I went to a food bank today for the first time in my life. I didn’t expect much, it’s charity after-all.
They gave me 2 big carrier bags - I couldn’t stop thanking them and carted them home.
When I opened them at home I noticed chocolate. I cried…cos I hadn’t even thought of buying myself chocolate in months cos it seemed so frivolous. But they put some chocolate in. It was so kind. 🥲
There’s so much suffering out there. It can happen to anyone. I founded and ran two companies in my 20s. High flying career and was making £50 at my last job in tech.
All fell apart 2 years ago. Been struggling to piece my life together ever since.
@Fudoshin@DessertStorms I'm involved with a local food bank, and when we have little extras like that or flowers to give out, it really makes our day too!
@Fudoshin@DessertStorms@Tooden this reflects my experience of needing a food bank for a while last year. They even did their best to accommodate dietary needs.
@Fudoshin@DessertStorms
I volunteer with a London charity that provides food to Foodbanks. We get food from farmers, high end restaurants, supermarkets etc. It very good quality and we are mindful when we pick orders from foodbanks, schools, play centres and hubs that we are picking for individuals, children and families . Of course we add in sweet treats xxx
@Fudoshin@DessertStorms My roommate and I will be visiting a food bank for the first time in our lives, this week, too. I was fired right before Xmas, and my UI hasn't kicked in yet, so I suggested we go and try to get some frozen veggies and some chicken or something. I'm celiac so I doubt they'll have much in the way of dedicated gluten-free, but if they have something we'll be grateful.
@Fudoshin every few months we are usually back at ours. We try to go as little as possible. Sweetest people, when I was younger and a dependent I volunteered there. It sucks but I am glad they have the same mission and have stuck to it so well all these years.
I had to go to a food bank once. Because I have dietary issues they gave me a Tesco voucher, everyone was so kind. It was a really humbling experience but not an awful one.
I’m doing much better these days and you will be soon too.
I'm sorry to hear you've been having a hard time but glad you were able to get some support and compassion locally.
We shouldn't need food banks, but their existence is proof that communities will look out for each other with or without central government telling them to or even funding them, and while they represent a failure of our current system, I also see them as representing hope for what a future could look like without outside of a for-profit existence.
But even (or especially) when you feel like it won't happen to you, you should be kind to others and help them. Helping each other doesn't have to be reciprocating.
@Fudoshin@DessertStorms
I understand the way you feel about the chocolate. I’ve been using commodities program all year; I too once had money, was ‘middle class’ & how delighted I was they included a cake in Dec. commodities. This month it’s mostly potatoes and nuts. I did get 2 dz eggs a and 8 grapefruits too. And a sack of 60 lbs of potatoes, 11 lbs. of walnuts, 6 lbs of almonds & 4 lbs of raisins.if I didn’t have dried beans left over from before I’d be living on trail mix .
@Fudoshin@DessertStorms May brighter days be timely. So many of us have needed that core generosity at one time or another, we were gifted shoes and wardrobes and a pantry from the Salvation Army after Hurricane Irene in Vermont USA, I kept walking around trying not to show I was crying by hiding in the clothes racks. Best of luck.
@Fudoshin
When I drove a "food rescue van" for a local food pantry collecting birthday cakes from the grocery stores' bakeries was the height of my day. People who shopped at the pantry were registered; when they checked in volunteers checked for kids with birthdays coming soon & notified the volunteers assisting shoppers to give them a cake.
I sometimes hung around to watch the faces as folks left with them. There was almost at least one every day. I sometimes got 4 or 5 cakes on a trip.
They want you to emphasize more on name and word calling so people don't headline actual things they did.
In the US politicians embrace the name calling, helps you get away with anything else. Trump makes orange jokes at his rallies and supporters love it as a more recent example.
Fascism is right wing social policies, left wing economic policies (National Syndicalism, economic interventionism, etc.).
More accurately the Tories going further right is social-authoritarianism with libertarian economics. Like if Truss and Braverman had a bastard child they emotionally abused into a psychopath ultra-capitalist.
