Friendship vs Greed

[Phil Pascoe]

There's bound to be poverty when poverty is decided by an arbitrary line, with people above and below it. Try telling people in Yemen, Syria etc. that we have 14,000,000 people living in poverty.

 

[Selwyn]

Food producer mate.

...

Ah, I see. You're the person who counts each baked bean into the tin. That would explain a lot.

No I grow it, supply supermarkets and shops with food. Don't knock us, the nation is only ever 4 meals from anarchy and we all knew we had the food supply and there was not a shortage

 

[Geoff_S]

And a bowl of porridge and honey costs what? 7p?...

Ah, you said you were in the food industry. Meals on Wheels perhaps.

OK...I know that I said I'd not respond to you gain but seriously...I doubt you're in any sort of meaningful capacity in the food industry. Dish washer, perhaps ?

Isn't Meals on Wheels a good thing then?

 

[rafezetter]

What the others said, it's sad but when everything has blown over things often have a habit of recovering.
Seems a shame to lose a 30 year friendship but in your case I would have had little hesitation in telling him he's wrong.

I suppose everybody would have a different approach to dealing with this but I think that mine would be - assuming that I genuinely valued the friendship and normally had high regard for this chap - would be to do nothing until running into him again once all the corona fuss has died down. Then over a pint get him to see that panic had led him to being a selfish fool. If he's not man enough to accept the latter point, then IMO he's not worthy to be a friend. We all make mistakes and we all occasionally do things that are wrong. We are usually better for coughing (no pun intended) to them and if he does manage that then the friendship will be resurrected.

But like I say, that's just me.

I'm not advocating ending a 30 year friendship on whim, but if he hasn't already twigged that there have been shortages, that elderly people have been given thier own slot to go shopping ahead of the greedy hoards or that those in the medical profession have still been losing out all because of panic buyers like him then I can see only two options here :

1) he doesn't read/ hear / watch the news in any form on any outlet anywhere.
2) he doesn't think any of the "don't be a pinapple" advice applies to him and his family, and he feels he has the right to "ensure thier survival at all costs", which no-one has - although plenty seem to believe it.

Either way, honestly he's a bit being a bit of a pillock.

 

[rafezetter]

At the end of the day no one in this country has starved. People couldn't just get everything they want for about 8 days.

That a remarkably glib reply.

Not really.

Look the panic buying was real for sure. Everyone thinks they didn't do any of it but actually pretty much everyone did. I'm not talking about trolleys full of toilet roll but everyone bought a little bit more of this and that and created a panic.

There was and is no shortage of food in this country. Whilst some headline photos of the pensioner in the supermarket hunched over the aisles, or the NHS nurse crying were undoubtedly real they were also extremely temporary. Facts are that there are always alternatives. Smaller shops said they had plenty of supply. Many catering sectors did too.

The feeding frenzy developed a further frenzy and then collective outrage because everybody still expected to get what they wanted when they wanted which is clearly not going to happen immediatley.

Actually NO, not everyone did.

 

[rafezetter]

I don't condone hoarding, especially if what is hoarded will be discarded or if it for later re-sale at a profit. But I bet we are all buying a few more days ahead than we normally do - I certainly am because 2 or 3 mini-shopping trips a week is more of a risk than 1. And please don't judge me because I've got 24 eggs and 3 packs of butter in my trolley - I have 2 neighbours who can't get out. Other people you see in shops might be buying for others, have a large family, or just be unable to get to the shops regularly.

While I don't condone hoarding I can understand it. We all behave rationally, but we have all had different experiences and 'rational' differs from person to person. My father saw great deprivation in Italy (Bomber pilot, 81 ops) and the UK during and post war. His father was killed in 1917 so he said they never had enough food at home when he was young. When I was growing up in the 50's and 60's he always kept a few tins in the cupboard - beans and spam I think - and a productive garden. I never asked, but his 'rational' was probably that he never wanted his family to go hungry. I worked in HR on Merseyside in the 80s, some of the union reps told me about their experience when young, fathers doing casual work on the docks and bakeries and in lean weeks they went hungry. That's why they didn't trust, or even hated, the bosses. There are lots of stories like that - then and now. I am a school governor and we have children coming to school hungry, in 2020 in what is a rich nation. What will their behaviour be if one day they can afford to hoard a little?

We have had inconveniences, sugar shortage of '74 is an example and it wasn't a real shortage even then. Many of us, including me, have never lived through proper unrelenting hardship. I would be distraught if my children when young had said "Dad I'm hungry", really meaning it not just whingeing, and I could do nothing about it.

Maybe your friend was regularly sent to bed without food as a punishment as a child, maybe long ago his family went hungry for some reason, maybe he feels a strong need to be the provider (we no longer leave our caves and return 3 days later with a dead elk on our shoulder, we come home from Tesco with a boot full of goodies). Maybe he sees himself as a rescuer - when the chips are down he has the resources to provide for relatives. You will never know and can never ask, you may not approve but maybe you can understand that what he thinks is 'rational' may not be greed but something else altogether.

