Time for a wee rant. I thought I'd watch Question Time tonight because it seemed to have good Scottish representation with Nicola Sturgeon and Duncan Bannatyne. Unfortunately, it also had the usual Westminster time servers: Caroline Flint, Norman Lamb and Lord Heseltine. So these are my conclusions:
Heseltine doesn't know who Ant & Dec are. Maybe it's an age thing. He's old - but then I'm old and I know who they are. Heseltine also thinks Scotland produces nothing and gets given all its money by England. I have a lovely picture of this: the whole population of Scotland at a luxury hotel sitting by the pool under a sun umbrella quaffing margaritas and telling the waiter: charge it up to the English tax payer. If only. I thought after the referendum we were partners within the UK? Not on this showing.
Caroline Flint knows which Coalition policies she doesn't like but is hard pushed to name a Labour policy apart from the mansion tax.
Norman Lamb is a nice guy from the Lib Dems but he has no policies to offer either, so he just tries to defend the LibDem role in the Coalition. I suspect that boat has sailed, Norman.
Duncan Bannatyne has no idea how the Jobseekers' scheme works. He recommends that a woman in the audience stop applying for jobs online (although the Job Centre and the companies hiring say she must) and wants her pounding the streets asking for a job. Good one, Duncan. Maybe that's what you did 40 years ago but we've moved on since then. We have these amazing things called computers. And we have the internet. But no doubt you have people who do all that for you. Memo to the rest of the politicos on the panel: never mind humiliating the disabled and the unemployed, as one sensible member of the audience said. How about supporting them? I wish the very best to the young people in the audience who hardly got a word in edgeways. They're the people who matter and scant support they're getting if this lot are anything to go by.
Poor Nicola Sturgeon must have felt she was sitting in a parallel universe. I know I did. The audience favoured keeping Trident and updating it to the tune of £100bn. Indeed, some even welcomed the idea of Trident being moved to the north of England. (Let it go, I say!) Not one member of the audience said: Haud oan, the UK is a tiny wee country - and a pretty poor country too - so could we forget our delusions of being a world power and concentrate on looking after our own people?
I don't think I'll bother watching again.
Thursday 19 February 2015
Monday 2 February 2015
About the food bank...
Week 3 of the foodbank and I've concluded weeks 1 and 2 were the lull before the storm.
First week I was down in the dunny, putting tins and jars of food into cupboards. Then filling boxes labelled 'Single Person', 'Couple', 'Family of four', etc, ready for us to bag up when clients came in to get them. We 'fed' about 40 people.
Week two I was on the door, meeting clients as they arrived, showing them into the hall where they can have tea, coffee and biscuits while their bags of food are being made up. A couple of people turned up without the 'red slip' that's given out by gps or the Money Matters office in Govan or by the jobcentre. The red slip gets people 3 days of food. Strictly speaking, people shouldn't get anything without a red slip but I'm told no one ever gets sent away empty-handed. I think the number of people getting food was about the same as the first week.
The food quite often comes from donations, some from local organisations like churches and schools. Last week someone said a donation had come in from the Bartenders' Association for Scotland who'd had a Xmas do. Supermarkets also give big donations. Morrison's give vouchers too so the food bank staff can buy what they need. At new year, Tesco gave a huge amount of food. Individual people also come to the door and hand in bags of food. Some things do run short and then the Trussell Trust gives the foodbank managers cash to go and buy what they need.
If you're thinking of giving a donation, forget the beans, sugar, cornflakes and tins of soup. The food bank has plenty of these. Give tins of meat and fish (protein is good!), toilet rolls, sweeties for the kids, biscuits, coffee (no decaf), pasta shapes. Toiletries are very welcome: packs of razors, shaving foam, toothbrushes, toothpaste, deodorants, etc. I imagine when people are off job-hunting they want to look their best.
