Going hungry this christmas

This christmas many in this country will go hungry disgracefully. To be poor is not a crime – yet in Britain, the poor have been criminalized and demonized by a propaganda campaign that gives new meaning to the word 'vicious.' In the UK, with Christmas approaching, hunger stalks the land. An ever-increasing number of lives have been reduced to misery and despair, yet for those at the top, 'austerity' remains nothing more than a word in the dictionary. It is proof that British society has now officially departed the 21st century and is heading at high-speed towards the Victorian era of the late 19th century. This is the only conclusion to be drawn from a week in which it has been revealed that food poverty – or hunger, to use the proper word – is a fact of life for millions of UK citizens. A recently published report by an All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Hunger and Food Poverty in Britain leaves no doubt that the UK in 2014 is governed by a gang of rich, privately educated sociopaths whose contempt for the poor is such that they are content to let them starve. That four million people in Britain are in danger of going hungry, that 500,000 children live in families that can’t afford to feed them, and that 325,000 adults do not get enough to eat, with close to a million forced to rely on food banks (charities set up to feed people unable to feed themselves), this is a despicable state of affairs. Moreover, the fact that it is happening in a country that presumes to lecture others on human rights and justice, this comes as yet more evidence of the rank hypocrisy and double-standards which lie at the heart of the British establishment. Compounding matters are the sentiments of Tory Baroness Anne Jenkin, which she expressed during the launch of the report. Calling to mind the infamous words of Marie Antoinette who, when informed of the desperate plight of the poor in Paris prior to the French Revolution, said, “Let them eat cake,” Baroness Jenkin postulated that one of the reasons was to claim that the poor do not know how to cook and should eat porrige . Tories breathtaking hate of the poor knows no boundaries. A recent excellent post by Johnny Void over at the void the report to food banks and their use has been published last week not surprisingly the real causes for food bank use's being on the increase were not spelt out. I'll allow Johnny to do this for us "The growth in foodbanks dates back to before the current Government weren’t elected as Labour’s decimation of the social security started to take its toll. The rise in benefit sanctions also began in the dying years of Labour’s administration as did the introduction of the despised Atos run Work Capability Assessment, designed to strip sickness and disability benefits from one million people. Alongside this Labour’s normalisation of workfare led to unprecedented numbers of people forced to work without pay. And then, as if things weren’t bad enough, along came Iain Duncan Smith. With him came the bedroom tax, council tax benefit cuts, the benefit cap, housing benefit cuts, freezes of almost all in and out of work benefits, more Atos tests for disability benefits, the scrapping of Crisis Loans and countless other measures all precision targeted at cutting the incomes of the poorest. Yet to read today’s report into foodbanks, you would think that none of this had ever happened. Instead it insists that the growth in people going hungry has been caused by market forces and modern economic conditions – beyond the control of us mere mortals and simply something that is here to stay no matter what we do. It is true that alongside the slow dismantling of the welfare state, the minimum wage stagnated whilst the cost of living for the very poorest soared. The erosion of social housing meant the greedy private rental sector became out of control as competition for low cost housing became ever more intense. As supermarket dominance grew, small local shops closed and with them out of the way food prices began to rise. A privatised energy market did exactly what you would expect from profit hungry vultures and fleeced their most voiceless customers, often elderly or disabled people who have no choice but to try and keep the heating on. Payday lenders and pawn shops started to appear on every high street. In some areas wherever you look you will see companies owned by the rich dressed up in pauper’s clothing as they attempt to wring every last penny of profit they can from the poor. All of these things are a direct result of government policies supported by all the major parties to allow the parasites of capital – landlords, supermarkets, energy companies and legal loan sharks – to run rampant in the name of the free market. But you won’t read that in today’s report either. Instead it proposes tinkering with the rules on prepay gas and electricity metres, vague and unspecific policies to slightly edge up the minimum wage and yet more patronising fucking garbage about cooking lessons and budgeting skills. Meanwhile calls for benefit payments to be made quicker are redundant when the government is planning a waiting period of up to six weeks for Universal Credit. This is not even mentioned in the report. They are not just willfully ignoring the cuts to social security that have already happened, but also the ones that are still set to come. The huge rise in the number of people who face benefits being stopped or sanctioned has mirrored almost exactly the growth of foodbanks. An ever more complex and draconian system now forces unemployed, sick and disabled claimants into pointless and irksome ‘work related activity’ for days, weeks and even months on end. Any breach of the rules means benefits are stopped. The report endorses this increased “responsibility to look for work”, calling it a “welcome move”. Instead it merely makes the same calls for improvements in communications with claimants and access to hardship payments that we have heard before. These bastards really think it is okay to leave someone in desperate poverty for missing a meeting with the Jobcentre as long as you write them a nice letter explaining why. This comes with a proposal for a condescending ‘yellow card’ warning system, which was first suggested by the Tory think tank the Policy Exchange. You can see their thinking on this one. Poor people like football after all, so it will be easy for our little minds to understand. Even this comes with conditions attached. Whilst they recommend claimants be given a warning with the chance to explain “their offence” before a sanction is applied, it suggests that this could come with an “additional requirement” to be met. This might as well be to go outside and hop on one leg for half an hour whilst quacking like a duck for all the good most Jobcentre requirements do to help people find work. Punishing people for their poverty is behind this idea, not helping them find jobs. Those behind the report are adamant that nothing can be done to halt the rise in the use of foodbanks. But abolishing benefit sanctions completely would slash the number of people going hungry in the UK overnight. As would scrapping the bedroom tax, council tax reform and halting George Osborne’s benefit freeze. In time honoured tradition however, politicians are clubbing together to say a functioning welfare state is over, time to move on and bring food parcels into the social security system. this. The growth of hunger in the UK did not happen by accident, it has been socially engineered. And the people who did that are the same vermin politicians who write reports telling us how terrible and inevitable it is." You can read the report at: http://foodpovertyinquiry.org/ with thanks to johnny void and his excellent blog over at http://johnnyvoid.wordpress.com/2014/12/08/savage-cuts-to-benefits-go-ignored-in-flagship-foodbanks-report-they-really-think-we-are-fucking-idiots/

