The Trussell Trust has launched a political campaign demanding an inquiry into the reasons behind the rising need, allegedly, for food banks.
Just a coincidence that it made its claims just in time for PMQ’s…Ed Miliband even quoting them in one of his questions….it says the figures were released to coincide with World Food Day.
The Trust’s executive chairman is Chris Mould.. a member of the Labour Party.
No doubt he’s happy then that his charity work is advancing the cause as The New Statesman admits:
Food bank figures reinforce Labour’s cost of living offensive
Curiously the New Statesman says this:
Labour has also used the trust’s findings to reaffirm the case for an energy price freeze.
But that was at 08:29…long before Labour could have responded to the press release.
Maybe the New Statesman’s article was written the night before with advance warning.
Not as if Labour hasn’t co-ordinated it’s PMQs with a charity before is it?
The Trust claims:
The Trust said that the problem of hunger in the UK is getting worse.
Rising living costs and stagnant wages are forcing more people to live on a “financial knife edge”, it said.
No mention that disposable income has risen…due to the government’s raising of the tax allowance threshold…something the BBC also doesn’t mention despite its enormous impact on income, whilst always mentioning Miliband’s new line of attack on ‘living standards’.
This might be an uncomfortable fact for Miliband and the BBC:
The foodbank is born
Whilst fundraising for Bulgaria in Salisbury in 2000, Paddy received a call from a desperate mother in Salisbury saying “my children are going to bed hungry tonight – what are YOU going to do about it”. Paddy investigated local indices of deprivation and ‘hidden hunger’ in the UK. The shocking results showed that significant numbers of local people faced short term hunger as a result of a sudden crisis. Paddy started Salisbury foodbank in his garden shed and garage, providing three days of emergency food to local people in crisis. In 2004 the UK foodbank network was launched teaching churches and communities nationwide how to start their own foodbank.
Apparently Chris Mould does quite well on charity:
Over the last two years (2011-12) Mould and his wife have received over £150,000 in wages, salaries, emoluments, consultancy fees and rent payments from Trussell Trust.
The rent payments go to Mould’s wife who bills the Trust for office space she leases to it in Salisbury.
Mould has also set up a private company, Chris Mould Limited, through which Trussell Trust has paid him more than £30,000 over the last two years, for “management consultancy” services.
A further sum of £1700 was paid last year to “Chris Mould Support”, “for the support of Chris Mould in support of his role as trustee”
Nearly two thirds (over £600,000) of Trussell’s income is currently being spent on staff wages, etc.
Since the Trussell frontline workers are all unpaid volunteers, that sounds like an awful lot of money on the wages bill.
It’s not clear why but Trussell also holds modest investments in the oil and gas industry, including stock in British Petroleum and Shell Oil.
and if you want to join in and help out by setting up a foodbank it’ll hardly cost you a thing:
Financial cost to church
Churches are expected to make a donation (currently £1500) towards Trussell Trust expenses supporting your project and a small annual donation towards the ongoing costs of the network support. Local project costs vary depending on the need to pay staff (P/T) and rent warehouse, cafe area. Estimated annual costs range from £10k to £18k including the donation above.
Non-Financial Requirements for church
- Small office with IT and telephone
- Food-store/warehouse – year 1 size of single garage
- Cafe area – enough for 3 tables with 4 chairs, and small kitchen/coffee making area.
- Initial team of about 12 volunteers, some with particular skills like fundraising, admin, coordination etc
- As a community project we envisage this being provided by partnering with other local churches so Christians are seen to be working together and no one church has to bear the burden.
This subject came up a few months ago and so I read up on it here is what the bBC isn’t telling you. (rather long)
PRESS RELEASE from The Trussell Trust
‘DWP HAS BROKEN AGREEMENT BETWEEN JOBCENTRES AND
FOODBANKS’ SAYS TRUSSELL TRUST AFTER YESTERDAY’S PMQs
Yesterday at PMQs David Cameron praised his overnment’s decision to allow Jobcentres to refer people to foodbanks yet in reality the DWP have broken the agreement between UK foodbank charity The Trussell Trust and Jobcentres.
The Trussell Trust, which has launched over 380 UK foodbanks, supports the Prime inister’s position that Jobcentres should be able to refer people in crisis to foodbanks ut says that in reality, the DWP has privately reneged on the agreement made between Trussell Trust and Jobcentres in 2011 without consultation with the charity.
Chris Mould says: ‘We’re delighted that David Cameron understands the importance of enabling Jobcentres to refer people in crisis to foodbanks but we are deeply concerned that some people within DWP are doing their best to block the agreement that makes this possible. The DWP entered into a partnership agreement with the Trussell Trust in 2011 which had been working reasonably well until recently but now there is real confusion within government about foodbanks and the agreement has been broken without consultation. We support the Prime Minister’s position that Jobcentres should refer to foodbanks and are keen to meet with ministers as soon as possible to reinstate the agreement that allows this to happen.’
