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, shop work, factory work, minimum wage work, any kind of work, because quite simply, this doesn’t work…” I repeated the words in Parliament last month to a shocked, silent assembly: “This morning, Small Boy had one of the last Weetabix, mashed with water, with a glass of tap water to wash it down with. Where’s mummy’s breakfast? He asks, all blue eyes and two year old concern. I tell him I’m not hungry, but the rumbling of my stomach calls me a liar. But these are the things that we do.” Publicly falling apart at the seams, I continued: “People ask me how I can be so strong. People say to me that they admire my spirit. Days like today, sitting on my son’s bed with a friend, numb and staring as I try to work out where the hell to go from here, I don’t feel strong. I don’t feel spirited. I just carry on.” And I did. I carried on. Hunger Hurts was my turning point – the rock bottom that I hit, the night I decided to hold a big open house […]

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This is my mixed bean goulash recipe adapted from the found-and-loved notebook I discovered in the bottom of my wardrobe earlier, and although I intended to cook it for tea tonight, I am still squirrelling away at my book draft, typing up the aforementioned notebook, and contemplating a peanut butter sandwich instead… So, I promised I would blog the recipe this evening, so here it is, in “book draft” format, so a real sneak preview! “I will never tire of this quick, simple meal. Originally adapted from a beef goulash recipe, and tweaked, and tampered with, in the way that all recipes are, it has become a sweet and spicy staple in my household, and never disappoints. Eat warm on toast, with rice, or stuffed in a pitta bread with lashings of cheese for lunch. Eat from a bowl, water it down and eat as a soup, or eat it straight from the pan in the name of ‘testing.’ I use cheap baked beans in place of haricot beans, as they are simply haricot or borlotti beans slathered in that bright orange tomato sauce – but usually for a third of the price of a tin of plain haricot or borlotti beans! Ingredients (serves 4-6): 4 tbsp oil, vegetable or sunflower will do 1 onion 3 tsp paprika 2 x 400g cartons of chopped tomatoes 1 fat clove of garlic, or a generous shake of the dried stuff 400g can […]

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HALF a million people are reported to be relying on food banks in Oxfam’s Below The Breadline report taken to the house of Lords for debate this afternoon – dismissed by Lord Freud, but more on that later. In what could easily be mistaken for a woefully out of touch parallel universe, Members of Parliament are considering giving themselves a pay rise, in addition to their £65,000 a year salaries, and expenses. You know, the moats and the Laura Ashley curtains and the like. The valuable use of the taxpayers money on making second and third homes “nice”. If you ask me, I’d rather have an extra member of staff at the local Sure Start children’s centre, but nobody asked me. But why did nobody ask me? Or you? Or any of us? I thought this was a democracy – but it seems the only people that want the MPs to snort more taxpayers money out of the alarmingly short public purse, are MPs. In January, an Independent Parliamentary Standards Association revealed that 69% of MPs think that they deserve a pay rise. As the poll was anonymous, it is suddenly impossible to identify whether those clamouring through the press that they wouldn’t accept the raise, were those eagerly (anonymously) deciding that they should be paid over £100,000 a year. The average results of the poll were as follows: LABOUR MPs thought that they deserved an average salary of £77,322 […]

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