‘Eating While Poor’: 2022 Challenge (Part 2)

The second half of my own personal ‘Eating While Poor’ challenge; where I try to see just how far a diet can be realistically squashed finance-wise before it stops fulfilling it’s nutritional needs. Why do it for another week? Simply put; I’ve not had enough attempts at different cheap meals to finally come to a conclusion regarding what could be viewed as a bare minimum for one person.

The rules of this challenge, plus the first week’s experiences can be viewed here; with no further ado I’ll continue the challenge…

Eighth Day

Half day. I’ve run out of my fibre bars, so it’s an apple instead. Another serving of cocoa porridge for breakfast, hoping it’ll prove to have enough staying power in the stomach while out to avoid consuming any expensive barred products. Also made a thermos of tea to take with me, along with my last pear.

Plan works, though it was somewhat a close call by the time I’d got home. Perhaps better to have a banana too next time. Another cream cheese sandwich as a late lunch; noting that I’m getting close to finishing the wholemeal loaf I’d bought a week ago and frozen. Daily foraging turns up some reduced salami and potatoes; dinner is an attempt at a ‘one-pot’ meal; beef mince, baked beans and onion affair, cooked on one ring – I’d bought said mince cheap and frozen a while earlier. Result; rather nice, in fact; but much of this was down to the use of condiments. Supper was the salami as a sandwich.

Conclusions: Got between four and six, depending on your classification of tomato ketchup and baked beans as counting. Salami (or any form of preserved meat) is not a viable solution for meals – the salt and saturates are too high. At least not more than very occasionally. At 65p, the ‘main meal’ was not much more expensive than the porridge (though that was down to the bargain meat I used and cannot be relied on). In both costs and nutrition, there’s quite a good future for baked beans – even if you (like me) go with the ‘lower salt’ option.

Energy	2085 cal
Fat	47g
…which is saturates	18g
Carbohydrate	271g
…which is sugars	159g
Fibre	42g
Protein	135g
Salt	6.3g
Items Consumed	£3.08
Items Bought	£0.61
Items Disposed	£0.00

Ninth Day

Day off. Fibre cereal for breakfast, have some grilled mushrooms with egg and beans for lunch, mainly to use up the former. A nice change from the never-ending sandwich. Snacks; a bag of ‘nuts and seeds’ I’d got as an end-of line way back and a softbake which came from I’m not sure where. Picked up some cheese and some Heck Meat-Free Chipolatas going cheap, along with some bread rolls. Guess what I had for dinner; melted cheese rolls, with cucumber. It was tasty, though I knew this cost was going to be high…

Conclusions: Hard cheese is not a viable major component of diet – far too much saturated fat. Normally, I’d microwave the cheese and drain off the excess fat, but this time it didn’t work on the variety chosen (Wensleydale). Mushrooms are decent enough, though lacking in the calories make up for it for their fibre, protein and relative low cost. Two/three portions of fruit and veg, depending on your consideration of baked beans.

Energy	2061 cal
Fat	80g
…which is saturates	36g
Carbohydrate	199g
…which is sugars	77g
Fibre	41g
Protein	102g
Salt	4.4g
Items Consumed	£2.76
Items Bought	£1.25
Items Disposed	£0.00

Tenth Day

Breakfast was several of last night’s chipolatas in the other two rolls with some sauce and onion; spent the morning homeworking, snacking on frankly too many lentil cakes which I’d given up reviewing due to the fact there was nothing to review. Lunch was a few of said cakes, with some cream cheese. Afternoon was work; got through an apple, a couple of clementines and a cup of tea. Lucked out on the evening forage; a load of protein bars and shakes and some bakery croissants. Plus, got given a few pears too. Picked up some jam for said croissants; slightly shocked that the branded ones had now breached the £2 barrier. Also, another cucumber.

Dinner was one of those which shouldn’t have been; milk, jam and croissants. I paid for that by the simple fact it didn’t even really fill; ended up having one of the bars I’d purchased – a ‘LighterLife Bar’ – later on that evening.

Time to do another inventory/clearout of the fridge; disposed of a small grab-bag of old fruits and vegetables, a couple of old over-frozen bread, a jar of marmalade which came from the wrong year and a protein shake which had all generally speaking, been forgotten about.

Conclusions: Unsurprisingly, a load of croissants were not a wise choice; they were over 650 calories, over half my salt allowance and all my saturated even before anything was put with or on them. However, proof (if any was needed) why diets can fuck up; my constant hankering for ‘something a bit tasty‘ led me to paying 25p to scratch that itch. It’s the pies back on the Second Day all over again. Only two portions of fruit/veg today.

Energy	2582 cal
Fat	74g
…which is saturates	36g
Carbohydrate	379g
…which is sugars	133g
Fibre	34g
Protein	96g
Salt	9.3g
Items Consumed	£2.90
Items Bought	£8.40
Items Disposed	£2.75

Eleventh Day

Day off. Cocoa protein porridge for breakfast, clementines and a pear for snacking. Finished off the remaining Cauldron sausages for lunch, decided to combine this with cooking up a decent piece of chicken breast from the freezer for dinner.

Spent a bit of time online; read that baked beans do count as your ‘five-a-day’, but tomato ketchup didn’t. Also read a couple of articles on ‘how to save money off your food bill’ which told me nothing new. Went out to the discounter’s for peanuts and bananas, found at a supermarket on the way home a load of date bars and some milk going cheap. The former went into the cupboard for packed lunches, the latter mainly got frozen into cubes for later tea and coffee consumption; had to throw a little of it away, mind.

As another meal test, I had the earlier chicken, with some couscous and steamed green beans I’d found in the freezer earlier – the former done with just a kettle and the latter in the microwave (along with the chicken). It tasted good; though I do need a bit more practice cooking this method so I get the times lined up.

Conclusions: Peanuts or chicken; not both. Or perhaps the date-ball I ‘tried’. The higher ‘consumption cost’ today was down to the said chicken. The green beans were good and cheap, mind – I knew this before, but not how cheap until I worked it out now.

Energy	2368 cal
Fat	83g
…which is saturates	14g
Carbohydrate	242g
…which is sugars	158g
Fibre	41g
Protein	161g
Salt	5.4g
Items Consumed	£3.34
Items Bought	£2.83
Items Disposed	£0.05

Twelfth Day

Now, I had a nice description of this day and the next done, but the crappy word processor I’m using decided to both crash and fuck up the recovery save, so you’ll have to simply put up with the bare-bones account I’ve reconstructed from my notes.

This day’s lunch comprised me trying out doing a jacket potato in the microwave; it wasn’t completely successful, but enough that it suggests it’s a viable method of cooking for this. I also didn’t appreciate that it was in fact possible to jazz it up somewhat using just a few condiments.

Shopping for this day was some cheap carrots, grapes and kiwi fruits; the latter two hopefully to counteract my constant hankering for sugar. Dinner was egg and baked beans on toast. This proved to be somewhat better nutritionally than I – and I suspect others – would believe.

Conclusions: Once again, baked beans come through with their good fibre rating and decent protein at an affordable cost. The low consumption cost for today is explainable due to two things; the lack of meat and the relative lack of fruit (two portions). Peanuts also helped here.

Energy	2072 cal
Fat	78g
…which is saturates	12g
Carbohydrate	238g
…which is sugars	98g
Fibre	51g
Protein	90g
Salt	4.6g
Items Consumed	£1.84
Items Bought	£1.53
Items Disposed	£0.00

Thirteenth Day

Another bare-bones review. A day at work, so the usual barred affairs, fruit and some peanuts (instead of my normal peanut bar). Was hugely hungry by the time I’d finished; popped in to a supermarket on the way home and picked up some very cheap Polish cheese which I had with some economy pasta I’d mainly bought to see if the gripes about it being disgusting were warranted (they aren’t that bad, in conclusion). However I did end up producing a cheap, but tasteless meal. Oh, and I had way too much of it, calorie wise. Oh, I also picked up some more peanuts and milk; noticing that the latter’s price had gone up by 8.5% since last week. And that the noodles I’d had last week risen by similar. (That’s nothing; today I noted another discounter’s noodles had risen by 14%).

Anything else? Oh, kinda screwed up doing pasta in the microwave. Think it cost as much energy as if I’d done it conventionally. Later reading suggests that I should have boiled the kettle and then have let the pasta ‘stew’ in the pot for some time.

Conclusions: That cheap pasta had more protein in it than I thought; though I still think in this case was a false economy – at least my usual pasta tastes of something, meaning that slathers of sauce are unnecessary. Could a person live like this? Yes. But only if they had to. It’s pretty grim and your resolve would buckle quick. Three to four portions today; depending on your classification of the dates in one of my bars.

Energy	2709 cal
Fat	93g
…which is saturates	22g
Carbohydrate	387g
…which is sugars	148g
Fibre	35g
Protein	90g
Salt	2.9g
Items Consumed	£1.82
Items Bought	£2.46
Items Disposed	£0.05

Fourteenth Day

Thank god this is nearly over; if nothing else, doing all this is a time-burglar extraordinaire. Today was one of those days which you seem to mainly graze; I got the calories in but don’t really remember eating that much (mainly due to the fact much of it came from date-balls, peanuts or the cheap protein shake I’d bought and has proven to be… interesting).

Went for my usual forage; discovered a couple of cheap cooked chicken pies. Said pies became my dinner – I wanted to see if nutritionally they were much better than the scotch pie I’d had before and proved to be terrible. (For the record, they were with some boiled carrots which I did semi-successfully using the ‘kettle method’ outlined the day before).

Well, my answer to this is; I do not know. All the packet had was the calorie listing, which proved to be as fucking useless as I predicted a few days before. I went online, thinking ‘well at least it will be there’ (which I have done successfully with a few other products, like the scotch pies). But nothing. Went to the supermarkets own website. Tells me ‘it is available on request’, if I email them for it.

This I refuse to do. Firstly, this was on a Saturday and I’d vowed this post would be done by Sunday, so the chances of a reply in time were slim. But more importantly; why the hell should I have to chase this up? These pies are a regular product of the supermarket’s ‘deli’. Even if the details were (for whatever reason) not listed on the packet you could have easily have put it on your website. But no. Pray tell me, why is this? Laziness? Or are you hiding just how nutritionally shit your products are? This also happened with the ‘chorizo chicken’ right at the start of this experiment.

*takes a breath*

Anything else? Oh, I picked up a half-kilo of close-dated protein powder at half my usual price, which along with the cheese I bought (for later marrying with potatoes) bumps up my daily spend, though also got some slightly cheaper apples too. On acceptance that this was the end of the experiment, did one last clear-out of the fridge (just like I did a clearout before the experiment). Only casualty was a few mushrooms.

