New Year Of Truth

My misunderstanding.

I thought you were saying that people needed a little extra to have some pleasure in life (which of course they do) but that it was possible to survive on benefits such as Universal Credit.

I would like to know how many people could even survive for more than a couple of weeks on £74 a week.

Growstuff It's the govt's policy that benefits are adequate - not mine.

Morrisons now has school food boxes with £15 worth of food. Spot the difference!

Schools are free to order them for their pupils. Clever marketing by Morrisons (why not?) and the children receive nutritious food. A win win situation!

Dinahmo

WWM2 Your list of food prices reminded me of an interview many years ago with a tax inspector and a client.

The Inland Revenue (as was) did not believe that this client's records were accurate. The client was an artist and his profits were about the same as unemployment benefit. What annoyed me at that time was that the benefit was supposedly enough for a person to live on yet this client was disbelieved. We got him to list his weekly shopping with costings, which he did. One pint of milk for 5 days, one loaf of bread for 3 days and so on. This helped us to win the argument.

40 odd years later it's still the case - the benefits are sufficient on which to exist but not enough to live. Everybody needs to live and not just exist.

I would dispute that benefits are even adequate to exist.

Abuelamia

Whitewavemark2

Another disgrace and level of corruption.

When is it going to stop?

This is what a poor child is considered capable of surviving on and the tax payer is charged £30 for the privilege.

Give the mothers the money!!

Below Tweeted by a mother.

Priced via Asda:

Bread 89p
Beans 85p
Carrots 15p
Apples 42p
Potatoes 22p
Tomato 11p
Cheese £1.45
Frubes 33p
Pasta 10p
Soreen 40p
Bananas 30p

Public funds were charged £30. I'd have bought this for £5.22.

Just want to add, yes this inadequate but the food was for five days not ten as originally supposed . So public funds would be charged £15. And although it may not seem fair the £3 per day needs to cover the cost of school kitchen staff preparing the meal.

For the sake of accuracy:

Schools receive £2.25 a day (5 days) for the value of food.

An additional £3.50 has been added for admin and distribution costs. The food isn't cooked, so there are no catering costs.

Many schools have outsourced to private companies, who are allowed to keep £3.50 per child for a week.

£2.25 x 5 (£11.25) is supposed to be spent on food a week. In the case of the "hamper" which was shown many times on social media, the company was making an extra £6.03, which it hasn't denied.

So the company received £9.53. The child received food which could have been bought for £5.22.

Your food is so cheap compared with ours! Think I’ll hop on a plane hehe

WWM2 Your list of food prices reminded me of an interview many years ago with a tax inspector and a client.

The Inland Revenue (as was) did not believe that this client's records were accurate. The client was an artist and his profits were about the same as unemployment benefit. What annoyed me at that time was that the benefit was supposedly enough for a person to live on yet this client was disbelieved. We got him to list his weekly shopping with costings, which he did. One pint of milk for 5 days, one loaf of bread for 3 days and so on. This helped us to win the argument.

40 odd years later it's still the case - the benefits are sufficient on which to exist but not enough to live. Everybody needs to live and not just exist.

The UK now has the highest COVID-19 death rate per capita of anywhere in the world. As we try and make sense of how we got our response so wretchedly wrong, just how significant will Government’s abandonment of transparency and proper process prove to be?

The purpose of procurement law is to ensure the public interest is served and that contracts go to those most able to deliver. It protects us by requiring Government to undertake open and competitive tendering. This is particularly important at times of crisis when stakes are high.

Yet Government’s response to this pandemic has been characterised by secrecy. There are billions of pounds of public health contracts we know nothing about – we don’t know who has made the decision to spend, or with what safeguards, or why such strange counterparties were chosen. It is almost impossible for anyone to accurately assess where we’ve gone wrong because so many parts of the story are missing. And Government is being deliberately misleading about what it has and hasn’t complied with.

On 17 December, Cabinet Office Minister, Julia Lopez, responded to a question in Parliament stating that all PPE contracts had now been published.

That is simply not true.

goodlawproject.org/update/scrutiny-in-the-courts/

Absolutely spot on

Those at the front face feel entirely let down by the rabble we call the government

Hands up those who have never lied ?

Incoming BBC chair Richard Sharp has defended his links with the Conservative Party, insisting that it is “not unusual” for the post to go to people with political associations.

Eyebrows were raised over the nomination of the former Goldman Sachs banker because of his friendship with both Boris Johnson and chancellor Rishi Sunak and his donation of around £400,000 to the Tories over a 20-year period.

