to be utterly ashamed and disgusted with this. Food banks iced buns and Weetabix.

[carernotasaint]

i found this article really upsetting. I cannot believe that we have come to this.
As the athletes and dignetaries arrive for the Olympics i cannot muster any enthusiasm for it. I also couldnt help noticing the attitide of some of the people running these banks. Comments about people "not being able to get up early" and the fact that they are happy to hand out iced buns (which are of no nutritional value but lets fact it you"d eat them if you were bloody hungry) and then saying that Weetabix is a bad idea because it soaks up too much milk I have never felt so ashamed to be British.
www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jul/18/food-banks-on-hand-outs

We're getting a foodbank in our area soon. I'm sad that it is needed, but unsurprised.

I am bemused by the cream crackers comment though. I eat them plain all the time. Given they are otherwise, presumably, thrown away - seems a waste not to offer them to people who might actually want to eat them.

I have to say as well, that crisis loans are not all they are cracked up to be. Some years ago, I was left with nothing at all, after a mix up with IS and my ex refusing to pay his maintenance. When I ran out of food and electricitym I went to the DSS to see if they could help. I was told that they could give me £9 to last 3 days, but not that day. I had to go back at 9am the next morning and queue up in a special crisis loan queue (they only dealt with CLs first thing in the morning). If things weren't sorted out in three days, I could go back for another £9 for the next 3 days. Considering that It cost £4 to get us there, that would have left me with a £5 to provide food and electricity for the children and I. At that time a power card cost £5, so it was one or the other.

I would have been so very grateful for a food bank in those days. And after the birth of DS3 when DH went off the rails and I spent a full week with nothing to eat but 2 packs of ryvita and a tub of marg, I sent the others kids to my mothers for a "holiday" just so they would get fed.

Please don't make assumptions about me or my life based on what you read into my posts. I am speaking from a position of experience not ignorance.

It makes me sick with rage, the whole situation.

What do you propose to do about it HEmum?

i saw a vox pop on the Beeb the other day about these food banks. They give out microwave meals and the like (not cheap), iced buns, all kinds of processed nonsense.

when the presenter asked the cigarette waving woman who had just come out whether she'd ever considered buying cheap, bulk items, like, for example many large families have to do such as pasta, lentils etc she said "no, cos i don't like them".

You provide food banks, giving out ready meals and canned food, you create a "need". No wonder they're expanding , word is getting around.

There's no reason for people to go hungry in this country, basic food has never been cheaper.

Huge Sack of spuds for a couple of quid, 5kg onions for £1.39 in my local market ( no, not a poncy farmers one) . Lentils and beans cost next to nothing.

Large Asian families with little money to go around near me often have to manage - i see them shopping - they cook from scratch and buy cheap basics, in bulk , prepare, don't waste anything and eek out. not great, but easily doable.

But that requires effort,

It's a lack of education, and a poverty of not just income but of spirit and mind that's the issue here.

Yes, but not everyone can cook from scratch. Lots of people wouldn't know where to start with a sack of spuds and a pack of lentils. What would you suggest they do? Also bear in mind that most recipes also require "store cupboard staples"

Perhaps it's worth reading the article before getting upset about iced buns, they had been donated by a supermarket that had stock about to go out of date, either the food bank had them or they went in the bin!

Food Banks are replying to a need not creating one. Again, read the article, they can only give out three parcels. You have to get a token from your HV, GP or Job Centre etc to receive one.

They usually only give out food that has a long use by date, so fresh food is unsuitable due to storage facilities

Lentils are long life, but you have to be able t cook them, difficult if your gas and electric have been cut off

Some places do provide cooking lessons to help people learn how to cook cheep meals, but at the point of need, when you have gone without food for a day or to, have given food to your kids rather than eat yourself I think an iced bun would be well reciceve!

The comments about weetabix and crackers were one individual volunteer, they do not represent the whole organisations. It's called journalism :)

Promised myself I wouldn't get sucked in again so will have to hide the thread before my blood pressure soars.

thinets I'm sure it's a very comforting thought that poverty is caused by ignorance.

Pretty overwhelming to accept that it can happen to anyone. That we are all one or two variables away from it.

Please do continue to live in your bubble of ignorance but please do fuck off from threads like this if you are not willing to hear the facts.

Many of us spent years cultivating an "it couldn't happen to me" attitude. It's a lovely safety net from the unpalatable truth.

Living in the real world is scary, everyone knows that so it's understandable that you prefer it where you are.

Just do everyone a favour and stay there unless you are willing to have your eyes opened to a very different reality.

The food banks that I have seen don't give out microwave meals. They follow a careful plan to try to give out nutritionally balanced food that will tide a family over for 3 days. That's why they ask for things like fruit juice, uht milk and the like and not just tins of meatballs or curry.

Theinets, people can be poor without being ignorant, you know. I am educated to Masters level in a posh, academic field and I am poor, but I am neither ignorant nor dispirited. I have 3 kids with AS and have ME, myself. Poverty can happen to anyone. I also realise how lucky I am because I have the knowledge and the skills to feed all 7 of us next to nothing and that my children are happy to eat lentils, beans, tinned fish and the like.

