I'm veggie and my weekly shop (ignoring lazy shop-bought sandwiches) is about £30 for food at most. Go to Tesco at 8pm and there are dozens of fresh veg options going for about 8p and about to expire meals for 50p. Bananas 10p, healthy option, energy, nutrition. Plenty of cheap options. Now whether or not families are desperately freezing trying to keep warm and running out of money is another matter entirely, but thats down to other costs and food comes first or you die, you don't die (unless you are elderly, and don't get me going on that one) from cutting down on heating if you are young and healthy. Again, old git that I am, we didn't have central heating when I grew up, we had gas meters or coal. If you ran out of cash, you went without and used blankets to stay warm. These days there are efficient heat-retaining cheap clothes available too. I'm not saying it's desirable to live like that (far from it) but no-one on benefits should be starving, if that were the case there would be rioting in the streets.

 

So if the unlikely story has any element of truth in it, I'd guess that other (not-mentioned) factors are causing the problem. Drugs and alcohol perhaps....

The lowest paid are far less likely to drink alcohol than the highest paid. Roughly half of the lowest paid men in a recent survey said that they had drunk no alcohol at all in the last week. Only about one in five of the highest paid made the same claim. Of course, that says nothing about drinking to excess but it does suggest that the stereotypical low-paid person squandering their money on alcohol may well be yet another tabloid myth.

Jesus christ, it scares me how much some people think they can predict about others' lifestyles. As Danny said, it's impossible to know what it's like until you've had to live on that little money. And why should minimum wage workers be forced to effectively live a life of permament austerity anyway? Pure discrimination.

 

Thank you to whoever posted the Gini graph, I came here to do just that.

Jesus christ, it scares me how much some people think they can predict about others' lifestyles. As Danny said, it's impossible to know what it's like until you've had to live on that little money. And why should minimum wage workers be forced to effectively live a life of permament austerity anyway? Pure discrimination.

 

Thank you to whoever posted the Gini graph, I came here to do just that.

Off-topic I know - but on Celebrity WWTBAM last night - neither Eammon or Fergie had a clue as to what the minimum wage was - even when given four choices! They must have seriously pondered that it could be £8.21 or £10.81!

 

And I agree - about why should some people be forced into permanent austerity. I'll tell you what too! If I ever have to go on minimum wage (and at my age - if I lose my present job - I'm certain the only work I will get is minimum wage) I'll have NO HESITATION in turning to shoplifting! Who knows? I could become a celebrity criminal and have my old age paid for like Ronnie Biggs!

 

BTW - I love your Gordon piccie!

Edited December 20, 201311 yr by Kath

I am SHOCKED to the core that you got a Maggie fact wrong Sandro! The gap between rich and poor has continually widened since the 80s and Labour only accelerated this division (one of their main crimes considering what the party has always maintained is one of their principles) Anywhoo congrats I always thought I was right wing (economically speaking only) but after reading your comments I see I am a centrist- who'd a thunk :lol:

 

I live alone and am not a man of excess by any means and I can't get my weekly bill under £40.00 no matter how I try and I'm always on the look out for bargains when I'm in the supermarkets. To suggest that anyone is purposefully using foodbanks to fuel a life of living beyond their means is crazy. You start from the basis that IF someone can rely on handouts then that will be the first choice, most people would actually prefer to stand on their own two feet- what you are talking about is maybe 1,000 people nationally who I don't think anyone whatever their political persuasion would object to seriously tackling. I don't think I've ever seen anyone express their options in a worse way- I start to think maybe that's on purpose!

