Tory MP Lee Anderson says no massive need for food banks in UK, and real problem people not being able to cook properly
In his contribution to the Queen’s speech debate the Conservative MP Lee Anderson said that a food bank in his Ashfield constituency operated a “brilliant scheme” whereby people accepting a donation had to register for a budgeting course and a cooking course. He went on:
We show them how to cook cheap and nutritious meals on a budget. We can make a meal for about 30p a day, and this is cooking from scratch.
When an opposition MP put it to Anderson that food banks should not be needed in 21st century Britain, Anderson agreed. He went on:
This is exactly my point. I’ll invite you personally to come to Ashfield, look at our food bank, how it works. And I’ll think you’ll see first hand that there’s not this massive use for food banks in this country. We’ve got generation after generation who cannot cook properly. They can’t cook a meal from scratch. They cannot budget. The challenge is there.
From the context, it is clear that when he said there was not a “massive use for food banks”, he meant no massive need for them.
There is a real problem of people not being able to cook properly.
If Jack Monroe had said that people struggle to cook properly and budget and support was needed for that, you wouldn't blink twice, but a Tory says that and its horrific.
Alternatively, we could find out what Jack Monroe thinks;
"Helping somebody conditional on them saying 'you know what, this is all my own fault, please teach me how to be better at being poor', is disgusting, actually."
To a large extent, it's the Captain Vines theory of economics. Being poor forces you into making bad long-term choices. If you are rich enough to have time and space to cook and buy in bulk, you can feed yourself well and cheaply much more easily than if you are in a bedsit or worse
So she wants people to learn how to cook, but doesn't like a scheme that literally teaches people how to cook. It's almost as if the campaigners have an agenda. Isn't the actual answer - "hey it's not ideal but one extra person who can cook cheaply is another person out of food poverty".
I've never had a cooking lesson in my life - worked 30 odd years teaching - been very hard up at times. Basic shopping and cooking really isn't that hard ffs and yes it's cheap and healthy and tasty more often than not.
Which is great but giving people a helping hand to get started is a really initiative. Whatever we can do to get people cooking and away from Deliveroo or the local high calorie, high salt, high fat expensive takeaway is to be welcomed. I think lefty campaigners who don't like the messenger are doing their own cause a disservice.
PB anti-Woke warriors won't know whether to laugh or cry, jeer or cheer . . .
Seattle Times ($) - San Juan Islands waterway could be renamed to honor Indigenous leader
Ken Carrasco was reading about the 1855 Battle of Ash Hollow when he came across a familiar name: Gen. William Harney.
The Harney Channel that his Orcas Island home overlooks, he realized, was named after a man who once tried to defend the San Juan Islands from British rule but also was responsible for the murders of Indigenous people and an enslaved woman. . . .
Now three years later, Carrasco and Shaw Island resident Stephanie Buffum are leading an effort to rename the channel to honor Henry Cayou, an Indigenous San Juan County commissioner and commercial fisherman . . .
The proposal to rename the waterway Cayou Channel was approved by the Washington State Committee on Geographic Names in April and is now under consideration by the Washington Board on Geographic Names. If approved, the proposal will go to the federal Board on Geographic Names for a final decision. . . .
General George B. McClellan . . . claimed that General William S. Harney and Pickett conspired with a cabal, to start a war with Britain, creating a common enemy, to head off a north–south confrontation. . . .
[SSI - my own theory is that Pickett was Harney's protege AND both were rash hotheads NOT noted for brainpower]
Brigadier General William S. Harney, commanding the Department of Oregon, initially dispatched Captain George Pickett and 66 American soldiers of the 9th Infantry Regiment under Pickett's command, to San Juan Island with orders to prevent the British from landing . . . Concerned that a squatter population of Americans would begin to occupy San Juan Island if the Americans were not kept in check, the British sent three warships . . . Pickett was quoted as saying defiantly, "We'll make a Bunker Hill of it," placing him in the national limelight. . . .
Pickett established the American Camp near the south end of San Juan Island, today one of two historical sites on the island, the other being the British Camp, defended by the Royal Marines on the north end of the island. . . .
The governor of the Colony of Vancouver Island, James Douglas, had ordered Captain Hornby to dislodge the American troops, avoiding armed conflict if possible. At the time, the additional reinforcements sent by American General Harney had not yet arrived, and the island was occupied by only Pickett's 66 men.
Hornby refused to take any action until British Rear Admiral Robert L. Baynes, who was in command of the British Navy in the Pacific, would arrive himself. When Baynes finally came and took stock of the situation, he told Governor Douglas that he would not escalate the conflict into a war between great nations "over a squabble about a pig".
I think a lot of people like to comfort themselves with the idea that people using foodbanks are doing so because they don't know how to cook or manage a budget. But I am not sure they would actually be able to cope with having to live the lives those who do use foodbanks have. Doing it for a week and knowing that it will all then go away is not the same as doing it with no reason to believe it will ever stop.
How did that Pulp song go?
Rent a flat above a shop Cut your hair and get a job Smoke some fags and play some pool Pretend you never went to school But still you'll never get it right 'Cause when you're laid in bed at night Watching roaches climb the wall If you called your dad he could stop it all, yeah You'll never live like common people You'll never do whatever common people do You'll never fail like common people You'll never watch your life slide out of view And you dance and drink and screw Because there's nothing else to do
Tory MP Lee Anderson says no massive need for food banks in UK, and real problem people not being able to cook properly
In his contribution to the Queen’s speech debate the Conservative MP Lee Anderson said that a food bank in his Ashfield constituency operated a “brilliant scheme” whereby people accepting a donation had to register for a budgeting course and a cooking course. He went on:
We show them how to cook cheap and nutritious meals on a budget. We can make a meal for about 30p a day, and this is cooking from scratch.
When an opposition MP put it to Anderson that food banks should not be needed in 21st century Britain, Anderson agreed. He went on:
This is exactly my point. I’ll invite you personally to come to Ashfield, look at our food bank, how it works. And I’ll think you’ll see first hand that there’s not this massive use for food banks in this country. We’ve got generation after generation who cannot cook properly. They can’t cook a meal from scratch. They cannot budget. The challenge is there.
From the context, it is clear that when he said there was not a “massive use for food banks”, he meant no massive need for them.
It's a fair comment. People in the UK have poorer cooking skill than the rest of Europe. I come across people who struggle to make rice or pasta regularly and not having basic skills really limits the ability to each cheap and nutritious food. Takeaways are both expensive and unhealthy.
Yes but as soon as you suggest teaching cooking or managing money in schools traditionalist Tories complain that we are not teaching enough about kings or queens or capital cities.
Call it "traditional values" class or something and teach them how to make pies?
STeak and kidney pudding. Boiled gammon with caper sauce. Coronation chicken. Queens pudding. Eton mess. Lots of good ideas in that royalist menu someone posted yesterday. Would keep the trads happy.
Steak and kidney pudding is horrific, tastes like wee, much better the Scottish steak pie with sausages.
Scotch meat pies are tops but steak pudding (forget the kidney) is awesome too. I do a beef pudding with a giant suet dumpling on the top as a bung for it to steam under
Tory MP Lee Anderson says no massive need for food banks in UK, and real problem people not being able to cook properly
In his contribution to the Queen’s speech debate the Conservative MP Lee Anderson said that a food bank in his Ashfield constituency operated a “brilliant scheme” whereby people accepting a donation had to register for a budgeting course and a cooking course. He went on:
We show them how to cook cheap and nutritious meals on a budget. We can make a meal for about 30p a day, and this is cooking from scratch.
When an opposition MP put it to Anderson that food banks should not be needed in 21st century Britain, Anderson agreed. He went on:
This is exactly my point. I’ll invite you personally to come to Ashfield, look at our food bank, how it works. And I’ll think you’ll see first hand that there’s not this massive use for food banks in this country. We’ve got generation after generation who cannot cook properly. They can’t cook a meal from scratch. They cannot budget. The challenge is there.
From the context, it is clear that when he said there was not a “massive use for food banks”, he meant no massive need for them.
There is a real problem of people not being able to cook properly.
If Jack Monroe had said that people struggle to cook properly and budget and support was needed for that, you wouldn't blink twice, but a Tory says that and its horrific.
Alternatively, we could find out what Jack Monroe thinks;
"Helping somebody conditional on them saying 'you know what, this is all my own fault, please teach me how to be better at being poor', is disgusting, actually."
To a large extent, it's the Captain Vines theory of economics. Being poor forces you into making bad long-term choices. If you are rich enough to have time and space to cook and buy in bulk, you can feed yourself well and cheaply much more easily than if you are in a bedsit or worse
So she wants people to learn how to cook, but doesn't like a scheme that literally teaches people how to cook. It's almost as if the campaigners have an agenda. Isn't the actual answer - "hey it's not ideal but one extra person who can cook cheaply is another person out of food poverty".
The agenda is they want a world where people are helpless and utterly reliant on state support. I am reliant financially on state support and it's fucking miserable. Anything that can be done to teach skills, techniques etc to help lift yourself away from poverty is a good thing.
A recent comedy. Round where I live.
There are quite a number of bike shops catering to the very well off. Lots of work doing upgrades and stuff, that frankly, a competent bike owner could do themselves.
So they have buckets of second hand bits. Lots of stuff that is straight off bikes that has just been bought - not even used. The bike is bought and then a long list of bit changed. Yes, I know - why not buy a bare frame and buy the toys to match? Anyway....
A lot is not even worth fleabaying.
So a couple of the owners got in touch with some local people and for a couple of quid, let them pick out any stuff they want. Awesome, you'd think?
No, no, no, no..... No.
Before you could say "Clipboard" - a couple of hi-vizziers from the Council popped in to try and claim they were selling dangerous and unsafe equipment.
Of course they did this in earshot of some the rich evul middle class bike owners. One of whom was a lawyer. Of course. The hi-vizziers got pounded like dockside hookers.....
Tory MP Lee Anderson says no massive need for food banks in UK, and real problem people not being able to cook properly
In his contribution to the Queen’s speech debate the Conservative MP Lee Anderson said that a food bank in his Ashfield constituency operated a “brilliant scheme” whereby people accepting a donation had to register for a budgeting course and a cooking course. He went on:
We show them how to cook cheap and nutritious meals on a budget. We can make a meal for about 30p a day, and this is cooking from scratch.
When an opposition MP put it to Anderson that food banks should not be needed in 21st century Britain, Anderson agreed. He went on:
This is exactly my point. I’ll invite you personally to come to Ashfield, look at our food bank, how it works. And I’ll think you’ll see first hand that there’s not this massive use for food banks in this country. We’ve got generation after generation who cannot cook properly. They can’t cook a meal from scratch. They cannot budget. The challenge is there.
From the context, it is clear that when he said there was not a “massive use for food banks”, he meant no massive need for them.
There is a real problem of people not being able to cook properly.
If Jack Monroe had said that people struggle to cook properly and budget and support was needed for that, you wouldn't blink twice, but a Tory says that and its horrific.
Alternatively, we could find out what Jack Monroe thinks;
"Helping somebody conditional on them saying 'you know what, this is all my own fault, please teach me how to be better at being poor', is disgusting, actually."
To a large extent, it's the Captain Vines theory of economics. Being poor forces you into making bad long-term choices. If you are rich enough to have time and space to cook and buy in bulk, you can feed yourself well and cheaply much more easily than if you are in a bedsit or worse
So she wants people to learn how to cook, but doesn't like a scheme that literally teaches people how to cook. It's almost as if the campaigners have an agenda. Isn't the actual answer - "hey it's not ideal but one extra person who can cook cheaply is another person out of food poverty".
Wasn't there a good survey years ago (before 2010 election?) showing you could get wildly different polling results on a suggestion made anonymously, and one quoted to a partisan politician. Especially if it was a Tory politician?
This is a prime example of that. What Anderson has said is eminently sensible, there is a major issue with people not being able to cook in this country. Tackling that should be taken seriously.
PS I heard Marcus Rashford making the same point last summer, and he helped develop a cooking for beginners course using his celebrity to get people interested. Funnily enough the people criticising Anderson didn't criticise Rashford.
People didn't like Marie Antoinette saying "let them eat cake"* even though they would have probably quite liked to eat some cake.
Tory MP Lee Anderson says no massive need for food banks in UK, and real problem people not being able to cook properly
In his contribution to the Queen’s speech debate the Conservative MP Lee Anderson said that a food bank in his Ashfield constituency operated a “brilliant scheme” whereby people accepting a donation had to register for a budgeting course and a cooking course. He went on:
We show them how to cook cheap and nutritious meals on a budget. We can make a meal for about 30p a day, and this is cooking from scratch.
When an opposition MP put it to Anderson that food banks should not be needed in 21st century Britain, Anderson agreed. He went on:
This is exactly my point. I’ll invite you personally to come to Ashfield, look at our food bank, how it works. And I’ll think you’ll see first hand that there’s not this massive use for food banks in this country. We’ve got generation after generation who cannot cook properly. They can’t cook a meal from scratch. They cannot budget. The challenge is there.
From the context, it is clear that when he said there was not a “massive use for food banks”, he meant no massive need for them.
There is a real problem of people not being able to cook properly.
If Jack Monroe had said that people struggle to cook properly and budget and support was needed for that, you wouldn't blink twice, but a Tory says that and its horrific.
Alternatively, we could find out what Jack Monroe thinks;
"Helping somebody conditional on them saying 'you know what, this is all my own fault, please teach me how to be better at being poor', is disgusting, actually."
To a large extent, it's the Captain Vines theory of economics. Being poor forces you into making bad long-term choices. If you are rich enough to have time and space to cook and buy in bulk, you can feed yourself well and cheaply much more easily than if you are in a bedsit or worse
So she wants people to learn how to cook, but doesn't like a scheme that literally teaches people how to cook. It's almost as if the campaigners have an agenda. Isn't the actual answer - "hey it's not ideal but one extra person who can cook cheaply is another person out of food poverty".
What scheme to teach people how to cook? Most schools stopped doing Cookery at school when GCSEs arrived transforming it into a Home Economics type course which meant that a fully equipped Kitchen classroom was only required for 1/2 the lessons rather than all of them.
In the Guardian article, it says they teach them how to cook cheap and basic meals as part of receiving assistance from a food bank. It's actually a good scheme though I think maybe it should be optional or recommended rather than mandatory as there's lots of people who are so afraid of the kitchen that they may go hungry rather than accept help if it meant cooking.
I agree with all of that and also 90% of what Anderson said, but his line that there is no massive use for food banks in the country is wrong and I can see why it causes offence.
Part of it is obviously politicians on both sides playing politics, but there is a massive need for both food banks and food education at the moment.
Tory MP Lee Anderson says no massive need for food banks in UK, and real problem people not being able to cook properly
In his contribution to the Queen’s speech debate the Conservative MP Lee Anderson said that a food bank in his Ashfield constituency operated a “brilliant scheme” whereby people accepting a donation had to register for a budgeting course and a cooking course. He went on:
We show them how to cook cheap and nutritious meals on a budget. We can make a meal for about 30p a day, and this is cooking from scratch.
When an opposition MP put it to Anderson that food banks should not be needed in 21st century Britain, Anderson agreed. He went on:
This is exactly my point. I’ll invite you personally to come to Ashfield, look at our food bank, how it works. And I’ll think you’ll see first hand that there’s not this massive use for food banks in this country. We’ve got generation after generation who cannot cook properly. They can’t cook a meal from scratch. They cannot budget. The challenge is there.
From the context, it is clear that when he said there was not a “massive use for food banks”, he meant no massive need for them.
There is a real problem of people not being able to cook properly.
If Jack Monroe had said that people struggle to cook properly and budget and support was needed for that, you wouldn't blink twice, but a Tory says that and its horrific.
Alternatively, we could find out what Jack Monroe thinks;
"Helping somebody conditional on them saying 'you know what, this is all my own fault, please teach me how to be better at being poor', is disgusting, actually."
To a large extent, it's the Captain Vines theory of economics. Being poor forces you into making bad long-term choices. If you are rich enough to have time and space to cook and buy in bulk, you can feed yourself well and cheaply much more easily than if you are in a bedsit or worse
So she wants people to learn how to cook, but doesn't like a scheme that literally teaches people how to cook. It's almost as if the campaigners have an agenda. Isn't the actual answer - "hey it's not ideal but one extra person who can cook cheaply is another person out of food poverty".
What scheme to teach people how to cook? Most schools stopped doing Cookery at school when GCSEs arrived transforming it into a Home Economics type course which meant that a fully equipped Kitchen classroom was only required for 1/2 the lessons rather than all of them.
In the Guardian article, it says they teach them how to cook cheap and basic meals as part of receiving assistance from a food bank. It's actually a good scheme though I think maybe it should be optional or recommended rather than mandatory as there's lots of people who are so afraid of the kitchen that they may go hungry rather than accept help if it meant cooking.
The anti-foodbank campaigners really annoy me.
They’re not trying to actually solve problems except by government handouts, assume people never fall through cracks in the system, and think that before 2010 we had some sort of socialist Utopia (EUtopia?) where no-one ever went hungry.
Here we have an example of a brilliant charity, working hard with some of the most disadvantaged in society, providing them with subsistence resources and training. The Guardian would usually laud this activity, but instead they hate it, for what looks to be no reason other than the fact we have Conservatives in government.
Tory MP Lee Anderson says no massive need for food banks in UK, and real problem people not being able to cook properly
In his contribution to the Queen’s speech debate the Conservative MP Lee Anderson said that a food bank in his Ashfield constituency operated a “brilliant scheme” whereby people accepting a donation had to register for a budgeting course and a cooking course. He went on:
We show them how to cook cheap and nutritious meals on a budget. We can make a meal for about 30p a day, and this is cooking from scratch.
When an opposition MP put it to Anderson that food banks should not be needed in 21st century Britain, Anderson agreed. He went on:
This is exactly my point. I’ll invite you personally to come to Ashfield, look at our food bank, how it works. And I’ll think you’ll see first hand that there’s not this massive use for food banks in this country. We’ve got generation after generation who cannot cook properly. They can’t cook a meal from scratch. They cannot budget. The challenge is there.
From the context, it is clear that when he said there was not a “massive use for food banks”, he meant no massive need for them.
There is a real problem of people not being able to cook properly.
If Jack Monroe had said that people struggle to cook properly and budget and support was needed for that, you wouldn't blink twice, but a Tory says that and its horrific.
Jack Monroe shows people how to cook on a budget but says that people shouldn't be put in a position of abject poverty by the benefits system, and notes that it has become increasingly difficult to be able to afford to eat even with the best budgeting and cooking skills because benefits have not kept pace with food inflation. That's a rather different position to voting against increases in benefits, lauding food banks as an alternative and shifting the blame for hunger onto the feckless poor.
Increasing benefits will do little to actually help people out of poverty unless you're suggesting we make benefits something like £1500-1800 per person per month which then becomes a question of who do you intend to impoverish to pay for it.
I think a lot of people like to comfort themselves with the idea that people using foodbanks are doing so because they don't know how to cook or manage a budget. But I am not sure they would actually be able to cope with having to live the lives those who do use foodbanks have. Doing it for a week and knowing that it will all then go away is not the same as doing it with no reason to believe it will ever stop.
How did that Pulp song go?
Rent a flat above a shop Cut your hair and get a job Smoke some fags and play some pool Pretend you never went to school But still you'll never get it right 'Cause when you're laid in bed at night Watching roaches climb the wall If you called your dad he could stop it all, yeah You'll never live like common people You'll never do whatever common people do You'll never fail like common people You'll never watch your life slide out of view And you dance and drink and screw Because there's nothing else to do
Tory MP Lee Anderson says no massive need for food banks in UK, and real problem people not being able to cook properly
In his contribution to the Queen’s speech debate the Conservative MP Lee Anderson said that a food bank in his Ashfield constituency operated a “brilliant scheme” whereby people accepting a donation had to register for a budgeting course and a cooking course. He went on:
We show them how to cook cheap and nutritious meals on a budget. We can make a meal for about 30p a day, and this is cooking from scratch.
When an opposition MP put it to Anderson that food banks should not be needed in 21st century Britain, Anderson agreed. He went on:
This is exactly my point. I’ll invite you personally to come to Ashfield, look at our food bank, how it works. And I’ll think you’ll see first hand that there’s not this massive use for food banks in this country. We’ve got generation after generation who cannot cook properly. They can’t cook a meal from scratch. They cannot budget. The challenge is there.
