Thread 39 Starmer: chwech/saith - dechreuodd y plant ei

[DuncinToffee]

Previous thread
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5446809-thread-38-starmer-tax-your-hamster?page=40

Political and general chat

Taxes optional but greatly appreciated

It’s big business, yes and sold to make a profit. It’s bought to nourish little children though and many if those buying it didn’t really want to have to - I include myself in that. It looks like cruelty to make the only option some women have to nourish their babies unnecessarily expensive when we can mitigate it. (And of course it’s perfectly legitimate for women to use formula if that suits them best, too).

If it isn’t it should be, also the reform councillors who seem to be spouting vile racist shite almost daily, it’s so bloody depressing I can’t see how it’s free speech it’s lies & hatred relentlessly being spewed out, as for allowing donations from people not resident in the U.K. how is that even legal.
our CLP has been very busy out every weekend canvassing, definitely putting in the legwork ahead of May local elections.

@cardibach , the loyalty points aren't for the customer's benefit.

What's really needed is availability of low- or no-profit baby formula for babies under the guideline weaning age, not a 50p off expensive formula your baby will prefer over other brands.

Same with nappies.

With san-pro and incontinence products we can chose to buy the cheap ones, not the eye-wateringly expensive ones.

I don’t think it necessarily means people will buy different formula from normal though - they can just use the loyalty points against their usual purchase. Non-profit would be great, I agree, but it’s not going to happen.

Another one shocked at the price of SMA when I was buying it for dgd2 five years ago it was under £10.00 that’s a huge jump in price, I’m glad formula will be available cheaper no one should be penalised for how they choose to feed albeit breast or formula.

A bit irrelevant to this discussion but tins of baby milk in the US are $50-60!!

Non or very low profit formula should be available highly doubtful it would ever happen.

Wtf that’s madness Efacsen

It was a huge problem during the US government shut-down when food stamps were stopped - I can't even imagine how low income parents coped

It is madness. I still wince with the memory of the pain when I breastfed - that ended 22 years ago! And yes they were all latched on properly.

Some medication can rule out breastfeeding too.

I agree with that, but making new mothers feel bad about their feeding choices helps nothing and nobody. I have friends who desperately wanted to breastfeed but couldn't make it work, for a range of reasons. They needed support, not shame. I fed both of mine for 13 months and it was easy for me, but we're all different. There has to be a balance between reining in formula manufacturers and pushing breastfeeding on women who don't want to, or can't.

@cardibach , You use the loyalty points against your shop. If my points add up to £5, and my basket adds up to £30, I pay £25. It doesn't matter much what I have in my basket.

The supermarkets I shop in don't offer bonus points on one product over another. I will sometimes buy things that are priced down if I use a loyalty card, but they tend to be things I buy normally.

I weigh pre-packaged items, and work out cost per kg when I put items in my basket. I also buy loose veg when I can.

The fresh food being expensive/goes off too quickly argument is another tedious one. Carrots, for example, are about 10p each.

Carrots tend to be a loss-leader, as is milk. The supermarkets can do this because they have the power over farmers. They don't have this power over the large international companies that make baby formula.

I'd have thought battle-for-births Reform would have been all over this.

That would assume they care much what happens after birth.

Well yes. That’s my point. People will just by their normal formula.

Rookie error, Nigel. Don't ever come for Glaswegians:

https://www.thepoke.com/2025/12/04/nigel-farage-isnt-happy-that-glasgow-kids-speak-more-than-one-language-and-ended-up-schooled-into-next-year/2/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0mk9kjd

We need to remember that the Enlightenment may not have started in Scotland (although I do), but by God it found the soil fertile there.

My first thought was "It's Scotland. Shouldn't we have a high proportion of kids with Gaelic as a first language?"

Second thought was: we need more of this (bilingual kids).

With 1.5 billion speakers English is not a threatened language. Nor is the English culture under threat - the bits that mark us out as English; (humour, food, culture, respect for rule of law, single-family household set-up) are all still widespread. What I have noticed is that second and third generation immigrants tend to adopt many of these norms, meaning they are valued by the people who come here.

Nigel needs to try harder.

Farage's latest defence of his school days racism is Bernard Manning did it too

And he won't give out the names of those friends that said he never did the thing he did.

He doesn't need to try harder, his supporters will just swallow his nonsense

With 1.5 billion speakers English is not a threatened language.

Well a lot of Reform supporters seem to struggle.

Very Trumpian, Farage attacking a female journalist Emma Barnett, describing her as one of the BBC’s “lower-grade presenters”

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/dec/04/nigel-farage-denies-saying-anything-racist-with-malice-as-he-attacks-bbc

I am always intrigued by odd phenomena.

A lot of flak has been directed at Farage over the decades. So with a large sample size to work from, the instances that clearly rattle him are instructive.

It's the same in the US - the things that Trump devotes energy to out of the oceans of choice he will have.