Today I have launched a campaign in the Daily Mirror, a petition to investigate the causes of food bank use and hunger in the UK today. After speaking at both major party conferences this summer about the realities of food banks and poverty in the UK, after sharing my experiences again and again, after countless … Read more
The question we were asked to answer today, was “are food banks a sign of hope or failure?” I think we all know the answer to that – or at least we think we do. Here’s my story. You might think you know it already, but listen carefully. Here it is without any media spin, … Read more
I can finally let one of my big cats out of the bag – as today the first of my columns for The Guardian was published. ‘Austerity Bites’ is a comment piece on the impact of welfare reform, and will be featured on the Society pages of The Guardian, both in the newspaper and online. … Read more
I’ve spent the morning going through the seventy-plus recipes on my blog, ‘tagging’ each with the individual ingredients, to make the site easier to use, and your weekly shop easier to reduce! I started this blog with a handful of ingredients, and made what I could out of what was in the fridge, the back … Read more
I’d like to apologise to Jilly Luke, who I have never knowingly met but seem to have mortally offended with my ‘conventional attractiveness’ and taste for middle eastern food. In an article that compares me to a tax evader, published today on ‘Left Futures’, I am ‘middle class’ for ‘not spending the afternoon drinking White … Read more
So the #22mealsforacoffee hashtag is still going viral and the original post is second only to the original Hunger Hurts for hits on my blog now, with 100,000 today alone. In the meantime, Ocado and Tesco have expressed an interest in adding a ‘Food bank pack’ to their online shop as an option for people … Read more
Today is exactly one year since I typed out, on my battered old Nokia, the words that have been reblogged and repeated in international news reports again and again and again over the last twelve months. The post, entitled ‘Hunger Hurts’, starts with the line: “Today has seen fourteen job applications go in…for care work, … Read more
I’m often quoted as saying I spend around £10 a week on my food shopping for me and Small Boy, which is usually met with a mixture of disbelief and shock, and a quick roving eye over my thin but soft-around-the-edges figure. The latest example of this was when I set up my business account … Read more
When I was a child, I spent my summers at a large and sprawling house in Plymouth, and these are some of my earliest memories. Playing hide and seek in three gardens, watching baby chicks bathe in a sink of water, sitting in the smallest ‘secret’ garden with a book all afternoon; these are some … Read more
Here we go again. I left the pub on Monday, and I cried when I told my boss lady that I was going, because I loved it. Good friends both sides of the bar, something to do, money in the bank, or that was the theory. Without stable hours, my top-up benefit claims would be … Read more