From the context, it is clear that when he said there was not a “massive use for food banks”, he meant no massive need for them.
There is a real problem of people not being able to cook properly.
If Jack Monroe had said that people struggle to cook properly and budget and support was needed for that, you wouldn't blink twice, but a Tory says that and its horrific.
Alternatively, we could find out what Jack Monroe thinks;
"Helping somebody conditional on them saying 'you know what, this is all my own fault, please teach me how to be better at being poor', is disgusting, actually."
To a large extent, it's the Captain Vines theory of economics. Being poor forces you into making bad long-term choices. If you are rich enough to have time and space to cook and buy in bulk, you can feed yourself well and cheaply much more easily than if you are in a bedsit or worse
So she wants people to learn how to cook, but doesn't like a scheme that literally teaches people how to cook. It's almost as if the campaigners have an agenda. Isn't the actual answer - "hey it's not ideal but one extra person who can cook cheaply is another person out of food poverty".
Wasn't there a good survey years ago (before 2010 election?) showing you could get wildly different polling results on a suggestion made anonymously, and one quoted to a partisan politician. Especially if it was a Tory politician?
This is a prime example of that. What Anderson has said is eminently sensible, there is a major issue with people not being able to cook in this country. Tackling that should be taken seriously.
PS I heard Marcus Rashford making the same point last summer, and he helped develop a cooking for beginners course using his celebrity to get people interested. Funnily enough the people criticising Anderson didn't criticise Rashford.
People didn't like Marie Antoinette saying "let them eat cake"* even though they would have probably quite liked to eat some cake.
What Anderson has said is eminently sensible, there is a major issue with people not being able to cook in this country. Tackling that should be taken seriously.
PS I heard Marcus Rashford making the same point last summer, and he helped develop a cooking for beginners course using his celebrity to get people interested. Funnily enough the people criticising Anderson didn't criticise Rashford.
Perhaps that's because Rashford wasn't making "help people in immediate difficulties" conditional on "sign up to the cooking course" ? It's the linking of the two that is putting peoples' backs up, I think.
PB anti-Woke warriors won't know whether to laugh or cry, jeer or cheer . . .
Seattle Times ($) - San Juan Islands waterway could be renamed to honor Indigenous leader
Ken Carrasco was reading about the 1855 Battle of Ash Hollow when he came across a familiar name: Gen. William Harney.
The Harney Channel that his Orcas Island home overlooks, he realized, was named after a man who once tried to defend the San Juan Islands from British rule but also was responsible for the murders of Indigenous people and an enslaved woman. . . .
Now three years later, Carrasco and Shaw Island resident Stephanie Buffum are leading an effort to rename the channel to honor Henry Cayou, an Indigenous San Juan County commissioner and commercial fisherman . . .
The proposal to rename the waterway Cayou Channel was approved by the Washington State Committee on Geographic Names in April and is now under consideration by the Washington Board on Geographic Names. If approved, the proposal will go to the federal Board on Geographic Names for a final decision. . . .
General George B. McClellan . . . claimed that General William S. Harney and Pickett conspired with a cabal, to start a war with Britain, creating a common enemy, to head off a north–south confrontation. . . .
[SSI - my own theory is that Pickett was Harney's protege AND both were rash hotheads NOT noted for brainpower]
Brigadier General William S. Harney, commanding the Department of Oregon, initially dispatched Captain George Pickett and 66 American soldiers of the 9th Infantry Regiment under Pickett's command, to San Juan Island with orders to prevent the British from landing . . . Concerned that a squatter population of Americans would begin to occupy San Juan Island if the Americans were not kept in check, the British sent three warships . . . Pickett was quoted as saying defiantly, "We'll make a Bunker Hill of it," placing him in the national limelight. . . .
Pickett established the American Camp near the south end of San Juan Island, today one of two historical sites on the island, the other being the British Camp, defended by the Royal Marines on the north end of the island. . . .
The governor of the Colony of Vancouver Island, James Douglas, had ordered Captain Hornby to dislodge the American troops, avoiding armed conflict if possible. At the time, the additional reinforcements sent by American General Harney had not yet arrived, and the island was occupied by only Pickett's 66 men.
Hornby refused to take any action until British Rear Admiral Robert L. Baynes, who was in command of the British Navy in the Pacific, would arrive himself. When Baynes finally came and took stock of the situation, he told Governor Douglas that he would not escalate the conflict into a war between great nations "over a squabble about a pig".
We'll live SeaShanty
Never doubted in your case!
Mere evaporation also seems unlikely. Though sublimation just MIGHT be possible?
Tory MP Lee Anderson says no massive need for food banks in UK, and real problem people not being able to cook properly
In his contribution to the Queen’s speech debate the Conservative MP Lee Anderson said that a food bank in his Ashfield constituency operated a “brilliant scheme” whereby people accepting a donation had to register for a budgeting course and a cooking course. He went on:
We show them how to cook cheap and nutritious meals on a budget. We can make a meal for about 30p a day, and this is cooking from scratch.
When an opposition MP put it to Anderson that food banks should not be needed in 21st century Britain, Anderson agreed. He went on:
This is exactly my point. I’ll invite you personally to come to Ashfield, look at our food bank, how it works. And I’ll think you’ll see first hand that there’s not this massive use for food banks in this country. We’ve got generation after generation who cannot cook properly. They can’t cook a meal from scratch. They cannot budget. The challenge is there.
From the context, it is clear that when he said there was not a “massive use for food banks”, he meant no massive need for them.
There is a real problem of people not being able to cook properly.
If Jack Monroe had said that people struggle to cook properly and budget and support was needed for that, you wouldn't blink twice, but a Tory says that and its horrific.
Alternatively, we could find out what Jack Monroe thinks;
"Helping somebody conditional on them saying 'you know what, this is all my own fault, please teach me how to be better at being poor', is disgusting, actually."
To a large extent, it's the Captain Vines theory of economics. Being poor forces you into making bad long-term choices. If you are rich enough to have time and space to cook and buy in bulk, you can feed yourself well and cheaply much more easily than if you are in a bedsit or worse
So she wants people to learn how to cook, but doesn't like a scheme that literally teaches people how to cook. It's almost as if the campaigners have an agenda. Isn't the actual answer - "hey it's not ideal but one extra person who can cook cheaply is another person out of food poverty".
What scheme to teach people how to cook? Most schools stopped doing Cookery at school when GCSEs arrived transforming it into a Home Economics type course which meant that a fully equipped Kitchen classroom was only required for 1/2 the lessons rather than all of them.
In the Guardian article, it says they teach them how to cook cheap and basic meals as part of receiving assistance from a food bank. It's actually a good scheme though I think maybe it should be optional or recommended rather than mandatory as there's lots of people who are so afraid of the kitchen that they may go hungry rather than accept help if it meant cooking.
The anti-foodbank campaigners really annoy me.
They’re not trying to actually solve problems except by government handouts, assume people never fall through cracks in the system, and think that before 2010 we had some sort of socialist Utopia (EUtopia?) where no-one ever went hungry.
Here we have an example of a brilliant charity, working hard with some of the most disadvantaged in society, providing them with subsistence resources and training. The Guardian would usually laud this activity, but instead they hate it, for what looks to be no reason other than the fact we have Conservatives in government.
Food bank demand has exploded in recent years. Not entirely unconnected with left/right politics. The inability of many to cook has existed for decades.
What Anderson has said is eminently sensible, there is a major issue with people not being able to cook in this country. Tackling that should be taken seriously.
PS I heard Marcus Rashford making the same point last summer, and he helped develop a cooking for beginners course using his celebrity to get people interested. Funnily enough the people criticising Anderson didn't criticise Rashford.
Perhaps that's because Rashford wasn't making "help people in immediate difficulties" conditional on "sign up to the cooking course" ? It's the linking of the two that is putting peoples' backs up, I think.
Also - what happens if you can't do the course for very good reasons, btw? Like child care.
PB anti-Woke warriors won't know whether to laugh or cry, jeer or cheer . . .
Seattle Times ($) - San Juan Islands waterway could be renamed to honor Indigenous leader
Ken Carrasco was reading about the 1855 Battle of Ash Hollow when he came across a familiar name: Gen. William Harney.
The Harney Channel that his Orcas Island home overlooks, he realized, was named after a man who once tried to defend the San Juan Islands from British rule but also was responsible for the murders of Indigenous people and an enslaved woman. . . .
Now three years later, Carrasco and Shaw Island resident Stephanie Buffum are leading an effort to rename the channel to honor Henry Cayou, an Indigenous San Juan County commissioner and commercial fisherman . . .
The proposal to rename the waterway Cayou Channel was approved by the Washington State Committee on Geographic Names in April and is now under consideration by the Washington Board on Geographic Names. If approved, the proposal will go to the federal Board on Geographic Names for a final decision. . . .
General George B. McClellan . . . claimed that General William S. Harney and Pickett conspired with a cabal, to start a war with Britain, creating a common enemy, to head off a north–south confrontation. . . .
[SSI - my own theory is that Pickett was Harney's protege AND both were rash hotheads NOT noted for brainpower]
Brigadier General William S. Harney, commanding the Department of Oregon, initially dispatched Captain George Pickett and 66 American soldiers of the 9th Infantry Regiment under Pickett's command, to San Juan Island with orders to prevent the British from landing . . . Concerned that a squatter population of Americans would begin to occupy San Juan Island if the Americans were not kept in check, the British sent three warships . . . Pickett was quoted as saying defiantly, "We'll make a Bunker Hill of it," placing him in the national limelight. . . .
Pickett established the American Camp near the south end of San Juan Island, today one of two historical sites on the island, the other being the British Camp, defended by the Royal Marines on the north end of the island. . . .
The governor of the Colony of Vancouver Island, James Douglas, had ordered Captain Hornby to dislodge the American troops, avoiding armed conflict if possible. At the time, the additional reinforcements sent by American General Harney had not yet arrived, and the island was occupied by only Pickett's 66 men.
Hornby refused to take any action until British Rear Admiral Robert L. Baynes, who was in command of the British Navy in the Pacific, would arrive himself. When Baynes finally came and took stock of the situation, he told Governor Douglas that he would not escalate the conflict into a war between great nations "over a squabble about a pig".
The Pig War. Harney and Pickett didn't come out well in my HS Canadian history course. The main street in Victoria is still named after the governor of Vancouver Island who sent the troops, James Douglas.
7, possibly 8 tanks in that picture. Which, given they only have maybe 1,500 more tanks in Russia, is somewhat sub-optimal.
So we can put that down as a qualified success, then? The river crossing got approximately 50 feet across the river, and they didn't lose all 1500 tanks in theatre.
It looks to me that they got further than that - a (floating?) military bridge got knocked out?
(You're right - there does seem to be a destroyed pontoon. Weird that my most of the destroyed vehicles are all lined up along that bank though.)
Tory MP Lee Anderson says no massive need for food banks in UK, and real problem people not being able to cook properly
In his contribution to the Queen’s speech debate the Conservative MP Lee Anderson said that a food bank in his Ashfield constituency operated a “brilliant scheme” whereby people accepting a donation had to register for a budgeting course and a cooking course. He went on:
We show them how to cook cheap and nutritious meals on a budget. We can make a meal for about 30p a day, and this is cooking from scratch.
When an opposition MP put it to Anderson that food banks should not be needed in 21st century Britain, Anderson agreed. He went on:
This is exactly my point. I’ll invite you personally to come to Ashfield, look at our food bank, how it works. And I’ll think you’ll see first hand that there’s not this massive use for food banks in this country. We’ve got generation after generation who cannot cook properly. They can’t cook a meal from scratch. They cannot budget. The challenge is there.
From the context, it is clear that when he said there was not a “massive use for food banks”, he meant no massive need for them.
There is a real problem of people not being able to cook properly.
If Jack Monroe had said that people struggle to cook properly and budget and support was needed for that, you wouldn't blink twice, but a Tory says that and its horrific.
Alternatively, we could find out what Jack Monroe thinks;
"Helping somebody conditional on them saying 'you know what, this is all my own fault, please teach me how to be better at being poor', is disgusting, actually."
To a large extent, it's the Captain Vines theory of economics. Being poor forces you into making bad long-term choices. If you are rich enough to have time and space to cook and buy in bulk, you can feed yourself well and cheaply much more easily than if you are in a bedsit or worse
So she wants people to learn how to cook, but doesn't like a scheme that literally teaches people how to cook. It's almost as if the campaigners have an agenda. Isn't the actual answer - "hey it's not ideal but one extra person who can cook cheaply is another person out of food poverty".
The agenda is they want a world where people are helpless and utterly reliant on state support. I am reliant financially on state support and it's fucking miserable. Anything that can be done to teach skills, techniques etc to help lift yourself away from poverty is a good thing.
A recent comedy. Round where I live.
There are quite a number of bike shops catering to the very well off. Lots of work doing upgrades and stuff, that frankly, a competent bike owner could do themselves.
So they have buckets of second hand bits. Lots of stuff that is straight off bikes that has just been bought - not even used. The bike is bought and then a long list of bit changed. Yes, I know - why not buy a bare frame and buy the toys to match? Anyway....
A lot is not even worth fleabaying.
So a couple of the owners got in touch with some local people and for a couple of quid, let them pick out any stuff they want. Awesome, you'd think?
No, no, no, no..... No.
Before you could say "Clipboard" - a couple of hi-vizziers from the Council popped in to try and claim they were selling dangerous and unsafe equipment.
Of course they did this in earshot of some the rich evul middle class bike owners. One of whom was a lawyer. Of course. The hi-vizziers got pounded like dockside hookers.....
Clipboard wielders are worse than Durham curry and beer people
Tory MP Lee Anderson says no massive need for food banks in UK, and real problem people not being able to cook properly
In his contribution to the Queen’s speech debate the Conservative MP Lee Anderson said that a food bank in his Ashfield constituency operated a “brilliant scheme” whereby people accepting a donation had to register for a budgeting course and a cooking course. He went on:
We show them how to cook cheap and nutritious meals on a budget. We can make a meal for about 30p a day, and this is cooking from scratch.
When an opposition MP put it to Anderson that food banks should not be needed in 21st century Britain, Anderson agreed. He went on:
This is exactly my point. I’ll invite you personally to come to Ashfield, look at our food bank, how it works. And I’ll think you’ll see first hand that there’s not this massive use for food banks in this country. We’ve got generation after generation who cannot cook properly. They can’t cook a meal from scratch. They cannot budget. The challenge is there.
From the context, it is clear that when he said there was not a “massive use for food banks”, he meant no massive need for them.
It's a fair comment. People in the UK have poorer cooking skill than the rest of Europe. I come across people who struggle to make rice or pasta regularly and not having basic skills really limits the ability to each cheap and nutritious food. Takeaways are both expensive and unhealthy.
It’s the remarkable thing about being in Italy. You hear a group of ordinary Italians having a most heated argument about something, and from the passion and energy you’d think the eldest daughter had run off with the best man or some similar family catastrophe was unfolding.
Then, armed with a little basic Italian, you begin to make out enough words to realise that the debate is really about how to cook a certain recipe or whether one restaurant in town does pasta better than another.
That said, today has been so hot that we escaped to the Slovenian mountains and have been exploring the remains of the trenches in the high mountains around Caporetto - the battle that did more than any single other thing to subsequently and eventually give birth to fascism in Europe - but a name that will draw blank looks from almost anyone you mention it to back at home.
I think a lot of people like to comfort themselves with the idea that people using foodbanks are doing so because they don't know how to cook or manage a budget. But I am not sure they would actually be able to cope with having to live the lives those who do use foodbanks have. Doing it for a week and knowing that it will all then go away is not the same as doing it with no reason to believe it will ever stop.
How did that Pulp song go?
Rent a flat above a shop Cut your hair and get a job Smoke some fags and play some pool Pretend you never went to school But still you'll never get it right 'Cause when you're laid in bed at night Watching roaches climb the wall If you called your dad he could stop it all, yeah You'll never live like common people You'll never do whatever common people do You'll never fail like common people You'll never watch your life slide out of view And you dance and drink and screw Because there's nothing else to do
didnt he go to public school as well?
Don't think so. But his Mum was a Tory councillor.
What Anderson has said is eminently sensible, there is a major issue with people not being able to cook in this country. Tackling that should be taken seriously.
PS I heard Marcus Rashford making the same point last summer, and he helped develop a cooking for beginners course using his celebrity to get people interested. Funnily enough the people criticising Anderson didn't criticise Rashford.
Perhaps that's because Rashford wasn't making "help people in immediate difficulties" conditional on "sign up to the cooking course" ? It's the linking of the two that is putting peoples' backs up, I think.
Yep - deserving vs undeserving poor, resonances with.
Cooking courses are exactly the sort of self help thing one sees in many places. Like the DIY courses one gets from Mens Sheds.
I think a lot of people like to comfort themselves with the idea that people using foodbanks are doing so because they don't know how to cook or manage a budget. But I am not sure they would actually be able to cope with having to live the lives those who do use foodbanks have. Doing it for a week and knowing that it will all then go away is not the same as doing it with no reason to believe it will ever stop.
How did that Pulp song go?
Rent a flat above a shop Cut your hair and get a job Smoke some fags and play some pool Pretend you never went to school But still you'll never get it right 'Cause when you're laid in bed at night Watching roaches climb the wall If you called your dad he could stop it all, yeah You'll never live like common people You'll never do whatever common people do You'll never fail like common people You'll never watch your life slide out of view And you dance and drink and screw Because there's nothing else to do
didnt he go to public school as well?
Nah, he went to a comprehensive. His mum was a Tory councillor though
I think a lot of people like to comfort themselves with the idea that people using foodbanks are doing so because they don't know how to cook or manage a budget. But I am not sure they would actually be able to cope with having to live the lives those who do use foodbanks have. Doing it for a week and knowing that it will all then go away is not the same as doing it with no reason to believe it will ever stop.
How did that Pulp song go?
Rent a flat above a shop Cut your hair and get a job Smoke some fags and play some pool Pretend you never went to school But still you'll never get it right 'Cause when you're laid in bed at night Watching roaches climb the wall If you called your dad he could stop it all, yeah You'll never live like common people You'll never do whatever common people do You'll never fail like common people You'll never watch your life slide out of view And you dance and drink and screw Because there's nothing else to do
didnt he go to public school as well?
No, a Comprehensive in Sheffield. Although his mother was a Conservative Councillor, according to Wikipedia.
The Express leads with welcome news for families suffering cost of living crisis.
Many other papers lead on government back tracking on what Boris promised.
Is coordinating government messaging really as difficult as they are making it look?
Are you not reading BigG. 's dispatched. Boris is having a great day signing international treaties with non-NATO partners. He has just tweaked Putin's nose and said "nuke us if you dare Vlad"!
Boris has his own hard hat and hi-viz coat, so he'll be fine...
...although if Putin is keeping up with the NI Protocol he might just be thinking, "Boris Johnson and international treaties? Pah!"
If Putin nuked us, Johnson would of course send a Trident nuclear missile to nuke Moscow.
In any case a UK Sweden mutual defence treaty is not yet the same as Sweden joining NATO
Well my reading of it from tonight's PM programme is this: If Putin puts a boot onto Swedish or Finnish soil Boris will be on his case. If Putin so much as harms a hair on the head of a British Tommy sent to defend Sweden or Finland, NATO are involved.
Johnson has ramped this up big time. He was the FIRST NATO leader to sign a treaty and any escalation into Scandinavia by Putin and it's all out confrontation. And do you know what? Good on you BigDog (I still wouldn't vote for the duplicitous b****** mind).
Tory MP Lee Anderson says no massive need for food banks in UK, and real problem people not being able to cook properly
In his contribution to the Queen’s speech debate the Conservative MP Lee Anderson said that a food bank in his Ashfield constituency operated a “brilliant scheme” whereby people accepting a donation had to register for a budgeting course and a cooking course. He went on:
We show them how to cook cheap and nutritious meals on a budget. We can make a meal for about 30p a day, and this is cooking from scratch.
When an opposition MP put it to Anderson that food banks should not be needed in 21st century Britain, Anderson agreed. He went on:
This is exactly my point. I’ll invite you personally to come to Ashfield, look at our food bank, how it works. And I’ll think you’ll see first hand that there’s not this massive use for food banks in this country. We’ve got generation after generation who cannot cook properly. They can’t cook a meal from scratch. They cannot budget. The challenge is there.
