"Cost of living crisis" nonsense

M0ney

ruggedtoast wrote: »

The Labour Party makes you pretty angry, doesn't it Fella.

The Labour party make me laugh, their front benchers are a bunch of pathetic pretentious rich kids who are pretending that they are fighting for the good of the people, when really they are only interested in their own political ambitions. The Labour party of 10 years ago can never be forgiven for allowing the UK to take part in the horrific war crimes visited on countries which had never posed any threat to the UK and were attacked based on lies about their weaponry and not forgetting our troops were mobilised in spite of the fact that the UN deemed the invasion illegal. Had Labour not followed this path we'd now have been billions of pounds richer, there wouldn't have been hundreds of thousands of deaths and severe injuries. Thankfully we now have a government which has many faults but is scaling back our illegal attacks on foreign countries.

We had the misfortune of having Thatcher in power for over 10 years and now it's too late for us to have the men we had then to be a good strong voice for good in the Labour party. The first few which come to mind are Tony Benn, John Smith, George Galloway, Robin Cook and Donald Dewar.

nickj_2

M0ney wrote: »

The Labour party make me laugh, their front benchers are a bunch of pathetic pretentious rich kids who are pretending that they are fighting for the good of the people, when really they are only interested in their own political ambitions. The Labour party of 10 years ago can never be forgiven for allowing the UK to take part in the horrific war crimes visited on countries which had never posed any threat to the UK and were attacked based on lies about their weaponry and not forgetting our troops were mobilised in spite of the fact that the UN deemed the invasion illegal. Had Labour not followed this path we'd now have been billions of pounds richer, there wouldn't have been hundreds of thousands of deaths and severe injuries. Thankfully we now have a government which has many faults but is scaling back our illegal attacks on foreign countries.

We had the misfortune of having Thatcher in power for over 10 years and now it's too late for us to have the men we had then to be a good strong voice for good in the Labour party. The first few which come to mind are Tony Benn, John Smith, George Galloway, Robin Cook and Donald Dewar.

they did a great job of shafting the working class man /woman as well

don't forget that thatcher took on the unions and beat them , we were known as the the sick man of europe with trade unions being far too powerful before she sorted them out

ash28

Generali wrote: »

So food banks...what changed?

Food banks were unheard of in 2007 yet were everywhere by 2010. Benefits weren't cut, wages went down a little in real terms but not by that much.

What did change was that you couldn't borrow money so easily. People were required to pay down short term debt for the first time in a decade. I suspect that food banks are simply chickens coming home to roost.

Wages rose by around 10% between 2007 and 2012 and CPI rose by 17% in the same period.

However the rise in the cost of none discretionary spends increased by far more than the overall rise in CPI.

Food rose by 30%
Gas and electricity rose by 45%
Vehicle tax and insurance by 88%
Public transport costs 32%
Water rose by 24%
Petrol and oil 56%

These are the costs that impact people on a daily basis, people don't buy big ticket items every month, but most of us do have to buy food, pay to heat and light our homes, put petrol in the car, tax and insure it or use public transport.

For instance we don't have a mortgage, we don't pay rent or have debt and our income gets increased by RPI (more or less) each year and we have definitely seen an increase in our overall cost of living.....quite a big increase. We're early retired and in our 50s.

The first food bank opened in 2000 and it wasn't until 2004 that numbers started to increase and it's the growth in numbers over the last 4 years which is the issue.

People can't access food banks without being referred (GP, police, health visitors, social workers, CAB etc), they are given a voucher and they will be given emergency supplies to last them 3 days. They can access them 3 times in 6 months.

It's not as if people can use them to supplement their shopping or anything, it's short term help for people in crisis/need.

The Trussell Trust opened it's first food bank in 2000, and by 2005/6 had helped 2.8k
9.1k in 2006/7
13k in 2007/8
26k in 2008/9
40k in 2009/10
61k in 2010/11
128k in 2011/12
347k in 2012/13

And the reasons
Benefit delays 30%
Low income 18%
Benefit changes 14%
Debt 9%
the other reasons include, sickness, unemployed, refused crisis loan, homelessness, domestic violence, etc.

chewmylegoff

Any party in opposition (indeed any political party) will say anything they can which will make people more likely to vote for them. Labour have been thrashing about spouting conflicting rhetoric for at least the last year trying to find themes which are popular with voters.