 

I am actually quite socially liberal, for example i have passionately supported gay marriages long before Cameron jumped on that bandwagon, i have said repeatedly that genuinely disabled people and the poorer elderly don't get enough money and should get more, i have spoken out against the thieving energy companies etc, I am far from an extremist

 

But, i do not believe in the idea of bailing out people who make bad lifestyle choices and those that live beyond their means be it someone on benefits who gambles or drinks or smokes or has a Sky subscription or owns an iphone

 

Or someone in work who gets loads of credit cards and gets into debt because they want to have a celebrity lifestyle

 

People have to make their own choices in life and live by those but not expect a helping hand if it goes pear shaped, and stuff like foodbanks gives people who have made the wrong choices in life a helping hand, and no incentive to change their ways, i believe in 'tough love'

 

Likewise with people on benefits who got sanctioned because they didn't apply for jobs or were late for an appointment or turned down a job etc, no sympathy for them, they made their bed let them lie in it, they should not get free food for making bad choice

 

Of course not everyone who goes to a foodbank is in the examples i gave above and in those cases following a means test and checks on their homes i would help those people, but no way do the examples i gave above deserve even a tin of free beans

 

That does not make me some sort of extremist one bit

This is only a tiny part of the 'gap between rich and poor': income inequality.

 

http://www.progressorcollapse.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/gini-index-uk.jpg

 

(I believe this graph is after tax, which is why there are more fluctuations rather than a gradual rise. It also makes short-term tax policies more evident)

 

The graph doesn't display on an ipad :( just a black and white square, i won't have access to a laptop till Sunday night

 

But between Maggie leaving power in 1990 and now, we had 13 years of labour government so if the gap between rich and poor rose during that time then it shows labour are full of shit about being champions of the poor and the working class

 

The tories have never pretended to care about the poor, labour have, so it does question whether labour should ever be trusted with power again

The graph doesn't display on an ipad :( just a black and white square, i won't have access to a laptop till Sunday night

 

But between Maggie leaving power in 1990 and now, we had 13 years of labour government so if the gap between rich and poor rose during that time then it shows labour are full of shit about being champions of the poor and the working class

 

The tories have never pretended to care about the poor, labour have, so it does question whether labour should ever be trusted with power again

 

I'll describe it to you, between 1979 and 1991 income disparity increased steadily from 23 to 33 - and since 1991 it has remained between 32 and 35. It didn't decrease under Labour, I'll give you that.

The graph doesn't display on an ipad :( just a black and white square, i won't have access to a laptop till Sunday night

 

But between Maggie leaving power in 1990 and now, we had 13 years of labour government so if the gap between rich and poor rose during that time then it shows labour are full of shit about being champions of the poor and the working class

 

The tories have never pretended to care about the poor, labour have, so it does question whether labour should ever be trusted with power again

It scares me to my core that you have no issue voting for a party that you'll openly admit doesn't care about the poor.

It scares me to my core that you have no issue voting for a party that you'll openly admit doesn't care about the poor.

 

I support the tories because they support and champion aspiration and enterprise

 

I do think that they should do more to help the genuine disabled and poor pensioners but despite a few faults they are by far the party for me

Jesus christ, it scares me how much some people think they can predict about others' lifestyles. As Danny said, it's impossible to know what it's like until you've had to live on that little money. And why should minimum wage workers be forced to effectively live a life of permament austerity anyway? Pure discrimination.

 

Thank you to whoever posted the Gini graph, I came here to do just that.

 

oh please I was on the dole for 2 and a half years and I wasnt eligible for full unemployment UB40 benefits, I was on £16 or thereabouts a week and I have had to live on that much money! and two years as a low-paid factory worker afterwards. Then 5 years on temporary council work. I've never reached average national wage despite doing professional jobs. I didn't at any stage starve and I didnt get into debt.

 

I was however thoroughly depressed and miserable and felt worthless, there were no helplines for graduate unemployed and there were no support groups. Plenty of my current close friends and close family are currently unemployed or on minimum, single parents with kids, or factory jobs and I come from a working class 3rd gen coal-mining background. Nobody I know is, or has ever been, starving. They've been cold, but not starving. It's a myth that benefits and wages are so low that people go hungry. You should pop round a few council house estates and have a closer look.

 

Now foreign workers or students, on the other hand, who are not eligible, do live in over-crowded flats with poor conditions, but again, not hungry. Again, personal experience, I know them....

