Merged thread – Unelectable Corbyn and Let's not bomb ISIS

…thanks to the Mail on Sundays exposé last year making life difficult for those in a difficult position.

Missed that one?

Well done Snafu!!;)But you haven’t explained the criteria for the issuing of the voucher nor the safeguards against abuse. Or am I just an addled old cynic? (That’s a rhetorical question):)

Then do a little research and the answers will jump out.

Most (all?) operate on a referral system, from Social Workers, Probation Services, Homeless/Refuge Units or Hostels, Schools, Sure Start Children’s Centres, Health Visitors, Doctors Surgeries, Church Pastoral Workers or Street Ministers, Community Carers, Hospitals, Police, C.A.B. These agencies issue a voucher which is redeemable at a designated food bank – no voucher, no food, after the procedure was tightened up thanks to the Mail on Sundays exposé last year making life difficult for those in a difficult position. Apparently there have been several cases of journalists trying to revisit the story ‘for the good of the public’, but failing.

Inevitable. Always has been, I guess. Offer something for nothing and it will always be abused – the genuinely needy probably being crowded out by those on the make.

Having watched a number individuals feeding their benefits into fruit machines yesterday (ok, ok, I dont actually know they are on benefits), I have no doubt that the food banks are seen in some quarters as just an extra benefit, to be used and abused. If you build it, they will come. It’s part of the old argument as to whether support by the state should preserve life, or buy a lifestyle.

The answer to your last three questions is probably – yes!

Free food on the NHS?

I wonder what the result of a ‘food-bank’ service on the NHS as outlined in the post above would be? Would people abuse such a system? How would the NHS assess need? How could the NHS assess need; do they have access to your benefits records for example? Are you hungry, are your kids hungry, because your benefits have been delayed or because you blew the lot at the betting-shop? Would the costs of such a system simply spiral out of control as more people took advantage of it, legitimately or because it was being abused?

The gutter press spout whatever crap they think will reflect the public mood in an effort to sell more newspapers, even if it contradicts exactly something those same newspapers were saying only days before; I think their days of actually influencing public opinion are numbered, well, enough public opinion to matter anyway.

Let me get this straight. You believe that if we were not maintaining a foreign aid package – as agreed by all (both?) the major parties – the government would have put the money into sorting out food banks at home?

No. Anyway, it is useless to speculate what the government would (or would not) have done.

I just point out that for a fraction of the 0.7% GDP Foreign Aid Budget, currently around £12billion per year, the government could have funded a supply of emergency food far greater than that handed out by the various charity food-banks; this could have been done directly through the NHS with the GP ‘prescribing’ food like any other medicine and the surgery dispensing it free of charge, there and then.

(Mathematics check: 913,138 food parcels handed-out, call it one million, at £100 a time (a high figure but what the hell!) cost the NHS £100million pounds. But that’s only the Trussell Trust food-banks, so let’s say that there are ten times that number of food parcels given out, so the cost to the NHS would be £1billion.)

So a government could reduce the Foreign Aid Budget by £1billion (about 8%) eliminate the need for charity food-banks completely (probably) and still donate more in foreign aid than any nation in the world except the USA.

At least it would stop the opposition using the emotive subject of ‘food-banks’ as a stick to beat the government with (even though food-banks are apparently now a fact of life in Europe, even Germany, although I find the figures quoted almost unbelievable).

Anyway, that’s what I’d have done in government.

Does it? Cutting some of the United Kingdom’s considerable foreign aid budget would probably have ‘fixed’ the food-bank problem; and the government would certainly have been pushing against an open door as far as most of the electorate were concerned. ‘Charity starts at home!’

