“How the hell” (Food Banks)

[steve99]

15 hours ago, Patfig said:

At least the Torys have rapidly expanded foodbanks for the slaves.......... what a party

Yes and people see that as a positive achievement from our beloved Tory party, some even believe that the government is stocking them. Labour never did that. Rents apparently are up 20% this year, now there is a positive outcome.  Vote Tory for landlords and foodbanks. 

[Warlord]

11 minutes ago, onlooker said:

Apartheid never applied in Rhodesia, nor even anything similar. It was a South African invention.

The thing which links Venezuela, Argentina and Zimbabwe is a socialist dictatorship, taking first from the rich, then the middle classes, and so on down. Basically, nobody thought there was any point in working anymore, if what you earned was stolen by the Govt. Approaching that in the UK nowadays.

Ok for Zimbabwe I should say the white-run government or whatever you want to call it under Ian Smith. They were yearning for those days when I saw some brief interviews Although you'll never see much about it in the media here.

Took those socialists just 20-30 years to ruin them countries...  It's worth noting I think.

 

@anonguest

Edited July 14, 2022 by Warlord

[pig]

2 hours ago, fellow said:

What I am saying is a lot of people use food banks who do not need to. If you hand out free food with no checks or questions asked, there are going to be lots of people who abuse it.

It is almost funny that the existence of food banks only prompts you to be tormented by the idea that some undeserving people might get away with free food.

[pig]

4 minutes ago, Warlord said:

Ok for Zimbabwe I should say the white-run government or whatever you want to call it under Ian Smith. They were yearning for those days when I saw some brief interviews Although you'll never see much about it in the media here.

Took those socialists just 20-30 years to ruin them countries...  It's worth noting I think.

 

@anonguest

Yeah people yearn to be second class citizens under a demented racist master lol. How much longer will it take to repair their society - another 30 years ?

[steve99]

16 minutes ago, Warlord said:

Not popular to say it either but Zimbabwe under their apartheid regime was a player in terms of food exports and a huge success. Fast forward 30-40 years and look what the Communist Mugabe did. I've seen people interviewed there 0hat said the apartheid regime was preferable.

 

Zimbabwe may have ostensibly been communist but was run like all dictatorships with zero socialism involved. Mugabe confiscated farms from white people who at the time were multigenerational farmers who knew what they were doing and gave them out as reward to cronies who were clueless. They also chased the local farm workers off the farms and as such had zero knowledge or the right labour to run a farm.   When dictators and even elected leaders turn up, eg BJ an chums, put into power in a fanfare of populism, things start to go askew, as we are finding out in the UK in the last few years. 

[byron78]

39 minutes ago, Warlord said:

Not popular to say it either but Zimbabwe under their apartheid regime was a player in terms of food exports and a huge success. Fast forward 30-40 years and look what the Communist Mugabe did. I've seen people interviewed there 0hat said the apartheid regime was preferable.

 

 

Mugabe was an African nationalist. 

He was backed by communists and definitely played on it, but it was racial, pure and simple.

I'm pretty sure communists aren't supposed to make distinctions between skin colour.

The wider point is that communism was largely a product of white intellectual Russian types. It probably wasn't developed with Africa in mind (and I suspect there were many Russians who didn't feel much solidarity with black/foreign communist "brothers" either, given how racist Russians often seem to be).

Mugabe was a dictator, but it's pretty simplistic to call him a communist. I think white racist or something along those lines is probably far closer to the truth.

You really think the Tory government of the early 90s would have knighted an African communist???

 

Edited July 14, 2022 by byron78

[byron78]

29 minutes ago, onlooker said:

Apartheid never applied in Rhodesia, nor even anything similar. It was a South African invention.

The thing which links Venezuela, Argentina and Zimbabwe is a socialist dictatorship, taking first from the rich, then the middle classes, and so on down. Basically, nobody thought there was any point in working anymore, if what you earned was stolen by the Govt. Approaching that in the UK nowadays.

Venezuela is suffering because of an oil embargo that Trump put into place in 2018, isn't it?

They can't sell their biggest export into the free markets.

And we are blaming the commies for that why?

[Insane]

2 hours ago, dugsbody said:

Now that we're out the EU you can turn from blaming poor Polish people to poor British people.

Nice work.

