To ask why there is such food poverty.

[Helendee]

Please no flaming as I genuinely am seeking answers as to why so many children are going to school hungry these days.
This is not a critical or inflammatory post, I just want to know what’s gone wrong.
Obviously many of us are struggling financially because of Covid but food poverty was a huge problem before that.
Is it that benefit levels are too low to adequately feed our children?
What can we do to ameliorate the situation?

[quote YankeeinKingArthursCourt]@WitchesGlove

With further education/ apprentiships etc, you still need to factor in costs of housing, food, bills, transport etc, so many people can not opt for this.

In previous posts, you have mentioned you unfortunately had to drop out of uni, you had "only" minimum wage jobs and your parents were disparaging saying you'd end up in a "fish and chip" shop. I'd hope that given your personal experiences, you'd have more empathy/ understanding of people in similar circumstances. I hope that your personal situation is better now.[/quote]
I didn’t then decide to have children in such circumstances as it would have been a really stupid/ irresponsible thing to do!

Nor did I claim benefits

@OnlyFoolsnMothers

WitchesGlove if everyone had a degree do you think everyone would be promoted and everyone would earn a high enough wage to live without benefits? Do you understand the basic economic principal of supply and demand?

I have never said everyone should have a degree- on the contrary, I said some degrees are a load of shit.

If you read my posts properly you will see that I have mentioned apprenticeships.

We have skills shortages in this country, therefore it must be possible to train for something and get a job in it.

There's a basic cost of keeping any car on the road. Insurance will be £300+ a year, car tax, cost of MOT. Certainly in my area, the cost of having even the cheapest car will be greater than selective use of public transport (I appreciate we in London are lucky in having cheap buses and trains). And that's not including the necessary maintenance, for which you should allow at least another £300 a year for tyres, brake pads, oil, other repairs.

I can see that if you become unemployed after incurring those yearly car expenses they are sunk costs...but beyond the first year if you live in an urban area a car is an expensive luxury.

I've always worked ft and used to shop at weekends, carrying my shopping home for myself and DC in a rucksack/ bags. So long as you're not buying lots of heavy items it's quite easy to carry a week's shopping. Sometimes I'd get the bus home to save time but others I would walk.

@lockeddownandcrazy perhaps the money could come from spending cuts to mp's large salaries, ortheir subsidised meals.

@Hesnotlocal

*Why can people ‘only’ ever earn minimum wage?

What’s to stop them studying/ gaining promotion/ building up a business*

Many minimum wage jobs have very limited promotion prospects so for many the only way to improve their earning potential would be to retrain/study. Many minimum wage jobs also offer very little flexibility and/or control over work patterns (shifts not being confirmed until that week etc). So even if someone can find part time study/training for free it is likely to be hard to fit around an existing job. Even harder if there is child care to cover. A couple with children both earning minimum wage will not be able to pay their bills if one of them stops working or significantly reduces their hours to make time for training/studying.

My OH retrained to move from a minimum wage job to a professional career. My (much higher than minimum wage) earnings covered our bills but we needed to use savings to cover course costs, travel (no training opportunities nearby) and additional child care. If we were both earning minimum wage there is no way we would have been able to afford this.

Which is why you get your training/career sorted BEFORE having kids

Patricia- what’s wrong with the apprenticeships listed?

Childcare could lead to being a nanny- they can earn well

Dental nurses can progress to being hygienists or practice managers - both good jobs

McDonalds actually isn’t a terrible company and has progression opportunities.

@grenlei I had a car that cost me £20.- Tax and £160.- insurance.... I filled it up with petrol every 3 weeks for around £50.-
That just leaves MOT and any other repair/ usage cost... ok it was one of these swanky city cars!

The fact is the world is overpopulated and people need to have less children for environmental reasons.

What’s so ridiculous about inviting immigrants who want to do jobs that we can’t fill?

@PatriciaPerch yes of course some apprenticeships aren't great and don't offer much by way of prospects. The same applies to degrees though. Hence why I discouraged my DC from going to uni unless they had a specific vocation in mind (they didn't) as I couldn't see the point of incurring huge debt otherwise.

DS's friend's apprenticeship didn't have a qualification of any kind attached, though I know some of them do.

I don't think from those listed the Mcdonalds or the Warehouse ones are too bad - the former has really good progression to store management, and the latter might lead to at worst getting a forklift licence (which can be v useful in those type of roles) or better into a logistics role which can pay much better.

Surely immigrants on minimum wage jobs would still need top up benefits?

I just looked for apprenticeships in my town. Of the 33 I found only 3 were actually in this town. All of them needed a full driving licence and A-levels. I thought they were meant to be for people who hadn't done so well academically. Clearly not.

@murmurgam

Lots of people don't live close to food shops

Compared to when I grew up, there seems to be far more food shops around. I hear about food deserts but I struggle to picture the sort of places they are. I live in an ex- mining area that's traditionally very poor but can't think of many places where significant numbers of people would be far from a co-op, Tesco express, aldi or similar.

I used to live in East London and was 25 minutes walk from a fairly small Sainsbury's (not Local but no clothes section). It was no quicker on the bus. There is now no Aldi/Lidl that I know of though this was before them. All the other shops were convenience shops - 10 mins walk to an off licence, then 15 in each direction to two Turkish shops that had good selections of fruit and veg but very pricey for most things. Food deserts exist. With a child that's an hour's travel total to and from anything reasonably priced.

I agree re apprenticeships, most of them are just jobs rather than offering any specific training - but at least they can be a foot in the door. However I suppose if a young person goes in expecting to learn certain things, or be trained in certain areas, it may not happen. It reminds me a bit of the old YOP/YTS in the 1980s which was mostly an excuse for cheap labour.

That documentary was heartbreaking. I was so glad John got his free school dinner, him writing the thank you letter at the end made me well up a bit.
I wonder how he and his family are doing now, 3 years later and I really hope their situation has improved.

Some of the comments / attitudes on this thread are very disturbing

@PatriciaPerch

My hygienist is a qualified dentist I think quite a few are?

Hygienists do not need to be qualified dentists

I think things are getting crazy with how much the government is having to pay out with Covid and everything else. It’s our children who will be burdened with repaying all this debt during their lifetimes and yet people are constantly demanding the govt pay out more and more.

What a ridiculous statement. Of course our children will be the ones repaying the debt. Just like we repaid the debt of WWII, hell we've not long finished paying the debt for the abolishion of slavery. We're one of the richest nations in the world ffs, we can afford to feed our hungry children.

@TheFormerPorpentinaScamander

Surely immigrants on minimum wage jobs would still need top up benefits?

I just looked for apprenticeships in my town. Of the 33 I found only 3 were actually in this town. All of them needed a full driving licence and A-levels. I thought they were meant to be for people who hadn't done so well academically. Clearly not.

Immigrants are not entitled to benefits unless they’ve been here 2 years.

Single, childless people get nothing anyway, no one cares if their wages are enough to live on. Whereas Blair’s govt topped up lazy fuckers who worked only 16 hours, to the point lots of them had more disposable income than those earning £50K!

Plenty of people get good jobs with no debt by starting out as an apprentice.