Let me get this straight. You believe that if we were not maintaining a foreign aid package – as agreed by all (both?) the major parties – the government would have put the money into sorting out food banks at home?
Charity does indeed start at home; most food banks are run by charities or the church with food mainly donated by the public or community-spirited shops, little political involvement other than the occasional visit from an MP trying to boost their standing with a PR stunt (Cookery writer Jack Monroe observed: “When David Cameron visited a food bank in his affluent constituency he reportedly turned up empty-handed, posed for photographs, and helped himself to a free lunch. Perhaps this is what Lord Freud and Edwina Currie were referring to with their comments about people taking advantage of the service.”). In some cases the people using food banks are not even unemployed, just very poorly paid. There are places that will do short term or top-up loans but, as they say, payback is a bitch so you go hungry.
In 2013 around 500,000 Britons reportedly used food banks regularly. In April 2014 the Trussell Trust (the only nation wide food bank network) said that they had handed out 913,138 food parcels over the last 12 months, which was up from 347,000 in the previous year.

How much has the government put into the food bank system in the UK? Nothing.
How much would the government put into the food bank system if they cut their foreign aid budget? Nothing. They wouldn’t need to, it is all covered by donations and volunteers displaying a wonderful example of community spirit.

Would that make the Conservatives a ‘better’ government or is it just better political management of the apparent situation given that almost all other economic measures of the handling of the economy, in very difficult times, under the Conservative (and Liberal) government were good (and better than almost any other developed nation in a similar position?)

Couldn’t say – except to assume that if we are better off “than almost any other developed nation in a similar position” then how badly off are other countries?
Germany apparently has a problem, to the point that 1.5 million people a week used food banks there (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-30470120) and there are twice as many food banks in France as in the UK. In Greece, where unemployment is at 28% and rising, officially about 40% of the population use food banks or their equivalent but the actual number is thought to be very much higher – should you count homeless shelters which reportedly feed and house tens of thousands across the country, or the bakery in Athens that gives away ten thousand loaves a day?

But to cut the foreign aid budget, as you are seemingly proposing, would incur the wrath of all the red top trash press and other tabloids who are all claiming that it was them ‘wot’ changed Cameron mind about letting in refugees – see today’s front pages.

As for the BBC, that organisation gives far better value for money than anything from the likes of Murdoch or even the ad loaded “free” commercial channels.

You are entitled to your opinion of course. Depends how you define “value for money” I suppose……

Democratic government or not, the rise in demand for food banks, probably the biggest since the great depression of the 1930s, says something about the situation that cannot be denied by all except the most politically blind.

Does it? Cutting some of the United Kingdom’s considerable foreign aid budget would probably have ‘fixed’ the food-bank problem; and the government would certainly have been pushing against an open door as far as most of the electorate were concerned. ‘Charity starts at home!’

Would that make the Conservatives a ‘better’ government or is it just better political management of the apparent situation given that almost all other economic measures of the handling of the economy, in very difficult times, under the Conservative (and Liberal) government were good (and better than almost any other developed nation in a similar position?)

Not sure I understand the point you are making here. Are you asking if I am interested but not to the point of…etc?

The point I was trying to make, appallingly badly (having re-read it), was that the United Kingdom electorate are unlikely to regard anybody but themselves when deciding who is ‘needy’ and who is ‘rich’ and the option that they are most likely to vote for is the one that benefits them while somebody else pays; this is sold to them as ‘fairness’ or ‘equality’. Nothing wrong with that it is what most politicians practice.

Of course, while calling for ‘equality’, those that regard themselves as being in need only consider those who are better-off than themselves and never the, far larger, numbers who are considerably worse-off than themselves. They may also be dismayed to discover that, even within the United Kingdom, they were perhaps not as badly-off as they imagined and they are included as part of the anonymous ‘rich’ who are expected to pay more tax. Be careful what you wish for!

Erm, yeah.

Living in a dreamworld…?

Just because one ‘side’ won does not mean that the opposition has to rejoice in it.

Not asking anybody to rejoice…..just asking them not to bitch about the ‘wrong’ government getting in! 🙂

Yes, in the analogy of voting in a democracy; the winning ‘team’ would be decided by a democratic vote of all the fans. That way it would be impossible for anybody to say that the ‘wrong’ team had won! Surely you understand this?

Just because one ‘side’ won does not mean that the opposition has to rejoice in it.

But not to the point where you would have to make any sacrifices to your after-school-clubs, entertainment, or libraries?

Not sure I understand the point you are making here. Are you asking if I am interested but not to the point of…etc?

