Food poverty where will it end?

[3asAbird]

saw this on aibu

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2531059/Police-going-easy-mothers-steal-food-simply-live.html

increase in food theft of basic cheaper food items and police taking softer approach.

Every other week there,s more articles on

increased food banks
increase in malnutrition.

There,s not going to be a debate whats the action plan to tackle it?

As its my understanding that most people use it due to long delays in benefits that they restricted on how many parcels they can have, its 3 days or food and has to have specific referal so its not easy thing for freeloading benefit claimants to do as daily mail seems to infer.

just feels really sad,.

I guess least with ks1 getting free school meals then thats few less kids going hungry .

When we kick out to Tory psychopathic scum and demand from whatever govt. in power that this situation is unacceptable and won't be tolerated.

Then it will end.

Then the labour psychopathic scum will line their pockets by overseas murder.

Is psychopathy a prerequisite for political scum now? (Quickly adds to CV for application for UKIP scum.)

I was responding in ridiculous kind, non.

why is this happening though?

Are you asking why food is more expensive?

this is from the blog 'agirl called jack' and it lists all the 296 MPs who voted against investigating the issue of foodbanks

hey won't even discuss it

and Ian duncan Smith called the Trussel Trust saying they were scaremongering

using the words 'psychopathic scum' does not shout 'reasoned argument', does it?

not happy? Get involved, you live in a democracy.

Well that article seems to blame benefits reform. Not so much the price of food

Joules68

Well that article seems to blame benefits reform. Not so much the price of food

Would it be reasonable to surmise that one of the reasons people are having trouble buying food is the price of food?

Price of food.... Depends what you buy!

And where from.

I am in Belgium and just spent Xmas in the UK. I don't get the argument that food is expensive in UK. It seems ridiculously cheap to me. Walking past Iceland I can't even work out how they PROVIDE the food at those prices. I think it more housing/benefit sanctions/zero hours contracts and the ilk that means people just can't manage anymore.

UK Food is comparatively cheap, but much more expensive than a few years ago as are domestic fuels. Wages have not kept up.

When interest rates go up and mortgages follow, I really worry what will happen to a lot of people.

"Would it be reasonable to surmise that one of the reasons people are having trouble buying food is the price of food?"

Partly, but if they are finding that they are getting a huge amount of people coming to food banks who cannot afford food due to benefit sanctions/delays then even cheap food isn't going to help. Can't buy even cheap food with no money.

I can't see it's any excuse for stealing though.

Benefits sanctions don't just happen. People have to repeatedly break the rules to get to that stage. And benefits are weekly, so literally, hand to mouth.

"Benefits sanctions don't just happen. People have to repeatedly break the rules to get to that stage."

In theory maybe, but there are plenty of cases where the sanctions have been needless and without warning.

Then of course there are the delays/errors.

"And benefits are weekly"

Some are, some aren't.

Which ones aren't weekly?

ESA/what used to be Income Support has always been fortnightly for us. And JSA used to be fortnightly too, no idea if it still is.

Yes but the article is about mothers. Sorry, was referring to those. You can have weekly cb if on IS and CTC is weekly unless you ask for monthly

Point I was trying to make is that 'mothers' do have money available regularly. So why steal? Maybe poor budgeting or something else

my son recieved a sanction becuase he was at a job interview

you get sanctioned if you are sick.

you get sanctioned if you are at your mothers funeral and didn't look for work that day - or your brothers funeral or sisters, or grandma or grandpa.

this ones a great one - you get sanctioned becuase your JC advisor is off sick - THEY are off sick so you didn't get another appt, YOU get sanctioned

the way this works

each LC gets a 'sister' centre - a JC that is about the same in regards to the amt of people they see

they are then given targets and encouraged to pit off against each other as to who can get the most people sanctioned

there is a JC whistleblower who posts documents online - will try and find it - internal letters that are disgusting.

the point is - sanctions - like any system if administerd properly would cost more ( i'm guessing they do anyway) than not doing it

becuase there is no wiggle room, there is no room to be sick, or look after your disabled mother who fell that day,

if you are a minute late becuase your bus - that takes an hour to get to town, broke down, or was involved in an accident, got a puncture

you get sanctioned

you can appeal, but by the time the appeal comes through

you
are
already
hungry

here is the guardian article re the whistleblower

some cracking reasons here why people have been sanctioned -inc. a MNreference!! the one i like best is

It’s Christmas Day. You don’t do any jobsearch, because it’s Christmas Day. So you get sanctioned. For not looking to see if anyone has advertised a new job on Christmas Day. (source: Poverty Alliance)

We also needed food parcels when the HMRC decided to loose our claim for the tax credits twice and forgot to send us a new claim pack twice.

Then when they finally had a look at our situation I was on maternity leave, so not working and we didn't got the tax credits.

If they would have done their job right in the first place we wouldn't have needed all the extra help, like food from the food back.

(I posted my story in the financial section)

We were very happy with the help of the food bank. Something seriously need to be changed so that everyone gets the money they are entitled to asap.

Until the people administering benefit payments stop making mistakes that have catastrophic consequences for people who are poor and vulnerable, there is no real safety net. It's easy to say that mistakes like the ones described by Custardo are rare, but the evidence shows otherwise. And even if it did not, then even one case of hardship caused by the failure of the system is one case too many.

flatpack you have a point about food prices, but it goes beyond that to housing costs, energy prices and the cost of transport - which means that at times, even working families need to resort to food banks. It's tragic that this should be so and criminal that it should be compounded by wilful policy making.

The Mirror had good article on food poverty on Monday