A Slice of Bread and Butter
The voice of The Bread and Butter Thing - with stories from the frontline of the cost of living crisis from one of the UK's leading food charities.
A Slice of Bread and Butter
From empty cupboards to Westminster: Meet the Godmother of Byker
Penny Walters tells it like it is. It's this Northern grit, honesty and fearlessness that's made her the go-to community figure in Byker that she is today. Join Mark and Alex as they chat with Penny about her incredible journey from working 70-hour weeks at a supermarket, surviving on pasta with margarine to speaking at Westminster about food insecurity as a Food Foundation ambassador.
Welcome back to A Slice of Bread and Butter with Alex and Mark from the Bread and Butter Thing. We're a charity that delivers affordable food to the heart of deprived neighbourhoods, to help nourish communities and act as a catalyst for change.
Speaker 2:We provide access to a nutritious, affordable range of food, which means our members can save money on their shopping, feed their families healthily, as well as access to other support right in the heart of their communities.
Speaker 1:And this is where we share a slice of life of somebody involved in bread and butter and hear about how they connect with us. And today is the lovely.
Speaker 2:Penny. So connecting is a really interesting word, because I tried so hard to connect with Penny I had two failed trips to go up to see Penny and then we ended up trying to do it online and Penny ended up doing it on her phone and her cat is rotating around the phone and purring and stroking and playing with the phone. So apologies about the quality of the recording, but we managed to get there in the end and she's definitely worth a listen.
Speaker 3:Hi, I'm Penny Walters. I am from Biker in Newcastle. I haven't lived here all my life, so I'm not a traditional Geordie. I moved here about 35 years ago, but it's the best place to live. People are friendly.
Speaker 2:So what brought you to Biker then?
Speaker 3:I worked for a church, I was opening up the church cafe, which was in St Michael's, and I liked it, I liked the people, and then I noticed there was a house, came up empty.
Speaker 2:And you're on your own family.
Speaker 3:No, no, there is me, my daughter, my son-in-law, my grandson, two cats, two chinchillas and three guinea pigs.
Speaker 2:Just a few of you then.
Speaker 3:Yeah, just a few.
Speaker 2:Tell me a bit about your story, penny, because you've done stuff for the Food Foundation. You've talked to government, to the NHS. What is it that's so interesting that everybody wants to hear about Penny?
Speaker 3:The fact that I have the confidence to stand up and say this is a major problem, the fact that people don't have enough money for food. And I'm not frightened to do that. You know I don't care. Who asks me why I do it? I do it because I've got the nous to stand up and do it. Where some people they don't want other people knowing the business when I don't care. I've got no food. I never have any food. I always used to. We spent like sort of two year, me and my daughter, doing without. So now if I've got food, then everybody gets food so what does doing without look like for you, penny?
Speaker 3:because this is a relative statement, right, because a lot of people that are better off than you would think doing without is they can't afford a takeaway yeah, I mean doing without is having, by the time you've paid all your bills, having 10 pence left over at the end of a month to buy food with how did you survive?
Speaker 3:um well, we were a lot thinner then. I mean I would eat at work to save that little bit of money If we ate at home. I mean, I was working 70 hours a week so I wasn't in the house that often. Me and my daughter would have like sort of boil a pan of pasta up and have a bit of margie in it and that's what we would eat. So what were you?
Speaker 2:doing 70 hours a week.
Speaker 3:I was working for a supermarket to get enough money together to pay all the living expenses that I've never had to pay for before, because I had a husband, and it'd come to the stage where I didn't have a husband anymore. The only thing that I didn't pay was the mortgage, which is cheaper than the rent I pay now. But it was. What do you do? You try your hardest to do what you've got.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I grew up during the miners' strike in 84. So I grew up in a mining village. My fiancé was a miner, my dad worked for the coal board up until like two weeks before the strike started. So we were better off than most. But it was a case of of how do you help out? You're making soup and you're putting little food parcels up for your friends and your family and stuff. So I learned to do things that way and community's always been one of the best things for me. I love living in a community. It's homely, it gives you a sense of worth.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I get that. I got brought up on a council estate where your back door was always open. Anybody and everybody can walk in.
