An update from Baroness Jenkin…
Half way through day three – in fact half way through the challenge. Phew.
Yesterday’s lunch was appreciated by all, and I was flattered by the compliments about my soup, – but I was horrified to find later that I packed it all up before Baroness Jolly arrived for her soup and sandwich which meant that she didn’t eat until scrambled eggs when she got home after 11. Last night I had half a very large potato (12.5p) and half a can of baked beans (12.5p) – not very adventurous but filling. Which I was glad off when I joined a group of women friends on a regular monthly evening out. They pressed me to join them, have a chip, a glass of wine, but I stuck to tap water and went to bed empty, glad that day two was over.
Good news is that I have reached and overtaken my target. My kind old friend Richard Curtis, who has done so much amazing work in this area, made a donation which tipped me over the £5k and as of today I am nearly at £6k which I am really pleased about. Doing the challenge has given me the opportunity to get in touch with lots of old friends, including many I haven’t seen for ages and I have been amazed by people’s generosity. I think for many the campaign has brought home to them how very lucky we all are to live in a prosperous country where we can make choices for ourselves on a daily basis, rather than having them made for us.
A large number of colleagues here in the Lords have sent in cheques and good wishes and have been intrigued to learn how we are managing. Brenda Dean and Margaret Jay have been in touch today to wish Jack and I well.
Today I was a guest on Midweek with Libby Purves. It was an eclectic mix of guests and as always with live radio a bit nerve racking. But Libby is a consummate interviewer and put us all at our ease, teasing interesting facts out of us all. She had even read my Maiden Speech and noted that I had given a small plug at the end to political spouses, a very unappreciated group. Without prompting Gary Cockerill, make up artist to the stars, (who admitted that he eats out every evening), said that he would like to join in with Live Below the Line next year. Lots of positive feedback and I am delighted that the awareness raising part of the campaign is as successful as the fundraising.
Dashed home on my bike after the programme (thankfully down hill this time) to cook today’s soup which I lugged in – on my bike again – in a large plastic container. Once again we failed to work out how to get the stove top to work, so soup into the microwave. Lunch for ten today, lots of laughter and discussion about how we are all faring. Lord McConnell started early and today is his last day. We are all rather jealous. The Lord Speaker sent for a takeaway and I was glad to reassure her that the soup (10p); pittabread and pate (14p) and yoghurt (7p) – dread to think what is in it – means that we will be able to enjoy the 33p meal to be provided at the reception tonight by the Global Poverty Project and leave something for a late night snack. Banana probably. In the queue to vote just now, Lord Strathclyde, hearing that I was host to this reception, said “well you will have to watch out for canapés”. Hmmm.. no such thing tonight, but whatever they are providing, I will be looking forward to it.
More tomorrow…
Well hello, Hansard’s Beccy Allen pp Baroness Jenkin
if you really think that “Live Below The Line” for a few days on £1-a-day is a “challenge”
then surely you should
(both, plus the rest-of-Hansard and of the two Houses of Parliament)
have years ago been publicly-welcoming how easy and comfortable you must have already been finding it to live transparently, publicly-accountably, on-film-audited, and with exemplary-leadership success in showing us similar permanent-low-income Masses how we too can achieve such a People-&-Planet-Saving, sustainworthily-exemplary and equal lifestyle, on £200 to £300 per week;
But you haven’t;
and you haven’t had the integrity nor the courage to tell us you haven’t any intention of permanently living within either the Earth’s Means or within our Peoples’ Common Purse means,
and to be ever maintaining yourselves and ourselves thrivingly healthy, citizenlike, and bio-environmentally supportive.
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I wonder what sort of ‘hidden blackmail’ has caused so many ‘leading’ and super-affluent snouts-in-the-trough-guzzlers to put up such big screens of ‘coloured-smoke’, about sufficiency for the poverty-struck ?
It so obviously has been concocted to appeal to the voting-public, like pre-teenager young-citizens rallying together on some sort of public-wooing “bob-a-job” week;
and like kindergarten-levels’ “Look at me, Mummy!” “Daddy, look what I can do !”;
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If you can’t show publicly your long-term ability and willingness to live sustain-worthily, and personally-efficiently, for decade after decade, upon no more than £300 per week, then you have no sustainworthy-human credibility, let alone any governance and community leadership credibility.