BNP gathering support via food banks

An interesting development which many who keep a keen eye on the far right have seen as their next development looks to becoming reality. "British National Party activists are going door to door with mobile food banks in a bid to win support ahead of the local and European elections, The Independent can reveal. The far-right party has even produced a YouTube instruction video to teach volunteers how to build trust with voters in deprived areas by offering soup, teabags and washing powder on the doorstep. The BNP said the scheme had been “pioneered” in London last year and others had been set up in the Midlands and the North-West. Food stalls have also been set up in places such as Havering in east London. The tactics echo those used by the Greek far-right group Golden Dawn, which distributed food to the public at the height of the country’s economic crisis. The BNP leader Nick Griffin visited Athens in January at the movement’s invitation, as part of efforts to set up a Europe-wide coalition. ked about the tactic, BNP spokesman Simon Darby said the bedroom tax and the high cost of energy was driving the need for free food. “It’s beyond belief. People are really, really struggling to make ends meet. It’s no joke. It really is a genuine need for people,” he said. “It [giving out free food] is a very, very practical way to express sympathy with people. So many people are cynical about politics now. “It’s a way of getting people to trust you and bringing real meaning to politics … a way of embedding yourself in the community.” Mr Darby denied the food was a bribe and said it would be given to non-BNP supporters. The BNP wasn’t making a profit and he did not think it was against election law. The demonstration video uploaded to YouTube last week shows a BNP London organiser delivering food in Union Jack bags to an elderly woman. He encourages other activists across the country to engage in “door-to-door food bank activism”, saying all that’s needed is a “trolley and an assortment of tinned products”. An Electoral Commission spokeswoman said she had not heard of political parties giving out food in this way in the UK. “I assume if we knew it was going on, we would want to consider the matter and see whether anything needed to happen with it.” She said any donations of food worth more than £1,500 to local branches would have to be reported to the commission. There is a criminal offence called “treating” which specifically relates to giving food, but this requires “a corrupt intent” to influence voters. " From http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/bnp-accused-of-using-food-bank-handouts-to-win-support-9224780.html all this is a concern which we must be wary of. The far right will always use tactics like this to build support in working class areas. We must tackle them head on to root them out of our communities where we can.

