Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

Good news too, at Manchester United:

Scholes back to assist Giggs

Ryan Giggs, Nicky Butt and Phil Neville were today assisted by former team-mate and Reds legend Paul Scholes at the Aon Training Complex.

Giggs was placed in temporary charge of the first team on Tuesday and was joined at Wednesday morning's training session by Butt, Neville and Scholes following the departures of David Moyes, Steve Round and Jimmy Lumsden.

Fixtures:

26 April: Home game against Norwich, who are currently 4th from the bottom. Then
3rd May: Home against Sunderland, who are currently bottom. Then
6th May: Home against Hull City, who are currently 6th from bottom.

An easy 9 pts there then..... :-)

Councils sit on £67m in emergency help for poor
Created on Tuesday, 22 April 2014 08:06

Category: Latest news

A fledgling scheme to provide emergency help to the poorest in the country is in chaos, with £67m left unspent and record numbers of families being turned away.

Figures released in response to Freedom of Information Act requests indicate that by the end of January councils in England were sitting on £67m of the £136m that had been allocated to local welfare schemes.

Half of local authorities had spent less than 40% of their funds.

An analysis by the Guardian shows that under the new local welfare assistance schemes, four in 10 applications for emergency funds are turned down, despite evidence that many applicants have been made penniless by benefits sanctions and delays in processing benefit claims.

Under the previous system – the social fund – just two in 10 were. In some parts of the country, as few as one in 10 applicants obtain crisis help.

The schemes were designed to help low-income families in crisis, such as those in danger of becoming homeless or subjected to domestic violence.

Charities and MPs have warned that those denied help are turning to food banks and loan sharks.

Read the full story in the Guardian

Two million poorest families hit by welfare reforms, says Oxfam
Created on Tuesday, 22 April 2014 08:01

Category: Latest news

Nearly two million of the poorest families in Britain have been made poorer by a “perfect storm” of below-inflation benefit rises and changes to the welfare system, a new report warns.

An analysis by Oxfam and the New Policy Institute found the worst-affected 200,000 families were losing £864 a year as a result of benefit cuts.

It concluded that about 1.75 million households had been hit by one or more changes to welfare payments, including fewer council tax exemptions and the “bedroom tax”.

The charity called on the Government to introduce an “absolute minimum” level of financial support regardless of where people lived, which would be “high enough to prevent people from having to walk the breadline”.

Tom MacInnes, research director at the New Policy Institute and the report’s author, said the changes were particularly harsh because they affected costs which could not be controlled.

“There are two parts to the safety net. One is the means-tested cash benefit such as jobseeker’s allowance, which is rising by less than prices. The other is the benefits that help pay for specific unavoidable costs. This is where cuts have been targeted and where the greatest damage to the safety net is being done.”

Mark Goldring, Oxfam’s chief executive, said the report provided the “latest evidence of a perfect storm blowing massive holes in the safety net which is supposed to stop people falling further into poverty”.

“We are already seeing people turning to food banks and struggling with rent, council tax, childcare and travel costs to jobcentres,” he said. “It is unacceptable the poorest are paying such a heavy price.”

Read the full story in the Independent

Our thanks to Pre-Raphaelite Sister for spotting this article for us

Ive been pointing this out for the last 18 months BELOW........

The headline employment data today looks good. 239,000 new jobs.

However, self-employment accounted for 146,000 of the increase.

But as I have shown, firstly no one really knows how many self employed people there are and secondly, they earned an average of £10,400 each in 2011-12, on a steadily falling trend.

These people will be living below the breadline. So will those in new part-time work, where the figure rose by 74,000.

There were, therefore, just 19,000 new full time jobs.

I bet most of those were minimum wage and zero hours contracts.

The exploitation of the UK goes on. This is no cause for celebration.

to which 39848 responds

GF.

P 39861

When you are posting for Manuel or the Hazier One, you are attempting to educate the deaf and blind.

They are unable to reach past their own pockets.

========

All these figures after the next election need and enquiry and exposure of the new messiah and his disciples IDS and Osborne and redefined Christianity.