Possibly faster. The COVID enquiry has absolutely more than enough information to haul Boris in front of itself. Of course they’re still gathering additional evidence and they have to identify how much Rishi knew.
So we may be able to get our Trump wannabe squared away faster than the Americans can get rid of classic Trump.
That is because the Tories take their lead directly from Republicans. National conservative group AKA the NAT C’s.
Despite the pro-UK stance, National Conservatism was actually the offshoot of a Right-wing US think tank, which sees the movement as having the potential to reshape the narrative for the Conservative Party in the same way the Tea Party did once for the Republicans.
Peasants could match the medieval Kings of Europe in a lot of ways. The force Kings could apply without using peasants was limited to knights that were dispersed across the country and a small number of professional guards/soldiers. The weapons these forces used were more powerful than the peasants but could be overcome through sheer numbers. If the peasants withheld their labour, the Kings would starve and the kingdom would fall apart.
Most states now have a large professional police force and military that is extremely well equipped with weapons and intelligence that modern peasantry cannot come close to matching. These forces are mobile enough to deploy rapidly throughout the jurisdiction. And the labour of the peasants has largely been offshored or supplanted with temporary foreign work.
Kings were right to fear peasants in the past because the peasants represented a credible threat. This is no longer the case in the modern world. We are entirely at the mercy of those in power to play by our imaginary rules for democracy. If those in power choose to ignore those rules, the rest of us peasants have very little effective recourse.
The pandemic showed we just have to stop going to work in great enough numbers. I know it’s a pipe dream, we’re too divided, there’s too many that would betray their class, etc etc., but theoretically we do have recourse. Even mass unionization would help.
From the outside looking in, it would appear that Labour is yet another pseudo-progressive party that got addicted to corporate cash during the late 1990s flowering of neoliberalism ans aren’t willing to let go.
It’s the same thing in most western Nations, and it has the awful side effect of making what were previously “reasonable” right wing parties into proto-fascists put of self defense.
Sticking to tough spending rules in order to deliver economic stability
Code for austerity, some arbitrary cap on fiscal deficit.
Setting up Great British Energy, a publicly owned clean power energy company
How could that be done if spending rules are ‘tough’? By raising taxes on the rich? I highly doubt that even with the higher taxes, the Government would be able to raise enough revenues to ‘fund’ a green transition.
Cutting NHS waiting lists by providing 40,000 more appointments each week - funded by tackling tax avoidance and non-dom loopholes.
NHS would require a shit ton more spending than whatever could be raised by tackling tax avoidance. Decades of austerity has to be compensated for.
Launching a border security command to stop the gangs arranging small boat crossings
Hitler particles detected. How will the security command be paid for? NHS has to be funded by ‘tackling tax avoidance’ but funds for border security never need to be ‘raised’.
Providing more neighbourhood police officers to reduce antisocial behaviour and introduced new penalties for offenders
What is antisocial behaviour? Loitering? Also how are revenues for police officers raised? Every bit of welfare has to be ‘paid for’ by raising taxes or whatever but there is no mention of how police officer salaries would be paid for.
Recruiting 6,500 teachers, paid for through ending tax breaks for private schools.
Its fascinating how he can’t just say ‘Recruiting 6,500 teachers’, he has to ‘pay for it’ with something else. Why do private schools exist in the first place?
This is so bad, Starmer is really showing that he is not different from the Tories.
While non of these promises seem very impressive. I will respond to a few of your comments.
Code for austerity, some arbitrary cap on fiscal deficit.
Agree fully
How could that be done if spending rules are ‘tough’? By raising taxes on the rich? I highly doubt that even with the higher taxes, the Government would be able to raise enough revenues to ‘fund’ a green transition.
He is talking about a company competing in the current energy structure.
It really dose not require huge investment. Companies can both sell energy created by other companies. So produce 0 themselves. But only buy from green sources. Already selling. That dose is increase the demand for green energy without actually investing anything in it.
Or it can invest in one or 2 very small energy production schemes that are green. And sell that to other companies
While that costs money. He makes no promises about how much would be spent. It could literally be a company owning one windmill. And his claim has been achieved.
