That's almost a month's income for me now.

So from what I had a week, I now have a month.

To give you some sort of scaling, yeah?

Which is why I want to go back to work so badly.

The family's finances also affect Sam's school life.

I have to reuse my sister's shirts

and then I get called a girl.

It gets me psyched up.

I just want to punch them, but then I get a detention or sent in isolation.

It doesn't matter if you're wearing

a girl's shirt or ripped trousers or a girl's blazer.

As long as you've got them, it doesn't matter what you're wearing.

It matters who you are.

They call me ankle swingers

because I have ripped trousers and they're too small for me.

Look, there's the rip.

People call me big girl's blouse as well for wearing girls' blazers and shirts.

Look, this is a girl's shirt, cos girls have them.

Them little lines.

My sister donated this shirt to me cos I needed a shirt for school.

I worry about Sam all the time.

Once you're marked, you're marked for life.

The minute people find out you're poor they automatically assume

and then you lose that friend.

You have to be so careful what you say,

cos automatically, in the back of your head, you're always going,

"What if I say something and they don't like it?

"What if I let something slip?" You've always got the what-ifs going through your head.

What they're doing is they're bullying me vocally.

I said, "Dad, I'm being bullied." He said, "Why don't you fight back?"

Because they're not doing it physically, they're doing it vocally.

You tend to just start merging into the background, not wanting to join in

because you don't want people to know what's going on at home.

I hate this hair.

I hate my hair!

Sometimes it does feel like you've got a big hefty secret and you need to keep it hidden.

It puts you in that mindset of,

"I'm lower than everybody else, I'm not worth as much as everybody else,"

which lowers your self-esteem to start with.

And then you've got the added

not having the money to get the right clothing at the time,

because when you're in school it's all about what you're wearing, isn't it?

So you don't have the money to get the clothing,

which sparks the bullying,

and then the bullying lowers your self-esteem,

then your self-esteem gets so low that you end up hurting yourself

to make yourself feel better.

Sometimes I'm out here on my own cos then I can talk to myself,

which I usually do.

Do you ever get lonely?

Yeah. Yeah, sometimes.

I did try and take my own life when I was younger.

I was thinking things along the lines of, "I'm not...

"I'm not worthy enough to be here,

"I'm...

"Nobody wants me here, I'm better off dead."

Things like that.

Basically up was down, down was up,

left was right and right was left, if you know what I mean.

I was so confused at the time.

You don't really think, "Is it going to work?" You just do it.

And if it works, it works and if it don't, you try again

until somebody breaks the cycle for you.

We'll play that game that we normally play, underground maze.

It's really dark and we need to find our way round. There's rats and dead stuff under here.

In Bradford the long summer break has begun.

For well-off children this means holidays away from home, trips out and treats.

But for poor families it's just another struggle.

You can just take them somewhere for the day when you've got money to spend, can't you?

Just give them money to do what they want,

but you can't when you're on what I'm on - benefits.

No free school meals during the week puts food bills up.

And there is the constant temptation of the ice-cream van.

But it's the need to find something to do for free

that preoccupies Courtney.

There's nowt to do here. It's really boring.

No, don't go in!

Look at that!

It's a cellar. They keep dead bodies in there.

-That's not a cellar, that.

-What is it?

-A graveyard.

The summer holidays are kind of part of your life,

but it gets too hot and you feel sick.

Put it in!

We can go to the park and play about on youthy.

Come on. Someone's actually killed someone probably.

You can see downstairs from here.

Cos the floor's falled through.

Look at that in the loft.

-Someone's been breaking through here, you know.

-Shall we go in the bedroom?

You can't cross there. If you fall in there...

It's scary up there.

THEY SCREAM

I get jealous when other people go on holiday and we can't afford it.

Our family can't do nowt, that normal, that other kids can do.

They get to go out of Bradford and play out of Bradford.

Then they get more adventurous and get to learn more about this world and that,

and just what happened in the past and that.

What's he barking at? Holly's on!

