There has been a lot of coverage over the last 24 hours about the fact that a million people have had to use foodbanks in the UK for a multitude of different reasons, but changes to the social security safety net appears to be the main ones.
I am not going to add to what has been written as an analysis of the issue, far better writers and bloggers can and will do that. My own view for what it is worth is that foodbanks are a national disgrace in any of the so-called G7 countries but esp. in the UK where certain people are drowning in money, including MPs.
No, this blog is about some of the comments I have read from people concerning this issue, I just can’t believe that people in this country, or more to the fact, down south are becoming so right-wing, it really should be a wake up call to all people in Scotland and the rest of the UK that there is a really frightening shift to the right down south, and as we know only down south really matters. But anyway here are some really disgusting comments from the very same people Labour say we can’t abandon to the right-wing government of the Conservatives:
Citizen Kane
Sadly there will always be genuine people who may have to use these but I believe that they are being abused. I wonder how many using these are immigrant welfare claimants. There should be a list of questions at the entrance:
Do you have subscription TV
Do you smoke
Do you take drugs
Do you drink
Did you come here to live off the UK welfare state
Ppuj
Maybe if these people are unable to afford to live, their benefits should be upped on condition they take some sort of reversible sterilisation tablet. This would stop them procreating and forming families, simply living generation after generation, on benefits. If they manage to get a job that supports them are given a reversal sterilisation tablet.
Mark_from_Manchester
The majority of people in the UK are overweight. 25% are obese.
NOBODY IN THE UK STARVES
So stop this soppy leftie clap trap and develop a basic understanding of human behaviour. Try and understand the difference between need and want.
People need to eat, but want to keep their car, fags, Sky or i-phone too.
Food banks help them do both, so there will always be a high demand for them.
xvs250
How many of these ‘starving’ recipients would be prepared to do a bit of I dare to mention the ‘w’ word work to pay for their hand-out? I am delighted that after years of political parties being afraid to talk about scroungers, it’s now wide in the public debate, and boy are the public sick of these people.
Tancredi
Two thirds of the population is overweight; it seems unlikely that all the slim ones are those using food banks. I lived on the office biscuits for two days before pay-day when I was 16, however, if free food is on offer, and people are not ashamed, who wouldn’t take advantage, in order to spend money on something else. Relative, rather than absolute need for many users.
I appreciate that I have been selective with the comments used, but believe me there are many more and I have no doubt that some people all over the UK will share those views but ask yourself the question, is this really the United Kingdom you want to remain a part of, I know I don’t.
grumpyscottishman.wordpress.com 
Reblogged this on pictishbeastie.
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The foodbanks are only a new manifestation of what has been going on for years. Back in the 80s, a friend who taught in a school in Glasgow shocked me by saying the school kept a store of second-hand shoes and clothes for children whose families couldn’t afford them, and another friend working in Edinburgh in the 90s talked about how he and other teachers bought breakfast cereal and milk to bring into school to give all the children, so as not to stigmatise those whose parents couldn’t afford to give them breakfast. These were probably examples of a ‘something for nothing’ culture so detested by some right-wing politicians like Ian Duncan Smith and Johann Lamont, but my friends realised they were essential or else children would suffer. The hatred of poor people mystifies me, and I can only presume it stems from our too close association with, and copying of, attitudes in the United States by which so many politicians seem to be dazzled. The UK is not OK, and if we don’t leave, these repellent views will spread to this country too.
Iain
Totally agree, we do what we can in my job for young people we work with who come in hungry, more ofthen that not buying things with our own money to provide even the smallest thing. The Tories have really pulled off the poor hating the poorest, they really have no shame and Bitter Together expect people to vote to remain in this horrid country.
Thanks for commenting.
Bruce
Is this really the United Kingdom you want to remain a part of? No.
But I suspect that many of the people commenting have no meaningful contact with anyone on benefits, so their opinions are formed from newspapers and TV. They saw Benefits Street, didn’t they?
This is how the BBC “fulfils” the inform part of their mission – except that I would call it peddling Tory Propaganda. Its one of the reasons I don’t have a TV or a TV licence.
bjsalba
I understand a lot of people don’t have the license, sadly I do and have to get the licence as I work for the local authority and you have no choice put to have everything up to date if you are an employee. The BBC are a joke though, they are just the state owned propoganda machine for the state and we are forced to pay for this crap. How their employees can push these lies are beyond me.
Thanks for commenting.
Bruce
I agree with you with regard to the fact that we have people who need to use food banks. Yes many people are over weight in this country, nothing to do with the fact that many people end up living on cheap food, that is now when they can afford it. A burger and chips 99 pence, or a nice dinner cooked with good ingredients. Some people have no idea what it is to be poor, and as I said elsewhere to be lacking in as many of the things that those of us who have made it, well till we are broke again, take for granted. There is poverty of imagination in Britain today, and I mean South of the Border, an inability to put themselves in other’s shoes. No idea that you have to be referred to a Food Bank, you do not just turn up and they give you food. Too many who have almost lost the will to live, no work and no certainty that it will ever turn up.Lets change things for the better in September, I say.