What if he had never told you, never proudly shown you his stockroom? Maybe you have other friends who have stores of this and that but haven't told you, would you be just as angry with them if you found out? Was telling you the mistake? I'm not supporting hoarding for the sake of it, but we should all try to understand why we act differently from one another.

We might all lose friends - or they us - to the virus, making peace might be the best thing we can do right now. When you are on a ventilator you can't speak. I'm not saying that to be gloomy, just realistic. Maybe we should all hoard as much goodwill as we can, just in case. I wasn't a part of the conversation you had with him, so mustn't judge and may have done exactly what you did, but maybe you can build a bridge back one day soon.

All fair points, I know my father (74) has always had an irrational fear of running out of food after the severe rationing when he was a child after the war - but I think if that friend has made a cache of stuff for the pure purpose of ensuring OTHERS had supplies because he envisioned the panic buying then....

Why did he rack out the room with shelving?

Forgive my ignorance but to me - shelving = LONGTERM STORAGE.

A person bulk buying for others wouldn't go to such lengths, even those with an overly developed sense of order, because it'll be gone soon. - Those genuinly doing so would just cram it where they could for the short(relatively speaking) period of storage required, not rack out an entire room floor to ceiling (which is what I think the OP said).

 

[Lons]

Look the panic buying was real for sure. Everyone thinks they didn't do any of it but actually pretty much everyone did. I'm not talking about trolleys full of toilet roll but everyone bought a little bit more of this and that and created a panic.

Well maybe that's true in your little corner of Wales, from the tone of your posts you were one of them and it's perfectly understandable to add just a little more but your statement that " pretty much everyone did " is absolute bullsh*t, that's not what caused the shortages on the shelves.
None of my family did that and as far as I know none of my close friends either and several of them are the ones likely to be caring for the morons who caused the shortages, they're working long shifts and can't easily get what they need which is disgraceful, so I'll tell then you said not to worry they can have what they need very soon as it's " extremely temporary " :roll:
I witnessed panic buying with trolleys piled high with way way more than an extra tin or two and found it distasteful.

There was and is no shortage of food in this country. Whilst some headline photos of the pensioner in the supermarket hunched over the aisles, or the NHS nurse crying were undoubtedly real they were also extremely temporary. Facts are that there are always alternatives. Smaller shops said they had plenty of supply. Many catering sectors did too.

The feeding frenzy developed a further frenzy and then collective outrage because everybody still expected to get what they wanted when they wanted which is clearly not going to happen immediatley.

Try telling that to the people who can't get a delivery slot because they stop at April 10th and are sold out. I managed to get a click and collect for next Tuesday which has been booked for several days but I have to drive a 30 mile round trip to get it and take the risk, however small of contact.
Local shops have an amount of stock but it tends to be very limited due to size, shelf space and storage capacity and our local village shop has said the wholesaler has bumped up prices and limited orders.

 

[Andy Kev.]

Given that in 2017/2018 it was estimated that 14 million people in this country were living in poverty (it's been since redefined what is poverty so that number may well have fallen), there's a lot of people who don't have that financial, physical or mental capacity to take responsibility for food budgeting.

So, there are *plenty* of people starving in this country.

Of those 14 million, how many have a mobile phone/car/flat screen telly/clothes which they were able to buy new etc.? Such people are not poor.

The number who are mentally incapable of food budgeting is probably miniscule and of course they would be deserving of assistance.

I would suggest that if someone handles their money frugally and wisely but still does not have enough for food/heating etc. then they qualify as poor.

Unfortunately there are people who just think that money should be handed out to them as of right and some of them probably think that they have a "right" to a certain kind of lifestyle.

A couple of years back a family on benefits (does that qualify as poor?) was put in the house behind my mother's. Lights burned all night, every night throughout the house. Did they think that electricity was free? (Effectively it was for them of course.) There was never a shortage of beer to be drunk in the back garden and so on. I'm not objecting to people getting handouts from social services but it's clear that some of them need managing i.e. having fiscal discipline imposed on them. That said, how that should be done is beyond me.

Yes there are people who most of us would probably agree are genuinely poor and I'm sure we would want to help them. There are other people who are just wastrels.

Another problem is that definitions of poverty are arbitrary. It seems to usually defined in terms of dividing line in income. I suspect that what people do with their income leads to whether they end up enduring poverty or not.

I do not see how you can say that there are plenty of people starving in the UK. Do you have any evidence for that? And indeed, what do you mean by "starving"?

 

[RogerS]

....
I do not see how you can say that there are plenty of people starving in the UK. Do you have any evidence for that? And indeed, what do you mean by "starving"?

I could find no evidence. Plenty to suggest malnutrition is prevalent especially in poorer areas.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I am reminded of long retired relative, a (very, very good) infant school headmistress, answering a comment made by my mother - you don't take any notice of the parents, do you? .............. No. I don't. You've seen the parents - would you?

 

[Rorschach]

I'd be very interested to know what the definition is of poverty and starving in the UK.

I live in/near to a poor area, there are people here who are 2-3 generation unemployed/benefit reliant. I am not seeing anyone starving or in what I would consider poverty. Indeed many look "well fed" shall we say and all have good clothes, technology etc. They seem to have very different priorities than myself though and other people I know.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

As long as the bottom n% of the population is classed as living in poverty it should come as no surprise that we can't abolish it.

