Britains Hiidden Hungry on BBC1

[Darkesteyes]

Tonight at 10.35.
Its about people who have had to use food banks. I just thought id flag it up on here for anyone who would be interested in watching it.
Ive only just spotted it in the TV guide.

Mrs Ewing its got to the stage where nothing the right wingers on here say, shocks me any more.

Xenia, I am assuming your 26 year old bed was a good quality (ie NOT the cheapest) one when you bought it.....hence it has lasted. My bed is 10 years old and second hand.....it is falling apart and won't last another 10 years. Another thing.....I bet you have been able to replace the mattress when needed as well. It's all very well going on about loans for "posh furniture" when you have enough to buy decent and lasting quality items.

All my furniture is secondhand...sofa from charity shop, DS bed from eBay, my bed from a relative, chest of drawers from charity shop, even my TV is secondhand from a relative (but its a flat screen , my brother gave it to me when they replaced it with a fancy 3D one). In fact the only thing new is the carpet and it was the cheapest one they did....hence it will not last 26+ years no matter how much I might want it to.

Sometimes you amaze me Xenia, you are extremely intelligent yet seemingly cannot work out that less money means poorer quality where furniture is concerned. This means it rarely lasts the distance.....and rarely 26 years.

JakeBullet your post could have been written by my younger self.

I didnt' bnuy it. Childcare at the time was more than the cost of one our salaries. A relative bought it, Like mnay people who work hard with families a lot of our furniture was given away and not in the antiques sense but grant bought it second hand in 1940 kind of stuff. There are a lot of people in the UK who have become very consumeristic and I suspect one good thing about the recession is we can return to the normality of second hand and make do and mend. We have the carpet that was in the house when we mvoed in in 97. I don't watch television. Anyway obviously I am well off. I am not in any kind of competition to prove I am poor but there are a lot of things people can cut back on if they need to.

I totally agree with you there Xenia.....my brother and his wife did NOT need a 3D television for one thing! And I don't know why I have their old TV as I rarely get the chance to watch it. My brother and SIL would not dream of going into a charity shop for anything. My DS spent the summer in 5 different T shirts I got for £10 at our local Sue Ryder store...all in lovely condition and still being worn.

Yes am a huge fan of make do and mend. My bargain this week was 2 wicker chairs for £15 from the charity shop....one to replace a broken dining table chair and one to go by the dressing table. Nothing I love more than a poke round a charity shop....my dressing table is very 70s but it has obviously lasted and I love it...it cost me £10.

Am amazed more people won't do this.

Yes although I doubt those really on the breadline buy much.

What we really need is to get the economy going again so there are real jobs for all the people who want them. Once that is sorted out we can ensure those who choose not to work but could are pushed into work. We do not even have enough jobs even cleaning and bar work and shop jobs for those who want them at present.

I realise criminals aren't the brightest of people but surely Darren would never have agreed to that being filmed, it does make me wonder if it was a fake / set-up .

I remember someone asking why the poor don't just buy bigger packs as they work out cheaper. The reason is they live hand to mouth, they have a limited budget and buying the bigger box of cornflakes would mean there was not enough money for bread. Only someone who has been poor, rather that a tightfist would comprehend.

mrsjrewing I have a similar problem (although we're not in need of a food bank yet). My house and cupboards are too small to buy the biggest packs (they won't fit in my cupboards and the work surface is tiny), hence I spend more money and time going to the supermarket to stock up. It's a logistical PITA.

Same goes for having a huge freezer to pre-cook and store things in, I have a half size fridge / freezer so it only holds the basics. I can fit a few portioned off meals in there and then it's at breaking point. There's little point in me buying all the reduced food in the supermarkets and freezing it as I don't have that storage option. I know I could save a fortune on food if we had more storage space.

Sorry to go backwards but I am still totally convinced that that whole programme was staged and then they fitted the incidents to match the story, and the main characters played their parts as instructed. Why I don't know but can only think it was to show that there ae people who abuse the system. But hey no matter, good tele is what counts and it's certainly got folk talking.

