What do you think should be done about food poverty?

I have just done a search for foodbanks in Scandinavia, and guess what, there aren't any.
Does this corroborate what Eloethan said earlier, that we need to redistribute the wealth in this country?
My son's partner has been unemployed for six months and had to go and sign on. You are expected to have a mobile and a computer to be unemployed these days. Can't go to the jobcentre or library to fill in forms, because there aren't any libraries open - she knows that because she was a librarian before she trained to be a teacher, and there were no librarian's jobs for her - and the jobcentre is somewhere you go to find out online if there are any jobs before you prove you are looking.
My sons have been trying to persuade me that I should get a smartphone on contract because they can be had for £10 per month, and cost no more than that if you text all the time. I prefer to have a landline and listen to a voice, but it costs me more than their smartphones.

I agree with your last comment, Notso. What are they trying to prove?

I wonder what they do differently in Scandanavia? I believe they have reasonably priced childcare that is readily available....this must make it easier/financially beneficial for young mothers to return to work...that has to help the overall economy I would imagine.

An young unemployed relative's experience was different to that you describe...he had a basic PAYG mobile phone, but it didn't have internet access and he didn't have a computer. He used the JobCentre for online job searches. Mind, that was 3/4 years ago, things may have changed. So if you don't have a mobile and a computer these days, can't you sign on or receive benefits? That's awful!

I don't understand the decision not to support the funding jen. What's subsidiarity? I'll have to look it up. It's getting to the time of night when my brain aches trying to understand these things.

You go to the jobcentre to sign on, and take proof of the jobs you have applied for. You are given a target every fortnight of so many jobs. If you do not reach your target, your welfare payments can be stopped straight away. No money for heating or food.
The jobs are on the computers, but because there are so many people there signing on, it is virtually impossible to stay and look at them. You have a special sign on password, and the people in the jobcentre can check up to see how many jobs you have applied for.
Two years ago today my husband died of a brain tumour. He stopped eating and drinking and died three days later. But at least he chose to do what he did. His life was not taken from him by a government which left him with no dignity or self-respect.

In every Scandinavian country, the difference between the rich and poor is closer than in this country. There is not such a disparity in income.
They complain just as much as people in this country about high taxes, in fact their taxes are higher, but they have a better welfare system. They look after each other.
My son's partner is Danish. My other son's wife is Spanish. Having listened to them both, I know which system I prefer.
Subsidiarity is a system where central government only controls those systems which cannot be run locally. This government says that's what it likes. It wants education to be run locally, but it takes financial control away from local authorities, and free schools and academies are paid by central government. Pickles is always going on about localism, then tells the councils they have to collect rubbish weekly after everyone has got used to fortnightly collections. The government does not know what it believes in, except it will not be told anything by Europe.

Food poverty is sometimes a result of the parents not being educated on how to manage food. They don't know how to cook cheap and nourishing meals, how to get the best value when shopping, and how to say "NO' to kids demanding junk food or takeaways. Of course, this isn't always the case - if your income has vanished for any reason, no amount of skill can help you: you need a food bank or very generous friends and family.

During my various hard-up periods I drew so heavily on the training in cooking, shopping and budgeting that my Mum gave me. But many young men and women have not been brought up properly, they have been deprived of such training, and this is definitely not their fault.

Jamie Oliver has tried to fill in this gap - not sure about the extent of his success though.

The huge gap between rich and poor, and the government reluctance to increase taxes to narrow that gap doesn't help, especially when government is run by 'posh boys' who have no idea what a lifetime of struggle is really like.

They've got it right in Scandinavia, but right wing governments the world over, denigrate their high taxation, high welfare societies.

As for me - when I left Britain for Australia just after Thatcher was elected in 1979, I should have gone to a Scandinavian country. It would have fitted my personal political beliefs much better than the mean-spirited government we have here. But that's another story.

I'm intrigued Notso. How do you tell a new tattoo from an old one?

Computers aren't so much of a luxury these days. They are needed for school homework for one thing. Mobile phones can be cheaper than land lines. Televisions are often the only means of entertainment for poor children (parents cannot afford to take them to the cinema or theatre) and many programs now are quite educational.

As for cars, well even good bus services have their limits.

I don't resent my taxes going to provide a basic decent standard of living for children who live in poor families.

Even if their parents are spendthrift enough to waste a tenner on their nails every few weeks.

Durhamjen I like your posts.

About 10 years ago when visiting a friend in Stockholm I bought a winter coat in the sales - I mentioned that I would be giving my current coat to Oxfam when I returned to London.

My friend and the shop assistant had no concept of a charity shop, especially one selling cheap second hand coats!

With new ones the colours are much fresher petallus and the surrounding skin is slightly inflamed. Very new ones are often covered in a type of cling film. (I have a tattoo btw )

Surely it is not much to ask to show you are actively looking for work (if indeed you are) and trying to get an interview with a company in exchange for benefits.

As for Food Banks, I agree some people will have genuine need for them, but some I feel with take everything that's on offer just because they can. Young mothers will be getting Child Benefit, free school meals, even free breakfasts in some schools for their children. Also their rent and council tax will be paid as well.