Yesterday David Cameron stated that enabling Jobcentres to refer to foodbanks was ‘the right thing’, and something that Labour refused to do because of bad publicity yet Trussell Trust foodbanks across the UK are reporting that since April 2013 Jobcentres have stopped using the agreed referral process. Some Jobcentres are not referring people to foodbanks at all, others are sending people to foodbanks without a foodbank voucher and DWP have recently dropped the rule that Jobcentres must record the reason why a person needs the foodbank. This means that people are being sent by Jobcentres to foodbanks without an indication of the reason for the crisis so that The Trussell Trust cannot be sure that the need is genuine or keep track of the different reasons why people need emergency food.
Whilst David Cameron clearly sees the value in the partnership between foodbanks and Jobcentres, the DWP has decided to alter the referral agreement without discussing their decision with the Trussell Trust or considering the consequences for people in crisis or for foodbank volunteers.
Whilst referrals to foodbanks from Jobcentre Plus only represent a small percentage of overall foodbank referrals, The Trussell Trust is keen to make sure that all frontline agencies, including JCP, are able to refer people in crisis to emergency food support using the proper referral processes. This helps to ensure that people are not forced to go hungry in the UK. The Trussell Trust is also keen to meet with ministers to discuss the problem of UK food poverty and ways to reduce numbers of people turning to foodbanks as a result of benefits problems. The Trussell Trust is an a-political charity that partners with churches and communities to provide emergency food to people in crisis. It is not part of the welfare state and receives no government funding.
Information on The Trussell Trust Food bank.
The Trussell Trust is a Christian charity that launches foodbanks to provide three days nutritionally balanced non-perishable food to people in crisis.
Trussell Trust Foodbank users are referred by a frontline care professional such as a doctor, social worker, CAB or schools liaison officer. Over 18,000 frontline care professionals across the UK refer clients to Trussell Trust foodbanks, 50 percent of which are statutory agencies.
Foodboxes contain at least three days’ supply of non-perishable foods such as tinned fruit, vegetables, meat and fish as well as pasta, cereal, UHT milk, sauces, tea, long-life juice. The Trussell Trust works with dieticians to ensure that foodboxes are nutritionally balanced. Over 90% food given out by foodbanks isdonated directly by the public. In 2012-13, 3,492.44 tonnes of non-perishable food was donated.
As well as providing emergency food, foodbanks also signpost clients to other agencies able to help resolve the underlying cause of the crisis.
Foodbank clients receive up to three consecutive foodbank vouchers (each voucher can be redeemed for at least three days food), although longer term support is available at the discretion of the foodbank manager.
Between 1 April and 30 June 2013, over 150,000 people received three days’ emergency food from a Trussell Trust foodbank – 200 percent more than the same period last year. Of those helped during the first quarter of the 2013-14 FY, 52 percent were referred to foodbanks by frontline care professionals due to problems with benefits. During the same period last year, 43 percent of referrals were due to benefits problems.
In 2008-09 Trussell Trust foodbanks gave three days’ emergency food to 26,000 people nationwide; in 2009-10: 41,000 were helped; in 2010-11: 61,468; in 2011-12: 128,697; in 2012-13: 346,992.
http://www.thebestof.co.uk/local/epsom-and-ewell/community-hub/blog/view/dwp-has-broken-agreement-between-jobcentres-and-foodbanks-says-trussell-trust-trusselltrust
“Panorama asks are pensioners are forced to choose between food and fuel* thanks to Brown-approved EU policy? Should the license fee be lowered to save their lives? Or should we just send them to an NHS unit run under Labour’s Arbeit Macht Frei programme?”
(* Not including P Hain MP, thank God, who claims winter heating oil out of expenses for his Welsh cottage.)
I know of a group of elderly but quite well-off people who drive into town, park their nice cars round the corner, and raid the foodbank. The attitude is, “Why not? We’ve have the time. It’s something to do. Afterwards we go to Waterstones and have a coffee and a bun.”
Seems remarkable that no-one screens them to ensure scare resources only go to those in need. What does one need to produce to get food from these places?
About five snotty-nosed sprogs by different fathers.
Really!! I think you may have just made this up!!
“Care professionals such as doctors, health visitors, social workers, CAB and police identify people in crisis and issue them with a foodbank voucher. Foodbanks partner with a wide range of care professionals who are best placed to assess need and make sure that it is genuine.”
So who are those you “know” getting the eligibility vouchers from?
Where’s that quote from? Are all foodbanks signed up to that? Or can anyone set up a foodbank and give it to whom they please?
Uncle Bup – I was going to take issue with Albaman’s latest ex-bunker foray to make accusations on nothing to do with BBC Bias (unless the quote, which seems to have ‘appeared’ as Roland D notes, is from them) on what he ‘thinks’ ‘may’ have been made up by a vaguely alluded to ‘you’ he has conjured up, but really as a response to his efforts of late that image is indeed much better.