Remember when we were in the UK the Media and Politicians said we needed polish people as the lazy brits lived on benefits. 

[Insane]

11 minutes ago, byron78 said:

Venezuela is suffering because of an oil embargo that Trump put into place in 2018, isn't it?

They can't sell their biggest export into the free markets.

And we are blaming the commies for that why?

Wrong 

Venezuela has been in a massive mess long before 2018.

[steve99]

3 hours ago, fellow said:

What I am saying is a lot of people use food banks who do not need to. If you hand out free food with no checks or questions asked, there are going to be lots of people who abuse it.

Very few are abusing it. Also you have to be referred by council or some other authority, cant just turn up for a free feed, unlike the Daily mail whispers in you ear.   And we cant just run it like universal credit or in the way the DWP do it to make it so hard that people will die of starvation, all in order to catch that 1 in 20 that might be cheating.

[steve99]

8 minutes ago, Insane said:

Remember when we were in the UK the Media and Politicians said we needed polish people as the lazy brits lived on benefits. 

The problem with a blunt statement like that is that it is a)wrong and b) far more complex than that. Many people are on benefits for a short time, unemployment is real and can happen to just about everyone, employers often refuse to employ people who are unemployed or even have a 6 month gap in their CV,  many single parents are not their via choice (Daily mail says all of them are) and cant afford child care if they work full time and so on and even in their case, they often end up getting a job when the children are older.  The Tories in particular see everything as a job for a hammer, ie the only tool in their toolbox. 

[byron78]

8 minutes ago, Insane said:

Wrong 

Venezuela has been in a massive mess long before 2018.

You're right. 

It's not just Trump.

Huge list of sanctions apparently. I honestly had no idea.

UK also sanctioning them from long before 2018.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/financial-sanctions-venezuela

Edited July 14, 2022 by byron78

[byron78]

7 minutes ago, steve99 said:

Very few are abusing it. Also you have to be referred by council or some other authority, cant just turn up for a free feed, unlike the Daily mail whispers in you ear.   And we cant just run it like universal credit or in the way the DWP do it to make it so hard that people will die of starvation, all in order to catch that 1 in 20 that might be cheating.

It's not how foodbanks work either.

At least not down here.

Various stages/hoops to jump through before you are given a token to use a foodbank.

[iamnumerate]

7 minutes ago, Insane said:

Wrong 

Venezuela has been in a massive mess long before 2018.

A Venezuelan friend went back in 2007 - even then there were shortages of milk. 

[byron78]

1 minute ago, iamnumerate said:

A Venezuelan friend went back in 2007 - even then there were shortages of milk. 

We've got that on the Isle of Wight right now!

And butter. 

(I'm not buying Lurpak).

[Trampa501]

I keep hearing the brand name Lurpak being mentioned. Has there been a shortage, or a sudden increase in price?

[byron78]

Just now, Trampa501 said:

I keep hearing the brand name Lurpak being mentioned. Has there been a shortage, or a sudden increase in price?

Big price increase and lots of photos in the papers of tubs of Lurpak with anti-theft tabs on.

It's often the only brand left in my local Waitrose at the moment.

[Insane]

1 minute ago, steve99 said:

The problem with a blunt statement like that is that it is a)wrong and b) far more complex than that. Many people are on benefits for a short time, unemployment is real and can happen to just about everyone, employers often refuse to employ people who are unemployed or even have a 6 month gap in their CV,  many single parents are not their via choice (Daily mail says all of them are) and cant afford child care if they work full time and so on and even in their case, they often end up getting a job when the children are older.  The Tories in particular see everything as a job for a hammer, ie the only tool in their toolbox. 

Exactly

I have been there , done that , bought the T-Shirt. 

I went and signed on once at 49 after having worked for 33 years. Treated like a lump of turd at the ( non ) job centre and told I would never get another job. 

While the media and the Politicians will spout about the Lazy Brits. The truth being very different. 

At the ( non ) job centre the guy explained to me that even though I was willing to work for minimum wage I was far to expensive as the companies want two or three part time workers rather than full time workers. With full time minimum wage workers they would have to pay holiday pay, sick pay and something into the pension. With part time workers they give them Zero hours contracts then let the tax payer make up the wages. Win win for the companies and part time workers, massive loss for those needing full time as they don't fit the Tax Credits Gravy Train. 

