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.
Shops sold out
HOUSE of Fraser has announced it is closing 31 of its stores (Mail). The rot set in with department stores when they became a collection of concession stands.
Like most people, when I go shopping, it is for something 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.
WHAT was most obvious to me watching TV reports of the fall of the House of Fraser was that most of their soon-to-be-closed stores are situated in pedestrianised streets with no parking.
I haven’t shopped in my local department store in more than 25 years due to the impossibility of getting my car within several hundred yards of the front door – preferring to frequent out of town malls with a superfluity of free and convenient parking.
It must be nice for the Green anti-car lobby to walk and cycle past the shuttered shops of our High Streets the death of which are largely due to their blinkered efforts.
JOHN EOIN DOUGLAS, EDINBURGH
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.
Charge for admission
EVEN before it is opened concerns are being raised over the financial sustainability of the V&A in Dundee (Mail). The Government is to put in £38million, making it look like a project to suck up more taxpayers money.
Why not make an admission charge of £10 per head to help fund this gap and perhaps get some people in government who can get their sums right the first time?
BRYAN SMITH, BRIDGE OF EARN
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.
Costly cutbacks
THE Queen has had a cataract operation on her eye, but not everyone is so lucky, Some patients have to wait up to 15 months to get the operation due to cutbacks in funding.
Perhaps the trusts should be reminded it costs £1,000 for the eye operation, Poor eyesight can lead to trips and falls, and hips cost £10,000 to repair.
ALAN REID, GLASGOW.
Overlooked NHS roles
IN her keynote party conference speech Miss Sturgeon attempted to take the moral high ground by offering a 3 per cent pay rise to NHS staff.
Yet this excludes the key roles of doctors and dentists. Are they not worthy of the same treatment? Just how are the SNP going to recruit more doctors with this kind of ‘second-class citizen’ approach? Shona Robison has now got an assistant in the demise of the NHS in Scotland.
GERALD EDWARDS, GLASGOW