Is this really what people want?

MrsDeVere Thu 18-Oct-12 10:03:22
"I do not want someone who is forced into an apprenticeship, on less than nmw, looking after my loved ones.
Thanks"

Exactly.

foos......food of course.

Excellent point Claig, I watched a documentary about junk foos a little while ago and the corn syrup used in foods was found to be extremely harmful and if I remember correctly quite addictive, so people got hooked on this sticky sweeter tasting junk good.

I hate to think what is going to happen when the changes take full effect. Are the Cons building more prisons? they'll need to.

omg

At my very poorest [single parent income support level] no way could I afford to buy a meal for 4 in mcdonalds.

Never seen a queue coming out of a fast food place in my whole life. ever.

In my old school there were waifs. The teachers used to joke when our school played football matches with the grammar schools because our lot were visibly shorter. 15 years on, I went back to teach at this school. No kids were waifs, obesity had replaced that.

I do think there are poor people in the UK but none are starving through lack of money. Eating crap actually costs a lot of money. Imagine the veg you can buy for the price of a McDonalds for four! I was always gobsmacked when I lived in another city - the bus used to go through the poorest district - at 6pm there were cues of people coming out of fast food places all along the road. Families buying their evening meal.

xenia its also the same body shape that Clarke and Pickles and they are not claimants of anything.......oh wait [hhmm]

And heres some more about those "non existent" food banks that arent needed according to Xenia because according to her the poor are over fed.

www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jul/18/food-banks-on-hand-outs?INTCMP=SRCH

Especially for you Xenia since you are the one who bangs on about "immigrants" working towards a better life.
This article proves that they are having it as badly as the rest of the country.

A large crowd in the Hope Centre are from Romania, and say they are waiting for food because collecting scrap metal and washing cars isn't enough to make ends meet. A bigger number is there because of benefit delays and cuts, or simply because they are no longer able to make their low wages stretch.

A local supermarket has delivered a load of stock just about to reach its sell-by date (it doesn't want to be named, to avoid getting caught up in discussion of the merits of giving food that is about to go off to the hungry) and today it is offloading industrial quantities of iced buns, which several families take home by the dozen.

The boom in Britain's food banks reflects a number of worrying and complicated trends. As well as rising unemployment, more people are seeing their hours cut at work. For the past couple of years, charities have been warning that a shift to a less generous way of uprating benefits in line with inflation, combined with rising food and fuel prices, would make life more difficult for people claiming benefits. Then there is the start of a new, harsher benefits regime, as a result of which it seems that more claimants are having their payments sanctioned ? cut or stopped entirely ? if they miss appointments. At the same time, the state system of a social fund and crisis loans is being wound down, so emergency cash payments from the welfare system for those deemed to be in extreme need are now exceptionally difficult to procure. Around 43% of visitors to Trussell Trust distribution centres nationwide come because of changes to their benefits or a crisis loan being refused.

Xenia, you know full well that obesity may be caused by what is put into processed food - things like high-fructose corn syrup.

www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S26/91/22K07/

It's not that the poor are living it up, but that they are often being fed poor quality food which in itself is fattening.

Well the Guardian agrees with me illustrated with a photograph of the typical body shape of many benefits claimants.

www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/aug/23/class-divide-health-widens-thinktank

Xenia has a lot of common sense.

Xenia you are living proof that brains and common sense are two different things!

Obviously there are a few fat rich people and some poor thin people but every set of stats ever produced in recent history in the UK shows many more of the poor are fat than the risk. The lower your social class the fatter you are so to suggest benefits do not give you enough to eat really defies the evidence of the surveys and our own eyes.

XeniaFri 26-Oct-12 17:33:12

They are fed. 60% of us are over weight. We have nevre had such fat people particularly the lower earners. You cannot suggest the poor are not fed. they are massively over fed. If we got their calorie intake down to 1800 a day with less food they would be so much better.

AuscreemaAscareSun 28-Oct-12 00:18:38

It is shameful. When I worked in education, the children from large non-working families who were neglectful visibly lost weight during the summer holidays. They needed that one hot meal every day. They would raid other children's lunchboxes whenever they could and the H.T would berate them for stealing treats as if they were just greedy [anger]

If people are objecting to the fact that the poor are more overweight than the rich in the UK or that most immigrants work very hard they just need to look at the statistics.

Err no Xenia they only need to look at Ken Clarke and Eric Pickles.

Yes, it really is what people want.

Humans have a real problem identifying need in people they don't know.

There are people who give money to charities that pay for music lessons for children.

And they feel good about that charity. And they feel like they are supporting childhood by supporting that charity.

And yet you can show them a photograph of a child lying starved and alone at the side of a road, and they are sad, but NOT SAD ENOUGH TO STOP FUNDING POINTLESS FRIPPERIES AND PAY FOR SOME FOOD INSTEAD.

