UK - Resources for help getting food during quarantine and other supermarket related problems

I totally agree, but apparently, it's more than sufficient for poor people to live off of.

If I really had zero food right now, I'd have to be getting very inventive

 

Next instalment will be 'government has taken my entire PIP money to pay for it ' wow I really should not be joking about that

 

Both smart and sneaky, supply food that's mainly sugar and low grade processed carbs, but only an amount that would provoke rapid weight loss and definitely not enough to risk aggravating diabetes.

Coming out of this it looks like they want thin eager people willing to do a hard weeks work in return for a single bacon sarnie.

 

perhaps you could donate the approx. amount? trouble is how much of that would you actually have bought given the choice, it not exactly nutritious is it?

 

I was thinking the same thing. Out of the whole lot, maybe tea bags, milk and soup. We can only hope that the people in the vulnerable group receive a better choice of food given that they have health problems.

I'm not complaining, my main concern was being put in the vulnerable group which hasn't happened thankfully, but at the same time the only thing I asked for was to be able to order my own food not have a bag of 'food' delivered once a week which if I didn't have the morrison's food box arriving tomorrow would not be enough.

 

Asda are introducing the volunteer card... Apart from being another step towards the cashless society they are quietly tip-toeing towards, how useful exactly is it for people who are housebound?

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/bus...ighbours-buy-groceries-self-isolators-2528184

If you have a person who is shopping for you, you are still going through a similar procedure. I guess it's useful if you don't have cash in the house, or the volunteer/ill person doesn't have online banking, or paypal. But then saying that, if the ill person doesn't have online banking, they probably can't purchase the asda card online either.

It was also suggested that the isolated person, emails the card to the volunteer, again, problem if no internet;
or prints and posts it... How?
Or leaves it on their doorstep... Again, how if they're on lockdown?

I think I'm too brain dead to figure it out today

 

I got an email about it earlier.

It looks like one of it's aims is so that people could give it to volunteers instead of cash to go shopping with. I don't see how this decreases risk for the person whose money it is, the volunteer could still buy stuff for themselves with it, or simply pocket the card.

It's primary purpose appears to be so that supermarkets don't have to handle potentially dirty money.

 

The only item from this that I would normally buy (and then only occasionally) would be the baked beans (I eat these cold from the tin when in PEM). Of course, if I was in a state of absolute starvation I would eat all the items, but I'd have to be really desperate.

 

I sent a pic of it to my Mam, she was 'oh well done! Though it's missing this, this and this and this...' Yeah cheers mother, I am aware

 

I emailed my MP thanking him for helping me and that it's greatly appreciated, however it's not enough to survive on long term and that the issue still needs to be raised so that the usually housebound are able to order their own food.

He replied immediately! Asking if there's any other groceries I need because they can arrange to get them to me. Not sure how to reply to that for best results.

ETA: I'm tempted to email him my full shopping list that I would have ordered if I had a supermarket delivery slot

I'm also tempted to send him a pic of the food, and ask him what groceries he would add to this to make it sufficient food for a week.

 

This just shows what life was like for all those 'benefit scroungers' before this crisis hit! It would have cost me more to get the bus into town (if I could have walked the 2 miles to the nearest bus stop) than it would have cost me to purchase the items I would have been entitled to from my nearest food bank.

 

Before I got PIP I used to just do the old fashioned thing and starve so I could buy my supplements and painkillers The good old days

 

Before I got PIP I somehow managed on the basic rate of ESA for 2 years (including needing to run a car due to there being no public transport in my village). It was actually the introduction of the bedroom tax leaving me with only about £75 a week that forced me to face the ordeal and stress of applying for PIP and 'helped' me overcome the autistic inertia (after having been turned down for DLA previously). Once I got awarded enhanced PIP, with the disability premiums added to the basic rate of ESA, my income suddenly trebled!

 

Same here I was on around 65 quid for 17 years on income support. It was only when they decided that under 35 year olds were only allowed one bedroom and were forcing singles into bedsits that they forced me to apply for PIP after failing DLA 17 years earlier; because being bedridden for years wasn't disabled enough. So they forced my hand applying for PIP to survive.

 

I went on income support after my divorce, rather than the higher rate incapacity benefit, because I hoped so much I would one day be well enough to work full time and didn't want to ruin my chances of getting offered a job in the future (this was before the Equalities Act). At that time single parents on income support weren't required to work until their youngest turned 16.

When I was nearing that point I managed to get a part time job in a school (term time only) and claimed WTC - but I was so, so ill during these few years. I was off sick (normally attributed to 'a viral illness' by my GP) for at least a third of my working days. Ironically, none of my colleagues seemed to notice or care (instead they'd make snarky comments about me 'not smiling enough'), whereas the kids would tell me I didn't look well and ask me if I was okay!

 

Marks & Spencer have also emailed me with news that they have some sort of card, I think for volunteer food collectors ...

 

I decided to stay up till midnight last night to try and book a slot with Tesco or Sainsbury's. I noticed about elevenish that available slots for the end of next week had appeared at Sainsbury's which hadn't been there earlier in the morning - there were still some available slots to book this morning as well in my area.

Then bang on midnight I tried to book a slot with Tesco's for three weeks time and a message came up saying that I was in a queue to book a slot. I waited 5 minutes in the queue and then gave up - I'm hoping I'll be ok with Sainsbury's now I've been flagged up as vulnerable by them.

Feeling more like death than usual this morning after stopping up!!

 

I also tried Ocado last night which supposedly had flagged me up as vulnerable but obviously haven't as it was saying that I wasn't on their priority register and wouldn't allow me access to their site.

So the award for supermarket of the year currently goes to Sainsbury's as far I'm concerned!!

 

I checked asda earlier and it seems that they have deleted my account.

They still send me marketing emails.

I haven't used them for shopping for a few years (I had several issues with things like them not being able to tell the difference between one 2.4kg chicken and 2 1.2kg chickens - it's all 2.4kg of chicken as far as they were concerned), but have used the account for clothes in the last couple of years.

I have no idea as to my status with morrisons, I haven't received an email from them, but my account (that has never been used and doesn't even have a payment card allocated) is still active - no slots.

Tesco doesn't seem to have any particular priority system for online, but my account is still active.

So asda are currently winning on the least sympathetic front.

ETA - sainsburys - my priority status only seems to apply to pc browsers (the only one of which that seems to be reliable is firefox, IE keeps jumping up and down about a missing pdf viewer, which is installed and why is it trying to use it anyway?, Chrome gives a 400 error whenever I try and login, mostly). On my android devices I do not have priority status, at all, in any way - it seems the message that I do has been omitted from android. Which is 'odd' as the last update was supposed to enable this 'feature'.

ETAA - I found out how to get android devices to recognise my priority status. Despite the fact that when starting the app it logs in it is necessary to immediately log out, and then log in again - only then do I have access to any slots - if any are available, which mainly they are not. I have however found that some slots that would be 'free' for me to use on a midweek pass are available if booked today, for deliveries starting Wednesday. I do not require shopping this week so I'll look again next Sunday and see if the same applies.