#food banks

[themadcapmathematician]

People should dunk on food banks more for giving people expired or nearly expired food actually I'm done being nice abt that. You won't let homeless people dumpster dive behind a fucking McDonalds but you'll make someone show their ID so they can get 5 cans of spagettios that went bad in 1947 lmfao hell world

#madcap rants #anti capitalism #food banks #poverty

[probablyasocialecologist]

Activists are “shoplifting” from supermarket shelves and dumping the proceeds straight into the stores’ food bank bins in a “redistributive action” to protest the cost of living and the climate crisis.

[...]

“The reason we’re doing this is that supermarkets in this country have been raising their prices ahead of the rate of inflation, essentially stealing from ordinary people in order to line their packets with profits.

“We’re acting against this in order to deliver food and necessities to the people of the community that need it the most in the middle of the cost of living crisis.”

The activist is seen ripping the security tag off a tub of baby formula. He says: “This is a basic need for every family with babies and it’s £18 in Asda, which is an immense price tag. […] Supermarkets are prioritising their profits over the safety and health of families in the community.”

Xander Cloudsley, 29, a community food co-ordinator and member of This Is Rigged, the campaign group behind the actions, said: “In my job, I’ve seen the lived reality of the cost of living crisis […] while corporate giants like Tesco are boasting astonishing profits year in and year out. I’m taking action because this disparity is sickening and profoundly unfair.”

The protest comes as food bank usage – already prevalent following austerity – has surged alongside spiralling inflation.

Many supermarkets now have collection bins for food banks. In 2018, Sainsbury’s trialled dedicated shelf-edge labels alerting customers to items that food banks need. In 2022, Tesco gained positive media attention for launching a “reverse food bank” where shoppers could buy and donate goods.

Meanwhile, supermarkets have also been accused of driving inflation. Analysis from trade union Unite shows the top three supermarkets – Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Asda – have taken advantage of increased food costs and doubled their profits to £3.32bn in 2021, up 97% on 2019. Unite’s general secretary Sharon Graham has called this “greedflation” – something supermarket bosses deny.

Ironically, supermarket workers, often poorly paid themselves, are amongst those forced to turn to food banks. One supermarket worker accused Tesco of “forcing us to use food banks, while using food banks to look good.”

#uk politics #food #poverty #food banks

[ceevee5]

Letter in the Guardian …

#uk politics #king charles lll #food banks #hunger

[listen-to-the-inner-walrus]

okay so normally when i make informative posts about current news, i try to always link a source for it (i tend to rely on the guardian) or at least explain the source of it.

but i dont know if the government are planning to publicise this or quietly implement it so im hesitant to give details on where i got this info. im just gonna say it was from someone/s who works in the department of work and pensions, and hope that my prior post history speaks well enough of me for you to trust that this isnt misinformation.

i dont like doing this but i think this information is too important for me not to share it and said info is fucking disgusting.

starting in march, in the uk, if you ask at the job centre for a voucher for a local foodbank, you are going to be turned away.

under the current system, if you go to a job centre that has a food bank referral service, the staff will fill in a slip (theyre advised not to call it a voucher but tomayto tomarto you know?) and refer you to a local charity which will allocate you food according to the slip.

that ends on march 1st. after that, they will just hopefully signpost you to other services that can help you get an emergency food parcel. that will likely involve you having to travel somewhere, potentially on a public transport, costing you more money that you dont have. and that does not guarantee that you will get the food you need either that day or at all.

our government does not care about its citizens, but especially not about us who are poor. they see the working class, the impoverished and the homeless as subhumans. they see us as what new right sociologist and white nationalist libertarian charles murray coined the underclass.

and you know this because of how the current system will be working from now until the end of february because if youre gonna stab someone while theyre bleeding to death, you might as well double tap it, ay?

from now until february 29th, you now must have an interview so that they can be "sure" that you need that food.

bear in mind that this does not cost the government anything. they are not losing money because of this service, if you want to call it that.

and that interview? that could take up to 3 days; its whenever they have a timeslot within 3 days of your asking. you could go in and say "i have no money and i have no food, i havent eaten for days, please help," and they could tell you to come back in three days, and then not even give you that slip of paper anyway.