Devastating food waste, capitalism will let you starve

first “All the world's nearly one billion hungry people could be lifted out of malnourishment on less than a quarter of the food that is wasted in the US, UK and Europe,” says Feeding the 5,000, a campaign group which is pioneering food recycling. Tesco – the UK’s largest supermarket – admits that 28,500 tonnes of food waste were generated in its stores and distribution centres in just six months. And this is only part of the 15 million tonnes of food which is thrown away in the UK each year. Is this a new and startling reality? Not for me i've known for a while now that many supermarkets who do not manage to sell their food in time before they go past their sell by date are thrown away. If capitalists cannot make a profit on a comodity they would rather scrap it than allow teh poor to eat for nothing as there is no profit in that. This is the bare face of modern capitalism for me. sold. At a basic level, we are alienated from the very substances that keep us alive. Instead of seeing the lettuce leaves, apples, meat, fish and bread as precious products developed from nature by our fellow human beings, most see them as little more than useful commodities. We have long lost the connection with the land and soil on which they grow and the people who tend the crops. We prefer not to think about how “free range” eggs are collected by cheap labour or how animals are kept and slaughtered. We don’t think about the end destination of plastic, polystyrene and packaging used to attract children to dangerous sweets and to make us buy more an But what is needed is something different. The for-profit market-growth model must always prioritise its shareholder returns. Yes, some capitalists are much more far seeing than others. Yes, they may even believe the greenwash they churn out through their clever publicists. But as the recent scandal with egg production in the UK shows, the bottom line for most companies is that they want to maximise their profits. One of the greatest scourges of humanity – hunger and malnutrition – could be overcome if humanity could open up an alternative path where eating, like heating, comes before profit. This is why i fight and believe in a communist future with socail production at its heart producing for peoples needs not profits that only a few benifit from. There is more than enough food and resources in the world if we didnt focus on producing for profit and market share.

Stand by for royal baby tidal wave

We are told we are moments away from the birth of the next royal in to Britain. Is this a time we should all celebrate and forget about our woes? No doubt the BBC, sky Channel 4 and the rest will have wall to wall coverage of this so called momentous occasion forgetting this is a regular every day event for many women and families around the world. The birth of another royal who the tax payer will no doubt fund does not cheer me up or do much to ease my growing anger at the rich. As millions in Britain and around the world struggle by with an estimated half a million last year using food banks do forgive me if I don’t jump out of my seat with my Union flag waving it profusely. I struggle to muster up any support for the royal family considering none of them have ever had to toil in their lives swanning about from country to country from royal engagement to another being a so called British ambassador like we are in desperate need of one of them. I will be thinking of the many struggling families with new born babies this week who will be wondering where the next meal is coming from and when they may next get work or if they can’t find a job if their benefits will be stopped. I am not a monarchist if you can’t tell already I’d be for a republic if only because it would be a step towards socialism and a true democracy which we are as far from today as ever it sometimes feels. Having a royal baby born live on your TV screens does nothing for me and I’m sure millions and millions will join me in sighing hugely at the absurdity of it all. Where is the real news you may ask What a good day to bury some bad news for the Tories. Now what was that about Lynton Crosby again?

