General Chat

Our local MP has posted pictures of himself opening the second food bank in Winchester, with the caption:
"This morning I officially opened the new branch of Winchester Basics Bank at St Lukes in Stanmore. WBB has been going since 2004 and we salute its many volunteers. Dropped off my box of goods; please do the same if you can. God bless them all."

Winchester - apparently one of the best places to live......

...I feel he's proud... :-(

Instead of taking a box of goods he should give loads of his wages to the food bank.


He should be bloody ashamed of himself all the colleagues he has in Parliament.

I feel (hope) it blows up in his (very smug) face.

So ashamed that we live in a country in 2017 and we have all these food banks and yet it’s costing us good knows what to leave the EU I think all MPs should give up their wages for at least six months and give it to the poor you still would not see a poor MP

I think all MP's should live for 3 months on:
A) What they call a 'living wage'
B) JSA - with the bedroom Tax deducted
C) ESA
D) A job they 'recommend' for others - like pensioners - or women who's pension age has been increased with no official warning - doing fruit picking/ agricultural labouring.

That would be their years apprenticeship!
I wouldn't be too mean, they could start with whichever they chose.

I agree Maggie, let them live in the real world for a while, not just a couple of weeks
like some of these reality show programmes

Lizx

It seems to me that when volunteers open food banks (as is what happened here back in the late 70s/early 80s) governments seem to take it as granted that they will continue to be provided with the necessary by the public, along with "largesse" delivered by elected officials at crucial times of the year.

I know the ones started here as an emergency measure .............. they're now considered an essential part of the social services for homeless and working poor, and the provincial government delivers a nice large cheque whenever there is the annual Christmas drive.


I find it really terrible that food banks are now considered essential by families and seniors who are not earning enough/getting a large enough pension to be able to reach the end of the month without resorting to the free food. In some areas, this segment makes up more than 50% of the regular users.

The largest call for donations, apart from money (because our food banks can buy 3 times the amount of food for each $ than you or I could) is for nappies and baby food.

..and sanitary products, Sylvia.

We have girls who miss school because they're having a period.
It's tragic.

I think the same attitude is here too Sylvia. It's great that others want to help poorer people but the government seem to rely on it to happen more and more.

Lizx

Rather than nappies and baby food, maybe there should be contraceptives available. As far as I am concerned, nobody who has need of a food bank should conceive a child.

Sharron .........

but what about those families where the parents do have jobs, just don't earn enough to pay rent and have enough left over to buy food for the whole month, let alone buy nappies? Or the baby was conceived while one or both parents had good jobs (or decently paying jobs), but then were laid off?

That seems to be the case for many here


Mind you, the metro area has got very high rents, even higher than in London or so we are told.

Minimum wage of $11.35 an hour (= ca £6.70) is what a lot of people earn.

However, if you are a liquor server, the minimum wage is only £10.10 per hour (= ca £5.96) .............. because they get more tips :-S

Trouble is, you can't generalise Sharron, people with babies can lose their jobs.

Contraception doesn't always work Sharron, I don't think many women particularly want or choose to be in a position where they can't afford food for their child, let alone be unable to buy it the new shoes etc it needs. If working women and men can't afford this because the rent/mortgage and bills they pay take the greater part of their money, what choice do they have?

If the DWP do not pay benefits out straight away when someone claims, or the tax credits application takes 7 weeks ( yes really!) what is a mother or father to do...let the baby starve or go without nappies in the meantime? What century are we in!

However I agree contraceptives should be available, I personally think they should be free to all :-D

Condoms are free!
Both from the NHS - and online.

It takes two to make a baby - the male of the species should take at least 50% of the responsibility!

Definitely the male should take at least 50% of the responsibilty, it might also cut down on the amount no doubt spent on treating STIs,? But that's another topic.

I thought contraception was free for all? Certainly the feminine version is & apparently condoms used to be handed out at Family Planning clinics like sweeties. Even if the male was too shy to approach them, their female partner would have been able to ask.
STI clinics would rather prevent an infection than have to treat it - that's another source for condoms.

Personally I don't mind donating to Food Banks. Its about time we pulled together as a Community rather than expecting the benefit system & 'them' to be the cure all.
Universal Credit was a good idea at the time, although the application of it has a lot to be desired. The same with councils giving the rent to private tenants so they have 'control' over their finances. Unfortunately, some of them either spend the 'windfall' on other things or their Bank grabs it to reduce their overdraft. Guess what? They eventually get evicted.

And so it goes on.

A big part of this mess is that employer's expect the tax payer to featherbed their payroll in order to finance vast profits for a a handful at the top.

Call it what you will "working tax credit" is a monster employment subsidy. It cetainly breaks both EU and WTO rules so it is not obvious how the UK gets away with it.

The housing market is fixed too with government, banks and builders conniving with one another to create an entirely false market in housing.

So long as the root causes are not fixed then the symptoms such as food banks, rough sleeping, sofa surfing , desperation debt and family breakdown will not go away.

The housing market can be fixed. Stop "right to buy" - if people want to buy a property there is no reason to make a social property available at huge doscount. Do as in all other EU countries, treat social housing as an assett not a liability. Allow councils as well as HA to build. Fix rents at what people can afford. One south coast town has new "affordable" housing with a 3 bed terrace renting at £ 930 per month! On the private side release a lot more brown and marginal "green belt" land for private building especially where main services are already there. True some people may see a hefty loss on property bought in the past ten years. What goes up sometimes comes down.....

Employers can choose to pay realistic wages nobody is stopping them. They can choose to work with the needs of people and their families, whether aged parents or children. No one is forcing rigid attitudes to staff. Many, many bosses in both private and public sector will tell you that their staff are their main asset but few put their money where their mouth is.

If the UK goes on as it is we will slide back to being the impoverished low skill economy which we were in the 1960s and 1970s. The young and skilled will go just the same way as they went then.

yes sorry I wasn't thinking ( or rather I was but you'd have to know my line of thought lol) about free condoms being available.

Detective, as you say of itself UC is not a bad idea, but the execution of it leaves a lot of people in difficulty.

Anyone who has had any dealings with the DWP for oneself or for others knows it 'can' work quickly...often it doesn't though, you can't put eating 'on hold' like you can paying the rent/bills for 4 weeks until some money comes through.

My point was not that people who have babies should not use the food bank or whatever. If a baby was conceived under different circumstances to somebody who is now needing to use a food bank then the child was not conceived by somebody having recourse to using a food bank.

Although Rollo has a point about a 'fixed' housing market, it only applies to new builds.

Homes offered for resale, are subject to market forces. Everyone will know of a home that's been offered for sale that's 'stuck' with no takers. Once they've swallowed their expectations & dropped the asking price, they'll find a buyer.

The same applies if a major employer has moved out of the area or ceased trading. There isn't the demand for homes resulting in those who do want to move having to lower their asking price.