Our fathers limping home after World War 1 would have been being kind to you when they said “Your conduct is not even worth the cost of giving you bread and water to live on until you come to your senses'”.
Our brothers after World War 2 would certainly have had no hesitation in turning away from you in disgust, and calling back “Go , get out of my sight” –
which historically your profession and a score of other professions have been quick to turn into peacetime-and-wartime-alike privately-protected higher-lifestyles, hidden from your 60 million Subjects’ ever-weary eyes, and safe from enemy-crossbows too.
And this “Live On £1 a Day” you gaily peddle is so deceptive, pusillanimous, ephemeral, avoidant of the Truth, and Insulting both to the Suffering Peoples themselves, and to us 1st World minimally-affluent Subjects whom you keep down without enabling us to learn, use, and reach out to billions of truly poverty-stricken other Subjects with effectivising methodology, such as with real-life-issues demonstration of the Friendly and Voluntary Method III, for Needs & Affordable- Hows recognition and win-win-win cooperative problem solving.
You have the World Internet at your fingertips; and the BBC World Service; but you not only do not use them yourselves to enable the Disadvantaged, you prevent others from using them for that human-progress purpose.
Check with the spirit of the Christ’s words in Luke 11 v 52:
“Woe to you lawyers! for you took away the key of knowledge.
You didn’t enter in yourselves, and those who were entering in, you hindered” (World English Bible).
Which I think we can read now as
“Woe … you took away the key to knowledge. You are not entering in yourselves, and those who are trying to enter in, you are hindering”.
And worse Woe,
for you not only do not fund your avoidant activities yourselves, you call even upon the poor to support you with money out of their much more meagre incomes, and you brazenly trumpet this as “charitably competitive fundraising”.
The human Race desperately needs competent and exemplary lifetyle-leadership.
Neither the Houses of Parliament nor such “good causes” as “Live Below The Line on £1 a Day Challenge” have found and publicly-supported such leadership.
Wouldn’t one be doing much better buying £1 worth of red-meat every day and throwing it into the river or sea, to increase fish numbers ?
Jesus loved fishes.
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If you want to live on a basic diet for a long time, and not suffer any ill effect, I am quite sure that multi-vitamin supplements are medically approved as hitting the spot.
Even the slim and elegant, no not eloquent LN, these days have yearnings for particular faddy foods, encouraged by consumerist supermarkets, at a high price. We do not really need “Rocket”,(1.50) but a simple cabbage (10p)is essential!
Splendid! Of course the philosophical question is: do those living below the poverty line on 100 pence per day pay any tax on what they buy and if they do, can it be morally justified? As a long time campaigner on this blog to have a big letter ‘Z’ prominently displayed on all food price labelling to indicate that the establishment regards the item as an essential rather than a luxury, a link is provided so that BJ in her new found mendicant way of life might avoid luxury.
Now at some point she is going to be quite depressed at the hardship of it all and in need of an inspirational role model. Frances of Assisi is such a role model but there are others; all demonstrate the value of human charity and a clarity of thought that comes with material denial. Will any of this make her into a saint? I very much doubt it!
Ref: HMRC Reference: Notice 701/14 (May 2002): Food
http://customs.hmrc.gov.uk/channelsPortalWebApp/channelsPortalWebApp.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=pageLibrary_PublicNoticesAndInfoSheets&propertyType=document&columns=1&id=HMCE_CL_000118
” pay any tax on what they buy?”
I should think that the whole point of buying
basic staples is that you do not pay, what is known in the food consumer retail business as “Added Value”, nor “Value Added Tax”.
If you buy faddy foods or prepared foods you pay through the nose, usually for cane sugar, as though it is identical with beef protein, for example.
Tom Lehrer must have written a song about it.
Quite so!
But how do you know when you put the item in your shopping basket? The answer is you don’t. If its a supermarket the item is marked as taxable on the till roll but is not given an overall total. Contrast this with German stores like Lidl and Aldi operating in the UK. Here the tax paid is totalled on the till receipt but not necessarily marked as individual items. The morality of a German till roll it seems is higher than its UK equivalent.