Lee Anderson MP for Ashfield is a pompous, ignorant, patronising oaf

[newnamethanks]

Mr Anderson invites us all along to his local food bank to see how they do things there. If you're poor enough and don't have any food you can register there for a handout. You have you sign up to be taught to budget and cook and be properly grateful. So, great. Budget with the cash you haven't got in the first place then cook with the fuel you can't afford. Reminds me of something I read in "Wotking Class Wives" a study of poverty in the 1930s. Lady Health Visitors were surprised that when some people were rehoused from the slums into houses with gas cookers, they continued to cook on the fire. Because, like now, they couldn't afford 2 amounts of fuel, gas AND coal. Such progress we've made in the last 100 years. I'd like to kick his arse.

Thanks Duncin, I didn't mean to imply the 2 memberships were concurrent. That would be a bit much even for him.

The Tories have dropped all pretence that they ever cared about the poor, the "squeezed" or the "just about managing". They never have and they never will.
There was never any intention of "levelling up" anything and Brexit was only ever a scheme to help the super rich keep avoiding tax.
These are just facts. Whether enough people decide this is reason for them to stop voting for them remains to be seen.

@newnamethanks

Food banks and charities are covering up for the government by preventing people from starving to death under twelve years of benefits being cut again and again.

Food bank use has increased a phenomenal amount in recent years. Some disabled people have actually died due to their policies. There was an inquest.

It seems some people are okay with charities having to step in in order to prevent folk starving to death.

DuncinToffee
He was [suspended] from the Labour Party before joining the Conservatives

Not the Labour Party just the local Labour group.

newnamethanks
Indeed, as Clavinova has helpfully pointed out his 'loyalty' was with Labour until he sussed he'd be better off as a Brexit supporting Tory and promptly got selected as their candidate. A man of firm conviction, little knowledge and a politician through and through.

Mr Anderson's reasons for leaving the Labour Party are stated here - 2019:

How the far-Left's vile hate drove me – a Nottingham miner – from working for a Labour MP to standing as a Tory in the election.

When I first came out as a Brexiteer, the abuse I received was unforgettable...

groups of men, most of them belonging to the hard-Left Momentum group, pulled up outside my house and hurled unprintable abuse at me and my family...

They posted sinister notes through my letter box. ‘Watch yourself’, that sort of thing...

I would show up at Labour meetings, only for members to turn a cold shoulder to me, whispering among themselves. It was bullying, plain and simple...

For those of you who have not had to deal with them, it is difficult to explain how perverse their tactics are. The best way to describe Labour meetings now is that it’s like being locked in a classroom with a bunch of sixth-formers spouting rubbish about global politics...They even wanted to open a book of condolence when Cuban dictator Fidel Castro died.

It soon became clear that I was about the only working class bloke at the meetings...
the party had lost all connection with its core voters...

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7699985/How-far-Lefts-vile-hate-drove-working-Labour-MP-standing-Tory.html

Do you agree with his comments clavinova?

Clav is making it sound like poor old Lee Anderson was hounded out of the Labour Party over his Brexit views - the truth is a little less palatable: he was suspended for dumping boulders to block access to a Traveller camp.

What a lovely, lovely man.

Do you agree with his comments clavinova

In part - I don't doubt that there are millions of people in the UK who lack the skills to cook a proper meal from scratch.

That's not an answer to his comments

What part do you disagree with?

I don't doubt that there are millions of people in the UK who lack the skills to cook a proper meal from scratch.

Like Jacob Rees Mogg? The problem is not lack of culinary skill, it's lack of money.

Will 'Lee and his 30p' have a Jubilee special? A slightly higher budget for the patriotic Jubilee trifle, 35p perhaps? Great idea about Rees Mogg, he could ask his nanny or cook to help.

Any chance of getting Rees Mogg to work from home and spare us his witless meanderings for a while? Sadly not he's terribly busy prowling vacant office space leaving notes for the essential, yet absent, workforce. So essential is the presence of these workers that plans are being made to sack 90,000 of them to make the government more efficient. And think of the savings on Mogg's shoe leather.

