You may be familiar with Penny Mordaunt MP, if for no other reason than she held a massive sword in the air for several hours at Charles Windsor’s coronation, while dressed as an upmarket flight attendant. And rather lovely she looked to, if I may say so. But enough sexism and misogyny for now. Let’s turn to something else she’s involved in: community pantries.
Food pantries are, put simply, upmarket food banks where people who haven’t got much money can pay a weekly subscription and get food items at a fraction of the price they’d pay in supermarkets. This according to the food pantry website is what they do:
Your Local Pantries are places that soften the blow of high living costs and bring people together around food.
Pantries strengthen communities, foster friendships, loosen the grip of poverty and contribute to healthier, happier lives.
Everyone should have ready access to good food, and everyone values community. Pantries are a win-win solution.
Each Pantry has a defined geographic area, and local residents can become members. Members pay a small amount each week, and in return, they choose at least ten items of food or other groceries, worth many times more.
Pantries are laid out like shops, and members choose their own items from a wide selection, including fresh, refrigerated, frozen and long-life foods.
Each Pantry is run by a local organisation. Pantry hosts include community groups, charities, churches and local councils.
Penny is very enthusiastic about food banks – sorry, pantries. Silly me – and was positively gushing on twitter:
Now, hang on a moment. Just because this kind of place doesn’t want to be called a food bank – presumably that’s a common term aimed at society’s riff-raff – that’s exactly what it is. Just because some people can afford a little bit doesn’t make it that much different to the type of food bank I volunteer at, where we deal exclusively with people who can’t afford anything at all. I find her words somewhat clunky, particularly where she explains they now have enough funds for another pantry “and will have exciting news soon.” Now, it could be me being a little over-sensitive, but here’s the thing: how can a temporary fix, essentially sticking plaster, which doesn’t directly address the issue of food poverty at source, be “exciting”?
For some reason, the people who visit our food bank do not appear to be excited by having to come and see us. And how could they be? There’s nothing exciting about having to go somewhere and ask for food because you haven’t got any, so why should there be anything exciting about going to a pantry with not enough money to pay the market price for food?
Perhaps she used the word exciting because she’s a bit thick? How else would you describe someone who advocates homeopathy being available on the NHS? Or maybe she simply hasn’t thought things through very much because pantries are only a heartbeat away from being food banks?
Either way, needing food banks and pantries in one of the richest countries is something we should be embarrassed about.