this could kill someone. yes, it takes longer than three days to starve to death, but if someone is struggling that much to need help acquiring food, theyre gonna have more problems going on. people might choose food over heating and freeze to death; they might decide to eat food thats gone off and end up dying from it because they couldnt call 999 because they didnt have electricity; they might decide to try and injure themselves so bad that they have an extended stay in hospital as a way to get food and die in the process; they might not have eaten in weeks and starve to death.

but hey, if you do pass the interview process, youll get the referral you needed up to three days ago and a discussion about how better to manage your finances, because hey, youve already stabbed the stabbed person two more times, why not twist the fucking knife?

#uk politics #ukpol #british politics #britpol #britposting #food banks #long post #job centre #i dont know what to tag this as #i also dont like posting this without more details on the source of the info #but i dont know if the government are planning to publicise it and i dont want to risk them getting in trouble #rishi sunak #tories #fuck the tories #conservatives #conservative party #anti tories

[mysharona1987]

Tbf, they changed their minds after all the backlash, but you don’t even have to be a rabid anti royalist to understand this is still absurd.

#Food banks #uk politics #queen elizabeth

[mysticdragon3md3]

Source:

#food #food banks #donations #tips advice suggestions #i wish BettyCrocker would release their cake mix that only needs to add water vs the egg just to make people feel creative

[chronicallycouchbound]

I successfully convinced a toddler at the food bank that my rollator is a racecar so today is a win

#chronically couchbound #disability #disabled #cripplepunk #cripple punk #disabled pride #disability pride #poverty #poor rights #poor joy #disabled joy #food banks #food bank #food pantries #food pantry #solidarity #solidarity not charity #rollators #rollator

[persimmonteas]

Donations to Food Banks

source

Everyone donates Kraft Mac and Cheese in the box. They can rarely use it because it needs milk and butter which is hard to get from regular food banks.

Boxed milk is a treasure, as kids need it for cereal which they also get a lot of.

Everyone donates pasta sauce and spaghetti noodles.

They cannot eat all the awesome canned veggies and soup unless you put a can opener in too or buy pop tops.

Oil is a luxury but needed for Rice a-Roni which they also get a lot of.

Spices or salt and pepper would be a real Christmas gift.

Tea bags and coffee make them feel like you care.

Sugar and flour are treats.

They fawn over fresh produce donated by farmers and grocery stores.

Seeds are cool in Spring and Summer because growing can be easy for some.

They rarely get fresh meat.

Tuna and crackers make a good lunch.

Hamburger Helper goes nowhere without ground beef.

They get lots of peanut butter and jelly but usually not sandwich bread.

Butter or margarine is nice too.

Eggs are a real commodity.

Cake mix and frosting makes it possible to make a child’s birthday cake.

Dishwashing detergent is very expensive and is always appreciated.

Feminine hygiene products are a luxury and women will cry over that.

Everyone loves Stove Top Stuffing.

Check with your local food bank that they accept fresh produce/meat.

#mutual aid #donations #food banks #food pantries #solarpunk #local communities

[this-user-is-sus]

Normalize going to food banks.

#off topic #food bank #food banks #food is a right #politics

[lesbiansandgayssupporttheminers]

The actual fuck, Waitrose?

“perfect for the foodbank” next to a packet of stock powder.

On so many levels, this is fucked up.

Welcome to britain in 2023 I guess.

#uk politics #food banks #waitrose #this has such a flavour #of gruel for the poor #honestly fuck off

[generalelectionmusings]

#crisis #ukpol #politics #uk #tory #conservative party #nasty party #hunger #food banks #poverty #inequality

[probablyasocialecologist]

Every time child poverty enters the news cycle, social media feeds are swept up in po-faced scold-recipes for frugal, joyless struggle meals, each complete with a smug price breakdown. A slew of half-raw eggs, boiled chicken and grey potatoes are offered up as exhibits in an ongoing moral case against the working class. To prove once and for all that hunger is a symptom of household mismanagement, profligacy and stupidity – and that they therefore deserve the punishments of poverty.

[...]