And it really is not because they are bad people. If that child had been at the side of their drive, they'd have rushed out there and called an ambulance, they'd have been appalled, it's because hearing about something is not the same as seeing it with your own eyes, it really isn't. As a race we have to force ourselves to care about something that isn't affecting us, and some people can't do it very effectively. They aren't bad, they just don't have the ability.

So when you tell rich childless lawyers, solicitors etc that there are real people going very cold and hungry in this country, they actually cannot believe you. If you were to show them the cold hungry person, then they would believe, but until then, they haven't seen it happen, so It Does Not Happen

We do though have a core of people who do not want to work

No, 'we' have a tiny minority of people who do not want to work. The idea that there are large numbers of families who live a life of ease on benefits while refusing to work is a fantasy made up by Tories and the promoted by the right-wing press in order to gain public support for reducing welfare costs, regardless of whether it makes people homeless or destitute.

The highest estimated levels of fraud for welfare claims was, I believe, less than 5% for JSA. On the other hand, more money is 'saved' by people who legally can claim some form of benefit, but don't, than lost through fraud.

If you have any evidence to show that large numbers of families are claiming welfare in perpetuity through a refusal to work (which is fraudulent), then please do show the evidence.

I think we tend to go a b it far when we make those kinds of analogies. Most of the unemployed int he UK would love to work. We have a huge shortage of jobs. 3 of my children have graduated in the last few years. I know how very hard it is, even to get bar work. We do though have a core of people who do not want to work and certainly immigrants whereever they are tend to be the ones who have sacrificed all to make a better life. I love it that my children are in schools with other children like that, where the family wants the chidlren to work hard and do well. It really helps the atmostpher in the classroom. It is one reason state schools in inner London have pushed ahead and indeed grades in them are now 2 grades ahead of say comps in Hull - a D in the latter tends to be a B in the former.

Again, the demonisation of the unemployed by their own people.

This is how the Nazis took hold of Germany, by demonising the Jews.

And we know what happened there.

Is there no end to this descrimination ?????????

The Tory right wing have an instinctive hatred of the welfare State and the role of the State, which is why they are doing what they are cutting.

These cuts have nothing to do with the economy, but everything to do with ideology.

Wake up people, even the middle classes pay taxes and NI contributions, they are entitled to child benefit.

The role of the State and the welfare State are being whittled away before your very eyes, and all you lot can do is fall into the divide and conquer trap.

What is wrong with saying immigrants work hard? Many of them do. Where people move abroad and I include there British moving abroad too, they have made that huge effort so they tend to want to do very well there.

What is the contradiction. I said a lot of the less well off in the UK in particular are overweight. Those who say the poor in the UK are starving just need to look at the vast bulk of some of them.

If people are objecting to the fact that the poor are more overweight than the rich in the UK or that most immigrants work very hard they just need to look at the statistics.

A post of Xenias from a previous thread.

XeniaThu 13-Sep-12 08:48:58
SOme people will always be poor and make up excuses and say impossible. Others get on with things and improve their lives. I hope we can remain a country where there are sufficient people with the personal values to make something better of themselves whatever it take. I accept and have said on iother threads that there is a problem once you start earning in a new business in coming off benefits althoug the new single benefit is going to make it easier - there was a letter in the Times about it last week - you can work for a year to get your self employed business going so things are imjproving thanks to this Government.

Just look at those who have moved here from abroad to see what is possible. I advise them all the time. They are wonderful, hard workers etc I hvae so much more in common with them than the fat lumpen negative white benefit claimants of the UK.

Ausceemas post was supposed to come before the one at 01.59. Think ive just been caught by the clock change.

AuscreemaAscareSun 28-Oct-12 00:18:38

It is shameful. When I worked in education, the children from large non-working families who were neglectful visibly lost weight during the summer holidays. They needed that one hot meal every day. They would raid other children's lunchboxes whenever they could and the H.T would berate them for stealing treats as if they were just greedy [anger]

This was ten years ago. A colleague of mine once shared the secret of his success in disciplining the half-starved children who couldn't pay attention. It was to ensure that they were last in the dinner queue. The choice was pitiful at the end, it really was. No protein on most days. Said colleague was also male and for the same money that the rest of us paid would get his plate piled high. And he was a really lovely man! He just had no clue, at all.

I used to ask one particular child who had a chemically-dependent mother and many siblings to tidy my desk at lunchtime and get rid of all the loose staples, elastic bands and coins. He did. That desk needed tidying every day to clear it of those pesky coppers and silvers. A bit Lady Bountiful of me I suppose but I couldn't think of anything else to do

XeniaFri 26-Oct-12 17:33:12

They are fed. 60% of us are over weight. We have nevre had such fat people particularly the lower earners. You cannot suggest the poor are not fed. they are massively over fed. If we got their calorie intake down to 1800 a day with less food they would be so much better.

Sorry i will be back in a mo with a post i spotted on another board which contradicts this.