Jamie Oliver webchat, Thursday 29 August, 2.45pm

[GeraldineMumsnet]

We're chuffed that Jamie Oliver is paying a return visit to Mumsnet this Thursday. His first MN webchat was back in 2010.

Jamie has a new book out, Save with Jamie: Shop Smart, Cook Clever, Waste Less (all subjects dear to MNers' hearts). It has 100 brand-new recipes designed to be accessible, reliable and, above all, affordable.

This is what Jamie says about his new book: "For years I have been telling people that if you look back through history, the best food in the world has always come from communities under massive financial pressure. But the proviso is that you MUST be able to cook! If you can't, and have no money, that is where the trouble starts. This is a cook book which, from start to finish has tasty recipes, all dedicated to great value, is a brilliant weapon to have on the shelf, and is relevant to every household. If you use this book the way it's intended, you should end up saving a wodge of cash from your wallet."

And to tie in with the book, he has a new six-part series on Channel 4 starting on Monday 2 Sept at 8pm.

Please post your question and join Jamie for a chat at 2.45pm on Thurs.

That may be darkest, but there are 297,000 households where no-one had ever worked and that a lot.

From the Office of National Statistics

what myth?

Ah yes the good old Office of National Statistics The same organisation that counts workfare as being employed.

Broken, we don't know what proportion of those households are in fact student households.

Are you disputing that fact then darkest?

It's on the first page of the link Boffin, it's the only page I actually read!

Excluding student households there were 224,000 households containing only people who have never worked, down 41,000 on the year.

Here.

www.boycottworkfare.org/?p=1659

Last October the ONS CONFIRMED that those on workfare are NOT counted as being unemployed.

More here.

www.theguardian.com/business/2013/jan/15/uk-jobs-soar-real

From my second link.

According to the official figures, he is employed, despite being on benefits. In more extreme cases, people enrolled on the work programme for the long-term unemployed could potentially be counted as employed, merely for being on government training courses, which, Paul Bivand of the Centre for Social and Economic Inclusion says, can be, at times, just a careers meeting.

Neither situation would easily fit what most of us would think of as employment ? but to the official figures, their job is as real as that of any doctor, teacher or stockbroker.

The numbers affected are far from insignificant: in the latest figures obtained by the Guardian, government-supported schemes accounted for about 100,000 jobs of about 500,000 created in the previous year. Of these, a substantial proportion ? very likely a majority ? involve people in unpaid work or training schemes, living on unemployment benefits.

So do excuse me if i take what the ONS says with the same amount of salt that was in Jamies pasta sauces!

So?

What does that have to do with the number of households where no one works?

Sorry, I forgot you're the one that can't talk about anything without bringing 'workfare' into it!

Broken YOU used the ONS to show the figures where no one works.
I showed you why the ONS cant always be relied on to tell the truth.

So you gaslighting me is not going to work.

Right, going on about the Apprenticeship malarkey this is why it annoys me. Just me, on a personal level.

We have a factory. We have a lot of staff. Because we are manufactures we provide all training. They have contracts, rights and are paid a living wage.

So far so good. UK manafactuer, UK employees.

We then sell stuff on. It gets marketed packaged etc. o that's a few more people earning from what our staff have made. They are in the service industry so should be on a good enough wage to pay tax, in etc.

Then

It hits the end user, and goes on the shelves of the big corporate store. It gets put there by people who are not paid a wage by the company but by the government. Or by people who are on such a poor wage it is being supplemented by the government.

So very crassly simplifying, my small factory's staff on the shop floor tax is subsidising the wages of the multi nationals staff. Why?

My problem is that in setting up the 15 "apprenticeship" Jamie is aping the ideology of the ruthless corporations who have lined his pockets. He's not actually giving anything back.

If people are working as they are training than they should be paid a wage they can live on.

Jesus Christ, if someone like me can manage to grasp it, and I immacced my baby and went to work in odd shoes on two seperate occasions than why can't Jamie and his advisors. As far as I am concerned, "apprenticeships" like Oliver's are part of the problem, not the solution.

You have got the hump because i showed you why the ONS figures arent reliable.

I only used their figures on workfare as an example.

He who pays the piper names the tune.

Six?? That's a bit odd because I know three. One opposite - 2 generations never worked (2 grandparents, 3 grown children), next door, 2 generations never worked (two adults, two grown children). Exes-ex - 3 generations never worked (two grandparents, three grown children, 9 grown up grandchildren) though 2 of them now work in menial tasks earning less than minimum wage, due to changes in benefit situation, but that is only for the last 10 months.

So if I know 3, how hard was the Joseph Rowntree foundation actually looking?

I also think there is a huge difference between genuine apprenticeships and workfare. Those who are apprenticed in 15 can reasonably expect to go on to have fulfilling and long careers with a defined career progression path. Those stacking shelves on the nightshift at Tesco don't.

Right. So shall I pay the people I'm training minimum wage and make the apprentices? Without outing what I do the training I provide does the same?

That's what financial advisors would love us to do.

Who do you want to take the reponsibility?

I am always amazed at these people who know the entire work history of people around them and their parents' and grandparents' entire work history. Perhaps I am just remarkably incurious, but even the neighbours whose houses I pop in and out of, whose pets I look after and whose plants I water when they're away - I couldn't tell you what they've done workwise throughout their entire lives. I certainly couldn't tell you their families' entire work history. Do other people really know so much about each other?

Missed this entirely but am rather at recipes costing £1.38 per portion being considered economical. I guess if you are multimillionare it is all relative.

I do not think that £1.38 a meal per person for main meals is so bad.

There are 6-7 of us, so excluding breakfast that is between £115-£135 a week to feed homecooked nutritious food. I am not pretending that this is austerity living ( and I think JO was wrong to suggest it was) but I don't think that is a millionaire's budget - and I would like to get my food bill down to that level .

I think it is definitely economical compared to most recipes in Jamie/Nigella/Delia/Nigel/etc's recipe books.

Shall we campaign for it to be renamed "Jamie's more-budget-than-usual recipes"?

I think that is exactly that it is Trills. I don't think there is any harm in that, JO made a mistake in thinking that this would help those actually in poverty.

wallison the grandparents are the people who live near me, and the grown up children either live with them or spend a lot of time with them. I'm more surprised at people who don't talk to their neighbours. I have a chatty husband too, which goes some way to finding these things out.

Like I say though, I do talk to my neighbours; we live in a pretty friendly street and are in and out of each others' houses a lot. But I don't know their entire work history, nor that of their children/parents/grandparents.

I am pretty sure I don't know anyone who's never worked though, despite growing up on a council estate and now living on the next street to one (my son's school is on the estate itself) which would mean, if Jamie Oliver and the like were to be believed, I would have spent a fair chunk of my life surrounded by the GENERATIONAL UNEMPLOYED who all can't be arsed to cook and have massive tellies.

See, I spend about £1.40 a meal or less and I am not even making any attempt to budget. I mostly cook from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage Veg Everyday. (Am not vegetarian, just trying to eat healthily).
I think Jamie does just tend to write expensive recipes. It's probably because he worships Mediterranean cooking which uses ingredients that cost more here. And Hugh seems to show more respect for old housewifely techniques for bringing out flavour while Jamie goes more for clever shortcuts which cost more (eg if you did white sauce the Jamie way of creme fraiche with parmesan in it, that would cost far more than the traditional roux).