The rise and rise of the food bank
They call it a "bank" for a reason.
By Rowenna Davis Published 12 May 2012 10:34
A woman walks into the Kings Church centre, her hands thrust deep into the pockets of a sports jacket twice her size. On the run from domestic abuse, she’s only been in the city two weeks and she’s hungry.
Inside it’s warm, fluorescently lit and smells faintly of disinfectant. The other visitors sitting at old computers in jeans and trainers don’t notice her enter. The only clue about what the centre offers is an abandoned trolley in one corner and some volunteers sorting through tins behind a counter. She looks around, “Is this a homeless shelter or something?” she asks.
More people are visiting food banks every day. There are now over 200 operating across the UK, serving everywhere from the densely concentrated poverty of Tower Hamlets to the rural poverty of Okehampton and the isolated highlands around Inverness.
The biggest is in Coventry, where over 7,000 people have walked away with packs of tinned food, sugar and tea since it launched last year. In a time of economic decline, the number of people visiting food banks doubled to 128,967 last year.
With no sign of the economy recovering, experts predict that they will be serving over half a million people by the next election. Two more open every week.
“Inflation in food, rising living costs and falling wages all push people to count their pennies, and a huge volume of people are finding that they can’t make it to the end of the week,” says Chris Mould, executive chairman of the Trussell Trust which operates the only network of food banks in the UK, “After two or three years of hardship people run out of people to ask for help, and savings have all diminished. This country is facing some hard truths.”
Everyone has their own story about why they came to a food bank, but two big factors play a part in most of them.
Some 29 per cent of visitors say that they have been forced to look for help because of benefits changes. Even if you’re entitled to help under the government’s new system, a six-week delay is standard.
In that space, some of the most vulnerable are left with nothing. But benefits are not the only reason. Low pay is more commonly cited as a reason for seeking help than unemployment, with some 19% of foodbank visitors finding that their wages cannot meet basic costs. Visitors have been let down by the market as well as the state.
Portsmouth food bank operates on the same principle to those across the UK. Those in need are given vouchers by partner agencies – Sure Start centres, social services, schools etc – and that entitles you to free bundle of soup, beans, rice pudding, tinned tomatoes, tea, cereal and other basics.
The food is nutrionally balanced, but the supply isn’t endless. Each voucher entitles you to three days worth of food, and each guest is only allowed three vouchers. Foodbanks are supposed to provide help in a crisis, not a long-term supply.
Although the need for food banks might be dark, their existence offers hope. With no government funding, they are a fantastic example of community action. According to the Trussell Trust, some 1,225 tonnes of food were donated last year, distributed by some 4,360 volunteers in partnership with 1,423 schools and 2,025 churches.
The organisation is religious, but their help comes with no ties, and although the Portsmouth bank has won some rare funding from the Lottery to support their work, most of the food comes from local donations.
Dotted around Portsmouth’s supermarkets you’ll see donation points where you can give away one or two items from your weekly shop. Volunteers stand outside shopping centres with lists of particular things they’d love you to pick up.
“Local communities are really bothered about the impact of the recession,” says Mould, who eventually wants to see some 700 foodbanks across the country, “As soon as you highlight that their neighbours are suffering people want to do something. It’s very heartwarming. They will help if there’s something practical they can do.”
They call it a food “bank” for a reason. Volunteers are encouraged to leave a deposit today, because tomorrow they might need to make a withdrawal. People like Kelly who have relied on foodbanks to get them through a crisis often come back when they’re on their feet, walking in with overflowing bags of shopping and smiling because they want to give something back.
This builds ownership. When a community is asked to help it makes them think about the poverty on their doorstep. It forces them to engage with poverty and take responsibility for it in a way that blind state services might not. This is important.
As Mant said as the bank closed for the day, "Any of us could find ourselves in the same position, but for the Grace of God.”
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11 comments
I'm warming to Ed Milliband, but he has yet to be taken over by the super-rich and their blood money. They will try, and if he resists, he'll find himself outed on some trumped up charge. It's no longer about Labour v Conservative, but
THE FEW v THE MANY.
Until we all realise that we are being conned left, right and centre by a few hundred of the richest people in the world who are clawing at every last bit of wealth that countries have, whether in the form of high interest rates on billions borrowed, or buying up all the gold and silver in the world, to leave us with NOTHING, like Greece and now Spain and therefore vulnerable to their selfish agenda, we will continue to live in fear for our future. That's what they want.