Think back a year or so and all Labour were going on about was the "hated" bedroom tax and how government cuts to benefits targeted the most vulnerable.

Fast forward to now and they are proposing to strip benefits from people who don't have the necessary skills to get a job!

The cost of living crisis is just something they tried out that got a bit of traction at focus groups amongst people who are "outraged" about their gas bill going up I expect.

Moby

Fella wrote: »

Can't believe the Tories are giving this nonsense the oxygen of publicity.

Leaving aside for a moment, the fact that it was Labour who screwed the economy so royally it beggers belief that whatever nonsense they trot out regarding the recovery is given so much credence.

(Text removed by MSE Forum Team)

To forum moderators. You have omitted to remove the rest of the rubbish written.

Moby

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

They tend to concentrate on tinned and packaged food rather than fresh or frozen chickens. These people can't afford to pay for the gas to cook a chicken anyway.

I strongly suspect that Channel 4 (or others) are planning a sequal to "Benefits Street" which will concentrate on food banks and their clientelle. Most of them probably have "regulars" by now. I think they try to ration what you can have, but I can't believe they can keep it up forever......

Sounds heartless, I know, but I can only believe it will all have nasty consequences. Firstly, we had the madcap Brownian philosophy of throwing money, tax credits, and benefits around like crazy. Not just for the unemployed but for the lower paid as well. It taught people that you don't really have to work hard for a living, because you can 'live' on benefits and have plenty over for that 51" Plasma TV, the trainers, and at least 3 nights a week down the pub and the bingo hall.

Now this beanfeast is being cut back, the balloon principle simply squeezes the same dross into some other direction. Which means that even if benefits are now frozen, or even cut back a bit, then provided the week's groceries come from the food bank, then there's still plenty for the beer, fags, and gambling...... but not, of course, the exponential cost of rolling over and churning your payday loan from Wonga and others....

I am not talking about the majority of those on benefits, but the 'professionals' who can sniff out a food bank from 12 miles away.

Speaking for myself, if only someone could analyse and disect, say, 50 food bank 'regulars', and then come up with an accurate set of accounts for how much money pours into their households, and how it all flows out, then I would be one of the first to contribute to my local food bank [if we have any here]. This would be if I could detect any degree of pure 'misfortune' or genuine hardship that was not self inflicted.

Straight out of Dickens this. Prove to me you deserve to be helped and I'll then pat you on the head and dip into my long pockets. Classic Essex Barrow Boy made good attitude......... well done!;)

SGE1

What's the issue here - does the OP disagree with the term "crisis", or disagree that the cost of living is higher, or even an issue at all?

I can understand why someone would want to argue that perhaps the word "crisis" is a tad exaggerated; but to deny that average incomes have not been significantly outstripped by prices over the last 4 or 5 years is just silly. Lots of well-respected think tanks (e.g. IFS) have backed this up. I trust them much more than I trust the anecdotal "my car insurance has gone down" contributions around here. (As an aside, well done, you must be a man; because if you were a women, odds are you'd have seen it increase significantly, on the back of a recent EU ruling about the use of gender in determining insurance premiums)

And as another aside, just because something is "better than expected" (and I'm not sure it is, really), it doesn't mean it's actually good. That's difference between the absolute and the relative.

J_i_m

I have't noticed my car insurance coming down substantially over the past few years. It's been fairly constant.

But I can tell you that during the 11 years I've been driving, prices at the pumps have doubled.

Fella

SGE1 wrote: »

What's the issue here - does the OP disagree with the term "crisis", or disagree that the cost of living is higher, or even an issue at all?

Read post #11

Tancred

Fella wrote: »

Can't believe the Tories are giving this nonsense the oxygen of publicity.

Leaving aside for a moment, the fact that it was Labour who screwed the economy so royally it beggers belief that whatever nonsense they trot out regarding the recovery is given so much credence.

(Text removed by MSE Forum Team)

Labour didn't screw up the economy, it was the bankers stupid!