 

 

as for discrimination on wages, be logical, businesses pay what they can afford for wages in many cases, or they will go to the wall and the low-paid will have no wages at all. Life on permanent austerity, who says it is? Young start on low money and work their way up over time, that's always been the way, you can't expect to be an instant expert or expect things to be handed over on a plate. Life isn't always fair but you have to persevere and try to help yourself while society (other luckier people in work paying taxes) makes sure that everyone DOESN'T starve.

 

You want to see really unfortunate people? Try getting help if you have mental or addiction problems and no family or friends to turn to, there are people who are really in desperate states walking the streets in every city and town with nowhere to go. They are the really needy and they are under everyone's nose. And usually ignored.

 

 

My personal opinion on foodbanks is that they should all be closed down

 

What started out as i am sure a very noble and well meaning idea has been hijacked by the left and left leaning charities as a stick to beat the government with

 

The very rare cases of someone genuinely needing food should be handled by charities or the church supplying some supermarket vouchers to the person to get some food, especially elderly or disabled people

 

If people were more responsible with money or managed money better there would be no need for them to be given free food, it is unfair to expect to be bailed out with free food if you have a smartphone, Sky TV, plasma tv, games console, any alcohol or cigarettes in the house or gamble, free food just acts as a crutch to bail out the weak minded and irresponsible, which imho makes up the majority of cases of the 500k grabbing free food.

 

Plus with these 500k where are their family? where are their friends? they should be helping them out

 

Also going by the twitter debate lots of people who use food banks are under JSA sanction, again why should people who refuse to look for a job or turn down a job or leave a job voluntarily or walk out on the work programme or not bother turning up on time to sign on or for an interview be given free food almost as a reward for their misconduct? wrong on so many levels

 

So long as people know there is free food out there they will not take responsibility for their lifestyles be it not wasting money on alcohol/cigarettes/sky/betting, be it applying for jobs and not refusing work, be it buying the wrong foods or whatever

 

With actions have to come consequences and people have to learn this

 

Time the foodbanks were closed down and replaced with food vouchers for means tested extreme cases and the homeless.

Dear god Craig. Do you have ANY fucking evidence for misinformed bollocks like 'imho the majority of the people getting 500,000 gamble/have Sky/etc'? No, you don't. You've just conjured up an imaginary world where everyone using food banks must be somebody who wastes their money because, well, you said so I guess.

 

Do you really think the indignity of having to get free food from a charity is a REWARD for misconduct? And there are countless cases of people getting put on JSA sanction as a result of administrative mistakes (i.e. being told not to come in that week by the Job Centre as their supervisor is ill, then being put down as not turning up and it taking weeks for their appeal to work through the bureaucracy). Why do you think charity should be forbidden to the extent that these people should literally starve? And not everybody HAS a family they can always consistently rely on for help in these circumstances, or friends well off enough to do so - without even getting on to how mortifying it would be to force people into the position of asking friends to pay for them to eat.

 

Food banks ARE charities. You really think charity should be forbidden and closed down just because it's inconvenient for the government to have it pointed out that their policies are driving people onto having to use them? :manson: And food banks actually are means tested to a degree - you have to have a food bank voucher issued by a doctor/social worker/the Citizens' Advice Bureau who assess your circumstances before you can apply for food bank support.

 

I'm not quite sure what world you live in, but I actually think you're a bit of a sociopath. You've created this ideal in your head that there is only a tiny minority of people in this country who need help, all of whom happen to be elderly or disabled, and that work is the easy solution for everyone else - even though you've had it pointed out COUNTLESS fucking times to you that the number of unemployed is five times the number of vacancies in the UK at the moment and therefore it is LITERALLY impossible for everyone in that position to get a job. After conjuring this up in your head, without any real world proof to back it up outside of a few anecdotes you've read in the Mail, you've decided society should be some social Darwinist paradise where the rich are rewarded even more for being rich and where poor people are punished even more, to the extent that even charity should be forbidden for the vast majority of them, with everybody not well off forced onto a constant workworkwork treadmill and to hell with anybody who falls off - let them starve, they aren't deserving!

