Big Society, i.e. community and churches taking on community projects .............. :sad:
and your proof neil?
I doubt it is 100% as you say... just as benefits claimed are not 100% those entitled.
I don't doubt there are people who are correctly deserving but I would doubt any claim that everyone using the facility is TRULY deserving and I wouldn't be at all surprised if some of the food sold finds its way into alternative markets providing a nice tidy little income for someone...
In a way, no different to international aid finding it's way into the pockets of despots, thieves and vagabonds but on a different scale.
GnV, I think I kind of get your meaning. I'm not sure how much you know on the subject but people can not simply turn up on the door and expect a handout. In those circumstances I too would suspect that some cases aren't genuine.
I've had a look at our foodbank and taken the liberty of pasting this:
'Care professionals such as doctors, health visitors, social workers, CAB and police identify people in crisis and issue them with a Foodbank voucher. Foodbank clients bring their voucher to a Foodbank centre where it can be redeemed for three days' emergency food. Volunteers meet clients and are able to signpost people to agencies able to solve the longer-term problem.'
Fine words Trev, thank you but I still doubt that 100% client's are truly in need which was neil's original claim which I challenged.
I'd go with a high percentage for sure, but 100% is a highly suspicious and un confirmable.
A goodly number of the 'referrers' organisations mentioned are under so much pressure to do 'something' that there must be a great temptation to issue tickets to 'apparently' needy and 'difficult' cases to process them quickly without a full and proper investigation into genuine need, the only measure by which such claims can be anywhere near verifiable.
You only have to look at the historical evidence of lack of proper action on the part of some of these organisations mentioned elsewhere to understand that there will, by association, be instances where people can apparently present a need and be given the benefit of the doubt without there actually being a genuine need at all.
Indeed, on the contrary, there are instances where people who have presented a genuine need to these 'partner' agencies in other respects have been failed miserably by the system. The papers are full of them! In just one selected at random example, vulnerable children are being let down by councils with ineffective and incompetent leadership, according to the Ofsted chief inspector, who singled out Birmingham as a "national disgrace". and I am sure there are many equally powerful snippets to refer to.
How confident can you be, given such overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that this system is so pure?
I'm sorry if that offends, but there will always be people who will take advantage and are cunningly adept at finding the means to be so which is where I was coming from in my response to neil's claim.
I'd be more inclined to accept an argument to say that it is far better that vouchers are issued first to 100% of people who present themselves as being in need to make sure that no-one with a genuine need slips through the net but to sweepingly claim that tickets are issued only to 100% of people truly in need is somewhat naive and misleading.
well GNV....Dean...(aka Neil here !!!)
As it is a Doctor, social worker or police etc that give out food bank vouchers....and I am sure you would accept they are professional type people..... Therefore I would say that all the people visiting the food banks have been checked and verified.
Now if just one person was found ( as you seem to think ), selling the food down the local market , then I am 100% sure again, that the Dailey Wail would have found them and be up in arms with Front page headlines !!!
Perhaps in this case the onus is on you to show...just one person that has been found to abuse the food bank system ?
rogue,
this doesn't show any person that does not need it. It does not indicate any person that has been offered a food bank voucher without due need....indeed it says how shocking it is that in this country people need to go there....and that it is becoming increasingly more prevalent that families at the lower end of the scale are being sucked into poverty.
And blimey Edwina Currie.....as if anyone takes any notice of her.
see the last two paragraphs from the article below :
"But the need for food banks, in one of the richest countries in the world, is a devastating testimony to the inequalities in our supposedly developed and forward thinking country. While the rich enjoy tax cuts, the poor are turfed out of their homes to pay for it. When the rich enjoy marriage tax breaks, the poor won’t even be able to afford the ceremony. While discussing worldwide poverty and hunger at the G8 summit earlier this year, our Prime Minister tucked into fillet beef and violet artichokes.
Is it just me, who thinks that this has been going on long enough? That food banks are no longer a shocking indictment of inequality, but have become almost normal? Because there’s nothing normal about a family in work that cannot afford to put food on the table for their child. There’s nothing normal about needing to beg for food. At the Conservative Party conference, one Tory peer called for an urgent all-party parliamentary enquiry into food banks. I just hope Currie, Freud and Gove are invited."
Dean, I was backing your argument really, with the scandalous nature of why we need them in the first instance.
GnV
every one is checked and verified, by professional person.
No one has ever been found to be dishonestly claiming the vouchers.
No one has ever been found selling the food down the market ..lol
Therefore I stand by my statement 100% of claimants are using the food banks out of need.
well, it seems you can't prove it so it will have to be left there.
