I visited a food bank for the first time in 2016 when I was working for the evil British Red Cross (never give them any money: they’re a bunch bullying bastards to work for) and I took one of my service users to the one based at the Salvation Army in Midsomer Norton. It was a sobering experience, accompanying someone to a place where they could get some food because had literally none and no money to buy any. The process to attend was bad enough, having to see someone else to get a referral, to prove you had no money and no food. We went and got some food and took it back to my service user’s tiny flat, where incidentally, he went without heating all winter because he couldn’t afford it. In 2016. Christ knows how he is managing today, if he is managing at all. In 2017, the local MP, one Jacob Rees-Mogg, said this:
“I don’t think the state can do everything. It tries to provide a base of welfare that should allow people to make ends meet during the course of the week, but on some occasions that will not work. And to have charitable support given by people voluntarily to support their fellow citizens, I think is rather uplifting and shows what a good, compassionate country we are.”
The state? The state? What planet is this man on? As ever, Rees-Mogg is gaslighting us all. Don’t call it the state, Jakey. Call it the government, which we elect every four or five years, in order to run the country on our behalf. We don’t expect the government to do everything because that’s just a silly thing to say. I wouldn’t expect someone like Rees-Mogg, who enjoyed the best education money could buy, but who is still thick as mince, to do anything, never mind everything. Reading his comments again, not only do I feel angry, I feel patronised. I volunteer at a food bank because I don’t want people to starve to death because of the actions of the likes of Rees-Mogg.
Today, I came into contact with the kind of people whose lives a pampered multimillionaire could never understand. Broken people whose lives were, to all intents and purposes, over. Torn apart by poverty and its trappings, drug addiction, alcoholism, homelessness, here was the underclass. A horrible term for human beings, I know, but if we don’t attempt to draw attention to those at the very bottom, why should we care about anything at all? We could all be like Jacob Rees-Mogg.
I know what poverty is. I was in it during the 1960s, although my mum went without food in order that I didn’t. There were no food banks in the 1960s, but my mum and me were the ones eating the scrag ends and the out-of-date pig’s liver and the dark brown minced beef. I thought it was all normal, that everyone was like us, but they weren’t. I see in my food bank users a me I could have been. My mum would have certainly visited on numerous occasions.
We had various young and youngish men in today. Look at their teeth, I always think. Teeth always tell a story. Hard drugs take their toll on teeth and several of the people I saw today had seen their teeth and their lives wrecked by hard drugs. They told me some grim stories which I won’t repeat, even anonymously, because they were so unpleasant and desperate. These people aren’t living: they’re merely alive and only just.
They get bags of food and sundry items for the home. They thank us profusely, genuinely, gratefully, but the truth is the heroes – well, mine anyway – are the folks who donate the stuff we give out. The pensioner couple, with an old but spotless old car, brings bags of stuff because they can’t bear the thought of people not being able to eat. They have more compassion than Rees-Mogg whose face I would be happy to bathe in fresh cow dung. I am not there to show “what a good, compassionate country we are”. I’m there to show that generally speaking we aren’t. I want nothing to do with anything he says. He’s a fanatical Roman Catholic who is probably expecting to go to heaven when his days are done. I only wish there was a hell for him to go to.
Not many anecdotes today. I’m quite weary and not a little depressed. I’m worried that soon I may not be able to cope with anything, now that my GP has unilaterally reduced by antidepressants by 50%, let alone my work at the food bank. My food bank colleague today told me that she didn’t believe in compassion fatigue and I hope she’s right. I’m hoping my fatigue is down to my depression and the reduction in my antidepressants. If it isn’t, I’m in a lot of bother.
