[Politics] Tory meltdown finally arrived [was: incoming]...

[darkwolf666]

Carers in the UK save the economy £132billion a year. A carer doing 35 hours of caring for their relative gets £67 a week. There are millions of carers in this country, looking after aged parents, disabled spouses, or disabled children, so they don't have to go into a home.
Because they are caring, many don't get the chance to go shopping at various supermarkets to get the best bargains as it is difficult to leave the cared-for person on their own.

There are those who work part-time, and are carers who get nothing because their hours of caring don't tot up to 35 hours.
That is a shameful side of this society, that nobody thinks about.

https://www.carersuk.org/news-and-campaigns/press-releases/facts-and-figures

While on the subject of carers people should look into the shocking statistics of how many children care for their parents. We are a heartless society when people can be so easily dismissed and soundbite politicians make comments that are clearly designed for one purpose - deflection.

Maybe those 800,000 children should learn to cook 30p meals, along with everything else they do!
https://www.childrenssociety.org.uk/what-we-do/our-work/supporting-young-carers/facts-about-young-carers

 

[Thunder Bolt]

While on the subject of carers people should look into the shocking statistics of how many children care for their parents. We are a heartless society when people can be so easily dismissed and soundbite politicians make comments that are clearly designed for one purpose - deflection.

Maybe those 800,000 children should learn to cook 30p meals, along with everything else they do!
https://www.childrenssociety.org.uk/what-we-do/our-work/supporting-young-carers/facts-about-young-carers

Well said.

 

[BBassic]

Yes - but this is an interesting thing in it's own right isn't it. How have we got ourselves to a position where we buy bagged mixed salads which cost about three times the price of the raw ingredients (not having a go at you - I have done it myself), and where we buy (not me this time) bagged up pre-grated or chopped carrots, which cost about four times the price of a carrot which we can grate at home. Aside from all the plastic.

The salad bags etc. are quite a new thing for us. When we lived in Brighton we'd go down to the Open Market and get our fruit and veg from there and, as you say, it was so much cheaper. We've yet to find ourselves a good grocer here in Worthing (mostly through laziness!).

 

[The Clamp]

This country can't afford a Tory government. Get rid.

 

[Westdene Seagull]

How to roast a chicken: Put it in an ovenproof dish, add 3/8ths of a pint of water, put it in the oven at 200 for half an hour followed by 150 for 2.5 hours. Boil potatoes by putting them in a pan with water and boiling them. Boil veg the same way. To say that some people are incapable of doing that is an insult to those you are talking about. They may not enjoy doing it, but it isn't hard. (And at £4.20 for a medium chicken, which will also make a meal of broth later (also easy to do), plus perhaps £2 for veg, then it's not expensive.)

In the same way, you can't do plumbing, but I bet if you had a leak you would turn off the water at the mains rather than let the house flood. You can plumb to that extent.

I'll take your prices and yes, that seems a decent meal. I do think you're being rather flippant on if everyone could cook that. Equally, the idea that everyone has £6 a day to spend on one meal is cloud cuckoo land - especially taking in the water and gas/electric costs. I'd suggest you go and work in a food bank to see some reality.

 

[The Clamp]

Agree with your assessment of the Tory in question. The way he went about raising this was super clumsy and really undermines what actually sounds like a positive initiative by the Food Bank(s) concerned (and the idea probably had nothing to do with any Tory).

I see nothing wrong with Food Banks offering / referring to other services in order to provide further help to those who are struggling. I think that's great. For a Tory MP to latch onto it the way he did, and message it the way he did ... I think he's done more damage than good really. He's tried to take what should have been a simple positive message of "we can do more nationally, and here's an example of the sorts of things we can look at" and spin it into "Look at this thing here, it proves there's no such thing as a cost of living crisis. Not our fault, it's your fault for not being able to cook/budget". As soon as he tried to connect it to shifting blame away from the government, he failed.

Was thinking exactly this. Was genuinely imagining the food bank volunteers with their heads in their hands as he turned their hard work and compassion into a tool to try and big the Tory's up.