Desperation crime on the rise in austerity Britain

As the economic crisis deepens for many people desperate times call for desperate measures. I’ve blogged about this before but it’s becoming more and more common. There are concerns that growing numbers of people, including young mothers, are stealing out of desperation, according to South Yorkshire Police. Its officers say shoplifters increasingly appear to be targeting essential items such as groceries, rather than luxury goods. There were almost 350,000 cases of shoplifting recorded by police in the UK last year and that figure has remained relatively steady over recent years. However South Yorkshire Police and a number of other forces say there have been marked increases in some more deprived areas. In Rotherham crime has increased by 28% in the last 12 months and the town's district commander believes that rise has been fuelled by the economic downturn. Baby food "What we are seeing is a small number of individuals - particularly young mums - who are committing crimes to feed their children," said Ch Supt Jason Harwin. "If you look at powdered milk or baby food it's quite expensive. "These are individuals that have had no dealings with the police in their lives and this is the first offence they've ever committed." Some people are getting so desperate these petty crimes are taking place” This is not people turning to crime for luxury goods or to make money out of these are people simply stealing to survive in society. A society which has abandoned them. No politician cares, no local authority cares, the police don’t care and others down their street may be taken in by the scroungers rhetoric the media and the government have embarked on to demonise those who receive benefits. Despite many who do receive benefits being in work just to make ends meet as their pay is so poor. This is the cruel cold reality of British capitalism making the poorest in society pay for a crisis not of their making. This is not just because we have a bunch of nasty Tories who don’t know what they are doing either. They may well appear to give that impression but believe me this goes far deeper. This is a crisis in capitalism and on a global scale. People who have had to steal to live will be criminalised for being poor. In the same report it mentions that this will have an affect on business and shops profits that is the real agenda here not that poor people are going hungry or can’t feed their babies but that shops are losing money. This is the true face of capitalism right before our very eyes. It’s time to end this system once and for all. 2013 will be a hell of a lot worse for many we could see a explosion of anger we don’t know at this stage which way that will manifest itself but I’m not ruling out anything. The anger is growing it is bubbling beneath the surface waiting just waiting. We as socialists feel that the best way to fight back is to join the labour movement and the organised working class to exert its power to stop austerity by starting with a 24 hour general strike with the threat of more if the go don’t back off. Quite simply a change is needed not just in government because labour who would likely come to power in the event of the government falling would be no better it would slow the cuts down but would not end the pain or misery at all. It’s time to fight for a workers government, a socialist government who will reverse the cuts and help people back to work using the 800 billion stored in the banks of big business sitting idle as they refuse to invest as do not see a profitable outlet. A 50% levee on this putting people into public works building new truly affordable council homes collecting the lost 120 billion in evaded tax would go some way to help. Of course this would just be the start, a very small start but a crucial one. We live in what is one of the wealthiest nations on the planet why do things have to be this way? They don’t. Let’s fight for change, socialist change today.