Conclusions: The stats for this day are guestimated (well, more guestimated than usual); I’ve had to approximate the chicken pies. As you can see, I just missed the salt and saturates limit; I shall point out that my consumption that day had been unusually ‘good’ before that – hit the five-a-day today.

Energy	2515 cal
Fat	75g
…which is saturates	21g
Carbohydrate	286g
…which is sugars	132g
Fibre	39g
Protein	95g
Salt	6.2g
Items Consumed	£1.83
Items Bought	£6.19
Items Disposed	£0.15

Final Thoughts

So, once again we have the total consumption cost of;

Condiments	£2.75
Coffee / Tea	£2.19
Milk	£1.83
Barred Products	£1.76
Meat	£1.64
Fruits	£1.57
Cheese	£1.10
Starchy Staples	£1.01
Vegetables	£0.95
Peanuts	£0.83
Fake Meat	£0.76
Protein Powder	£0.64
Baked Beans	£0.60
Egg	£0.60
Sugar	£0.50
Premade Products	£0.45
Cereals	£0.47
Bread	£0.35
Total:	£20.00

Again, this is not strictly accurate, due to the fact that ‘condiments’ is a large grab-bag of low-consumption items but nevertheless, do need occasional replacement (I defend this spend on the basis the boring dishes would have been inedible without them and thus, their removal would be a false economy). However, I also disposed of £3 of food too – almost all being deteriorated old fruit and vegetables. I ‘spent’ in cash terms £23.47, so in total my ‘kitchen reserves’ are 47p ahead. (You may wonder why I’ve done this; it’s to ensure I am not massaging the figures by running down pre-bought reserves which are not counted in the totals).

Much of the ‘loss’ has been from the fruit department; it’s true that I’ve eaten less this week than last and thus, didn’t hit the mandated ‘5 a day’ thing (why is it that?). But not as much as you’d think; I was relatively lucky in my ‘foraging’. The result is predictable; while I’ve managed to squeeze my bill down to £2.86 a day, it’s at the cost of insufficient greenery. I’ve also managed to increase my average daily calorific intake by 90; which points to a very simple issue which I’ve started to highlight statistically – that the cheapest diet of all is generally the nutritionally shit one.

What else did I learn? Well, that meat – and meat replacements – were expensive. In fact, I only had three portions of meat in the second week if you discount what meat was within the pies. What’s more, I wouldn’t have been able to afford them at all if not ‘bargains’. That frankly throws a spanner into many traditional British meal plan; the ‘meat, starchy carb and veg’ combis. More concerning is that it slices off one of the main sources of protein.

But other sources often cost too. Cheese, milk, eggs, nuts; all come in with relatively high costs per kilo. That even with all the cost-savings my protein budget was again about 30%; and partly why I resorted to using protein powder to fortify otherwise protein-poor dishes.

This being one of the key lessons from this experiment; that nutrient density was more important than mere cheapness – which was one of the reasons I never brought anything like crisps. In fact, I lost a kilo during the experiment; now, I could stand to lose a kilo or ten but it ultimately means this diet was unsustainable long-term (even more so if I’d avoided the ‘gorge moments’).

Limitations?

With hindsight, this experiment was not designed as well as I’d intended. The most glaring issue was the simple fact that a lot of the items I bought were reduced-cost and so not representative – I am not one who shall peddle the ‘I could do it, so can you!’ line. That naturally, reduces the value of my whole experiment.

This also damages one of the key ‘food economy’ advice given; to make meal plans and stick to them when buying items. But that does not really work when much of what is for dinner is down to the lucky dip of the bargain bin. Shopping lists are similarly limited in value. My solution to this is simple; to have ‘reverse shopping lists’ i.e. listing what you already have in the kitchen rather than what you don’t. The logic here is simple; that if you know what you’ve got on-hand already, you can instantly start coming up with ways to fit in those bargain eggs, cheese or peaches in. Shopping frequently helped this; it meant that when it came to perishables, I usually didn’t have much on-hand to waste.

Another issue is the fact that despite my diligence, not all my costs have been calculated. I take both a generic multivitamin and an omega-3 supplement; the latter vital as I consume nil fish or seafood. The price; about 70p a week which shall be needed to be found.

Then there’s my water. I use a filter, due to the fact I live in one of the most limescaley parts of the land. No, it really does help me to actually drink the stuff, and to make food/drinks taste nicer – not just a bourgeois affection. But still, that’s another 75p a week.

Lastly, there’s the issue of electrical costs. I did try to keep them down, but I didn’t do it scientifically and so I’m sure I made some mistakes there. Perhaps one day I’ll work it out properly, but that’s not today.

Full Circle

But back to the original question; what is the realistically minimum level of cash a person needs to spend weekly for a nutritionally balanced diet? After my little experiment I shall say as of April 2022 that number is £25 a week. Yes, I know you did it on almost half this but you know what? Bet you couldn’t stick to it for three months. What’s more, your meals are mainly fucking laborious and at least you’re cooking for two so seems more a worth use of time. Also, that was three years ago now. Lastly, I could get it down to £20 if needs be so there’s not so much between us – I provided the extra £5 as a little bit of a margin to cater to personal preferences and the occasional substitution (I’d budget another £5 a week if packed lunches are required).

Though there are similarities between us both; near-vegetarian diets that are generally dull, limited and time-consuming. If having to draw up a shopping list, I’d select a lot of wholemeal bread, full-fat milk, peanuts, rolled oats, baked beans and eggs. Then I’d supplement with chickpeas, tomato puree, mushrooms, onions and a couple of types of fruit and veg. I generally avoided potato, pasta and rice because of their high cooking times; perhaps if I’d owned the suitable items for the microwave I’d used them more.

Which is perhaps the main point; the ownership of the kit to do this stuff. That’s more an ask than you’d think. 10% of British homes don’t have a freezer. 5% don’t have a cooker (like I didn’t for the experiment). Scarily, around 3.5% don’t have a refrigerator. The kitchen might be short of basic kit like sharp knives, ironware and heatproof receptacles. Then there’s a deficiency in ‘knowledge’; a pile of chickpeas or oats doesn’t automatically suggest meals to folks who don’t really know much scratch cookery.

I find it interesting that my £25 a week is so much more than all but one of the figures I gave from my original ‘Eating When Poor‘ post. It testifies to two things; not just the significantly higher than reported inflation in perhaps the last decade (though it’s possible my figure is more accurate than any of my examples). but also the simple fact that when you are this poor, no, the healthy option does cost more. And invariably, almost any ‘saving’ cash-wise comes at a price; either more time, more cooking and/or more fuel cost.

As everything on this blog, merely my own thoughts and opinions. Part of my Essays series.

Eating While Poor: 2022 Challenge (Part 1)

I do try to review and refresh old blog content to keep it relevant; and this week it was the turn of ‘Eating While Poor’. While expanding said content and commenting on one of the (new) examples, a mini-litany of complaints towards it built up; one of the main ones being that nobody was taking into account cooking costs – of particular interest right now with news that people are turning away free root vegetables and potatoes simply because they can’t afford the long cooking times for them.

So, I hit up Google and the like – and don’t find anything. Admittedly, I didn’t search very hard. But it’s quite possible such a thing doesn’t exist. And what does a marginally-competent blogger interested in things like fitness, diet and poverty do when encountering such a gap?

Yep. Welcome to my own, personal ‘Poverty Diet’ challenge.

Da Rules

The following have been written with the various weaknesses in the other challenges/plans in mind. While I accept I can’t do this perfectly, I can at least make a decent attempt to produce a semi-reliable result. Therefore…

#1: While I will be keeping a tally of what I spend, the headline number will be the price of what I consume. This – hopefully – shall help to give more reliable figures, allowing me to eat a more realistic diet without cheating the numbers (by say, stocking up on stuff before the challenge or anything).

#2: The price of foodstuffs disposed of shall also be calculated. I don’t think there’s much actual waste going on, but I’m curious to just how much.

#3: Various ‘low use’ items condiments, herbs, spices etc won’t be calculated on consumption, but I’ll factor in replacement spending for new items on the assumption in the long run this evens out.

#4: ‘Bargains’ are factored in at their lower price if they are available to the general public. Otherwise, they’re charged at the rate shown at the Aldi website.

#5: I shall focus on the cheapest items with acceptable quality. Sometimes, the cheapest stuff is so poor it’s actually a false economy to purchase, as well as increasing the feelings of truly ‘in the shit’. This is a ‘poverty diet’, not a ‘right on the edge’ one.

#6: As part of the challenge is whether it’s possible to eat a healthy diet when poor, I shall also be keeping a tally of the nutritionals. Yep, a food diary too.

#7: As I am ‘very poor’, this means I’m very conscious of keeping costs low. This means that I will be acutely aware of how expensive it is to cook foodstuffs and thus avoid items which require long periods of heat etc.

#8: Lastly, on the learning that quite a few folks lack kitchen appliances, I am going to limit myself even further. In this challenge, I do not have an oven. Instead, I have a two-ring hotplate which I borrowed from a bemused relative (‘but it’s kind of shit?’) for this challenge. I also have a microwave, so it’s not that bad.

So, here we go…

First Day

The first thought – while making the morning coffee – is that I don’t actually know how much loads of stuff costs. Like the price of the coffee I’m about to drink. While drinking that with a fibre bar, I do the maths; it’s 11.5p a cup. Didn’t realise that. Did a cup of tea too, for comparison; 3.6p. This is made easier by the fact I’ve already measured out the ingredients for both in the past for my food diary waay back.

Home working in the morning – another coffee and an apple happens. Realise I’ve got to go out to the Post Office; decide to pop into a discounter’s next door afterwards – see if they’ve got anything good. Realise that I don’t really know what I need to get. Shit. Being this poor seems to need more planning than my usual methods. Did spy a wholemeal loaf and some sandwich thins on ‘final markdown’ and get these, putting them in the freezer on getting home.

Afternoon I’m out at work. Normally, I’d buy something while out, but conscious of the prices of stuff, I have an early lunch at home first. Manage to find some slightly staled up pitta breads, a bit of cucumber and cream cheese. Toasted and with some herbs on it, rather nice. Though run out of onion granules, shit.

On way home from work, go via town and some shopping – now I’ve got a better idea of what I’ve already got on-hand. I need to find some barred items for ‘on site’ workdays; locate from a pound store some decent enough plain flapjacks and my beloved Mr Toms to see me through a bit. A visit to a beauty shop leads me to find a 4-pack of short-dated protein bars. Per unit will be 50p, so okay enough. Plus, shall allow a review to be done while I’m on the challenge.

