Who Could Have Predicted This..?

A new food bank has opened after the existing site struggled to cope with rising demand for its services.

Oh, of course. We all could.

Within six months of its launch, the service had seen more than 1,000 food parcels collected by families.

It has recently found it is oversubscribed and cannot meet the needs of people in the area.

Or the desires...

A sign will be put in place to show people where to go and organisers said the site was open not just to people in Hassocks but also anyone from the wider Sussex area who may need it.

/facepalm

Volunteer Natalie Meehan, who has helped publicise the opening of the food bank, said: “It’s really shocking that the need for community food banks is so prevalent in somewhere as seemingly affluent as Sussex.”

It's not 'shocking' at all. You're giving away free stuff. Of course there's a demand!

"Wait, I Can't Have It All? There Must Be Some Mistake!"

Charmaine Parkin, 34, from Hove, said she was forced to use food banks to feed her children.

She alleges the six-in-one benefit system discriminates against self-employed people.

Is she a plumber? Gas fitter? Architect?

When the actress, producer and director split from her partner in October 2017, she tried to claim Universal Credit. But a measure called the Minimum Income Floor (MIF), which aims to ensure people who are self-employed cannot get more benefits than if they were on minimum wage, would have left her with just £8.98 if she paid her rent.

Ms Parkin’s lawyers say she would have been £393 a month better off if she had quit her career and claimed the equivalent of jobseekers’ allowance.

So, why doesn't she?

She said: “Working in the theatre has always been my passion and it is what I am trained to do but the nature of the work means that my earnings can vary a lot from month to month.

“It has made me feel like I have to choose between being a good mother and pursuing my chosen career path because it is no longer possible to support my family by continuing the type of self-employed work that I need to do as a theatre practitioner.”

Well, welcome to the real world, sweetie. You have had children. You're now a parent. Did no-one tell you that this involved sacrifice?

Her lawyers, Leigh Day (Ed: Well, well, well....), claim MIF is “unjustified discrimination” and are applying for a judicial review to get it changed.

Of course they are. Because who's paying? Not her!

Demand For Free Stuff Increases At Christmas? Who Knew?

Staff at a foodbank are asking for urgent donations as they warn Christmas could be their busiest month ever.

Last December, The Whitehawk Foodbank provided 137 three-day emergency food supplies to people in crisis, 47 of which went to children.

That figure is expected to be higher this year as it launches its Twelve Days of Christmas campaign.

Gosh! Who could have exp...

Oh, yeah. Everyone.

Manager Rich Merrick said every year, the foodbank sees an increase in demand in December.

So it's not remotely 'news' then, is it?

It's A Day With A 'Y' In It....

...so it must be time for yet more 'poverty' bollocks from the dear old 'Grauniad':

Paula Snowdon, who runs the Hub House, a converted end-of-terrace community centre on Seventh Street, describes malnourished families begging for food.

“Most had received benefit sanctions and were basically starving when they came to us,” she said. Others turned up wanting little more than a chat.

“We had individuals who hadn’t spoken to another person for days, sometimes weeks. Solitude is a major issue.”

'People are starving!' is a great hook, 'people need a chat!' not so much...

Some asked only to sit on the Hub’s sofa; private landlords lease homes without furniture in the numbered streets, forcing many tenants to live without the luxury of settees. Some arrived seeking refuge from the network of drug dealers that has infested the village: one resident on Eleventh Street counts six dealers among its 54 red-bricked properties.

Wait, people can't afford furniture, but can afford drugs? So much so, there's an increase in supply to mean the demand?

Yet what astonished Snowdon most was the prevalence of mental illness. “The actual way of life around here causes problems. I would say that 85% have a mental health illness such as anxiety and depression, or post-traumatic stress disorder. Children are born into deprivation and high unemployment: people feel forgotten about.”

So they can also afford children? And the luxury of 'mental illness', most of which falls into the 'excess of self-indulgence' category?

