Food Banks - thoughts and feelings ?

[Potstubsdustbins]

As long as folks earn their money I personally am not at all jealous of their wealth.

I have worked in peoples homes from 1962 to the present day from the largest to the smallest, from slums to mansions. Some of the things I have seen and heard from both sides of the divide have coloured my opinions.

[Alison]

It's not about being jealous, envious or whatever. The main thing concerns me is the fact that some people are able to work their way out of poverty through hard work, luck and / or a brilliant idea but that is incredibly difficult. Whereas if you start with money you have the means to invest and probably more connections which all help. It's not an equal playing field and never could be totally. Sorry to sound political but it is a real worry. I know things could be much worse (we don't have any choice where we're born and there are some really bad places to make a start ) but they could be better too.

[Potstubsdustbins]

Alison I can't disagree with your perspective.

But a lot of our difference's are due to something called a generation gap. As an old friend of mine often remarks as we discuss things 'Colin you've lived to long, nobody under forty understands your point of view and you certainly don't understand theirs'.

If I told my mother now dead that people today were living in poverty she would just laugh her probable remark would be along the lines of "Poverty, they don't know the meaning of the word" However she was born in 1906 and lost her father to WW1, the was no benefit system, you just had to get on with it. This would have coloured her outlook somewhat.

My friend who likes to tell me I have lived to long was born in 1933 just in time for the Great Depression and a few years later WW2. His father was in the building trade so in his early years in the spring they would rent a nicer house for the summer whilst dad was working, come winter they had to move back to cheaper accommodation. His mother often remarked the best thing that happened was the war coming along so that his dad could join up and for the first time earn a regular wage.

As for me I was born in 1946, we had neither bath or hot running water until I was 18 and we were not considered poor by any means I was always well fed and clothed. I knew children living on my road who had no socks and when they went to secondary school and had to have black plimsolls for PT had no other footwear and wore them all year round what ever the weather.

I believe it is these early year experiences that colour one's view, that and having worked in peoples homes since 1962 where you get the chance to see what folks are really like.

[Alison]

Indeed Potty, poverty is relative and it is always difficult to compare past and present events. My nan was orphaned young and brought up in a 2 up 2 down by her aunt and uncle with her sister and 4 cousins. There was never enough food but it beat her mum who died in childbirth in the workhouse hospital. She never even thought about central heating and didn't have a fridge until she was almost 60 and she would never have considered herself wanting but that wasn't unusual in those days. I just believe in striving for equality of chances and a start like that now would seriously disadvantage a child.

[Thelma Sanders]

The main difference between then and now, IMO is that a there are some people who think they can have all they want from life without having to make any effort to earn it.

I understand that some people have a better start than others, but your life depends on you making an effort to improve things. I was brought up in the kind of world Potty remembers (I'm 3 years younger) but made the effort to improve my life, which meant working hard and making sensible life choices.

I think it is sad and unfair, that people can end up still paying taxes and living on the pensions they paid in for (as well as the usual OAP) - when some of those people who made no effort get benefits that match or exceed the incomes of those who did (make the effort).

It's a strange world we live in.......................

[Potstubsdustbins]

I fact I count myself very lucky.

I lived through a period of possibly the greatest social change ever in this country. It started in the late 1940s and really took off in the late 50s early 60s.

The labour government started it with the advent of the NHS, then later on the younger generation decided they had had enough of the old way of doing things. There was lots of work and we no longer had to bow our heads to our employers.

At one time in the building trade the men used to breathe a sigh of relief at 4-30pm on a Friday as it meant they had work the following week. Then it changed, many the time I have told the boss where to put his job on a Friday and started another job at a better rate of pay on the Monday morning.

Taking Thelma's point about putting in before taking out. Back then if you were laid off there was no redundancy I don't think the term had even been invented with regard to work, you were called into the office and given your cards. One was your holiday pay card, with stamp added for every week you had worked, the other was you national insurance card again with a stamp added for ever week worked.
If you hadn't got 6 months of stamps on your card you were entitled to ..........err...........nothing, no state help what so ever ...........zilch. I even tried to cash in my holiday pay card once not a cat in hell's chance, the sole advice from the dole office was get out and get a job, any job but get a job.

What was once a safety net for the working man/woman has now become a life style choice for some and to some extent I can understand why. If you can get more by being on benefits than by going to work, then why go to work?

[Potstubsdustbins]

Thelma your post brings back a memory of my mother. Both she and her friend retired on the same day. Mother had always paid the full national insurance stamp, whilst her friend had opted to pay the reduced woman's stamp. I can't post on here what my mother said when she found out that her friend was a shilling a week better off than she was, but lets say it was not lady like..........not lady like at all.

[tom_birmingham]

Great to read the thoughts and feelings on GYO.

