Hungry Britain

Just saying that food banks are not the only answer if you read my other post.

There is obviously incompetence in the way the benefits system is administered and that should be addressed.
Some officers are going to be jobsworths or look down on the people they are helping which is very unfortunate and does not help matters.
Some people are in a complete and utter mess of their own making and need more help than just food banks.
Any one of us could need a helping hand at some time in our lives.
That does not mean that some people have not become dependent on benefits and handouts as a way of life. Not all, just some, which give the others a bad name.

Anyone here work in a food bank?
My close relative does and sees the many and varied rsons why the people who are using them do so.

Well......I don't know where to start, so won't bother - except to ask how many people have been joining in discussions about freecycling, swapping household items, donating furniture to charities etc? Are you giving your unwanted furniture away to feckless drug addicts who smoke and watch TV? Or, like me and many others, seeing a genuine need and trying to contribute to help struggling families and single people who are trying to make ends meet?

We're decent people, aren't we? Aren't we??

Iam40, when Seebohm Rowntree did his first treatise on poverty in York, they used to go into people's homes and find out if the women had been drinking. It was written on the census.
That was the start of the welfare state, bank holidays, better housing, shared finance for housing between rent and purchase, and lots of other help. They set up libraries and healthcare for their workers.
We appear to be going back to those pre-Rowntree days.

I despair of some of the comments on here. Lots of people have criticised the vulnerable. I restarted this thread because a man has died because he had his benefits cut and did not understand that he could apply to get more money.
In yesterday's guardian there was an article about the right-wing thinktank Policy Exchange which said that the WCA had gone too far. 70,000 jobseekers had had their benefits withdrawn unfairly. These are the ones that end up at foodbanks.
This thinktank was set up by the Conservatives!
Churches and charities as well as the Labour party have been telling IDS that the administration of benefit sanctions has become too punitive. Atos are getting out of the administration of the WCA because they have been making too many mistakes.
Can you survive for four weeks on no money?
That's why people go to food banks.
They have no food, and nothing to cook with when they get food. That's why they eat pot noodles.
They do not need cookery lessons from someone like James Martin, whose dad cooked at Castle Howard, by the way.
Some people take it seriously. There are calls for IDS to be charged with manslaughter.
I could put links on this thread, but will not bother as I know those who need to read them will not.

and I might add we bought a lot of second hand furniture etc cheaply - you can't sell anything these days even for next to nothing. They all seem to want or get new somehow.

Thank you Ana, for expressing it so well. I was beginning to think I was heartless and sanctimonious for expressing an opinion that debt is causing some of the misery today. Some of this is debt caused over the last few years when people, encouraged by the banks and by Mr No More Boom and Bust, went credit card crazy and people are still paying it off, or have consolidated it into a lump sum - still a debt!
I am not talking about the sort of debt we may have incurred, buying one thing at a time on HP or interest free credit which was how we bought our 3 piece suite. There was always too much month left at the end of the money but we would have done anything to make sure our DC were fed.

I don't see that anyone has heartlessly criticised the vulnerable in our society, Iam64.

They may have expressed some irritation at the way some recipients of benefits seem to be exploiting the system, and there is no doubt that this happens.

The impression I get from the posts on here is that most feel that help should of course be available to those in genuine need.

give the poor food vouchers that do not allow for cigarettes or alcohol, I find it hard to believe that some people will put pleasure before feeding their kids.
Also how do they manage in Scandanavian countries, I talked to a girl who had married and gone to live in Norway, she said there were very little benefits and they were so low that you were glad to get back to work. She told me the few single parents they have are hard working and all the children go to state nursery schools. We should take a leaf out of their book.
As regards drug takers, I think they should have their children taken into care, they do not deserve to have them.
IDS is right in his stance, yes it is hard but if we bring the end to the benefit culture it is worth it, having said that the government needs to do more to encourage more jobs especially for young families

Ariadne - thanks for your post. I find the heartless criticism of the vulnerable in our society depressing. All societies have a few feckless folk.I recall looking at Hogarth's gin lane prints and seeing the similarities between the gin sodden mother's he drew, and the heroin sodden mother's I came across so often in my work. They're a minority of those dependent on benefits. Are those expressing a no sympathy point of view suggesting we return to a work house response to poverty.

When we were poor we did not run a car, smoke or drink alcohol and I was married before anyone in my family had a TV or a fridge. I think priorities are different now.