I can almost guarantee not one of those volunteers votes Tory and this is not a collaboration between the Tory's and the volunteers. This is people having to try anything BECAUSE of the heartless Tory's.

 

[MJsGhost]

How to roast a chicken: Put it in an ovenproof dish, add 3/8ths of a pint of water, put it in the oven at 200 for half an hour followed by 150 for 2.5 hours. Boil potatoes by putting them in a pan with water and boiling them. Boil veg the same way. To say that some people are incapable of doing that is an insult to those you are talking about. They may not enjoy doing it, but it isn't hard. (And at £4.20 for a medium chicken, which will also make a meal of broth later (also easy to do), plus perhaps £2 for veg, then it's not expensive.)

In the same way, you can't do plumbing, but I bet if you had a leak you would turn off the water at the mains rather than let the house flood. You can plumb to that extent.

You roast a chicken for 3 hours?

Either that's a massive chicken, or you're wasting the energy required to power your oven for at least an hour...

20-30 mins on high to brown it and then an hour or so thereafter is how it's done in our house.

Do you boil your veg for half an hour?

 

[beorhthelm]

Carers in the UK save the economy £132billion a year. A carer doing 35 hours of caring for their relative gets £67 a week. There are millions of carers in this country, looking after aged parents, disabled spouses, or disabled children, so they don't have to go into a home.
Because they are caring, many don't get the chance to go shopping at various supermarkets to get the best bargains as it is difficult to leave the cared-for person on their own.

There are those who work part-time, and are carers who get nothing because their hours of caring don't tot up to 35 hours.
That is a shameful side of this society, that nobody thinks about.

https://www.carersuk.org/news-and-campaigns/press-releases/facts-and-figures

sounds like moving onto a different problem. yes, its shameful, would that be solved by simply paying carers more or do they need better solutions? i reckon they'd benefit from food stamps to ensure they have enough to eat.

 

[Billy the Fish]

As for 'learn to cook PDQ' - some people can cook, others can't and never will be able to. In the same way I can't do plumbing and never will be able to. The Tory MP that raised this is a complete cvnt with no idea what the real world is.

This is utter nonsense.

Go to where my partner's family are from in Portugal, it's one of the most deprived areas in Europe. The one thing that literally everyone can do is make decent food on a tiny budget, the knowledge gets passed down through families and they take a lot of pride in doing it. It doesn't seem to happen as much in this country.

The "real world" for centuries has consisted of poor people learning to make nice food from what was available, it just doesn't suit your political beliefs to admit it.

 

[Thunder Bolt]

sounds like moving onto a different problem. yes, its shameful, would that be solved by simply paying carers more or do they need better solutions? i reckon they'd benefit from food stamps to ensure they have enough to eat.

The problem was people not getting enough income to live on. Foodstamps won't help with that. People who are in need, through no fault of their own, need a minimum income coming in.

 

[Billy the Fish]

How to roast a chicken: Put it in an ovenproof dish, add 3/8ths of a pint of water, put it in the oven at 200 for half an hour followed by 150 for 2.5 hours. Boil potatoes by putting them in a pan with water and boiling them. Boil veg the same way. To say that some people are incapable of doing that is an insult to those you are talking about. They may not enjoy doing it, but it isn't hard. (And at £4.20 for a medium chicken, which will also make a meal of broth later (also easy to do), plus perhaps £2 for veg, then it's not expensive.)

Don't throw away the veg water, boil the chicken carcass in it and you've got soup for a week.

 

[darkwolf666]

This is utter nonsense.

Go to where my partner's family are from in Portugal, it's one of the most deprived areas in Europe. The one thing that literally everyone can do is make decent food on a tiny budget, the knowledge gets passed down through families and they take a lot of pride in doing it. It doesn't seem to happen as much in this country.

The "real world" for centuries has consisted of poor people learning to make nice food from what was available, it just doesn't suit your political beliefs to admit it.

All very noble, but does Portugal not have any adults with learning difficulties, for whom using a sharp knife or oven could be extremely dangerous, or maybe their reading is such they can't read a recipe or the instructions on a packet?

