Carrier bags

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I was asked to give some carrier bags to the local food bank today. I’m very bad at remembering to take bags with me when I go shopping and I didn’t want to throw them away to go in landfill.

I handed them over to a friend outside the local supermarket. She had started a couple of years ago getting almost out of date, unsold food, and dry goods. But as austerity had increased and now the devastating effect of covid 19,she has found herself getting food for people seven days a week! She is a volunteer and decided she must do something as the local Councillor is not at all helpful.

I asked her how she copes, she’s been ill recently, she says she just has to. She cannot give up on people.

I wish I had her commitment. All I did was hand over a few carrier bags. I have to ask why people are in this situation. How have we got to this. The sixth wealthiest country in the world? But cruel to people in poverty. Who are seen as useless and not worth the money. Another Councillor has called people from my city ‘peasants’ this week. Remind me to tug my forelock!

Why are there foodbanks?

sketch-1577233161543.jpgThis might be someone’s meal today, tonight, next week. They may be on a low income, on benefits or state handouts. They might be in a refugee camp trying to flee from famine or oppression.

Coming closer to home, in a land that is the sixth richest in the World and where many more billionaires live than ever before, the number of Foodbanks here over the last few years have soared, from a handful ten years ago to more of them than McDonald’s outlets now! There are around two THOUSAND Foodbanks in this country now. Let that sink in. And people using them are only allowed two or three referrals in a six month period. That referral gives them emergency food for three or four days. They are used when someones benefit has been cancelled or delayed. I know about them because I used to refer people into them. I had to jump through hoops to get a referral for them. Often I came up against the arguments about whether they were deserving enough. I would be talking to a decision maker who would criticise the person’s ability to budget a paltry amount of money that the decision maker could not possibly have lived on themselves.

My question again is why are there Foodbanks? Why are the poorest in society forgotten? Why do the rich think it’s OK to look down on the poor? Remember that it is only by luck that we are born into the lives we have.