If we couldn't afford, we got HP. The car, TV, sofa and chairs, cooker - all needed, all on HP. We paid our debts or risked repossession. Some managed better than others. I remember crying when a threat of summons arrived in the post because we got behind with the rates. For several weeks, it was buy groceries or pay the council, so we ate. Bit by bit we paid it off, but it was years before I was debt-free - after my last child left education.

If the benefits had been available at the time, we most certainly would have qualified. People on minimum wage, part-time workers, unemployed and unable to work, unavailable for work because of care commitments - they don't need the added burden of condemnation.

Yes, sorry "Ariadne" we the older generation are to blame for the mess our youth are in now. We have allowed the 'buy now pay later' society, we have allowed greed to overwhelm need. We allowed our industry to be outsourced. We allowed our utilities to be nationalised. We made our children precious. We allowed basic skills to be removed from the curriculum preferring media studies etc. etc. etc.
Sometimes it takes courage to acknowledge that the baby went down the plug hole with the water and things were better in the old days.

It is good to hear the stories surrounding this issue, and the links are useful. But I do weary of the branding of everyone on benefits as feckless and the "in my day we managed" sanctimony. That was then, this is now. Things are different and we would do well to realise that, rather than engage in mass castigation of the poor and needy. Dickens would have had something to say about this!

But, as Joelsnan mentioned, a lot of it was taken up by debt I think. So should we feel sorry? If we couldn't afford we went without, debt frightens me.

There are food banks in France too, one is Restaurants de Coeur. Donations made from supermarkets and veg. producers.
I wanted to contribute eggs from our hens who are producing well, too many for us. But they said, the hens must be checked by a vet. I can understand the health risk (insurance again?) but there's more to this than meets the eye.
There needs to be a better system for using surplus or wasted food.

£900 a month isn't bad for a single person - a lot of pensioners have to survive on much less than that!

Yes, Joelsnan, there was a programme on our local TV last night about hunger and food banks and the bit I saw showed a woman who could not feed herself after she had paid her debts and essential bills. I think her total income was £900 per month. She was working part-time, her children had left home and she had lost some of her housing benefit because she had a 3 bedroomed house and did not want to move. She got herself another part-time job as well and I think the reporter wanted us to feel sorry for her as she was working late into the night. However, I thought well done, good for you. Her main part-time job was then increased to full-time so I hope she is managing now.

Delia tried (how to boil an egg)

Does anyone really follow their mum's or their gran' s cooking? I did n't. I invented scrambled egg with cheese and baked beans, all in together, when I was thirteen. Never looked back!

And there was always Woman's Weekly.

My Mum was an excellent cook and I think I inherited some of that, rather than consciously copying.

Oh yes, Joelsnan with plenty of violence. Maybe Gordon Ramsey might be a good idea after all.

"Merlotgran" not unless it was made as a computer game

Maybe it's time for TV program makers to put their thinking caps on and come up with a format that will appeal to people who really do have no one to teach them to cook. It's all very well Jamie Oliver banging on about his Nan and working in his dad's pub and James Martin's lovely afternoon show, Comfort Food, being peppered with references to his Gran and her wonderful cooking but they're preaching to the converted.

I'd like to see a young cook (no need to be a chef) stand up and say, 'I HATED food when I was a kid. My mum was a lousy cook and my nan was dead! One day I got fed up with living off chips and lemon curd and decided to teach myself to cook. These are MY recipes and they don't cost much money because I didn't have any!! It's got to feel credible. Nigel Slater would have us believe he grew up on toast before his dad re-married but I very much doubt it.

Think it would work?

Maybe food vouchers should be given as a component of the benefit payment, then claimants could not be accused of 'wasting' their money and food banks would diminish.
Sadly, many on the program appeared to have debts that were taking most of their income.
We do not know what is around the corner, but I do believe that things were better before the 'easy credit' society came about.

How sad that there is a need to do this J52. Is society so broken that so many children are not learning basic skills from their parents and have to be taught in school?

I did not even have a cookery lesson in school and learnt hand sewing in primary school only.

Before I retired, I was involved in an Entry Level education programme for 14 -16 year olds. They would gain practical entry level qualifications along side the GCSEs that they were able to manage, over 2 years.
The content of the qualifications was heavily biased towards life skills of a practical nature. This was a pilot scheme and before the end of the first two years it was announced that the success indications meant that it would be rolled out in all English secondary schools. Then what? It was axed!! Each school had put their own funding into running the pilot. What a waste. This is where we fail to give people the skills to survive!! Xx