If you think about it, the focus was on Darren more or less from the begining, why did they go to the cash point with him. When he went in the Job Centre the cameras didn't go in and you just heard a "so called" conversation Darren was having with one of the advisors. Yes I'm sure he'd settle for an interview "next Tuesday" if he was owed £300 plus! Why did they photograph going along the road with a small boy, and the birthday business, what a coincidence that someone donated a chocolate birthday cake. Why was he allowed to change items he was given, why did the cameras take the trouble to go into his flat and watch him open the parma ham? Why was he chosen to meet the mayor on same vauge pretext of being the 100th customer or something...........he knew about the so called confrontation in his garde and remembered his lines very well "Is this being filmed" - no the cameras and all the bells and whistles just fancied turning up........hw about the van shot - he would have seen the cameras there too and if he really was a benefit claimant I don't think he would have allowed that van shot. Revealing the truth to Gavin was staged too I reckon.

Think Kelly and Charlotte were in on the whole thing too and played their roles that were ascribed to them. If you think about it, we only saw fleeting shots of other people needing food and I reckon they were the genuine ones.

I checked out with my dil's sister last night and she e mailed me this morning saying "Oh if people didn't believe these things, there would be no good tele hahaha!!!!"

I rest my case!

Nina - the Darren character almost seemed like an actor.

People slag off newspapers but TV are SO much worse when it comes to misleading the public

Yep agree Nancy - Darren was very articulate and was "acting" his part, as the sweet little Charlotte and Kelly were. The shot of the dogs in Kelly's flat and the huge tele and them eating takeaway pizza were to demonstrate that these people didn't really need food parcels (again to pander to the tories and their ilk about all the "scroungers" - Now Charlotte was cast as a "striver" trying to better herself at Uni (with no money at all) had she not heard of student loans???
and she too was a good actor especially with her little collecting tin.

Must admit I was taken in by it all at first but the more i thought about it there were too many things that didn't fit together.

Don't know if anyone remembers the Prof Robert Winston programmes that followed through several children who had all been born in Jan 2000, and got a good cross section - kids in well of families, kids with single parents struggling for money, kids in rural places, urban places etc etc. I have a friend whose triplets were featured in that programme and she is an absolutely amazing person because she coped unbelievably well and her husband was supportive too - they had 3 older kids so when the triplets were born they had 6 kids under 10. The TV cameras used to be in their house with 24 hours at a time filming, and going outside to the park etc. Then all those hours of filming would be edited down to about 5 mins (max) obviously showing the bits where things got a bit hairy with all the kids etc.

She decided to stop doing it when the triplets were 7. She said it was alll too much fuss with cameras in their house for days on end, just for a few minutes.

At the end, in the rolling credits, they updated us about the people we had seen - apart from Darren. We didn't hear if he had been done for benefit fraud.

NanaNina I don't doubt that what you say about Child of Our Time is true, but we sit there saying "But why would you?". Who would really want the whole nation viewing their family, and it is pretty obvious that they aren't going to show the good bits, because it isn't very good TV.
Interesting thought about the other programme being staged (as opposed to heavily edited).

Think I've got one or two things mixed up - just looked at some of it again. Charlotte wasn't at Uni she was at 6th form college so wouldn't have been entitled to anything since the tories took away the Education Maintenance Grant £30 per week. However she does live in a flat with her boyfriend so he must work or he gets HB paid and she has nice clothes and make up and does sound very genuine but I still think she was "hand picked" to suit the producers and the message they wanted to get across. she is cast as a "striver" not a "scrounger"

Not sure about Kelly being the one with the dogs, might have been the black woman whose name I can't remember.

However none of what I've said changes my view that inreal life there are people going hungry every day and it's a shocking thing for this to be happening in a developed country and it's thanks to the tories and those spineless lib dems who are waging war on the poor in a way that we have never seen before, unless you are old enough to remember the 30's. They are actually taking up back to the 1890s and the Poor Law. No I'm not oldenough to remember that or the 30's! So regardless of what the BBC want to put out and their motives for staging much of the programme, I still think everyone needs to know how evil this coalition is and make sure they don't win the next General Election or god help us !!

It is true if you go on tv you will have no editorial say. The Queen may be able to do a deal with her calling the shots Millions of people just seem to want to be on TV I have been on, but much prefer radio really.

I thought the programme we are discussing was not very well put together.

AS nananina says, there are people in UK going hungry every day. And old people eeking out heating in winter. .It may be a bit better than it was 20 years ago. But a lot of poverty is hidden and that mingles with excess. I suppose that is capitalism And not only capitalism. So the relative poor are always with us. We need to shrink the numbers. A lot of people are working towards that end. I resist the temptation to say, amen.

