Last week, a photograph from Kent hit the headlines.
It was of the Conservative mayor, with the Conservative leader of Dartford council, cutting the ribbon on a new community centre food bank. There were huge smiles all round; the faces were, in fact, captured mid-chortle.
The commentator, James O’Brien, best expressed the bafflement and outrage many felt when he tweeted: “WTF are they all so happy about?”
Like dogs returning to their own vomit to roll about in it, Tories just don’t seem to be able to keep away from food banks. They love popping up at them for inappropriate photo ops.
“Here I am,” they seem to say, “giving a cheery smile and two thumbs up to the fact that my party’s policies over the past 12 years have plunged over two and a half million additional people into food poverty to the extent that they’re dependent on state-rationed tins of beans handed out by volunteers for sustenance! Vote Conservative!”
Earlier this year, David Cameron, architect of both the “Big Society” and the beginning of the damaging austerity policies which essentially waged war on lower income citizens, had the gall to actually stage a PR photo shoot of himself volunteering at his local food bank.
For the last two years I've been volunteering each week at the Chippy Larder, a food project in my local town, which helps low income families with surplus food from supermarkets (and cuts food waste at the same time). pic.twitter.com/oXZL1os1YM
— David Cameron (@David_Cameron) March 18, 2022
It is always, always worth pointing out that before Cameron’s premiership in 2010, although the Trussell Trust did hand out emergency food parcels, food banks were not nearly so widespread in the UK. They were not an essential component of our social security system.
Now, the number of food banks in the UK outnumbers branches of McDonalds almost two-to-one. Rule Britannia! Huzzah for the fifth-richest country in the world!
A fundamental lack of empathy and understanding
Since the Dartford photo op, which was only last week, people living in food poverty – currently estimated at one in seven adults – have suffered the indignity of further patronising comments from Lee Anderson (Conservative MP for Ashfield in Nottinghamshire) and Rachel Maclean (Conservative MP for Redditch in Worcestershire).
If they want to register for more food packages, they also have to sign up to courses in cooking, budgeting or job skills. Prove that you’ve earned that packet of dried noodles, peasant
Anderson stood up in the Commons to announce that, in his opinion, food banks were largely unnecessary. The problem was not that economic conditions have significantly worsened due to 12 years of Conservative policy, to the extent that even people working two or more minimum-wage jobs cannot afford to eat; certainly not!
The problem, according to Anderson, is that “you’ve got generation after generation who cannot cook properly. They can’t cook a meal from scratch. They cannot budget.”
A nutritious meal, opined a man who last year claimed £220,000 in expenses on top of his £84,000 salary, should only cost 30p to make from scratch. He then went on to extol the virtues of a food bank in his constituency which will only give people referred to them in desperate need one-off support.
If they want to register for more food packages, they also have to sign up to courses in cooking, budgeting or job skills. Prove that you’ve earned that packet of dried noodles, peasant.
His colleague, Maclean, hopping on her bike to channel the spirit of Norman Tebbit, chimed in with the helpful advice that people struggling with the cost of living crisis should simply move to a better paid role, or take on a second job.
A government minister has suggested that people struggling with the cost of living should take on more hours or move to a better-paid job.
Read more: https://t.co/x0S3ZgrhX6 pic.twitter.com/cFflaiyDxg
— Sky News (@SkyNews) May 16, 2022
I am slightly confused as to where, say, a single mother – already working two zero-hour contract, minimum-wage jobs during school days – forced to make horrendous choices between heating and eating, with absolutely no ability to afford childcare, finds the additional hours to take a budgeting course, a cooking course and an additional job. But, perhaps I just lack the dedicated work ethic that made this country great.
Alternatively, Maclean and Anderson’s attitudes might display the fundamental lack of empathy and understanding essential to the Conservative project that leads them to grin as they cut yet another ribbon around poverty.
Some Scots can’t even afford to cook their food
In the village where I live, an independent food bank set up during lockdown has evolved into a community larder, run as a charity. It has two part-time staff and a small army of volunteers. Like many community larders, it works with the charity FareShare to distribute leftover food from supermarkets very close to its sell-by date to anyone who visits.
Community larders are not food banks. By putting the emphasis on reducing food waste, by making the food available to everyone, no questions asked, without referral, and with no limits on the number of items service users can take, community larders are an attempt to destigmatise food poverty.
Recently, the woman who runs the larder in my village told me that she’d had five people come in during the last week asking specifically for items they could make into a meal without having to use their cookers, as they couldn’t afford to turn the gas on anymore. Is that included in Anderson’s 30p-per-meal budget?
I wonder if David Cameron heard that sort of story during his volunteering shift. I wonder if he actually listened.
- If you are currently affected by food poverty, FareShare Grampian works with a number of community larders around the region. The organisation Cfine runs pantries around north-east Scotland. There are community larders in Johnshaven, Auchenblae, Inverbervie, Fettercairn and Stonehaven as well as several in Aberdeen.
Kirstin Innes is the author of the novels Scabby Queen and Fishnet, and co-author of the recent non-fiction book Brickwork: A Biography of the Arches
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