1% of people in Britain own as much as the 55% poorest. There’s not much new in that statement. The rich have always been rich and the poor – except you have no doubt noticed there are no poor nowadays only the less affluent – those folks who stay in less affluent areas, never poor, never impoverished. Less affluent has a ring of ambiguity about it, less of a value judgement (on society and how the 21st century have thrown up a new class of poor). Terms such as affluent and not-so affluent gets rid of that awkward separation between the rich and the poor.
Poverty has become the phenomenon of our time. That thing which we assumed had been largely eradicated through government action, in the name of all of us, but has not. In fact government action has created the situation that has turned into a national disgrace.
‘Every town should have one,’ remarked the hapless Elmer Fudd.
‘Shame on you’ they shouted at the Elmer Fudd of Scottish politics, MP for Dumfries, Clydesdale and Tweeddale aka Scottish Secretary, as he opened yet another food bank.
You can just see the headlines –
Banking sector is thriving in this age of austerity
And so it is. Food banking sector that is. Post-independence failure that Grrreat Britain just keeps on giving. We have the perfect antidote to those over-stretched welfare purse-strings – charity. Charity doesn’t cost the government anything. What a great wheeze.
Bankers, financial that is, love the free market. Free enterprise is essential to the growth of capital and when growth staggers to a halt there is crisis. But during those golden years leading up to the 2008 financial crisis bankers and their buddies in government were madly, blindly, addictively making it big in the laissez-faire economy and becoming so very, very rich, sorry affluent, they thought the good times would never end.
Private marketeers dazzled by paper profits, not even on paper but numbers on a screen, multiplying before their voracious appetites could be sated until one day the numbers started dropping off those screens and they found themselves in CRISIS (the technical term for shit).
When the in for a penny in for a pound doctrine is brought up sharpish by the realisation that a peril of the free market is success is never guaranteed it is time to call in a favour. There’s nothing so comforting to big business than a lapdog Prime Minister who eagerly tells them he’ll do,
whatever it takes
to dig them out of the shit.
Brown and Darling emptied their pockets – oops, our pockets and handed over a cool £50bn investment stake to the banksters and an even cooler £500bn in the form of loans and guarantees to restore market confidence ie send out a message to the banksters that they could do whatever they liked as the buck stopped with the British taxpayer. Oh yes, there are times when only nationalisation will do. Now you won’t ever hear that from any of the banksters although that’s what it took to save them from penury and prison.
Cue Alistair Darling:
‘The global economy is spluttering back into life. The Tories would have left it to choke to death.’
Really? So how dead is dead Mr Darling? Apologies it is Lord Darling now that yet another Labour socialist had donned the pelt of a dead animal to signify his importance to the running of the state (albeit through patronage and not the will of the people).
And so the banks were handed a parachute as they hurtled Icarus-like down to earth. Not just any parachute but a golden parachute worth billions to prevent them descending into – less-affluence. And affluence after all is a lifestyle choice.
Grrreat Britain is food bank Britain. This wasn’t what we were promised by the better-together Britainics last September.
1% of people in Britain, let’s call them the smug and rapacious for convenience, own as much as the 55% poorest. This was not the assurance – we were promised good times – wealth, health, happiness and dancing girls and puppy dogs whose tails that never stopped wagging. We were promised chubby little goldfish blowing bubbles and fluffy bunnies – oh, yes we got the bunny equivalent, or as near as, in Elmer Fudd. We were promised raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, bright copper kettles and warm woollen mittens, cream coloured ponies and crisp apple streudels if we voted yes to stay in the union of Grrreat Britain and all things red, white and blue.
I’ll tell you what we got. We got Elmer Fudd and the man who communes with unicorns – the one in charge of sums but not it appears Grrreat Britain’s grrreatest grrrrowth sector. Referrals to food banks in Scotland rose by 63% over the last financial year with scarce as sighting of streudel in any I would wager.
As I have said before, the reasons behind food bank use are complex and varied and every individual case is different. Rightly these important issues are debated regularly in both the UK and Scottish parliaments,
said Elmer Fudd.
Hmm, individual cases – in other words the get out clause of the rabid right, that poverty is a lifestyle choice. Let’s have that figure again – 1% of the population of Britain own as much as 55% of the poorest. That is one helluva statistic where individuals and their varied and complex reasons for boosting food bank use appear to be getting overwhelmed by a tidal wave of what’s that thing again? the thing we were promised would sink Scotland if we voted yes to independence? what is it? Ah, yes, financial ruin.
Actually, actually it is all very simple. Britain is a wealthy country. The wealthiest in the EU and 13th in the world which you might think puts the great into Grrreat Britain but not when wealth is so unevenly distributed. You might think that a fairly wealthy country might be obliged to provide a strong welfare system. Well you’d be wrong.