You can't get me! Na na-na na-na! Courtney's got no knickers on!

Time out now, time out.

I need to go in the shade again.

When did you go holiday?

I didn't, I haven't been.

-I haven't gone on holiday.

-Have you ever been on holiday?

No, I've only been to Scarborough with school.

I've been to Mallorca, Greece, Crete and, um...

How long did it take to get to Greece?

I think about two hours.

How did you get there?

By a plane.

Don't you go in...helicopters?

No.

-Don't you?

-No.

-Aren't you scared of heights?

-No.

I am.

I would be scared to fly up in the sky.

Is that why you don't go on holiday?

I don't go on holiday because my mum hasn't got that much money.

Because to go on holiday it's about 50 or 100 quid or something.

How come your family are different and they can go on holiday and that and our family can't?

It's because my family ain't scared of heights.

-Catch me, little bear!

-No!

-Catch me, little bear!

-No.

SHE LAUGHS

Oh, stop swearing!

Holly's family can afford nicer clothes than me because her family work and my family don't.

My mum looks after people who are really poorly

and they can't walk and are in their wheelchairs.

My dad, he does gardens and just...

So like if something breaks down in her house, her dad can fix it,

and in mine we can't because we can't afford the money

the council here to fix stuff and that.

If your family work, you get more money in the house,

but if they don't, then you get less money in the house.

My mum can't lend me the money when I become 21 or whatever, how old I become.

Then I just want to be able to work and do what I want to do.

You never know.

When you get older, you might be a richer... You never know.

I think that my future is going to have loads of bad things in it

then a few good things.

Because her, she's going to be richer when she grows up and I'll be poor.

I'm just saying this might not be my future.

The social workers might pay for you or summat.

They won't. Social workers will be dead by the time I'm 21.

None of my family are working, I'm a little kid, like three or four or something.

I'll ignore my future then just wait till it comes up and find out what happens and that.

# Can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky

# Are like shooting stars

# I could really use a wish right now

# Wish right now Wish right now!

# Can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky

# Are like shooting stars

-# I could really use THEY SING ALONG:

-A wish right now

# Wish right now Wish right now! #

In Glasgow, Paige's most heartfelt wish has come true.

The family has been offered a house north of the city in Drumchapel.

They move today.

Bye, Gorbals!

I wonder how much money my dad paid for that van?

£25. Just to hire that for the day.

-And then you need to get petrol and all that.

-I don't know whether I'm coming or going.

I still don't know whether it's a good thing or a bad thing, I'm just...

Kids should be in houses with their dog and their rabbit and all that.

And I'm so lucky in fact to get that. And I'm happy.

And when I move into this new house I'll be really happy. So I will.

Courtney's family haven't been so lucky.

She's still hoping that the council will find them a new house soon.

When I heard that Paige was moving house, I felt like she was really lucky.

She can get dogs, cats, rabbits, hamsters...

anything she wants.

She could even have an elephant in her back garden!

Bye.

Bye, flats.

You need to wave me off...

You need to wave me off... Wave me off!

Love you, bye!

Oh, Mum, you'll be all right.

It's weird leaving, ain't it?

It's gonna be much better.

It's better than a flat stuck up there. At least you'll have a better life now.

Paige's new home is a half-hour drive from the Gorbals.

Right, there's my house, there.

That is beautiful, Paige.

Everybody, run! Go, go, go, my house!

-Look!

-DOORBELL RINGS

We're home!

I'm home, Dad!

I cannae believe how different it is, to be honest with you.

I thought it was just going to be

one toilet, two bedrooms, a living room and a kitchen.

Same old, same old. But it's not.

It was two toilets, two bedrooms, a kitchen, front door, a back door and two gardens.

So, it's really different to what I thought it was going to be.

I think my life will be much better, now that I've actually got a proper home.

Nobody can talk about me or say, "Oh, smell her clothes,

"her clothes are pure stinking" because they smell of dampness.

