Gardening and cooking skills are not being passed down. That's what WINZ staff have noticed. It's true but let's not kid ourselves the loss is confined to beneficiaries.
People grew their own veges because they needed to make their small incomes go further and/or they enjoyed the process and liked eating homegrown produce. People cooked because they had to. Some did it well, some did it adequately and others badly. Some enjoy it, some don't.
Times have changed. Ready to eat food is cheap. Go to the right places and veges are cheap (if you are interested in eating them).
But cooking and growing veges takes time which many people don't have (notice the gorgeous gardens of retired folk). Beneficiaries ironically do have the time but why should we expect them to behave differently from the rest of society? Especially those who have chosen not to work for a living.
Skills and a love for doing things are passed down through families. Stuff the family and you stuff that process. Make people reliant and they will lose their iniative. This is just another example of government screwing things up and then trying to fix it.
Of course the "great little cookbook" will be touted a raging success because everybody will take one home. Why not? After all, it's "free".
UPDATE; Shameless. I said it would happen but with such unseemly haste??? David Benson-Pope says Great Little Cookbook going like hotcakes.
UPDATE 2; The demand for the "beneficiary cookbook" (as described in the DomPost) is so overwhelming it is going to be put on a website. Seems to me there is a slight problem there. Can you spot it?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
In truth I have very mixed feelings about this whole deal. Supergrans, a voluntary organisation that teaches "lost" skills has a cookbook too. It's been around since 1994. I support the idea coming from the private sector. Maybe it's good thing when govt starts imitating NGOs but the drawback can be they muscle them out of the sector. And the question should also be asked, if an organisation exists who already produce such a thing, why use taxpayers money to produce more? Cheaply produced recipebooks are also used as fundraisers. A "free" govt book competes with those as well. The role of govt expands a little bit more.....
I just don't believe people can't cook; I mean really it's not that hard to cook. There are plenty of recipes available, cook books in libraries and magazines ... there's no big secret to it.
Most supermarkets sell the Edmonds cook-book a cheap easy to follow recipe book. I don't know anyone who couldn't follow a Edmonds recipe. It's not that people can't cook, it's that they can't be bothered. The cookbooks like a cattle-prod.
Gloria
Post a Comment