Food Banks

[G Richards]

Excuse my ignorance - FOBT?

[Jairzinho]

Gambling is popular because its become a one in a billion shot to break the cycle of relative poverty large swathes of the country are in. I like my gambling but im a little bit more clued up on it than the average person but i only win relatively small amounts through various loopholes and offers. But its not difficult to see how and why they are flourishing.

 

The biggest swizz these bookies are pulling is that they are all registering themselves in tax havens to avoid paying tax.

 

Yep, pretty much every poker site and sports bookmaker I have ever used has been registered in Malta, Gibraltar, or the Cayman Islands.

 

Now why would the government allow them to this...ahh yes, the enormous donations from them.

 

FREEDOM!

[Section_31]

Gambling is popular because its become a one in a billion shot to break the cycle of relative poverty large swathes of the country are in. I like my gambling but im a little bit more clued up on it than the average person but i only win relatively small amounts through various loopholes and offers. But its not difficult to see how and why they are flourishing.

 

The biggest swizz these bookies are pulling is that they are all registering themselves in tax havens to avoid paying tax.

I think my main issue with it is when it's actively marketed as a fun and social pass time to people who are probably sat at home bored. You get it all day, the you get it before Emmerdale and other shows.

 

Bookies were like pubs, they didn't come and find you you found them when you were old enough. Now people are being actively targeted with free bets, free money, easier than ever access. I think there are right and wrong ways of doing these things and it's getting well out of hand.

[Jairzinho]

Excuse my ignorance - FOBT?

 

Fixed odds betting terminals.

 

They essentially tell you how much money you'll win, or rather lose, long term.

 

Fruit machines are the same. If you look closely on a fruit machine somewhere it'll say "73%" payout, or something similar. Therefore if you play them for long enough for at least most of the variance to even itself out you will lose money.

 

 

In fact, I might as well post the article I found when googling for this image.

 

 

 

I entered my first betting shop at the age of 16. Despite the Think 21 policy, I was allowed in without having to prove my age. I went in to put a bet on the football, and I'll always remember the day. It was the first time I ever played a fixed-odds betting terminal. An FOBT is a touch-screen machine with a variety of different games, but the most popular is roulette. I remember feeding £10 into the machine, placing £2 bets on either red or black, and quickly doubling my money. From that day on, I played FOBTs every single day for the next four years.

At the time, I had a part-time job while I was in the sixth form. I earned about £650 a month, which, for a 16-year-old with no bills to pay, is a small fortune. I used to work 20 hours a week, and I once worked out that during each shift I made £32.44, but I would always go to the bookie's before, and sometimes after, I went to work – and bet £30 to £40 a spin. This soon increased to the maximum. The time between spins on FOBT roulette is about 20 seconds, and it's possible to bet up to £100 each time.

I neglected just about every aspect of my life during that time. I scraped into my second-choice university and there was a betting shop next to the campus. I used to go in there every single day, before lectures, after lectures, every spare minute I had. I had no savings, despite having worked for two years while in the sixth form, so I was gambling with my student loan, and constantly extending my overdraft.

After four years, when I was 20 and halfway through my second year, I hit rock-bottom. I had no money, and no possible access to credit. I worked out that I had lost £16,000 – all the savings I might have had, all the money I had earned and all the money I had borrowed.

I was fortunate enough to receive cognitive behavioural therapy to help me overcome my addiction but, with only one NHS clinic for problem gambling in the country, it's imperative that the government limits FOBTs. Otherwise, it's inevitable that even more will become addicted to what have been described as "the crack cocaine of gambling".

It's for this reason that I'm now part of the Campaign for Fairer Gambling, which advocates a reduction in the maximum stake from £100 to £2; an increase in the time between spins; the removal of casino table game content from FOBTs; and a reduction from four FOBTs per shop to one. These recommendations would make the machines less addictive and create significantly fewer problem gamblers.

The DCMS select committee recently recommended lifting the cap on the number of FOBTs per shop as an "anti-clustering" measure, as bookies leapfrog regulations by opening up as many shops as possible, and usually in deprived areas. Research commissioned by Channel 4's Dispatches found there to be more than twice as many betting shops in areas of high unemployment than in areas of low unemployment.

The government is due to respond to those recommendations this month, but both the Campaign for Fairer Gambling and Community, the union that represents betting shop staff, will be hoping they are rejected. Ryan Slaughter from Community said recently: "Our members want to be bookies, not bouncers. Betting shop workers up and down the country will look upon this report with dismay and outrage, because they experience physical and verbal violence on a daily basis owing to the presence of FOBTs."

Tonight's Panorama, which investigates the destructive rise of FOBTs, will more than substantiate Ryan's claims. The government needs to act quickly. The last British Gambling Prevalence Survey in 2010 showed that problem gambling in the UK had increased by 50% in three years and, while the proliferation of FOBTs is not entirely responsible for this, better regulation of these machines could help bring the numbers down.