Nobody can say stuff like that about me any more.

It feels dead weird, don't it?

I just think that it's...

amazing how a person like me who's been staying up high rises can get a house like this.

I seriously cannae believe it.

It's so weird, just look up there

and there's no dampness.

It's great.

Mummy, can you put some on my back, please?

It did get bad on her legs. It's clearing up now, though.

Your hair looks a right state. Who did it, you?

Courtney's summer holidays are almost over.

Soon she'll be back at school.

My bestest learning objective is doing right and wrong.

That's good because we learn about what's right and what's wrong in life.

What's wrong outside and what's wrong inside.

And it's not about judging people on their looks.

Umbrella.

Found it.

But how do you put it up?

Somebody left it, but I'm having it.

But the new school year brings new expenses,

something Courtney is only too aware of.

My mum is finding it hard to go out shopping and buying new uniforms like other children can get.

She hasn't given Argos

the money that she owed. Well, she has but she hasn't given them enough.

Some parents have got loads of money.

They can afford to get taxis and go to the shops, and buy new uniforms for their kids.

My mum has to walk all the way to the shop

and she can't afford to get us new uniforms that are all posh and nice.

Posh means really nice with loads of detail on and that.

My mum can't afford to get us them.

She can afford to get us the detail on and colour and that but she can't

afford to get us like gold and silver diamonds on and whatever else.

If you've only got little toys and that you should still

be grateful because your mum and dad have got to go out and buy you food, brand new clothes for school.

Clothes that fit you. Cos as you get older, the clothes you used

to wear as a baby or when you were eight or something,

as you get older you grow too small for them so your mum needs to go out and buy you new ones and that.

Like I'm eight, on my next birthday I'll be nine.

So she's a teenager.

No, I'm not, you're a teenager when you're 13.

I think that what's going to happen on Chantelle's birthday

is she'll get the cake that she wants

but she won't get all the presents that she wants.

She'll only get some of them.

I might have a dolly house with some people.

I don't think you will.

I want to be rich.

Then I can buy anything what I want.

That's playing the game.

Wooahhh!

Now it is a bit hard.

Put one of your feet on the other brick, there.

This isn't hard yet.

Whoa!

Oopsie, nearly both your feet off.

We are nearly on the end of our stepping stone game.

That was quick.

I bet you a lot of people have applied for that job.

In Leicester, Sam's dad still hasn't been able to find a job.

With money tighter than ever, Sam has little option after school

but to play at home with his friend Guy.

I spend all day every day inside on a weekend.

All right, chill out.

Guy, your circumstances are better than mine.

I don't get a lot of money,

one quid feels like a whole year of pocket money.

With Sam's birthday and then Christmas coming up in the next two months,

there's even more strain on the family's finances.

Birthday's and Christmas are always stressful for me.

It involves spending money I don't really have,

that could be used in a better way.

You have to treat the kids

in the same manner as all other children and that.

They all expect a present on their birthday,

they expect presents for Christmas.

FIREWORKS EXPLODE

I can't take the kids off to Alton Towers for a day out.

I can't take them anywhere where money is involved in reality.

Everything I do has to be planned around lack of money as opposed to with money.

I'm freezing out here.

Arm's length, Daddy.

I'm just freezing out here.

Mine's going, mine's going, mine's gone.

Everybody's losing jobs

and so people are going to get less and less money.

And soon we're going to starve to death.

I don't think we're ever gong to starve to death.

Yeah, but they're raising the prices of food and lowering the money.

But still we're never going to starve to death.

Not if we can help it.

The thing is,

they're saying either get a job or you're buggered, basically.

They're trying to get everybody to get a job.

But then at the same time they're getting rid of so many jobs.

How are you supposed to get a job when jobs are going away?

Angry and frustrated, that's how I feel.

It'll probably take years for my dad to get a job.

Maybe decades.

Or even maybe...

..centuries.

That is looking well nice.

It looks like venison curry but it's not.

How to make something look really expensive when actually

it cost next to nothing.