I was in a position where I had to use a food bank, and have to say I was incredibly grateful for the 4 weeks of food they gave me whilst waiting for benefits to come through
There was a discussion on this subject on the Jeremy Vine show today. To be fair there was lots of anecdotal evidence of less than honest users of the service.
Is this service abused, well yes in a way I think it is, I have no real experience of food banks other than what I saw on the Channel 4 programme "Benefits Street"
For those who watched the series you will recall the young couple who in the early episodes were complaining that they had, had their benefits cut to practically zero when they were found to be bringing in (according to the male half) around £1500 per month working on the side.
With no benefits coming in they found things difficult, not so difficult that they could not afford beer and cigarettes but difficult to the extent that he went to a foodbank, he was refused any help because the voucher was in her name but eventually they got the help the sought.
Their case and as I said the only case I have any knowledge of, was self inflicted and I will never understand why when their benefits were stopped he stopped working and bringing in the £1500 per month that he claimed he earned when getting benefits. Had he not tried to defraud the benefits system they would have continued to receive benefits and not needed a food-bank.
I have no doubt that there are many, many genuine deserving cases and I think it is great that they can get some extra help to alleviate the problems that our benefits system is bringing to them terrible as it is that we need to help them in this way in the first place, but I also have no doubt that there will be many cases of people abusing the help spending the benefits they get on what we would class as luxuries at such times because they can get some essentials from the food banks.
There is no way to stop them, and I would not want to see it made any harder for the real deserving people to get the help they needed because of a few who will always find a way to get more than they should out of our welfare system and charitable organisations.
Knew I'd find something eventually.
The report simply states what I said above, there are people who have and will abuse any system, personally I think the amount of genuine cases is extremely low, mostly those awaiting decisions on benefits, for example a person who loses their job today and has to wait weeks for a benefit payment to come through.
Feeding a family of 4 in times of need is very, very cheap, I could feed such a family for a week with just £40 and that would be a varied. nutritious and filling 3 squares a day menu, back in the early 70s I was in full time employment but had to do it often. It would only be a problem long term, because we all know that a bag of potatoes, a large bag of rice or pasta etc is very cheap but it is all the other things that cost, cleaning materials are especially expensive, I can buy 8 large bags of pasta for the price of a bottle of washing up liquid, We all have things in our cupboards to make a simple pasta dish tasty, but long term those things we have in the cupboard run out and it is long term poverty that is the problem.
In the UK we should not have any long term poverty situations, something should have been done before it gets to that stage, the ideal situation would be money management for those who find themselves in the terrible situation of poverty, I don't know how it could be worked but the truth is people would be better off if we did not give them money but gave them the things they actually need, there would be no money for alcohol and cigarettes, taxis to food banks or satellite TV, but there would be gas, electric, clothing, food, cleaning materials and other essentials. There would still be some abuse of the system but less of it and there would be more compassion for the genuine cases and more funds available to help them and less stigma for those that need help and cannot bring themselves to seek it.
I appreciate that The Mail article I posted reinforces wht you had said above my post Jed but I posted it for the benefit of Dean et-al who seemed to think that there was no black market for vouchers and that ticket providers were all 'squeaky clean' and incorruptible.
I challenged that view without supportive evidence at the time but The Mail has now provided some helpful comments to support both our views which I thought worthy of note.
now lets remember this is the Daily Mail....the paper that has paid out more often than any other newspaper, in compensation, for printing what later turns out to be lies. Then lets read what it states !!
" The fly-on-the-wall crew gave viewers a revealing insight into 44-year-old Mr Harvey, however. For far from being deserving, he was exposed as a ‘conman’ — the local newspaper’s description — who was slyly taking jobs while claiming benefits, accusations he denies.
In addition it was claimed he had a string of petty criminal offences, had been accused of tricking two women out of thousands of pounds, and was alleged to have been evicited by his landlord after refusing to pay rent. Little wonder the BBC documentary described him as a man with a ‘sense of entitlement’. "
so he denies the first accusation.....and the second is only alleged !!!
Now where is the innocent before found guilty !!!
and Mids you say they should not be given money but vouchers !! Vouchers is exactly what they do get and the only thing they can exchange them for is food, and exactly the sort of food you mention..pasta....potatoes etc...
In reality I am sure that there will be one or two that will con a voucher out of someone. the average food parcel I believe is valued at £20/£25.....now lets equate that with tax fiddles and evasion.....lets make Starbucks pay what they owe, and we can afford food banks through to next century !!!
I couldnt myself ... clearest indicator you need to sort life out if you are in the queue there. Another freebie to keep the jobless whingers out of work ... give them nothing and they will find work .. and pay tax on benefits like working people too .. too easy i think and needs to change or they will bring the country to ruin ..