I’ve already been to four shops by this point and I’m more tired than I’d normally be. The answer is simple; I’m having to look at everything; trying to find the best deal, if there’s any offers and so on. The supermarket which I got the onion granules from showed me an issue; even after the reduction for quick sale done, the items were still more expensive than the discounter from earlier.

By this point I’m hungry as hell. That early lunch was simply too long ago, I’ve come to realise too I didn’t have a proper breakfast either and remembering I have walked around 8km by this point. Have to eat a protein bar to tide me over as I set off for home.

Go via another supermarket; remembering that it was about the time for their discounting. I was right; find 100g of cooked beef for 55p. Ah, beef pittas (without cooking) it is, then. Get a lettuce and some mustard to finish it off. And a couple of bananas. And some cheap apple juice.

Have a large cup of cocoa coffee while I finish up at home, along with a banana. Like doing the food diary (showing my calorie deficit was rather serious) and the budget (ouch! This challenge isn’t going to last long if that spend is that high).

Some time after dinner, still feel hungry. Have a couple of pieces of toast to tide me over. Crap, use the last of the jam which I can’t afford to replace.

Conclusions: If I’m allowed to count the apple juice as another portion, I got my five-a-day. By my estimation, I’m about 140 calories under for my activity level. Everything else was within reasonable limits, though.

Energy	2060 cal
Fat	38g
…which is saturates	14g
Carbohydrate	315g
…which is sugars	118g
Fibre	45g
Protein	95g
Salt	5.75g
Items Consumed	£3.53
Items Bought	£9.03
Items Disposed	£0.00

Second Day

Day off. Use this as opportunity to make a sausage sandwich for breakfast. Plus, remember yesterday. Decide to cook two lots, so I can have the other half for lunch (and save on cooking costs). Good news; I had a load of Cauldrons in the freezer, that I’d picked up cheap a couple of weeks back. With a fried onion, the other half of the lettuce from yesterday and the cheap frozen bread. Pleasant enough; though by late afternoon felt the energy shortfall, so had a peanut bar to tide until dinner.

Made the trek over to the other discounter’s; justified in this case otherwise I’d be going for a run. Plus, I’d run out of tea bags. Got a jar of peanut butter for toast in the future, as well as more bananas, fibre bars, cream cheese and a cucumber (to replicate yesterday’s lunch at some point). Then I swung past my usual supermarket on the way home.

I know I shouldn’t have. I knew the result in advance. But I needed to show you. For they’d done a mass reduction on their ‘hot food counter’, and I bought a pair of scotch pies. Two for 16p. I could see grease-stains on the damn bag. And I still got them. Even when a bloat-man had to manoeuvre his colossal gut so he could reach pie (clearly, what he needs more of right now). They also had some ‘chorizo chicken’, which I ended up consuming that night as a snack.

Well, I had said pies with a little tin of peas (pies re-heated in microwave, like the peas); it was pleasant enough, but hell, I could taste the pastry, grease and salt. Not much meat either, really. Not surprised, now I’m reading that it’s only 11% beef. That chicken… well, I’m not sure how bad that was, really because I found no nutritional listings for it. So I’ve guestimated (conclusion; okay, not not great).

Conclusions: If onion counts, I got my five-a-day. But those pies fucked everything up. They are to blame for the serious ‘bust’ on both the saturates (69% of total) and salt (38% of total). Lesson here being; basically, don’t have them. Even one by themselves is very nutritionally iffy. Got the ‘daily price’ down by 20%, though. All it cost was my arteries, apparently.

Energy	2284 cal
Fat	70g
…which is saturates	23g
Carbohydrate	291g
…which is sugars	75g
Fibre	35g
Protein	106g
Salt	11g
Items Consumed	£2.70
Items Bought	£5.27
Items Disposed	£0.00

Third Day

Half-day; morning work from home, afternoon free. Did the now familiar fruit/coffee/fibre bar combo until lunch, which was a beef/cream cheese sandwich thins with cucumber. Pleasant enough. Afternoon of ‘pottering’; getting a few of those annoying little jobs done. That was the problem. Kept on snacking, after I’d made a peanut butter on toast around 3PM. Mainly on said peanut butter. Sign that I think my body is craving energy. Or just greed. Which is how I emotionally took it on seeing half the jar gone. Well, that was a shit idea…

As a penance (of sorts) I decided to have a light(er) dinner; did myself my own instant noodles; a ready-to-wok pack, with a little bit of protein powder, herbs/spices and a couple of salt-free stock cubes. The protein powder was a bit of a problem; in the end decided to treat it like coffee and have a ‘per use’ price using the cheapest soya brand I can stand. After consuming, learned said noodles was not as calorific than expected. But more expensive. Well, we live and learn.

Pudding was half a bottle of peaches in juice that I found at the back of my cupboard – I’d forgotten all about it, on the basis I’d not bought it. Was about six months out of date, but I reasoned that I was poor now and thus, must try them before disposing. They appeared fine, so had half of them.

Conclusions: Four fruit/veg today. That amount of peanut butter seriously screwed up things – price and calories. But problem is; without it, I’d have been in a clear calorific deficit. Also, fibre levels not that great. Plus, I am still spending too much. Plus side; salt intake pretty good.

Energy	2260 cal
Fat	93g
…which is saturates	20g
Carbohydrate	234g
…which is sugars	119g
Fibre	31g
Protein	102g
Salt	2.6g
Items Consumed	£3.45
Items Bought	£0.00
Items Disposed	£0.00

Fourth Day

Oversleep. Not seriously, but enough that I have to hurry out the door for work. Coffee and the other half of those peaches for breakfast, chuck in a flapjack, fibre bar and a couple of bits of fruit in my bag while leaving. Have a cup of tea while there, which is at least free.

Do a bit of a detour on the way home; pop into a discounters for milk and apples. Decide to get some pears too, hoping to avoid the ‘peanut butter’ issue again. Successfully resist urge to buy biscuits. Come out three quid lighter. Tried a the cheap-type of pear I bought on way back; pleasant enough.

Remember that it was about time for my local supermarket to (hopefully) do their reduction thing, so went in there too. Not much, but did get some mushrooms cheap. Remembered to swipe a couple of paper bags on way out to store them in so they last longer.

Egg sandwich thins for an early dinner, making up for the semi-absence of breakfast; I’m kinda getting bored of variants of sandwiches as meals. Spend a couple of hours getting to know my dumbbells better, post-workout snack being a packet of curried chickpeas I’d found in the cupboard (if nothing else, I’m clearing the backlog…) which at least felt a bit substantial for once.

Conclusions: Four fruit/veg today. Sugars way up, due to pear and flapjack. But at least they’re mainly natural, spread across the day and being used. I honestly don’t see much that a nutritionist could bitch at, though protein could do with being a touch higher. But I’m seeing a trend here; even when I vary my foods, I can’t really get the total price down.

Energy	1983 cal
Fat	59g
…which is saturates	15g
Carbohydrate	301g
…which is sugars	162g
Fibre	47g
Protein	60g
Salt	3.3g
Items Consumed	£2.92
Items Bought	£3.45
Items Disposed	£0.00

Fifth Day

Half-day again, this time in reverse. Have an All-Bran knockoff for breakfast with a spoon of sugar for a change. Vaguely surprised to realise on computation that it’s a bit cheaper per-serving than I thought. Normal round of coffee / apple / fibre bar / tea, until lunch which is a cream cheese sandwich; the repetitiveness of some of this is starting to get to me. Now time to get down to work; slogged away for a bit, another coffee and the final banana (water too, but I don’t count that) during. Then went out for a bit to finish what needed to be; came back and had a peanut butter sandwich and a chocolate coffee.

Afterwards went on what is now becoming my routine; the walk to the nearest supermarket to see what early-evening bargains they have. I’m not going to pretend everyone can do this; mine is a little less than a half-hour round trip and the weather so far has been decent. Plus, less need to do ‘artificial’ cardio, eh? I’m rewarded; find a half-kilo of baby tomatoes. Remember to swipe another paper bag for storage in the fridge.

Later that evening, decide to actually do some proper cooking. Ideally, something not a sandwich. Think this decision was decided when I suddenly got a strong hankering after chips. Decide to do the other half of those frozen Cauldron sausages with mushrooms and onion in a kind of stir-fry, so to only use one ring. Threw in a bit of tomato ketchup and some of the tomatoes bought earlier. It was quite delicious, more so because it had more than three ingredients.

But once again, the lack of starchy carbs is telling on me; end up snacking on yet another peanut bar before bed.

Conclusions: Six/seven portions today, depending whether you count tomato ketchup as a vegetable. Salt close to recommended maximum; those meat-replacement sausages took up a third by themselves. Saturates aren’t too shabby, though. Or fibre. And the ‘can’t reduce spend’ trend continues…

Energy	1949 cal
Fat	63g
…which is saturates	14g
Carbohydrate	238g
…which is sugars	143g
Fibre	51g
Protein	90g
Salt	5.7g
Items Consumed	£2.98
Items Bought	£0.44
Items Disposed	£0.00

Sixth Day

Day off. A bit of a lie-in, then gear up with the usual routine. Get drawn into stuff enough I forget breakfast and only realise at lunch. Well, it happens. Said breakfast/lunch is some porridge, done in the microwave with a bit of spices, brown sugar and a bit of protein powder to bulk it out. While eating it, calculated it to cost 38p.

Spend half the afternoon doing a little digging online on ideas on how to try to cut cost without nutrition; come across stuff like the ‘Stigler diet‘ and a blog post trying to replicate it for the modern day. Okay, I suck at higher mathematics but I can at least do counting; let’s see if I can do this more scientifically yet come up with edible meals…

First question; what should I be consuming? As in, nutritionally? After consulting a few sources, I come up with;

Energy:	2300 cal
Fat:	52-90g
Saturated Fat	<20g
Carbohydrate:	259-374g
Proteins	58-202g
Fibre:	25g>
Salt	<6g

Okay. So far, I’ve done fine for all of these, with the exception of the saturates and salt on Day 2. The average calorific consumption is 2107; normally this would be a concern but my calculations show that between changing my milk and cream cheese to full-fat editions, the increased calories from which should be enough.

Spend a half-hour or so mucking about items to see if I can get the price down further without screwing up the macros (while consuming an apple; a cheaper kind now as the shop had them on a special). Answer; not really, at least not without dropping the pretence of them being, well meals (one plan had me eating 8 slices of bread a day. Minus any accompaniment). Single biggest offender on this list is in fact fruit and vegetables; yes but that only works because I’m not measuring the vitamins, minerals and so on. The next suggestion is less alarming, though rather boring; eat lots more porridge.

The time for my usual foraging arrives; thank God, I found a load of cheap clementines. And some reduced cooked sausages. And a French stick. Well, despite the hope it’s sandwiches again for dinner. And judging from the size of the stick, tomorrow too.

