Chef skills needed, not foodbanks
I would like to point out to Sean Flanagan that I have not blamed foodbank users for anything. I merely pointed out that because they no longer teach basic cooking skills at school many of them are unable to manage because they don’t know how.
The fault lies with government, Labour or Conservative, who concentrate more on academic results than life skills needed to survive when they go out into the world.
I did say as much in my letter, though I fear some of it was edited out. Pro rata, we had a lot less to manage on in the 60s and 70s but we had been taught in school, and by our parents, how to manage household bills and most of all how to plan meals for a family for a week – so we managed. What is the point of having all these wonderful academic exam results if you cannot cook a meal or manage your household? How is anyone ever going to learn to stand on their own two feet if we keep bailing them out.
We should be educating them to do it for themselves. No, Mr Flanagan, I don’t blame them at all, they have never been taught any different.
Regarding your comment on Mr Williams’ letter, I am afraid I have to agree with him. I have no idea how old you are, Mr Flanagan, but I am old enough to have seen Labour governments and their borrowing and yes it did seem a better standard of living but it was all false. It is basic common sense that if you borrow, you have to pay back more than you borrow, so you end up worse off, and you have to borrow again. This is what we are trying to pay back now, the fun is over.
Younger people have a tendency to live for today and for the ‘now’, think about tomorrow when it comes (we have all done it) so, yes, they were ‘suckered’, as Mr Williams put it, by Jeremy Corbyn because he picked on all the things the young want for the ‘now’. Clever man. But he conveniently left out the bit about them having to pay back heavily at a later date, and just when they have homes and families of their own.
There was no way all the things he promised would have been paid for with a bit of extra tax from here and there, it would have meant borrowing again.
We are ‘older, but not necessarily wiser’, as the title of your letter said, but by being older we have learnt that there is no such thing as a free lunch, no matter what the promises are.
Jenny James, Wordsley
