Give poor families a food allowance to tackle obesity
JAMIE OLIVER has called on MPs to curb the advertising of foods high in fat and sugar and identifies higher levels of obesity in poorer families.
Those on benefits or zero-hour contracts struggle from one payday to the next, surviving on a cheap diet of pasta, frozen beef burgers, chicken nuggets, fish fingers, oven chips and crisps. Such foods are cheap and filling, but they pile on the pounds.
Contrast families on the breadline with a group of people who have a choice of healthy options for lunch and dinner. Prisoners are provided with nutritious food and as it is free they have no concerns as to how to pay for it, unlike struggling families.
The daily food allowance for a prisoner is £1.87 for an adult and £3.81 for a young offender. Compare this to a poor family of two adults and two children with a food budget of less than £6 a day.
The daily cost of a healthy diet should be part of a benefit claim. And families on a low income should get a food allowance.
As Jamie Oliver has said, poorer people are not obese because they are lazy or eat too much, but because good, wholesome food is beyond their reach. SHEENA DEARNESS,
Weymouth, Dorset.
Wild West UK
I AM not surprised violent crime has increased in Wild West UK ( Mail). When there is little likelihood of being caught and jailed, why not seize an opportunity to get rich?
If the penalty for breaking a police officer’s wrist is a £20 fine, why not have a go?
If political correctness prescribes no stop and search, why not carry a knife and drugs?
If police are busy interrogating your neighbour for their Facebook opinions, why not rob a pensioner up the road? And if you get caught, your jail cell will be comfy. CHRISTINA BURTON, Eastbourne, E. Sussex. THE Government is split to the point of breaking, but despite this, details of a potential deal with the EU are emerging.
The talk of customs unions, the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights, hard or soft Brexit is so baffling most people appear to have switched off.
We are heading towards BRINO — Brexit in name only. All of the efforts and arguments of the long EU debate will have been for nothing.
We will be applying EU rules and regulations and paying huge sums to the organisation for years, but will have lost all representation. We will be in a worse place than we were before the referendum.
The votes of more than 17 million people and the manifesto promises of the two major political parties have been rendered irrelevant by a handful specific, such as a dress, coat or handbag. I used to be able to go to a store, walk into one department and find a large collection from which to choose.
Now I have to trek around any number of concessions in the hope of finding something appropriate. It is tiring, time- consuming and all too often frustrating.
I strongly urge department stores to go back to basics; to do what other outlets can’t or won’t and be somewhere special where it is a pleasure to shop.
Shopping is no fun when the customer is the last thing to be considered and customer service has all but evaporated.
VIVIEN HUGHES, London SE11. I’M WORRIED about all the High Street shops closing. Where will I go to look at goods before I buy them online? MALCOLM JENNEY, Middlesbrough, Cleveland.
Be proud to be English
IT IS hardly surprising that only 45 per cent of young people are proud to be English (Mail).
The Left-wing and PC dogma taught in schools and universities has downgraded the remarkable achievements of the English. It is all too easy to look at past events through 21st-century glasses and use this to demonise the English.
It does not help that England is the only country in the UK that does not have its own assembly, thereby denying people a platform to highlight their Englishness.
And if English people demean their nationality, what hope for the newcomers?
Name supplied, Belfast.
Norma vs Norman
RICHARD LITTLEJOHN poses an interesting question when he asks what the outcome of the Jeremy Thorpe trial would have been if Norman Scott had been a woman (Mail).
If it had been a Norma who had entered the witness box in the Seventies and declared she’d had an affair with the Liberal leader, reporters would not have recorded it in their notebooks.
There would not even have been a question of adultery since Thorpe was not married at the time of the relationship.
We know all too well from the Harvey Weinstein revelations that the claims of a young woman would not have been taken seriously 40 years ago.
EDWARD THOMAS, Eastbourne, E. Sussex.
Hold a candle to Ronnie
DESPITE other claims (Letters), the Two Ronnies’ famous Four Candles sketch was inspired by one of my employees.
In 1976, my former partner and I were building a swimming pool for Ronnie Corbett and his wife at their home in Surrey.
Mr Corbett took a close interest in the project and witnessed the gofer being told to go to the wholesaler to buy fork handles.
Off he went in the van, but when he came back, he handed over four candles. There was a lot of shouting and arm waving as he was told to go back and get fork handles, but he was still puzzled.
When I saw the skit on TV, I phoned Ronnie Corbett and we had a good chat about it.
Mrs H. LEE, Yarmouth, Isle of Wight. THE Four Candles sketch reminded me of my Glaswegian aunt who moved South with her husband when he got a new job.
She went to a shop to buy a football for her young son. The sales assistant couldn’t understand her strong accent and thought she wanted a fruit bowl.
We did laugh — she couldn’t understand why. JOHN ARTHUR, Ipswich, Suffolk.