Clearing out the fridge points out a couple of casualties; some mushrooms and a couple of lemons I’d forgotten about. And I was doing so well until now…

Conclusions: I can’t have white bread again; it’s the wholemeal stuff which is keeping the fibre rating high enough. As already worked out, porridge helped me sneak under two quid, the cheap cooked sausages doing much of the rest.

Energy	2136 cal
Fat	53g
…which is saturates	10g
Carbohydrate	297g
…which is sugars	104g
Fibre	19g
Protein	76g
Salt	5.8g
Items Consumed	£1.98
Items Bought	£1.16
Items Disposed	£0.46

Seventh Day

Working from home day. Have some of that leftover French stick for breakfast with some cream cheese and cucumber; well, I can’t waste it and is likely to taste worse later on. At least the condiments applied made it taste of something. Had the last portion of the stick as a snack later on with a bit of margarine; nothing more than a bit of ballast to help me keep on going. The hankerings for carbohydrate and sugars is becoming more pronounced as this experiment goes on; a sign that yesterday’s calculations are correct regarding the calorific deficit.

My late lunch is another protein porridge; this time with a bit more protein and a bit of cocoa powder to bulk it up a bit. Tasty enough; and powers me though my workout session after the work of the day is done. After a snack of a pear and the last third of the apple juice, then get ready to head out for my daily ‘forage’. Discovered; a pack of cheap apples and some fake meat strips I’ve had before. Their very low cost wasn’t the only factor which swayed me; it was also the fact it could be eaten cold (and thus save cooking costs).

Dinner is another ‘proper’ cooking session; a stir-fry, with a pepper I had from a week or so ago. And other bits, obviously. And some chilli sauce I bought cheap ages ago. It was certainly nice to have an actual meal for a change, though I’m now spending half my time hungry. Pudding is one of the new-found apples, nice enough. As become a bit of a tradition now; late-night snack of a couple of spoons of peanut butter.

Conclusions: Perhaps for the first time, my macros are sufficient on all fronts; got my five-a-day, came in under the saturates and salt limit and so on. Perhaps a bit over on the calorie front; either the pre-made chilli sauce or the apple juice should have been removed (but as I was in deficit much the previous days, perhaps not so much an issue). Much of the fibre is down to the fake beef, which nicely counteracts the lack of fibre from the second half of the French stick.

Energy	2491 cal
Fat	52g
…which is saturates	13g
Carbohydrate	368g
…which is sugars	174g
Fibre	38g
Protein	101g
Salt	5.5g
Items Consumed	£2.77
Items Bought	£0.66
Items Disposed	£0.00

Final Thoughts

So, my week’s spend, in the style of the original ‘Eating While Poor’ post, was the following;

Fruits	£3.79
Condiments	£1.95
Vegetables	£1.91
Coffee / Tea	£1.90
Milk	£1.40
Barred Products	£1.40
Meat	£1.32
Fake Meats	£1.30
Fibre Bars	£0.90
Cream Cheese	£0.88
Noodles	£0.80
Bread	£0.78
Peanut Butter	£0.77
Protein Powder	£0.64
Fruit Juice	£0.60
Sugar	£0.44
Chickpeas	£0.40
Egg	£0.30
Cereals	£0.23
Premade Products	£0.16
Total:	£21.87

This is £1.54 more than my weekly ‘products consumed’ listing; part of this is down to rounding but mainly due to the non-calculation of most condiments and so on. Throw in the 44p I threw away, it would appear that my house lost £1.97 of ‘stored food’ when taking the consumption/disposal and purchase numbers together.

I can explain the relative high coffee costs; I have standards and won’t drink instant. Kerrie had her Coca-Cola, well I’ve got my nice ground arabica. The main cost; the 26% spent on fruit, veg and fungi. Forms of protein took another 30%; I think you’ll agree on the whole I’ve got a lot of bang for my buck here. What’s more, there’s precious little actual waste; either from what is eaten or what is thrown away.

Which is an important aspect for doing this challenge; normally, we’re interested in cutting calories, choosing the less fattening foodstuffs. Not here. In fact, you need to find the most nutrient-dense foods, weighing up their worth not just on price per kilo/whatever, but also how many macros they can provide. Once again, the ‘Stigler diet’ in action. Could it be that if you’re extremely poor you should have butter?

Like I was fully expecting, this diet proved to be gruelling – physical and mental. I had to go out shopping every day and what’s more, planning future meals were difficult because I was quite confined not just by my limited cooking capabilities but what was on offer. The mental stresses was more surprising; the constant trying to find the ‘best bargain’, trying to work out which item is the best value and so on was tiring. However, at very least many of my meals were somewhat tasty, due to my ‘excessive’ spend on condiments and so on. Though I’m rather tired of bread products. Yet even then, I still got quite a lot of cravings, as I’ve explained.

I’ve decided to continue this experiment for another week; to see if I’m able to squeeze any more cash out of this diet, to get my daily cost below the current level of £3.12…

As everything on this blog, merely my own thoughts and opinions. Part of my Essays series.

Hoarding & Poverty

This tale starts with a humble shoelace. I was making a pair of makeshift draft excluders, and required said shoelaces to tie-off the fabric. Found a couple random ones in the cupboard drawer, completed excluder #1, was happy with the result. Then a problem arose.

I had no more odd shoelaces.

Oh, I still had shoelaces. Six pairs, in fact. Issue was, all six were still usable, in lengths and styles which suit most of my current footwear. All were equally worth keeping. But once I used one for the excluder, it couldn’t be used as a shoelace again, because I had to cut it. I also only needed one more, meaning that I’d be left with an odd shoelace.

This was a serious enough dilemma which flummoxed me for around two minutes until I realised the complete stupidity of the whole affair. That I clearly had a squirrel mentality; laying up stores of items which might prove useful ‘one day’. Yet, said mentality wouldn’t let me actually use it for something out of a pathological fear of not ‘using it right’ and then needing it, but not having it for use (clearly, I was an army quartermaster in a previous life).

The ‘Poverty Mentality’

It has to be pathological, as I’m fearing an event which happened once, around a decade ago. By that reckoning, chances are the stock will outlast me. I also get through a pair of shoes about yearly, meaning I’ll be able to replenish my reserves very soon – I mean, how many shoelaces will break in a single year? And it’s not like they’re either difficult or expensive to purchase new.

Yet that’s irrelevant, for facts and logic are fighting the poverty mentality, which is ingrained within my unconscious mind, mainly due to a life of varying levels of, well poverty.

The easiest way to describe it is akin to eternally living in your personal ‘shortage economy’, like in the old East Germany or the Soviet Union. You hold onto things – like my shoelaces – in fears of not being able to get hold of them when you actually need them. I also allowed poorly-fitting clothes to accumulate in my wardrobe out of fears of being unable to afford replacements. I bought dead-cheap a load of powdered protein shake which proved rather nasty but it’s still here, just in case I go through a (cash-caused) protein famine. And non-routine cash purchases requires me to overcome my desire to simply stuff said cash under the mattress to allay my fears of future economic catastrophe.

That is the poverty mentality – when you always think tomorrow will bring a torrential downpour, so it’s best to stock up on umbrellas today. And as we go though most things in life on autopilot and it doesn’t rain half as much as we think, our squirrel-caches can grow rapidly, unawares.

…And Hoarding

While we’re loathe to admit it; the vast majority of us follow a kind of Parkinson’s Law of possessions; that it shall expand to fill all the space realistically available – that only when it gets past that point shall something be done about it. Or when we’re forced to confront the amount of crap you’ve accumulated, like on major ‘life changes’ (such as a new partner, or moving home) and you’re wondering how you ended up with such an amount.

The issue is, the majority of hoarders of this type will deny it even when the ‘accumulations’ reach critical levels; after all, they don’t (usually) possess mounds of yellowed ancient newspapers, larders filled with expired food and/or piles of rusting appliances. Basically put; they’re unable to be a subject for that freak-show which is accurately-named Hoarders; where we can gape at the clearly disturbed wade through seas of crap while explaining why a blown rusty tin of beans was still ‘perfectly fine’.

And that’s the problem.

‘Poverty hoarders’ don’t have obvious shit à la Mr Trebus (non-obvious is another matter, and generally subjective) and nor do they show the classic symptoms such as compulsive shopping, having a front room akin to a papery tomb or a kitchen home to rats and maggots. But the most important issue is that perhaps more so than any other genus of hoarder, they’re most commonly proven right.

After all, I did end up using those shoelaces, didn’t I?

Reinforcement

To continue the analogy from above, yes it does rain sometimes, and when you’re poor that seems to be more frequently. Spare parts are often artificially expensive, labour sometimes prohibitively so. Older / poorer quality items often need more frequent attention too. Often, you’ve either got to DIY it or simply put up with the issue indefinitely. Result; the accumulation of items for parts cannibalisation, random bits of wood, assortments of screws, sheets of fabric, off-cuts of lino, bags of old chargers and power packs…

Unfortunately, ‘project hoards’ (also known as ‘man-crap’) often do prove their worth… eventually. Like when I needed a sturdy cutting board and filched a piece of sturdy MDF off a relatives’ hoard for that purpose. Or my improvised workout station / storage unit from a pair of dining chairs, several bath towels and the back off an old wardrobe. Who thought that salvaged toilet handle would prove useful one day? (or last week, in my case).

The other side of this is the ‘good bargain’. Remember, the poverty mindset is always whispering ‘you won’t be able to get that tomorrow!’ which leads to snap up stuff simply because ‘it’s cheap’ and you might need it one day, or to accept usable cast-offs which are free – this can combine with hobbies/interests to create a powerful variant of ‘Gear Acquisition Syndrome‘.

But like the ‘project hoards’, this type of hoard also proves it’s worth in time. I remember, for example when I moved back out on my own a decade ago some 75% of my non-personal items were off three or four of these hoards, meaning my furnishing outlay was near nil (the other 25% I already possessed). I’ve been conditioned by experience to know that if I need a new X, it’s often worthwhile to ask around to see if anyone has a spare first…

…And Approval

Which is, unsurprisingly used as justification for their hoarding. But hell, that’s not the only encouragement going on – the last decade’s surge in ideas about ‘the circular economy’, ‘upcycling’ and all that is just more fuel for the fire. In this case, I’ll argue that the message has hit the wrong targets; the ‘make do and mend’ campaigns was aimed at folks who’d dispose of a shirt rather than replace a button, not the ones who already had old chocolate tins filled with enough buttons to fill a donation bucket and once made a pair of trousers out of two old pairs.

