Food banks

My mobile phone costs me £5 a month. What is wrong with people? They may as well complain that people are turning up actually wearing clothes.

62Granny

M0nica

There is a thread already discussing this and other Food Bank related topics.

I did a search but nothing came up, sorry to duplicate.

Thread called “Tory MP blames food bank use on people,not knowing how to cook or budget”

People also need to understand that many of these cars are on lease contracts (probably taken out before someone lost their job), and many phones are also on contract.

These agreements are very difficult to cancel, and usually incur a financial penalty.

Phones are needed to log into benefit sites, and job search.

Appearances can be deceptive.

Many people have been comfortably off before some event turns their life upside down and they have no job, no income and are desperate. Since they need a car to go for interviews and other needs they keep the big car that went was comensurate with the job. For many people, this period of extreme poverty is relatively short lived and the trade in price for a big newish car is not much more than the purchase price of a smaller older car.

The food bank we support is no questions asked.

At Christmas a local factory had closed suddenly, the staff were in dire straits as it would be weeks before a universal credit would be paid out and in the meantime they had all their outgoings so to prevent getting into a spiral of debt they were advised to use food banks.

Many arrived in nice cars.

There are lots of people loading bags of groceries into big cars at the Foodbank I help at. People are phoning up to say they can't afford to replace a bald tyre/get an mot for their car and getting to a Foodbank with small children is not easy, let alone carry multiple carrier bags of tinned food home on a bus (assuming there is one). So volunteers load up their cars and drop off parcels After the Foodbank closes. Nobody claims petrol costs either.

"Listen to the TV this morning and DH had Jeremy Vine on the phone in was regarding food banks and being able to cook. A lady phoned in an she said she had seen people going to food banks and coming out with bags of food then getting into their big cars and talking on their mobile phones."

It's a pity you didn't listen to James O'Brien's phone-in show on LBC yesterday morning on this very subject, and Shelagh Fogarty's afterwards. They were discussing the Tory MP's assertion that people only use them because they can't cook and that they can make a meal for 30p and the Tory councillors at Dartford smiling and laughing as they proudly cut the ribbon on a new foodbank.

Most of the calls were very sad and folk were explaining how they had ended up having to use food banks through changes in their personal circumstances (losing jobs, health issues, marriage breakdowns, etc.). Most callers spoke of how humiliated they felt and that it was a last resort for them.

Quite how people "turn up in big cars" is beyond me when, in the case of most food banks, you can only use them if you've been referred to them by health workers/social workers, etc. Maybe they have mobile phones so they can phone in to radio shows and tell the world how truly s* their lives are??

The Trusell Trust, one of the biggest providers of food banks across the country, provided just over 61,000 3-day emergency food parcels in 2010. Last year it was around 2.3 million. I shudder to think what the 2022 figure will be.

Makes you proud to be British, doesn't it?

I heard something on the radio yesterday. One of our politicians claiming that food banks are not necessary, and are abused by lazy layabouts, who can't be bothered to cook from scratch, who prefer to go out clubbing to working, he claimed that vouchers should only be offered after a proper assessment, which should include checking to see what individuals had that could be sold.

At this point my language had descended to the level of a ..... I was so angry. Do our political representatives really have a) so little respect for those they are meant to represent and. b) really believe what he was spouting?

M0nica

There is a thread already discussing this and other Food Bank related topics.

I did a search but nothing came up, sorry to duplicate.

I don't know whether it's national, but I know that the biggest users of my local foodbank are people waiting for delayed payments of benefits. People have to wait (at least) a month before anything is paid out, so they are lent money, which is then taken back through future benefit payments, which means people are permanently short of the money they need.

Never understood why people are so quick to try to find something wrong with everything.

What is disgusting (IMO) is that in a country which is is one of the richest in the world NEEDS such things as Foodbanks, whom - it has been shown main recipients are people who are in employment.

Another thing is that sometimes people collect and deliver food parcels to people who have mobility problems or who are self isolating. The people doing the delivery may do so in their own (big) car.

There is a thread already discussing this and other Food Bank related topics.