Hungry Britain

Surely the very reason that you access a foodbank at all is because you are desperate and limiting this to three times a year seems very unfair to me Ana I did not see the program but it is very sad that anyone needs a foodbank at all in 2014.

Wasn't there a poster calledcheelu who sent that kind of nasty pm?

Of course it is, gillybob! A quick google indicates that food banks in different areas have varying limits on the number of hampers per family allowed - usually 3 - 6 a year. They're only supposed to help the family through a crisis.

What was this tv programme please? It wasn't in my tv guide.

It was Tonight at 7.30 p.m. yesterday, Lona. 'The Rise of the Working Poor'.

I think cactus has some valid points. Maybe she lives in an area where she see it all going on.

I should n't be criticising anyone. I have been dealt a lucky hand after a rocky start. I do remember being poor though and, to be honest, I don't think we could have managed without some state help when I wAs little. In fact I know we couldn't have.

She has some valid points, but she does not accept that anyone else might have some valid points, or that the examples she has seen are not 100% of those on or needing benefits.

Many people on this thread are saying that there is a great variety in how much people really need the help that is available, and that sensitive triage is needed to decide who gets what and for how long, a very difficult thing to administer in a big industrialised country where people move about from one place to another, fall in and out of work, get ill or recover, have family to help out or have none.

Once upon a time, relief was given by the parish you were born into. If you had stayed put there, you were known to all your neighbours, who had to contribute directly to the fund that helped you, and to the officials who paid out. If you were swinging the lead, you were sussed out pretty fast. If you fell on hard times in a different parish, you were "sent home" for help, which worked until the Industrial Revolution and the concentration of a lot of workers in big towns.

Now it is all state based, so the recipients are further from the providers of the cash.

Elegran being 'on the parish' was the most shaming thing possible for people back then [next step the workhouse.] It was not some delightful rural idyll.What we have today imperfect as it is, is a million times better.
Also, I think from reading all the posts, that cactus lives in an area where she sees a lot of things going on [as Jingl points out in her post.]
This thread is making people very hot under the collar.

Eh! I don't go that far back you know!

My granny was always talking about the workhouse and how she was going to land up in it. I, with all the wisdom of an eight year old, would tell her there was no such thing any more. I'm not sure she believed.

me.

I did not know foodbanks limited the bags of food to three a year. My close relative who helps run one mentioned seeing the same people regularly, I am not sure that that can be correct. How can you need it one week but not the next if you are still in difficulties?

I am still thinking about the link I posted earlier to a blog by the Children's Commissioner in Wales where children told him they got school meals in termtime but went hungry in the school holidays.
Can't re-post as I have to go NOW according to DH.

jingle
My point was about some earlier posts about social class and professional job status.
I wanted to comment about the large number of very poorly paid persons. doing jobs which are generally thought of as low status.

The job examples I cited were those that are absolutely essential to the running of the country without which most of the business infrastructure would ground to a halt.

It was just my musings about pay not reflecting the relative value of the work done by these very low paid workers.

I wonder what the city of London will do when this basic workforce move away as they can no longer afford to live and work there.

rose and cactus it's very hostile, and rude, to address members as 'you lot'.

And cactus don't send me another pm - I've barred you.

You too, River?

To be fair, London is one place where there does seem to be a lot of council flats dotted about.

Riverwalk

Yes, let's keep things polite on here, even if we all have different thoughts on things.I saw a tv programme on food banks a while ago, they seemed to be helping a lot of the same people, so unless food banks have different rules, it can't just be 3 bags of food per year.

Three bags a year isn't really going to help is it? Think that must be wrong. I have a friend who volunteers at one and she seems the same folk every week or two.

Yes, but on a different thread Dragonfly.

BTW, I had only nice pm's from Cheelu

I can't remember the workhouse either Jingl long before our time thank goodness.However from reading about it, it was unbelievably awful, wives and husbands separated, children separated from parents [lucky if you saw them for a short time on Sunday.] Can you imagine your toddler clinging to you and crying? and then see them taken away again. What terrible times for the poor.Nothing today even comes close [in UK].

What is the point of descending to offensive or even abusive language just because people don't agree with your point of view?

Rose
I am not advocating shame and embarrassment! My point is that the more faceless the source of help, the easier it is for those who don't want to work to get something for nothing, and the harder it is to identify those who can't work. Publicly receiving help may cause shame and embarrassment, but bureaucracy and anonymity don't help the fair distribution of funds.

I know how shameful "the parish" and the workhouse were, and I am not citing rural idylls, and in any case the "Union" workhouses were a progression from the older system of each parish being responsible for its own welfare. In the late 18th and early 19th Centuries, growing industrialsation produced concentrations oflong-term poverty, instead of local ups and down that depended on harvests and crop prices, and were largely shared by the whole population. The "solution" was to concentrate the poor into institutions built by Unions of several parishes instead of giving them a temporary handout. The shame was deliberate, so as not to encourage anyone to apply.

My grandmother spent time in the workhouse in her early teens when her mother died and her father was admitted ill. If she ever said that something was, "as cold as charity", she would add, "and God knows, that is cold enough!"

That was to Rosesarered not Rosequartz Very confusing, this rosebed.

Lots of previously council-owned blocks jingl but many of the flats were sold-off to the long-term tenants and since sold on the open market at hugely-inflated prices.

I mentioned on another thread last year about a nearby flat selling for over £700,000 (the block is not a 'typical' council building).

Council flats in London are like gold dust.

www.childcomwales.org.uk/blog/

Is this the link you wanted rosequartz?