General Chat

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that in most food banks one needs some proof of need, ie a voucher or a referral etc, and only for a limited period.

for example

"If people come to a foodbank more than three times in six months our system automatically flags this so that the foodbank manager can contact their social worker or the service that referred them to make sure that there is a plan in place to help their client break out of poverty,"

Therefore, I'd suggest that it's 'unlikely' that there are many people who deliberately or accidentally conceive while using a food bank?

Situations can change very quickly, not everyone has even a little money or family to fall back on.

To summarise Sharron's view point.

If your only income is benefits, don't get pregnant!

Landlords won't put the rent on hold. They cannot afford to.
UC is a bad idea and is not workable. The irrational 7 day compulsory delay after application has been removed by the budget though heaven knows when it becomes effective.

1. Under UC all payments including Housing Benefit go into the account of the claimant. Sounds all well and good but many of the claimants live in a 7 day world, cannot wait, have other debts and cannot protect thier rent income from other needs and creditors. The inevitable result is rent arrears and landlords refusing new lets to people on UC or even evicting current tenants whether in arrears or not. (For those unaware of it classic Housing Benefit is paid directly to the landlord. )

2. The UC provides no paper proof of income, Even worse the computer screen display does not give any breakdown of the benefits so cannot be used for proof of income. Where in some areas peple could actually get a mortgage on a cheap flat or terrace house despite being on benefits that is now pretty well impossible. Mainly affects working women such as teachers and nurses with kids.

3. Under UC claimants are expected to work for 35 hours a week whereas on the old system 22 hours was sufficient and 12 for the disabled. If a claimant is doing , say, 25 hours ( which can fit in with family commitments) then he/she is hounded by their "job manager" into getting a second job to make up the hours with the very real threat of being sanctioned with no benefits at all for weeks.

4. It is the frequent use of sanctions more than anything else causing instant and unpredictable loss of income which has given rise to the foodbanks. As Nyx says children have to eat even if their parents often don't.

5. The DWP uses an expensive 0345 number which forces the claimant to listen to all sorts of guff plus Vivaldi for anything from 10 to 30 minutes before talking to a person. This charge is to be stopped but hasn't happened yet. Many claimants do not have a fixed connection for internet or telephone relying on mobile phones so they get clobbered.

6. The UC system is totally internet centered. There are nothing like enough free public internet terminals so many claimants end up using net cafes or piggy backing mobile phone dialup connections delivering 2Mbps at best often dialup speeds.

7. UC was promoted as a system to make work pay and to make it much easier for claimants to manage their finances. It has done neither.

As an employer having a revolving door of support staff is a major distraction, something which adds nothing to the bottom line and can take up a lot of time. We have been able to greatly reduce "churn" on support jobs by increasing pay, adding hours worked, giving free access to the internet (not in paid time though) and for some people hand holding them through the DWP computer screens. The lack of logic and common sense is incredible.

Quite how somebody is supposed to work, look for more work, manage a family on a tight (impossible) budget and spend hours keeping DWP managers happy god knows. It is a system setup for people to fail.

The truth of it is that the Tories want to return the UK to the 1930s with piece work ("gig" economy), the relieving officer (UC), abysmal and insecure rented accomodation, no proper pensions. A hard brexit will make this so much easier.

As MW says MPs taking pride in the existence of food banks should be ashamed of themselves.

Better yet, never be poor, never be sick, never be incautious, never be old, never be unlucky.

Sorry if I offend anyone's sensibilities, ( not), but I've just returned from seeing someone who might in other times have been in the workhouse, and from some quarters receives as much care as she would were she in one now. :-|

The housing market is fixed - all of it - by the creation of an artificial restriction on supply. Although the root of this lies in the restriction of new build it actually leverages the whole market. Labour have plans for fixing this by over riding local government planning policies. Kent for instance is in for a big shock if a Labour coalition wins power.

At the top end, mainly in London, the main factors influencing property values are (a) the current $/£ exchange rate, (b) the ease with which the beneficial owner can be hidden and (c) the ease of buying property with funny money. In the last year the fall in sterling and a mild try at not so obviously corrupt deals has pushed the > £ 2M market in London down by 10 - 20%.

Political instability & general ambiguity do not help to reassure or give some future hope to the downtrodden electorate.

Hang on till Brexit is accomplished & everything will then be fine & glorious.

This is in no way a political comment, my politics are my own business, but an observation of my own.

