Lucy Aeroplane
VIP Member
I’m catching up while finishing my dinner of, erm, chips and baked beans, and nodding my head. The beans came from my local community pantry where I pay a fee for a bag/box of stuff that’s worth quite a lot more at RRP than I pay. Not quite a food bank, but those of us on tight budgets who have a community pantry nearby are very grateful to be able to get what’s basically subsidised groceries.ooosh a rough couple of days for guset - first an enjoyable Guardian-esque side eye from george mate, and now this academic is all up in her potatoes niche!
I don't want to speak disparagingly of the academic because I've never had to strike nor been employed somewhere where striking is even on the cards. I will say I am struck a little by the response, and the nature of the post itself I guess.
This isn't intended as a me-rail because I don't think I'm all that unique in not finding that meal all that out of the ordinary? tbh it's not that far from a pretty bog-standard lunch/dinner for me - as some fraus started mithering at the end of the last thread, it's usually a jacket-potato but I understand the spuds in question are likely from a foodbank. Not saying I eat it every day or that anybody should, but it's cheap and easy so features quite regularly in my 'go tos' (I am not a 'foodie' and don't have a particularly varied diet because I'm lazy and not all that food motivated - I eat to live if ugetme). I just can't work out where some of the pearl clutching (for want of a better phrase) is coming from - is it anger that this middle class man is having to eat potatoes and beans for dinner, is it that he had to use a foodbank, or is it a mix of both?
It's a bit of a tired comparison by now, but if anybody on the estate where I live (I rent privately but the majority is still social housing) were to share that photo with a much more benign caption simply stating it was their dinner, or perhaps even mentioning they'd been donated the potatoes by a foodbank but without any outrage implied, would it elicit the same response from those in the comments?
The chances are they wouldn't even see it, let alone be shocked/horrified/scandalised by it, right? which in itself is part of the point I am very clumsily trying to make - there are some groups where using foodbanks and being seen to be 'living on' certain foods is par for the course really, not great but to be expected and what can you do?And then there are some where as soon as they venture close to 'poverty' (read: they struggle for a bit) it's book deals and 'put a little something in your tip jar' and gofundmes and endless platitudes of 'my poor sweet tenderheart, this is truly awful news, how bewilderingly unthinkable, it simply cannot be so, how utterly deplorable!!!'
Am I completely off the mark here? Am I being a bleep?
For all that poor academic fella might be missing his steak and french beans or whatever, a potato and legume based meal really isn’t out of the ordinary in the UK (or indeed other countries), most of us have been raised to a greater or lesser extent on some variation of it, it’s relatively nutritious when you break it down to its constituent parts.
Every time there’s a take like that it surprises me, yet I really shouldn’t be surprised by this point. I think I’ve at least learned now that it’s best not to mither on it too much or it eventually all ends up a bit Road to Wigan Pier, and tbh it’s a Monday night and we’re all too knackered for that innit.
Big up the ninnies by the way - am extremely pleased George M has effectively disowned Jack. Wouldn’t have happened without the forensic dissection of all her bullshit. Much love xx