This has led to the rise of a new sub-species; the ‘green hoarder’. On the surface they look just like the poverty type, but their motivations are different; while the poverty one might hold on to loads of old towelling because it might come in useful, the green one does so because they feel obligated to stop things going to ‘waste’. They’re a phenomenon which I feel require their own post one day, so will leave that topic after giving one simple ‘maxim for identification’ – if your ‘subject’ will allow you to take things off their hoards to use yourself, then they’re much more a green sub-species.

Treatment?

As I’ve hopefully shown, a lot more of us have ‘hoarding instincts’ than we’d personally admit; after all, my own home isn’t packed out with crap yet I still had my ‘shoelace dilemma’. Plus, I bet I have a fair amount of stuff which I don’t think I’d really miss. But like say, alcoholism, we only feel ‘there’s a problem’ when it actually starts to impinge on our lives or more commonly the lives of others.

Problem is, the ‘normal’ hoarding treatments will be not that effective on us. Our hoards are generally not obvious shit, which precludes a ‘skip solution’. They’re also relatively logical; my dilemma was driven by a desire to not waste it, not any warped emotional attachment to it due to not getting any love as a kid or something.

This is why the best self-help I’ve done is to accept I have the poverty mentality. Like some old folks who lived through the era of rationing, I unconsciously feel the need to be ‘thrifty’. A usable, decent item with the line ‘it’s free!’ is difficult to resist (and I normally only managed it in the past because my flat is so small), and my eye is seemingly always on the prowl for ‘bargains’. Being mindful of my own problem means I should be better-able to consciously overrule it. Hopefully.

The other possible solution is to volunteer in the rear of a charity shop for a while. I found doing that to be quite a decent antidote to the mentality; mainly due to the fact some 80% of the items they have are basically, shit, crap and tat and spending long hours in a hugely cluttered, dusty room with poor ventilation can make you hate ‘stuff’ quite quickly.

As everything on this blog, merely my own thoughts and opinions. Part of my Essays series.

Pick For Pittance?

One of the news articles I bet you missed last week was the scrapping of the ‘Pick For Britain’ campaign which was launched in March ’20, fuelled by a fear that food supplies might run short due to ‘the pandemic’ both gumming up the imports of foodstuffs and of migrant labour to work British farms, which is critical mainly for those producing fruits, vegetables and salad items.

There’s a good reason why this story was buried – for the campaign failed. Massively. Like anyone who knew the foggiest about the industry warned it would. The oddity lies perhaps the fact that not even the ‘agin’ the Government’ media seem to have rather ignored it too. I cannot really explain this; I really don’t want to suggest conspiracy here, so I’m going to go with the theory that the vast majority of journalists either don’t really care or they think the public has forgotten all about it by now.

Normally, I don’t do straight ‘reporting’ (and this news is a bit old now) but I feel we should look at this issue a bit closer; for it shows us rather a lot of what’s wrong with Britain. Or at least an aspect of it.

New Land Army?

The principle was simple. Britain needed millions of tons of food harvested, millions of Britons needed jobs due to the first lockdown throwing them out of work (in some way). Well, you don’t even have to be a man as ‘smart’ as Dominic Cummings to draw a line between the two and wonder if one can’t solve the other.

So, it was hatched. With the predictable standby of the motheaten Second World War motifs, backing of celebrities, Royals, politicians and companies, the ‘Pick For Britain’ was launched with website, adverts on all media and supportive journalists. When it was officially launched, said website crashed due to the demand – 160,000, according to a spokesman. It was sufficiently decent-sounding that I didn’t criticise it once (the plus of a blog; you can effectively re-visit your old thoughts).

I suspect if I had thought things through a bit more, I would have. Or at least raised questions.

Labour Issues…

However, it became rapidly clear that while there was masses of vacancies, the employers were generally not interested in British labour. In their defence, farm labouring is job which is heavily physical; something that not much native labour is used to these days – myself included. This is not just about ‘laziness’ either; sheer willpower alone won’t turn a middle-aged office worker into a successful agricultural worker overnight.

However, the very fact so many of these potential inefficient farmhands were informed they weren’t needed was the first suggestion that like the old ‘iron railings for tanks’ wheeze during the Second World War, ‘Pick For Britain’ was perhaps not all what it seemed. This suspicion rapidly rose when even fit, healthy and footloose Britons – the ideal worker for farms – were being denied en bloc.

After all, we’d been told that there was serious risk of food shortages. Prince Charles told us that it was ‘a vital contribution to the national effort’. If it was that important, inefficient farmhands were better than no farmhands – similar to when the NHS ransacked the country for anyone who could realistically be pressed into a doctor’s coat or nurses’ uniform, or during the above war conscripts were sent down the coal mines as ‘Bevin Boys’ because the energy shortage was so severe instead of the armed forces.

The Wrong Answer

The fundamental problem was that ‘Pick For Britain’ was not the answer British agribusiness wanted to hear. They’d been whining to the Government ever since the Brexit referendum about the drying-up of the cheap migrant labour from (particularly) Romania and Bulgaria which had left them around thirty percent understaffed in the 2019 growing season.

That when they went back to bawl at the Government in April about the almost complete loss of the ‘migrant tap’ due to travel bans, what they wanted was to be given special ‘importing rights’ for said labour – not this damn silly idea of hiring native Britons to do it.

So they made sure the campaign failed.

It wasn’t hard. Many applicants could be refused due to being too old, unfit or geographically restricted. The vast majority of the minority who cleared that could simply be ignored. Then they could go the right-wing media and whine about ‘Britons being so lazy’. Admittedly, not every farm was in on this – but enough were to achieve success.

The travel restrictions eased up, they were given ‘guidance’ on how to make their plants and farms (supposedly) ‘covid-secure’. Then they got their pipeline of migrant workers back.

The Usual Reason…

Is why British farms love their Eastern European labour. They are cheap, they are more docile and are more easily exploited. More than anything else, they can be imported by the plane-load via agencies, in the same way as you’d buy in packing crates, rolls of wire or a new rotavator. The very fact most are from Romania or Bulgaria is telling – these are the two EU nations with the lowest standard of living.

For it is a terrible job. From the stories I’ve read, the conditions – or pay – don’t seem to have improved much since when Orwell went hop-picking ninety years ago. There is a damn good reason why Britons do not do this – because almost any other form of employment is superior. Even the likes of an Amazon warehouse for minimum wage is better, and that’s crap. It’s not ‘laziness’ stopping Britons from doing irreparable damage to their back picking fruit, it’s the simple fact they were educated to notice which number is bigger than the other and logically picking the occupation which was least shit.

Though British labour is, frankly a complete faff to hire and retain for agricultural labouring – in the employers view. They don’t like working fifty-plus hours for fuck all cash in all weathers while residing in a dilapidated static caravan minus amenities in the middle of nowhere. They have this tendency to ‘know their rights’, ‘talk back’ to the supervisors or even *gasp* call the authorities when things go wrong. And because they’re in their home country, they’re much more likely to walk if they don’t like things.

Ourselves To Blame?

The more thoughtful farm managers and industry experts are painfully aware of this. However, they also know who is ultimately to blame; the British consumer.

It’s us, in our ever-stronger demands for year-round, cheap and fresh produce which has pushed the income earned by British farms so hard that said ‘migrant pickers in tatty caravans’ is the only labour they can afford. What’s more, the British supermarkets are both the consumer’s manipulator and handmaid – in one breath they assure us we can have fresh food cheap, then in the next take a bat to the growers in our name to get said cheapness.

It’s a racket which only the truly wealthy can escape from – like Prince Charles, in his neat Scottish garden. Chances are, he pays enough to support agricultural workers well enough to attract Britons. But not many others. Not for the first time, I genuinely wonder whether he even realises this.

In this day and age, it’s ever so ‘woke’ to think about organic, non-GMO, sustainable sources, carbon footprints, food miles and so on. Yet with the exception of a very few imported goods (such as coffee, cocoa, tea etc) there’s almost nothing to encourage British consumers to actually buy fresh native produce which supplies it’s harvesters an actual living wage.

The answer is – I suspect – depressingly simple. ‘Labour exploitation’ is only something which happens far away, which is conveniently distant to allow us to do much about it. If we came to accept this exploitation happened in our own nation, the excuse is much thinner.

So, best not think about that. Just in case it makes you sad or something.

As everything on this blog, merely my own thoughts and opinions. Part of my Essays series.

Eating While Poor

One of the things that strikes me online when reading up on nutrition, diet ‘on a budget’ and suchlike is the staggering level of ignorance displayed by so many of the Big Public on the subject. Now, there’s many facets of this topic to be covered; I’ve already looked into why poor people hanker over crap and the common nutritional mistakes made by so many of us, today’s bitch is about the very misconceptions regarding the diet of poor people in general.

The main problem, I’ve come to understand is that British society has become so stratified that those on the higher rungs don’t even understand what poor actually is. That when the average person thinks about ‘poor people’, they reach for the stereotypes put there by the right-wing media; that of lazy, feckless dole-scroungers, gorging themselves on takeaways and drinking all hours, living the life of fucking Riley on your coin, while you sweat it out to keep the wolves from the door.

That picture is so fucking wrong it’s easy to blow the idea to smithereens; like the fact that the basic single payment for Universal Credit is just over £10 a day, which doesn’t stretch that far even if you didn’t have any other forms of outgoings. No, even those on the liberal left have precious little idea of what poor people really subsist on, which often leads to a well-meaning but stupid conclusion; they simply need better education regarding cooking, budgeting and so on.

One of the many reasons for this is the terminology slippage; between ‘relative’ and ‘absolute’ poverty (sometimes, deliberately). The first one is a simple % below the national average income, the latter the line where you are unable to meet your basic needs (naturally, what equates a ‘basic need’ is always debated; as seen by the austere puritannicals when us plebs ‘rise above our station’ by desiring items such as, say a mobile phone or internet connections). Which is the problem; almost all the ‘savvy shopping’ advice, meal-plans and whatnot are mainly geared to the relative poor – in fact one of the motivations for writing this post was encountering a ‘healthy eating on a budget’ plan online which would have cost more than my current diet. Even when they’d promised me I’d ‘save money too’.

Yet all the above doesn’t actually get us any further on the actual point in question; what do genuinely poor people eat in the early-21st Century Britain? This is in fact a much harder question to answer than you’d think; after all, we are used to internet search engines being able – at a few clicks and taps – to provide us with reams of statistics, tables, lists and whatnot on almost any subject of our curiosity. Which is why this post exists; to try to fill this void in information.

Five Baskets

To my own admission, the following shall not stand up to close scrutiny. It’s anecdotal evidence, undocumented, with little coherent methodology and with the risk of ‘overfitting’. But I shall defend it on the basis as far as I can find (so far) there is not anything better to go on. A dim candle cannot beat a bright lightbulb, but it’s better than simply sitting in the darkness.