I live in a village which has changed beyond recognition in the last thirty years. When I was growing up there were farm workers and ordinary young working families employed in horticulture, living in farm cottages and council houses in the village.The very successful horticultural co-operative was deemed to be a quango and sold to individuals who were never able to organize their marketing as well and sold up to move on. The council houses and farm cottages that had been adequate for generations to bring up fair sized families in were sold as well

Rural wages are low so the cost of living must be of a similar standard. People who had bought properties at a discount in London were, of course, able to buy better properties at local rates and they did, sometimes two to knock together.

Family homes that housed the next generation have been bought, usually by older couples, who then knock two into one or add large extensions.The local young people will never be able to afford to live in those properties again, driven out by people who really are not rurally inclined and have now taken to building industrial type fencing around their properties..

Rollo

I agree entirely on all points, except that currently on the old system (for areas that haven't switched to UC) the working hour expectation for disabled is 16 hours not 12.

I've come into contact with so many people who neither have access to the internet or knowledge of how to use it if they did, whether that's to job search or to fill in any claim forms which are often so daft and do not 'fit' the very specific situation someone might be in when applying.

UC 'should' have been a great opportunity to cut down on the having to contact this dept and that, DWP, council etc etc, and use technology to make getting the right benefits to the right people much easier and quicker. it doesn't.

As for Vivaldi...I've gone right off him lol.

The problem is, Universal Credit is, allegedly, a 'one size fits all' system.
Unfortunately, People are all different , as are their situations.

One of the worst moves was getting rid of direct payments from benefits to landlords for rent. In addition to the difficulties mentioned, some people simply cannot manage their money and will spend it as soon as they get it, not always on debts and necessities either. Drugs and/or alcohol and/or fags or gambling or simply having a good time are the priority for some. Whereas direct payments gave landlords some certainty of at least getting the rent due when tenants left (after trashing the place causing thousands of pounds worth of damage in some cases), now they must spend more time and money chasing money owed, which doesn't help keep rents down for those that do pay their rents.

Channel 5 and its mates will have you believe that it is very common for people who rent to be feckless with a tendency to trash their homes. Nothing could be further from the truth - if such behaviour were typical it would be impossible for the landlord to get insurance and the whole industry would collapse.

It is certainly true that most households drawing benefits (inc old age pension) are for the most part financially stressed and often face inviduous choices such as pay the rent or put the heating on rather than shall we paint the town red tonight.

The weeks of delay involved in granting UC - even for people already on the old system - does not help of course. Neither does the absurd cap in London which is having the effect of forcing Londoners out of a city their ancestors have lived in for centuries - including the blitz. And then there are the sudden suspensions of benefits for all kinds of allegations most iof which are withdrawn but only after much damage is done.

The whole sorry mess, taking into account the time and effort taken to implement the computer system and in manpower since it has gone live will not even save any money quite the opposite. It does not help employers either.

UC simply put is class warfare on the old, the disabled, the poor, the out of work, victims of circumstance, many ex-soldiers and pretty well anybody down on their luck.

On the tin it says that UC will help build a bright new future. Piffle.
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Not all Tory voters are well off by a long stretch. It will be interesting to see how loyal their vote remains after a year or two on UC ( or not ).

If you're not good with money when it comes in weekly or fortnightly , a monthly payment is not going to make you better at managing is it? It just builds up a cycle of boom and bust I think, 'hooray there is a load of money in today' but instead of having to sort it out to last the week, it now has to last the month. Easy if you're good at that, not so if you're not.

When you look at the broader picture of how some people NOT on benefits but on more-than-adequate wages manage their money, loading debt on to credit cards, it's not surprising that if you're just not good with money that's how it's likely to stay. Don't we all know someone who stacks up their bills in a drawer or behind the clock? Out of sight out of mind.

The other aspect of that is that when the 'threatening' bills come, the ones that you get phone calls about, people panic and pay them first...leaving the actual essential bills unpaid.

Another thing is that people who have little money are also often the ones paying the most, for instance a pensioner I know who has to pay for electric on a card meter, who has to pay for carers, whose landlord will not do repairs (so to keep warm is even more expensive).

If you are old and sick or just poor and/or not good with money it's truly hard, and the harder it gets the less you can cope with it. You get in a downward spiral, not always of your own making, and it's hard to climb out of. it's not always the big things like divorce/illness/ losing a job that tip people over from 'managing' to 'not managing', it can be a vets bill, or the boiler dying in the middle of winter. You don't have to be feckless to get into difficulties

but I digress lol, (I think that will be on my tombstone ;-) ).