This week was a shitstorm. There were people waiting at the door well before the foodbank was due to open. The volunteers had all come in early and we thought we were well-prepared: cupboards full, plenty of boxes made up. As soon as a box was emptied into bags and given out to clients, we re-filled it. I lost track of how often we had to re-fill the boxes, especially the boxes for single people. We have a lot of formerly homeless single men housed in the area. They are all well turned out and very polite. And quiet. Boy, are they quiet. It's obvious some need medical help. I wonder if they get it? One woman was there with her car. She's lost her job and is alone with two kids. Her husband isn't paying child support and her benefits haven't come through. As we took bags out to the car for her, I wondered how many other families would recognise this situation. They do say only 2 months wages stand between a family and the foodbank. And if your family can't help you, you'd right up the creek.
Some of the people who volunteer at the foodbank are themselves on benefits. For some reason ,that really upset me today.
Suddenly, D (in charge in the dunny) said it was twenty to two. We close at two. Boxes of donations appeared from an upstairs store and we piled the stuff into the cupboards, made sure the boxes were made up and generally tidied up so we could see, for example, if there would be enough bags for Thursday. The pile of red slips looked huge. I think the foodbank fed about 70 people this week.
I came home to a letter from my local gp practice, inviting me to a stroke review. There's a questionnaire which includes a section asking what exercise I take and if I want to take more. I reckon 2 1/2 hours working at the foodbank and 2 1/2 hours delivering books to the homebound every week is exercise enough for a woman of 66.
First week I was down in the dunny, putting tins and jars of food into cupboards. Then filling boxes labelled 'Single Person', 'Couple', 'Family of four', etc, ready for us to bag up when clients came in to get them. We 'fed' about 40 people.
Week two I was on the door, meeting clients as they arrived, showing them into the hall where they can have tea, coffee and biscuits while their bags of food are being made up. A couple of people turned up without the 'red slip' that's given out by gps or the Money Matters office in Govan or by the jobcentre. The red slip gets people 3 days of food. Strictly speaking, people shouldn't get anything without a red slip but I'm told no one ever gets sent away empty-handed. I think the number of people getting food was about the same as the first week.
The food quite often comes from donations, some from local organisations like churches and schools. Last week someone said a donation had come in from the Bartenders' Association for Scotland who'd had a Xmas do. Supermarkets also give big donations. Morrison's give vouchers too so the food bank staff can buy what they need. At new year, Tesco gave a huge amount of food. Individual people also come to the door and hand in bags of food. Some things do run short and then the Trussell Trust gives the foodbank managers cash to go and buy what they need.
If you're thinking of giving a donation, forget the beans, sugar, cornflakes and tins of soup. The food bank has plenty of these. Give tins of meat and fish (protein is good!), toilet rolls, sweeties for the kids, biscuits, coffee (no decaf), pasta shapes. Toiletries are very welcome: packs of razors, shaving foam, toothbrushes, toothpaste, deodorants, etc. I imagine when people are off job-hunting they want to look their best.
This week was a shitstorm. There were people waiting at the door well before the foodbank was due to open. The volunteers had all come in early and we thought we were well-prepared: cupboards full, plenty of boxes made up. As soon as a box was emptied into bags and given out to clients, we re-filled it. I lost track of how often we had to re-fill the boxes, especially the boxes for single people. We have a lot of formerly homeless single men housed in the area. They are all well turned out and very polite. And quiet. Boy, are they quiet. It's obvious some need medical help. I wonder if they get it? One woman was there with her car. She's lost her job and is alone with two kids. Her husband isn't paying child support and her benefits haven't come through. As we took bags out to the car for her, I wondered how many other families would recognise this situation. They do say only 2 months wages stand between a family and the foodbank. And if your family can't help you, you'd right up the creek.
Some of the people who volunteer at the foodbank are themselves on benefits. For some reason ,that really upset me today.
Suddenly, D (in charge in the dunny) said it was twenty to two. We close at two. Boxes of donations appeared from an upstairs store and we piled the stuff into the cupboards, made sure the boxes were made up and generally tidied up so we could see, for example, if there would be enough bags for Thursday. The pile of red slips looked huge. I think the foodbank fed about 70 people this week.
I came home to a letter from my local gp practice, inviting me to a stroke review. There's a questionnaire which includes a section asking what exercise I take and if I want to take more. I reckon 2 1/2 hours working at the foodbank and 2 1/2 hours delivering books to the homebound every week is exercise enough for a woman of 66.
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