Do they want their bums wiping as well!

ninny, people on benefits DO have to show they're looking for work. They DON'T get all their rent and council tax paid for them, just a portion. Some of them live in their own, rather than social/council properties. They still have to pay for utilities, home repairs, clothing etc. and if you're only on benefits for a short time this is doable. However, living on benefits for a long time leads to a cycle of diminishing resources. If you can't afford a holiday then maybe getting a tattoo or a manicure might just be an acceptable, cheaper, alternative?
And why wouldn't you take everything that's on offer if it benefitted your family?

My son had been out of work for many months and is not computer-literate, so he had to come to me (a £6 return bus fare) in order to search for work with me helping him on my computer. It is a case of logging on through a Government Jobsearch site, so the Job Centre do see if you've been looking or not. I couldn't take my computer to him, obviously, and there was no point in his going to his library to use the computer facilities because he had no idea how to use them. Many times, I had to look on the Jobsearch website for him, as he couldn't afford the bus fares to come to me. Thankfully, he's now employed again, though it wasn't through finding anything on that website.
My granddaughter is a single mum and works 28 hours a week in a residential care home. She struggles to pay her bills, and there are many times when she and I go and just do a 'bit of shopping' together - which means she can get a good load of stuff in and I have no problem with paying for this for her, because she really is doing her very, very best and she's a good mum.
If it wasn't for these wee shopping trips now and again, she may have had the need to visit a foodbank.
It's not just people who aren't employed who are in near-poverty, ninny.

Thinking about Germany where I live and where there are also foodbanks now, I remember what it was like in the 60s. The Germans believed in potatoes. nothing new there. The potatoes grown here are for storing and all German houses have cellars, and flats have a little part of the cellar they can use. The potatoes go in the cellar and when that box is full then no one will go hungry. That is how they think.
I can imagine that Scandanavians think on similar lines. The winter is something you plan for either with bottled fruit, or potatoes. Scandanavian children go berry picking when in school, and this provides Vit C in the winter.
I can remember in Munich the potato man coming round in autumn ringing a bell and calling out 'Kartoffeln!' and then you went out and bought a sackful.
Like many in GN we a were students with a baby and I lived on herrings, and porridge in the UK. Today I would go to a foodbank there is so much thrown away these days.

I know what you mean about those shopping trips, Marelli, DD and I occasionally do the same. That's where the BOGOF offers actually do come into their own, if it's something we both use. She works full time too, and as a single parent to two girls does struggle to pay the mortgage and bills alone (ex partner unemployed).

I'd hate her to have to resort to food banks, because there must be many worse off, but it does demonstrate that poverty, or near poverty, is a lot more prevalent than many seem to think.

The first place I would turn to is the job centre to get myself a job because that is the only cure for poverty.

No excuses--there are no jobs!!--were there is a will there is a way.

But I live in London, I don't know what its like elsewhere....

I do think people's expectations are different these days - smart phones, computers, piercings, tattoos etc are considered a normal and essential part of life for some people; they have probably never learnt how to budget and make a little stretch a long way like we had to or to go without what we would have considered luxuries? Perhaps we need free classes in how to budget, how to make good nourishing food with very little etc. Do the supermarkets supply the food banks with food that has not been sold? If so, good, it would be criminal to waste it. Can't abide waste, but then I grew up with rationing.

I soooo agree with everything that you have said margaretm!!!!

Marelli and I were pointing out that it's not just the unemployed who are nearing poverty, eliza - nor are there jobs to be picked up 'just like that' in most parts of the country.

It's easy to say there are lots of jobs available, as though everyone who is currently on benefits but not working, can simply put their mind to it, and get a job. In so many parts of the country, there isn't much work available. In the past, people with low ability/achievement in basic literacy and numeracy were able to work in unskilled jobs.
It's also the case, that many people who now live in the community, would 50 years ago have lived in some form of institution. It isn't easy to find a job if you have learning difficulties, or indeed if you have a poor work record due to health problems for example.
I dislike the notion of a 3rd generation where no one has ever worked as much as anyone. The vast majority of those people have significant social or health difficulties. The nasty attacks on the vulnerable are increasing, it seems to me.

So many good posts here. Margaretx's post about Germany reminded me of Austria: I was there for a year and a half in the mid 1960s, 20 years after the war ended, but memories of starvation were still clear, so no-one over about 30 could bear to waste food. Apparently during the immediate post war period of starvation, word got around that a train full of peas was arriving; everyone made their way to the relevant railway station, the train arrived, but all it contained was lumpy black slime - they'd gone off, hugely.

Poor people were helped when I was there by something else: once a year they have a 'take-out-your-rubbish day, ie the wonderful German word 'Entrumpelungstag'. Poor people and students could scour the streets and pick up any old furniture that they needed. Seemed like a good way of helping the poor, to me.

Why should we redistribute wealth? There will always be people who have good brains and the ability and inclination to work hard. With others, it will be their parents who did the hard work and built up a fortune to pass on. Nothing wrong with that.

In many cases it's people who get themselves into messes. Either through laziness or bad life choices. Thank God for the welfare state to bail them out. And it does.