Not being able or not able to cook isn't ALL about how much money you have, but also about your individual abilities. You simply cannot, like the Tory MP did, lump everyone into the same boat and expect them to all sail happily!

Perversely, the DWP have changed one of the descriptors on the PIP assessment to "can you use a microwave" to prepare a simple meal - maybe the Tory MP in question could point me in the direction of a 30p microwave meal range for those people!

 

[crodonilson]

Met Police has bought the century up on fines issued for Downing Street parties. A good effort and with more to come we may even see the double century bought up.

 

[Hugo Rune]

Met Police has bought the century up on fines issued for Downing Street parties. A good effort and with more to come we may even see the double century bought up.

Especially as they are not issuing fines for anything that could possibly be construed as a ‘working’ event such as the Downing Street garden party.

 

[The Clamp]

This is utter nonsense.

Go to where my partner's family are from in Portugal, it's one of the most deprived areas in Europe. The one thing that literally everyone can do is make decent food on a tiny budget, the knowledge gets passed down through families and they take a lot of pride in doing it. It doesn't seem to happen as much in this country.

The "real world" for centuries has consisted of poor people learning to make nice food from what was available, it just doesn't suit your political beliefs to admit it.

Well of course it helps to be able to cook. Of course.

That's Portugal though. Different culture, And culture's don't just change overnight.

Learning to cook is one part of a complex solution. We also need to address the cause. And the cause of food poverty is NOT the inability to cook.

 

[dsr-burnley]

You roast a chicken for 3 hours?

Either that's a massive chicken, or you're wasting the energy required to power your oven for at least an hour...

20-30 mins on high to brown it and then an hour or so thereafter is how it's done in our house.

Do you boil your veg for half an hour?

Technically it's braised rather than roasted. But yes, we like it so it drops off the bone.

 

[Thunder Bolt]

Someone started a parody account. The reference to gypsies is because of the reason he got an ASBO whilst a Labour councillor.

https://twitter.com/leeandersonmp

Ey ‘up, it’s 30p Lee ‘ere! Tory MP for Ashfield. In it for me’sen. Scroungers and foreigners can jog on. And gypsies. Parody, me duck.

 

[The Clamp]

As an aside, maybe the women in Portugal are good cooks but as in a lot of Mediterranean countries, in general Portuguese men are mothered and coddled by the women and grow up to be big babies who can barely stir their own coffee.
Anyway, as you were.

 

[Bodian]

Met Police has bought the century up on fines issued for Downing Street parties. A good effort and with more to come we may even see the double century bought up.

None for Johnson this time around?

 

[dsr-burnley]

I'll take your prices and yes, that seems a decent meal. I do think you're being rather flippant on if everyone could cook that. Equally, the idea that everyone has £6 a day to spend on one meal is cloud cuckoo land - especially taking in the water and gas/electric costs. I'd suggest you go and work in a food bank to see some reality.

Everyone who can heat a ready meal has the technical skill to cook a chicken. I did not suggest that it would be a meal for everyday - after all, even today we surely don't define poverty as "can't afford the Sunday roast every day of the week" - but even if it was, the roast chicken dinner will serve 4, the broth from the carcase will make another meal for 4, so that's 75p per meal. (Plus about 6p per hour to run a gas cooker, per google, so that adds a few more pence.)

There's a bit of a disconnect between where this all started and where this has got to. On page 651 of this thread, usernamed posted a case study of a man living in poverty, on a little more than minimum wage and who had no benefits at all - not even family allowance for his child who he had shared custody of. And even though he was several thousand light on the benefits he should have had, and was paying £12k per year housing costs with no housing benefit, he still had £50 per week, £5 per person per day, for the weekly shop.

Now we're talking about people who don't have £1 per person per day as a normal situation. How has this happened? Is it that people literally don't have income, or that they spend it on something else, or that other peoples' benefits are even more astray than usernamed's case study? There can be no solution till we identify what's causing the problem.