First Basket comes from a person called ‘Kerrie’ who posted on Quora. According to them, this is/was their fortnight food budget around 2017. While they’ve left off a few things which makes me a touch suspicious (no bread, tea etc.) I have no grounds to think they made up the general tenor of their listing (I mean, this diet is kinda shit, but I’ve seen worse in real life.)

Milk	£1.00
Frozen Meals	£10.00
Pasta	£0.20
Jarred Sauces	£2.00
Chips	£1.00
Biscuits	£1.00
Coca-Cola	£5.00
Crisps	£3.00
Yoghurt	£1.00
Sugar	£0.50
Oatmeal	£4.00
Total:	£28.70

An acute observer will notice several things. Firstly, the complete lack of any fruit or vegetables – excepting any present in the jars of sauce or the frozen meals (which you may count as more coincidental than intentional). Next, a pretty serious lacking in the protein; ‘Kerrie’ is relying on the oatmeal, milk, yoghurt and whatever sorta-meat products in the frozens for it. ‘Highly-processed’ is a very big thing here; the only items remotely resembling the natural state is the milk and perhaps the yoghurt – I’d hate to see what their salt consumption was. Even the items which could be reasonable on closer look aren’t; that ‘oatmeal’ for example are the pre-packaged just-add-water pots rather than bags of the stuff. Lastly, you’ll notice that much of the items are snacky in nature – at very least the frozen meals are functionally a meal, even if a poor one nutritionally.

Second Basket comes from a person we shall call ‘Bob’. They’re a real person, I know them quite well. This is an guestimated purchase-list; I feel they’d either refuse or lie if I openly asked them. But I stand by it; having seen their kitchen / meals / shopping etc and know where they shop (so can work out prices). Here’s what I’d consider an ‘average fortnight’…

Milk	£1.80
Tea / Coffee	£2.20
Sugar	£0.65
Biscuits	£1.00
Chips	£2.00
Meat	£6.00
Frozen Meals	£3.00
Mixed Veg / Carrots	£1.00
Eggs	£1.40
Baked Beans	£1.50
Bread	£1.80
Margarine	£0.75
Pasta	£0.50
Jarred Sauces	£1.00
Lemonade	£1.50
Cheese	£1.50
Onions	£0.50
Savoury Snacks	£2.00
Condiments	£1.00
Jam	£0.50
Total:	£31.60

Once again, we have a real lack of greenery going on; the only time I’ve seen it appear was as a side of a pie-chips combo for a dinner. The next is the heavy weighting towards drinks; ‘Bob’ spends around 19% of his budget on tea, coffee and lemonade (Kerrie’s shelling out 17% for her Coke). In other items, his list is better than hers, though not by much; at least he has more actually recognisable meals – though mainly of a frozen item-chips combos. Don’t get all excited in the ‘meat’; it’s mainly bacon, sausages and sliced, reformed ham for his work sandwiches. Most breakfasts are a fried egg sandwich, which helps the ‘pile o’ starchy carbs’ vibe going on here.

Third Basket comes from… me. In my ‘Year Of Pain’ in my early 20s. Like above, a fortnight’s worth. I’ve scaled up the pricing to match 2020 levels – I recall doing it on about £14 some fifteen years ago, suggesting a basket inflation rate of around 4%, almost double the official figure for the period.

Pasta	£1.50
Milk	£1.20
Pasta Sauce	£1.50
Cheese	£2.00
Eggs	£0.50
Meat	£3.50
Margarine	£1.00
Tea / Coffee	£2.70
Tinned Foods	£3.00
Orange Juice	£1.50
Sugar	£0.50
Bread	£3.00
Condiments	£1.50
Baked Beans	£2.00
Jams / Spread	£2.00
Total:	£27.40

On the plus side; my shopping list is a bit less processed than Kerrie’s was, though is about the same as Bob’s. However, unlike Bob I didn’t have a freezer and lived pretty far away from the supermarket, which increased costs and limited what I could buy. Once again, you can see running themes; the heavy weight towards starchy carbohydrates, salt-laden, long-life products and a dearth of fruit and vegetables (though on occasion I’d get a tin of fruit or something). I got the protein in, though the baked beans was from the looks of it the only major source of fibre. You’ll be right to suspect that I consumed a lot of variants of ‘X-on-toast’. I didn’t die (obviously) but I did lose a fair bit of weight that year and a couple said I’d gotten rather pale. Surprising, that.

Fourth Basket – or more correctly, fourth box is an emergency ‘three-day’ affair from a food bank, as tested by a journalist for the Birmingham Mail in 2018. I’ve given the items an approximate value for comparison purposes…

Milk	£0.75
Cereal	£0.50
Soup	£0.75
Baked Beans	£0.75
Tinned Tomatoes	£0.50
Tinned Vegetables	£0.75
Tinned Meat	£3.50
Fruit Juice	£0.50
Biscuits	£0.50
Pasta / Rice	£0.35
Rice Pudding	£0.35
Fruit	£0.40
Tea / Coffee	£0.75
Total:	£10.35

Two things are obvious here. Firstly, it’s by a decent margin nutritionally better than the previous three examples. But it should be in the respect it’s fortnightly spend is £49, about 75% higher than the above. However, it can be said that in this case they’re relatively unable to take advantage of the larger quantity discounts and can’t really distribute perishables – unwelcome ‘limitations’. I’ll discuss this in a bit.

The other noticeable element is that with the exception of the tea or coffee this is truly a bare-bones diet. If you literally have nothing, this would be very bland; the journalist, for example complained about the lack of jam for their oatmeal and sugar for the tea. It’s this which explained the £1.50 I spent on ‘condiments’- pepper, brown sauce, pickle etc – which I used in an attempt to disguise the fact that a meal was – for example – basically pasta, margarine and with a few flakes of cheese.

Fifth basket is from ‘Thrifty Lesley’ her submission for the ‘£1 a day diet challenge’ from 2014. She used Aldi for pricing, which allows me to re-weight for current prices (turns out it’s 30p lower now).

Bread (22 slices)	£0.36
Flour (1.5kg)	£0.45
Jam (227g)	£0.28
Eggs (10)	£1.09
Brie (200g)	£0.89
Spread (250g)	£0.75
Carrots (1kg)	£0.39
Onions (1kg)	£0.50
Chicken Fillets (4)	£1.99
Total:	£6.70

Several things are noticeable here. The first being; I don’t think it’s possible to squeeze any more nutritional value out of £13.40 a fortnight (for the list is for a week) than Lesley has managed. But even then, she admits that the calorific level (1800 a day average) is a bit on the low side for the sustaining of any male and any active female (thus would be unsustainable long-term). You also notice the relative expensiveness of protein; almost 60% of the budget goes on it. This is down to the fact that she’s tried hard to produce a nutritionally healthy diet – perhaps the first person to really tried to do this (the food bank might have, not sure). But even then, this person won’t be getting their ‘5 a day’. In fact, I suspect that some form of mild malnutrition would be a long-term result here.

However, there’s a clear issue; not only is this diet monotonous as fuck, but is also seriously heavy on both prep-work and cooking time. The first part makes the assumption you’ve got large gobs of free time to make scones etc, while the latter shall seriously rack up the energy costs from many an hour with the oven on – perhaps nullifying much of the ‘savings’ from following this diet.

More damming is the fact that Leslie has – I feel – cheated. The ‘£1 a day’ should cover everything in that day, when hers clearly has not. I’m sorry, suggesting that tea/coffee can ‘top up’ the calorific shortfall cannot happen in this case because it’s not budgeted. Therefore, I’ve produced a ‘supplementary’ list – using Aldi prices again – to flesh out that diet to a point where the person following it does not feel like they’re being tortured.

Milk (2 pints)	£0.89
Tea / Coffee (½)	£1.10
Sugar (½)	£0.32
Apples (6)	£0.95
Bananas (4)	£0.56
Orange Juice (1 litre)	£0.75
Peanuts (200g)	£0.49
Tinned Fruit (1)	£0.40
Condiments	£0.80
Total:	£6.26

It’s not much, really; the ability to have tea/coffee, some fruit, a bit of fruit juice and a little bit of cash to get items such as stock cubes, dried herbs etc to jazz up the basic meals. But it all adds up; the fortnightly spend is now at £25.92, which a keen eye shall see is ultimately very close to both mine and Kerrie’s costs.

And is at around 35% of the basic state benefit for a single person. Before we forget this.

Other Factors…

One thing not obvious to those who haven’t experienced it, but this diet is bland as fuck. A “normal” person can put up with it for a day or two – but after that, it starts messing with your brain in rather serious ways; like how I laid out in my ‘Something Tasty‘ post, this journalist for the Evening Standard experienced and why Kerrie spent 17% of their food budget on Coca-Cola.

There’s other issues too, often not considered by ‘outsiders’. Such as the fact when you’re on seriously limited finances, you may not be able to literally take advantage of bulk buying. There’s also the strong chance you don’t drive, so ‘shopping for deals’ may be much harder. This leads to a conclusion; you’re paying for the cheapness by inconvenience. A trend best shown in Lesley’s plan; she basically calls for many an hour of prep-work to keep the costs low as possible. Yes, it works… but is the cheapness outdone by the hours of prep-work and extra cooking costs? After all, I know ‘Bob’ works full-time and throw on another couple of hours travelling on top of that. Look, when you get in the door tired, sweaty and damn hungry, the last thing you desire to hear is that you’ve got loads of prep-work to do and dinner is the best part of two hours away.

The less said about the fact the ‘budget dishes’ trotted out in the media etc also normally serve 4-6 doesn’t help matters. Bob lives alone. Now, it’s quite possible to do the whole cooking/freezing thing but you’ve got to be both a confident cook and super-organised. Hell, this is an issue even folks like Jack Monroe fall into, and I’ve got a lot of time for them.

Lastly is the marked preference by the poor for non-fresh foods; this makes perfect sense in respect that if you’ve got that tin of corned beef, packet of dry couscous or block of frozen mince, you know it’s there – today, tomorrow, next week, next month. Trust me; I was almost brought to tears on my Year Of Pain when I discovered – for example – that my last two sausages I’d been hoarding had gone off and my meal for the next three days was plain pasta.

The Obvious Question…

Can people eat healthy for the price shown above? Sure they can; I could, if needs be (or could I? Now that sounds like a challenge…). There’s bloggers out there who boast of it, in fact. Yet the section above tells the probable result; gobs of wasted time, lots of bland meals and long prep-times.

But here lies the paradox. The British benefits system, however meagre it may appear to be is just about sufficient to stop people from actual acute starvation (sanctions and delays not withstanding, naturally). Yet it relies on the fact the average Briton has rather high standards (by global/historical terms) and not a huge amount of knowledge of home economics. This means if all those folk living on the state-sanctioned pittance all learned how to spend their cash much better, the chances are the state would soon notice and reduce said pittance to compensate.

