Bad to do good?

The ‘Red Wall’ Tory MP for Ashfield and all-round dunce Lee Anderson has an interesting theory as to why Britain has so many food banks:  “Every do-gooder is starting these little projects to make themselves feel good.” That’s some claim, isn’t it? Every single person who gets involved with a food bank is a “do-gooder” who only does it to “feel good”. Well, that’s a good few of my friends around Britain told then and, apparently, my sole motive for volunteering at a food bank near me. Except that I very much doubt that this is true.

However, I do like being called a “do-gooder” by a silly little man like Anderson. Give me a do-gooder any day of the week, rather than someone who wants to do bad; a do-badder, I’ll call it. Quite how “do-gooder” turned into being an insult, I’ll never know. Saying something while meaning the exact opposite.

One definition of the term is this: “a well-meaning but unrealistic or interfering philanthropist or reformer.” I’m not stupid or naive enough to not understand that this definition is more commonly accepted. “That fucking do-gooder. Why can’t he mind his own fucking business. God, I hate these do-gooders.” But of course I tend to see things in black and white and literally, so this definition, as Midge Ure once sang of Vienna, means nothing to me.

I have visited a fair few food banks in my time, none I am pleased to say as a potential user, and not once have I come out with a negative thought about the people, almost entirely volunteers, who work there. On the contrary, they were all, without exception in my experience, working for nothing because they wanted to make other people’s lives better, not their own. And here’s another thing: when you work, voluntarily or for money, with people who have little or nothing, there is often an emotional investment made, too. People don’t think: “I am so great for having done that”, though who could blame them if they did?

Anderson, I strongly suspect, has never considered assisting at a food bank because he prefers to do bad things, like supporting Kwasi Kwarteng’s generous proposed tax cut to the super rich when many of his colleagues were threatening to rebel. Not bad for a bloke who used to be a Labour Party member until he changed horses to join the most right-wing Tory party of many of our lifetimes.

Quite simply, the reason there are so many food banks in Britain is because there is a growing demand for them. I can only hope there is a growing demand for a Labour MP in Ashfield when we have the next general election.