Glad I bought some meaning to your sad life

Posted this on facebook just now, it rather summarises my opinion. There ARE people who slip through the safety net, but lack of food is not the hole they fall through.

I have kind of mixed feelings about food banks, or rather how they've become such a political football. Time and time again you see people saying how bad it is that people have to rely on food banks. But that's simply not the case. Food banks only exist in very wealthy countries, where people spend far less of their income than they used to on food.
It's around 9% now, was 15% before the recession, and 33% 50 years ago. In other parts of the world it is as high as 50%.
Don't get me wrong, I think they are a good thing, but they are a sign of wealth and generosity, not hardship. I was briefly unemployed 20 years ago, and had way less to get by on than today's unemployed. But I still managed to feed myself.
Living off cheap food might not be that nice, but it's a lot nicer than turning up to hospital and finding they can't treat you, or can't fund the drugs that will keep you alive. Nobody starves to death in the UK through lack of money.

I've read some of the report into 'hunger in Britain'.

What is absent is any reference to peoples' own responsibility to be clever, ingenious and shrewd when it comes to housekeeping.

Buying, storing and cooking food well is the key and yet it's absent in the report.

If I was poor I would do all I could to learn how to make every last penny count in buying the types of food that store well, can be cooked in different ways and are filling.

Ideas on this thread already include oats and rice. I buy rice in 10kg bags for £15. It works out at about 14p a portion.

The report mentions a high percentage of kids arriving at school having not eaten brekkie. And the govt gets the blame....

You couldn't make this up..

The report mentions a high percentage of kids arriving at school having not eaten brekkie. And the govt gets the blame....

You couldn't make this up..

This is my theory.  sh1t parents are to blame.  And to a lesser extent governments that allow sh1t parents to get away with it.  ie. pinko governments.

are you a stooge?

.......The death of a child is always a tragedy. The avoidable deaths of thousands of children under five years old every year in the UK is a scandal, according to the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) and the National Children's Bureau, who say that inequalities in our society which leave many families in poverty and deprivation are to blame.

Their views, expressed in a report this week, Why Children Die, put flesh on stark new statistics published on Friday from the most authoritative number-crunchers on health in the world, the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation in Seattle, part of the University of Washington. In their paper, published in the Lancet, they show that children under five in the UK are more likely to die than in any other western European country except Malta. Nearly five babies of every 1,000 born in the UK will not live to their fifth birthday.

The data is broken down by life stages. The UK does particularly badly in the first six days of life, in one month to a year and – worst of all – in ages one to four. The reasons are slightly different, but there is one outstanding link factor: deaths rise with socio-economic deprivation.

In 2012, 3,000 died under the age of one. Those babies tend to be premature and of low birthweight. Their mothers may be young and still growing themselves, they may be smokers or they may not eat well – the RCPCH report says the increasing number of people accessing food banks is a concern.......

http://www.jrf.org.uk/sites/files/jrf/poverty-definitions.pdf

I’ve seen very little genuine poverty in this country, I don’t say it doesn’t exist but I challenge your figures, 13 million people in this country may or may not be in relative poverty but that isn’t real poverty by a LONG CHALK.
Try reading “Road To Wigan Pier” or “Down and Out In Paris And London” or travel to Africa to see real poverty. I’ve been in Africa a few times and seen the real McCoy up close and it’s pretty grim.
Real poverty is where you’re GENUINELY at risk of starving etc or dying for lack of basic medical care. NOT can’t afford my shopping or electric cos I blew it on cider , ****, betfair , fobt etc etc.

In my teens I used to work in a corner shop in a village that was a mix of private and council houses, I saw plenty of the benefits street type characters then, none of them were in REAL poverty. One set of kids were maybe scraping along the bottom but they were still being fed, if their useless mother didn’t blow as much of her dole on Ace Lager and cheap **** they’d have been in a better state.

The definition of poverty is a joke but very few people seem to understand what it is.

A large % wouldn't know how to make a shepherds pie from scratch let alone grow and source their own food

Shameful

if there was a massive war i think the streetwise would be the only ones who survived....not the likes of ian duncan smith who says he could manage on 50 quid a week.....

anyone can say they can do anything....but getting yer hands dirty is a different matter.
id love to see him scrape some of his colleagues up off the floor if a ruskie shell hit whilest in the middle of sucking the orange....

the streetwise would kill each other and go looting

The report mentions a high percentage of kids arriving at school having not eaten brekkie. And the govt gets the blame....

I help out at a local school and particularly help with what are known as the disadvantaged kids. The reason they come to school with no breakfast is nothing to do with lack of money or the Governments fault. Sorry but it's just bad parenting.
We club together to give them something to eat when they come to school and finish lessons early so we can feed them something before they go home. Not being on the staff I am not told what exactly are the problems at home but one teacher told me when I started that it was better not to know as a lot of it is too upsetting and difficult to cope with.

The reason they come to school with no breakfast is nothing to do with lack of money or the Governments fault. Sorry but it's just bad parenting.

what evidence do you have of this?

I bet my neighbour is counted in that poverty figure.  She is not in poverty imo.  She is a pig.  And her children suffer as a result.  Giving her free food(which she can afford thanks to benefits really) doesn't help her it just lets her get away with being a sh1t mum.

wasn't Harold Wilson the first to stop school milk?

If we leave Europe, why do "People" think Europe will stop trading with the UK, We do more importing than Exporting,
What is our Best Home/Produced grown asset?,
We have not been self-sufficient for years,
Children think Milk comes from a superstore and not a Cow.

He is right. He stopped it to all secondary schools then Thatcher extended it to primary schools so she was merely extending a labour idea. A lot like zero hours contracts really.

Now THERE is a man who looked after children.