Speaker 3:They did in ours. For us, though it was, our front door was always open, and the dog used to sit outside on the steps.
Speaker 2:Sounds about right. So how is it nowadays?
Speaker 3:It's not as close, people aren't as friendly I wouldn't say standoffish but they don't want anybody knowing the business type thing. So they wouldn't share if they were in a bad situation, which is fair enough. But the more you get to know the people, now and again they will share if they trust you. So you've got to build up your trust. I mean, now it's just they go in the front door and that's it. They shut the door and they don't think of anything else or anybody else. They're in their own little cocoon what do you think changed it?
Speaker 3:Upbringing. I was brought up to think of others Kids nowadays aren't. I mean we could go outside as kids and play. You can't do that now. You know you can't let your kids out to play. It's not safe.
Speaker 2:I know you're doing your bit, though, to keep communities alive.
Speaker 3:I like to be, I would say, say busy, but at the minute I'm making myself, coming back. It's being part of the community, being part of friends, people that need help but not quite sure where to go for it, and it's just being there for anybody so you are a food foundation ambassador.
Speaker 2:You really really think that access to affordable food or nutritious food is massively important?
Speaker 3:It is, but also education on how to cook some of this food. We've just done our hub today in Baker. Half of the people that come to the Baker hub aren't English. I have Google Translate on my phone just in case. A couple of our volunteers aren't English speakers either, so normally you put it on Google Translate and you tell them what you want, and I do a very good pidgin English and the stuff that we get in our hub is stuff that people can use all the time and I mean we sell out every week in Baker. It's very rarely we have anything to go back. We pack two hubs, so we pack Baker as well as Benwell. Sometimes that can be a bit challenging, especially maybe if I've only got about one or two volunteers, but you get to know your people as well. You have a bit of a laugh and a joke and a carry on.
Speaker 2:Definitely. So tell me about biker, because I'm sure a lot of people won't actually know biker.
Speaker 3:It's not what it's portrayed. People say, oh, it's horrible, it's portrayed. People say, oh it's horrible, it's full of crime, it's full of doom and gloom. It's not. It's the same as everywhere else. Everywhere else, you have a little pocket of crime. So we've got our little pocket of crime, but apart from that, it's fine let me change the subject a bit, then, penny.
Speaker 2:I talk a lot to people about what do they think is a luxury nowadays that you used to see as an everyday thing?
Speaker 3:they're putting your heating on. You know that's a big luxury nowadays, especially today, because it's absolutely bitter out there today. I mean for us, when we were growing up, a luxury was having a takeaway or going to a pub or a restaurant for some food. That was not something you did. And now it's actually cheaper to go to one of the sort of branded pubs and sit there all day with your refillable cuppa using their heat and their electric. You know for what? Under two quid, and you've got people to talk, to use their free Wi-Fi. You're not using your own electric and what have you? You just can't afford to put it on.
Speaker 2:Let me give you a final question. Then, if you were talking to the government, what do you think needs to change?
Speaker 3:I got asked this question in Westminster the other week and I went, went just give people the money, have a set amount of money that people should be entitled to, like a universal basic income, and then from then on, if they make anything over that, all well and good, so that if they're on a zero hour contract and I'd scrap all of them anyway they know every week or every month they are going to have that set amount of money and they can then budget a little bit better. They say, well, if you give everybody just extra money, then the ones that are have got addictions will just waste the money, and that's 3% of the population. Why are you tarring the rest of us with that 3%? They can't help that they're addicted to stuff. Do something different for them.
Speaker 2:Give them vouchers, things like that I've got mixed emotions about just giving people cash, because what it doesn't change is the fact that you haven't invested in the surrounding community. So community policing, better infrastructure, more job options all those sorts of aspects that a universal basic income doesn't give you it doesn't.
Speaker 3:But if you can cross off one area you can then work on the rest of them. You can buy not so much necessities, but you can buy a little bit of a luxury. You know, a luxury to me now would be being able to have food that I can actually eat, because I have intolerances, and to have the stuff that I need to be able to not be ill costs more.
