It’s trombone time for King Brian today and what with his recent health issues, it’s only right for me to wish him a happy birthday and more importantly good health. But he makes it very hard to like him following the recent exposé on Channel 4 Dispatches programme of how he and his son Prince William trouser millions from the public purse, as well as from charities, some of which of which they are patrons. Today, Brian who is believed to be worth around £2 billion, opened two new ‘food hubs’, one inevitably in London, the other (which he opened remotely) in Liverpool. Anything that helps to alleviate food poverty is good in my eyes, but how generous is Brian really being?
A year ago, the king launched The Coronation Food Project. In his words, this is how it works:
“Food need is as real and urgent a problem as food waste – and if a way could be found to bridge the gap between them, then it would address two problems in one. To mark my 75th birthday in this Coronation year, it is my greatest hope that the Coronation Food Project will find practical ways to do just that.”
In 2022, a £1 million fund was launched and, to his credit, Brian made a personal donation. I quote from the Food Project website:
“Through this fund, over 800 commercial fridges and freezers were distributed to key locations across all four nations of the UK. Together they are helping food charities rescue tonnes of additional fresh and frozen surplus food every week – food that was at risk of being wasted. This first initiative highlighted the urgent need to do more.”
I am not going to knock this since it means that food which would otherwise be chucked away will now be offered to people in food poverty. According to the website, some 95,000 people have benefitted from this initiative and while this will only make a small dent in the overall total, acknowledged by the charity there being 13 million people currently suffering from food insecurity, it is nonetheless a positive move. Furthermore, a grant was given to the Trussell Trust, the food bank I volunteer at, which again is A Good Thing.
Of the 800 freezers and fridges being donated, approximately none are coming to us. I’m not sure it suits our model to be honest. The stuff we take in is more “long life” products in tins and packets. I’d like Brian to go much further.
I am reasonably sure the old boy means well. And I suppose I should welcome the fact that although he lives in unimaginable luxury in a variety of homes and palaces, he has some kind of sense of awareness of the lives of many millions of poor people. Doing something is always better than nothing. But given his vast – some would say obscene – levels of wealth, should he not be doing a great deal more and indeed donating a great deal more?
And he’s the head of state. He meets the prime minister every week and presumably has numerous contacts in the upper echelons of society. It’s safe to say that any concerns Brian may have had during 14 longs years of Tory misrule were ignored by the governments led by David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and finally, thank God finally, Rishi Sunak, but surely with a new Labour government, which has promised to improve the lot of working people, he should be knocking at an open door. Although the king has no real power as such, it’s his influence as a royal that just might make a difference. If one bloke can have circa £2 billion sloshing around in his bank accounts,the irony of 13 million people suffering from food insecurity, a figure which of course includes millions of children, must surely not be lost on him, nor anyone else.
I look upon Brian’s initiative as being a start, nothing more. A welcome and positive start, for sure, but that’s all. Today, as with every nearly other Thursday in the last two years, I will be doing my bit to help those who have nothing. Our food bank is now a major priority in my life that takes precedent to almost everything else. That’s obviously not me being a hero or a martyr to the cause – that would be pathetic and silly – but it’s my commitment to a world I never imagined I would ever see.
I’ve seen poverty from both sides now, as someone who was brought up in poverty to viewing it from the outside. I didn’t realise just how bad it was when I was young and poor because I was shielded by a loving mother and a generous absent father who ensured we kept a roof over our heads. But I know now and seeing others struggle, in what is still a rich and prosperous country, drives me forwards.
Maybe the king has come to a similar kind of place from a very different background? And maybe we should credit him with having the decency to acknowledge the state we are in and that all of us, those at the top, those at the bottom and those in the middle, which is most of us, have a role to play?
I will still have deep unease about someone so fabulously rich, who collects millions from the public, from government and from charities, over and above his income from the crown, being involved in food poverty and food insecurity. In truth, the Dispatches programme made me very angry at the sheer greed of this dysfunctional family.
I see food poverty as a crime against humanity, I really do, not least because it came about directly as a result of government strategies and policies. Brian ascended to the throne as the Conservatives finally started to crumble so in some ways he has a clean slate to work with. If The Coronation Food Project represents just the beginning of the fight against food poverty, maybe he will have some kind of legacy he could be proud of. If this is it, just tokenism, for a few positive column inches and the opportunity to shake hands with and wave at people, then we will still be in this place when Prince William takes over at the top. And we will all be able to say: what was the point of that?
