No money for food? Why the hungry rely on food banks

The 21 yr old paints something of a
sob story…. not entirely credible
IMHO.

There seems to be some doubt as to whether Marie Antoinette ever actually said “Let them eat cake”, but what is certain is that if she did say it, it wasn’t original.

It had already been attributed to two of Louis XV’s daughters, Madame Sophie and Madame Victoire, and before that to Marie-Thérèse, a Spanish princess who married Louis XIV in the 1660s. However the original saying appears to be “‘Why don’t they eat meat?”, uttered by the Chinese Emperor H*i of Jin when he was informed that the peasants had no rice to eat.

I love Wikipedia.

By self inflected I mean drop kids until you can’t afford to save for the future and then when something bad happens, you’re stuffed. I’ve been unemployed over 2 years no benefits and I’m not not starving. Its all about prudent planning and not going with the spend spend world that all the ads are tempting people with. Hence self inflicted. If I want something I wait until I’ve saved up. I still don’t have a mobile phone or flat screen TV, I don’t smoke or drink or do drugs. And I don’t have 5 kids.

You’ve been unemployed for two years and claimed no benefits but if you want something you save for it. I assume this means that you do in fact have some form of income?

Not now I don’t, I just go without or use my ever dimensioning savings. When I had a job I would save. I’ve always wanted double glazing but never felt secure in my job (of 21 years) enough to spend £3k on it.

I would like to ask all the people in London who say they and their children are starving because the breadwinner has lost their job how they do spend what they get. I am 76 years old and when our family was young we were always hard up and I did go without food at times
1) do you smoke or ever drink alcohol, I did not as food and rent came first. I learned to make the children’s and my clothes from cast offs and second hand school uniforms. I bought the cheapest cuts of meat grew veg, often failed and could make a 3 lb chicken do 3 meals for seven of us by boiling up the giblets and carcass picking the meat out to use with pasta and made soup. I learned the “parsons nose” was the tastiest bit of the bird, still always buy goods at the end of their use by or sell by date, buying reduced meat and food in season and from street markets.
We always turn lights of and have gradually bought LED bulbs as others failed. LED’s cost very little to run.
I never put the heating on until 30 mins before the kids came home from school and made sure that I was home when my children came home from school.
In the 60’s and 70’s it was considered antisocial to do more than reproduce yourselves because of rising world population so we fostered and adopted. Fostering rates in those days nowhere near covered the cost of keeping a child where we lived in the home counties as the local authority rates did not cover costs & never gave you London rates or what they promised if you took in extra children and did not have enough spare clothing for them. We could not afford to adopt our girls as we had already adopted one child but they are still our daughters treated exactly as we do our natural children and they have done well in life.
We made or did up toys for Christmas and birthdays and I made extra to sell to pay for Christmas and we always camped for holidays. The London LA we fostered for is still as troubled as ever gave no support and still has child death scandals that make headlines. I studied when the children went to secondary school as I had few qualifications and was lucky to get a grant for a 4 year a full Social Work qualification. Often despised for this from the ignorant. We stuck together at times of discord because we had to and are still married moving to a sheltered flat so we will never go into a home. No holidays abroad. I am not showing off and no longer have a religious faith just stating facts and consider myself lucky to have survived the Blitz. A hard sometimes but good life. I am lucky!