but the lucky (aside from needing emergency handouts) people of Birmingham will be able to benefit from the ASDA Price Guarantee!
So if they could have brought their strictly regulated allowable goods cheaper elsewhere ASDA will surely refund the difference like they advertise on TV ... or will that only apply to decent people using cash, or proper debit and credit cards.
Asda has partnered the UK's biggest local authority to provide emergency welfare to some of the country's poorest people.How jolly public spirited and splendid of ASDA, eh to facilitate this
Birmingham council, which represents around 1 million people, said that from 1 April Monday it would give out crisis welfare payments in the form of prepaid cards that could be redeemed only in Asda supermarkets.
The Labour authority said the cards – which Asda said were similar to their gift cards – would restrict spending to a list of predetermined goods, which would exclude tobacco, alcohol, phone-related expenditure and fuel.
Asda said: "We responded to an approach from Birmingham city council, which was looking for a simple way of delivering social fund payments to claimants.And nothing whatsoever to be gained by ASDA in having this "locked in to only using us" scheme obviously.
"Making money available via Asda gift cards rather than cash is a safe way to ensure claimants have access to a huge range of products at low prices, and is an efficient use of the public purse."
So why did Labour controlled Birmingham decide to go with ASDA?
Asked why Birmingham was restricting choice by partnering only with Asda, a council spokesman said the chain had been "the only main supermarket in the city willing to work with the council".
15 comments:
It'll be free Asda booze delivered to councillors next.
So people in financial difficulties don't need road fuel to, say, attend job interviews, then?
C, no, because if they haven't already sold their car, they can't be that badly off, obviously.
"So people in financial difficulties don't need road fuel to, say, attend job interviews, then?"
This raises an interesting point about these card schemes, which is about the state thinking it knows better (the cost and the morality of cards are the other points).
My wife was once the only applicant for a job. It was right out in the sticks, very difficult to get to by any other means than a car.
But the worst one in the list is excluding phone-related expenditure. That just reeks of the people in charge thinking that all jobs go through Job Centres, when in reality, people hear about work via their personal networks.
It's just following in the footsteps of grasping Victorian factory owners who paid their staff in tokens for the factory shop. I think it was Disraeli who outlawed that. But that was COMPLETELY different, obviously.
AC Any apparent resemblance between grasping Victorian factory owners who paid their staff in tokens and the Labour party - especially in Birmingham which includes the constituency of Birmingham Hodge Hill the MP for which is one Liam Dominic Byrne the Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions - is of course purely an unfortunate coincidence. As indeed is the fact that the devolving of crisis funding to "local" level has been leapt upon as a fortuitous opportunity to introduce locally some "behaviour modelling" practices entirely in line with the approach espoused by the Party's spokesperson on "Public Health" as she explains here (http://labourlist.org/2013/03/labours-family-led-health-revolution-its-not-about-banning-things/)
"Labour’s family-led health revolution: it’s not about banning things".
AC, and the factory workers lived in housing rented to them by the Victorian factory owner as well. Ker-ching!
BobE, as a Daily Mail Reader, I think it's quite right that welfare scroungers should be discouraged from wasting it all on booze and fags, and that they should have about £5 dole money deducted each time they have the gall to buy a packet of cigarettes.
Oh... we already do that. It's called "tobacco duty".
Problem solved!
BobE, decent people spend their money on fresh fruit and yoga mats, don't they?
MW just checked on-line - ASDA reports, to their shame:
Fit 4 Life Yoga Mat
Product availability status: Sorry, out of stock.
Yet another unfortunate failing by the Birmingham Burghers - they should surely have checked that ASDA had sufficient supplies of "the right stuff" ...
"grasping Victorian factory owners who paid their staff in tokens for the factory shop"
Aha, the whole scheme could be illegal under the Truck Act - I'll get the ambulance-chasers onto it right away.
"and the factory workers lived in housing rented to them by the Victorian factory owner as well."
I've often thought that this was a clever piece of (unintentional?) psychology by the paternalists: You pay your workers well, so they feel better off, but that means they can afford to pay higher rents, so in the end it doesn't cost you any more.
@Bayard
Don't mention the Trucks Acts: they ruined my young life in a colourful episode.Being paid a salary as a schoolmaster meant I had to rely on the banks which took to closing on Saturday mornings in the era before Cash Dispensers. Knowing my history ,I demanded to be paid as of right in cash as per Truck Acts.My Headmaster wondered why I did n't leave my money in the bank so it could accrue some useful interest.(So began an undying mutual distrust). I embellished my argument with wild claims that the banks were forcing every working man into their grasp by enforcing payment by cheque requiring everybody to have bank accounts. The folly of youth. I was of course right as it turned out as they subsequently knocked building societies out of the equation as well cue a further move by myself to the extremes of political thought.
( I will not dwell on my attempts to pin The golden age of armed robbery>.See Bertie Smalls on the banks themselves as part of a PR attempt to finish widespread payment by cash).
The Truck Acts were repealed in 1983 after being modified in the 1960's (in a way which should have allowed me to be paid in cash!).However the whole point of the legislation if you read the Hansard of Lord Harris proposing the abolition was i) to stop Bertie Smalls type wage heists ii) make everybody have bank accounts but the prohibition of payment in groceries was to remain.
You will be up against the real government if take up on a Truck Acts campaign.
Is it just me or are there similarities between this deplorable situation and the conduct of a certain Walton family in the US, who are indirectly the largest single benefactor from the food stamps and Medicaid programs on that side of the pond? (if you're wondering what the blue blazes I am rattling on about, just go Google "Walmart" + "Food Stamps").
Maybe it just goes to prove the sorry old adage that what happens in America usually winds up happening here?
So perhaps it's high time we all vote with our wallets and say "G'night Jim Bob!" to their yellow and green branded UK subsidiary and start spending our hard earned in what's left of our high streets. I consider myself really rather lucky to still have a bakery, green grocer and butcher in the locale... Well, struggling along as they are amongst the boarded up shop fronts in between the charity stores, hairdressers, kebab emporiums and inevitable CostaBloodyLotForCoffee.
But that's probably just my gloomy take on things :-(
J, no it's not just you, it's always the same everywhere.
"C, no, because if they haven't already sold their car, they can't be that badly off, obviously."
I doubt whether Stagecoach will accept the cards for payment either.
C, they can always walk or go by bicycle. It's not that time is an issue, is it?
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