Tory MP blames food bank use on people not knowing how to cook or budge

Just heard from friend who works in Co-op. Says they sell 3 x 1.6kg uncooked chickens for £10. Not an offer but a regular thing.

Well, that's me corrected, then.
It's good to hear it from someone who knows it to be true.

I don't eat meat so had no idea of cost. She said her Co-op does not sell whole cooked chicken but larger branches and different regional Co-ops might albeit smaller than the raw ones.

Does anyone know why the cost of chicken is going to increase dramatically soon? I keep hearing about it. I bet it took my MP ( or her lackeys) ages to find something that was good value!

Is it because chickens are being kept indoors at the minute?

Isn’t it because the price of grain is increasing, so it’s becoming uneconomical to raise them to sell cheaply?

Yes. Ed Davey made an appeal today to help farmers with the rocketing cost of animal feed and fertilizer for arable. They are cutting back on food production because of rising costs. The government benches made animal noises while he was speaking.

On Monday, Andrew Bailey, the governor of the Bank of England warned of "apocalyptic" food prices, saying he feels "helpless" amid soaring inflation. He's not alone.

Mark Carney warned about this but no one listened to him. I thought the new Governor was in the governments pocket. Dread to think what Carney would be saying now.

MissAdventure

Is it because chickens are being kept indoors at the minute?

The cheap ones are raised indoors.
One average size free range chicken will probably cost about £10.

Some restrictions have been lifted now, I think.

I wonder if we should have a thread entitled "daft things Tory MPs have said and done today".

A senior police officer has said that the force will need to be circumspect about understanding shoplifting in the next wee while as the Cost of Living crisis means more people will turn to shoplifting as a last resort.

Kit Malthouse says its not poverty that causes people to do things like that. Crime causes poverty. So basically, he thinks that if you're poor, its probably because you're a criminal.

Oh volver, thank you for sharing Mr Malthouse's helpful insights with us. I didn't know this, did you??

No, I was eating breakfast when he said it on the news and I thought, aha! that's the problem! How could we not have known? ?

Some crime can cause poverty I would think.

A drug supplier, selling drugs to the poor, will make them even poorer, and unable to look after their families.

A shoplifter, stealing from a local shop, will make that small shop owner poorer.

I can understand someone stealing a loaf of bread, from a supermarket, because they have no food, but poverty isn't an excuse to commit crime.

I expect most of us have been pretty financially poor, at some point. This isn't the first recession we've had. Most of us didn't go out shoplifting.

I was quite impressed with the police officer. I didn't catch their name but they seemed to understand that the causes of crime weren't just "you're a bad'un" and that there needed to be some effort made to understand what drove people to do things that they would normally never consider.

But Malthouse said he was wrong and it was because crime causes poverty.

So. Who do I think has the more nuanced view, and who would I rather have in charge of looking at crime statistics and how society goes about handling it?

MayBee70

Does anyone know why the cost of chicken is going to increase dramatically soon? I keep hearing about it. I bet it took my MP ( or her lackeys) ages to find something that was good value!

I bet it is the feed.

I don't think the police officer was wrong to say there needs to common sense applied as to why people are stealing, but I'm not sure it was wise to announce it.

As far as I know, the Met police don't prosecute a shoplifting incident under £75, so it wouldn't apply anyway. The shops tend to use the civil courts to recover compensation.

Whitewavemark2

MayBee70

Does anyone know why the cost of chicken is going to increase dramatically soon? I keep hearing about it. I bet it took my MP ( or her lackeys) ages to find something that was good value!

I bet it is the feed.

It's the feed, according to the Co-Op:

www.theguardian.com/food/2022/may/01/rising-feed-prices-mean-chicken-could-soon-cost-as-much-as-beef

It wasn't a police officer, it was the new chief inspector of constabulary for England and Wales. Found two articles about this story online, so I'll copy links to them both. Anti-Guardian people can read the Mail one.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10831003/Police-officers-told-easy-shoplifters-steal-eat-amid-cost-living-crisis.html

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/may/18/officers-should-use-discretion-over-stealing-to-eat-says-uk-police-watchdog

I think that crime can cause (or exacerbate) poverty. As DL says, a small shopkeeper might not be able to stand the loss of revenue from shoplifters, and if she employs another member of staff who loses her job, that family could be plunged into poverty too.

I'm not advocating a return to harsh prison sentences (particularly for people stealing to eat) but I don't see theft as a victimless crime. I am in a number of local history groups online, and when Victorian photos are published of people imprisoned for theft there are always comments on the lines of 'a month in jail for stealing a pair of boots ?', but the same people get equally tearful when they see photos of barefoot children in the street. The stolen boots might have taken weeks of savings for the owner, who deserves to be protected by law. If the owner has to do without food to save for another pair, is that crime causing poverty or poverty causing crime?

The point is not about what causes what, but that poverty exists at all in a rich country like ours. IMO we need to have a root and branch overhaul of the tax system, taking into account individual income tax from all sources, plug gaps that allow people to transfer tax allowances within families, chase up companies that don't pay their share, crack down as hard on tax evasion as we do on benefit fraud, and anything else I've missed. Basically, if everyone who is able to pays in a fair amount, there would be enough for nobody to have to do without.

Just before the interview with Mr.Malthouse the programme highlighted the case of a Detective Constable in Wales on £40,000 basic salary a year. She said that after paying her mortgage, bills, food and transport costs including her sons monthly bus pass there was nothing left over at the end of the month.

Looks like the current inflation is beginning to have an impact further up the income bracket.

One police officer reckons she can't manage on £40k a year, and she might understand colleagues taking a "backhander" to survive...?

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10830115/Welsh-police-detective-tells-LBC-wouldnt-surprised-hard-colleagues-took-HANDERS.html

GrannyGravy13

Just before the interview with Mr.Malthouse the programme highlighted the case of a Detective Constable in Wales on £40,000 basic salary a year. She said that after paying her mortgage, bills, food and transport costs including her sons monthly bus pass there was nothing left over at the end of the month.

Looks like the current inflation is beginning to have an impact further up the income bracket.

She went on holiday to Portugal though. ?

Two years ago.

She said that after paying her mortgage, bills, food and transport costs including her sons monthly bus pass there was nothing left over at the end of the month

She must have chosen a school out of their catchment area for her son.
Children in the school catchment area get free bus passes to go to and from school in Wales.

Next year (apparently) DWP will gain powers of arrest over those they consider to be guilty of benefits fraud.

As some of this so called fraud is the results of errors by the DWP, this move is likely to cause more poverty and chaos.

'Two million claimants will have their cases dredged up and face fines for fraud under sweeping laws - even if they’re not convicted of a crime.

Department for Work and Pensions officers will be allowed to mass-request bank data more easily to spot-check if people are cheating the Jobcentre.

DWP staff will then make arrests, execute warrants, conduct searches and seize evidence themselves instead of leaving the work to police.

Even if a case does not make it to court, they will then get power to dish out civil fines - like those issued by HMRC."

www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/dwp-staff-power-arrest-brits-27002864