I wonder if they go down on their knees at No 10 or just bend over.

Bend over............LOL.

and as usual you do not actually contradict 39856 in any way - which is not surprising, not least because i gmerely ave an alternative and perfectly legit way of viewing those numbers

Sorry Hays your theory is flawed given that a family are only allowed 3 tokens (visits) per year to a trustel foodbank, more and more new familys are turning up at each outlet. In other words 6,000 visits per year as per your theory BUT we all know from press coverage the number of food parcels as Multiplied many times over. .......................

Haystack - 23 Apr 2014 10:53 - 39850 of 39864

cynic
I have looked at the Trussel's own figures on their web site and it is clear that the average number o people served is 2,000 per outlet and has been that way since not long after they started

both of the above comments clearly need further investigation + supporting evidence if the one is to gainsay the other

sticky - do you fundamentally disagree with what i wrote in 39848?

Cynic said........cynic S - 23 Apr 2014 10:44 - 39848 of 39866

while trussell are indeed a respected organisation and do an excellent job, the implication of the above table is that the number of people needing foodbank subsidy has risen ~2.5x between 2012 and 2013

of course that is something of a distortion, for though the number may well have grown, it does not show like/like but merely that there was a hidden need before more foodbanks were opened................ ends

NO wrong Cyners, you are forgetting benefit sanctions and the bed room tax only came into being about 18 months ago.

Your obviously not up to speed why some people on benefits are turning to a food bank rather than the Welfare State as the last and only safety net they can rely on.

But fear not IDS in his 'Final Solution' will progress onto the modern day WORKHOUSE so as to cut savings even further and fool the gullible public into believing the Fraudulent employment figures are reality and can be relied upon LOL LOL LOL LOL

MAM need to do something about their Bugs thread, it's knocking my keyboard on the head with that silly video ad.

DB.

Alter you volume control to mute.

But, if you are using Chrome download Adblocker plus and install it.

Runs easily.

When you start moneyam up, click the Adblocker icon top right corner and finger the video advert. Follow the instruction.

It works perfectly for me on a Windows 7 !

Thank you Fred, will give it a go. I'm on Windows Vista - not to be recommended!

I think Blair is a self deceiving liar who will do anything for money.

If you put him in a sack of rats he would be the first to get out.

The UK has had some rubbish PMs. in recent years.

sticky - i admit ignorance, but why does "NO wrong Cyners, you are forgetting benefit sanctions and the bed room tax only came into being about 18 months ago" have a specific let alone significant influence on the use of foodbanks?

btw, you last para was just typically silly

Even the Trussel Trust admits that there are people turning up nine times or even more.

If self-employment is largely the result of people not being able to find direct employment then it seems to me that you would expect to find higher levels of self-employment in the regions of the UK with the highest proportions of long-term unemployment. Infact there is a general pattern revealing that self-employment is higher in those UK that have lower long-term unemployment.

Last week the TUC published research which they said showed that “while some choose to be self-employed, many people are forced into it because there is no alternative work”. In fact, that “some” who choose to be self-employed turned out to be no less than 72% of all self-employed people when the Resolution Foundation released the findings of their survey a couple of days later. This accords very closely with the RSA’s own survey (full results to be published soon) which found that 76% of people in self-employment or running their own micro-business were happy with their work situation.

Hays yep but they dont get served. They get re-directed to the LocalAuthority emergency unit which I posted about earlier today and is sitting on 70 million of unused funds because they dont have the staff to manage the scheme.

*And Manuel if you cant work the coorelation between an increase in benefit sanctions and the increase in the use of Food Banks........wells theirs just no hope for you...............let me S P E L L it out for you..........................

Someone gets benefits stopped.............many a time for admin reasons and not their fault (92% is the figure) this is usualy for 3 months but can be up to 6 months.

they have no contact with parents or relatives no freinds etc etc, so what do they do...........they starve to death and die in the road.

But the alternative is to get a token from thier local vicar and take it to the food bank for food.

They then return to thier cardboard box to live their life of luxury.

Get it now???????????? comprende???????