Psychopathic Tories now blame rise in food bank use on Christian 'Evangelism'

[ttosca]

As yet another report — this time from Oxfam, Church Action on Poverty and the Trussell Trust — links changes to the welfare system to an increase in food bank use, the government trots out its usual line:

“It’s simply not possible to draw conclusions from these unverified figures from disparate sources.”

Perhaps its worth reflecting on DWP’s own attitude to the truth. Giving evidence to a Scottish Parliament committee on food banks recently, department director Neil Couling questioned the motivations of the UK’s biggest supplier of emergency food aid by implying that a motivation for their growth was Christian “evangelism” and that the food banks were merely an “evangelical device”:

“For the Trussell Trust, food banks started as an evangelical device to get religious groups in touch with their local communities. As far as I know, the Government has no policy on evangelism.”

The comment elicited a furious response from the Trussell Trust chair, who wrote to Couling last month:

“Please provide me immediately with the evidence you have to support this assertion. You are directly challenging the integrity of a registered charity and its trustees both past and present. If you are not able to provide evidence to support this assertion please write immediately to the Scottish Parliament Welfare Reform Committee to withdraw the statement.”

This smear comes from a department whose secretary of state has claimed that problems of poverty have a “spiritual base”.

politicalscrapbook.net/2014/06/now-dwp-blame-christian-evangelism-for-growth-in-food-banks/

edamsavestheday …… please believe me that I no more think that poverty is (entirely) the fault of the people, as anyone else really believes that everyone in poverty has done everything they could, to help themselves out of it, from school on.

Indeed much of the responsibility is firmly on a governments door step to provide the basic, but key ingredients to lift people out of poverty; in housing, an excellent education fit to obtain work, an excellent health service, the jobs to go to AND taxes as low as they can be, to both fund efficient government and let the people keep as much of what they’ve earned, as they can. FYI we have already had much of this debate (and my opinions) on the link below.
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/in_the_news/2094669-The-real-cost-of-living-crisis-Five-million-British-children-sentenced-to-life-of-poverty-thanks-to-welfare-reforms

What specifically I was getting to on here, where the accusation is that (despite record UK employment) it is the Coalitions benefits policy that is driving up the demand for free food from Food Banks, I wonder how many grown ups, with children statically in poverty, smoke, drink, gamble, upgrade to the largest LED TV and pay £60 a month for Sky, and call those items ‘essentials’.

FYI there is no judgement here, I came from a council estate, went to work with a few ‘ologies (but through hard work and luck, made it and lost it etc) it is just so many people are using ‘statistics’ to make a poverty political point, on a complex subject, I think we have a get real.

Furthermore, when government fulfils their basic functions I’ve already mentioned, those that are falsely claiming are weeded out, children are encouraged that an education can be key to their life choices – I, and I’m sure many millions more, would expect a government to spend whatever it takes to help all those that TRULY need help, long term or temporary, and wouldn’t mind paying more taxes if need be.

Paying taxes to a fat inept government, who make the wrong policy choices, and believe paying a small army of Quangocrats £100k plus, is neither an efficient use of taxpayers money, or socially acceptable - especially when they constantly preach about the subject of poverty. IMO.

Darkesteyes ….. The Daily Mirror, other ‘social’ organisations and Uncle Tom Cobbly (see below) blames the Coalitions ‘’bedroom tax’ for all the UK’s housing/benefitsills; I’m not a reader of The Mirror, but were they quite so vocal in 2009/10 when organisations like Shelter were crying out how dire the home/bedroom shortage was, when there were LESS social homes available in 2010, than in 1997?

“Rabbit-hutch Britain: Growing health concerns as UK sets record for smallest properties in Europe”

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/rabbithutch-britain-growing-health-concerns-as-uk-sets-record-for-smallest-properties-in-europe-9544450.html

“The poorest households are being hit hardest, with estimates suggesting that four-fifths of those affected by the Coalition’s “bedroom tax” are already forced to contend with a shortage of space, the Cambridge University study found.”

“A Department for Work and Pensions spokesman said: “The fact is that before our reforms taxpayers were funding 820,000 spare bedrooms in working age households in the social rented sector. The removal of the spare-room subsidy is a fair reform so the taxpayer no longer pays for people’s spare bedrooms, while over 300,000 people continue to live in overcrowded homes and 1.7 million sit on council waiting lists.”

Shelter (2009); The housing crisis in numbers – and the need for spare bedrooms, never mind homes.
england.shelter.org.uk/campaigns/why_we_campaign/the_housing_crisis/what_is_the_housing_crisis.

• Over 1.7 million households (around 5 million individuals) are currently waiting for social housing

• 7.4 million homes in England fail to meet the Government's Decent Homes Standard

• 1.4 million children in England live in bad housing. [3]

• In 2008/09, 654,000 households in England were overcrowded. [4]
The number of new households is increasing faster than the number of house builds

_Reading all the armchair critics views, the lack of our overly small-in-size national housing stock, is all the Coalitions fault since 2010 for trying to free up spare bedrooms, yet handed over a broken economy, a £157 billion a year annual budget deficit and a social mess - from a government that had, and spent £trillions including policy national debt to be passed on to our grandchildren.