Today, things went like clockwork. Very few no shows and the ones who did show turned up at their appointed times which meant that waiting times were very short. When the last place on Earth you would want to be is a food bank, waiting to be given food, you’d want to spend as little time there as possible. So it was today.
One of the first things that happened was that volunteers were asked whether they would be prepared to tell callers who arrived on spec, without having been referred to us, that there were procedures to be followed and we couldn’t help them. In other words, to turn people away. I agreed straight away. I’m content – I won’t say happy – to tell people bad news and anyway I wouldn’t leave it to someone else. Let’s see how that goes. But the way things are going, it won’t just be uninvited callers who are being turned away. Things are getting serious.
I’m just working my way through some figures and it appears that in March, eight tons of food came into our food banks – and this is not a big area – and sixteen tons went out. Given that food donations are down by about half on last autumn, there’s a pattern here. You may have read in certain sections of the media that food banks may need to ration food to callers and some might run out of food altogether? The doomsday scenario which many suggested was scaremongering is on the cusp of coming true. With the numbers of callers booming and donations falling – I was going to say collapsing, but maybe it’s not that bad yet? – something will have to give.
I don’t have any information as to why donations are so much lower, only opinions, possibilities. I don’t think people are becoming meaner. On the contrary, I think they – we – are kinder than ever. We still get people turning up with bags of food for the food bank for no other reason than they want to help other people, to do their bit. But something else has happened since last autumn: the cost of living crisis has escalated still further. People are having to cut back on their own expenditure to ensure that they too are not knocking on our door. Yes, I know it’s only anecdotal, but I know plenty of folk who are scaling back their spending, sometimes massively to keep the wolf from the door. Some are forsaking that second holiday, others can’t afford to book one. With food inflation currently running at 19.2%, which has a greater effect on poorer people than the better off, is it any wonder people are struggling?
Once again, today I saw working people, including a recent university graduate, whose money had run out. I’m watching my words but I don’t always get it right. “Hi, nice to see you,” probably isn’t the line you want to hear when you’re on the breadline and I found myself saying it a couple of times, qualified each time with something like, “although I appreciate these aren’t ideal circumstances for you.” There were people who had issues with Universal Credit (“it was a great idea when it came out but now it’s one big fuck up”), fuel bills and all the rest of it. The people I meet, well some are near to being broken, some are already broken, irreparably. It must be like hitting rock bottom and being stuck there.
I can’t get over how thankful people are when they get their food. It’s humbling and not a bit embarrassing for me because I haven’t done anything out of the ordinary. Do you know what I mean? I’ve found out what they want, hopefully put them at ease, made them a hot or cold drink and moved on to someone else. But then, I don’t do praise very well due to my imposter syndrome and when colleagues praised what I’d done, I would have happily been swallowed up into the ground.
I suppose as well as donating time and money to food banks, I suppose as important as anything is the emotion my colleagues and I put into what we do. I don’t think it’s possible to do what we do without it. I feel a range of emotions and always high among them is anger. Controlled anger, for sure, but’s definitely anger, focused as it is on those dreadful politicians who run our country. Part of me can simply not believe I am where I am, doing what I’m doing. A country where the prime minister, a multimillionaire married to a near billionaire, has to have the entire electricity system around his country mansion upgraded because his brand new swimming pool uses so much electricity while I am trying to help people who literally have nothing to eat. It’s not his fault that he’s a greedy, parasitic, tax-dodging, sleazy right wing money man who made a killing from the banking crash of 2008, whose assets are hidden in a blind trust, but it’s definitely his fault that the country is in such a mess that food banks are the only industry which simply can’t keep up with demand.
Finally, allow me to have a whinge. Every Christmas, my social media includes appeals for help from well-meaning folk to give poor children presents. Put a box of nice stuff together and we can make some poor kid’s Christmas slightly less terrible. I’ve been known to contribute too, but things are becoming so bad that waiting for Christmas before doing anything to help just isn’t cutting it. I was in our food bank before Christmas, between Christmas and the New Year and in the New Year and people were still in food poverty. What I am trying to say is that doing something once a year is better than doing nothing, but only just.
I too was ignorant at the sheer levels of food poverty until I got involved, but knowing what I know today has changed everything. We can change this grim situation if we want to by giving even the tiniest amount to food banks but more importantly in the medium term by voting Sunak and his charlatans out of office. If we’re not angry about millions of people in one of the richest countries in the world not having enough to food to eat, I doubt that we can get angry about anything.
