Channel 5, On benefits: 100 stone and on the Dole.

Out of order, downright unjustified and totally unfair attack on annsixty , paddyann!

All heart aren't you!!Thank god there are people in this god forsaken UK who DONT think like you
Talk about "holier than thou"!
All I can say is.
Thank God there are people in this god forsaken world who despite being tied to a DH with severe dementia will take the trouble and time to visit another GN member in hospital with serious heart troubles.
Who do you think you are to accuse someone of being heartless? What DO you know? How deliberately hurtful can you be?

Thank you all. I really am not as heartless as that

I think paddyann's comments about annsixty were quite out of court. She chose to misunderstand and manipulate everything annsixty said.

I enjoy a Greggs sausage roll and often have one (or two). However, I also weigh under 10 stone and exercise regularly. If someone is very overweight and unable to exercise due to health issues it just makes sense to avoid puddings and pies or you will just get even bigger and have more health/mobility problems. The woman on this programme did not even try to help herself.

I have also noticed that you rarely see an overweight child with slim parents.

Brave to stick your head above the parapet Harrigran in the ne. I share your dislike of Gregg's but then I had a friend whose daughter worked there. I also found their pastry very fatty but I'm now on Omneprozole so possibly a warning sign. I used to,love a cookery programme where people brought in random foods and two chefs cooked against the clock. I can't remember it's name but feel like that in my kitchen with what DH has forgotten from the list.

I am in a minority where I live as I do not like Gregg's sausage rolls, pasties or pies. They used to do very acceptable salad baguettes which was my choice of fast food.

'God forsaken UK' I don't think so paddyann. There is lots of beauty in the UK and lots of acts of kindness going on every day. We are so blessed to live here.

Another supporter of annsixty here. She is well known to be kind and caring and no stranger to difficult times herself.
I'm very struck by how children are losing parental attention and care due to various electronic devices. I bet we've all felt sorry for little children strapped into buggies and desperately trying to communicate with a mum totally absorbed in her phone.
Alternatively, using i-phones/tablets to distract children. It was called electronic heroin in a recent article I read. 2 hours a day of this can seriously impair children's concentration for learning apparently.

Thatbags I also like a Greggs sausage roll.
H and I sometimes have one warm at lunchtime with a small salad (bought frozen from Iceland) but I don't think it is suitable food for toddlers when they may,just may, have one several times a week.
Just reviewed before posting and I do,of course, mean the sausage rolls are frozen not the salad.
I have slapped myself on the wrist for my poor English.

Thank you both for supporting me I must say I was very upset by those remarks.

Yes, Ann60 is a kind person as Any says.
paddynan refers to living "in this god forsaken UK" - hang on a minute, we are so fortunate to live here. Yes, we have some social problems amongst a small group of the population. Look at those Hogarth prints from the 17th century and see history repeating itself, if in a slightly different form, with the drug of choice not always being gin.
There have always been neglectful and abusive parents. Many of those parents experienced neglectful/abusive parenting themselves, mental health/substance misuse issues. Not all parents who have a tough childhood go on to repeat that with their own children and some children who have a loving childhood go on to neglect or abuse their own children.
There are a small number of people who exploit the benefit system. That doesn't mean society should demonise the vast majority who would like to work, or worse, do work but earn so little they have the 'benefit' of tax credits.

Ann60 is in fact a very kind person paddyann and she made it quite clear that she was making a 'facetious' remark. These kind of scroungers do make people cross, there's no doubt about that but what really annoys me is when people jump in to support their chosen lifestyle, forgetting that every pound given to those who deliberately choose this lifestyle is money that ought to be spent on those who have no choice in the matter.

So less of the virtue signalling that you are of course 'all heart' perhaps?

annsixty so you'd like to return to the good old days when children had rickets and malnutrition ,or when they were forcibly removed from their mothers and put in cruel childrens homes or sent abroad as cheap labour...well I dont,I would hate to live anywhere where people were treated so appallingly.Just watch the programmes where mother and children are desperatley trying to find their birth family and how it has affected their whole lives .All heart aren't you!!Thank god there are people in this god forsaken UK who DONT think like you>

When I was at school, sausage rolls in your packed lunch would be a bit of a luxury. Cheese sandwiches were the cheaper option.