I was trying to work out Charlotte. She was 21 or something but must have gone back to school after many years out of it? It seems very unusual. SO presyuably she got no student loan as she was trying to pick up a few GCSEs not a degree. Then she seemed to acquire a boyfriend later. Had C stayed in touch with London social services she would have had money and inf act when they found her it was resumed her sums.

Theo ne with the dogs was white and had the 15 year old and the new baby and her baby's father moved in I think or was back with her towards the end.

It is certainly good news the current Government is working very hard to help those most in poverty. IDS in particular deserves credit - his measure cost a lot and he has stood his corner.

A lot of people in trouble also have compounded their problems through all sorts of unrelated problems. I don't think the sum you receive on benefits is too llittle to feed yourself but if you've got into a mess earlier with other things which was most people's problems then there is an issue.

Jesus fucking Christ Xenia. You think they deserve credit for the fact that we have got to the point that we NEED food banks.

[hconfused] [hhmm]

Xenia, good grief!

I think Xenia has a point. A common theme was the need to use good banks because they had got payday loans at 400% that had access to their bank accounts. So when they got benefit money the loan company would take it and they would be left with nothing. It is a vicious cycle and hard to break.

Food banks not good banks.

In fact what they need in addition to the food banks are debt advisors. Going hungry to pay the payday lenders is awful.

And bisjo it has often been like that. My mother in the 1930s used to go with her mother to collect debts (one of the few jobs available to widows I think - I can't imagine her mother liked the door knocking). It is very hard to stick to but the old saying neither a borrower nor a lender be is very wise. Don't spend whta you don't have. A pity Governments of all colours haven't always followed that principle either. You can't go far wrong whatever your income level with

Mr Micawber's recipe for happiness:

"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen [pounds] nineteen [shillings] and six [pence], result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."

Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

When you are on your beam ends it must be tempting. Having spent a number of years living hand-to-mouth the only thing that saved us was that DH's family were very generous. D MiL used to bring us meat from her freezer whenever she visited and various other things we would not have been able to buy ourselves. She also bought the DCs good quality clothes so they had at least one good outfit (they mostly wore handmedowns from friends). We bought out first house with help from DFiL for the deposit, and were able to move to a larger house when DH's GF died and left us some money.
Without all that help we would probably have been in the same situation as some of the people on the programme, although this was the 70s/80s and I am not aware that food banks existed.
I remember weighing up whether I could afford carrots or onions, and as a previous poster said there is no question of buying "economy" packs when you are literally counting every penny,or of doing what I do now, stocking up on non-perishables when they are on offer.

"It is certainly good news that this govt is working so hard to help those in poverty" WHICH planet do you live on Xenia cus it certainly ain't planet earth! "

I don't even think it's worth my time outlining all the ways that this govrt is waging war on the poor, and looking after the rich as they always have, only now it is more overt.

OK one question at a time:

As from April 2013 young people under 25 will not be able to claim Housing Benefit (which is being re-named Housing Allowance - nasty word is benefits see) Cameron says they have to go back and live in their childhood bedrooms and save up for a deposit for a house. Ah yes brilliant idea because there will be so many happy parents dusting off the shelves in the bedrooms and getting a piggy bank so they can save 25% for a deposit on a house costing around £120,000. Be there in no time!

I don't usually resort to sarcasm but I do if forced to -what Cameron and his ilk (including you) don't realise is that for hundreds and thousands of young people they have been turned out of their homes when they were 16 (and sometimes younger) and no way are they going to be able to return.
SO where do they sleep - you tell me?
They won't be able to claim JSA (at £60 per week) because they won't have an address and furthermore they won't be able to fulfil the elegibility criteria for getting this massive benefit each week. Do you know what the criteria is - no thought you didn't, you are too busy quoting Dickens! Well I'll tell you:

You have to turn up at the job centre every two weeks and provide evidence that you have been job seeking - this means youhave to have the copies of 2 letters yu have sent to apply for a job, evidence of 2 phone calls you have made and evidence of 2 speculative visits you have made to employers and this all has to be written down so that the advisor can check if necessaru.

Now call me an old cynic but I don't know if someone living on the streets is going to be able to fulfil this elegibilty criteria so he won't get his JSA.

Now Xenia you tell me what this hyperthetical young person is to do.

I have many more issues I could raise with you but let's start with this one. I don't want to know how long you have had your mattress or the fact that you drink tap water (FGS) just answer my query please.