From the context, it is clear that when he said there was not a “massive use for food banks”, he meant no massive need for them.
There is a real problem of people not being able to cook properly.
If Jack Monroe had said that people struggle to cook properly and budget and support was needed for that, you wouldn't blink twice, but a Tory says that and its horrific.
Alternatively, we could find out what Jack Monroe thinks;
"Helping somebody conditional on them saying 'you know what, this is all my own fault, please teach me how to be better at being poor', is disgusting, actually."
To a large extent, it's the Captain Vines theory of economics. Being poor forces you into making bad long-term choices. If you are rich enough to have time and space to cook and buy in bulk, you can feed yourself well and cheaply much more easily than if you are in a bedsit or worse
So she wants people to learn how to cook, but doesn't like a scheme that literally teaches people how to cook. It's almost as if the campaigners have an agenda. Isn't the actual answer - "hey it's not ideal but one extra person who can cook cheaply is another person out of food poverty".
The agenda is they want a world where people are helpless and utterly reliant on state support. I am reliant financially on state support and it's fucking miserable. Anything that can be done to teach skills, techniques etc to help lift yourself away from poverty is a good thing.
A recent comedy. Round where I live.
There are quite a number of bike shops catering to the very well off. Lots of work doing upgrades and stuff, that frankly, a competent bike owner could do themselves.
So they have buckets of second hand bits. Lots of stuff that is straight off bikes that has just been bought - not even used. The bike is bought and then a long list of bit changed. Yes, I know - why not buy a bare frame and buy the toys to match? Anyway....
A lot is not even worth fleabaying.
So a couple of the owners got in touch with some local people and for a couple of quid, let them pick out any stuff they want. Awesome, you'd think?
No, no, no, no..... No.
Before you could say "Clipboard" - a couple of hi-vizziers from the Council popped in to try and claim they were selling dangerous and unsafe equipment.
Of course they did this in earshot of some the rich evul middle class bike owners. One of whom was a lawyer. Of course. The hi-vizziers got pounded like dockside hookers.....
Clipboard wielders are worse than Durham curry and beer people
The important thing is to "professionalise" everything so only middle class and above can afford it.
Tory MP Lee Anderson says no massive need for food banks in UK, and real problem people not being able to cook properly
In his contribution to the Queen’s speech debate the Conservative MP Lee Anderson said that a food bank in his Ashfield constituency operated a “brilliant scheme” whereby people accepting a donation had to register for a budgeting course and a cooking course. He went on:
We show them how to cook cheap and nutritious meals on a budget. We can make a meal for about 30p a day, and this is cooking from scratch.
When an opposition MP put it to Anderson that food banks should not be needed in 21st century Britain, Anderson agreed. He went on:
This is exactly my point. I’ll invite you personally to come to Ashfield, look at our food bank, how it works. And I’ll think you’ll see first hand that there’s not this massive use for food banks in this country. We’ve got generation after generation who cannot cook properly. They can’t cook a meal from scratch. They cannot budget. The challenge is there.
From the context, it is clear that when he said there was not a “massive use for food banks”, he meant no massive need for them.
There is a real problem of people not being able to cook properly.
If Jack Monroe had said that people struggle to cook properly and budget and support was needed for that, you wouldn't blink twice, but a Tory says that and its horrific.
Alternatively, we could find out what Jack Monroe thinks;
"Helping somebody conditional on them saying 'you know what, this is all my own fault, please teach me how to be better at being poor', is disgusting, actually."
To a large extent, it's the Captain Vines theory of economics. Being poor forces you into making bad long-term choices. If you are rich enough to have time and space to cook and buy in bulk, you can feed yourself well and cheaply much more easily than if you are in a bedsit or worse
So she wants people to learn how to cook, but doesn't like a scheme that literally teaches people how to cook. It's almost as if the campaigners have an agenda. Isn't the actual answer - "hey it's not ideal but one extra person who can cook cheaply is another person out of food poverty".
Wasn't there a good survey years ago (before 2010 election?) showing you could get wildly different polling results on a suggestion made anonymously, and one quoted to a partisan politician. Especially if it was a Tory politician?
This is a prime example of that. What Anderson has said is eminently sensible, there is a major issue with people not being able to cook in this country. Tackling that should be taken seriously.
PS I heard Marcus Rashford making the same point last summer, and he helped develop a cooking for beginners course using his celebrity to get people interested. Funnily enough the people criticising Anderson didn't criticise Rashford.
People didn't like Marie Antoinette saying "let them eat cake"* even though they would have probably quite liked to eat some cake.
I agree that too many people can't cook from scratch.
But only an idiot would say that you can make homemade meals for "30p per day". Lee Anderson is an idiot, so that fits.
As I pointed out upthread, it costs 30p to heat the bloody oven up to temperature, these days.
You always get this kind of crap at the fag end of a Tory government. Out of touch, out of ideas, out of fat to cut off the state.
The irony is. Anderson was pushing back at many of his fellow back benchers who want something done about the cost of living. Many of whom are also from the fabled "Red Wall". It's a sign of the lack of ideological coherence of the Tory Party if anything, rather than of a government policy.
I think a lot of people like to comfort themselves with the idea that people using foodbanks are doing so because they don't know how to cook or manage a budget. But I am not sure they would actually be able to cope with having to live the lives those who do use foodbanks have. Doing it for a week and knowing that it will all then go away is not the same as doing it with no reason to believe it will ever stop.
How did that Pulp song go?
Rent a flat above a shop Cut your hair and get a job Smoke some fags and play some pool Pretend you never went to school But still you'll never get it right 'Cause when you're laid in bed at night Watching roaches climb the wall If you called your dad he could stop it all, yeah You'll never live like common people You'll never do whatever common people do You'll never fail like common people You'll never watch your life slide out of view And you dance and drink and screw Because there's nothing else to do
didnt he go to public school as well?
Nah, he went to a comprehensive. His mum was a Tory councillor though
Ha ha, great minds make similar recourse to Wikipedia. I definitely had him down as a fellow Comprehensive school kid though. I once ran into Jarvis Cocker in the toilets at Watford Gap services, which seemed a suitably Pulp like venue. Our eyes met but only Leon will be able to tell you whether there was any romantic spark. Pulp are amazing, one of my favourite bands.
What is the fucking matter with the man. He's at the 'I love you' stage of being drunk, chucking our overstretched military at anyone who'll have it like an unwanted beery hug.
Uniting the Baltics against the war criminal that is Putin is just desserts for his foolish and miscalculated criminal attack on the sovereign nation of Ukraine
This is interesting and worthy comment, but aren’t you going to do ANY beergate this week? 🙁
The Express leads with welcome news for families suffering cost of living crisis.
Many other papers lead on government back tracking on what Boris promised.
Is coordinating government messaging really as difficult as they are making it look?
Are you not reading BigG. 's dispatched. Boris is having a great day signing international treaties with non-NATO partners. He has just tweaked Putin's nose and said "nuke us if you dare Vlad"!
Boris has his own hard hat and hi-viz coat, so he'll be fine...
...although if Putin is keeping up with the NI Protocol he might just be thinking, "Boris Johnson and international treaties? Pah!"
If Putin nuked us, Johnson would of course send a Trident nuclear missile to nuke Moscow.
In any case a UK Sweden mutual defence treaty is not yet the same as Sweden joining NATO
Well my reading of it from tonight's PM programme is this: If Putin puts a boot onto Swedish or Finnish soil Boris will be on his case. If Putin so much as harms a hair on the head of a British Tommy sent to defend Sweden or Finland, NATO are involved.
Johnson has ramped this up big time. He was the FIRST NATO leader to sign a treaty and any escalation into Scandinavia by Putin and it's all out confrontation. And do you know what? Good on you BigDog (I still wouldn't vote for the duplicitous b****** mind).
There was already a military alliance between the UK, Finland and Sweden (among others)
I think a lot of people like to comfort themselves with the idea that people using foodbanks are doing so because they don't know how to cook or manage a budget. But I am not sure they would actually be able to cope with having to live the lives those who do use foodbanks have. Doing it for a week and knowing that it will all then go away is not the same as doing it with no reason to believe it will ever stop.
How did that Pulp song go?
Rent a flat above a shop Cut your hair and get a job Smoke some fags and play some pool Pretend you never went to school But still you'll never get it right 'Cause when you're laid in bed at night Watching roaches climb the wall If you called your dad he could stop it all, yeah You'll never live like common people You'll never do whatever common people do You'll never fail like common people You'll never watch your life slide out of view And you dance and drink and screw Because there's nothing else to do
didnt he go to public school as well?
Nah, he went to a comprehensive. His mum was a Tory councillor though
Ha ha, great minds make similar recourse to Wikipedia. I definitely had him down as a fellow Comprehensive school kid though. I once ran into Jarvis Cocker in the toilets at Watford Gap services, which seemed a suitably Pulp like venue. Our eyes met but only Leon will be able to tell you whether there was any romantic spark. Pulp are amazing, one of my favourite bands.
Taking food education further I would like to see an ongoing level of free life skills provision available for all.
Something like first 2 hrs per week of cooking, sports, literacy, numeracy, personal finance, fitness, basic IT paid for by the state for everyone who wants it.
A real investment in the people of the UK. It would be expensive at first but we would quickly become happier, better educated and also more productive in work and less costly to the health service.
Tory MP Lee Anderson says no massive need for food banks in UK, and real problem people not being able to cook properly
In his contribution to the Queen’s speech debate the Conservative MP Lee Anderson said that a food bank in his Ashfield constituency operated a “brilliant scheme” whereby people accepting a donation had to register for a budgeting course and a cooking course. He went on:
We show them how to cook cheap and nutritious meals on a budget. We can make a meal for about 30p a day, and this is cooking from scratch.
When an opposition MP put it to Anderson that food banks should not be needed in 21st century Britain, Anderson agreed. He went on:
This is exactly my point. I’ll invite you personally to come to Ashfield, look at our food bank, how it works. And I’ll think you’ll see first hand that there’s not this massive use for food banks in this country. We’ve got generation after generation who cannot cook properly. They can’t cook a meal from scratch. They cannot budget. The challenge is there.
From the context, it is clear that when he said there was not a “massive use for food banks”, he meant no massive need for them.
There is a real problem of people not being able to cook properly.
If Jack Monroe had said that people struggle to cook properly and budget and support was needed for that, you wouldn't blink twice, but a Tory says that and its horrific.
Alternatively, we could find out what Jack Monroe thinks;
"Helping somebody conditional on them saying 'you know what, this is all my own fault, please teach me how to be better at being poor', is disgusting, actually."
To a large extent, it's the Captain Vines theory of economics. Being poor forces you into making bad long-term choices. If you are rich enough to have time and space to cook and buy in bulk, you can feed yourself well and cheaply much more easily than if you are in a bedsit or worse
So she wants people to learn how to cook, but doesn't like a scheme that literally teaches people how to cook. It's almost as if the campaigners have an agenda. Isn't the actual answer - "hey it's not ideal but one extra person who can cook cheaply is another person out of food poverty".
What scheme to teach people how to cook? Most schools stopped doing Cookery at school when GCSEs arrived transforming it into a Home Economics type course which meant that a fully equipped Kitchen classroom was only required for 1/2 the lessons rather than all of them.
In the Guardian article, it says they teach them how to cook cheap and basic meals as part of receiving assistance from a food bank. It's actually a good scheme though I think maybe it should be optional or recommended rather than mandatory as there's lots of people who are so afraid of the kitchen that they may go hungry rather than accept help if it meant cooking.
The anti-foodbank campaigners really annoy me.
They’re not trying to actually solve problems except by government handouts, assume people never fall through cracks in the system, and think that before 2010 we had some sort of socialist Utopia (EUtopia?) where no-one ever went hungry.
Here we have an example of a brilliant charity, working hard with some of the most disadvantaged in society, providing them with subsistence resources and training. The Guardian would usually laud this activity, but instead they hate it, for what looks to be no reason other than the fact we have Conservatives in government.
Food bank demand has exploded in recent years. Not entirely unconnected with left/right politics. The inability of many to cook has existed for decades.
Yes it exploded because the regulations of food banks were relaxed as part of David Cameron's Big Society reforms. That ought to be celebrated.
The year it exploded also saw a corresponding collapse in people taking payday loans.
Some people have always got into difficulty, but isn't it great to have charity available when people fall between the cracks instead of predatory loan sharks?
The Express leads with welcome news for families suffering cost of living crisis.
Many other papers lead on government back tracking on what Boris promised.
Is coordinating government messaging really as difficult as they are making it look?
Are you not reading BigG. 's dispatched. Boris is having a great day signing international treaties with non-NATO partners. He has just tweaked Putin's nose and said "nuke us if you dare Vlad"!
Boris has his own hard hat and hi-viz coat, so he'll be fine...
...although if Putin is keeping up with the NI Protocol he might just be thinking, "Boris Johnson and international treaties? Pah!"
If Putin nuked us, Johnson would of course send a Trident nuclear missile to nuke Moscow.
In any case a UK Sweden mutual defence treaty is not yet the same as Sweden joining NATO
Well my reading of it from tonight's PM programme is this: If Putin puts a boot onto Swedish or Finnish soil Boris will be on his case. If Putin so much as harms a hair on the head of a British Tommy sent to defend Sweden or Finland, NATO are involved.
Johnson has ramped this up big time. He was the FIRST NATO leader to sign a treaty and any escalation into Scandinavia by Putin and it's all out confrontation. And do you know what? Good on you BigDog (I still wouldn't vote for the duplicitous b****** mind).
There was already a military alliance between the UK, Finland and Sweden (among others)
The Express leads with welcome news for families suffering cost of living crisis.
Many other papers lead on government back tracking on what Boris promised.
Is coordinating government messaging really as difficult as they are making it look?
Are you not reading BigG. 's dispatched. Boris is having a great day signing international treaties with non-NATO partners. He has just tweaked Putin's nose and said "nuke us if you dare Vlad"!
Boris has his own hard hat and hi-viz coat, so he'll be fine...
...although if Putin is keeping up with the NI Protocol he might just be thinking, "Boris Johnson and international treaties? Pah!"
If Putin nuked us, Johnson would of course send a Trident nuclear missile to nuke Moscow.
In any case a UK Sweden mutual defence treaty is not yet the same as Sweden joining NATO
Well my reading of it from tonight's PM programme is this: If Putin puts a boot onto Swedish or Finnish soil Boris will be on his case. If Putin so much as harms a hair on the head of a British Tommy sent to defend Sweden or Finland, NATO are involved.
Johnson has ramped this up big time. He was the FIRST NATO leader to sign a treaty and any escalation into Scandinavia by Putin and it's all out confrontation. And do you know what? Good on you BigDog (I still wouldn't vote for the duplicitous b****** mind).
Misunderstanding of NATO treaty. Thwacking NATO troops on non-NATO ground does not trigger art 5 or 6.
The Express leads with welcome news for families suffering cost of living crisis.
Many other papers lead on government back tracking on what Boris promised.
Is coordinating government messaging really as difficult as they are making it look?
Are you not reading BigG. 's dispatched. Boris is having a great day signing international treaties with non-NATO partners. He has just tweaked Putin's nose and said "nuke us if you dare Vlad"!
Boris has his own hard hat and hi-viz coat, so he'll be fine...
...although if Putin is keeping up with the NI Protocol he might just be thinking, "Boris Johnson and international treaties? Pah!"
If Putin nuked us, Johnson would of course send a Trident nuclear missile to nuke Moscow.
In any case a UK Sweden mutual defence treaty is not yet the same as Sweden joining NATO
Well my reading of it from tonight's PM programme is this: If Putin puts a boot onto Swedish or Finnish soil Boris will be on his case. If Putin so much as harms a hair on the head of a British Tommy sent to defend Sweden or Finland, NATO are involved.
Johnson has ramped this up big time. He was the FIRST NATO leader to sign a treaty and any escalation into Scandinavia by Putin and it's all out confrontation. And do you know what? Good on you BigDog (I still wouldn't vote for the duplicitous b****** mind).
Quite right Mexicanpete in all respects. However the BBC strangely reports that Sweden and Finland have a long history of wartime neutrality. They seem to have forgotten that we reluctantly declared war on Finland in December 1941. Though it was not really the Finns' fault they found themselves on the wrong side.
Tory MP Lee Anderson says no massive need for food banks in UK, and real problem people not being able to cook properly
In his contribution to the Queen’s speech debate the Conservative MP Lee Anderson said that a food bank in his Ashfield constituency operated a “brilliant scheme” whereby people accepting a donation had to register for a budgeting course and a cooking course. He went on:
We show them how to cook cheap and nutritious meals on a budget. We can make a meal for about 30p a day, and this is cooking from scratch.
When an opposition MP put it to Anderson that food banks should not be needed in 21st century Britain, Anderson agreed. He went on:
This is exactly my point. I’ll invite you personally to come to Ashfield, look at our food bank, how it works. And I’ll think you’ll see first hand that there’s not this massive use for food banks in this country. We’ve got generation after generation who cannot cook properly. They can’t cook a meal from scratch. They cannot budget. The challenge is there.
From the context, it is clear that when he said there was not a “massive use for food banks”, he meant no massive need for them.
It's a fair comment. People in the UK have poorer cooking skill than the rest of Europe. I come across people who struggle to make rice or pasta regularly and not having basic skills really limits the ability to each cheap and nutritious food. Takeaways are both expensive and unhealthy.
It’s the remarkable thing about being in Italy. You hear a group of ordinary Italians having a most heated argument about something, and from the passion and energy you’d think the eldest daughter had run off with the best man or some similar family catastrophe was unfolding.
Then, armed with a little basic Italian, you begin to make out enough words to realise that the debate is really about how to cook a certain recipe or whether one restaurant in town does pasta better than another.
That said, today has been so hot that we escaped to the Slovenian mountains and have been exploring the remains of the trenches in the high mountains around Caporetto - the battle that did more than any single other thing to subsequently and eventually give birth to fascism in Europe - but a name that will draw blank looks from almost anyone you mention it to back at home.
The battles on the Isonzo made the Somme and Paschendale look like masterpieces of military tactics.
Tory MP Lee Anderson says no massive need for food banks in UK, and real problem people not being able to cook properly
In his contribution to the Queen’s speech debate the Conservative MP Lee Anderson said that a food bank in his Ashfield constituency operated a “brilliant scheme” whereby people accepting a donation had to register for a budgeting course and a cooking course. He went on:
We show them how to cook cheap and nutritious meals on a budget. We can make a meal for about 30p a day, and this is cooking from scratch.
When an opposition MP put it to Anderson that food banks should not be needed in 21st century Britain, Anderson agreed. He went on:
This is exactly my point. I’ll invite you personally to come to Ashfield, look at our food bank, how it works. And I’ll think you’ll see first hand that there’s not this massive use for food banks in this country. We’ve got generation after generation who cannot cook properly. They can’t cook a meal from scratch. They cannot budget. The challenge is there.
From the context, it is clear that when he said there was not a “massive use for food banks”, he meant no massive need for them.
There is a real problem of people not being able to cook properly.
If Jack Monroe had said that people struggle to cook properly and budget and support was needed for that, you wouldn't blink twice, but a Tory says that and its horrific.
Alternatively, we could find out what Jack Monroe thinks;
"Helping somebody conditional on them saying 'you know what, this is all my own fault, please teach me how to be better at being poor', is disgusting, actually."
To a large extent, it's the Captain Vines theory of economics. Being poor forces you into making bad long-term choices. If you are rich enough to have time and space to cook and buy in bulk, you can feed yourself well and cheaply much more easily than if you are in a bedsit or worse
So she wants people to learn how to cook, but doesn't like a scheme that literally teaches people how to cook. It's almost as if the campaigners have an agenda. Isn't the actual answer - "hey it's not ideal but one extra person who can cook cheaply is another person out of food poverty".
What scheme to teach people how to cook? Most schools stopped doing Cookery at school when GCSEs arrived transforming it into a Home Economics type course which meant that a fully equipped Kitchen classroom was only required for 1/2 the lessons rather than all of them.
In the Guardian article, it says they teach them how to cook cheap and basic meals as part of receiving assistance from a food bank. It's actually a good scheme though I think maybe it should be optional or recommended rather than mandatory as there's lots of people who are so afraid of the kitchen that they may go hungry rather than accept help if it meant cooking.
The anti-foodbank campaigners really annoy me.