Hopin, why are you getting antsy with me. I do everything that I can to address the situation. I have been campaigning for social justice, in one form or another, since I was a teenager, I'm now in my late 40s. I am involved with several local groups who "protest" about things like benefit cuts, taxation issues, social care etc. I am the local area organiser (voluntary) for a major international charity involved in many social justice issues. I am constantly bombarding Brian Donohoe, and various secretaries of state with letters/postcards/emails about these and other subjects. As I said above, I'm also involved in several projects in this area which are trying to address some of the need created by poverty. My physical ability is not what it was, but I still do everything I can, to the detriment of my own health very often, because I believe that that poverty and social injustice must be challenged.

I live in an area where almost 50% of people meet the Scottish Government's criteria for living in poverty, including my own family, so I do have first hand experience. I still believe that food banks and other initiatives are responding to a need, not creating it. As I said earlier, there are strict safeguards in place to stop people becoming dependent on food banks. Most food banks also work with other agencies to try to ensure that people are getting the help and advice that they need, be it education advice, budgeting help, addiction counselling, benefit help or whatever. The other projects that I am involved with also do this.

HEmum If only all of us could have such a clear conscience.

I know I don't

You're children may have financially less than others but my God what they do have is so much more valuable.

You really have inspired me to get off my arse and actually do something.

*>>Be the change you want to see

The official idea of poverty is nothing like real poverty. Earning 60% less than the median houshold is not real poverty. The welfare state provides the safety net for those in real need but unfortunately the welfare state also allows those most vulnerable to still be at the mercy of the parent(s) missuse of the income they receive. It would be far more sensible to have welfare paid in a form that it was impossible to buy alcohol or cigarettes with. Surely that cannot be beyond the wit of man these days.

Hmmm Novack, we could then make it that anyone who earns under a certain amount only gets food vouchers as their pay too, so they can't smoke.....

Sounds rather 1984 to me

I don't smoke, but if I was made redundant, my OH had just left me, I'd had the electric turned off I'd say that would be an ideal time to stop smoking

The welfare state provides the safety net for those in real need

Yep, it really is that simple

The thing is, you give someone a microwave meal (which cost about £1 each for the cheap ones) and it takes 5minutes in the microwave, uses next to no electricity, is a filling, complete meal and uses hardly any pots, pans or cutlery so no washing-up. To cook with potatoes, onions and lentils you need knives/pots/spices/oil/stock cubes, and it's no use saying "oh, you can get this and that for next to nothing", some people have nothing, not next to it. Let's not start attaching moral value to living off lentils - some people need A Meal and they need it straight away. Giving them a microwave pasta bake is not the end of the world.

Novak - I know that 60% less than the average median wage doesn't actually equate to poverty, but where I live has just about the highest level of unemployment (including longterm) in Scotland, one of the highest levels of NEETs, some of the lowest academically achieving schools and just about the lowest pay. The average salary for a full time job is less than £12,000 a year for those who are lucky enough to be able to find one. That's something that was discussed at a meeting I was at last week. There is a gap of literally thousands of pounds between salaries for jobs here and their equivalent elsewhere.

Poverty in endemic around here and there are a whole lot of issues that need to be addressed before that can begin to change.

My Dog, thank you. I don't think that I do that much, tbh, but I do want my kids to have a social conscience so I try to set an example. I also want them to be thankful for what we actually do have, rather than feel sorry for themselves about what they don't have. I think that we should all try to give something back if we can and I am blessed in that I am able. I think, as well. when you have been in these kind of situations yourself, it is easier to empathise with people's circumstances.

I do want my kids to have a social conscience so I try to set an example. I also want them to be thankful for what we actually do have, rather than feel sorry for themselves about what they don't have.

That there ^^ is the best foundation for a child than any money can provide.

theinets "Huge Sack of spuds for a couple of quid, 5kg onions for £1.39 in my local market " - Right, so if you haven't got your own transport and are travelling on the bus or on foot, how do you suggest someoine gets this huge sack of spuds home?

"when the presenter asked the cigarette waving woman who had just come out " Obviously the cigarette waving woman is getting a lot of negative comment here. But I heard the original article on the Today programme and I have to say I had slightly mixed feelings. Yes she is epnding money she can ill afford on cigarettes right now. However, she had also said that her teenage daughter has just died of cancer so it has been a very stressful time for her and her husband therefore giving up smoking was especially hard for them right now.

There is a very interesting article about food banks and how the working poor in the UK are having to use them in this months Marie Claire (Sept issue)
Apparently there was a big meeting of Oxfam delegates in London. The Indian arm of Oxfam came over and went on a tour round our inner cities and were shocked at what they saw. They stated at the conference that if it had been the other way around and the British arm of Oxfam had gone over there,they would be asking them why they were ignoring it and what they were planning to do about it.
Oxfam were originally started to help with overseas famine. Now they have an arm called Oxfam GB.