And this huge time-skill-cash poor demographic is the reason why our food retailers continue to pump out crud for us to consume, despite all the claims otherwise. Nothing sinister, just free market capitalism, baby. Give the customer what it wants. And while there is a demographic out there who could afford to eat well but don’t – the demographic of people who can’t is much higher.

As everything on this blog, merely my own thoughts and opinions. Part of my Essays series.

Frugality vs Cheapskate

Officially, I’m a cheapskate – at least in the minds of a few of my relatives. Their evidence; my “unwillingness” to spend cash, often in the past. Putting aside the fact that several of the “examples” where at times where I didn’t have the damn cash to spend on it, I’ll happily admit that yes, I am frugal. But no way a cheapskate. A subtle but important difference. I should know, for one of my placements as a kid was with a family who were cheapskate royalty.

Life at “the Cheapskates” was an interesting one, if only for sociological and instructional value. When I close my eyes and remember living there, the first thing I recall is the slightly damp, chilly rooms; for “gas was expensive” and so the central heating was on minimal if on at all. Next, the dated, mismatched furniture; for Mr Cheapskate would often acquire “new” furniture from random places and it would be patched up and re-purposed repeatedly until it literally died. And we’re not taking about cool “upcycling” either, we’re talking about the austere “shore up with some nails and this bit of wood I found” type.

Next, the food. Every single meal was produced in a manner which “saved” as much cash as possible while still able as pass as a meal. If containing liquid, it’ll be watered down. If solid, it’ll be bulked out by something starchy. A “serving” will be stretched to it’s very limit; I’ve not seen margarine and jam spread so thinly on bread (thin-sliced economy, naturally) either before or since. Which is saying something, as I’ve lived on unemployment. Naturally, the main “loss” on this part was the fact no meal at the Cheapskates was tasty.

Mrs Cheapskate did her best in the never-ending quest to “save”, and a major part of this was her sewing machine and the knitting machine. God, I’d forgotten about that one. That long, toothed machine resembling a keyboard, with the reels of yarn at the top, looking a bit like them old textile machines in Victorian factory pictures. Then the “sweeping” sound as the head (the bit which carried the threads, I suppose) would roar back and forwards over “the keyboard”; which meant that A Creation was in progress.

In Mrs Cheapskate’s defence; she was actually rather decent in the skill department here. Problem was that her choice in fabrics or yarn was all wrong. The patterns at least a decade out of date (possibly two), the yarn colours hideous. The explanation now is a simple one; they were being used for they were cheap.

One of the “Creations” which sticks in my head was a school jumper. For reasons I no longer remember, Cheapskate had decided to use her machine to make mine. Instead of being like normal people and buying one. Wrong shade of the colour required, “chunky knit”, heavy as hell and really itchy. Plus, made me stand out and I already did enough with my dorky haircut, old-person glasses and stupid “sensible shoes”. And no small kid wants to stand out.

I could continue this almost indefinitely, but you get the point. What clearly separated them from “frugal” territory was three aspects. One; they subjected themselves to the same tightness that they did us; I never remember them doing anything for fun, or going out. Though it’s possible they were simply the most boring people in England. Two; everything was as cheap as possible; from socks to orange squash – even if they weren’t that suitable. Three; the desire to “save money” overrode everything else. Going back to my horrid school jumper, Mrs Cheapskate must have spent the best part of an evening making it. Possibly more, I don’t know. The point is that she used several hours of her time in the desire to save – I’d guess – around £10. Of which wasn’t even their money, as it would have been paid for by the Social Services.

That’s my “frugal test”. A cheapskate will go through hardship simply to save a few pounds, while the frugal one wouldn’t. The idea of “false economy” is alien to the cheapskate; they’ll happily “spend” gobs of their own time and effort to end up with a marginally fuller wallet. The frugal one will spend “more” when they feel it’s either needed or wanted; the stingy one will prefer to sit at home and justify not spending the cash for “it’s a waste of money”. A phrase which I heard the Cheapskates on almost a daily basis.

As everything on this blog, merely my own thoughts and opinions.

Something a Little Bit “Tasty”

One of my words of the year is “richsplaining”; which is basically “when the wealthy ‘explain’ something and/or offer ‘advice’ to the poor which is either inappropriate, ineffective and/or just plain incorrect.” An insulting, condescending sneer is optional, though frequent.

It’s not that this phenomenon is new either to me (I’ve seen this much of my own life) or society in general (GB Shaw and HG Wells both showing this tendency a century ago) but it’s only in the last few years where the online world has allowed people to notice the sheer amount of it going on, and thus coin a name. And as we already have “-splaining” a new portmanteau was born.

While I feel I could write a whole dissertation on the whole richsplaining thing, I’ll focus (as I usually do on this) on the bit which is kicking around my head right this moment; the issue with diet and nutrition. And one part of it; choice and desire.

A Critical Misunderstanding

From well-meaning TV chefs “teaching the poor how to cook” to right-wingers bellowing that junk food should be taxed (which allows them to continue consuming to their waistline’s content, naturally), we have richsplaining everywhere. At it’s best, it’s well-meaning progressive “do gooding” which utterly misses the mark, at it’s worst openly contemptuous hectoring of “the lessers”. Both, in my opinion are equally condescending – the only difference being the motivation behind the comments and “help”.

It’s no secret; poor people eat badly. They always have; it was only the 19^th Century where in the advanced world the poor stopped starving to death in their droves due to crop failures. Yes, it is perfectly true that it’s possible to have a “healthy diet” on a very low income in countries such as the USA and UK. But those arguments miss a fundamental point; that food and drink are more than just “fuel”, but a provider of enjoyment. You saw this in the feast-days of old, where people would come around to consume good food, good drink and with (hopefully) good company – of which Christmas is one of the few surviving examples of into the modern age. And this wasn’t a new idea, as George Orwell observed in 1937…

“…The basis of [the miner’s] diet, therefore, is white bread and margarine, corned beef, sugared tea, and potatoes – an appalling diet. Would it not be better if they spent more money on wholesome things like oranges and wholemeal bread … Yes, it would, but the point is that no ordinary human being is ever going to do such a thing. The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on brown bread and raw carrots. And the peculiar evil is this, that the less money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food. A millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and Ryvita biscuits; an unemployed man doesn’t…

…When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don’t want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit ‘tasty’. There is always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you. Let’s have three penn’orth of chips! Run out and buy us a twopenny ice-cream! Put the kettle on and we’ll have a nice cup of tea. That is how your mind works when you are [unemployed]. White bread-and-marg and sugared tea don’t nourish you to any extent but they are nicer (at least most people think so) than brown bread-and-dripping and cold water. Unemployment is an endless misery that has got to be constantly palliated, and especially with tea, the English-man’s opium. A cup of tea or even an aspirin is much better as a temporary stimulant than a crust of brown bread…”

The Road To Wigan Pier (1937)

As accurate now as it was eighty-odd years ago, and something which could only be written by one who knew first-hand how poverty changes your mindset. For like many of these things, you only notice it when you’ve been on both sides of the divide. Truly on the “other side”, when you’ve dug under the skin of the surface view and heard, seen and felt the situation like a native. This is exactly why Hunter S. Thompson put Orwell’s Down and out in Paris and London on his reading list – it showed the need for “Gonzo Journalism”.

Onward, Hectoring Buzzkills

That’s the thing; Orwell got that food is meant to be enjoyed. That when you’re poor, your life basically sucks and a “tasty dinner” might be the highlight of your day. That for your meagre finances, the “tastiest” things are basically crap; oven chips and pizza slices, cheap sausages, frozen microwave curries and pasta with fatty mince and lashings of cheese. And in the enjoyment matrix, salad, lentils and plain oatmeal simply don’t cut it.

It’s this desire for enjoyment which leads to several other things which the richsplainers love to attack; drugs, gambling, smoking and particularly alcohol. Shit, the flack that pastime takes; constant warnings about binge drinking, the concerted effort to choke pubs to death, the tut-tutting which has all but destroyed the traditional “lunchtime drink”, the increasing demands for “minimum alcohol unit pricing” which will hit the shelf-stacker wanting a few beers but not the stockbroker and their vintage claret.

Sure, booze – particularly high levels of booze – is not good for the health, but there’s more to this world that just that. It’s this which led a Mr Roundtree in 1899 to note that pubs and alcohol were important to the poor as one of their few sources of pleasure; one which even as a teetotaller he felt it was impossible to deny them. Doctors have coined a shorthand for this; “Dot Cotton Syndrome” – after the chain-smoking old god-botherer on EastEnders – as the older person who clings to their whiskey, fags and fry-ups simply because they feel it’s “one of the few pleasures in their lives”.

That’s what the health richsplainers are doing. They’re trying to deny poor people of their few pleasures they’ve got in this world. I feel “sanctimonious killjoys” is the best term to describe their feelings towards said richsplainers. Ignorant ones too, as I’ve barely ever seen the above argument shown regarding things like public health. That while “education” and so on does help, the key thing we need to do to tackle this problem is to find these people other things which make them happy.

As everything on this blog, merely my own thoughts and opinions.

The Road from Nigeria

If I was ever to write an autobiography of my childhood, it would be titled “be thankful for what you’ve got”. I’d pick this because it’s the phrase I was told the most; and not in an ironic manner either. You see, I grew up in local authority care, and one of the strongest currents of thought then was that I was the beggar, and so therefore couldn’t be a chooser. Looking back on it now, I fully accept that my position was better than it would have been at “home”, but that’s a bar so fucking low it’s nothing to shout about that you managed to clear it. Perhaps I’ll write about this one day; it’s now only in my thirties I’m able to look at it with a relatively dispassionate eye. But not today.

What I’ve been thinking about is one of the many old comments from Mr Johnson which has surfaced; the 1999 one condemning “the youth of today” (which was at this point included me) being “like Nigerians” in our desire for money and gadgets. The odd thing was, when I first heard this a couple of days ago while I noted the unconscious racism I felt more keenly the clear classism.

‘When I Was Young…’

With hindsight, the late 1990s Britain was a rather special time to be in. A rather thin sliver of years between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the fall of the Twin Towers, a time which did not know the phrases “carbon footprint”, “fake news” or “jihadist”. A land ruled by Good King Tony (Blair), where it was perfectly acceptable to want both the trappings of the Good Life and what we’d now call “social justice”. That we’d reached “the end of history” with the triumph over the Evil which was the Soviet Bloc, that the world was on the relentless path to universal prosperity and freedom. If that reads in 2019 as stupidly naïve… well, it was. A time of relative innocence, where “Things Can Only Get Better”.

