Gove thinks those who turn to food banks are there because of their "own decisions"

[MurderOfGoths]

Link

"I had the opportunity to visit a food bank in my constituency only on Friday and I appreciate that there are families who do face considerable pressures. It's often as a result of some decisions that have been taken by those families which mean that they are not best able to manage their finances"

I hate that this govt pulls the rug from under people and then blames them for it.

[telsa]

rich idiot drops crap on other people, then blames them....again.

[BoulevardOfBrokenSleep]

To be fair to Gove (!), he is very popular with the more... outspoken right-wingers who post on MN. I guess because Cameron is more of a centrist, he has to let a few people like Gove loose, to keep the UKIP end of his party/voters on board.

And he does say what Tories want to hear; if you were a tory voter and heard that food bank visits had soared, you might briefly worry that your party's policies were pushing people into penury. But along comes Gove to reassure you that it's due to their own bad choices, and you can push those little niggles of conscience to the back of your mind. Result!

[MurderOfGoths]

Is anyone watching PMQ's? Seems Cameron is being asked about Gove's comments and avoiding the question. I don't have access to live TV so only have Twitter to go on.

[HattyJack]

A politician avoiding a question MurderOfGoths? I think you must be mistaken - that has never happened before.

[MurderOfGoths]

Guess that's what they do best - often it's the only thing they can do well.

[HattyJack]

It took him three attempts go get a National Curriculum that wasn't so laughably bad that even he had to admit it was rubbish and start again.

Can you imagine if he was doing foreign policy?

[Darkesteyes]

varicos This is a c and p of a post i wrote on one of the Jamie Oliver threads


last month Camila B. from Kids Company who you mentioned and i also admire gave an interview about what was going on at the time of those massive riots 2 years ago. She was talking about how the young people involved had lost all hope and how the news didnt cover the fact that there was also very BASIC FOODS being looted from the shops during the riots. She could feel something was going to happen and wrote to David Cameron 10 days BEFORE the riots.
Even more disturbingly she mentioned that there are some young people who are so angry at the way they are being treated in this country that they are actually turning to Jihadism and she says riots like these WILL happen again

[Darkesteyes]

mumvausterity.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/budgeting-welcome-to-world-of-master.html


mumvausteritys take on Goves idiotic comments.

[Darkesteyes]

mumvausterity.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/dwp-pull-foodbank-lifeline-from-poorest.html

[MurderOfGoths]

Oh yes, when the DWP cut us off and we asked how we were meant to afford food etc we were told, "not our problem".

[HattyJack]

Did you not think to use that magic money the treasury is saying it will use for HS2 - the stuff they don't have to stop people being homeless and/or starving, MurderOfGoths?

[longfingernails]

There were howls of protest from Guardian/BBC/MN leftie types when it was suggested that Universal Credit payments were to be made monthly rather than weekly - their principal argument being that those in receipt could not be trusted to budget with it over a period of more than a week.

I do hope that Red Ed's acolytes on MN aren't guilty of saying one thing about benefit claimants' ability to manage their money when it comes to UC, and another when it comes to needing food banks. After all, that would make them hypocrites.

[HattyJack]

[MadameDefarge]

gosh long, you are so right. difficulties in managing very little money or an awful lot of money is not something we should really address...

for fear of being partisan, leftie, or banker bashing.

[MurderOfGoths]

long If you read the stats provided by food banks you'll see that money management is a total red herring, the majority of food bank users are there because their income has been removed entirely (either because of DWP mistakes, delays or sanctions). Saying it's hard to manage small amounts of money is neither here nor there. Anyone would struggle to "manage" an income reduced to 0.

And there is a world of difference between talking about how best to help people who are struggling to manage finances and blaming them for needing charity!

[JoinYourPlayfellows]

The thing that bothers me about this is the idea that whether they made decisions that contributed to them being there should matter.

Food banks are for people who are totally on their uppers.

They aren't the welfare state, they aren't social insurance.

They are charity, given out to people who don't have enough to eat.

I don't really give a fuck what decisions they might have made that contributed to them being there.

Nobody in the UK should be going hungry, even if they are making bad decisions that mean they are broke and in need of help.

[Bramshott]

yy Joinyourplayfellows - that's a very good point.

[Rooners]

Is there a Mrs Gove?

I suspect if there is she is merely a Conservative HQ generated moustache

(he couldn't carry off a beard imo)

[Rooners]

It would dangle on his teeny tiny toes.

[eretrew]

Isn't he right to a certain extent, the level of household debt in this country is enormous most of which has been racked up by people trying to live beyond their means. The tightening of credit in recent years has meant that much of this debt has been called in and people simply cannot pay it, leading to many of the situations that many households find themselves in.

[MurderOfGoths]

Look at the stats on why people are going to the food banks.

[HattyJack]

My former neighbours used food banks, eretrew

He had been a builder - well, a hod carrier - but had damaged his back. He was also suffering from some sort of mental illness and was always on medication for it, and sometimes in hospital.

She had done some cleaning work, but as they lived in a very poor area with poor public transport links and no car she couldn't get to anywhere that wanted her services.

Both were living in the same dead-end town they'd been born in, and both had been to the same hopeless local school and come out with not much of an education and no qualifications.

They didn't have household debt as far as I know. I remember they rented a big TV when the World Cup was on and never made any payments so it was taken away again - but by then the World Cup was over so it served it's purpose - but aside from that they just didn't have any money apart from benefits, and no legal means of getting any. I think they spent as much as they could on their kids and grand-kids and one of the ways they had of making life a bit better for them was to not eat much themselves. Their lives were desperately sad. I don't think either of them had been more than 20 miles from their front door for 20 years or more.

Some people are effectively unemployable through no fault of their own, and the welfare safety net is inadequate.

[HappyMummyOfOne]

I also think he's right to a certain extent.

So many people have debt from having to have the latest item, big christmas, holidays etc. Some spend on alcohol, cigarettes, contract phones etc and wont cut back to buy the basics. Others make lifestyle choices they cant afford but claim its their "right".

Perhaps the checks are not strict enough and the system is being played just like people exploit other systems.

There will be some in desperate need but others will have been able to oud the situation.

[MurderOfGoths]

Not bothered reading the stats then?