Come on, OP, managing Brexit benefits and a clearly unreasonable EU, Civil Service bureaucracy, his investment fund and such a large family. He's clearly an exemplar.

I guess you're right Zilla, someone's got to save us from ourselves, but now you've pointed out his workload that would overwhelm any pleb like me, maybe he could just take a rest, off the public stage, to see if it's possible to discover whether any remnants of compassion lurk with his Christian soul. A Retreat, perhaps? I understand they're healing for those of his faith.

@newnamethanks I wonder if he thinks others are doing Christianity wrong. Most of the genuinely wealthy (£100ms to £10ms to £ms, mostly the £ms as I only know a few worth the larger sums) with whom I have an acquaintance purport to be Christians. To be fair, I know Christianity is a broad Church and I am no arbiter of who is a Christian, just that I am a very bad one.

Of course the others are wrong. Goes without saying. Bless you my child.

JRM this morning

Jacob Rees-Mogg says he wouldn't echo comments from Tory MP Lee Anderson, who said that people who use foodbanks can't cook or manage their finances properly.

"I can't cook myself and it wouldn't be right for me to lecture people on how to live their lives", said Mr Rees-Mogg.

Asked if someone with his wealth understands what people are going through at the moment, Mr Rees-Mogg says "human nature is about empathising with people who live different lives... you understand the issues and difficulties people face without having to do it for yourself".

To be fair to JRM, arguably better his final sentence than some junior MP living for a week off the current benefit rate without having to replace appliances, manage debts, have the same meals for years or all the other ways in which it is performative to justify government policy without really empathising. Could be wrong but back in the day, did Matthew Parris perform that exercise when he was an ambitious MP working for Mrs T? Others have since. Not sure about Matthew Parris but the others will join 'Lee for 30p' in a list of exemplars for how not to do poverty wrong.

I can't quote exactly as I read this many years ago but, if I recall correctly, that experience contributed to Matthew P's Damascene revelation that Thatcher's Tory Party was too brutal for him as well as for many of the rest of us.

Perhaps we should celebrate every conversion rather than within my mean spirit feel sad that it took something like that for an adult to be able to empathise and understand such things.

Perhaps JRM had his moment and it just changed his younger hippy communitarian beliefs into his compassionate conservatism he has now?

It would be interesting to see if anyone has visited the Ashfield foodbank as suggested and found out what you get for 30p

Remember the school meals provided during lockdown? I wonder if it's similar to those.

Ha Duncin they were both mean and expensive as I recall. A bowl of gruel would be more like 30p worth. Or the original aqua cotto, not the River Cafe version.

It was a World In Action special. It's actually on Britbox for anyone who has it (possibly youtube as well). Parris actually became good friends with one of the men who were struggling for work.

I had to look up acquacotta

It means cooked water and main ingredients are Water, stale bread, onion, tomato and olive oil

You are right about those school meals being expensive. They did look like they cost about 30p a day.

Noone is giving support to a party that starts illegal wars. I think we can judge a party on its current policies not those of 20 years ago. The Tory party has changed too - 20 years ago I would never have imagined they'd have introduced gay marriage for example.

I am happy to be an "apologist" for trans rights, but even if I wasn't, I accept that if you vote for a party you're complicit in what they do. I can't imagine any single issue (except possibly averting an extinction level event) could make me willing to be complicit in what the Tories are doing. I remember having an argument on here years ago about Trump. At the time one of the states was working to ban abortion even in the case of ectopic pregnancy and Trump was supporting them. The poster argued that it was worth the roll back of abortion rights because Trump had also rolled back trans rights. I pointed out that more than 1% of pregnancies are ectopic and if it's illegal to treat them, then women will die. They said it was still worth it.

We’ve got to get rid of this shower.

between their lack of action or even basic understanding about the cost of living crisis and the corruption, not even to mention breaking international law, they’re actually going to destroy this country.