al_yrpal wrote:One of my relations works in a Manchester food bank. From what she tells me they arent quite what you might imagine reading the Guardian. This programme seems to analyse the situation pretty much in line with what she says is going on.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07krdvvAl
I don't know what
you imagined from reading the Guardian, Laurie Taylor's usual thought provoking program (Rightly called Thinking Aloud) put some detail on what I already knew the situation to be,though I'm not much of a Guardian reader. It's all about people in crisis and there seemed plenty of evidence throughout the article that more people were in crisis and many of them there as a result of recent Government policy.
The quote that stood out for me was from the second expert (These are the sort of people Gove dismissed) that "We're moving back to a pre 1930 situation, where the Government has abdicated some of that responsibility - the safety net is much weaker"
We're told the first lot of evidence comes from a larger study on Health Inequality, carried out in Stockton, I'll look out for that. This expert made the point several times that what people in crisis need is more support rather than judgment, something some of the people here might take on board.
A little away from the subject of food banks was the statistic that male life expectancy on Stockton was 17.3 years different between most and least affluent areas. Laurie was taken aback enough to get her to confirm it, 17.3 years for men 11.4 for women. At the risk of being called a Britain Hater there is something seriously wrong with a society that considers that acceptable.