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Tesco and FareShare are calling on charities and community groups in Angus to register for an exciting new scheme which will see unsold food become meals for vulnerable people. As part of its ongoing pledge to cut food waste, Tesco’s Community Food Connection programme with FareShare FoodCloud recruits and supports charities and community groups, linking them to Tesco stores via an innovative app that allows store teams to alert them to surplus unsold food items available at the end of each day.

There have been 350,000 meals donated to people in need via Community Food Connection to date, following a successful pilot in 14 stores last year and a national rollout from March this year, that has seen more than 1000 charities sign up to the scheme so far. FareShare FoodCloud is the result of a unique three-way partnership bringing the charity, social enterprise and commercial sectors together. 

FareShare FoodCloud, Iain Livingstone, Tesco Store Director, said: “No food that can be eaten should go to waste. We’re really excited to start working on this initiative to ensure that any unsold food we have is made use of. We are looking forward to forging strong links with local charities and community groups in Angus, and to use this initiative to support their efforts to help vulnerable people in our community.”

US job machine sputters, may give the Fed pause:   The new U.S. job creation data for August came in at 151,000, down from 275,000 in July. Analysts had predicted job growth of about 175,000, according to a Bloomberg survey of economists.

Meanwhile: Boston Globe’s Matt Viser has this long read on the Class of 1976 at Butler High School near Pittsburgh. “People here are approaching their golden years with a sense of bitterness about the new, unforgiving economy and foreboding about what they will have to show for this life. Something their parents could count on — a comfortable retirement, debt-free and maybe in a warmer place — seems out of the question to many who say they see themselves scratching out a living until they are buried in the cemetery on the hillside near.” 

A sanction is a reduction in the amount of JSA which would otherwise be payable. 

Sanctions imposed on thousands of benefit claimants for not taking part in the DWP’s so-called “back-to-work” schemes are unlawful; a court ruled earlier in the year.

After a previous Supreme Court judgment ruled some sanctions unlawful the Government passed a new law to make them legal. 

The High Court and Appeal Court have now both ruled that the retroactive legislation is not lawful.  

The sanctions had originally been ruled unlawful because a court said the Government had not provided sufficient information to claimants on how to make representations before benefits were stopped.

That ruling was won by university graduate Cait Reilly, from Birmingham, who challenged having to work without wages at a local Poundland outlet.

We have added some more information about Sanctions that you might find useful. 

Information below

Theresa May rules out second EU referendum as cabinet meets at Chequers.

The facts are: the UK must keep most EU workers or face jobs crisis: A new Brexit impact assessment by the House of Commons shows there are at least 2.2 million non-U.K. EU workers in Britain. That’s half a million more than the number of unemployed people. So even if every single job now held by an EU citizen were filled by an unemployed Briton — which is essentially impossible — there would still be a significant shortfall. The bottom line is the U.K. has to find a way to keep most of the EU citizens currently living in the country.

The Trussell Trust has opened their 50^th foodbank in Scotland – showing the grim result of Tory austerity and welfare cuts.
 
The charity, the largest provider of food parcels in the country, issued more than 130,000 supplies of food in 2015/16, an increase from 117,689 in the previous year.
 
The Trust’s Ewan Gurr said that the geographical spread of foodbanks showed that “poverty permeates every postcode in the UK, and that many of us are just one pay cheque away from a crisis”.
 
He continued: “Our social security system has so many holes it’s more like a tightrope than a safety net.”
 

British consumer confidence recovers (slightly) post-BREXIT: Consumer confidence in Britain rose in August, according to a survey by research firm Gfk, though it still recovered its second-lowest level in over two years. The marker rose to -7 in August from -12 in July, when it suffered its sharpest drop in over 26 years on the back of Brexit. 

Joe Staton, Head of Market Dynamics at GfK, says:

"We're reporting some recovery in the Index this month as consumers settle into the new wait-and-see reality of a post-Brexit, pre-exit UK. The uptick in confidence is driven by good news from hard data, the combination of historic low interest rates matched with falling prices and high levels of employment. This can be seen in positive growth across all major measures including both our Personal and General Economic situation for the next 12-months. And at +7 points (a jump of nine points from last month), the Major Purchase Index reflects strong retail figures. But more remarkable is the 16-point collapse in the Savings Index (down from +1 last month to -15). We Brits are clearly determined to carry on shopping for today rather than saving for tomorrow."

The Disability News service has reported that paralympians heading to Rio next week have lost their Motability vehicles after being reassessed as part of the government’s programme of benefit cuts and reforms, a member of the ParalympicsGB team has revealed.

Some Paralympians have spoken previously of the importance of the support they receive from the benefits system, particularly through disability living allowance (DLA), but this is the first confirmation that any of them have lost that support as a result of the government’s austerity programme.

The concerns were raised by wheelchair-racer Ben Rowlings, one of the young track stars of the British team, who is set to compete in the T34 100 metres and 800 metres in Rio, and holds the British record at 100, 200, 400 and 800 metres.

He currently receives the higher rate mobility component of DLA, which has allowed him to use that payment to lease a vehicle through the Motability scheme.

But like hundreds of thousands of other disabled people, he has been told he will be reassessed for the government’s new personal independence payment (PIP) – introduced in 2013 in a bid to cut working-age DLA spending by 20 per cent – and that an assessment of his eligibility will take place next year.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is refusing to publish nine secret reviews into the deaths of benefit claimants, despite finally admitting that seven of them relate to people who took their own lives.

DWP only released the information after Disability News Service (DNS) lodged a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

DWP has also admitted that five of the nine reviews – which all relate to deaths that took place in the 16 months from August 2014 to January 2016 – contain recommendations for improvements in the department’s policies or procedures.

Ministers are refusing to publish the nine reviews, even though civil servants prepared them for release on 23 May – more than three months ago – under freedom of information laws.

Black Triangle has provided a dossier of evidence to Police Scotland, which McArdle believes shows that Duncan Smith and Grayling should be investigated for the Scottish criminal offence of wilful neglect of duty by a public official.

Antony Jay, co-writer of Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister, aged 86. Wonderful program. 

UK tax crackdown — fines to rise to three times the evaded amount: In a consultation exercise that will run until October 19, HM Revenue & Customs seeks to increase fines for tax evaders who do not voluntarily come forward to pay their dues on offshore finances. Starting in October, the U.K. government will start to receive information on British citizens’ accounts in Crown Dependencies and overseas territories.”

“HMRC said tax dodgers would be charged up to three times the amount of the tax they attempt to evade and could also face criminal charges. To allow those with outstanding taxes to pay and legalize their positions, HMRC will open its Worldwide Disclosure Facility from September 5.”