Next month, a delegation from the trust will meet the minister responsible for the “northern powerhouse”, Jake Berry, to discuss a proposition to build industrial and commercial space that will allow small businesses to flourish. Officials believe that £30m of state funding over four years will bring in three times that amount in direct investment, along with a sustainable income of £2m each year that will be invested to deliver bespoke projects like the Hub House.

And this can all be cured by throwing yet more taxpayer cash at them?

Well, Frances, It Says We’re Living In A Society Where People Demand ‘Free’ Stuff…

Frances Ryan has a new hobby horse. It seems remarkably like every other one in the stable to me:

Louise Cooke, a 46-year-old ex-teacher and community worker in Nottingham, has never been elected nor is her work funded by the taxpayer – but she is filling in the gaps left by the government.

For the past two years, volunteering out the back of her local church, Cooke has been running Sharewear – what, in austerity’s language, we could dub a “clothes bank” . This isn’t packets of pasta or boxes of veg but winter coats and children’s shoes. Cooke describes the people who come through the doors as in “crisis” : anyone from job seekers to Syrian refugees, from low-paid workers to people on benefits (“We have people coming in on disabled people’s behalf because they’re housebound,” she adds). Five years ago it would have been inconceivable to think food banks – and the poverty that leads families to them – would be a normalised part of towns and cities up and down this country.

Five years from now, will we say the same about clothes banks? “It’s like we’re living in the developing world – but it’s the UK,” Cooke says. “What sort of society are we living in?”

Easy answer, Louise. It’s the sort of society that has allowed, nay, even encouraged, a section of that society to believe that it’s someone else’s job to provide them with free stuff.

It says something about how entrenched deprivation now is in this country that a key reason Cooke started the scheme in March 2014 was that her son – then volunteering at one of the city’s latest food banks – told her, among the queues for food parcels, people were coming in and asking about packs of baby clothes.

It doesn’t say anything about ‘entrenched deprivation’, but it speaks volumes about the fecklessness of the benefits culture, and the fad for baby-farming to get yet more benefits.

When Sharewear started it was three rails of clothes run by four volunteers. Now, there’s a team of 20 overseeing a main room for clothes, a separate one for bedding and another for children’s clothes – crammed with shoes, and grey, black, white bits for school uniforms. New things are always needed. “We didn’t do towels but people kept coming in asking for them,” Cooke explains. “It enables them to wash. You can’t get much more intimate than that.”

Gosh, how surprising! Who could have predicted that if you start offering free stuff, the demand will go through the roof? And that demand will begin to expand for type, as well as quantity?

Apart from everyone, that is..

Everyone coming in is referred by an agency: local children’s centres, housing associations, women’s refuges (the number of referral agencies started at a dozen and is now about 70). Someone will talk to a family about truancy and realise the reason a child hasn’t gone to school is because they haven’t got a uniform – and then send them to Cooke.

Of course they do! It gets them off their books, it means they get to tick a box – what’s not to like?

Vouchers have needs scribbled on them in pen: “Smart clothes for a job interview” or “Warm coats for kids”.

Those aren’t needs. Those are wants…

In the early days the vast majority of people who came to her for help had been sanctioned by the jobcentre (“People who’d missed a bus and had their benefits taken”). Increasingly now it’s working families struggling on low pay – often on zero-hour contracts. “Both parents are working and still they can’t afford shoes and coats for their children,” Cooke says. “We get people calling saying, ‘I can’t come on Friday because I’m at work. They need the clothes but haven’t got a chance to come for them because they’re working all the time. It’s unbelievable.”

If you can’t afford children despite both of you working, why have them? So that others can pay the cost of raising them?

Enough! No more. The bottomless well of taxpayer largesse is finally exhausted. As is my patience.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished…

A foodbank worker was left “heartbroken” after her mobile phone with treasured pictures of her young son was stolen as she helped people in need.

