Food Banks, I mean who needs a Food Bank?
Quite a lot of folk, it would seem.
It has been speculated that the The Trussell Trust provide somewhere in the region of 31% of the emergency food provision in the UK. These are their suggested figures and honestly I’d guess that they are inflated. But lets go with it. A but of maths results in the following:-
Provision at 31% = 3 Million
Household provision by other Charities and unofficial Food Banks at 69% (Say) 6 Million
(Under Estimated) Possible number of people needing basic support to feed themselves and / or their families 9 Million
Estimated number of Households in the UK (2021 estimate) = 19.3 Million
Percentage of households potentially using basic food assistance = (9 / 19.3 X 100) 46.6%
Over 46% of our population potentially can’t actually afford to feed themselves? Perhaps I need to check the maths here? No that seems to be correct and is most probably an underestimation. It doesn’t account for family helping out, friends lending a bit of money at the end of the month, people deciding which bills have to be paid so they can put food on the table and worry about the others a following month.
I can only realistically and honestly speak about our local area in York, although I know of other Charities in both Selby and Doncaster who are working in this field. In York we have, to my knowledge 12 independent providers who offer Food Bank services, run Street Kitchens, or offer discreet Free Food Delivery services. I volunteer for one of them and share with several others. There will be many more who I don’t know of.
So to me it seems that as supposedly the 5th most wealth nation we seem to have a bit of a problem? It would seem to me that the figures about our ranking as a supposedly wealthy nation are somewhat biased. There is a small percentage of the population who are incredibly rich, for whom it is beneficial to ensure that those in the greatest need are persistently suppressed and forced into ever greater poverty.
Perhaps that is the basic cause of the problem which we as a society should address without further delay? Just a thought.
References:-
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/apr/26/uk-food-bank-charity-reports-record-take-up-amid-cost-of-living-crisis
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/families
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_wealth