But Mr Sharp today insisted that his political donations were “dwarfed” by gifts to charity, and suggested that there was nothing untoward in the government appointing a chair sympathetic to its politics.

He refused to say whether he felt his political connections had helped secure him the job, saying it was for others to decide whether he was an “appropriate” candidate.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/bbc-richard-sharp-chair-conservatives-b1787399.html

Just want to add, yes this inadequate but the food was for five days not ten as originally supposed . So public funds would be charged £15. And although it may not seem fair the £3 per day needs to cover the cost of school kitchen staff preparing the meal.

2 points
1) The mother who posted the photo said that she was told it was for 10 days and has documentary evidence for that.

2) In the dim and distant past when I did a catering course the food cost/ gross profit ratio used for working out portion pricing was either 60:40 or 75:25. The larger figure is the food cost.

33.3:66.6, with the lower figure being the food costs says someone is having a laugh and bleeding the public purse dry..

I read with interest that the rabble called our government has been refused permission to test every school pupil on a regular basis, because guess what?

The tests are so unreliable!

Remind me who was paid squillions for this unreliability?

Whitewavemark2

Another disgrace and level of corruption.

When is it going to stop?

This is what a poor child is considered capable of surviving on and the tax payer is charged £30 for the privilege.

Give the mothers the money!!

Below Tweeted by a mother.

Priced via Asda:

Bread 89p
Beans 85p
Carrots 15p
Apples 42p
Potatoes 22p
Tomato 11p
Cheese £1.45
Frubes 33p
Pasta 10p
Soreen 40p
Bananas 30p

Public funds were charged £30. I'd have bought this for £5.22.

Just want to add, yes this inadequate but the food was for five days not ten as originally supposed . So public funds would be charged £15. And although it may not seem fair the £3 per day needs to cover the cost of school kitchen staff preparing the meal.

Anyone care to make a bet which way the narcissist will jump?

SUN EXCLUSIVE: Bombshell warning to Boris Johnson from powerful Tories: lift lockdown soon or face leadership threat thesun.co.uk/news/politics/13743945/bombshell-warning-to-boris-johnson/

Murdoch the Trump supporter and supporter of white supremacy is influencing the U.K. just as he did in the USA.

God almighty.

Do they ever learn?

D/E told schools that children will not be given food during half term.

What is the matter with these idiots!

We are only going to get more of this Whitewave. We now have a party influence by far right economics and, in far too many cases, far right social policies for it not to degenerate further.

Just to make it clear for those who don’t realise. The list above is the parcel of food being delivered to the poor.

Rather than give the mother the £30. Apparently it would all to to crack dens or on alcohol.

B.......s saw a good opportunity to make a good profit from feeding poor children.

Another disgrace and level of corruption.

When is it going to stop?

This is what a poor child is considered capable of surviving on and the tax payer is charged £30 for the privilege.

Give the mothers the money!!

Below Tweeted by a mother.

Priced via Asda:

Bread 89p
Beans 85p
Carrots 15p
Apples 42p
Potatoes 22p
Tomato 11p
Cheese £1.45
Frubes 33p
Pasta 10p
Soreen 40p
Bananas 30p

Public funds were charged £30. I'd have bought this for £5.22.

Oopsadaisy1

Maybe they are fed up with you all keep banging on about it

QED I think Eloethan.

Maybe they are fed up with you all keep banging on about it

I hadn't noticed Conservative supporters being backward in coming forward, although very rarely with substantive comments. Often it's just the usual "the great hordes of Labour supporters on Gransnet are daring to criticise the government but we are too frightened of them to respond" (and yet by making such remarks they are indeed responding, though not particularly constructively).

Gwyneth

If Starmer is on Andrew Marr next week it will be interesting to see how much of an ‘easy ride’ he gets. I wonder if he will be allowed to speak unlike the Prime Minister who was constantly interrupted.
The BBC really needs to employ an interviewer who is impartial.

Starmer may get and easy ride because he allows Andrew Marr to ask questions. Johnson just kept on talking so that Marr couldn't get a word in. He did talk over Johnson but it was necessary I think.

Also, in case you didn't notice, Starmer wrote a column in the Torygraph at the weekend.

Miriam Margolyes - bang on

The UK has fallen. There has been a right wing coup in this country… And nobody noticed. We did not notice because it was years in the making. We did not notice because when it came, it came in a blonde wig and a mask of buffoonery."