They want the masses to be so crippled financially and beholden to them, in every country, that we will be putty in their hands, then they can set us to warring with one another, to kill a few million of us off, to reduce the world's population. Don't be fooled into thinking that this would be a good thing. There's enough resources to feed us all several times over. They control the world's media, so every time we tune in to the news, we are drip-fed why we need to go to war with for instance Iran, because they want Iran's rich mineral resources. A Middle East war, setting Muslims against Jews would suit their agenda. Remember Iraq! That was the biggest con, all to gain access to the oil. People who headed that war have still to be brought to justice. Any party constituency that takes Tony Blair in, will be doing their members a disservice.
Who are the few hundred that want to bring every nation under their dominance? The same people that spout about a new society, a"New World Order, a One-World Military, a One-World Banking System". Yeh - theirs! They already own the media groups, the oil companies, the big corporations, the international banks, national banks, major religions, pharmaceutical conglomerates, food chains. They are even trying to buy the freshwater resources. They want to own us lock, stock and barrel, to take away our access to what is our right to have. It is only a small number of families and individuals that own all of these, or control them, some of the richest people.
Those who discover how to create free energy for all, get murdered. Those who have discovered a cure for cancer, diabetes and the common cold get murdered or get bought out by the pharmaceutical companies who sit on or destroy the discovery, as they tried to do with a Canadian nurse, Rene Caisse (look her up). Those who want to set the world to rights get imprisoned (Mandela) put under house arrest, or murdered, like Ghandi, Martin Luther King or the Kennedy brothers. The richest people on earth don't want to see us free and prospering. They want to bring nations down. They want people to be afraid for their future. They manufacture a crisis, then they say, let us protect you, let us sort it out for you, but all the while they are taking power into their own hands, using our governments, military, police, customs, monetary systems, to manipulate us further.
Remember the swine flu scare, the bird flu scare, the weapons of mass destruction scare, 9-11 (Dick Cheney 'fessed up, didn't want it on his conscience) and so much terrorism scare? Not only do they want all our fingerprints, they want to ID us by face, retina and full body scans, highly toxic to young children, and have samples of everyone's DNA. They want to make us so fearful for our safety that we will voluntarily agree to being micro-chipped (like we do to cattle, sheep and dogs), for our personal protection, they will tell us, so that the "bad guys" can be rounded up. So we let them stick a micro-chip in our bodies and our children's bodies in the belief that we will all be safer! It's another form of control and loss of personal freedom!
Look what happens when we forget that we're all important individuals with spirit. We get coralled like sheep to the slaughter. Remember that these people control the media, not just newspapers but TV news and movie corporations. They are laughing at us. They like to produce film footage that shows us how the world's going to end for us, and we sit enthralled, thinking we are watching unbelievable science-fiction. They are laughing because they see us as gullible, exploitable people that don't even realise that we are being drip-fed the IDEA of some fantastically horrible future, that will become our reality, in their eyes. WAKE UP to the fact that our nation's leaders are merely puppets in their hands. STAND UP for human dignity, for our right to free will and free lives to work and prosper in a thriving environment.
They are already more than halfway through their selfish agenda. They are bringing nations to their knees in debt - to them, manufactured by them, because of manufactured "boom and bust" systems of banking. We are not to blame for wanting to prosper, but they like to take advantage of that. Then they start reeling us in and we all get caught up in their net of debt, individually and nationally.
They have one fear. They fear us standing together, united, in a spirit of non co-operation. As a nation we can take control. They cannot control our desire - our need- to live in a peaceful world, a peaceful society where we can all prosper and grow, govern and police ourselves. We need to SAY NO to government when we know something to be wrong, like we called them out on their expenses scandal and the phone-hacking scandal. We need to SAY NO to the banks that want to charge us for simply having an account. We need to STAND UP for OUR RIGHTS like we've done in the past over the crippling Poll tax, the IPP's and the Endowment mortgages, to name but a few. We don't want our government hoodwinking us, scamming us, taking advantage of us. We want a government that will STAND BY us, work FOR us. (Watch what our forefathers did about crippling taxes on BBC 2 tonight at 9pm, by Michael Wood). People in developing countries rebelled and won against freshwater takeovers and seeds for farming. YES, companies were telling farmers that they could not save seed for new crops! The danger of GM crops now is that farmers all over the world will be left with sterile seed, so please don't defend this. Farmers know only too well the vagaries of weather, drought and flooding. Messing about with the seed and who can have it, is a law against humanity. The rich bozos want it all, they want a monopoly on the world's food resources and have already put small farmers to the wall. Look what happened to OUR small farming in Britain.