 

You've decided that just because YOU made it from a very deprived background, everybody must be able to - without recognising at any point that not everybody is the same as you, and that hard work doesn't always pay if you're putting hard work into something that's a non-starter. You've decided that eBay trading is the magic bullet to make everybody well off, which quite clearly isn't the case - 1. everybody would be doing it and everybody doing it would be getting minted out of it if so, and 2. logically it isn't something everybody CAN do because of the basic rules of supply and demand. The whole point of business is that there is massive risk involved. It is therefore not something everyone can do. Not everyone can find a job in the country as there are not enough jobs to go around. Not everyone can start a business in this country as not everybody would be able to make a business a success. Have a bit of fucking empathy for once in your lifetime and stop assuming you know what people's lives are like, because you wouldn't last a week in most of their circumstances.

Edited December 21, 201311 yr by Cassandra

I feel like I should say something along the lines of 'PREACH' here.

 

I will be eagerly refreshing in the morning in anticipation of Craig's response.

HASH TAG BOOM

The lowest paid are far less likely to drink alcohol than the highest paid. Roughly half of the lowest paid men in a recent survey said that they had drunk no alcohol at all in the last week. Only about one in five of the highest paid made the same claim. Of course, that says nothing about drinking to excess but it does suggest that the stereotypical low-paid person squandering their money on alcohol may well be yet another tabloid myth.

 

I'm sure thats correct, but I'm equally sure that a minority of people do have problem habits, drink, drugs, gambling, fags, which eat up money. Fags are one of the last luxuries to be dropped, because it's addictive, it also costs 5 or 10 pound a day but the money always seems to be found for them. Just sit outside the council's benefits offices for an hour and observe, or ask staff who visit the homes what conditions are like inside, what they own. People who get into real problems, despite benefits, usually have other issues going on. They need help, but it's not necessarily throwing more cash at them at a time when there is no cash thanks to New Labour allowing the country to get into massive debts, much of it bureaucracy not real useful jobs to help society. Unfortunately.....

They need help, but it's not necessarily throwing more cash at them at a time when there is no cash thanks to New Labour allowing the country to get into massive debts, much of it bureaucracy not real useful jobs to help society. Unfortunately.....

 

Any evidence for that?

I'm sure thats correct, but I'm equally sure that a minority of people do have problem habits, drink, drugs, gambling, fags, which eat up money. Fags are one of the last luxuries to be dropped, because it's addictive, it also costs 5 or 10 pound a day but the money always seems to be found for them. Just sit outside the council's benefits offices for an hour and observe, or ask staff who visit the homes what conditions are like inside, what they own. People who get into real problems, despite benefits, usually have other issues going on. They need help, but it's not necessarily throwing more cash at them at a time when there is no cash thanks to New Labour allowing the country to get into massive debts, much of it bureaucracy not real useful jobs to help society. Unfortunately.....

 

So you complain that there's too many people on benefits, and yet you want there to be even less jobs to go round. Ok then.

Any evidence for that?

 

Yes. I've worked for a council for 25 years, everyone there (who cant talk to the media) knows exsactly waht the bullsh*t pointless jobs were under New Labour we worked with perfectly lovely people, but hey, do we really need a dozen media-relations staff (one would do). Or such as the 2 million pound spent on hiring people with no experience to "plan" the building of new schools, the money spent on public consultations, hiring in architects from the private sector, consultants. I'm not saying it's the same in every council, just mine. 5 years later, 2 million down the drain and the proposed schools still weren't built/expanded. Back in the day, the money would have been put aside, existing staff instructed to do the bloody job and it would have been done.

