Eating on Benefits

[mockney piers]

Totally with you regards Delia D_C.

As for the latter point, I am by and large with you there too, though the closer to poverty you are, the less morality applies.

Extend it logically and if it's starve or steal, then how moral would people really be?

It's dog eat dog out there....ooh, dog, now there's an idea, a cheap plentiful supply and help goose green remain pooh free at the same time.

[macroban]

So that's where missing East Dulwich cats end up?

[Marmora Man]

All in all it seems a budget of about ?20.00 a head seems to be he consensus.

I'll see what I can achieve.

[Cassius]

There's always road kill - I used to eat pheasants my father had hit on Devon roads.

[david_carnell]

Marmora Man, if you have an air rifle, squirrels on the Rye are free and can be legally shot. Although guns in peckham tend to cause a degree of panic so best use a ghillie suit, eh.

Squirrel recipes here.

Mockney, you raise a well known example of the legitamacy of theft in certain circumstances but I'm not convinced they apply in modern Britain. Absolving oneself of social responsibities due to poverty is both patronising to those who are law-abiding and in the same boat as you, and also a profoundly selfish POV.

There are obviously shades of grey in this with decisions to be made on free-range, ethical food stuffs being a world away from anti-social behaviour. Nonetheless, I'm not sure I believe poor (although this is obviously relative rather than absolute) people should evade judgement on their purchasing power merely because they are poor.

Hugh Fernley Whittingstall showed in his chicken campaign that judicious use of one chicken can feed a family of four twice over. If Mamora Man's budget is a mere ?20 however even this may be beyond his reach.

[*Bob*]

It isn't difficult to live on benefits for a week.

The difficult bit is having lived on benefits last week, living on benefits this week, and knowing that next week.. and the week after that.. you'll be living on benefits. Having the odd power cut and getting the candles out is a bit of fun, but it's no fun for three months.

Regarding abuse of the benefits system: there's a difference between abusing the system in order to stay in it and abusing the system in order to get out of it.

[Asset]

Will MM be allowed to utilise the truffle oil, beluga caviar and 25 yr old single malt he's got stashed in the cupboard this week? And none of those hand rolled cuban cigars either!

[Marmora Man]

Asset Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Will MM be allowed to utilise the truffle oil,

> beluga caviar and 25 yr old single malt he's got

> stashed in the cupboard this week? And none of

> those hand rolled cuban cigars either!

No caviar and I don't smoke, but I do pride myself on a good selection of malt whiskies.

[Asset]

what about the truffle oil?

[????]

I think "drinking on benefits" could be a more enjoyable challenge

[Marmora Man]

???? Wrote:

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> I think "drinking on benefits" could be a more

> enjoyable challenge

There's plenty of calories

[spadetownboy]

and choice.

[Klaus]

Through no choice of my own, i've been on benefits just over a year and can happily inform you all it is possible to survive on them.

"Survive" being the important word though. I've barely bought any non-essential items in that time... that means no clothes, music, books. Even things like newspapers are a treat. Every purchase, from a tin of rice pudding to a new toothbruth is deliberated as to whether it's really neccessary. No holidays. No pubs. No eating out. In fact, barely any sort of social life at all.

I can also happily say it is no fun whatsoever.

[ChavWivaLawDegree]

"so the odd bottle of milk and loaf of bread did get long term loaned from someone's doorstep post the milkie's delivery. Apart from turning up at friends' houses, coincidentally just in time for dinner, it was sometimes necessary to augment stocks by utilising the storage capacity of the sleeves on my parker coat in Tesco's freezer cabinet. Sometimes I'd survive on a packet of cornflakes (breakfast, lunch and dinner) a loaf of bread and a packet of cheese. By the end of the week the remaining bread and cheese would be slightly mouldy, but nothing a quick blast under the grill couldn't cure (and yes I was fiddling the gas meter so that 10p coin was recycled infinitely).

I'm just about a reformed character now."

Lozzyloz I believe we were twins separated at birth!

I have done my time on benefits and it helps if you don't smoke or like a tipple. It also makes a difference if you understand the basics of nutrition and can cook.

MM, the problem comes when you need to buy the non-food items like the second hand computer I got for my kids when I wasn't working. We had to live on peanut butter on (wholemeal!) toast for a couple of weeks after I bought it. Or if you have to replace things like a washing machine, or even if you can't afford a washing machine and have to use the more expensive option - the local launderette.