But lets continually blame the Lazy Brits then cry like babies when people voted Brexit. 

 

[Si1]

2 minutes ago, Trampa501 said:

I keep hearing the brand name Lurpak being mentioned. Has there been a shortage, or a sudden increase in price?

It's about £7 for a tub of lurpak or something.

[byron78]

Ours is mostly down to a local dairy farm going to the wall I think.

 

[steve99]

25 minutes ago, Insane said:

Exactly

I have been there , done that , bought the T-Shirt. 

I went and signed on once at 49 after having worked for 33 years. Treated like a lump of turd at the ( non ) job centre and told I would never get another job. 

While the media and the Politicians will spout about the Lazy Brits. The truth being very different. 

At the ( non ) job centre the guy explained to me that even though I was willing to work for minimum wage I was far to expensive as the companies want two or three part time workers rather than full time workers. With full time minimum wage workers they would have to pay holiday pay, sick pay and something into the pension. With part time workers they give them Zero hours contracts then let the tax payer make up the wages. Win win for the companies and part time workers, massive loss for those needing full time as they don't fit the Tax Credits Gravy Train. 

But lets continually blame the Lazy Brits then cry like babies when people voted Brexit. 

 

Same happened to me at the same age. Didn't sign on for the first 6 months but when job agents were telling me 'Its more than my job is worth to put someone of your age forward to work in the City'  I decided to try them. All I got was a load of nonsense. The Jobsworth I was assigned to just gave me lecture after lecture, eg ''there is no age discrimination, so no excuse''  She checked through the online agencies  and Ads and conjured up over 500 jobs, all in IT and Comms, cleverly pointing out one job after another and clueless as to the massive variation in skillsets (none of them matched mine). I asked for training for something new and all they could come up with was 'a keyboards skill course' ,  wonderful!, just what I needed after I had been touch typing on a computer for 25 years, never mind working on anything from mainframes to massive worldwide networks in that timeframe.  Today they exist to purely attack you for being unemployed.  Just as well I had savings from the good years before that.   As for brexit, well it was full of false promises as we are finding out but I can see why many voted for it, some out of desperation for something new. 

Edited July 14, 2022 by steve99

[steve99]

25 minutes ago, Si1 said:

It's about £7 for a tub of lurpak or something.

I bought Aldis version of it yesterday. Much cheaper and tastes about the same. 

[Si1]

33 minutes ago, steve99 said:

The problem with a blunt statement like that is that it is a)wrong and b) far more complex than that. Many people are on benefits for a short time, unemployment is real and can happen to just about everyone, employers often refuse to employ people who are unemployed or even have a 6 month gap in their CV,  many single parents are not their via choice (Daily mail says all of them are) and cant afford child care if they work full time and so on and even in their case, they often end up getting a job when the children are older.  The Tories in particular see everything as a job for a hammer, ie the only tool in their toolbox. 

The poor-blaming in this country is currently astonishing. There's even the "my parents worked hard for my success so I'm morally justified" attitude. No longer thanks with a bit of humility like @Frugal Git uses. Out and put contempt for people with less opportunity. The flip side is those without a leg up deserve their poverty.

Under the last labour govt a hard drug addict would get a free 2 bed flat, and that was too far (anecdote of mine). But the pendulum seems to have swing the opposite direction now.

[Si1]

2 minutes ago, steve99 said:

I bought Aldis version of it yesterday. Much cheaper and tastes about the same. 

Yes

[steve99]

2 minutes ago, Si1 said:

The poor-blaming in this country is currently astonishing. There's even the "my parents worked hard for my success so I'm morally justified" attitude. No longer thanks with a bit of humility like @Frugal Git uses. Out and put contempt for people with less opportunity. The flip side is those without a leg up deserve their poverty.

Under the last labour govt a hard drug addict would get a free 2 bed flat, and that was too far (anecdote of mine). But the pendulum seems to have swing the opposite direction now.

A concerted effort from the Right wing press (got to get them voting tory in order to punish the scroungers that I pay ALL my tax for )  and with the full backing of the tory government.  As Starmer was questioning Boris in parliament yesterday 'what is the government going to do about non-doms and taxation''   of course BJob didn't answer but the reality is, massive tax dodging at the top of the financial tree is far more expensive for tax payers than all  benefits put together.