Now I would think it's the other way round.

Cheap cut meat like sausage is what poorer people have always eaten, long before obesity and its related health issues became a problem.

Sorry to digress a bit from the OP. I'm just sick of it being implied or said of perfectly decent food that it is junk. Meat and something to wrap it in like a bap or pastry is not junk food even if the meat is at the cheap end of the market.

What's wrong with sausage rolls? Sausage and pastry are not junk food and they're quite easy to make at home.

I had a Greggs sausage roll recently, cold. It was really good.

We can preach and pontificate as long as we choose but I suggest that you visit Stockport where I live and Rhyl where I used to spend a lot of time to see the young women, in groups, pushing buggies with babies munching on crisps and sausage rolls, totally ignored by their mums who are either talking amongst themselves or on their I+phones to realise just how deep the social crisis is. As I facetiously suggested in a previous post , just give them a taste of what life was like for previous generations who produced children with no parental or governmental support and see how they feel about that.
It is easy to say it is the child we must support, those young men and women have conceived those children without love or care for their future or welfare.
A very old fashioned and entrenched view but still very relevant today

Because they make cooking look so difficult, fiddly and time consuming.

I find it intriguing that the massive popularity of cookery programmes coincides with an equally massive increase in ready-meal consumption, takeaways and eating out.

The only things I learnt to cook in domestic science were lemon curd, rock cakes, mashed potato and pancakes.
I only took it in the first (unsegregated) form as after that I was in the science stream ( which did not do domestic science ?)
My dh did all our own cooking, I've had to learn since he died!

I didn't watch the programme but from the comments above, I've an idea what it showed.
The old age pension is not a benefit. Most of us contributed to it over our working lifetime, I did from 17 - 62 with a gap of 2 years followed by 3 years half time in the early 70's when my first child was born. I'm lucky to have an occupational pension which I paid into for 35 years.
As well as many girls and boys not learning to cook in the family home, they didn't have the benefit of being taught to cook from scratch at high school. When mine were told to buy a pizza base, some tomato pure and any other topping they fancies, I could have blown a gasket.
We had Family Centres where young parents were taught how to make nutritious meals for little money, how to budget and where to shop. There were parenting skills classes, midwives and health visitors on site at the family centre. Outreach workers visited families, made relationships with families who may have been 'hard to reach'. I'll stop there because I could weep. I feel I'm writing about some utopia in deprived areas where I worked for years. These good things happened during the early period of the Blair government. The current government has closed over 1000 family centres in the past year. this, despite research confirming they were improving outcomes for many children.

We have had topics the same as this a few years ago on GN and at the time I did comment that my DD was giving cook from scratch lessons at her local school hall she was inviting all the mums once a week to two hour sessions showing them how to manage their budgets and cook and feed a family of 4 healthy meals from scratch with the produce which was available in abundance at that specific time of year,she was even showing them easy ways of managing their housework so they had time with their children and not spend time stuck in front of the TV all day,after 8 weeks she had to cancel the project as the mums couldn't be bothered to attend they would rather sit in McDonalds chatting to each other drinking coffee and stuffing their children full of take away food,costing a small fortune.

Food offered by various fast food restaurants can be very addictive.
As can sugary sweets and drinks.

I have often stood at the till behind people with shopping baskets full of what I'm sure they would call drinks and sweets.
Its IMHO just chemicals such as artificial sweeteners colourings, gum and several chemical numbers.
Not a food stuff ingredient in sight.
And again possibly quite addictive.

My farmer uncle used to eat roast sheep's head, including the eyeballs. My city-bred aunt used to shudder and only cook it on "special occasions" (his) whilst we children would sit at the table peeping through our fingers.