I'm good at that.

As far as I know, my dad's already in debt.

I wouldn't say it's OK.

But you gotta do what you gotta do, ain't ya?

If you need, say for instance if that cooker breaks...

you need that to heat your food.

Without the cooker you can't eat much

and you won't get any warmth from the food.

So sometimes you've got to get into debt to keep yourself alive.

If you know what I mean.

The family's debts are not helped by the fact that Kayleigh's child benefit

still isn't being paid, even though she's in full-time education.

This costs the family almost £60 a month.

Are they sorting out my claim?

-Are they bollocks.

-No, didn't think they had.

I'll get onto child benefit this week

and find out why it's nearly six weeks and they didn't bother to reply to me. Do you know what I mean?

It might now be a lot,

but we're talking a couple of hundred pound at least

that I should have, that I've not had.

And now dad is juggling money,

going like that...

Going food, debt, food, debt,

food, debt, food, debt...

See if I was to borrow £200 from say Provident or Shopacheck...yeah?

Essentially that's going to cost me £300 or £400 to pay back and that.

In the period, although I'm going to get my money back from the social,

it's then cost me an extra £150 that I've got to find,

which will take 15 or 16 weeks.

On top, just to get back to where I'd been at the first place.

That's obviously £150 I've got to take out of the budget

that I could be using for the kids, the home, whatever...so...

I find that quite stressful.

I have to be honest.

The advent of cold weather also means that fuel bills are set to rise.

It is a stress when it comes to wintertime

because he has to budget in for gas, because of the heating.

And because we don't have a tumble dryer we have to dry the clothes on the radiator,

which means it's costing more and more and more as the prices go up.

So things like that do tend to stress him out.

It's winter and I don't like it cos it's cold

and not many people go to the park

and especially when you're going to school

you've got to stand and wait outside until a bell goes.

And that's just getting you even colder,

that's why I don't like winter,

because of snow and stuff.

I like playing out when it's red hot.

But I don't like it when it's freezing like this weather.

When I'm outside in the winter, we shiver a lot.

Move your bum!

This one's better but the car's there.

It can be quite hard sometimes

because we ran out of gas and didn't have none.

So we have to get our coats from upstairs and use them.

We couldn't get no hot water,

so that next day when it was school I couldn't go

because I couldn't have a bath cos there were no hot water and we couldn't get no water neither.

But Courtney does have some good news.

Her eczema is much better.

I weren't going to take my medicine and stuff cos my medicine made me feel sick.

My mum forced me to take it

and I said thank you

cos she's nice and she's good and she's kind

and she's best mum in the world.

It's a lot better now and it ain't itching no more.

What's one fours?

Eight.

I don't like my times tables.

Mum!

What?

What's five times one?

Five ones?

Yeah.

I thought you were clever. Five ones.

Count five ones.

Clue...

Well done.

You sure you didn't bang your head too hard?

Do we have to do this homework? I hate it.

I'm not doing it.

If I get away from this dump

I want to be, what do I want to be?

A lady jockey.

I do, I want to be a lady jockey.

Shall I tell you why?

Cos you get to ride horses.

And you can be happy.

Cos when you work,

you can earn more money for you and your family.

Everybody like it, do you like it, do you like it, do you like it?

Like what?

If I was given some money, I'd save up and I'd get myself a new house.

Save loads and loads and loads and loads and loads and loads and get myself a new house.

# If I fall

# If I fall

# If I fall

# Will you catch me? #

# Happy birthday to you

# Happy birthday to you

# Happy birthday, dear Sam

# Happy birthday to you. #

Happy birthday, mate.

Happy birthday, Sam.

Today is my birthday.

I'm turning 12 today.

Oh, the electric's gone!

I got two presents and one card.

That's it.

A big birthday hug.

But Sam's birthday is also the anniversary of the day his mum walked out on the family.

Not even a goodbye.

Just off she goes, me getting bored.

Not everything works out forever, people change, things change, circumstances change.

