Strictly Cheese Sandwiches

‘Suppurating abscess’ That’s a bit harsh, isn’t it? I don’t know anything about the woman but I wouldn’t say that about anyone, it is just rude.

biglouis

When we were kids (late 1940s/1950s) we ate a lot of "scouse" - a traditional Liverpool dish which resembles Irish stew in that the basics are potatoes, beef and onion boiled up together. However you can put almost anything into a pan of scouse and keep reheating it. I always used to prefer it next day when it had gone thick and you ate it with a spoon.

Born and bred in Liverpool. We used to get a lamb bone from the butchers, to make ‘lob’ or meatless scouse. The bone provided stock and the stew itself was mainly potatoes with carrots onion and swede. There was always barley in it too, to stretch it out and thicken it. We used to have it next day after it had thickened, on toasted bread.

Chocolatelovinggran

Does Ms Widdecombe have any helpful ideas as to what people might eat instead?

Cake ?

Is there anyone who will come and say she thinks Ann N W- was quite right and fair enough?

Ilovecheese

Is this the Anne Widdecombe who got subsidised food when she was in the commons?

It would be problematical for me to go there. Yes, the various eateries in the Parliamentary estate are subsided to a point, but not by that much. When I was contracting for BP about 30 years ago I got free meals in the Finsbury Circus canteen, and they weren't rubbish by any means either.

The thing about the eateries in the Palace of Westminster estate is that they don't just cater for MPS and Lords, in fact they are a small minority of the 13,000 people working in there. The great majority of those are low-paid researchers and assistants. It's also hard to get in and out of the area in these security-conscious days – the sealed-off estate covers very much more than the big Victorian-gothic building by the Thames, it extends quite a way down Parliament Street into Whitehall and also along the Embankment a way, and there are long queues to be checked in again once you've left it.

But don't let this distract from the suppurating abscess on the anus of British politics that is Ann Noreen Widdecombe. I bet she never ate sausage beans and chips in the Strangers' Caff, or joined the throng of caseworkers in the Portcullis House canteen. I bet she looked out for every schmoozing lunch opportunity.

When we were kids (late 1940s/1950s) we ate a lot of "scouse" - a traditional Liverpool dish which resembles Irish stew in that the basics are potatoes, beef and onion boiled up together. However you can put almost anything into a pan of scouse and keep reheating it. I always used to prefer it next day when it had gone thick and you ate it with a spoon.

Is this the Anne Widdecombe who got subsidised food when she was in the commons?

The reason people can't afford the ingredients for a cheese sandwich or other food is because basic staples have gone up by 19% and incomes have stayed the same. On top of that there are the ridiculous gas and electricity prices and increased mortgage rates. It is a sorry state of affairs when outgoings exceed income through no fault of the person(s) concerned. These people like Anne Widdecombe should try living in the real world!

nanna8:

'We were all poor then. Maybe you don't remember?'

No, not all of us - we were rich, but didn't realise it. As kids, we just assumed our families were 'normal' and other people were much the same - both totally, completely wrong.

MaizieD yes … you’re right about inflation. What’s annoying me is to hear the spin Hunt and Widecombe put on the subject. Also righteous indignation!

Well, I am thankful to admit that I did not grow up in poverty, although I do have ancestors that did!

But, when I was about 5 we moved from London to Carlisle, and lived in a small area of semi-detached and detached houses(nothing grand) close to an area of small Victorian terraces and for the first time in my short life I saw a lot of fat women in the local bakery and grocers.

I must have asked some questions, because I was told it was because they were poor and all they could afford to eat was bread spread with margarine, with sugar on it. This would have been in 1949.

Poverty is always relative. In 1949, just after the war, food was still rationed, taxation was still high, no one was well off. I cannot remember wanting for anything, but then our expectations were low, so one didn't actually want anything that much.

ON the other hand the NHS had just started and for many of those poorer families, free medical care was like manna from heaven.

Does Ms Widdecombe have any helpful ideas as to what people might eat instead?

growstuff

www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKHFZBUTA4k

Just what I was thinking.

Thanks. 😆

ronib

MaizieD and what can we say about getting inflation down which is the government’s mantra of the moment?

Inflation coming down won't make anything any cheaper. You do realise that, don't you?
It will just mean prices are either not rising, or are rising more slowly.

As it happens, the Bank of England is making inflation worse by raising interest rates...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKHFZBUTA4k

MaizieD and what can we say about getting inflation down which is the government’s mantra of the moment?

nanna8

I wouldn't see it as a competition at all- strange comment. We were all poor then. Maybe you don't remember?

We were all poor then

So that makes it OK that people are in desperate poverty now?

Seven years ago she was telling everyone that we would have cheaper food if we left the EU.

Now we have left where is the cheaper food?

Ann Widecombe went on to say that we had to get inflation down and we don’t have a right to cheap food. So I think AW needs to volunteer at a food bank and see more of life.

I wouldn't see it as a competition at all- strange comment. We were all poor then. Maybe you don't remember?

I am always amused when a thread like this comes up there is a competition as to how poverty stricken everyone was.

It wasn’t right then and it isn’t right now.

Poverty isn’t a competition it is a state of affairs that destroys life chances and families.

Cheese features heavily with these politicians. Truss, Boris, now Widdecombe.

When we were very poor in the postwar 1950s we would sometimes have mashed potato with cheese through it because that was all there was. I quite liked it. Cheese used to be a cheap food then. My Dad always had a job so goodness knows what the really, really poor jobless people ate.

Sorry, did I miss something? Is Anne Widdecombe recommending sugar sandwiches?
I was far harder up when we took out our first mortgage at 14%, but we both had two jobs. If we couldn't afford anything we just had to go without, our parents couldn’t help us. We had no help what so ever from the government, no food banks, because back then there wasn’t any, you didn’t work you didn’t eat.
I’m not saying it’s not hard now, but things were harder in the past, my folks used to tell me out the depression. These times will pass and things get better.

Living in poverty and eating mainly bread and sugar left me with malnutrition when I was a young child; yet here we are, six decades later and we still have children in this country whose parents cannot afford to feed them properly. In the world of Ann Widdecombe I guess bread and sugar is an acceptable meal for poor people who can’t afford cheese.