They’re not trying to actually solve problems except by government handouts, assume people never fall through cracks in the system, and think that before 2010 we had some sort of socialist Utopia (EUtopia?) where no-one ever went hungry.
Here we have an example of a brilliant charity, working hard with some of the most disadvantaged in society, providing them with subsistence resources and training. The Guardian would usually laud this activity, but instead they hate it, for what looks to be no reason other than the fact we have Conservatives in government.
Food bank demand has exploded in recent years. Not entirely unconnected with left/right politics. The inability of many to cook has existed for decades.
Yes it exploded because the regulations of food banks were relaxed as part of David Cameron's Big Society reforms. That ought to be celebrated.
The year it exploded also saw a corresponding collapse in people taking payday loans.
Some people have always got into difficulty, but isn't it great to have charity available when people fall between the cracks instead of predatory loan sharks?
Taking food education further I would like to see an ongoing level of free life skills provision available for all.
Something like first 2 hrs per week of cooking, sports, literacy, numeracy, personal finance, fitness, basic IT paid for by the state for everyone who wants it.
A real investment in the people of the UK. It would be expensive at first but we would quickly become happier, better educated and also more productive in work and less costly to the health service.
There might even be more permanent salaried positions for qualified FE teachers. I approve of this. And would chuck languages into the mix. And "wellbeing". Though I detest the term. CPD is a requirement in a lot of jobs. But we make Continuous Personal Development scarce and prohibitively costly.
Tory MP Lee Anderson says no massive need for food banks in UK, and real problem people not being able to cook properly
In his contribution to the Queen’s speech debate the Conservative MP Lee Anderson said that a food bank in his Ashfield constituency operated a “brilliant scheme” whereby people accepting a donation had to register for a budgeting course and a cooking course. He went on:
We show them how to cook cheap and nutritious meals on a budget. We can make a meal for about 30p a day, and this is cooking from scratch.
When an opposition MP put it to Anderson that food banks should not be needed in 21st century Britain, Anderson agreed. He went on:
This is exactly my point. I’ll invite you personally to come to Ashfield, look at our food bank, how it works. And I’ll think you’ll see first hand that there’s not this massive use for food banks in this country. We’ve got generation after generation who cannot cook properly. They can’t cook a meal from scratch. They cannot budget. The challenge is there.
From the context, it is clear that when he said there was not a “massive use for food banks”, he meant no massive need for them.
There is a real problem of people not being able to cook properly.
If Jack Monroe had said that people struggle to cook properly and budget and support was needed for that, you wouldn't blink twice, but a Tory says that and its horrific.
Alternatively, we could find out what Jack Monroe thinks;
"Helping somebody conditional on them saying 'you know what, this is all my own fault, please teach me how to be better at being poor', is disgusting, actually."
To a large extent, it's the Captain Vines theory of economics. Being poor forces you into making bad long-term choices. If you are rich enough to have time and space to cook and buy in bulk, you can feed yourself well and cheaply much more easily than if you are in a bedsit or worse
So she wants people to learn how to cook, but doesn't like a scheme that literally teaches people how to cook. It's almost as if the campaigners have an agenda. Isn't the actual answer - "hey it's not ideal but one extra person who can cook cheaply is another person out of food poverty".
The agenda is they want a world where people are helpless and utterly reliant on state support. I am reliant financially on state support and it's fucking miserable. Anything that can be done to teach skills, techniques etc to help lift yourself away from poverty is a good thing.
A recent comedy. Round where I live.
There are quite a number of bike shops catering to the very well off. Lots of work doing upgrades and stuff, that frankly, a competent bike owner could do themselves.
So they have buckets of second hand bits. Lots of stuff that is straight off bikes that has just been bought - not even used. The bike is bought and then a long list of bit changed. Yes, I know - why not buy a bare frame and buy the toys to match? Anyway....
A lot is not even worth fleabaying.
So a couple of the owners got in touch with some local people and for a couple of quid, let them pick out any stuff they want. Awesome, you'd think?
No, no, no, no..... No.
Before you could say "Clipboard" - a couple of hi-vizziers from the Council popped in to try and claim they were selling dangerous and unsafe equipment.
Of course they did this in earshot of some the rich evul middle class bike owners. One of whom was a lawyer. Of course. The hi-vizziers got pounded like dockside hookers.....
Clipboard wielders are worse than Durham curry and beer people
The important thing is to "professionalise" everything so only middle class and above can afford it.
This worked really well for childcare.
Spot on. What's the point if being middle class unless everything is tailored to expressing your relative affluence? Why have a cheap exercise bike when you can spend £1500 on an exercise bike with a kindle fire stuck on it?
I think a lot of people like to comfort themselves with the idea that people using foodbanks are doing so because they don't know how to cook or manage a budget. But I am not sure they would actually be able to cope with having to live the lives those who do use foodbanks have. Doing it for a week and knowing that it will all then go away is not the same as doing it with no reason to believe it will ever stop.
How did that Pulp song go?
Rent a flat above a shop Cut your hair and get a job Smoke some fags and play some pool Pretend you never went to school But still you'll never get it right 'Cause when you're laid in bed at night Watching roaches climb the wall If you called your dad he could stop it all, yeah You'll never live like common people You'll never do whatever common people do You'll never fail like common people You'll never watch your life slide out of view And you dance and drink and screw Because there's nothing else to do
didnt he go to public school as well?
Nah, he went to a comprehensive. His mum was a Tory councillor though
Ha ha, great minds make similar recourse to Wikipedia. I definitely had him down as a fellow Comprehensive school kid though. I once ran into Jarvis Cocker in the toilets at Watford Gap services, which seemed a suitably Pulp like venue. Our eyes met but only Leon will be able to tell you whether there was any romantic spark. Pulp are amazing, one of my favourite bands.
Pulp would be on my 'yeah, I guess' list
Go and listen to "Being Followed Home" and then tell me what you think
Taking food education further I would like to see an ongoing level of free life skills provision available for all.
Something like first 2 hrs per week of cooking, sports, literacy, numeracy, personal finance, fitness, basic IT paid for by the state for everyone who wants it.
A real investment in the people of the UK. It would be expensive at first but we would quickly become happier, better educated and also more productive in work and less costly to the health service.
Totally agree, I think it would hugely help with our workplace productivity issues as well over the medium to long term. Part of the issue is that people simply fall out of learning new things and it becomes a huge problem later on in life.
Tory MP Lee Anderson says no massive need for food banks in UK, and real problem people not being able to cook properly
In his contribution to the Queen’s speech debate the Conservative MP Lee Anderson said that a food bank in his Ashfield constituency operated a “brilliant scheme” whereby people accepting a donation had to register for a budgeting course and a cooking course. He went on:
We show them how to cook cheap and nutritious meals on a budget. We can make a meal for about 30p a day, and this is cooking from scratch.
When an opposition MP put it to Anderson that food banks should not be needed in 21st century Britain, Anderson agreed. He went on:
This is exactly my point. I’ll invite you personally to come to Ashfield, look at our food bank, how it works. And I’ll think you’ll see first hand that there’s not this massive use for food banks in this country. We’ve got generation after generation who cannot cook properly. They can’t cook a meal from scratch. They cannot budget. The challenge is there.
From the context, it is clear that when he said there was not a “massive use for food banks”, he meant no massive need for them.
There is a real problem of people not being able to cook properly.
If Jack Monroe had said that people struggle to cook properly and budget and support was needed for that, you wouldn't blink twice, but a Tory says that and its horrific.
Alternatively, we could find out what Jack Monroe thinks;
"Helping somebody conditional on them saying 'you know what, this is all my own fault, please teach me how to be better at being poor', is disgusting, actually."
To a large extent, it's the Captain Vines theory of economics. Being poor forces you into making bad long-term choices. If you are rich enough to have time and space to cook and buy in bulk, you can feed yourself well and cheaply much more easily than if you are in a bedsit or worse
So she wants people to learn how to cook, but doesn't like a scheme that literally teaches people how to cook. It's almost as if the campaigners have an agenda. Isn't the actual answer - "hey it's not ideal but one extra person who can cook cheaply is another person out of food poverty".
The agenda is they want a world where people are helpless and utterly reliant on state support. I am reliant financially on state support and it's fucking miserable. Anything that can be done to teach skills, techniques etc to help lift yourself away from poverty is a good thing.
A recent comedy. Round where I live.
There are quite a number of bike shops catering to the very well off. Lots of work doing upgrades and stuff, that frankly, a competent bike owner could do themselves.
So they have buckets of second hand bits. Lots of stuff that is straight off bikes that has just been bought - not even used. The bike is bought and then a long list of bit changed. Yes, I know - why not buy a bare frame and buy the toys to match? Anyway....
A lot is not even worth fleabaying.
So a couple of the owners got in touch with some local people and for a couple of quid, let them pick out any stuff they want. Awesome, you'd think?
No, no, no, no..... No.
Before you could say "Clipboard" - a couple of hi-vizziers from the Council popped in to try and claim they were selling dangerous and unsafe equipment.
Of course they did this in earshot of some the rich evul middle class bike owners. One of whom was a lawyer. Of course. The hi-vizziers got pounded like dockside hookers.....
Clipboard wielders are worse than Durham curry and beer people
The important thing is to "professionalise" everything so only middle class and above can afford it.
This worked really well for childcare.
Spot on. What's the point if being middle class unless everything is tailored to expressing your relative affluence? Why have a cheap exercise bike when you can spend £1500 on an exercise bike with a kindle fire stuck on it?
Obviously - but the important bit is to make sure that the Head Count can't get a cheap version. What is the point of having a Sign of Affluence if the Mob all have one?
Taking food education further I would like to see an ongoing level of free life skills provision available for all.
Something like first 2 hrs per week of cooking, sports, literacy, numeracy, personal finance, fitness, basic IT paid for by the state for everyone who wants it.
A real investment in the people of the UK. It would be expensive at first but we would quickly become happier, better educated and also more productive in work and less costly to the health service.
There might even be more permanent salaried positions for qualified FE teachers. I approve of this. And would chuck languages into the mix. And "wellbeing". Though I detest the term.
Agree on wellbeing, but also couldnt define it so it was in my fitness. Languages borderline for me, not against it but not fussed compared to the others that I think are real issues within the UK.
Tory MP Lee Anderson says no massive need for food banks in UK, and real problem people not being able to cook properly
In his contribution to the Queen’s speech debate the Conservative MP Lee Anderson said that a food bank in his Ashfield constituency operated a “brilliant scheme” whereby people accepting a donation had to register for a budgeting course and a cooking course. He went on:
We show them how to cook cheap and nutritious meals on a budget. We can make a meal for about 30p a day, and this is cooking from scratch.
When an opposition MP put it to Anderson that food banks should not be needed in 21st century Britain, Anderson agreed. He went on:
This is exactly my point. I’ll invite you personally to come to Ashfield, look at our food bank, how it works. And I’ll think you’ll see first hand that there’s not this massive use for food banks in this country. We’ve got generation after generation who cannot cook properly. They can’t cook a meal from scratch. They cannot budget. The challenge is there.
From the context, it is clear that when he said there was not a “massive use for food banks”, he meant no massive need for them.
There is a real problem of people not being able to cook properly.
If Jack Monroe had said that people struggle to cook properly and budget and support was needed for that, you wouldn't blink twice, but a Tory says that and its horrific.
Alternatively, we could find out what Jack Monroe thinks;
"Helping somebody conditional on them saying 'you know what, this is all my own fault, please teach me how to be better at being poor', is disgusting, actually."
To a large extent, it's the Captain Vines theory of economics. Being poor forces you into making bad long-term choices. If you are rich enough to have time and space to cook and buy in bulk, you can feed yourself well and cheaply much more easily than if you are in a bedsit or worse
So she wants people to learn how to cook, but doesn't like a scheme that literally teaches people how to cook. It's almost as if the campaigners have an agenda. Isn't the actual answer - "hey it's not ideal but one extra person who can cook cheaply is another person out of food poverty".
What scheme to teach people how to cook? Most schools stopped doing Cookery at school when GCSEs arrived transforming it into a Home Economics type course which meant that a fully equipped Kitchen classroom was only required for 1/2 the lessons rather than all of them.
In the Guardian article, it says they teach them how to cook cheap and basic meals as part of receiving assistance from a food bank. It's actually a good scheme though I think maybe it should be optional or recommended rather than mandatory as there's lots of people who are so afraid of the kitchen that they may go hungry rather than accept help if it meant cooking.
The anti-foodbank campaigners really annoy me.
They’re not trying to actually solve problems except by government handouts, assume people never fall through cracks in the system, and think that before 2010 we had some sort of socialist Utopia (EUtopia?) where no-one ever went hungry.
Here we have an example of a brilliant charity, working hard with some of the most disadvantaged in society, providing them with subsistence resources and training. The Guardian would usually laud this activity, but instead they hate it, for what looks to be no reason other than the fact we have Conservatives in government.
Food bank demand has exploded in recent years. Not entirely unconnected with left/right politics. The inability of many to cook has existed for decades.
Yes it exploded because the regulations of food banks were relaxed as part of David Cameron's Big Society reforms. That ought to be celebrated.
The year it exploded also saw a corresponding collapse in people taking payday loans.
Some people have always got into difficulty, but isn't it great to have charity available when people fall between the cracks instead of predatory loan sharks?
...so it's a positive step forward? Right!
Yes. I've said that repeatedly.
Replacing Wonga with the Trussell Trust ought to be celebrated. It's one of the best developments in the past decade and a real world case of David Cameron's Big Society in action.
Instead of people celebrating Cameron's achievement with that, people put it down as a failure.
Tory MP Lee Anderson says no massive need for food banks in UK, and real problem people not being able to cook properly
In his contribution to the Queen’s speech debate the Conservative MP Lee Anderson said that a food bank in his Ashfield constituency operated a “brilliant scheme” whereby people accepting a donation had to register for a budgeting course and a cooking course. He went on:
We show them how to cook cheap and nutritious meals on a budget. We can make a meal for about 30p a day, and this is cooking from scratch.
When an opposition MP put it to Anderson that food banks should not be needed in 21st century Britain, Anderson agreed. He went on:
This is exactly my point. I’ll invite you personally to come to Ashfield, look at our food bank, how it works. And I’ll think you’ll see first hand that there’s not this massive use for food banks in this country. We’ve got generation after generation who cannot cook properly. They can’t cook a meal from scratch. They cannot budget. The challenge is there.
From the context, it is clear that when he said there was not a “massive use for food banks”, he meant no massive need for them.
There is a real problem of people not being able to cook properly.
If Jack Monroe had said that people struggle to cook properly and budget and support was needed for that, you wouldn't blink twice, but a Tory says that and its horrific.
Alternatively, we could find out what Jack Monroe thinks;
"Helping somebody conditional on them saying 'you know what, this is all my own fault, please teach me how to be better at being poor', is disgusting, actually."
To a large extent, it's the Captain Vines theory of economics. Being poor forces you into making bad long-term choices. If you are rich enough to have time and space to cook and buy in bulk, you can feed yourself well and cheaply much more easily than if you are in a bedsit or worse
So she wants people to learn how to cook, but doesn't like a scheme that literally teaches people how to cook. It's almost as if the campaigners have an agenda. Isn't the actual answer - "hey it's not ideal but one extra person who can cook cheaply is another person out of food poverty".
What scheme to teach people how to cook? Most schools stopped doing Cookery at school when GCSEs arrived transforming it into a Home Economics type course which meant that a fully equipped Kitchen classroom was only required for 1/2 the lessons rather than all of them.
In the Guardian article, it says they teach them how to cook cheap and basic meals as part of receiving assistance from a food bank. It's actually a good scheme though I think maybe it should be optional or recommended rather than mandatory as there's lots of people who are so afraid of the kitchen that they may go hungry rather than accept help if it meant cooking.
The anti-foodbank campaigners really annoy me.
They’re not trying to actually solve problems except by government handouts, assume people never fall through cracks in the system, and think that before 2010 we had some sort of socialist Utopia (EUtopia?) where no-one ever went hungry.
Here we have an example of a brilliant charity, working hard with some of the most disadvantaged in society, providing them with subsistence resources and training. The Guardian would usually laud this activity, but instead they hate it, for what looks to be no reason other than the fact we have Conservatives in government.
Food bank demand has exploded in recent years. Not entirely unconnected with left/right politics. The inability of many to cook has existed for decades.
Yes it exploded because the regulations of food banks were relaxed as part of David Cameron's Big Society reforms. That ought to be celebrated.
The year it exploded also saw a corresponding collapse in people taking payday loans.
Some people have always got into difficulty, but isn't it great to have charity available when people fall between the cracks instead of predatory loan sharks?
Timing's all wrong in my observations locally, with a big gap between the two, about 4-5 years.
Taking food education further I would like to see an ongoing level of free life skills provision available for all.
Something like first 2 hrs per week of cooking, sports, literacy, numeracy, personal finance, fitness, basic IT paid for by the state for everyone who wants it.
A real investment in the people of the UK. It would be expensive at first but we would quickly become happier, better educated and also more productive in work and less costly to the health service.
Totally agree, I think it would hugely help with our workplace productivity issues as well over the medium to long term. Part of the issue is that people simply fall out of learning new things and it becomes a huge problem later on in life.
Yes learning is great, and I had fallen out of the habit, just doing things I was already good at. Back to challenging myself more the last few years and it is undoubtedly better.
Tory MP Lee Anderson says no massive need for food banks in UK, and real problem people not being able to cook properly
In his contribution to the Queen’s speech debate the Conservative MP Lee Anderson said that a food bank in his Ashfield constituency operated a “brilliant scheme” whereby people accepting a donation had to register for a budgeting course and a cooking course. He went on:
We show them how to cook cheap and nutritious meals on a budget. We can make a meal for about 30p a day, and this is cooking from scratch.
When an opposition MP put it to Anderson that food banks should not be needed in 21st century Britain, Anderson agreed. He went on:
This is exactly my point. I’ll invite you personally to come to Ashfield, look at our food bank, how it works. And I’ll think you’ll see first hand that there’s not this massive use for food banks in this country. We’ve got generation after generation who cannot cook properly. They can’t cook a meal from scratch. They cannot budget. The challenge is there.
From the context, it is clear that when he said there was not a “massive use for food banks”, he meant no massive need for them.
There is a real problem of people not being able to cook properly.
If Jack Monroe had said that people struggle to cook properly and budget and support was needed for that, you wouldn't blink twice, but a Tory says that and its horrific.
Alternatively, we could find out what Jack Monroe thinks;
"Helping somebody conditional on them saying 'you know what, this is all my own fault, please teach me how to be better at being poor', is disgusting, actually."
To a large extent, it's the Captain Vines theory of economics. Being poor forces you into making bad long-term choices. If you are rich enough to have time and space to cook and buy in bulk, you can feed yourself well and cheaply much more easily than if you are in a bedsit or worse
So she wants people to learn how to cook, but doesn't like a scheme that literally teaches people how to cook. It's almost as if the campaigners have an agenda. Isn't the actual answer - "hey it's not ideal but one extra person who can cook cheaply is another person out of food poverty".
The agenda is they want a world where people are helpless and utterly reliant on state support. I am reliant financially on state support and it's fucking miserable. Anything that can be done to teach skills, techniques etc to help lift yourself away from poverty is a good thing.
A recent comedy. Round where I live.
There are quite a number of bike shops catering to the very well off. Lots of work doing upgrades and stuff, that frankly, a competent bike owner could do themselves.
So they have buckets of second hand bits. Lots of stuff that is straight off bikes that has just been bought - not even used. The bike is bought and then a long list of bit changed. Yes, I know - why not buy a bare frame and buy the toys to match? Anyway....
A lot is not even worth fleabaying.
So a couple of the owners got in touch with some local people and for a couple of quid, let them pick out any stuff they want. Awesome, you'd think?
No, no, no, no..... No.
Before you could say "Clipboard" - a couple of hi-vizziers from the Council popped in to try and claim they were selling dangerous and unsafe equipment.
Of course they did this in earshot of some the rich evul middle class bike owners. One of whom was a lawyer. Of course. The hi-vizziers got pounded like dockside hookers.....
Clipboard wielders are worse than Durham curry and beer people
The important thing is to "professionalise" everything so only middle class and above can afford it.
This worked really well for childcare.
Spot on. What's the point if being middle class unless everything is tailored to expressing your relative affluence? Why have a cheap exercise bike when you can spend £1500 on an exercise bike with a kindle fire stuck on it?