*searches for give-a-fuck-ometer*

Miss Lent said she was cleaning on Tuesday afternoon at the charity’s main centre in Charminster when a client (Ed: wha..?) asked for help.

“A client asked me to change something in their food parcel so I went out the back,” she said.

“I put my phone down with the cleaning products. I was only out there for a minute or so. When I went back to pick up the cleaning stuff the phone was gone.”

Miss Lent believes one of the foodbank users may have stolen the white iPhone 5 when she left the room. She said: “I was heartbroken. They are desperate so I get why they did it but I just want the phone back. I would pay to get it back.

“I just want the pictures. They weren’t backed-up and I’m not the kind of person to put them on Facebook. A year and a half of memories is on that phone.”

I’m reminded of the phrase ‘If God didn’t want ‘em shorn, he wouldn’t have made ‘em sheep’ once more…

H/T: @BBCPropaganda via Twitter

What Is It You Don’t Understand About Supply And Demand?

A foodbank claims it is short of supplies after seeing a surge in families needing help over halfterm.

‘Needing help’ translating as ‘Waaah! I have to feed my kids now? I was relying on the school to do it! How am I going to buy my fags now?’

Cass Francis, warehouse co-ordinator for the charity, said: “We are running out of things like tinned pies and fish, carrots, sweetcorn and pasta sauce. We’re also getting low on nice things like sugar and tinned custard and puddings, chocolates, crisps and treats.

“Over half-term we had more families than usual, but that’s to be expected as children aren’t having school meals.

“We’ve seen a gentle increase in demand as we open more distribution centres from Tuesday to Saturday across the borough. The more places we open, the more food we are able to give. ”

Gosh, it’s astonishing how that happens, isn’t it?

“It’s a shame, in a country which is so affluent, we have people who have to turn to foodbanks.”

Yes, it’s a shame that in a land stocked with natural prey, we have animals that would rather scavenge crisps & pizza.

That’s why we discourage it.

You’d Have To Have A Heart Of Stone…

…luckily, I do!

Chairman Francis Barnes- Challinor, who has pledged to continue the service, said the not-for-profit organisation is desperately applying for grants to pay off its debts, but believes the authorities which direct people to the foodbank should support it.

Why? Is it their fault you’re an idiot, then? That you set up a non-for-profit and assumed that meant you wouldn’t have to pay any bills?

“The volunteers are very disappointed, of course. We have been here nearly a year.

“We didn’t think we would get into this financial state when we took the premises. We thought people would help us to pay the rent.

“At the moment, we deliver a lot of parcels to certain points such as probation, the council, the churches, or a lot of them used to help us by coming here.

“But they don’t offer any financial help or any volunteers.”

Well, why should they? You’ve taken away a burden so they are happy to see you shoulder it. They bear no responsibility for your plight. That falls to you.

The organisation is also hoping to offer courses, including cookery and management skills, in a bid to generate funds for any future rent.

Hmmm, I wonder if that will include financial management..?

Schizophrenic. It Is. Are You?

Yesterday's 'Independent':

The 'Independent' just before Christmas:

Make up your minds!

Suzanne Moore Struggles With Basic Concepts (Again)…

Beggars bother us apparently. They bother shopkeepers and residents. They are not good for business. They annoy us when we are only trying to spend our hard-earned money. We know what they need, even if they don’t. They are often difficult people to help.

What’s your next column going to be about, then? How water is wet, and the sky is blue?

I don’t kid myself here, but what is the point of further criminalising them?

What’s the alternative, if they are doing something criminal?

The demand to arrest beggars is said to be because some are aggressive and intimidating. But surely this is an attempt to cleanse and hide the increasing numbers.

No, it might just be because some are aggressive and intimidating. Even Sigmund Freud had to agree that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar…

As we load up for Christmas, it really would be nicer not to encounter these hopeless, zoned-out specimens. They are the cities’ human graffiti, reminding us that inequality is not some abstract notion. But is it really the job of the police to arrest them, fine them and call this “help” ?

