Them & Us


Food bank habit?

Tory MP Paul Maynard is concerned people might get a ‘food bank habit’. He said: “I do not believe that immediate food relief should be the role of the government.

“We can’t make food banks part of the welfare state. What I don’t want to do is normalise food poverty.”

Unfortunately he and his party are already ‘normalising’ food poverty by slashing jobs, benefits and pay, forcing people to turn to food banks to feed themselves and their families.

Subsidy habit!

Despite the tax payer subsidising their grub by £5.8 million a year, MPs are still not happy.

One was “horrified” when the restaurant he was dining in ran out of the vintage of wine he was after.

Another felt there were “not enough English dishes”. And one was “sorry to say the courgette and potato rosti cake with beetroot wedges and cream cheese was disgusting”. It’s a hard life.

3p expenses

Ex-defence secretary Liam Fox claimed 3p in expenses for a 100m car journey. This is just one of 16 claims for less than £1 car expenses made by Fox in 2012-2013.

Every penny counts – even when you’re ‘struggling’ to get by on at least the MP’s minimum salary of £66,396 a year, apparently.

Welfare facts

The minimum wage increased to £6.31 for over-21s recently. But adjusted for inflation this is £1,010 less than the minimum wage in 2008.

  • 93% of new housing benefit claimants from 2010-2011 were in work
  • 0.7% of all benefit expenditure is thought to have been overpaid due to fraud in 2011-2012
  • £16bn of benefits people are entitled to go unclaimed every year
  • £120bn is evaded or avoided in tax every year, largely by the super-rich
  • £850bn is sitting idle in the bank accounts of big business in Britain
  • 3.5% of people taking part in the Work Programme have found jobs
  • £12.8bn expected cost of introducing Universal Credit
  • 390% increase in long-term unemployment since the Con-Dems came to power in 2010
Have you got news for the ‘fishes’? Email: [email protected]