Obviously - but the important bit is to make sure that the Head Count can't get a cheap version. What is the point of having a Sign of Affluence if the Mob all have one?
Very true. Also important to make cheap cuts of meat trendy in the dinner party and tv chef set so they become pricey and only for you. No belly pork or shin of beef for the peasants if you please
Tory MP Lee Anderson says no massive need for food banks in UK, and real problem people not being able to cook properly
In his contribution to the Queen’s speech debate the Conservative MP Lee Anderson said that a food bank in his Ashfield constituency operated a “brilliant scheme” whereby people accepting a donation had to register for a budgeting course and a cooking course. He went on:
We show them how to cook cheap and nutritious meals on a budget. We can make a meal for about 30p a day, and this is cooking from scratch.
When an opposition MP put it to Anderson that food banks should not be needed in 21st century Britain, Anderson agreed. He went on:
This is exactly my point. I’ll invite you personally to come to Ashfield, look at our food bank, how it works. And I’ll think you’ll see first hand that there’s not this massive use for food banks in this country. We’ve got generation after generation who cannot cook properly. They can’t cook a meal from scratch. They cannot budget. The challenge is there.
From the context, it is clear that when he said there was not a “massive use for food banks”, he meant no massive need for them.
It's a fair comment. People in the UK have poorer cooking skill than the rest of Europe. I come across people who struggle to make rice or pasta regularly and not having basic skills really limits the ability to each cheap and nutritious food. Takeaways are both expensive and unhealthy.
It’s the remarkable thing about being in Italy. You hear a group of ordinary Italians having a most heated argument about something, and from the passion and energy you’d think the eldest daughter had run off with the best man or some similar family catastrophe was unfolding.
Then, armed with a little basic Italian, you begin to make out enough words to realise that the debate is really about how to cook a certain recipe or whether one restaurant in town does pasta better than another.
That said, today has been so hot that we escaped to the Slovenian mountains and have been exploring the remains of the trenches in the high mountains around Caporetto - the battle that did more than any single other thing to subsequently and eventually give birth to fascism in Europe - but a name that will draw blank looks from almost anyone you mention it to back at home.
Cummings has lost it. email for his latest substack drivel headed "Snippets 4 & AMA 1200 13 May: hundreds of Auschwitz’s in a few hours... and the media cheers like the crowds of summer 1914..."
God knows what he's on about, but you can tell he is a Leaver to the core: plural of Auschwitz is Auschwitzes.
Tory MP Lee Anderson says no massive need for food banks in UK, and real problem people not being able to cook properly
In his contribution to the Queen’s speech debate the Conservative MP Lee Anderson said that a food bank in his Ashfield constituency operated a “brilliant scheme” whereby people accepting a donation had to register for a budgeting course and a cooking course. He went on:
We show them how to cook cheap and nutritious meals on a budget. We can make a meal for about 30p a day, and this is cooking from scratch.
When an opposition MP put it to Anderson that food banks should not be needed in 21st century Britain, Anderson agreed. He went on:
This is exactly my point. I’ll invite you personally to come to Ashfield, look at our food bank, how it works. And I’ll think you’ll see first hand that there’s not this massive use for food banks in this country. We’ve got generation after generation who cannot cook properly. They can’t cook a meal from scratch. They cannot budget. The challenge is there.
From the context, it is clear that when he said there was not a “massive use for food banks”, he meant no massive need for them.
There is a real problem of people not being able to cook properly.
If Jack Monroe had said that people struggle to cook properly and budget and support was needed for that, you wouldn't blink twice, but a Tory says that and its horrific.
Alternatively, we could find out what Jack Monroe thinks;
"Helping somebody conditional on them saying 'you know what, this is all my own fault, please teach me how to be better at being poor', is disgusting, actually."
To a large extent, it's the Captain Vines theory of economics. Being poor forces you into making bad long-term choices. If you are rich enough to have time and space to cook and buy in bulk, you can feed yourself well and cheaply much more easily than if you are in a bedsit or worse
So she wants people to learn how to cook, but doesn't like a scheme that literally teaches people how to cook. It's almost as if the campaigners have an agenda. Isn't the actual answer - "hey it's not ideal but one extra person who can cook cheaply is another person out of food poverty".
What scheme to teach people how to cook? Most schools stopped doing Cookery at school when GCSEs arrived transforming it into a Home Economics type course which meant that a fully equipped Kitchen classroom was only required for 1/2 the lessons rather than all of them.
In the Guardian article, it says they teach them how to cook cheap and basic meals as part of receiving assistance from a food bank. It's actually a good scheme though I think maybe it should be optional or recommended rather than mandatory as there's lots of people who are so afraid of the kitchen that they may go hungry rather than accept help if it meant cooking.
The anti-foodbank campaigners really annoy me.
They’re not trying to actually solve problems except by government handouts, assume people never fall through cracks in the system, and think that before 2010 we had some sort of socialist Utopia (EUtopia?) where no-one ever went hungry.
Here we have an example of a brilliant charity, working hard with some of the most disadvantaged in society, providing them with subsistence resources and training. The Guardian would usually laud this activity, but instead they hate it, for what looks to be no reason other than the fact we have Conservatives in government.
Food bank demand has exploded in recent years. Not entirely unconnected with left/right politics. The inability of many to cook has existed for decades.
Yes it exploded because the regulations of food banks were relaxed as part of David Cameron's Big Society reforms. That ought to be celebrated.
The year it exploded also saw a corresponding collapse in people taking payday loans.
Some people have always got into difficulty, but isn't it great to have charity available when people fall between the cracks instead of predatory loan sharks?
...so it's a positive step forward? Right!
Starvation is undoubtably a spur to the education and work ethic of the working classes, when seen from a comfortable state subsidised bar in Parliament.
I think a lot of people like to comfort themselves with the idea that people using foodbanks are doing so because they don't know how to cook or manage a budget. But I am not sure they would actually be able to cope with having to live the lives those who do use foodbanks have. Doing it for a week and knowing that it will all then go away is not the same as doing it with no reason to believe it will ever stop.
How did that Pulp song go?
Rent a flat above a shop Cut your hair and get a job Smoke some fags and play some pool Pretend you never went to school But still you'll never get it right 'Cause when you're laid in bed at night Watching roaches climb the wall If you called your dad he could stop it all, yeah You'll never live like common people You'll never do whatever common people do You'll never fail like common people You'll never watch your life slide out of view And you dance and drink and screw Because there's nothing else to do
didnt he go to public school as well?
Nah, he went to a comprehensive. His mum was a Tory councillor though
Ha ha, great minds make similar recourse to Wikipedia. I definitely had him down as a fellow Comprehensive school kid though. I once ran into Jarvis Cocker in the toilets at Watford Gap services, which seemed a suitably Pulp like venue. Our eyes met but only Leon will be able to tell you whether there was any romantic spark. Pulp are amazing, one of my favourite bands.
Pulp would be on my 'yeah, I guess' list
Go and listen to "Being Followed Home" and then tell me what you think
Yeah, I guess
You either know it already or you didn't go listen. It's 6 minutes of magnificence and you replied before 6 minutes were up! There's no other song like it. Nobody else would write a song like that. Say what you like about Pulp, they are madly unique.
It was a 'humorous' response. I haven't listened yet. I will at some point.
The Express leads with welcome news for families suffering cost of living crisis.
Many other papers lead on government back tracking on what Boris promised.
Is coordinating government messaging really as difficult as they are making it look?
Are you not reading BigG. 's dispatched. Boris is having a great day signing international treaties with non-NATO partners. He has just tweaked Putin's nose and said "nuke us if you dare Vlad"!
Boris has his own hard hat and hi-viz coat, so he'll be fine...
...although if Putin is keeping up with the NI Protocol he might just be thinking, "Boris Johnson and international treaties? Pah!"
If Putin nuked us, Johnson would of course send a Trident nuclear missile to nuke Moscow.
In any case a UK Sweden mutual defence treaty is not yet the same as Sweden joining NATO
Well my reading of it from tonight's PM programme is this: If Putin puts a boot onto Swedish or Finnish soil Boris will be on his case. If Putin so much as harms a hair on the head of a British Tommy sent to defend Sweden or Finland, NATO are involved.
Johnson has ramped this up big time. He was the FIRST NATO leader to sign a treaty and any escalation into Scandinavia by Putin and it's all out confrontation. And do you know what? Good on you BigDog (I still wouldn't vote for the duplicitous b****** mind).
There was already a military alliance between the UK, Finland and Sweden (among others)
A further affirmation of what was the situation anyway - that if Russia attacks Finland or Sweden, then we will be very, very rude.
This re-affirmation of outstanding commitments is a long standing thing in times of tension. For the very, very good reasons why, read The Guns of August -
The Germans in 1914 convinced themselves that the UK would abandon the Belgians, because WWI wasn't going to work for them (the Germans) if the UK didn't.
On the UK side, no-one thought that they needed to re-affirm the treaty. If they had...
Tory MP Lee Anderson says no massive need for food banks in UK, and real problem people not being able to cook properly
In his contribution to the Queen’s speech debate the Conservative MP Lee Anderson said that a food bank in his Ashfield constituency operated a “brilliant scheme” whereby people accepting a donation had to register for a budgeting course and a cooking course. He went on:
We show them how to cook cheap and nutritious meals on a budget. We can make a meal for about 30p a day, and this is cooking from scratch.
When an opposition MP put it to Anderson that food banks should not be needed in 21st century Britain, Anderson agreed. He went on:
This is exactly my point. I’ll invite you personally to come to Ashfield, look at our food bank, how it works. And I’ll think you’ll see first hand that there’s not this massive use for food banks in this country. We’ve got generation after generation who cannot cook properly. They can’t cook a meal from scratch. They cannot budget. The challenge is there.
From the context, it is clear that when he said there was not a “massive use for food banks”, he meant no massive need for them.
There is a real problem of people not being able to cook properly.
If Jack Monroe had said that people struggle to cook properly and budget and support was needed for that, you wouldn't blink twice, but a Tory says that and its horrific.
Alternatively, we could find out what Jack Monroe thinks;
"Helping somebody conditional on them saying 'you know what, this is all my own fault, please teach me how to be better at being poor', is disgusting, actually."
To a large extent, it's the Captain Vines theory of economics. Being poor forces you into making bad long-term choices. If you are rich enough to have time and space to cook and buy in bulk, you can feed yourself well and cheaply much more easily than if you are in a bedsit or worse
So she wants people to learn how to cook, but doesn't like a scheme that literally teaches people how to cook. It's almost as if the campaigners have an agenda. Isn't the actual answer - "hey it's not ideal but one extra person who can cook cheaply is another person out of food poverty".
The agenda is they want a world where people are helpless and utterly reliant on state support. I am reliant financially on state support and it's fucking miserable. Anything that can be done to teach skills, techniques etc to help lift yourself away from poverty is a good thing.
A recent comedy. Round where I live.
There are quite a number of bike shops catering to the very well off. Lots of work doing upgrades and stuff, that frankly, a competent bike owner could do themselves.
So they have buckets of second hand bits. Lots of stuff that is straight off bikes that has just been bought - not even used. The bike is bought and then a long list of bit changed. Yes, I know - why not buy a bare frame and buy the toys to match? Anyway....
A lot is not even worth fleabaying.
So a couple of the owners got in touch with some local people and for a couple of quid, let them pick out any stuff they want. Awesome, you'd think?
No, no, no, no..... No.
Before you could say "Clipboard" - a couple of hi-vizziers from the Council popped in to try and claim they were selling dangerous and unsafe equipment.
Of course they did this in earshot of some the rich evul middle class bike owners. One of whom was a lawyer. Of course. The hi-vizziers got pounded like dockside hookers.....
Clipboard wielders are worse than Durham curry and beer people
The important thing is to "professionalise" everything so only middle class and above can afford it.
This worked really well for childcare.
Spot on. What's the point if being middle class unless everything is tailored to expressing your relative affluence? Why have a cheap exercise bike when you can spend £1500 on an exercise bike with a kindle fire stuck on it?
Obviously - but the important bit is to make sure that the Head Count can't get a cheap version. What is the point of having a Sign of Affluence if the Mob all have one?
Very true. Also important to make cheap cuts of meat trendy in the dinner party and tv chef set so they become pricey and only for you. No belly pork or shin of beef for the peasants if you please
This is a standard Spectator bore meme, why pay £££s for takeaways when you can buy three penn'orth of scrag end of faggot from the butcher and boil it up with a fardel of shallots in a Le Creuset marmite in the slow oven of the Aga for 3 weeks. Serve with a full bodied first growth burgundy.
Tory MP Lee Anderson says no massive need for food banks in UK, and real problem people not being able to cook properly
In his contribution to the Queen’s speech debate the Conservative MP Lee Anderson said that a food bank in his Ashfield constituency operated a “brilliant scheme” whereby people accepting a donation had to register for a budgeting course and a cooking course. He went on:
We show them how to cook cheap and nutritious meals on a budget. We can make a meal for about 30p a day, and this is cooking from scratch.
When an opposition MP put it to Anderson that food banks should not be needed in 21st century Britain, Anderson agreed. He went on:
This is exactly my point. I’ll invite you personally to come to Ashfield, look at our food bank, how it works. And I’ll think you’ll see first hand that there’s not this massive use for food banks in this country. We’ve got generation after generation who cannot cook properly. They can’t cook a meal from scratch. They cannot budget. The challenge is there.
From the context, it is clear that when he said there was not a “massive use for food banks”, he meant no massive need for them.
There is a real problem of people not being able to cook properly.
If Jack Monroe had said that people struggle to cook properly and budget and support was needed for that, you wouldn't blink twice, but a Tory says that and its horrific.
Alternatively, we could find out what Jack Monroe thinks;
"Helping somebody conditional on them saying 'you know what, this is all my own fault, please teach me how to be better at being poor', is disgusting, actually."
To a large extent, it's the Captain Vines theory of economics. Being poor forces you into making bad long-term choices. If you are rich enough to have time and space to cook and buy in bulk, you can feed yourself well and cheaply much more easily than if you are in a bedsit or worse
So she wants people to learn how to cook, but doesn't like a scheme that literally teaches people how to cook. It's almost as if the campaigners have an agenda. Isn't the actual answer - "hey it's not ideal but one extra person who can cook cheaply is another person out of food poverty".
The agenda is they want a world where people are helpless and utterly reliant on state support. I am reliant financially on state support and it's fucking miserable. Anything that can be done to teach skills, techniques etc to help lift yourself away from poverty is a good thing.
A recent comedy. Round where I live.
There are quite a number of bike shops catering to the very well off. Lots of work doing upgrades and stuff, that frankly, a competent bike owner could do themselves.
So they have buckets of second hand bits. Lots of stuff that is straight off bikes that has just been bought - not even used. The bike is bought and then a long list of bit changed. Yes, I know - why not buy a bare frame and buy the toys to match? Anyway....
A lot is not even worth fleabaying.
So a couple of the owners got in touch with some local people and for a couple of quid, let them pick out any stuff they want. Awesome, you'd think?
No, no, no, no..... No.
Before you could say "Clipboard" - a couple of hi-vizziers from the Council popped in to try and claim they were selling dangerous and unsafe equipment.
Of course they did this in earshot of some the rich evul middle class bike owners. One of whom was a lawyer. Of course. The hi-vizziers got pounded like dockside hookers.....
Clipboard wielders are worse than Durham curry and beer people
The important thing is to "professionalise" everything so only middle class and above can afford it.
This worked really well for childcare.
Spot on. What's the point if being middle class unless everything is tailored to expressing your relative affluence? Why have a cheap exercise bike when you can spend £1500 on an exercise bike with a kindle fire stuck on it?
Obviously - but the important bit is to make sure that the Head Count can't get a cheap version. What is the point of having a Sign of Affluence if the Mob all have one?
Very true. Also important to make cheap cuts of meat trendy in the dinner party and tv chef set so they become pricey and only for you. No belly pork or shin of beef for the peasants if you please
I got a huge piece of 26 day aged rib of beef on the weekend at the butchers - he's dropped the prices on that, while the price of ox tail etc rockets up.
Cummings has lost it. email for his latest substack drivel headed "Snippets 4 & AMA 1200 13 May: hundreds of Auschwitz’s in a few hours... and the media cheers like the crowds of summer 1914..."
God knows what he's on about, but you can tell he is a Leaver to the core: plural of Auschwitz is Auschwitzes.
PB anti-Woke warriors won't know whether to laugh or cry, jeer or cheer . . .
Seattle Times ($) - San Juan Islands waterway could be renamed to honor Indigenous leader
Ken Carrasco was reading about the 1855 Battle of Ash Hollow when he came across a familiar name: Gen. William Harney.
The Harney Channel that his Orcas Island home overlooks, he realized, was named after a man who once tried to defend the San Juan Islands from British rule but also was responsible for the murders of Indigenous people and an enslaved woman. . . .
Now three years later, Carrasco and Shaw Island resident Stephanie Buffum are leading an effort to rename the channel to honor Henry Cayou, an Indigenous San Juan County commissioner and commercial fisherman . . .
The proposal to rename the waterway Cayou Channel was approved by the Washington State Committee on Geographic Names in April and is now under consideration by the Washington Board on Geographic Names. If approved, the proposal will go to the federal Board on Geographic Names for a final decision. . . .
General George B. McClellan . . . claimed that General William S. Harney and Pickett conspired with a cabal, to start a war with Britain, creating a common enemy, to head off a north–south confrontation. . . .
[SSI - my own theory is that Pickett was Harney's protege AND both were rash hotheads NOT noted for brainpower]
Brigadier General William S. Harney, commanding the Department of Oregon, initially dispatched Captain George Pickett and 66 American soldiers of the 9th Infantry Regiment under Pickett's command, to San Juan Island with orders to prevent the British from landing . . . Concerned that a squatter population of Americans would begin to occupy San Juan Island if the Americans were not kept in check, the British sent three warships . . . Pickett was quoted as saying defiantly, "We'll make a Bunker Hill of it," placing him in the national limelight. . . .
Pickett established the American Camp near the south end of San Juan Island, today one of two historical sites on the island, the other being the British Camp, defended by the Royal Marines on the north end of the island. . . .
The governor of the Colony of Vancouver Island, James Douglas, had ordered Captain Hornby to dislodge the American troops, avoiding armed conflict if possible. At the time, the additional reinforcements sent by American General Harney had not yet arrived, and the island was occupied by only Pickett's 66 men.
Hornby refused to take any action until British Rear Admiral Robert L. Baynes, who was in command of the British Navy in the Pacific, would arrive himself. When Baynes finally came and took stock of the situation, he told Governor Douglas that he would not escalate the conflict into a war between great nations "over a squabble about a pig".
The Pig War. Harney and Pickett didn't come out well in my HS Canadian history course. The main street in Victoria is still named after the governor of Vancouver Island who sent the troops, James Douglas.
Quite a fellow in his own right, rose through ranks of Hudson's Bay Co, spent much quality time at Fort Vancouver on Columbia River, now in WA State just north of Portland, Oregon. Before he along with HBC were run out by Americans with partition of Oregon Country, which explains his touchiness re: the pig.
BTW, Douglas was also one of the few satraps-of-color in mid-19th century British Empire, being born out of wedlock in (today's) Guyana to a Scottish planter/merchant father and mixed African-European mother.
Tory MP Lee Anderson says no massive need for food banks in UK, and real problem people not being able to cook properly
In his contribution to the Queen’s speech debate the Conservative MP Lee Anderson said that a food bank in his Ashfield constituency operated a “brilliant scheme” whereby people accepting a donation had to register for a budgeting course and a cooking course. He went on:
We show them how to cook cheap and nutritious meals on a budget. We can make a meal for about 30p a day, and this is cooking from scratch.
When an opposition MP put it to Anderson that food banks should not be needed in 21st century Britain, Anderson agreed. He went on:
This is exactly my point. I’ll invite you personally to come to Ashfield, look at our food bank, how it works. And I’ll think you’ll see first hand that there’s not this massive use for food banks in this country. We’ve got generation after generation who cannot cook properly. They can’t cook a meal from scratch. They cannot budget. The challenge is there.
From the context, it is clear that when he said there was not a “massive use for food banks”, he meant no massive need for them.
There is a real problem of people not being able to cook properly.