Yes, if they are doing something arrestable.

In fact, that’s more ‘the job of the police’ than trawling Facebook for off-colour jokes and trudging round car parks checking people don’t leave coats in their cars, I’d suggest…

Antisocial behaviour is not sitting by a cash machine asking for spare change.

It can be. If people want to use a cashpoint without being hassled for change by a worthless drunk or drug addict.

Are we to accept this, as well as the notion that food banks are necessary in a very rich country? To see this as inevitable strikes me as the most antisocial behaviour of all.

Food banks aren’t necessary. They are a calculated political pressure point and we can all see through them. Mainly thanks to people like you constantly harping on about them.

I Think I’ve Realised Why Yasmin’s Out Of Work…

…and so relying on a foodbank; she’s as thick as a whale sandwich:

"I'd love to be able to afford some vegetables, I really would," says 20-year-old Yasmin.

"Being a qualified cook, I'd love to make myself a nice risotto or something. But I'm not rich; I'm not posh. I can't afford nice food."

Oh, wait…. *rummages*

Ah, there we go!

For the last year Yasmin has been living at the YMCA in Burton-upon-Trent. She is one of an estimated four million people in food poverty - without enough money to make healthy eating choices.

The counter-intuitive reality - particularly for poorer women - is perfectly illustrated by what she says next.

"I've gained loads of weight since I've lived in the YMCA because when I'm not eating my body stores the fat and makes me fatter. And then when I am eating, it's just stuff like rice and cheap stodgy stuff. You can't afford to eat nicely," she says.

You mean…rice like that healthy risotto you were desperate for, in just the other paragraph..?

Gimmie a look at those 'qualifications', Yasmin. I have a hunch they might be more use to you if they were written on rice paper...

Another Of Those Poor Starving Waifs Who ‘Need’ To Use Foodbanks…

A qualified veterinary nurse faces jail for animal cruelty after her emaciated and dying British Bulldog was discovered lying in a gutter.

Yeah, but since the usual ‘reports’ have been called for, I very much suspect she’ll get off. They usually do.

Admitting an animal cruelty charge, she told Birmingham Magistrates that she couldn’t even afford to feed herself, and had been forced to rely on food bank handouts, the Birmingham Mail reports.

If so, then I can only say – looking at her picture – those Northern food banks are waaaaaaaay too generous!

Update: No surprises. Just what do you have to do to get a suitable punishment in this country?

*Grabs Big Bag Of Popcorn*

Bromley Borough Food Bank has been allowed to use a shop rent free for three years as its premises where hard up people come for essential foodstuffs to help them survive.

But the council says from January it must pay rent, thought to be around £8,500 a year, for the property in Cotmandene Crescent, St Paul’s Cray.

Let the wailing and rending of garments commence!

Food bank project manager Mary Beckingham said: “I have not found anybody that has not been shocked, surprised and horrified and that’s from people in the street, people from churches and the people that hold our vouchers; it’s across the board.”

I'm not any of those things.

“There are still shops empty in the street so what was need for us to have to pay rent?”

 Because...yours isn't empty.

“I think the council needs to look at its priorities.

“It’s nice to have flowers round the roundabouts but perhaps they should be helping the people and feeding the people.”

With flowers? *confused*

And since when was 'feeding the people' considered a vital job of the council?

A Bromley Council spokesman said: “We have supported the Food Bank with a rent free period of three years whilst it has established itself but we cannot go on with this arrangement indefinitely and simply cannot give rent free terms to each and every charity, regardless of how worthy their aims are.

“We are continuing to support the Food Bank which is why we have offered them a lease for premises in Cotmandene Crescent, which is their preferred location and not in our original thinking.

“I should point out businesses are interested in the same premises and that any rental income ultimately helps support the provision of our frontline services which are vital to so many residents, when the council continues to face unprecedented financial budgetary pressures over the coming years.”

That's an awful lot of words to say 'The free ride's over' isn't it?