I understand that.

I used to get jealous, when I was younger I used to go, "Where's Mummy?

"Why isn't Mummy coming to see me?"

And then I grew up.

I don't want to have a wife just in case she leaves me.

Then I'll have to be like Dad,

taking care of three children by himself.

-How are you going to have your hair styled?

-I dunno.

-Ain't it cold?

-It's freezing, mate.

As a birthday treat Sam's auntie Sarah is paying £9

for his first ever trip to the barber's.

I've come to get a wash, cut and blow dry.

Yeah, not a problem.

He turned 12, we thought we'd bring him to the hairdresser's.

Before I came here my dad used to cut my hair.

Oh, yeah?

This is the only time I've been to a hairdresser's.

Well, let's see if we can do better than your dad.

This haircut is special, because people are calling me mophead.

I just want to get rid of my hair.

That makes you look really handsome, you look gorgeous,

all the girls at school will definitely be after you.

What do you think of that, Sam?

Good.

Good? Just good?

Not good.

Absolutely extraordinary!

So good, my goodmeter has gone through the roof.

As the demolition of the tower blocks in the Gorbals begins,

Paige has come back to visit her friend Courtney,

whose family is still waiting to be re-housed.

One bit came down first then the other bit came down.

The road was actually rumbling,

it went bang at first but the buildings were still there.

And the dust actually went into town.

It went away to Argos.

Some people don't get moved out and some people do,

some people get moved out but have to stay in a hotel or something.

They'll give them money for that until they find a house for them.

I wish I had the opportunity to go to a house.

I do feel quite sorry for Courtney cos when I was staying here

I was embarrassed to take my friends to my house,

it made me feel so poor when I stayed it.

It was like, I've got nothing.

Now when I stay in that house I think I've got everything.

In the old house I was up and down in the lift getting changed.

So my mum and dad stopped it and plus it was too cold.

Now I've got a back garden so I can go out and then go back in.

It's nice and hot inside,

it's much better.

One, two, three...

I feel sad for kids in high rises, especially my friends,

because it's going to be colder for them cos they don't have heating.

It's upsetting thinking that there's kids in conditions like that.

It's like four days till Christmas.

Definitely more financial struggle.

You've got to get all the ordinary things, which you struggle to get anyway,

and then buy presents for three or four people on top of that

and then you've got to buy all the extra food and anything else you may want...

Daddy, we're done!

-That is absolutely amazing.

-I'm well happy with that.

Dad does get us to write a list every year

of a certain amount of things we want, this year it was six.

And he'll try to get us as many of those things as possible.

Last Christmas was quite hard

cos we got chocolates and little things like that for Christmas,

and then Dad told us he was really struggling and there was no money to go round.

We ended up having Christmas dinner round our mates' house.

Cos we were going to have pie and chips.

It is quite hard,

cos people seem to see it as the more money you've got,

the higher up society you are.

Since I've had my hair cut I ain't been called moptop.

A lot less people have been bullying me.

And if they do bully me I run away as fast as I can to a teacher.

One thing bullies hate is teachers.

It'll be hard for my dad cos he has no money.

It means he can't buy us presents.

So Dad put me on free school meals, I can't wait to get it.

Shall I tell you know why?

Cos then that way Dad can save up to £10 a week - that is lots.

As long as there's food...

it's good.

I think these cutbacks that are coming are going to make it very hard for people and children.

I think they're going to really affect families really.

I wouldn't want anybody to experience what I have to experience.

People are struggling to feed their families,

and on a budget and stuff.

It's just like hard.

# When the rain is blowing in your face

# And the whole world is on your case

# I could offer you a warm embrace

# To make you feel my love. #

The circumstances are out of our control. If we could change it, we would.

I'm going to find it hard. I don't want to grow up.

I don't want to grow up.

# I could make you happy make your dreams come true

# Nothing that I wouldn't do

# Go to the ends of the earth for you

# To make you feel my love

# To make you feel my love. #