If Jack Monroe had said that people struggle to cook properly and budget and support was needed for that, you wouldn't blink twice, but a Tory says that and its horrific.
Alternatively, we could find out what Jack Monroe thinks;
"Helping somebody conditional on them saying 'you know what, this is all my own fault, please teach me how to be better at being poor', is disgusting, actually."
To a large extent, it's the Captain Vines theory of economics. Being poor forces you into making bad long-term choices. If you are rich enough to have time and space to cook and buy in bulk, you can feed yourself well and cheaply much more easily than if you are in a bedsit or worse
So she wants people to learn how to cook, but doesn't like a scheme that literally teaches people how to cook. It's almost as if the campaigners have an agenda. Isn't the actual answer - "hey it's not ideal but one extra person who can cook cheaply is another person out of food poverty".
The agenda is they want a world where people are helpless and utterly reliant on state support. I am reliant financially on state support and it's fucking miserable. Anything that can be done to teach skills, techniques etc to help lift yourself away from poverty is a good thing.
A recent comedy. Round where I live.
There are quite a number of bike shops catering to the very well off. Lots of work doing upgrades and stuff, that frankly, a competent bike owner could do themselves.
So they have buckets of second hand bits. Lots of stuff that is straight off bikes that has just been bought - not even used. The bike is bought and then a long list of bit changed. Yes, I know - why not buy a bare frame and buy the toys to match? Anyway....
A lot is not even worth fleabaying.
So a couple of the owners got in touch with some local people and for a couple of quid, let them pick out any stuff they want. Awesome, you'd think?
No, no, no, no..... No.
Before you could say "Clipboard" - a couple of hi-vizziers from the Council popped in to try and claim they were selling dangerous and unsafe equipment.
Of course they did this in earshot of some the rich evul middle class bike owners. One of whom was a lawyer. Of course. The hi-vizziers got pounded like dockside hookers.....
When I first moved to Cambridge, I lived in a shared house in Milton with a few blokes. One was a caterer who worked at one of the Cambridge colleges. He had made a top-notch bike by stealing bits of various other bikes from around the city at night: if a nice bike was locked through the wheel, he'd dismantle it and steal the frame, leaving everything else behind. If he needed the chainset, he'd take just that.
What got me was that it would probably have been quicker to steal the whole bike; instead, he would carefully dismantle it, taking only the bits he needed, and leaving the rest in a pile. Because of his job, he was often around the city late at night.
He'd also go into the back garden of the house and hit golf balls over the surrounding rooftops, not caring where they landed.
Taking food education further I would like to see an ongoing level of free life skills provision available for all.
Something like first 2 hrs per week of cooking, sports, literacy, numeracy, personal finance, fitness, basic IT paid for by the state for everyone who wants it.
A real investment in the people of the UK. It would be expensive at first but we would quickly become happier, better educated and also more productive in work and less costly to the health service.
There might even be more permanent salaried positions for qualified FE teachers. I approve of this. And would chuck languages into the mix. And "wellbeing". Though I detest the term.
Agree on wellbeing, but also couldnt define it so it was in my fitness. Languages borderline for me, not against it but not fussed compared to the others that I think are real issues within the UK.
Yeah. Just noticed you had sport and fitness as two discrete categories.
Taking food education further I would like to see an ongoing level of free life skills provision available for all.
Something like first 2 hrs per week of cooking, sports, literacy, numeracy, personal finance, fitness, basic IT paid for by the state for everyone who wants it.
A real investment in the people of the UK. It would be expensive at first but we would quickly become happier, better educated and also more productive in work and less costly to the health service.
There might even be more permanent salaried positions for qualified FE teachers. I approve of this. And would chuck languages into the mix. And "wellbeing". Though I detest the term.
Agree on wellbeing, but also couldnt define it so it was in my fitness. Languages borderline for me, not against it but not fussed compared to the others that I think are real issues within the UK.
Yeah. Just noticed you had sport and fitness as two discrete categories.
Yes - get people into actually doing sport. Excessive emphasis on fitness, too early, can just put them off.
The Express leads with welcome news for families suffering cost of living crisis.
Many other papers lead on government back tracking on what Boris promised.
Is coordinating government messaging really as difficult as they are making it look?
Are you not reading BigG. 's dispatched. Boris is having a great day signing international treaties with non-NATO partners. He has just tweaked Putin's nose and said "nuke us if you dare Vlad"!
Boris has his own hard hat and hi-viz coat, so he'll be fine...
...although if Putin is keeping up with the NI Protocol he might just be thinking, "Boris Johnson and international treaties? Pah!"
If Putin nuked us, Johnson would of course send a Trident nuclear missile to nuke Moscow.
In any case a UK Sweden mutual defence treaty is not yet the same as Sweden joining NATO
Well my reading of it from tonight's PM programme is this: If Putin puts a boot onto Swedish or Finnish soil Boris will be on his case. If Putin so much as harms a hair on the head of a British Tommy sent to defend Sweden or Finland, NATO are involved.
Johnson has ramped this up big time. He was the FIRST NATO leader to sign a treaty and any escalation into Scandinavia by Putin and it's all out confrontation. And do you know what? Good on you BigDog (I still wouldn't vote for the duplicitous b****** mind).
There was already a military alliance between the UK, Finland and Sweden (among others)
A further affirmation of what was the situation anyway - that if Russia attacks Finland or Sweden, then we will be very, very rude.
This re-affirmation of outstanding commitments is a long standing thing in times of tension. For the very, very good reasons why, read The Guns of August -
The Germans in 1914 convinced themselves that the UK would abandon the Belgians, because WWI wasn't going to work for them (the Germans) if the UK didn't.
On the UK side, no-one thought that they needed to re-affirm the treaty. If they had...
The Armenian genocide memoir that I’m reading right now makes that same point. The Armenian author is in Germany in 1914 when WW1 kicks off. At first everyone is elated because they are convinced Germany can easily win a swift war against France and Russia
Then “England” joins the war and the elation turns instantly to a numb, stunned sourness, as Germans realise the war will be looooooong and they might not win
Tory MP Lee Anderson says no massive need for food banks in UK, and real problem people not being able to cook properly
In his contribution to the Queen’s speech debate the Conservative MP Lee Anderson said that a food bank in his Ashfield constituency operated a “brilliant scheme” whereby people accepting a donation had to register for a budgeting course and a cooking course. He went on:
We show them how to cook cheap and nutritious meals on a budget. We can make a meal for about 30p a day, and this is cooking from scratch.
When an opposition MP put it to Anderson that food banks should not be needed in 21st century Britain, Anderson agreed. He went on:
This is exactly my point. I’ll invite you personally to come to Ashfield, look at our food bank, how it works. And I’ll think you’ll see first hand that there’s not this massive use for food banks in this country. We’ve got generation after generation who cannot cook properly. They can’t cook a meal from scratch. They cannot budget. The challenge is there.
From the context, it is clear that when he said there was not a “massive use for food banks”, he meant no massive need for them.
It's a fair comment. People in the UK have poorer cooking skill than the rest of Europe. I come across people who struggle to make rice or pasta regularly and not having basic skills really limits the ability to each cheap and nutritious food. Takeaways are both expensive and unhealthy.
It’s the remarkable thing about being in Italy. You hear a group of ordinary Italians having a most heated argument about something, and from the passion and energy you’d think the eldest daughter had run off with the best man or some similar family catastrophe was unfolding.
Then, armed with a little basic Italian, you begin to make out enough words to realise that the debate is really about how to cook a certain recipe or whether one restaurant in town does pasta better than another.
That said, today has been so hot that we escaped to the Slovenian mountains and have been exploring the remains of the trenches in the high mountains around Caporetto - the battle that did more than any single other thing to subsequently and eventually give birth to fascism in Europe - but a name that will draw blank looks from almost anyone you mention it to back at home.
The battles on the Isonzo made the Somme and Paschendale look like masterpieces of military tactics.
Indeed. Although we did pause for a breather atop the hill the capture of which first made the name of a then lieutenant Rommel.
The Express leads with welcome news for families suffering cost of living crisis.
Many other papers lead on government back tracking on what Boris promised.
Is coordinating government messaging really as difficult as they are making it look?
Are you not reading BigG. 's dispatched. Boris is having a great day signing international treaties with non-NATO partners. He has just tweaked Putin's nose and said "nuke us if you dare Vlad"!
Boris has his own hard hat and hi-viz coat, so he'll be fine...
...although if Putin is keeping up with the NI Protocol he might just be thinking, "Boris Johnson and international treaties? Pah!"
If Putin nuked us, Johnson would of course send a Trident nuclear missile to nuke Moscow.
In any case a UK Sweden mutual defence treaty is not yet the same as Sweden joining NATO
Well my reading of it from tonight's PM programme is this: If Putin puts a boot onto Swedish or Finnish soil Boris will be on his case. If Putin so much as harms a hair on the head of a British Tommy sent to defend Sweden or Finland, NATO are involved.
Johnson has ramped this up big time. He was the FIRST NATO leader to sign a treaty and any escalation into Scandinavia by Putin and it's all out confrontation. And do you know what? Good on you BigDog (I still wouldn't vote for the duplicitous b****** mind).
This is the opportunity that we missed in Ukraine. We could have done the same. I argued that we should have.
This is a case of the government learning from its shortcomings, and it's to be applauded.
The current conflict in Ukraine was predictable. After 2014, Putin (and by extension Russia's) actions and rhetoric was all heading this way. Salisbury and all the other sh*t he was doing reinforced this.
I know this triggers some people, but Ed Miliband's actions in the wake of the use of chemical weapons in Syria contributed to Putin's actions. It made it look as though the west was impotent, and would not react to anything bad people did. He could act as though the west could be divided.
Despite this, as a country, I think we did well, considering most other civilised countries did not give a damn. Then again, we had been directly affected by the Litvinenko and Salisbury affairs.
Watching that Gove video, crikey, he reminds me of a friend who went through a pretty messy divorce.
It's not pleasant.
I had thought of all the twatty Brexiteers out there, there was one, that while very weird in many ways appeared otherwise comparatively sane, and that was Gove. This morning he proved he was even more twatty than the worst of them.
Tory MP Lee Anderson says no massive need for food banks in UK, and real problem people not being able to cook properly
In his contribution to the Queen’s speech debate the Conservative MP Lee Anderson said that a food bank in his Ashfield constituency operated a “brilliant scheme” whereby people accepting a donation had to register for a budgeting course and a cooking course. He went on:
We show them how to cook cheap and nutritious meals on a budget. We can make a meal for about 30p a day, and this is cooking from scratch.
When an opposition MP put it to Anderson that food banks should not be needed in 21st century Britain, Anderson agreed. He went on:
This is exactly my point. I’ll invite you personally to come to Ashfield, look at our food bank, how it works. And I’ll think you’ll see first hand that there’s not this massive use for food banks in this country. We’ve got generation after generation who cannot cook properly. They can’t cook a meal from scratch. They cannot budget. The challenge is there.
From the context, it is clear that when he said there was not a “massive use for food banks”, he meant no massive need for them.
There is a real problem of people not being able to cook properly.
If Jack Monroe had said that people struggle to cook properly and budget and support was needed for that, you wouldn't blink twice, but a Tory says that and its horrific.
Alternatively, we could find out what Jack Monroe thinks;
"Helping somebody conditional on them saying 'you know what, this is all my own fault, please teach me how to be better at being poor', is disgusting, actually."
To a large extent, it's the Captain Vines theory of economics. Being poor forces you into making bad long-term choices. If you are rich enough to have time and space to cook and buy in bulk, you can feed yourself well and cheaply much more easily than if you are in a bedsit or worse
So she wants people to learn how to cook, but doesn't like a scheme that literally teaches people how to cook. It's almost as if the campaigners have an agenda. Isn't the actual answer - "hey it's not ideal but one extra person who can cook cheaply is another person out of food poverty".
The agenda is they want a world where people are helpless and utterly reliant on state support. I am reliant financially on state support and it's fucking miserable. Anything that can be done to teach skills, techniques etc to help lift yourself away from poverty is a good thing.
A recent comedy. Round where I live.
There are quite a number of bike shops catering to the very well off. Lots of work doing upgrades and stuff, that frankly, a competent bike owner could do themselves.
So they have buckets of second hand bits. Lots of stuff that is straight off bikes that has just been bought - not even used. The bike is bought and then a long list of bit changed. Yes, I know - why not buy a bare frame and buy the toys to match? Anyway....
A lot is not even worth fleabaying.
So a couple of the owners got in touch with some local people and for a couple of quid, let them pick out any stuff they want. Awesome, you'd think?
No, no, no, no..... No.
Before you could say "Clipboard" - a couple of hi-vizziers from the Council popped in to try and claim they were selling dangerous and unsafe equipment.
Of course they did this in earshot of some the rich evul middle class bike owners. One of whom was a lawyer. Of course. The hi-vizziers got pounded like dockside hookers.....
Clipboard wielders are worse than Durham curry and beer people
The important thing is to "professionalise" everything so only middle class and above can afford it.
This worked really well for childcare.
Spot on. What's the point if being middle class unless everything is tailored to expressing your relative affluence? Why have a cheap exercise bike when you can spend £1500 on an exercise bike with a kindle fire stuck on it?
Obviously - but the important bit is to make sure that the Head Count can't get a cheap version. What is the point of having a Sign of Affluence if the Mob all have one?
Very true. Also important to make cheap cuts of meat trendy in the dinner party and tv chef set so they become pricey and only for you. No belly pork or shin of beef for the peasants if you please
This is a standard Spectator bore meme, why pay £££s for takeaways when you can buy three penn'orth of scrag end of faggot from the butcher and boil it up with a fardel of shallots in a Le Creuset marmite in the slow oven of the Aga for 3 weeks. Serve with a full bodied first growth burgundy.
300% increase in price overnight if some tosser like Blumenthal cooks it in a vacuum cleaner bag at 40 degrees facing north.
PB anti-Woke warriors won't know whether to laugh or cry, jeer or cheer . . .
Seattle Times ($) - San Juan Islands waterway could be renamed to honor Indigenous leader
Ken Carrasco was reading about the 1855 Battle of Ash Hollow when he came across a familiar name: Gen. William Harney.
The Harney Channel that his Orcas Island home overlooks, he realized, was named after a man who once tried to defend the San Juan Islands from British rule but also was responsible for the murders of Indigenous people and an enslaved woman. . . .
Now three years later, Carrasco and Shaw Island resident Stephanie Buffum are leading an effort to rename the channel to honor Henry Cayou, an Indigenous San Juan County commissioner and commercial fisherman . . .
The proposal to rename the waterway Cayou Channel was approved by the Washington State Committee on Geographic Names in April and is now under consideration by the Washington Board on Geographic Names. If approved, the proposal will go to the federal Board on Geographic Names for a final decision. . . .
General George B. McClellan . . . claimed that General William S. Harney and Pickett conspired with a cabal, to start a war with Britain, creating a common enemy, to head off a north–south confrontation. . . .
[SSI - my own theory is that Pickett was Harney's protege AND both were rash hotheads NOT noted for brainpower]
Brigadier General William S. Harney, commanding the Department of Oregon, initially dispatched Captain George Pickett and 66 American soldiers of the 9th Infantry Regiment under Pickett's command, to San Juan Island with orders to prevent the British from landing . . . Concerned that a squatter population of Americans would begin to occupy San Juan Island if the Americans were not kept in check, the British sent three warships . . . Pickett was quoted as saying defiantly, "We'll make a Bunker Hill of it," placing him in the national limelight. . . .
Pickett established the American Camp near the south end of San Juan Island, today one of two historical sites on the island, the other being the British Camp, defended by the Royal Marines on the north end of the island. . . .
The governor of the Colony of Vancouver Island, James Douglas, had ordered Captain Hornby to dislodge the American troops, avoiding armed conflict if possible. At the time, the additional reinforcements sent by American General Harney had not yet arrived, and the island was occupied by only Pickett's 66 men.
Hornby refused to take any action until British Rear Admiral Robert L. Baynes, who was in command of the British Navy in the Pacific, would arrive himself. When Baynes finally came and took stock of the situation, he told Governor Douglas that he would not escalate the conflict into a war between great nations "over a squabble about a pig".
The Pig War. Harney and Pickett didn't come out well in my HS Canadian history course. The main street in Victoria is still named after the governor of Vancouver Island who sent the troops, James Douglas.
Quite a fellow in his own right, rose through ranks of Hudson's Bay Co, spent much quality time at Fort Vancouver on Columbia River, now in WA State just north of Portland, Oregon. Before he along with HBC were run out by Americans with partition of Oregon Country, which explains his touchiness re: the pig.
BTW, Douglas was also one of the few satraps-of-color in mid-19th century British Empire, being born out of wedlock in (today's) Guyana to a Scottish planter/merchant father and mixed African-European mother.
Tory MP Lee Anderson says no massive need for food banks in UK, and real problem people not being able to cook properly
In his contribution to the Queen’s speech debate the Conservative MP Lee Anderson said that a food bank in his Ashfield constituency operated a “brilliant scheme” whereby people accepting a donation had to register for a budgeting course and a cooking course. He went on:
We show them how to cook cheap and nutritious meals on a budget. We can make a meal for about 30p a day, and this is cooking from scratch.
When an opposition MP put it to Anderson that food banks should not be needed in 21st century Britain, Anderson agreed. He went on:
This is exactly my point. I’ll invite you personally to come to Ashfield, look at our food bank, how it works. And I’ll think you’ll see first hand that there’s not this massive use for food banks in this country. We’ve got generation after generation who cannot cook properly. They can’t cook a meal from scratch. They cannot budget. The challenge is there.
From the context, it is clear that when he said there was not a “massive use for food banks”, he meant no massive need for them.
There is a real problem of people not being able to cook properly.
If Jack Monroe had said that people struggle to cook properly and budget and support was needed for that, you wouldn't blink twice, but a Tory says that and its horrific.
Alternatively, we could find out what Jack Monroe thinks;
"Helping somebody conditional on them saying 'you know what, this is all my own fault, please teach me how to be better at being poor', is disgusting, actually."
To a large extent, it's the Captain Vines theory of economics. Being poor forces you into making bad long-term choices. If you are rich enough to have time and space to cook and buy in bulk, you can feed yourself well and cheaply much more easily than if you are in a bedsit or worse
So she wants people to learn how to cook, but doesn't like a scheme that literally teaches people how to cook. It's almost as if the campaigners have an agenda. Isn't the actual answer - "hey it's not ideal but one extra person who can cook cheaply is another person out of food poverty".
The agenda is they want a world where people are helpless and utterly reliant on state support. I am reliant financially on state support and it's fucking miserable. Anything that can be done to teach skills, techniques etc to help lift yourself away from poverty is a good thing.
A recent comedy. Round where I live.
There are quite a number of bike shops catering to the very well off. Lots of work doing upgrades and stuff, that frankly, a competent bike owner could do themselves.
So they have buckets of second hand bits. Lots of stuff that is straight off bikes that has just been bought - not even used. The bike is bought and then a long list of bit changed. Yes, I know - why not buy a bare frame and buy the toys to match? Anyway....
A lot is not even worth fleabaying.
So a couple of the owners got in touch with some local people and for a couple of quid, let them pick out any stuff they want. Awesome, you'd think?
No, no, no, no..... No.
Before you could say "Clipboard" - a couple of hi-vizziers from the Council popped in to try and claim they were selling dangerous and unsafe equipment.
Of course they did this in earshot of some the rich evul middle class bike owners. One of whom was a lawyer. Of course. The hi-vizziers got pounded like dockside hookers.....
Clipboard wielders are worse than Durham curry and beer people
The important thing is to "professionalise" everything so only middle class and above can afford it.
This worked really well for childcare.
Spot on. What's the point if being middle class unless everything is tailored to expressing your relative affluence? Why have a cheap exercise bike when you can spend £1500 on an exercise bike with a kindle fire stuck on it?
Obviously - but the important bit is to make sure that the Head Count can't get a cheap version. What is the point of having a Sign of Affluence if the Mob all have one?
Very true. Also important to make cheap cuts of meat trendy in the dinner party and tv chef set so they become pricey and only for you. No belly pork or shin of beef for the peasants if you please
I got a huge piece of 26 day aged rib of beef on the weekend at the butchers - he's dropped the prices on that, while the price of ox tail etc rockets up.
Taking food education further I would like to see an ongoing level of free life skills provision available for all.