Speaker 2:And I don't think there's any help out there for that is there.
Speaker 3:There's not not anymore. You used to be able to go out there, especially if you were celiac. So if you couldn't tolerate wheat, you used to be able to go to the doctors and the doctors would give you a prescription for the bread, because gluten-free bread is pretty expensive. But I use lacto-free milk. Now I'm paying twice as much for a litre of milk for me than ordinary cow's milk. It's still the same, but it's more pricey.
Speaker 2:So you know, Penny, don't you?
Speaker 1:I do In my first. It might have been my third week of starting this job. I got dispatched up to Biker to go and oversee the BBC coming to film a piece in smack bang in the centre of Biker about food deserts, and Penny is the matriarch of the whole area, I think. So I was only there for about three hours and in the space of that time two break-ins happened, which just demonstrates how that area sort of operates. And instead of calling the police, people came to find Penny. She's the godmother of the area.
Speaker 2:She's brilliant, absolutely brilliant, and you get that because we talk about our values, about how we care right and everything that we do and all the team. We all come here with common values and that's how we end up working together, which is a wonderful thing. But that's Penny right. That's why they come to her, because she is the one that properly gives a shit in that area.
Speaker 1:She really is. She does work for the Food Foundation, nhs, and she mentioned that she'd been speaking in Westminster the week before Telling them what. Just telling them. Just telling them, telling them, yeah, very vocal, and I could just listen to the Geordie accent all day. So I'm yeah. I love it. I love it. Yeah, she's pretty special. Penny is. I'm glad to have her on our team and I have interviewed Penny previously so I did know her backstory, but I wasn't aware of the two years of real hardship of pastor and marge that's tough.
Speaker 2:This is coming up time and again. Right these tough times that people go through go back to dino 70p a day. How do people survive?
Speaker 1:yeah, and carry on fighting and having the energy to get up out of bed. Penny was working 70 hour weeks at that time, living on pastor and marge. It's mind-boggling, isn't it? No wonder she feels so strongly about it now.
Speaker 2:Interesting luxury.
Speaker 1:Ah, the heating? Yeah, is that? Because she's so far up north? It's Baltic up there.
Speaker 2:You know most people listening to this will think you're northern right so. But clearly we're Midlands to Geordie's because we're Poncy.
Speaker 3:Southerners from.
Speaker 2:Manchester. Now, it does get cold up there, but it's fascinating, isn't it, that it's those two constant threads that we hear about all the time fuel and food. They're the two big, big costs in everybody's life.
Speaker 1:still, and just to sort of paint the picture of where Biker is, Google Maps took me along the Tyne, so beside the bridge, and then Biker is actually just kind of round the corner, so it's just off the Tyne. So it is really bloody breezy.
Speaker 2:And just so you know as well, there is no Biker Grove.
Speaker 1:I know it was all a lie.
Speaker 2:It was all a lie, it was all a lie.
Speaker 1:We were fed lies. It's ruined my childhood Biker grove, but that's the first thing you think of, isn't it, as soon as you hear those words.
Speaker 2:Do you know what? I was really interested to hear from Penny, though, because it was like when she talked about universal basic income. So universal basic income is when everybody you me, every tom dick and arie over the age, I guess, of 18 get a basic income from government. If you start to get a job and earn, that basic income goes down as like a form of taxation. Yeah, so the you earn, the less universal basic income you get, and then it turns into a tax. But it's a massive cost. It's more than double the current welfare bill.
Speaker 1:Go on, give us the figures.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's billions, it's literally billions. Keep talking and I'll look for it, because I had it somewhere.
Speaker 1:Interesting to hear Penny talking about the generational differences between community, how everybody's back door was open, everybody was in each other's houses. But now people shut the doors and struggle. Struggle behind closed doors. And is this? Is this a pride thing?
Speaker 2:I don't know, because I think the closed doors is more that everybody thinks that they're going to get robbed.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I think it's not knowing your neighbours. So I think that is from a loss of community.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's what I think it is. I remember growing up like that, having the back door was always open and there were God knows whose kids running in and out all day long. But it's just unheard of nowadays, isn't it.