 

Oh the consultants, the endless expensive consultants parading through year after year. Public consultation: a way of acheiving nothing. You can't please everyone, it's impossible. Nothing happens. Nimbys. My council spent 10 million to knock down a perfectly good building because the moaning minnies wnated a sea-view for 20 seconds as they drive past the seafront. It's breath-taking the waste of money that could have been spent on (now-closed) day care centres.

 

I realise this is not cut n pasted data posted by newspapers and politicians on the internet (who of course have no agendas) it's merely the viewpoint of someone who's worked on the frontline for nearly 3 decades, but hey ho.

So you complain that there's too many people on benefits, and yet you want there to be even less jobs to go round. Ok then.

 

where exactly did I complain that there are too many people on benefits? Or that I wanted less jobs? Please re-read my postings. Council staff are over0-worked and stressed, we need real help doing important work to help the needy. Those are "real jobs". Media-consultants are not "real jobs". That's political propaganda.

Edited December 21, 201311 yr by popchartfreak

:( :(

 

Dear Mr Duncan Smith,

 

On Wednesday our family went to the House of Commons to listen to the debate on foodbanks.

 

We were disappointed you left early, because you missed MPs telling some really sad stories about people going hungry across the country.

 

We know what it’s like to not have enough food at Christmas – we’ve been there.

 

Even though Dad was working really hard, him and Mum weren’t eating dinner so there would be enough for us. Mum said we weren’t going to get any presents last Christmas Day – and that we’d have beans on toast for Christmas dinner.

 

All our friends at school were looking forward to Christmas but for us it would just be a normal day with hardly anything to eat. It was really upsetting. We felt like outsiders.

 

We were so lucky on Christmas Eve – a food box from The Trussell Trust turned up at our house. It saved our Christmas and meant that we could have a proper meal

 

Now things are getting a bit better. But we heard that 20,000 kids like us will need feeding this Christmas by The Trussell Trust – which has already given food to 500,000 people since April.

 

This year we’ve been volunteering at foodbanks, because we want to help people have a normal Christmas, too.

 

The past couple of weeks have been amazing. More than 140,000 people signed a petition in under a week. And the Mirror and Unite Christmas Appeal has raised over £75,000.

 

It’s nice to know ordinary people care. I’m sure you must care, too – and you must have heard about ­foodbanks in your area. Last Christ­­­mas was a really hard time for our family – and we don’t want to see other kids in the same place next year.

 

So we’re asking if you’ll make it one of your New Year’s resolutions to meet the Trussell Trust and its clients, to talk to them about food poverty and what can be done about it.

 

Happy Christmas, Jade and Jasmine

Edited December 21, 201311 yr by ★ G R I F F ★

Yes. I've worked for a council for 25 years, everyone there (who cant talk to the media) knows exsactly waht the bullsh*t pointless jobs were under New Labour we worked with perfectly lovely people, but hey, do we really need a dozen media-relations staff (one would do). Or such as the 2 million pound spent on hiring people with no experience to "plan" the building of new schools, the money spent on public consultations, hiring in architects from the private sector, consultants. I'm not saying it's the same in every council, just mine. 5 years later, 2 million down the drain and the proposed schools still weren't built/expanded. Back in the day, the money would have been put aside, existing staff instructed to do the bloody job and it would have been done.

 

Oh the consultants, the endless expensive consultants parading through year after year. Public consultation: a way of acheiving nothing. You can't please everyone, it's impossible. Nothing happens. Nimbys. My council spent 10 million to knock down a perfectly good building because the moaning minnies wnated a sea-view for 20 seconds as they drive past the seafront. It's breath-taking the waste of money that could have been spent on (now-closed) day care centres.

 

I realise this is not cut n pasted data posted by newspapers and politicians on the internet (who of course have no agendas) it's merely the viewpoint of someone who's worked on the frontline for nearly 3 decades, but hey ho.

I assume you're talking about Bournemouth Council and the infamous IMAX. That, of course, is a Tory council.

I think to be honest most local councils are equally wasteful- it's the nature of the beast- regardless of political hue.