Something like first 2 hrs per week of cooking, sports, literacy, numeracy, personal finance, fitness, basic IT paid for by the state for everyone who wants it.
A real investment in the people of the UK. It would be expensive at first but we would quickly become happier, better educated and also more productive in work and less costly to the health service.
There might even be more permanent salaried positions for qualified FE teachers. I approve of this. And would chuck languages into the mix. And "wellbeing". Though I detest the term.
Agree on wellbeing, but also couldnt define it so it was in my fitness. Languages borderline for me, not against it but not fussed compared to the others that I think are real issues within the UK.
Yeah. Just noticed you had sport and fitness as two discrete categories.
Yes - get people into actually doing sport. Excessive emphasis on fitness, too early, can just put them off.
Now I must go and row on the Thames.....
Fitness should be a very broad church if it is for all ages, not just gym, but mindfulness, walking groups, yoga, dance, whatever gets people out and about and moving or thinking better.
What is the fucking matter with the man. He's at the 'I love you' stage of being drunk, chucking our overstretched military at anyone who'll have it like an unwanted beery hug.
Uniting the Baltics against the war criminal that is Putin is just desserts for his foolish and miscalculated criminal attack on the sovereign nation of Ukraine
This is interesting and worthy comment, but aren’t you going to do ANY beergate this week? 🙁
I am able to multi task and I did post this earlier today
This may come back to cause issues for Starmer if he receives a Cumming's style verdict from Durham Police rather than a FPN and ironically penned by Mary Foy MP who was present at 'beergate'
“The vast majority of constituents who have contacted me have expressed the view that Mr Cummings’ actions have been insensitive and unacceptable at best, and many feel that they warrant further investigation by the police.”
“While I understand today’s decision by Durham Police to take no further action, many of the constituents who have written to me would like Mr Cummings to resign or be sacked. Clearly, whether you stick by him or not is a matter for you, but the perception from my constituents, and I would hazard a guess that this is a common view across the North East, is that you are currently putting the interests of your chief adviser above that of the people of the region and the country as a whole.”
What is the fucking matter with the man. He's at the 'I love you' stage of being drunk, chucking our overstretched military at anyone who'll have it like an unwanted beery hug.
Isn't Boris just making formal, an unspoken truth?
If Russia invades Finland or Sweden (or both) it's WWIII! Which is why a Russian invasion of Finland or Sweden probably isn't going to happen (I say *probably* rather the *definitely* because there's always that 5% chance Mad Vlad has become so loopy he might actually do it)
If it is WW3, my suggestion would be wait it out until we're attacked - it worked for the Americans in WW2 - few people seem to see that as a blot on their copybook.
Tory MP Lee Anderson says no massive need for food banks in UK, and real problem people not being able to cook properly
In his contribution to the Queen’s speech debate the Conservative MP Lee Anderson said that a food bank in his Ashfield constituency operated a “brilliant scheme” whereby people accepting a donation had to register for a budgeting course and a cooking course. He went on:
We show them how to cook cheap and nutritious meals on a budget. We can make a meal for about 30p a day, and this is cooking from scratch.
When an opposition MP put it to Anderson that food banks should not be needed in 21st century Britain, Anderson agreed. He went on:
This is exactly my point. I’ll invite you personally to come to Ashfield, look at our food bank, how it works. And I’ll think you’ll see first hand that there’s not this massive use for food banks in this country. We’ve got generation after generation who cannot cook properly. They can’t cook a meal from scratch. They cannot budget. The challenge is there.
From the context, it is clear that when he said there was not a “massive use for food banks”, he meant no massive need for them.
It's a fair comment. People in the UK have poorer cooking skill than the rest of Europe. I come across people who struggle to make rice or pasta regularly and not having basic skills really limits the ability to each cheap and nutritious food. Takeaways are both expensive and unhealthy.
It’s the remarkable thing about being in Italy. You hear a group of ordinary Italians having a most heated argument about something, and from the passion and energy you’d think the eldest daughter had run off with the best man or some similar family catastrophe was unfolding.
Then, armed with a little basic Italian, you begin to make out enough words to realise that the debate is really about how to cook a certain recipe or whether one restaurant in town does pasta better than another.
That said, today has been so hot that we escaped to the Slovenian mountains and have been exploring the remains of the trenches in the high mountains around Caporetto - the battle that did more than any single other thing to subsequently and eventually give birth to fascism in Europe - but a name that will draw blank looks from almost anyone you mention it to back at home.
The battles on the Isonzo made the Somme and Paschendale look like masterpieces of military tactics.
Indeed. Although we did pause for a breather atop the hill the capture of which first made the name of a then lieutenant Rommel.
Be tricky doing that for some of the features they fought over further north ... just been reading about that particular theatre of the war.
To a large extent, it's the Captain Vines theory of economics. Being poor forces you into making bad long-term choices. If you are rich enough to have time and space to cook and buy in bulk, you can feed yourself well and cheaply much more easily than if you are in a bedsit or worse
Dorothy L Sayers also wrote about in Murder Must Advertise.
Plus, deep freezes. You can't run one if you are hand-to-mouth about electricity,and they are the or a great saver.
We have a bunch of frozen vegtables in our freezer, and some frozen prawns. When I'm being lazy, I chuck 'em all in a frying pan and add some rice noodles and soy sauce.
My children pronounce this delicious, and it takes less than ten minutes and involves maybe $1 of ingredients per person.
What is the fucking matter with the man. He's at the 'I love you' stage of being drunk, chucking our overstretched military at anyone who'll have it like an unwanted beery hug.
Uniting the Baltics against the war criminal that is Putin is just desserts for his foolish and miscalculated criminal attack on the sovereign nation of Ukraine
This is interesting and worthy comment, but aren’t you going to do ANY beergate this week? 🙁
I am able to multi task and I did post this earlier today
This may come back to cause issues for Starmer if he receives a Cumming's style verdict from Durham Police rather than a FPN and ironically penned by Mary Foy MP who was present at 'beergate'
“The vast majority of constituents who have contacted me have expressed the view that Mr Cummings’ actions have been insensitive and unacceptable at best, and many feel that they warrant further investigation by the police.”
“While I understand today’s decision by Durham Police to take no further action, many of the constituents who have written to me would like Mr Cummings to resign or be sacked. Clearly, whether you stick by him or not is a matter for you, but the perception from my constituents, and I would hazard a guess that this is a common view across the North East, is that you are currently putting the interests of your chief adviser above that of the people of the region and the country as a whole.”
You've been saying for months we have to wait for Ms Gray's report, for a whole catalogue of things allegedly perpetrated by Mr Johnson.
The Express leads with welcome news for families suffering cost of living crisis.
Many other papers lead on government back tracking on what Boris promised.
Is coordinating government messaging really as difficult as they are making it look?
Are you not reading BigG. 's dispatched. Boris is having a great day signing international treaties with non-NATO partners. He has just tweaked Putin's nose and said "nuke us if you dare Vlad"!
Boris has his own hard hat and hi-viz coat, so he'll be fine...
...although if Putin is keeping up with the NI Protocol he might just be thinking, "Boris Johnson and international treaties? Pah!"
If Putin nuked us, Johnson would of course send a Trident nuclear missile to nuke Moscow.
In any case a UK Sweden mutual defence treaty is not yet the same as Sweden joining NATO
Well my reading of it from tonight's PM programme is this: If Putin puts a boot onto Swedish or Finnish soil Boris will be on his case. If Putin so much as harms a hair on the head of a British Tommy sent to defend Sweden or Finland, NATO are involved.
Johnson has ramped this up big time. He was the FIRST NATO leader to sign a treaty and any escalation into Scandinavia by Putin and it's all out confrontation. And do you know what? Good on you BigDog (I still wouldn't vote for the duplicitous b****** mind).
There was already a military alliance between the UK, Finland and Sweden (among others)
A further affirmation of what was the situation anyway - that if Russia attacks Finland or Sweden, then we will be very, very rude.
This re-affirmation of outstanding commitments is a long standing thing in times of tension. For the very, very good reasons why, read The Guns of August -
The Germans in 1914 convinced themselves that the UK would abandon the Belgians, because WWI wasn't going to work for them (the Germans) if the UK didn't.
On the UK side, no-one thought that they needed to re-affirm the treaty. If they had...
The Armenian genocide memoir that I’m reading right now makes that same point. The Armenian author is in Germany in 1914 when WW1 kicks off. At first everyone is elated because they are convinced Germany can easily win a swift war against France and Russia
Then “England” joins the war and the elation turns instantly to a numb, stunned sourness, as Germans realise the war will be looooooong and they might not win
Never seen it told that way before
I recently watched a video on the history of WW1. It takes the conflict as a totality, and it is surprising how little of it concentrates on the trenches of France, and instead on events in Turkey or the Middle East. The western front was just a part of a much wider conflict; much of which 'we' ignore. (Mrs J, being Turkish, has a very different perspective.)
But this brings me onto a thorny question: who was to 'blame' for WW1? WW2 is an easy answer: Germany and Japan. But was WW1 just a conflict that was going to happen, as empires and would-be empires faced each other off like drunkards in a dive bar? Might it have happened earlier, and if Ferdinand had not been killed, might a reason for war have been found a year or two later?
What is the fucking matter with the man. He's at the 'I love you' stage of being drunk, chucking our overstretched military at anyone who'll have it like an unwanted beery hug.
Uniting the Baltics against the war criminal that is Putin is just desserts for his foolish and miscalculated criminal attack on the sovereign nation of Ukraine
This is interesting and worthy comment, but aren’t you going to do ANY beergate this week? 🙁
I am able to multi task and I did post this earlier today
This may come back to cause issues for Starmer if he receives a Cumming's style verdict from Durham Police rather than a FPN and ironically penned by Mary Foy MP who was present at 'beergate'
“The vast majority of constituents who have contacted me have expressed the view that Mr Cummings’ actions have been insensitive and unacceptable at best, and many feel that they warrant further investigation by the police.”
“While I understand today’s decision by Durham Police to take no further action, many of the constituents who have written to me would like Mr Cummings to resign or be sacked. Clearly, whether you stick by him or not is a matter for you, but the perception from my constituents, and I would hazard a guess that this is a common view across the North East, is that you are currently putting the interests of your chief adviser above that of the people of the region and the country as a whole.”
You've been saying for months we have to wait for Ms Gray's report, for a whole catalogue of things allegedly perpetrated by Mr Johnson.
Now you can't wait for a few days?!
Six to eight weeks apparently and why is this not salient ?
Tory MP Lee Anderson says no massive need for food banks in UK, and real problem people not being able to cook properly
In his contribution to the Queen’s speech debate the Conservative MP Lee Anderson said that a food bank in his Ashfield constituency operated a “brilliant scheme” whereby people accepting a donation had to register for a budgeting course and a cooking course. He went on:
We show them how to cook cheap and nutritious meals on a budget. We can make a meal for about 30p a day, and this is cooking from scratch.
When an opposition MP put it to Anderson that food banks should not be needed in 21st century Britain, Anderson agreed. He went on:
This is exactly my point. I’ll invite you personally to come to Ashfield, look at our food bank, how it works. And I’ll think you’ll see first hand that there’s not this massive use for food banks in this country. We’ve got generation after generation who cannot cook properly. They can’t cook a meal from scratch. They cannot budget. The challenge is there.
From the context, it is clear that when he said there was not a “massive use for food banks”, he meant no massive need for them.
There is a real problem of people not being able to cook properly.
If Jack Monroe had said that people struggle to cook properly and budget and support was needed for that, you wouldn't blink twice, but a Tory says that and its horrific.
Alternatively, we could find out what Jack Monroe thinks;
"Helping somebody conditional on them saying 'you know what, this is all my own fault, please teach me how to be better at being poor', is disgusting, actually."
To a large extent, it's the Captain Vines theory of economics. Being poor forces you into making bad long-term choices. If you are rich enough to have time and space to cook and buy in bulk, you can feed yourself well and cheaply much more easily than if you are in a bedsit or worse
So she wants people to learn how to cook, but doesn't like a scheme that literally teaches people how to cook. It's almost as if the campaigners have an agenda. Isn't the actual answer - "hey it's not ideal but one extra person who can cook cheaply is another person out of food poverty".
The agenda is they want a world where people are helpless and utterly reliant on state support. I am reliant financially on state support and it's fucking miserable. Anything that can be done to teach skills, techniques etc to help lift yourself away from poverty is a good thing.
A recent comedy. Round where I live.
There are quite a number of bike shops catering to the very well off. Lots of work doing upgrades and stuff, that frankly, a competent bike owner could do themselves.
So they have buckets of second hand bits. Lots of stuff that is straight off bikes that has just been bought - not even used. The bike is bought and then a long list of bit changed. Yes, I know - why not buy a bare frame and buy the toys to match? Anyway....
A lot is not even worth fleabaying.
So a couple of the owners got in touch with some local people and for a couple of quid, let them pick out any stuff they want. Awesome, you'd think?
No, no, no, no..... No.
Before you could say "Clipboard" - a couple of hi-vizziers from the Council popped in to try and claim they were selling dangerous and unsafe equipment.
Of course they did this in earshot of some the rich evul middle class bike owners. One of whom was a lawyer. Of course. The hi-vizziers got pounded like dockside hookers.....
When I first moved to Cambridge, I lived in a shared house in Milton with a few blokes. One was a caterer who worked at one of the Cambridge colleges. He had made a top-notch bike by stealing bits of various other bikes from around the city at night: if a nice bike was locked through the wheel, he'd dismantle it and steal the frame, leaving everything else behind. If he needed the chainset, he'd take just that.
What got me was that it would probably have been quicker to steal the whole bike; instead, he would carefully dismantle it, taking only the bits he needed, and leaving the rest in a pile. Because of his job, he was often around the city late at night.
He'd also go into the back garden of the house and hit golf balls over the surrounding rooftops, not caring where they landed.
Nice bike as a whole = identifiable configuration, traceable against Ploddata.
Bits = not traceable. Presumably he also had an UV lamp and the necessary solvents?
What is the fucking matter with the man. He's at the 'I love you' stage of being drunk, chucking our overstretched military at anyone who'll have it like an unwanted beery hug.
Isn't Boris just making formal, an unspoken truth?
If Russia invades Finland or Sweden (or both) it's WWIII! Which is why a Russian invasion of Finland or Sweden probably isn't going to happen (I say *probably* rather the *definitely* because there's always that 5% chance Mad Vlad has become so loopy he might actually do it)
If it is WW3, my suggestion would be wait it out until we're attacked - it worked for the Americans in WW2 - few people seem to see that as a blot on their copybook.
I'd take your 'suggestion' with more weight if you would answer a simple question: do you believe the Dutch investigation into the M17 shootdown got to the truth of the matter, or do you still parrot a Russian line?
What is the fucking matter with the man. He's at the 'I love you' stage of being drunk, chucking our overstretched military at anyone who'll have it like an unwanted beery hug.
Isn't Boris just making formal, an unspoken truth?
If Russia invades Finland or Sweden (or both) it's WWIII! Which is why a Russian invasion of Finland or Sweden probably isn't going to happen (I say *probably* rather the *definitely* because there's always that 5% chance Mad Vlad has become so loopy he might actually do it)
If it is WW3, my suggestion would be wait it out until we're attacked - it worked for the Americans in WW2 - few people seem to see that as a blot on their copybook.
Probably sounding cynical but trying to be honest, the answer is, Lucky, Boris pressed on partygate and beergate at the news conference today refuses to answer with “we have moved on to far more important things now.”
I expect operation save big dog is still working to shore up his position. Things like todays visits and promises are his best way to do that maybe? Considering his Treasury or cabinet won’t back his promise in debate yesterday to help families with cost of living crisis, what else can operation saving big dog work with this week? 🤔
HYUFD, playing these deals down in contrast to Big G, summed up todays entente cordially deals by pointing out in this thread, they are not “legally binding” in the same way as NATO membership, leaving us in no doubt once NATO membership deals come along, these deals become superseded even mostly meaningless is what I took from it.
However, correct me where I am wrong, I understand HY is also not being open about “legally bindings” if a NATO ally is attacked - we could just send Putin a stiff letter and call in his ambassador for a dressing down, this is all we are “legally obliged” to do in NATO membership?
Taking food education further I would like to see an ongoing level of free life skills provision available for all.
Something like first 2 hrs per week of cooking, sports, literacy, numeracy, personal finance, fitness, basic IT paid for by the state for everyone who wants it.
A real investment in the people of the UK. It would be expensive at first but we would quickly become happier, better educated and also more productive in work and less costly to the health service.
There might even be more permanent salaried positions for qualified FE teachers. I approve of this. And would chuck languages into the mix. And "wellbeing". Though I detest the term.
Agree on wellbeing, but also couldnt define it so it was in my fitness. Languages borderline for me, not against it but not fussed compared to the others that I think are real issues within the UK.
Yeah. Just noticed you had sport and fitness as two discrete categories.
Yes - get people into actually doing sport. Excessive emphasis on fitness, too early, can just put them off.
Now I must go and row on the Thames.....
Fitness should be a very broad church if it is for all ages, not just gym, but mindfulness, walking groups, yoga, dance, whatever gets people out and about and moving or thinking better.
I would argue it goes wider still. Encompassing anger management, parenting skills, addiction therapies, cooking, personal finance and the like. Which is where it tips into "wellbeing". Which I don't like, but haven't a better term for. All of which are much better than yet another night of Netflix.
What is the fucking matter with the man. He's at the 'I love you' stage of being drunk, chucking our overstretched military at anyone who'll have it like an unwanted beery hug.
Uniting the Baltics against the war criminal that is Putin is just desserts for his foolish and miscalculated criminal attack on the sovereign nation of Ukraine
This is interesting and worthy comment, but aren’t you going to do ANY beergate this week? 🙁
I am able to multi task and I did post this earlier today
This may come back to cause issues for Starmer if he receives a Cumming's style verdict from Durham Police rather than a FPN and ironically penned by Mary Foy MP who was present at 'beergate'
“The vast majority of constituents who have contacted me have expressed the view that Mr Cummings’ actions have been insensitive and unacceptable at best, and many feel that they warrant further investigation by the police.”
“While I understand today’s decision by Durham Police to take no further action, many of the constituents who have written to me would like Mr Cummings to resign or be sacked. Clearly, whether you stick by him or not is a matter for you, but the perception from my constituents, and I would hazard a guess that this is a common view across the North East, is that you are currently putting the interests of your chief adviser above that of the people of the region and the country as a whole.”
You've been saying for months we have to wait for Ms Gray's report, for a whole catalogue of things allegedly perpetrated by Mr Johnson.
Now you can't wait for a few days?!
Six to eight weeks apparently and why is this not salient ?
Given how long the wait for justice is these days, that's pretty quick by current standards. Unless you want the Tory party to interfere.
I agree that too many people can't cook from scratch.
But only an idiot would say that you can make homemade meals for "30p per day". Lee Anderson is an idiot, so that fits.
Risotto and Spanish Omelette.
Both are utterly delicious (or can be if cooked well). Both can be made extremely cheaply.
(Spanish omlette - 1.5 eggs per person, 1/4 onion, a couple of potatoes, a splash of olive oil... that's going to come in below 50p per person unless you really overboard with your eggs.)
To a large extent, it's the Captain Vines theory of economics. Being poor forces you into making bad long-term choices. If you are rich enough to have time and space to cook and buy in bulk, you can feed yourself well and cheaply much more easily than if you are in a bedsit or worse
Dorothy L Sayers also wrote about in Murder Must Advertise.
Plus, deep freezes. You can't run one if you are hand-to-mouth about electricity,and they are the or a great saver.
We have a bunch of frozen vegtables in our freezer, and some frozen prawns. When I'm being lazy, I chuck 'em all in a frying pan and add some rice noodles and soy sauce.
My children pronounce this delicious, and it takes less than ten minutes and involves maybe $1 of ingredients per person.
I had some chicken, frozen sliced mushrooms, spring onions and noodles with soy today as it happens. Cheap and tasty
Watching that Gove video, crikey, he reminds me of a friend who went through a pretty messy divorce.
It's not pleasant.
I had thought of all the twatty Brexiteers out there, there was one, that while very weird in many ways appeared otherwise comparatively sane, and that was Gove. This morning he proved he was even more twatty than the worst of them.