Its really only an expensive promise if you add assumptions about how big the gb energy company is going to be. He has not made any commitments on that.
<span style="color:#323232;">Cutting NHS waiting lists by providing 40,000 more appointments each week - funded by tackling tax avoidance and non-dom loopholes.
</span>
NHS would require a shit ton more spending than whatever could be raised by tackling tax avoidance. Decades of austerity has to be compensated for.
To fix the NHS compleatly yes. But he is only offering to reduce waiting lists by 40000 more appointments
He dose not say what type of appointments or make any promises as to the costs invested.
He could litralling hire a nurse 40hrs a week. Much as GP are already doing. Average of 10 mins an appointment. 240 appointments a week. That is 167 nurses.
Not a huge cost. Or much of a promise.
Hitler particles detected. How will the security command be paid for? NHS has to be funded by ‘tackling tax avoidance’ but funds for border security never need to be ‘raised’.
GODWINS LAW STILL IN FULL SWING.
but I agree its not costed here. But also remember he. He really has not committed to spending much on everything else yet. So how much dose he need. How much is he actually promising here.
what annoys me more. Its just a rebadged tory policy they have failed to achive. So is he planning to copy failure to commit as well as policy? I will add. Tories rwanda bullshit iss costed at 150k per victim sent. So if that is costed in the current budget. Then cancelling it and using that money would technically be costed. So its no worse then tory bulshit.
What is antisocial behaviour?
pretty well defined in the past. By both labour and tories. Its not a new thing.
Also how are revenues for police officers raised? Every bit of welfare has to be ‘paid for’ by raising taxes or whatever but there is no mention of how police officer salaries would be paid for.
Agreed. But again what is he actually commiting to more is not a number. Hiring a few specials (is that the still the name for unqualified part time officers now) would meet the commitment.
Its another promise with no real measure.
<span style="color:#323232;">Recruiting 6,500 teachers, paid for through ending tax breaks for private schools.
</span>
Its fascinating how he can’t just say ‘Recruiting 6,500 teachers’, he has to ‘pay for it’ with something else. Why do private schools exist in the first place?
because some folks want to pay for an elite education. But the better question is why the hell are they allowed to claim charity status and not pay taxes on the fees.
It is potentially a fairly large some of money. Lots of higher earners send kids to privrate school. And every privrate school uses charity status to allow no taxation on the income. I actually like this idea. But its an old one. Labour has used multiple times.
Where it might fail. If you increase the cost of provrate scooling(I’m gonna leave that typo. As I did not go to a privrate school ;) ). As this would fairly huge. You may see an equal number of lower wealthy deciding they cannot afford it. So it deff has a failure point. But less provrate schools is still a win to some extent.
This is so bad, Starmer is really showing that he is not different from the Tories**************
Oh def agree. Including typical promises that don’t promise much. Long time tory practice. Offer something that sounds great. But give 0 detail of what it actually will be.
PS I am visually impaired on a tablet. So sorry I make lots of typos. I try to fix the ones I see. So lots of edit but again vision is crap so I just miss loads. Sorry but live with it please.
There’s two reasons why there is a lack of teachers/doctors/nurses/police, and none of them seem to want to acknowledge this…stress, and pay. Solve the pay problem and you’ll solve the other. But no politician seems to want to acknowledge this.
The ‘world was safer’ argument is an especially bizarre one to make this week, of all weeks, when the Middle East is ‘on the cusp’ of a wider conflict that was partly caused by Donald Trump’s unilateral withdrawal from a treaty with Iran. And Trump also inflamed tensions in that same region by moving the US’ Israeli Embassy to Jersualem. As to conflict in ‘the West’ specifically, he also endorsed and continues to endorse the very people pushing the West towards conflict, and himself caused violent conflict in the US, which was part of ‘the West’ last time I checked.
Not just the withdrawal, but also the assassination of a Revolutionary Guards general, which Iran themselves said was why they staged October 7 as an act of revenge.
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