I don’t have to defend such a government (even if you could prove that such a government has ‘brought more people down’) because you are forgetting our democratic football match…

…the ‘right’ team won the match…..so say the democratic electorate!

Democratic government or not, the rise in demand for food banks, probably the biggest since the great depression of the 1930s, says something about the situation that cannot be denied by all except the most politically blind.

So Hitler captained the right team in 1933?

Ouch.

Maybe he paid off the referee, the linesmen and the opposition, bought all the tickets for both ends and wrote the match report in his favour.

If Germany had voted democratically for Hitler in 1933 (which they didn’t?), then yes.

But please understand what I am saying here, not what you think I am saying; what that means is that democracy voted in the ‘right’ government…

Yes, very right. Politically.
What you are saying is that the people, in essence, voted in the leader, the party, so therefore it is the right government. Ok, we get it.

…that means the one the democratic process says was the ‘right’ government by the number of votes cast.

It does NOT mean that the policies of that government were ‘right’! I’ll say that again. It does NOT mean that the policies that government were ‘right’!

Like I said, we get it.

Legitimate I’ll go for. Has no morally relativistic connotations. (lies down after too many syllables)

Well done; maybe you should take a little more water with it next time…;o)

From the point of view of the New Labour establishment this is backfiring horribly.

Yes indeedy! Fun, isn’t it?!!

Obviously Blair didn’t offer up enough sacrifices or offended his invisible friend in some other way.

I’m glad you’re amused but nobody here is indulging in any more ‘rhetoric’ about the NHS than Jeremy Corbyn himself; in his campaign for election to lead the Labour Party he suggest it would be possible to double spending on the NHS!

There would be an end to austerity, higher taxes for the rich and protection for people on welfare – and a new crackdown on tax avoidance and tax evasion, as well as ‘corporate welfare’, tax breaks for companies. He claims this plan could ‘double’ the NHS’s income.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-33772024

Now we all appreciate the ‘value’ of the NHS but when talking about balancing a government budget, the NHS, even though it is an ‘asset’, it is still right and proper to refer to its ‘cost’ surely?

And while we’re on the subject…..the NHS is not completely funded by NI and tax…

…successive governments have had to borrow about the cost of the NHS every year to bridge the short-fall between what government spends and what government raises in taxes.

Even essential services need to be costed so that they can be funded, affordably and sustainably.

Oh, and nobody has suggested that the NHS or the Armed Forces should operate at a profit!

Amusing to read all the rhetoric regarding the “cost” of the NHS, of course it is a net cost, paid for by NI contributions and taxes just as all the emergency services are and the armed services, no-one seems to expect the armed services to operate at a profit, all of them are costs which we pay for.

Yes we can debate as to value for money or priorities etc, but essential services are in place because they are as it says on the tin “essential” services.

As for the BBC, that organisation gives far better value for money than anything from the likes of Murdoch or even the ad loaded “free” commercial channels.

OK, fair enough. I was actually not clear that that was what you meant, so I am happy to accept your explanation.:)

I haven’t responded about the BBC because it really is a subject by itself, but do start a new thread if you feel so inclined. All I would say is that a radically slimmed down BBC, without commercial interests and a hugely reduced tax, is unlikely to be pestered by those clammering after ratings. In any case my aspirations for the BBC will never be realised so I’m really just p******ng in the wind!!:eek:

Well no actually I was using (a *******ised version of) the second. And to quote somebody recently “we all know what I meant” 😉
Somebody can offer a critical appraisal that is not negative, whether that is in reference to literary or artistic work or something else is a little pedantic I think.

Snafu

From the OED. Correct me if I am wrong but we are dealing the first of the two definitions.

Definition of criticism in English:
noun

[MASS NOUN]
1 The expression of disapproval of someone or something on the basis of perceived faults or mistakes:
he received a lot of criticism
[COUNT NOUN]: he ignored the criticisms of his friends

2 The analysis and judgement of the merits and faults of a literary or artistic work:
alternative methods of criticism supported by well-developed literary theories

2.1 The scholarly investigation of literary or historical texts to determine their origin or intended form.