Also most people on benefits can't afford to save up to pay electricity and gas bills so have pre-payment meters installed for which they charge much higher prices than the prices paid by the more wealthy quarterly bill payers.

I have always loved buying second hand, even when I am working, because I hate waste, but it gets really difficult to stay positive after a sustained period surviving on that amount of money and depression is a common problem amongst long-term broke peeps, whether jobless or just underpaid.

[bawdy-nan]

HFW says he can get food for a family of four from judicous use of a chicken? Pah! I say, you profligate fop - make it go at least 3 if not 4 meals:

1. remove all limbs and serve meal one - roast torso of chicken (retain carcass) and any pickings (assume family of 2 adultsand 2 smallish chidlren) - serve with lots of veg and potatoes and bread sauce

2. cook drumsticks, thighs and wings in a jerk / other marinade - serve with plenty of pitta and salad

3. pick to smithereens your torso of chicken retain pickings and make stock from the picked carcass (onion, carrot, celery bones etc) use stock to make a stew comprising the most delicious stock in the world bulked out with veg and lentils or barley or both (jazz up with a small bit of bacon and chopped parsley if you're feeling flush)

4. use remaining stock and chicen pickings to make make a chicken noodle soup

As far as cooking on a low budget goes there is a very big difference in cooking for just yourself student stylee (fun with noodles and no protein before going out) and trying to feed a family day in and day out. Of course it is possible but - heck, I admire the person that does it every day,does it well and makes it appetising and interesting.

[SteveT]

The toughest thing to live with is the feeling of no hope or future.

[Marmora Man]

Well I did it.

It is, as some have mentioned, undoubtedly easier to do for a week than for an unknown long term future. I didn't have to think about buying staples for the store cupboard. Shopping took longer as altho' I was buying less the price comparisons took time. I bought it all on LL - and could perhaps have done better by bussing it to Aldi / LIDL. The food was OK, nutritious but boring"ish". Having to do it week in, week out and make the cooking inventive and appetising within the budget would be very difficult and stressful.

It made me aware of why anyone living on benefits will take any chance to reduce eating costs, take up a freebie or invitation to eat at someone else's cost.

It wasn't a mile in their shoes but it was a few hundred yards.

[SeanMacGabhann]

Intersting stuff MM - thanks for sharing all the detail as well. I might even forgive you not buying me that pint you promised last Friday ;-)

[snoozequeen1]

I am not sure if I have understood your eating programme? It looks as though you're suggesting two meals a day, breakfast plus one other. No tea or coffee (with or without milk) throughout the day, either. That's a permanent fast. Your person never has any kind of social life, either, of course, for they cannot cook for or eat with others, ever.

As pointed out already here by those who have experienced the reality, you have not been in the shoes of people dealing with even short term, let alone medium or long term poverty and hardship, not for one step.

All the material comforts and security that sustain your sense of who you are, and define society's view of who you are, were still there. Wait until a tile comes off your roof and the rain starts coming in, or you crack a tooth and you have to walk about in pain trying to find an NHS dentist. If you were lucky you would end up with a mishapen lump of lead filling that you could not hide and that would, literally, wipe away the superior smile that, unfortunately, one is led to imagine must be your habitual expression.

One of the biggest causes of poverty is ill health, yet it is never even mentioned any more by politicians, as though they can simply wish the problem away, as per all the other varieties of hysteria they have substituted for rational government. No doubt it is supposed to be a matter of faith. Welcome to the Middle Ages.

[Peckhamgatecrasher]

But MM did have a social life - he attended the Forum Drinks, benefits budget suspended for the duration.

[SeanMacGabhann]

did he??? Did I miss him? I don't remember being that drunk...

[Peckhamgatecrasher]

Sorry, I inferred from the Vale thread that he had attended. Hush my mouth.

[SeanMacGabhann]

phew

Anyway.. snoozequeens points are all good and valid.

And to be fair I think MM has learned a lot from the excercise. It would be interesting to hear what he thinks might be good public policy to address the situation? How can people escape that kind of trap (getting a job doesn't always help as many minimum wage jobs effectively provide similar income)

[Asset]

I think the tuna pitta was lunch

[citizenED]

I rather think that MM's task was a bit of a vanity. Laudable, interesting, challenging maybe, but really nothing more than a distaction. As others have said doing it for a week is simple - the whole issue is the psychological impact of doing it long term. I'm sure that MM's task was made all the easier for knowing that there was a prime steak and a glass of malt and the whole trappings of a well-off lifestyle waiting at the end of the week.