 

[Trainee neophyte]

As long as the bottom n% of the population is classed as living in poverty it should come as no surprise that we can't abolish it.

But what we can do is spend inordinate amounts of other people's money combatting and waging War On Poverty™, "for the children". There is an entire industry built around it.

In other news, I feel the need to start hoarding: https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest ... i-21725476

It is anti-microbial - I need it!

 

[Phil Pascoe]

We had two School of Mines lodgers when we first got a nice house. One said to me one day we'e comfortable, clean, warm and very well fed ......... many of our class mates aren't - some go out to buy food after their evening meal.
We made good money out of them. We bought carefully - trays of eggs, large cans of tomatoes, beans, large bags or pasta and rice, sacks of potatoes and onions, meat from the market butcher, fish from friends who fished. It really doesn't cost a lot per capita to feed a number of people. I've followed people out of supermarkets with £150 trolleys that I would struggle to make a decent meal out from.

 

[Woody2Shoes]

....
I do not see how you can say that there are plenty of people starving in the UK. Do you have any evidence for that? And indeed, what do you mean by "starving"?

I could find no evidence. Plenty to suggest malnutrition is prevalent especially in poorer areas.

I judge the demographics of an area by the amount of obesity I see amongst the local population. Poverty is not (just) about money.

 

[Andy Kev.]

I'd be very interested to know what the definition is of poverty and starving in the UK.

I live in/near to a poor area, there are people here who are 2-3 generation unemployed/benefit reliant. I am not seeing anyone starving or in what I would consider poverty. Indeed many look "well fed" shall we say and all have good clothes, technology etc. They seem to have very different priorities than myself though and other people I know.

That's an interesting and probably key point about prioritising. By income I am officially now at the bottom end of the middle class in Germany where I live. I simply have no grounds for complaint yet I know people who earn more than me who claim that they don't have enough. Then look at the cars they drive. If having a tip-top BMW, Merc or Audi is a priority for you then fair enough but you have no grounds whatsoever to moan about what is left over from your monthly pay. I've got a Fiesta (no status symbol whatsoever and I saved for it and so took out no loan) and therefore the outlay was much less.

I reckon that if you act in general terms as if debt is a very bad thing, you will probably get by. Never buy things on the drip.

 

[Lons]

....
I do not see how you can say that there are plenty of people starving in the UK. Do you have any evidence for that? And indeed, what do you mean by "starving"?

I could find no evidence. Plenty to suggest malnutrition is prevalent especially in poorer areas.

One of my brothers lives in one of those "poor" areas although he certainly wouldn't class his family as being in that category, they are well fed and for a good reason which is very simple i.e. they buy decent honest food and cook proper meals from scratch, they didn't feed their kids on easy junk stick in the microwave cr*p, crisps, and burgers like most of his neighbours whocan't be bothered and don't give a monkeys.
It's astonishing how many takeaways are delivered into and how many obese adults and kids there are in some of these deprived areas. ( My brother in law has been delivering for 5 years and is very clear about where the volume of their business lies).
It's not always cost or lack of availability that's the issue but rather laziness, attitude and ignorance.

Of those 14 million, how many have a mobile phone/car/flat screen telly/clothes which they were able to buy new etc.? Such people are not poor.

Yep, all abundantly obvious in the area I'm talking about, hell of a lot of sat dishes, decent cars and a high percentage of smokers! *** money could buy a lot of healthy food and no good saying they can't give up as the help is available to them foc if they wanted it.

All that said there are of course cases of very real hardship despite a parents best efforts and in those case they need appropriate help.

 

[RogerS]

....
I do not see how you can say that there are plenty of people starving in the UK. Do you have any evidence for that? And indeed, what do you mean by "starving"?

I could find no evidence. Plenty to suggest malnutrition is prevalent especially in poorer areas.

I judge the demographics of an area by the amount of obesity I see amongst the local population. Poverty is not (just) about money.

Not really sure what you're trying to say? Especially the last sentence.

 

[Nigel Burden]

I can assure you that what Andy has posted is perfectly true.

My daughter lives on her own with her dog and is buying her flat. A family living in a flat below her claim benefits, don't work, or at least only enough so as to receive maximum benefits, (his scaffolding truck very rarely moves). There is certainly no shortage of food judging by the size of them. In the summer they take over the shared garden with their inflatable swimming tub, and there's no shortage of alcohol. The flat they are living in was refurbished before they moved in although it had only been done a couple of years earlier, and was in good repair. Another neighbour had a go at them one day for making a lot of noise one night when they had a party, and reminded them that Gemma, she's my daughter, actually works, as does her husband, and perhaps they might like to sleep as they had to get up in the morning.

Nigel.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

A friend I worked with years ago was a baker at Tesco. He used to walk through two council estates on the way to work at four in the morning. He said I wonder every day why I f ........ bother - they've all satellite dishes, new double gazing, gas central heating, newer cars than mine - half the time they're still up partying ..........and I'm supposed to be intelligent.