The cost of living crisis is impacting the poorest families in the UK. As The Canary’s Steve Topple reported:
- 2.5 million families are struggling to pay rent and heat their homes.
- 15% of households live in food insecurity.
- 4% of households have used a foodbank
Just this week, food banks made it clear they were at breaking point:
Food banks have said they are struggling to keep up with the “relentless” demand, with many reaching breaking point, as families struggle through the cost of living crisishttps://t.co/MgN8yctLtl
— ITV News (@itvnews) April 11, 2022
It’s becoming increasingly inevitable that, as the cost of living is in the news, Tory commenters jump on social media to tell poor people how to manage their money. One such person claims that if you shop and cook “properly” you too can live within your means:
Yet you can buy a big bag of dried pasta, that would feed a family, for about £0.50p….
If you shop and cook properly, you can eat healthy meals really cheaply.
I would love to see how she spends her salary… https://t.co/p02LyMJ6WN
— Kevin Edger (@KEdge23) April 11, 2022
What cost of living?
Campaigner Jack Monroe had to come and clear up the obvious for Kevin:
https://twitter.com/BootstrapCook/status/1513546258836774918?s=20&t=KaAMWr9X0NYhT_b9d_FzkQ
Then, Jack cooked their own pasta dish and broke down the realistic cost:
https://twitter.com/BootstrapCook/status/1513609088546058251?s=20&t=lrD3BZy1Zv01bWPEg08juw
The cost of pasta is not the only thing to look at:
https://twitter.com/BootstrapCook/status/1513609091440066566?s=20&t=lrD3BZy1Zv01bWPEg08juw
Monroe’s thread shows that the individual pricing of meals is almost entirely useless. Without factoring in rent, heating, energy, equipment, and the time that it takes to cook nutritious meals, this pricing means very little.
Misery nation
Other commenters similarly tried to slip dodgy pricing (and dodgier food) into the conversation:
https://twitter.com/BootstrapCook/status/1514238182363176962?s=20&t=KaAMWr9X0NYhT_b9d_FzkQ
The assumption that poor people should eat anything available to them is classist and miserly. Poor people deserve to eat nutritious, beautiful, and well-cooked food as much as anybody else in the country.
There is a mental toll that comes with worrying about where your next meal will come from and how you can afford to cook it. One commenter pointed out that, given that Kevin Edgar was discussing a nurse who struggles to feed her children, nurses should have salaries which go further:
Nutritious home-cooked meals aside, I like it to go one step further, I'd like a hard-working nurse to be able to come home, think 'fuck it', and order a Chinese. I'd like them to be able to say 'come on kids, let's go out to eat tonight'. They deserve that kind of salary. https://t.co/orZHlqJjtY
— Dr. Songo (@songo_doc) April 11, 2022
As Professor Devi Sridhar points out, access to good food (amongst other things) is a health issue:
To be healthy, people need to have enough money to heat their homes, buy decent food, access health services & live in adequate housing. So yes, wealth distribution, taxation (who pays & who doesn't), cost of living & financing of the NHS are all linked to public health.
— Prof. Devi Sridhar (@devisridhar) April 8, 2022
To pretend otherwise is to insist that poor people should be miserable, an approach which provides oxygen for the dumpster fire that is the Tories war on the poor.
Featured image via Unsplash/Bozhin Karaivanov – resized to 770×403, via the Unsplash License