I listen mainly to our national broadcasting radio station, the CBC ....... one of the reasons (not the main one) is that there are no ads on their radio stations across the country, although CBC tv stations do carry ads

CBC radio stations across Canada run a Food Bank Day before Christmas, each province organises its own. The CBC in BC 31st Annual Food Bank Day will be held this coming Friday, replacing all normal broadcasting from 5:30-8:30am and then from noon to 6:00pm, all programming will come from the station in Vancouver, a mix of information on food banks, people who depend on them, music interludes, expensive offers free to someone who donates xx$, and so on.

Among the people interviewed will be people such as Nyx has just mentioned ............ the full time worker who got injured and eventually ran out of money, seniors who just do not have enough money to survive, even with a pension. It should be noted that these seniors now who are depending on the food bank and even becoming homeless are mainly women who married in the 50s and 60s when wives stayed home and their husbands took care of all the finances.

I don't know about the UK, but a woman who never worked gets a very limited widows pension and a small OAS (Old Age Security). People have to have worked full time to get the full OAS and to have contributed from their wages to get the CPP (Canada Pension Plan). There is another income seniors can apply for, based on a means test of their income the previous year, known as GAIN ....... but even that doesn't bring a low income senior anywhere close to the $20,000 annual income that is considered the poverty level.


I heard a promo for this day earlier this morning .......... there are now 100 food banks across BC, and the arrangement is that any money donated by a listerner in a place where there is a food bank will go to that food bank OR a donor can designate a particular food bank. Nova Scotia has 146 Food Banks spread across a much smaller geographical area, but the income levels have always been much lower in the maritime provinces.

One other interesting that emerged was that one food bank director in the metro area said that she could buy $6 of veggies with every $1 donated

It could be any of us.

Not related to benefits as such, but just talking to a pensioner who is probably more fortunate than many financially, but still in the space of a few weeks has had to have a new boiler, house insurance renewal, etc totalling many hundreds of pounds. Throw that at someone already struggling and it would easily become the straw that broke the camel's back.

I'm just looking at some articles on the local food banks, they are for the most part just the straight statistics supplied by the people who volunteer, ( in the closest one to me it's the church hall staff /volunteers who take collections, and give the food out ). Locals who help other locals in need. And not just food but access to internet, someone to direct people who need help with housing , mental health support etc,

We're not talking living it large food wise either, beans, pasta , soup, bread, UHT milk (yuk!) rice, cereals. Toilet rolls and toothpaste.

A comment, which is anonymous so I think ok to post

"“We would like to thank you all, you made life bearable when we thought we were a lost cause whether that was a cup of tea, a hug, a smile and some friendly company.

Of course the food parcels helped our family more than anyone could believe but it was the kind hearted team that made the biggest impact to our lives.

Our financial difficulties are solved for the time being and we’d like to give something back by volunteering and donating something back”

Nyx .............

it's much more organised than that here, at least now.

Food banks started the way you describe, volunteers in the church basement.

But now every province seems to have an organised group that pulls in all the food banks under its wing, eg foodbank-bc, foodbank-ns

Foodbank-bc has 100 individual food banks across the province under its purview; f00dbank-ns has 146, and so it goes.

The oversight group and the individual food banks are all non-profit organisations, which means they can give tax receipts for donations. In BC, all the food banks seem to have a paid director, with volunteers helping in the warehouses or at distribution time. It's all very organised.

"...Labour has plans for fixing this..." Like they did between 1997 and 2010 I presume.

Do you have some plans that are better Bob? if so do tell. Or perhaps send them in a brown envelope to ALL the political parties who could work together on a solution?

I don't care which party 'fixes it' or at least tries to, as long as someone does.

I don't care that it's the Methodists here that open their doors, or the bearded Bros in Birmingham that run a food bank, or the Sally army or whoever. Someone has to do something.

Food banks were once considered as a passing phase but they appear to have become an embarrassing & an established part of the today's UK welfare state.

Dermot .......

not just the UK!

it's all over the world

They began here as a temporary way to help during the economic crisis in the 1981/82

The intention was to be a temporary social services helper.

What happened??

Fund raisers were held, and government officials of all levels turned up to proudly present cheques to "help", got lots of praise and applause for that, but they then did nothing to increase welfare rates, funding, social services, etc.


Now it seems that maintaining food banks is still the job of ordinary citizens. :-|

Same here in Oz, Sylvia, and the Salvo's have just had their 'Give a Damn, Give a Can' day which is an annual event.

All other Food Banks rely on ongoing contributions throughout the year :-(