We hear from the usual suspects in the usual suspect parties that we can’t afford the welfare bill and how austerity is the new sexy politics of choice for Conservative, Labour and the rump of sad, swivel-eyed Liberals who’ve found their natural level in the midden heap of politics.
Poor people expect to be able to eat food. Shock. Horror.
People living in areas of high unemployment are more likely to use foodbanks. ‘Oh?‘ says Elmer Fudd.
People who have their benefits cut are more likely to use foodbanks. ‘Oh?’ says Elmer Fudd.
Politicians slavering at the prospect of 10% added to an already impressive salary will claim food bank popularity is the result of an argument that runs along the lines of
the more they see it, the more they will use it.
It is a comfort blanket argument. For every 1 per cent cut in welfare spending there is 0.16 percentage rise in emergency food parcels. When a Jobseeker claimant is sanctioned for an infringement of Department of Work and Pensions rules designed to trip him or her up so that his or her benefits can be lawfully cut there is a 0.09 percentage point increase in food parcels.
The UK government does not monitor food bank use possibly because if it did then the sheer scale of impoverishment and need which has become dependent on ad hoc charity would be shown up and be used to attack the freeloading policies of the Department of Work and Pensions.
As it is the government is able to carry on in blissful denial that there is any causal relationship between its inadequate welfare policies and an ever-growing demand for emergency food parcels. The DWP’s driver to reduce the costs of welfare led to an increasing number of sanctions slapped on work-seekers at Jobcentres. For those already on the breadline this makes the difference between eating and not eating. Sanctions, it seems, are deliberately set up to catch out jobseekers – for as minor acts as filling in a form wrongly or being late for an appointment irrespective of the reason. A sanction is not just a slap on the wrist it is the removal of benefit for up to 13 weeks. People suffering from mental health issues are particularly vulnerable to this vindictive policy.
We haven’t always had a welfare state. There was a time, not so long ago when poverty was wholly relieved, to the extent it was, by charitable contributions. It didn’t work very well which is why it was decided that any society worth calling itself society ought to take care of those unable to look after themselves – for reasons complex and varied as Elmer Fudd might say – such as unemployment, illness and accidents. That was then, when Britain was wealthy, runs one argument. Britain is still wealthy. Those who are obscenely wealthy are very determined to hold onto their wealth so it suits them to see poverty as an individual failing – for which society should feel no guilt. Unemployment after all is a result of the market. And the market is always right. Except when it fails the banksters. Then it is the state’s duty to step in, according to the argument.
Unwilling to see poverty as a consequence of the failure of capitalism the average apologist for free trading with a parachute goes into denial mode.
Scroungers. A lifestyle choice. Why should hard-working taxpayers have to support THESE PEOPLE? There are charities for that.
To put it simply. The message from government is – you’re on your own. Happily those who have suffered most in Austerity Britain are not on their own but are being helped by collective action from within their communities.
You can’t just walk into a food bank, you must be referred by some organisation with authority, Citizens Advice, police, Jobcentres. Figures are hazy. A bit like the casualties from the Iraq war – never regarded as important enough to keep a tally.
Of all food bank providers the Trussell Trust is the largest. It fed nearly 1.1 million people for three days in 2014-15 from its 445 food banks (up from 56 in 2009). Above this add another 50% or so food banks provided by local communities and other charities including soup kitchens and emergency food providers and you can understand why this banking sector is on the rise.
Elmer Fudd and the government may refuse to accept there is a link between spending cuts, benefit sanctions, unemployment and an increase in use and number of food banks but the BMA does.
The point is ladies and gentlemen, that indifference and selfishness is behind the expansion of the food bank sector. Government reaction to this social crisis is very different from how it approached the financial one, when it stepped in to prevent financial chaos, entirely the fault of the banksters. When it comes to the welfare crisis it is behind the chaos. Central to its welfare cuts policy is that while British institutions have to be supported and preserved individuals may perish.
There’s no nobility in poverty, as someone said and it wasn’t Elmer Fudd.
It’s all about bucks, kid. The rest is conversation.
The rightwing press rails against what is regards as politicising the issue of food banks. They condemn the increasing reliance on them as a phoney reflection of the state of welfare support in this country. It’s nothing to do with poverty levels increasing. Goodness food banks can even be a means for tackling food waste from supermarkets. Nice symmetry that chimes well with deluded views.
Doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles for the 1%. Well you didn’t really believe the rhetoric about safety net Britain (unless you are a bankster) did you? In austerity Britain there are no rules except the rich get more affluent and the less-affluent are definitely poor.
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2008/dec/28/markets-credit-crunch-banking-2008
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Lenathehyena's Blog from Lorna Corall Dey 
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