The thing is, Johnson was actually right, in the respect we were materialistic as hell. But what did you expect? We’d had seventeen years of “greed is good” from the Conservatives, the decade of consumerist excess of the 1980s, the first ballooning of easy credit and for quite a lot of us, Boomer parents who were short on time but long with the gifts. Lastly, I’ve not come across any teenage cohort which wasn’t self-absorbed and wanting “something for nothing”; while we argue with our kids now about how we’re not going to give our credit card so they can buy a loot box for their game, we argued with our parents about getting a mobile phone, and they argued with their parents about getting a record player.

‘Be Thankful For What You’ve Got’

These teenage arguments, at least in my case were invariably unsuccessful. As a kid who’s parents were listed as the local council, the amount of cash – from clothes to pocket money – had been set in stone in an office, and said sums were clearly on the “kid must have” level. I didn’t have gruel and sackcloth, but sure as hell it was a rather austere childhood materially (at least in comparison with my peers). Made it easier to move placements, I suppose.

Because of this, I always felt keenly whenever a variant of “be thankful…” was uttered to me, or when I saw it elsewhere. For you see, this mentality has been strong within conservative circles for at least two hundred years; from the feelings that “benefits” were providing “Them” with a too high standard of living, that “coal-miners would only use a bath to store coal in” and finally ending up with the top-hat wearing Victorian industrialist bellowing that starvation wages were vital to keep the Lower Classes from “slacking off” work.

In short, it’s a strain of conservativism which has always been happy enough with subsistence wages, poverty and gross inequality. One which was on the losing side of every struggle; slavery, child labour, sex discrimination, trade unions, the Welfare State, decolonisation and the Minimum Wage – and is happily leading the fightback on as many of these as they feel they can “get away with”.

This is the unconscious school of thought attended by Mr Johnson. His complaint from two decades ago wasn’t about consumerism, or even “the youth of today”, but the fact that even poor youth wanted, nay expected these things. How dare they! Or, how dare I; wanting a damn Nokia and video player when I should have been thankful that I wasn’t malnourished and being abused in a damp, cold home. I was clearly not knowing my Station and was thinking above it.

Forelock-tugging, cap-doffing and “mustn’t grumble” is what this type of Tory not only desires, but feels is the natural order of things. And what they’ve managed to return to mainstream society in the last decade, using the excuse of “Austerity” as a cover. Food banks, benefit cuts, a shift from a right to a privilege, all delivered in the brusk, condescending manner of the old Workhouse master dealing with the paupers.

Walking With Dinosaurs

And Johnson isn’t alone. From Javid’s love of Ayn Rand to Raab and Patel’s bellowing that we British are lazy and with excessive material desires in Britannia Unchained, we see the return of another creature we thought we’d got shot of; the “rich man in his castle, the poor man at the gate” conservative, one who’d happily strip us proles of any protection and rights if they thought they’d get away with it, one which is so dismissive of our intelligence that they’ll tell us any damn lie simply to get us to submit to their leadership. Which is the natural order of things.

And these are the people who want us to give them a nice, big majority. Many folk hate Trump. But credit where it’s due; at least the White House Ferengi doesn’t really hide his nature or wishes to us. Johnson and co will say anything to anyone, as long as it is in their interests to do so. Which is why I don’t trust them a millimetre with our country.

As everything on this blog, merely my own thoughts and opinions.

Defending “Mr £80k”

This news article makes me a little worried, to tell you the truth. Mainly that it seems on first glance to be so patently stupid you’d want to check to see your browser wasn’t displaying The Daily Mash. Then, if you’re as cynical as I am, you wonder whether Labour HQ planted the man to deliberately be like this as to generate some good copy for the election. But, it seems he is a real person and not an activist or actor.

To make this readable in a weeks time, I’ll quickly recap. A Mr Barber (apparently an IT consultant or something) attends Question Time as an member of the audience. He attacks Labour spokesman as “being liars” about not taxing low/middle earners more as they’ll tax him more. Cue ripple of audience support – until he reveals his £80k a year income. He argues he’s not in the ‘top 5% of earners’ (yes, you are), gives some ‘comparison salaries’ (amazingly inflated) and at one point even claims to not be in the ‘top 50%’ (which means the average wage would be over £80k a year, which means you’re earning around £38.50 an hour for a 40-hour week. Clearly, I’m in the wrong job…). His comments were interesting; a glimpse into a world and mindset that quite a lot of us don’t see often. Or care to admit.

The thing is, our view of the layout of society (and our position within it) is really skewed. On the whole, we move in the milleu of our own class, with the occasional glimpses of the rung “above” and “below” us. We take our cues from this; if you’re in a strata where everyone shops in Waitrose and goes skiing in Switzerland, you “feel poor” if you’re having to make do with Tescos and Bulgaria. Naturally, this cuts the other way; in a world that Waitrose is “normal”, Fortnum’s is where the wealthy go. Ergo, if you’re not at Fortnum’s, you’re not wealthy.

This general lack of “cross-class” interaction means we become socialised within our own class, meaning we lose sight of the other groups – mainly the ones below. That when one rises to (I’d guess) the £40k mark, whole swathes of the country simply become invisible to you. Naturally, this means your pronouncements on poverty-related issues becomes insulting, useless or condescending; for we all know that poor people don’t have a lack of money, simply bad “budgeting skills” and so on.

Lastly, we have the media. Every day, we see the wealth-fantasy played in front of us; the super-rich and their lives in the magazines, the glossy programmes on the TV where often the characters have lifestyles way more than their income would justify. Worst of all are the advertising; showing us all the beautiful things that we simply must have. Live in a world where every living room is the size of a tennis court, all clothes new and designer and every car Teutonic luxury; you start feeling “poor” simply if you don’t have these things. Don’t believe me? Go and look at the adverts in the like of say Country Life, then compare them to Take A Break.

And this, my readers is why I’m defending “Mr £80k”. He’s a archetype of one of the segments of the loyal Conservative supporter; one who has literally no idea how the bottom half of society lives. Sure, they might be able to see clearly – but only to the end of their nose. Their “morals” might be decent, but their minds are so filled with drek masquerading as “facts” their actions are at best useless, worst actually damaging.

In short, I’m defending him by allowing him to plead ignorance and stupidity. Which isn’t much of a “defence”, now I think of it. But better than accusing them of being callous and greedy.

As everything on this blog, merely my own thoughts and opinions.

Closing the Digital Divide?

Just over a decade ago, a nephew of mine entered secondary school. This school took pride in its “forward looking” mentality regarding technology; gone were the whiteboards and textbooks of my youth – replaced by interactive boards, heavy use of computers and the ubiquitous internet access. And before you ask whether I used quills in my youth, I’ll point out that when I was that age, Tony Blair had just become Prime Minister. So, wasn’t that long ago.

The interesting thing was the difference in homework. Not the difficulty or amount, but the medium; while I had worked in exercise books, worksheets or sometimes a word-processed essay – he had to perform the vast majority online, via logging onto the schools network. Naturally, a boon for several teachers; ending the rigmarole of manual marking. Suspect the trees were happy about this too. Only problem was; my nephew did not have the internet at home. In fact at this date, he did not even have a computer.

He managed to not fall behind, but with a cost; skipping every lunch for snacky crap so he could work during the break, utilising every moment his school ‘Learning Resources’ was open [which was no way long enough] and visiting a friend’s house who’s parents were understanding of the situation. The school was that helpful “oh, that’s bad” way. This affair continued until – I think – Year Nine, where he managed to get given a cheap laptop and a pay-as-you-go internet dongle through a government scheme. Which the school hadn’t heard of.

Luxury Or Necessity?

A little illustration of the digital divide; nephew’s school had designed an all singing-dancing system, overlooking the fact that some might not be able to partake. And the situation has gotten progressively worse since then.

It’s hard to imagine – you’re reading this, which means you have decent enough internet access. But; without it, you would not be able to apply for benefits such as Universal Credit, enrol in an Open University course to improve your employability, use YouTube to learn new skills, consult the NHS website for health advice, gain the best deals for utilities, keep in contact with others through email or social media and so on. Worse; a decade of austerity has led to a shrinkage of physical services; banks, shops, libraries, jobcentres. For some, to deliberately avoid the digital in it’s entirety has almost become impossible. And the opportunity costs for your ‘intransigence’ is increasing by the day.

Yet, some do. ONS statistics show that 10% of Britons have not been online for three months or more. Some have not been online ever. Many of these, I suspect are elderly; ‘not seeing the value’ being the main reason for being a digital refusenik. However, this hides what I suspect millions more where their digital access is limited or unstable; the ones who still trudge daily to the library to answer their email, piggyback on coffee-shop wifis or scrape together the cash to keep their broadband from being cut off. And for many of these, cost has to be an issue.

Saner On A Second Look?

Labour has proposed a ‘British Broadband’ service, free for all, across the UK by 2030. Now, while ‘free broadband for everyone’ seems utterly harebrained, it looks much more sane if we assume Labour has been a bit illiterate and actually meant ‘free wifi access for all’.

This is much more feasible – and affordable. Many public organisations and companies already offer wifi hotspots. Some cities in the UK have been considering widening the net, such as the idea of boosting the wifi from the likes of schools and allowing ‘outsiders’ to access it. BT has already got a pay-as-you-go wifi network going in most urban/suburban areas – haven’t you ever wondered what that ‘BT with FON’ is? Rolling it out into rural areas will cost, but it’s not insane to think that this could be provided via private enterprise and a government subsidy. We have the technology, all is needed is the political will and cash to give every Briton outside a farm it within five years. But… is it really the government’s job to provide this?

I would say – it depends on what you see internet access as. As in; is it a product, best left to business to provide? Or is it a public service? That’s the point I was making at the start; that by 2019, internet access has become so important that it’s difficult to be a fully-functioning member of society without it. And this is going to become worse – to the extent where being without internet may mean you’re utterly excluded from society, akin to being illiterate now would exclude.

It would help bridge the divide; the pensioner, poor families, the homeless and the unemployed could join the rest of us in the digital world. It would save small businesses money; for they would no longer feel obliged to offer ‘free wifi’. The public subsidy would give an incentive to companies to improve the current digital ‘black holes’ and the parts of the land where there is effectively a monopoly in internet provision. By making said ‘free wifi’ a rather bare-bones service would allow private internet providers to continue marketing their products; in fact, it would improve their offerings for their products would need to be superior to the free option.

This policy needs a lot of work – the devil in the details and all that – but it’s not one which should be pooh-poohed instantly. We have to remember that many new ideas were derided, simply because they were new. The best example of this being: the NHS.

As everything on this blog, merely my own thoughts and opinions.