Speaker 1:But then for one day a week, the community rolls out in force for our hub, and I can verify this penny knows every single person's name who comes to that hub, the fact that she's got google translate so she can communicate with them all because, I know, I know. Can you imagine not really knowing English and having to deal with a Geordie accent and talk to me about your thoughts If you've got food intolerances and you're already scraping by? I mean that's tough, I feel like that's something we need to be banging on about.
Speaker 2:We see this a lot and our model can't deal with it straight out the bat because it's surplus food. Everything that we talk about says if you've got food intolerances, just be mindful that there could be nuts or whatever in your bag. What we have found is members typically use bread and butter to feed the people that aren't food intolerant, and then all the money they save on it they spend on the more expensive stuff that they need to get for the spouse or kids that have food intolerances. And it's funny because it happens the same with culturally diverse food. So we can't do halal, we can't do kosher, etc. Yeah, but we do find that faith-based people do still come and use bread and butter and then, with the savings, go on and buy the halal meat etc so it's freeing up cash, yeah, and stretching those budgets again.
Speaker 2:So we've got those figures I found the universal basic income thing. I'm just looking for what the annual universal credit is. Let's say, if you wanted to give everybody in the UK 500 quid a month as a basic introductory rate and this is a difficulty with it, right? So if you did that, that would cost over 300 billion. How much do you think we normally spend currently on things like universal credit and welfare payments annually?
Speaker 1:I'm going to go 100 billion. Well, done. You're so close because it's like circa 85 billion it's only because of something you said before and you gave me a benchmark to work from there right.
Speaker 2:So it's more than triple, just to give everybody 500 quid a month. So when everybody talks about universal basic income, I think as a philosophy it's really, really relevant. But to fund it, the taxes that would have to come in to fund it, are astronomical.
Speaker 1:Tax the rich.
Speaker 2:But how far? That's the question. So I did a little thing just to geek out and the basic rate of tax to fund this. So let's just say we were taxing everybody instead of just the rich, because it goes crazy.
Speaker 1:And what is rich?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a completely separate podcast. But to fund the universal basic income just at 500 quid a month, the basic rate of tax would have to go from 20% up to 33%.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's a leap.
Speaker 2:That's a chunk isn't it?
Speaker 1:You're such an accountant.
Speaker 2:I'm going to take that as praise Do being an accountant.
Speaker 1:Being stoke-born and bred. Of course, good mining talent yes absolutely Hearing Penny talk about the miners' strike. I have friends whose dads used to go down the mines and they were really affected and they still talk about it now. I think that shapes you, doesn't it, as you go through life and seeing how that affected your parents.
Speaker 2:So you know, I set up Community Shop.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:We set it up in a village outside Barnsley and it was one of the mining towns that was really affected and when Thatcher died they had a big bonfire party and burnt an effigy off Thatcher. And that just goes to show how long that passion and anger and generational rift carries on, because it just ripped the heart out of so many towns, right.
Speaker 1:Friends still talk about it now when I know, yeah, it's still a sort of common subject to be talked about.
Speaker 2:Up here it is. There's definitely a north-south divide on that one.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:He says being provocative, but Penny, what a one. Yeah, he says being provocative, but Penny, what a legend.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Absolute treasure.
Speaker 1:So if you'd like to know more about the bread and butter thing and what we get up to, find us at Team TBBT on Instagram, twitter, tiktok and LinkedIn, or online at breadandbutterthingorg.
Speaker 2:And if you have any feedback or thoughts on the podcast or if you want to come on, you can get in touch with us by email at podcast at breadandbutterthingorg.
Speaker 1:Lastly, we're always always open to new members at all our hubs. If you or someone you know would benefit from our affordable food scheme, find your nearest hub on our become a member page on the website and please do all those things.
Speaker 2:You know that podcasts ask you to do, like us subscribe to us, leave us a review, share us with your friends and chat about us on whichever socials you've got. And tell your dad. Tell your dad, not your mom. Tell your dad see you next time bye.