Guest post : Nancy Taaffe why i'm against food banks

This post below is a republishing of a fantastic post written by my comrade Nancy Taaffe who lives in London, a really well put piece highlighting the hypocrisy of Labur Mp's and those who think they are doing good but are not tackling povety at al. “When I feed the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor are hungry, they call me a communist” Helder Camara, Liberation Theologian Nancy Taaffe speaking out Every Saturday the Anti-Cuts Union has a stall in Walthamstow campaigning against cuts. The Labour Council passed a budget that has taken £65 million away from local services. I lost my job in a library, a job which I had for over 10 years. Children and young peoples’ services have been decimated by cuts, with some services, such as careers, being cut by almost a third. The three main political parties say it wasn’t their fault, that there isn’t any money but… …THAT’S A LIE. A report in The Guardian last year stated that there is currently £750 billion locked away in banks by the rich who see no immediate way to make a profit and so they just sit on the money and let it collect interest, £120 billion is squirrelled away through tax evasion and one thousand of the riches people in this country increased their wealth by £155 billion last year, enough to wipe out the nation’s deficit overnight. Meanwhile my local foodbank runs a stall in a market on a Saturday next to the Anti-Cuts Union stall where they ask the poor of Walthamstow to donate tins and toiletries to the destitute of Walthamstow. Food banks need to get political My annoyance at foodbanks is that we are not in debt, there is money to feed everyone, and we, the poor, shouldn’t pay for a crisis we didn’t create. I understand that foodbanks are often set up by well intentioned people who want to help, but I would question whether a foodbank without politics does actually help. Poverty is not like a hurricane or a flood, it’s man made and it can be man solved. I stood on the Town Hall steps for over a year asking Labour Councillors to set a needs budget and reject cuts but, to a man and woman they all voted for them. I stopped my local MP Stella Creasy (a big proponent of foodbanks) in the street (as I was losing my job) and asked her to make a public statement condemning cuts to libraries and children’s services but she just wouldn’t. Why? Because getting behind the consequence of cuts is far easier than fighting a preemptive battle….. if you are a career politician. When 3 million public sector workers took industrial action last November for decent pensions to prevent poverty in old age the same MP who stands behind the foodbank stall and campaigns against poverty wouldn’t support them. Strikes me, if your simpering and crushed by poverty then you get patronised and pitied but if you stand with a straight back and lean look and assert yourself through your trade union then you get condemned. I suppose it’s the hypocrisy I can’t stand, the Councillors who voted to sack me all support foodbanks. The smell of fresh tar My Liverpool Grandmother would tell me stories of the poverty her family endured in the 30′s, of picking up orange peel by the side of the road to gnaw on to alleviate hunger pains or sniffing the air when fresh tar was laid on the road because it smelt like food. But she also described the humiliation that many mothers had to endure at the hands of “charitable organisations”, how it was common to have to stand in a cold church hall with children clawing at your skirts and put your case to the parish fathers as to why you should have money to survive. Often these “parish fathers” were local businessmen and factory owners who paid poverty wages to their workers and were vicious if the workers went on strike for decent pay and decent working conditions. Rebellion against charity The rebellion that took place in the working class after the Second World War was not just a reaction to the horror of war but was a revolution against the humiliation of poor relief and welfare administration built on “charity”. I suppose if foodbanks get political and mobilised those they feed to get organised, then I could support them. If, like the unemployed movements of the 30s, they not only fed people but stirred them up to fight for revolutionary change, then I would get right behind them. If I could sum up my opposition to charity without politics I would have to do it with the help of the inimitable Oscar Wilde who said: “We are often told that the poor are grateful for charity. Some of them are, no doubt, but the best amongst the poor are never grateful. They are ungrateful, discontented, disobedient, and rebellious. They are quite right to be so. Charity they feel to be a ridiculously inadequate mode of partial restitution, or a sentimental dole, usually accompanied by some impertinent attempt on the part of the sentimentalist to tyrannise over their private lives. …Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue” …Long live disobedience! with thanks to http://thefoodbankers.wordpress.com/2012/11/30/guest-post-nancy-taaffe-explains-why-shes-against-foodbanks/

The poor and the hungry turning to crime to eat

In a shocking thing I’ve just read it tells a story of old people turning to crime and stealing just to feed themselves. This in one of the poorest areas of Britain which is still the 7th richest nation on earth. It’s an absolute disgrace that people in this country have to feed themselves via food banks. Shockingly many labour councillors cry crocodiel tears at the opening up of new food banks and even campaign for them as Stellar creasy MP for Walthamstow does but this is liberal moralising she has the influence and ability to oppose all the cuts condemn her local labour councilmaking more cuts and fight for a better system, but she doesn’t and this shows one exampl of the bankrupcy of the labour party today. I heard the other day that even in my town of Ware, in Hertfordshire a food bank has opened in the Salvation Army building serving roughly 200 people a week. This in a so called affluent area of the country austerity really is starting to bite and bite hard as winter sets in. This was the piece I found. It’s set in Glasgow but this could be anywhere in our towns and cities now as the rich get richer the poor getting poorer under this rotten capitalist system. We must get organised and oppose all cuts now. Glasgow shoplifters are being referred to food banks after a police chief confirmed more people are stealing groceries because they are hungry. But police said some of the thieves – including a pensioner caught trying to take three tins of salmon – needed help from charities rather than trouble from the courts. The revelation came after the Evening Times revealed shoplifting figures had jumped 14% in the city in 2011-12 as the recession bites. Chief Inspector Ann Hughes, of Maryhill police, said the demographic of shoplifters had changed “significantly” in the past two years. She said: “The profile of shoplifters is not consistent with what you would expect. Part of the change is the austerity we are experiencing. “We had an old man who had taken three tins of salmon. He could not afford to feed himself. “People are finding it really, really difficult. “It’s about making sure they are linked to the right agencies, food banks, etc. It’s very, very sad.” Police refer such vulnerable and starving thieves to social services, which can put them in touch with food banks. Chief Inspector Hughes is responsible for one of the poorest places in Scotland; her patch has seen significant increases in shoplifting since the recession. Despite this, and the ‘tip-of-the-iceberg’ TICGate arrests last week, the PM insisted again during PMQs that crime is down, side-stepped a question about police morale and reminded everyone how special and important we are, except of course when it comes to pay & conditions.