[Rico1304]

I find it amazing how many young lads are into gambling nowadays. At our cricket club they open up during the winter and spend a day watching the racing and betting. This is 16 yr old lads. It's much more prevalent than when I was a kid I'm sure. Although I can remember the days when bookies weren't allowed to advertise, had to have obscured glass windows and fruit machines paid out in tokens.

[Gnasher]

I am quite sure there are a lot of people who find it extremely difficult to get by. I'm certainly not as willing to blame the government for every little problem. My mother regularly went hungry growing up because her father used to gamble away almost everything he earned. The fault of the government? No, the fault of a stupid, selfish person.If everyone stopped blaming the government for everything that goes wrong, I would feel less of a need to respond with sarcasm and we could have a proper discussion about how we fix things.

You live in a fantasy world.

[Gnasher]

I am quite sure there are a lot of people who find it extremely difficult to get by. I'm certainly not as willing to blame the government for every little problem. My mother regularly went hungry growing up because her father used to gamble away almost everything he earned. The fault of the government? No, the fault of a stupid, selfish person.If everyone stopped blaming the government for everything that goes wrong, I would feel less of a need to respond with sarcasm and we could have a proper discussion about how we fix things.

" I'm not willing to blame the govt for every LITTLE problem"

 

I'd hardly describe the problems pointed out in the links as "little problems" being short of food for four weeks due to govt policy is certainly a major crisis for those on the receiving end.

 

It's not often church leaders of different faiths pen a letter to the govt lambasting govt policy on welfare cuts, stressing the situation is now "a crisis"

 

It's not a case of waitroes running a bit low on Chablis.

[General Dryness]

The government oddly takes the position that adults should be free to make their own decisions.

 

Obviously this means that a minority of people are going to ruin their lives by making bad decisions; frankly I'll take that if it means I can plod along without being nannied by an interfering government that wants to micro-manage my life.

 

And yet controlled substances are illegal. Interesting. Why is one life-destroying addiction more acceptable than another?

[Strontium]

 

And yet controlled substances are illegal. Interesting. Why is one life-destroying addiction more acceptable than another?

 

Don't look at me. I would legalise every drug tomorrow if it was up to me.

 

Nick has done the next best thing in calling for a Royal Commission on the drug laws.

[General Dryness]

I find it amazing how many young lads are into gambling nowadays. At our cricket club they open up during the winter and spend a day watching the racing and betting. This is 16 yr old lads. It's much more prevalent than when I was a kid I'm sure. Although I can remember the days when bookies weren't allowed to advertise, had to have obscured glass windows and fruit machines paid out in tokens.

 

 

I always remember our local one had a sign outside saying "No Loitering". Always wondered what was going behind those obscured windows. It was a really underground thing back in the day.

 

I worked in the industry for a couple of years a little while ago, night shifts taking telephone bets off american and canadian customers. American sports mostly, but I was often in early enough to cover a bit of the night racing and dogs. Fun times, just before internet betting broke big. Kind of put paid to telephone betting when everyone started jumping online.

[General Dryness]

 

 

Don't look at me. I would legalise every drug tomorrow if it was up to me.

 

Nick has done the next best thing in calling for a Royal Commission on the drug laws.

 

Drugs won't be legalised until the powers that be come up with a surefire way of making sure the profits end up in the right pockets.

[Carvalho Diablo]

If anything is gonna change for the better then pay these vapid politicians a minimum wage. Only then will change occur for the better.

[Rico1304]

Panorama 8:30 tonight.

[Clem H Fandango]

If i only had £10 to my name, my priority would be food. The thought of turning that £10 into £20 with a risk that i could lose all does not appeal to me or my stomach.

If people are brainwashed by adverts or think it's sensible to try and get rich quick through risky means then i have no sympathy for them.

[Carvalho Diablo]

If i only had £10 to my name, my priority would be food. The thought of turning that £10 into £20 with a risk that i could lose all does not appeal to me or my stomach.

If people are brainwashed by adverts or think it's sensible to try and get rich quick through risky means then i have no sympathy for them.

 

IDS and Edwina Curry once again show themselves up as heartless vampires.

[Strontium]

If i only had £10 to my name, my priority would be food. The thought of turning that £10 into £20 with a risk that i could lose all does not appeal to me or my stomach.

If people are brainwashed by adverts or think it's sensible to try and get rich quick through risky means then i have no sympathy for them.

I have some sympathy for them, but I do find it hard to have much empathy with them. I can't really get into the mindset of someone like that. If someone can crack the problem of people making consistently poor life choices, we'll barely even need a welfare state.