Will be updating the blog with updates and findings from my volunteering, now considering how as I am whinging about the food supply chain i am going to look into starting a local buying group with an ethical wholesaler. This doesn't address food poverty but gets rid of the supermarkets and their profits. Time to consider solutions as well as addressing problems too !

[Potstubsdustbins]

You want to get rid of supermarkets because they make a profit?

[Snow]

Honestly, I think the idea that people on benefits have their priorities wrong is usually a misconception. The reality is that most people on benefits are severely struggling, have much lower options, and higher costs (due to their medical needs for instance) and usually turn to food banks when they have no other alternative and are literaly starving, because the gov't has denied them benefits they are entitled to (and yes, the word is entitled, because we pay high tax in this country for national insurance, so that we are covered if we need it through no fault of our own), often for the most ludicrous of reasons - and although it sometimes gets put right in the end, it doesn't always, and what else can the person do for a month or two while its potentially getting sorted out anyway? The answer is they turn to food banks, and other charity.

Unfortunately, programs like Benefits Street and so on, just cherry pick the most extreme examples, as do the papers, and then Joe Bloggs believes everyone on benefits is a scrounger. In reality 95% of people on benefits need them and deserve them - and worse, it could be you if events in your life take unexpected turns.

Something that people also don't realise is that contrary to what you might expect having been constantly bombarded with how much we are spending on welfare, etc., is that we actually pay a lot less than other big European countries in benefits. France and Germany pay much much more, for instance. The reality is that the UK gov't have realised that it is very very easy to hit the most needy because what can they do? If they are even well enough to challenge it, and many are not, they have to do it alone because legal aid has been cut, and the system and much of society is against them. It does cost lives too. In the last couple of years the lives lost after benefits sanctions has sky rocketed. Some are suicides, some are people literaly starving to death.

Personally, it disgusts me that as a nation we treat the most needy in this manner and that food banks are needed at all. It is a sign that there is something very wrong in our wider society. If you haven't done it, I'd recomend going to a food bank, just for a single day as a volunteer, and talk to the people that come along. Just to see for yourself what it is really like. Not meaning to be preachy at all, just I've seen it and it was very different from what I expected, and what I think most people would expect.

[muddled]

You want to get rid of supermarkets because they make a profit?

I think Tom meant to enable people alternative option to supermarkets...one without a 'mark up' rather than actually demolishing his local sainsbergs in a vendetta against capitalism.

It seems to me that we are having several different conversations in this thread.
I think we all agree that too many people lack a basic understanding of how to run a thrifty household.
Also, it would be hard to argue against the fact that some abuse the benefit system (although I think we perhaps don't all agree the percentage involved)
And surely we would all agree that the world around us is changing,

But food banks are not part of the benefit system or the welfare state.
They are set up by local people/charities who are witness to the problems in their own area.
No-one's taxes pay for foodbanks. They are not funded by National insurance.

[Thelma Sanders]

A different subject, maybe

is that we actually pay a lot less than other big European countries in benefits. France and Germany pay much much more, for instance.

but if this is true, why are the people in Sangatte all trying to cross the Channel rather than claim in the countries they have already crossed?

Just wondering

[sparrow100]

In my opinion there are a whole host of reasons. Just one of them is wanting to build a better life and for some that might mean benefits, but it's by no means true of all, in the same way as there are a minority of people here who want to stay on benefits. Bear in mind that in the countries they come from there is no welfare and that their understanding of what welfare is is often very distorted.

The popular press and the Mayor of Calais like to portray all those migrants there as benefit hungry scroungers as part of the villify the migrant agenda. It's in the mayor of Calais' interests to keep blaming the UK, but what she & our press say is not borne out by research by UNHCR and other agencies working there.

I'm personally not for a totally open-door migration policy, but I think the misleading and dehumanising way of how migrants are portrayed is worrying, in the same way that the rhetoric about people on benefits is worrying. It takes years to shift opinion from the negative, but it seems to take no time these days to start people despising each other.

Sorry that turned into something of an essay. I've spent 14 years working in this sector. Off soapbox now.

[Thelma Sanders]

I'm not saying they are all scroungers, at all - just wondering why they would all want to come here rather than stay in France, Germany, or Italy etc.

Albanians and Bulgarians get into Greece easily and work hard, once there - they're eligible for benefits (none were huge amounts, even before the crash) after they've paid in for 2 years. So why do the others come all the way across Europe to get here.

My best friend worked at the HO in Immigration, til she retired a few years ago - and she had no idea either (apart from the people who were obviously here just to claim!)

[Guest]

I'm not saying they are all scroungers, at all - just wondering why they would all want to come here rather than stay in France, Germany, or Italy etc.

I know one big reason is the NHS. Again as much as people moan it is one of the best and available to all dispite personal circumstances. Also if you don't speak English you get a free translater to boot