World food in crisis why a socialist plan is needed

here is more than enough food on the planet to feed everybody and for no one to go hungry but in this farcical system of capitalism a system based on meeting the profit margins of a few is far more important than meeting the needs of the many.

Even basic needs for the majority of people on the planet cannot be met under capitalism.

THE FINANCIAL speculators and hedge funds that so spectacularly contributed to the financial crisis resulting in the 'Great Recession' have now turned their attention to the international food market with devastating consequences.
These spivs are now trading heavily in the futures markets in food, speculating on prices and causing extreme volatility.
The UN Food and Agricultural Organisation reported: "Rarely have markets exhibited this level of uncertainty and sudden turns in such a brief period of time. World cereal production, which is currently put at 2,216 million tonnes, is 2% below 2009 levels, 63 million tonnes less than the forecast reported in June."
The UN has warned that food prices could rise by 10-20% next year after poor harvests and an expected rundown of global reserves. More than 70 African and Asian countries will be the worst hit.
Combined with the heat wave and fires in Russia and the floods in Pakistan, this has resulted in the prices of wheat, maize and many other foods traded internationally rising by up to 40% in just a few months.
Sugar, butter and cassava prices are at 30-year highs, and meat and fish are both significantly more expensive than last year.
Larry Elliot in the Guardian has argued that these massive increases are also due to speculators buying up farms in poor countries to profit from China's increasing reliance on imported food. This in turn increases poor countries' reliance on expensive imported food.
International food import bills could pass the $1 trillion mark and the speculators cannot resist getting their noses into a trough that size.
The 2007/08 food crisis saw food riots in more than 25 countries and 100 million extra hungry people. The UN fears similar for the next few years.
As Lester Brown, founder of the Washington-based World watch Institute, pointed out: "The poorest will suffer the most because they feel the effect of price rises directly".
With one and a half billion people globally struggling to get by on between $1 and $2 a day, capitalism has nothing to offer them - not even enough food in their bellies.
But while the world's poorest people are suffering, big business is enjoying a profits bonanza in global agriculture and its associated trade. In the advanced capitalist countries working people are also increasingly struggling with rising food prices.
Socialist nationalisation of the agribusiness multinationals and a democratically run, international plan of food production represent the only way forward for the poor and the working people of the world.


We also as socialists recognise the short term need for food banks but do not see them as the way to solve a food crisis for the poorest people in society.
We are not like new labour that earlier this year our comrades came in contact with one of their new rising stars of the party Stellar Creasy.
. This was recently underlined by an incident involving Stella Creasy, Labour MP for Walthamstow, and one of our comrades.
The Labour MP was collecting tins of food for the poor! When confronted on why she was acting like a Victorian 'do-gooder', collecting from the already poor for the destitute, and not fighting the cuts, she replied: "I'm just the MP -what can I do"!
. Little wonder that polls show that there is little faith in New Labour's ability to control the economy.


Its time for a socialist plan for producing and distributing food to the many taking away the profit motive and putting the need and meeting those needs back into the production of food.