They want to squeeze us into a corner, with no way out. NOW is the time we need to declare our rights to fairness, justice and proper use of our taxes, not tomorrow. What we've put up with for so long HAS NOT BEEN PROPER GOVERNANCE, it's been a diabolical shambles. This is not an advocacy for feud, for squabbling amongst ourselves - don't forget, they'd love that. This is for neighbour linking arm with neighbour and saying, "Enough is enough. We've had enough of your clap-trap. Whatever we feel is right, that's what we need, like giving the Police back their proper powers, stop stealing our money and feeding the Brussels Bureaucrats and the IMF(money which the world bankers control). GET US OUT OF EUROPE NOW, it's a sinking ship! Use the fiscal policy to create jobs for us here in our own country, give us decent housing. Do your job, or get out! You work for us, the British people, not the super filthy rich of the world, the greedy money merchants with their own sick agenda. Isn't it time for David Cameron to step down? He needs to know that we don't entertain our finances draining into the coffers of leeches in this country or the world. Freeze their assets and declare war on the money lenders with their exorbitant rates of interest.
STOP THEM, IN THE INTEREST OF THE PEOPLE. NOW.
Stop calling it a 'bank'. Unless we're very much mistaken hi-altitude compensation and banking bonuses have no place in this organisation. Or tax-payers' money! Or government bail-outs. Or Cabinet excuses!
We need another Yip Harburg. "Brother, can you spare a dime?"has resonance even today.
And 'The Wizard of Oz" and 'Paper Moon'. George Osborne is so typecast - a dead cert for the Wizard. George can do kindly!
Only wish his handling of the UK economy was a fairy tale. Well, it's not that far-fetched, really. There are villains big and small in those stories. And lots of cruelty! And even hunger!
Christopher Big 'Uns
"The truth is that by the time we left office, it seemed like we had stopped listening to both the party and people" - A very candid remark. Perhaps the reason is to do with the executive effect- even the corporate executive effect.
It happens roughly like this; as the Parliamentary term of office proceeds, the nature of government changes. Government doesn't always stick to those popular principles it manifested when it was in effect a bunch of amateur political players in opposition. With the executive effect, governments in power can simply make things up as it goes along - even to the point for example of re-packaging any semblance of social mobility into a £27000 debt, selling it under the guise of an educational opportunity that perchance may or may not need paying back..
I suppose something similar could be said of food parcels and foodbanks. However well intended, this drip, drip, drip, form of charity is nowhere near the standard and level of welfare we provide for our people in this country - Our welfare is about helping people live as autonomously and privately and as dignified as possible.
In my view foodbanks might as well be a fast track to re-educating ordinary members of the UK public and our common sense towards the ways and means America treats it's citizens. Talk about going backwards. Foodbanks smack of cheap behavioural psychology tactics on a grand scale - One wonders how much research data and how many fancy top end jobs are being generated from this so-called charity.
Excuse me, but just how is sugar a dietary essential?
If we have this level of abject poverty this country is truly going to face some hard truths. Why are we giving away billions in foreign aid? Why are we subsidizing the lie of man-made Global warming? Why are we giving millions to the terrorist sponsoring state of Pakistan? Why haven’t we already re-opened our long abandoned and plentiful coal mines? And why do we continually tolerant the green fascist movement in their criminal activity of ripping-up GM crops? Yes this country really does need facing some hard truths.
@ Rain
So you'd be the first to volunteer to go down the coal mine, right? Have you thought through anything? GM crops? why, when they're sterile, should they replace organic? You sound like one of the bankers who want to get their greedy mitts on all the money. Selfish, selfish, selfish.
Just one of the consequences of the global warming scam.
Erm, no Hrothgar: just one of the consequences of this inept, elitist and failed Tory government.
Surely the fact that we have so many people in abject poverty in the UK suggests that the government should concentrate on trying to help them, rather than wasting billions upon billions on foreign aid to India, a country that has nuclear weapons, a space programme and has already been rewarded by being awarded public sector IT contracts that has benefited Indian IT Companies? Not to mention the outsourcing that has taken place in the last 10 years that has resulted in so many jobs being lost.
Surely it's time for the government to stand up for the interests of the British people rather than focusing on global interests?
Here, here! Well said!