Food Banks Are Bad

26 Replies

Image from the BBC

Some Advice From Edwina Currie, Former MP

Don’t give thanks
for local food banks
they encourage
the feckless
the greedy
the emotionally needy
the reckless
the addicts
the idle-by-habits
the drunkards
the hopeless
the gormless
the homeless
the wasters
the smokers
the cheaters
the faceless
the indigent
the immigrants
the lazy
the crazy
the tattooed dog owners
the debtors
the sanctioned
the punished
the poor

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Let me declare an interest: I voted for half of this government.  I am an instinctive Conservative: I believe in working hard; in looking after yourself and your family; I believe in small government.

I am also on benefits.  As a family, we had a comparatively well-off lifestyle until bad health, bad luck and bad timing reversed our fortunes.  I don’t complain about it: that’s life.  There’s always someone worse off.

I believe the benefits system needs reforming.  I was prepared to do my bit; I’m grateful for what we receive.  What I was not prepared for was the way in which this government has attacked the weakest and most vulnerable sections of society; for the way in which everyone on benefits is harangued for being feckless, dishonest and determined to live the high life at taxpayers’ expense.  This government and a complicit media blame the poor for being poor because they’re poor.

Newsflash, Ms Currie: not everyone on benefits smokes and drinks and spends their dole money on body art.

But I do confess to two dogs.  I’d like to use the money I spend on their food on designer gear but emaciated pooches aren’t my style.   Or do you also believe that people on welfare should not be allowed to keep pets?

I thank God every day that I have not had to ask for help from a food bank.  I budget; I use cheap cuts; I buy from the pound shop and discount stores and supermarket mark downs; I use fresh food and avoid processed goods where possible.  Most people on low incomes do.

I agree with one thing Ms Currie said: the existence of food banks is bad.  It is disgraceful that in the 21st Century, people are forced to ask for help because they have been made redundant; spent what little savings they have from their low-paying jobs to cover the rent or mortgage; and have nothing to fall back on.  It is outrageous that many people are in work but don’t earn enough to cover rising costs.  It is shocking that charities in a country as wealthy as ours have had to set up food banks to help such people.   Anyone accessing the food banks is given three days’ worth of food.  Three days: hardly a drug dealer’s dream customer.

This government should be ashamed of itself.  And so should Ms Currie.

*

Here’s the article which got me so riled, I had to set up this blog to reply: MEN

26 thoughts on “Food Banks Are Bad”

  1. Grannymar

    I have been away for a week, so way behind with what was happening in the news. People in Politics should try living close to the bone before they force others to do so!

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  2. SidevieW

    How is it that the politicians currently who claim to be Christians want to stop looking after those in need. yet these same politicians are all very wealthy – from the big corporations they are protecting, and that 1% who own most of the country’s wealth.

    Time for a real people’s revolution where we in every country hold politicians to the middle income, and put them in jail for taking money for favours.

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  3. colonialist

    Not a simple issue, by any manner of means. The management of the economy – in fact, the whole skewed way modern economics run – has caused the crazy situation of joblessness. That makes it necessary to dole out benefits – how ridiculous, when if the system wasn’t cockeyed, there would be some sort of return for them.
    The benefits mean that some people (and families) do in fact become professional benefit-drawers. They have no ambition to do otherwise.
    Still, as is constantly shown in Africa, handouts are not the answer. The answer would be to create projects which benefit the community and country as a whole, which otherwise would not be happening (so it isn’t just taking away a job opportunity which was there), and have the able-bodied earn their benefits by participating in these projects. Handout benefits would then only be for the incapacitated.

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    1. The Laughing Housewife Post author

      You are right, Col. I have no problem with working in return for benefits. The only problem, of course, is that if you’re working for your benefits, you’re not looking for work. On the other hand, if you’re not looking for work, at least you are working for your benefits.

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      1. colonialist

        Part of the return-for-benefits work of some of the unemployed could, actually, be to maintain a specialised employment agency with a database of all the affected people, and which would-be employers or other agencies could consult. They could also actively study positions advertised to identify any appropriate profiles.

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  4. SchmidleysScribbling

    Oh don’t let her get to you. Not all Conservatives are nuts, just a few. Both extremes have their weird ones, it’s called extremism.

    We take food to the food bank and we vote for Conservative and Liberal candidates. If I lived in England, I’d probably belong to the Liberal Party. I’m a middle of the road kind of person. I take it, this MP will lose her job?

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  5. Three Well Beings

    This topic divides the American public, too. The painting with a broad brush always makes me crazy. For every person that abuses the system there are half a dozen who genuinely need and deserve assistance. But whenever a public personality wants attention, they like to climb on their soap box, and spew nonsense. I don’t know Edwina Currie at all, but I know here American counterparts. Not a fan!

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  6. bluebee

    “…don’t teach people how to get a job and hold on to it’.” How nauseatingly arrogant, ignorant and simplistic. Clearly the woman doesn’t live in the real world.

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  8. penpusherpen

    hear hear!! says I. So much anger about at most policies to do with benefits and suchlike. they feel they can attack the poor and underpriveledged without recourse, ‘cos they daren’t take from the overdulged, the money men, for that would shoot them in the foot. so to speak. Food banks in Britain? Makes you wonder what next? xPenx

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      1. penpusherpen

        More than likely, do you get the sinking feeling we’re moving back in time, that the motivation for all these changes is to create and even wider gap beteween the haves and have nots? There’s a non-caring attitude that creeps insidiuosly into peoples minds, that ‘I’m ok jack’ type of thought.

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  9. roughseasinthemed

    I think we are coming from very different sides of the fence. I haven’t voted Conservative in years, nor would I.

    I also believe in working (although preferably not), looking after myself and family, not relying on the state, or benefits, or government at all, whether large or small.

    I do think the state should be there to look after people who are ill, needy, homeless, jobless etc. I think that’s normally described as a socialist viewpoint because the classic Tory one is that everyone can get a job can’t they? Can they?

    I’ll spare you the political rhetoric about bringing down the working wage etc.

    For now, we have an income. As we don’t eat meat, our food bill is relatively cheap. I bake my own beans, I bake my own bread. I grow some veg. Every little and all that.

    In an ideal world, sure we wouldn’t need food banks, or food stamps in America. I am surprised, no maybe I am not, that the UK has arrived at food banks. But while ever we have a greedy grasping capitalist society that doesn’t care for others, I think any measures that help those people are worthwhile.

    One day that could be me.

    Is this a one off post or are you starting a political blog?

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    1. The Laughing Housewife Post author

      I think most people are more alike on the political spectrum than the parties allow us to be. You said nothing with which I disagreed; much of which I applaud, especially your last paragraph.

      I will probably post intermittently, as things happen and I get riled 🙂

      Thanks for your thoughtful comment.

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      1. roughseasinthemed

        It’s easy to get riled! Believe me.

        Marius was the one who riled me – rather Horst did – except he is on roughseas and not clouds. I normally keep clouds for ranty posts, but I figured marius deserved my wider roughseas readership. Not that people like to see pix of dead giraffes.

        I think people lack compassion and that is what courses political differences, by which I mean people are selfish.

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Comments are always welcome