Tellingly, the remedial recipes conjured by Conservatives tend to neglect not only cupboard staples like salt, pepper and cooking fat, but also the cost of equipment, gas, electricity and transport. They also overlook one vital ingredient of which the UK workforce is terminally short: time. Working hours have crept upwards as living standards and wages continue to fall. The less you earn, the more likely you are to be pulling long shifts – we now work the longest hours in Europe – that leave little time or energy for fussing over a stewpot for hours of an evening. That more expensive ready meals and pre-prepared food might save chronically overstretched working people some time and worry looks far too much like comfort to be thinkable.

Let’s retreat to the obvious: millions in the UK are living in poverty, and most of them are in work. Foodbank dependency has shot up, as have the many health conditions, mental and physical, associated with food insecurity. The profligate parent visiting their sins on their children is a conservative bogeyman; 1 in 4 UK parents skip meals so their kids can have enough to eat. Jack Monroe’s thrifty recipe planning is touted as proof it’s possible to live well on shoestring – something Monroe continually refutes. Those accounts, they point out, always neglect the many side-effects of penury that cannot be managed out of existence with canny budgeting: the despair of mounting debt; the daily nightmare conundrum of heating vs eating; the letters of demand; the bailiffs pounding on the door; the endless grind of anxiety involved in trying to stay just the right side of starvation. Monroe is clear: their recipes are a “sticking plaster” on a gaping wound. No cookbook will transform not enough money to live on into enough money to live on.

[...]

The theatrics of tactical miserablism pantomimes a political universe in which the struggles of poverty are symptoms of moral failure – and therefore always at least a little deserved. If you are hungry, that must be because you have not budgeted properly, because you have spent too frivolously, that you have been lazy or self-indulgent, selfish or thoughtless. If you need help, you must surely not deserve it, and if you deserve help, you must not need it.

#uk politics #food #hunger #food banks #never forget the tories are scum

[scavengedluxury]

"community pantries" is it now

#food banks #they're called food banks Tories #uk politics #cost of living crisis

[blackdogdesignuk]

#King's coronation #Food banks #Warm banks #Uk politics #Not my king

[mysharona1987]

#News #nurses #socialism #conservatives #conservatism #Capitalism #food banks #politics #nurses strike #food #boris johnson #britain

[notallfay]

So a little bit of a story about how the Tories are huge cunts towards disabled people.

I have a neighbour who I haven't seen in ages, she lives directly opposite me. It has been several months though. But yesterday I saw her queueing outside my local food pantry, so I got chatting to see how she was doing.

Her money has been cut, because she updated the DWP (Department of Work and Pensions) about her going blind. Her retina's are detaching. She is terrified to leave the house properly, for 2 reasons and has a friend pick her up if she needs to go out. She physically can't leave the house on her own.

She is insecure on how she looks, and is really anxious because one of her eyes has dropped down. And she is afraid of comments, whispers, and overall people being awful. She said that she only managed to talk to me, because she knows I'm safe, because she's met me before. The Tories villainise us so publicly, that this hostility has spread to be in our everyday lives. They make out that so many of us are "benefit cheats".

The other reason is that, because she's very blind, she does not feel safe wandering around, because of the added dangers of not being able to see. Which is understandable really. But hey, this person can totes work right??

This was on top of her normal disabilities, that she previously did get money for. So her getting worse warrented a money cut. Great logic. She now has to have no money until she can see a judge, which could take like 6 months. She after cancelling what bills she could has £10/month for food.

The thing is, I know her story isn't unique. Just like mine isn't unique when I have to go through this myself. It happens to disabled people constantly, to the point the trauma we go through actually gives us new mental health issues that we didn't have before.

The face to face assessment are so awful, and so much like interrogation that Scotland got rid of them for being inhumane.

With Austerity 2.0 I know full well Rishi Sunak has us on the chopping block, and more of us are going to die. The DWP will be given harsher targets to cut us off, even if we are fully genuine and in need. This is what Tory Britain is for disabled people.

#uk politics #political #Food banks #tory party #Tories out #conservative #Britain #rishi sunak #uk prime minister #disabled life #Disabled #tory britain