[Champ]

I have some sympathy for them, but I do find it hard to have much empathy with them. I can't really get into the mindset of someone like that. If someone can crack the problem of people making consistently poor life choices, we'll barely even need a welfare state.

Like being young, old or sick, you mean?

[Jairzinho]

I have some sympathy for them, but I do find it hard to have much empathy with them. I can't really get into the mindset of someone like that. If someone can crack the problem of people making consistently poor life choices, we'll barely even need a welfare state.

 

They're persuaded, ruthlessly, to consistently make poor life choices. It is entirely in the interests of businesses for people to consistently make poor life choices.

 

The problem could be solved easily. Stop the rich being fucking cunts to the poor.

[Gnasher]

I have some sympathy for them, but I do find it hard to have much empathy with them. I can't really get into the mindset of someone like that. If someone can crack the problem of people making consistently poor life choices, we'll barely even need a welfare state.

You don't half talk some shit.

 

The welfare state exists to protect the weak, the sick, the old, children, etc

 

Losing your job, falling seriously ill, being orphaned, getting old, is not "poor lifestyle choices".

[melons]

I volunteer for my local food bank which is the Trussle Trust, I hate the organisation, I hate the fact we have it, I hate the need for it and everything it stands for whilst we are a first world country I don't understand how we can have people in such poverty. And they are. I see them on a weekly basis. I mainly deal with stock, collections and the warehouse. Occasionally int he parcel rooms when we're short on volunteers. 

 

 

Nah, it amused me that Tesco were encouraging people to donate to them recently when I went though, with loads of their own brand shit next to a trolley for you to dump it in, seeing as it's companies like Tesco paying people shit wages, automating their tills and putting high streets out of business that's put people in the position of having to use shit like food banks in the for first place.

 

It's a corrupt system, i agree. It's not just that though, it's the fact that other arsing supermarkets are so difficult, it took months of negotiations with other local supermarkets to get something set up for a collection. Morrisons don't even let us in the foyer, we are however allowed to stand under the rain shelter. So generous of them. ASDA are also just as bad. Tesco now have something set up with TT whereby we also get 30% of the weight value back as a voucher to spend in store. It sucks, but it has made a massive difference to our stock. 

 

 

 

 

Well, free school meals for all primary school children will help, as will raising the income tax allowance to £10k. But obviously much more needs to be done.

 

If I was looking at my own ideas, I note that the DWP is causing at least a third of these cases by taking weeks to process claims. So how about a root and branch reform of the DWP, which continually demonstrates itself unfit for purpose.

 

School meals were something due to be implemented toward the end of the Labour government, your lot came in and said no you don't and it got pulled. Left it a few years and brought it out as a aren't we wonderful! 

 

 

We took our daughter for her 1 year check up last week, the health centre had loads of posters on the wall showing stats for the area. By the age of 4 31% of Stockport's children are overweight. Are they the ones that are starving?

 

Clearly not, however what about the other 69%?

 

 

I don't think they are no. Perhaps it's a generational thing, I can remember my gran telling me how when her husband died at 40 she had a couple of pounds to her name and 5 kids to support. So poverty was always 'real' and my mum, aunties and uncles all remembered it and talk about it. Ask them if you can be poor with a phone.

 

What era was this? It must have been before the liberal reforms? You've lost me. The welfare state came in following the Beveridge report, so it couldn't have been after that?

Poor with a phone? Seriously? I didn't have a phone in the house growing up, doesn't mean i look at those in the street for having a PAYG phone as being wealthy or even having money. What a prick of a comment. 

Because poverty affected your mum, your family, it means everyone else can have to deal with it too? Fuck this making life easier for all lark and raising the standards of living eh? I'm alright, Jack.  

 

 

Of course we are rich, it's obvious. How many Nandos are there, McDonald's, etc. I'm not saying some people aren't hard up, that's obvious too, but they aren't poor. If you've got a house, free healthcare, schooling and can afford to make the decision to buy shit food instead of healthy food you ain't poor.

 

Bollocks, utter bollocks. Being poor isn't about being able to afford a McDonalds, it's not even about health care. Jeeze, do you actually believe the tripe you're typing? 

You don't have a house, you have a roof over your head, not necessarily long term and it certainly isn't a secure roof. Free health care and education is a human right, not a standard of poverty. Buying shit food or healthy food isn't about being poor, its more intrinsic than a simple picking up a bag of nuggets, most of the people that buy shite food don't even realise it is just that

. 

 

But that's my point, I'm being told hundreds of thousands are relying on food banks, but I'm also being told that people are getting fatter and a third of kids are overweight (I have a feeling it was obese but can't be 100%).