Yeah, as long as the people on the other side of the argument are low rent basic types like David Davis, JRM, Mad Nad and Priti Patel you can be pretty sure you're on the right side. Gove is the exception because he is really not stupid. But he seems to be undergoing an epic mid life crisis, so maybe he was mad too, or BDS has taken its toll on him. I don't count Johnson in this because as we all know he doesn't give a shit about Brexit either way.
What is the fucking matter with the man. He's at the 'I love you' stage of being drunk, chucking our overstretched military at anyone who'll have it like an unwanted beery hug.
Uniting the Baltics against the war criminal that is Putin is just desserts for his foolish and miscalculated criminal attack on the sovereign nation of Ukraine
This is interesting and worthy comment, but aren’t you going to do ANY beergate this week? 🙁
I am able to multi task and I did post this earlier today
This may come back to cause issues for Starmer if he receives a Cumming's style verdict from Durham Police rather than a FPN and ironically penned by Mary Foy MP who was present at 'beergate'
“The vast majority of constituents who have contacted me have expressed the view that Mr Cummings’ actions have been insensitive and unacceptable at best, and many feel that they warrant further investigation by the police.”
“While I understand today’s decision by Durham Police to take no further action, many of the constituents who have written to me would like Mr Cummings to resign or be sacked. Clearly, whether you stick by him or not is a matter for you, but the perception from my constituents, and I would hazard a guess that this is a common view across the North East, is that you are currently putting the interests of your chief adviser above that of the people of the region and the country as a whole.”
You've been saying for months we have to wait for Ms Gray's report, for a whole catalogue of things allegedly perpetrated by Mr Johnson.
Now you can't wait for a few days?!
Six to eight weeks apparently and why is this not salient ?
Given how long the wait for justice is these days, that's pretty quick by current standards. Unless you want the Tory party to interfere.
What is the fucking matter with the man. He's at the 'I love you' stage of being drunk, chucking our overstretched military at anyone who'll have it like an unwanted beery hug.
Uniting the Baltics against the war criminal that is Putin is just desserts for his foolish and miscalculated criminal attack on the sovereign nation of Ukraine
This is interesting and worthy comment, but aren’t you going to do ANY beergate this week? 🙁
I am able to multi task and I did post this earlier today
This may come back to cause issues for Starmer if he receives a Cumming's style verdict from Durham Police rather than a FPN and ironically penned by Mary Foy MP who was present at 'beergate'
“The vast majority of constituents who have contacted me have expressed the view that Mr Cummings’ actions have been insensitive and unacceptable at best, and many feel that they warrant further investigation by the police.”
“While I understand today’s decision by Durham Police to take no further action, many of the constituents who have written to me would like Mr Cummings to resign or be sacked. Clearly, whether you stick by him or not is a matter for you, but the perception from my constituents, and I would hazard a guess that this is a common view across the North East, is that you are currently putting the interests of your chief adviser above that of the people of the region and the country as a whole.”
That is the spot on answer Big G, becuase I already posted this myself a few days ago when my Dad said it - a ticking off or “not enough evidence to prove it” verdict but no fine means he can be hounded by beergate innuendo all over again, forever 😄
Wow. Key modeller who demanded more lockdowns admits too much weight was given to models - a regular area of strong discussion on PB (where there are many who are more numerate than most peeps) at the time.
I am going to be charitable and say that this is a very important if belated contribution to the forthcoming public inquiry on covid.
"Britain relied too much on 'very scary' SAGE models to decide on lockdowns, according to the man behind some of those very projections.
Just months after SAGE predicted 6,000 deaths per day and called for a Christmas lockdown in response to Omicron, Professor John Edmunds said the models were only supposed to be 'one component' of decision-making but were leaned on too much by ministers.
He accepted the models failed to account for the economic harm and the knock-on health effects that lockdowns caused."
Tory MP Lee Anderson says no massive need for food banks in UK, and real problem people not being able to cook properly
In his contribution to the Queen’s speech debate the Conservative MP Lee Anderson said that a food bank in his Ashfield constituency operated a “brilliant scheme” whereby people accepting a donation had to register for a budgeting course and a cooking course. He went on:
We show them how to cook cheap and nutritious meals on a budget. We can make a meal for about 30p a day, and this is cooking from scratch.
When an opposition MP put it to Anderson that food banks should not be needed in 21st century Britain, Anderson agreed. He went on:
This is exactly my point. I’ll invite you personally to come to Ashfield, look at our food bank, how it works. And I’ll think you’ll see first hand that there’s not this massive use for food banks in this country. We’ve got generation after generation who cannot cook properly. They can’t cook a meal from scratch. They cannot budget. The challenge is there.
From the context, it is clear that when he said there was not a “massive use for food banks”, he meant no massive need for them.
There is a real problem of people not being able to cook properly.
If Jack Monroe had said that people struggle to cook properly and budget and support was needed for that, you wouldn't blink twice, but a Tory says that and its horrific.
Alternatively, we could find out what Jack Monroe thinks;
"Helping somebody conditional on them saying 'you know what, this is all my own fault, please teach me how to be better at being poor', is disgusting, actually."
To a large extent, it's the Captain Vines theory of economics. Being poor forces you into making bad long-term choices. If you are rich enough to have time and space to cook and buy in bulk, you can feed yourself well and cheaply much more easily than if you are in a bedsit or worse
So she wants people to learn how to cook, but doesn't like a scheme that literally teaches people how to cook. It's almost as if the campaigners have an agenda. Isn't the actual answer - "hey it's not ideal but one extra person who can cook cheaply is another person out of food poverty".
The agenda is they want a world where people are helpless and utterly reliant on state support. I am reliant financially on state support and it's fucking miserable. Anything that can be done to teach skills, techniques etc to help lift yourself away from poverty is a good thing.
A recent comedy. Round where I live.
There are quite a number of bike shops catering to the very well off. Lots of work doing upgrades and stuff, that frankly, a competent bike owner could do themselves.
So they have buckets of second hand bits. Lots of stuff that is straight off bikes that has just been bought - not even used. The bike is bought and then a long list of bit changed. Yes, I know - why not buy a bare frame and buy the toys to match? Anyway....
A lot is not even worth fleabaying.
So a couple of the owners got in touch with some local people and for a couple of quid, let them pick out any stuff they want. Awesome, you'd think?
No, no, no, no..... No.
Before you could say "Clipboard" - a couple of hi-vizziers from the Council popped in to try and claim they were selling dangerous and unsafe equipment.
Of course they did this in earshot of some the rich evul middle class bike owners. One of whom was a lawyer. Of course. The hi-vizziers got pounded like dockside hookers.....
When I first moved to Cambridge, I lived in a shared house in Milton with a few blokes. One was a caterer who worked at one of the Cambridge colleges. He had made a top-notch bike by stealing bits of various other bikes from around the city at night: if a nice bike was locked through the wheel, he'd dismantle it and steal the frame, leaving everything else behind. If he needed the chainset, he'd take just that.
What got me was that it would probably have been quicker to steal the whole bike; instead, he would carefully dismantle it, taking only the bits he needed, and leaving the rest in a pile. Because of his job, he was often around the city late at night.
He'd also go into the back garden of the house and hit golf balls over the surrounding rooftops, not caring where they landed.
Nice bike as a whole = identifiable configuration, traceable against Ploddata.
Bits = not traceable. Presumably he also had an UV lamp and the necessary solvents?
No idea; didn't ask. I do know he took to prowling around the streets at night, looking for the components he needed, with tools in his backpack. "Just needed for fixing my bike, officer."
His parents lived near Nottingham, so I'd often drive him home at weekends on the way to see my girlfriend in derby. One of the people you meet and spend a lot of time with, but then touch with when you move. Or at least I do...
Taking food education further I would like to see an ongoing level of free life skills provision available for all.
Something like first 2 hrs per week of cooking, sports, literacy, numeracy, personal finance, fitness, basic IT paid for by the state for everyone who wants it.
A real investment in the people of the UK. It would be expensive at first but we would quickly become happier, better educated and also more productive in work and less costly to the health service.
There might even be more permanent salaried positions for qualified FE teachers. I approve of this. And would chuck languages into the mix. And "wellbeing". Though I detest the term.
Agree on wellbeing, but also couldnt define it so it was in my fitness. Languages borderline for me, not against it but not fussed compared to the others that I think are real issues within the UK.
Yeah. Just noticed you had sport and fitness as two discrete categories.
Yes - get people into actually doing sport. Excessive emphasis on fitness, too early, can just put them off.
Now I must go and row on the Thames.....
Fitness should be a very broad church if it is for all ages, not just gym, but mindfulness, walking groups, yoga, dance, whatever gets people out and about and moving or thinking better.
I would argue it goes wider still. Encompassing anger management, parenting skills, addiction therapies, cooking, personal finance and the like. Which is where it tips into "wellbeing". Which I don't like, but haven't a better term for. All of which are much better than yet another night of Netflix.
Parenting absolutely! Forgot that, but it is a key one, crazy it is not taught yet we obsess over kings and queens from 1000 years ago. Coping with anger or addiction definitely should be available for free, far cheaper for society to avoid some of the issues by paying early than dealing with it afterwards.
Tory MP Lee Anderson says no massive need for food banks in UK, and real problem people not being able to cook properly
In his contribution to the Queen’s speech debate the Conservative MP Lee Anderson said that a food bank in his Ashfield constituency operated a “brilliant scheme” whereby people accepting a donation had to register for a budgeting course and a cooking course. He went on:
We show them how to cook cheap and nutritious meals on a budget. We can make a meal for about 30p a day, and this is cooking from scratch.
When an opposition MP put it to Anderson that food banks should not be needed in 21st century Britain, Anderson agreed. He went on:
This is exactly my point. I’ll invite you personally to come to Ashfield, look at our food bank, how it works. And I’ll think you’ll see first hand that there’s not this massive use for food banks in this country. We’ve got generation after generation who cannot cook properly. They can’t cook a meal from scratch. They cannot budget. The challenge is there.
From the context, it is clear that when he said there was not a “massive use for food banks”, he meant no massive need for them.
It's a fair comment. People in the UK have poorer cooking skill than the rest of Europe. I come across people who struggle to make rice or pasta regularly and not having basic skills really limits the ability to each cheap and nutritious food. Takeaways are both expensive and unhealthy.
It’s the remarkable thing about being in Italy. You hear a group of ordinary Italians having a most heated argument about something, and from the passion and energy you’d think the eldest daughter had run off with the best man or some similar family catastrophe was unfolding.
Then, armed with a little basic Italian, you begin to make out enough words to realise that the debate is really about how to cook a certain recipe or whether one restaurant in town does pasta better than another.
That said, today has been so hot that we escaped to the Slovenian mountains and have been exploring the remains of the trenches in the high mountains around Caporetto - the battle that did more than any single other thing to subsequently and eventually give birth to fascism in Europe - but a name that will draw blank looks from almost anyone you mention it to back at home.
The battles on the Isonzo made the Somme and Paschendale look like masterpieces of military tactics.
Indeed. Although we did pause for a breather atop the hill the capture of which first made the name of a then lieutenant Rommel.
My great grandfather was attached to General Gough's military mission to the Italians and was wounded at Vaporetto. After he recovered he was sent to Paschendael where he was gassed. He died with half a lung in 1924
Comments
But only an idiot would say that you can make homemade meals for "30p per day".
Lee Anderson is an idiot, so that fits.
How did that Pulp song go?
Rent a flat above a shop
Cut your hair and get a job
Smoke some fags and play some pool
Pretend you never went to school
But still you'll never get it right
'Cause when you're laid in bed at night
Watching roaches climb the wall
If you called your dad he could stop it all, yeah
You'll never live like common people
You'll never do whatever common people do
You'll never fail like common people
You'll never watch your life slide out of view
And you dance and drink and screw
Because there's nothing else to do
One of the key requirements of "doing a funny voice" is the ability to discern which accent the speaker is attempting.
There are quite a number of bike shops catering to the very well off. Lots of work doing upgrades and stuff, that frankly, a competent bike owner could do themselves.
So they have buckets of second hand bits. Lots of stuff that is straight off bikes that has just been bought - not even used. The bike is bought and then a long list of bit changed. Yes, I know - why not buy a bare frame and buy the toys to match? Anyway....
A lot is not even worth fleabaying.
So a couple of the owners got in touch with some local people and for a couple of quid, let them pick out any stuff they want. Awesome, you'd think?
No, no, no, no..... No.
Before you could say "Clipboard" - a couple of hi-vizziers from the Council popped in to try and claim they were selling dangerous and unsafe equipment.
Of course they did this in earshot of some the rich evul middle class bike owners. One of whom was a lawyer. Of course. The hi-vizziers got pounded like dockside hookers.....
* yes I know she didn't actually say this.
Part of it is obviously politicians on both sides playing politics, but there is a massive need for both food banks and food education at the moment.
They’re not trying to actually solve problems except by government handouts, assume people never fall through cracks in the system, and think that before 2010 we had some sort of socialist Utopia (EUtopia?) where no-one ever went hungry.
Here we have an example of a brilliant charity, working hard with some of the most disadvantaged in society, providing them with subsistence resources and training. The Guardian would usually laud this activity, but instead they hate it, for what looks to be no reason other than the fact we have Conservatives in government.
Mere evaporation also seems unlikely. Though sublimation just MIGHT be possible?
Harney and Pickett didn't come out well in my HS Canadian history course.
The main street in Victoria is still named after the governor of Vancouver Island who sent the troops, James Douglas.
It's not pleasant.
You always get this kind of crap at the fag end of a Tory government. Out of touch, out of ideas, out of fat to cut off the state.
It’s the remarkable thing about being in Italy. You hear a group of ordinary Italians having a most heated argument about something, and from the passion and energy you’d think the eldest daughter had run off with the best man or some similar family catastrophe was unfolding.
Then, armed with a little basic Italian, you begin to make out enough words to realise that the debate is really about how to cook a certain recipe or whether one restaurant in town does pasta better than another.
That said, today has been so hot that we escaped to the Slovenian mountains and have been exploring the remains of the trenches in the high mountains around Caporetto - the battle that did more than any single other thing to subsequently and eventually give birth to fascism in Europe - but a name that will draw blank looks from almost anyone you mention it to back at home.
Cooking courses are exactly the sort of self help thing one sees in many places. Like the DIY courses one gets from Mens Sheds.
Johnson has ramped this up big time. He was the FIRST NATO leader to sign a treaty and any escalation into Scandinavia by Putin and it's all out confrontation. And do you know what? Good on you BigDog (I still wouldn't vote for the duplicitous b****** mind).
This worked really well for childcare.
It's a sign of the lack of ideological coherence of the Tory Party if anything, rather than of a government policy.
I once ran into Jarvis Cocker in the toilets at Watford Gap services, which seemed a suitably Pulp like venue. Our eyes met but only Leon will be able to tell you whether there was any romantic spark. Pulp are amazing, one of my favourite bands.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Joint_Expeditionary_Force
Long standing UK policy.....
Something like first 2 hrs per week of cooking, sports, literacy, numeracy, personal finance, fitness, basic IT paid for by the state for everyone who wants it.
A real investment in the people of the UK. It would be expensive at first but we would quickly become happier, better educated and also more productive in work and less costly to the health service.
The year it exploded also saw a corresponding collapse in people taking payday loans.
Some people have always got into difficulty, but isn't it great to have charity available when people fall between the cracks instead of predatory loan sharks?
"Whatever Michael Gove had for breakfast the LDs would legalise it".
I approve of this.
And would chuck languages into the mix. And "wellbeing". Though I detest the term.
CPD is a requirement in a lot of jobs.
But we make Continuous Personal Development scarce and prohibitively costly.
Why have a cheap exercise bike when you can spend £1500 on an exercise bike with a kindle fire stuck on it?
Replacing Wonga with the Trussell Trust ought to be celebrated. It's one of the best developments in the past decade and a real world case of David Cameron's Big Society in action.
Instead of people celebrating Cameron's achievement with that, people put it down as a failure.
Go to the museums at Rovereto
God knows what he's on about, but you can tell he is a Leaver to the core: plural of Auschwitz is Auschwitzes.
This re-affirmation of outstanding commitments is a long standing thing in times of tension. For the very, very good reasons why, read The Guns of August -
The Germans in 1914 convinced themselves that the UK would abandon the Belgians, because WWI wasn't going to work for them (the Germans) if the UK didn't.
On the UK side, no-one thought that they needed to re-affirm the treaty. If they had...
BTW, Douglas was also one of the few satraps-of-color in mid-19th century British Empire, being born out of wedlock in (today's) Guyana to a Scottish planter/merchant father and mixed African-European mother.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Douglas_(governor)
What got me was that it would probably have been quicker to steal the whole bike; instead, he would carefully dismantle it, taking only the bits he needed, and leaving the rest in a pile. Because of his job, he was often around the city late at night.
He'd also go into the back garden of the house and hit golf balls over the surrounding rooftops, not caring where they landed.
Now I must go and row on the Thames.....
Then “England” joins the war and the elation turns instantly to a numb, stunned sourness, as Germans realise the war will be looooooong and they might not win
Never seen it told that way before
I know this triggers some people, but Ed Miliband's actions in the wake of the use of chemical weapons in Syria contributed to Putin's actions. It made it look as though the west was impotent, and would not react to anything bad people did. He could act as though the west could be divided.
Despite this, as a country, I think we did well, considering most other civilised countries did not give a damn. Then again, we had been directly affected by the Litvinenko and Salisbury affairs.
This may come back to cause issues for Starmer if he receives a Cumming's style verdict from Durham Police rather than a FPN and ironically penned by Mary Foy MP who was present at 'beergate'
“The vast majority of constituents who have contacted me have expressed the view that Mr Cummings’ actions have been insensitive and unacceptable at best, and many feel that they warrant further investigation by the police.”
“While I understand today’s decision by Durham Police to take no further action, many of the constituents who have written to me would like Mr Cummings to resign or be sacked. Clearly, whether you stick by him or not is a matter for you, but the perception from my constituents, and I would hazard a guess that this is a common view across the North East, is that you are currently putting the interests of your chief adviser above that of the people of the region and the country as a whole.”
My children pronounce this delicious, and it takes less than ten minutes and involves maybe $1 of ingredients per person.
Now you can't wait for a few days?!
But this brings me onto a thorny question: who was to 'blame' for WW1? WW2 is an easy answer: Germany and Japan. But was WW1 just a conflict that was going to happen, as empires and would-be empires faced each other off like drunkards in a dive bar? Might it have happened earlier, and if Ferdinand had not been killed, might a reason for war have been found a year or two later?
Bits = not traceable. Presumably he also had an UV lamp and the necessary solvents?
I expect operation save big dog is still working to shore up his position. Things like todays visits and promises are his best way to do that maybe? Considering his Treasury or cabinet won’t back his promise in debate yesterday to help families with cost of living crisis, what else can operation saving big dog work with this week? 🤔
HYUFD, playing these deals down in contrast to Big G, summed up todays entente cordially deals by pointing out in this thread, they are not “legally binding” in the same way as NATO membership, leaving us in no doubt once NATO membership deals come along, these deals become superseded even mostly meaningless is what I took from it.
However, correct me where I am wrong, I understand HY is also not being open about “legally bindings” if a NATO ally is attacked - we could just send Putin a stiff letter and call in his ambassador for a dressing down, this is all we are “legally obliged” to do in NATO membership?
All of which are much better than yet another night of Netflix.
Both are utterly delicious (or can be if cooked well). Both can be made extremely cheaply.
(Spanish omlette - 1.5 eggs per person, 1/4 onion, a couple of potatoes, a splash of olive oil... that's going to come in below 50p per person unless you really overboard with your eggs.)
I don't count Johnson in this because as we all know he doesn't give a shit about Brexit either way.
I am going to be charitable and say that this is a very important if belated contribution to the forthcoming public inquiry on covid.
"Britain relied too much on 'very scary' SAGE models to decide on lockdowns, according to the man behind some of those very projections.
Just months after SAGE predicted 6,000 deaths per day and called for a Christmas lockdown in response to Omicron, Professor John Edmunds said the models were only supposed to be 'one component' of decision-making but were leaned on too much by ministers.
He accepted the models failed to account for the economic harm and the knock-on health effects that lockdowns caused."
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10804993/SAGE-models-scary-held-weight-says-lockdown-architect-them.html
His parents lived near Nottingham, so I'd often drive him home at weekends on the way to see my girlfriend in derby. One of the people you meet and spend a lot of time with, but then touch with when you move. Or at least I do...