 

Have you seen the food given out by food banks? Seriously, I wouldn't feed it to my dog! Ok, she might get some of the custard creams but that's it. I have to hand this shit food out to people knowing that all it is doing is filling a hunger, that they're getting little to nothing or nutritional value from it, that value hot dogs are going to be fed with some boiled rice. No chance, it's wrong, it's a fucking disgrace. 

Do you know that it is possible to be obese and suffer malnutrition? Right? 

 

Poverty is a strange concept because it conjures up all sorts of Dickensian images, or pictures of absolute poverty, such as we find in other parts of the world where there is drought and famine. But even if we don't have that sort of poverty in today's 'first world' Britain, it is not difficult to see that all is not well. We are a rich nation but huge swathes of the population are not accessing the benefits that should flow from that. It's clear to see that we have some problems that in this day and age we really should be beyond.

 

Having a nation with far too many fat, poor kids is a blight. A lot of these kids will die before their parents. They eat cheap processed crap, full of empty carbs, and many of them do not enjoy the sort of nutrition that will help to keep them fit, healthy, and bright at school. Eating a variety of fruits and vegetables is almost becoming the preserve of the middle class, and that can't be right. 

 

There are far too many people who do not have enough to eat properly, keep warm, and perhaps have a few options open to them in life. One of the overlooked things about poverty is that it is very isolating, and the lost social capital is enormously damaging for a nation's prospects. I'm not especially politically minded, but the whole lot of them, from all sides, need to have a word with themselves. Are we not able to do better than this? Really?

Spot on. 

 

If anything is gonna change for the better then pay these vapid politicians a minimum wage. Only then will change occur for the better.

 

I accidentally negged this, should have been a rep, someone help a girl out? 

 

 

I have some sympathy for them, but I do find it hard to have much empathy with them. I can't really get into the mindset of someone like that. If someone can crack the problem of people making consistently poor life choices, we'll barely even need a welfare state.

 

You're right, If someone can crack that problem of preventing poor life choices it would make a massive difference, however constantly berating and attacking the poorer members of society isn't going to do that, is it? 

[Strontium]

Like being young, old or sick, you mean?

As you can see, I was specifically referring to the example of a person who gambles away what limited funds they have. You could extrapolate that to other poor choices: alcoholism, drug addiction etc, but being "young, old or sick" in and of itself was obviously not on my radar.

[Hand Shandy]

melons is on one. Run while you can!

[Strontium]

School meals were something due to be implemented toward the end of the Labour government, your lot came in and said no you don't and it got pulled. Left it a few years and brought it out as a aren't we wonderful!

Must say, I don't recall any concrete proposals from Labour, and I certainly don't recall the coalition nixing it.

[melons]

Must say, I don't recall any concrete proposals from Labour, and I certainly don't recall the coalition nixing it.

 

I do. 

 

This is more an argument on tit for tat so to speak that went on when it was axed. 

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10446149

 

 

Ed Balls has launched a "save free school meals" campaign, stepping up his protest against cuts to an expansion in free meals.

The shadow education secretary wants to reverse the cancellation of plans to extend free meals to a further 500,000 pupils.

He said the school meals would improve "health, concentration and behaviour".

Education Secretary Michael Gove has dubbed the previous government's plan for extra meals an "unfunded promise".

Mr Balls, a candidate for the Labour leadership, has launched a campaign with the GMB union against the coalition government's ditching of plans to extend free school meals.

Tackling obesity

The Labour government, in which Mr Balls had been schools secretary, had wanted to widen pilot schemes to test the benefits of giving all primary pupils a free hot meal.

Three such schemes are currently running and will be continued in Newham in East London, Wolverhampton and Durham.

Free meals for all pupils had also been planned for Bradford, Islington in London, Nottingham, Cumbria and Medway in Kent.

But the coalition government has stopped these extensions, saying that the cost had not been fully funded by the previous government.

The cabinet has been meeting in Bradford on Tuesday - one of the authorities that will now miss out on the year-long free school meals project, which would have cost the education department £8.34m.

Ralph Berry, Bradford council's executive member for children's services, attacked the cancellation as an "ill-advised cut".

"The pilot was to have wide-reaching benefits, including healthy eating, reducing obesity and improving health and well-being," he said.

Mr Balls said that the cabinet's choice of Bradford for such a meeting was an "own goal".

"I hope they'll take the opportunity to explain to parents and teachers across Bradford why they're cutting funding for school meals which would have seen every child in the city get a free hot healthy lunch," says Mr Balls.

Mr Gove has rejected suggestions that money intended for free meals was going to be spent on the government's free school plan - and said that the proposed expansion of free meals had been a "cynical pre-election manoeuvre".

He accused the Labour government of making an "underfunded promise" over free school meals, "which raised the hopes of the poor without the cash being there to sustain it".

 

 

[melons]

melons is on one. Run while you can!

 

 

Ha, it's been a while since i had a good rant. x