One imagines half the BBC Scots cubicle flower bed are on route to follow up on how he came to be in this predicament.
Maybe he was looking for the latest copy of the BBC Editorial Guidelines, or Lord Hall Hall and Patten’s copies of Pollard, Rose, etc?
Mystery solved:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-19790191
You say “I think you made that up” then provide a quote with no source whatsoever. Considering that you usually manage at least some highly selective, often innuendo-based link to back up your claims, the fact that you didn’t include ANYTHING for this one suggests that you’re lying.
Pot, meet kettle.
Source:
http://www.trusselltrust.org/how-it-works
Perhaps you can now evidence the “innuendo-based” links you claim I have used in the past.
OK, first please now ‘evidence’ what you ‘think’ someone ‘may’ have made up.
Or is this a one way deal again?
While you are here, do you think that beyond landing the licence fee payer the compo bill, the personal career consequences to all BBC staff who ‘knew’ such as McAlpine was what they wanted him to be, but didn’t know Savile was what they dare not ponder, have been adequate thus far?
Or Mitchell. Or…?
Seems you get very excited about evidence until it errs in directions you don’t fancy.
This, as you often complain, is a site about BBC Bias, yet you vanish when it is nailed, yet return, scampering through the cherry groves of tribal political irrelevance, at the drop of a drive-by opportunity.
That does rather fall under ‘trolling’.
Very BBC, true.
I took this from Pounce’s initial post on this subject – “Trussell Trust Foodbank users are referred by a frontline care professional such as a doctor, social worker, CAB or schools liaison officer.”
It seems to be a quote from the Trussell Trust itself – and indeed may be drawn from whatever source Albaman is referring to….. but it is Trussell Trust’s words, not an independent source.
However, the second part of the paragraph containing the words quoted above is quite interesting …. namely
“Over 18,000 frontline care professionals across the UK refer clients to Trussell Trust foodbanks, 50 percent of which are statutory agencies. ”
I wonder who the other 9,000 referrers are, and how are they authorised to issue vouchers – indeed, if they aren’t statutory agencies, how does anyone know the processes they use to issue vouchers – and whether they even use a voucher process…. or does anyone just turn up and quote the name of ‘someone’ who ‘told them they qualified’ ?
Heaven forbid members of the Labour stay-behind army (Copyright Spectator commentator!) placements at DWP are causing a exacerbating a problem that if played well would look very bad for the coalition.
The key point mentioned above is ‘there’re there so we’ll use them’.
Do you remember when the tree huggers used to say “the more roads that are built mean that more cars will use them” I think that this is the same with food banks.
The poor people will use them and spend their monies on fags, booze, Sky, new TVs etc etc
Exactly. And yet this obvious point is NEVER EVER mentioned by the BBC in any of their daily foodbank stories.
If you give away free food people are going to use it. It doesn’t mean they would starve otherwise.
OT-ish, but at supermarket yesterday were a few folk from some Dog Charity advocating folk buy dog food and donate it into a special standee located in the foyer.
I could not help but wonder at the logic of people being conned into paying retail on top.
Nice work if you can con it.
Is there a charity or self-help network for dogs that are held captive by feckless boozehounds for begging purposes?
If so, I`ll happily invite them all round for a nosh up this Christmas?
Without some “fitness to hold a dog captive” license-we should assume that half these owners/grifters-are holding hounds in slavery.
Release the hounds!…where is PETA?
How often do you see such a streetsuck with a doggie bag for his pets poo?…more likely they`re trying to sell it as the Big Issue, so I find!
Decided to do a search and see which one, and guess what, they have a PR guru…
http://image.slidesharecdn.com/1-4pr-091013062236-phpapp01/95/slide-1-728.jpg?1255433146
As a matter of interest, these food banks… are they operating on the most cost effective provision of essentials at cost too? Or are some folk along the way doing quite well out of marking up, covering ‘admin’, PR, etc?
http://www.trusselltrust.org/media-coverage
I wonder if this is just one working hard, volunteers, or maybe a team of 147?
Possible answer:
‘…Nearly two thirds (over £600,000) of Trussell’s income is currently being spent on staff wages, etc.
Since the Trussell frontline workers are all unpaid volunteers, that sounds like an awful lot of money on the wages bill.’
Foodbanks? Vanity project for wealthy left-wingers. A while back a bunch of SWP-type student lefties occupied HSBC bank offices in a PR stunt to demand they set up “foodbanks”. We will see where these types have a personal bank account, or do they deposit their student loan in a foodbank?
Narcisism of The Left.
I’m sure all PETA memebers are busy protesting at those halal slaughterhouses where you can hear the speech of an animal scream.
I read on an American new site that last week, during the government shutdown, the computer that doles out food stamps went offline, and benefit claimants were unable to obtain their share. WalMart, that demon of capitalism, opened one of its stores and publicised that food stamp claimants would be allowed to obtain their foodstuffs. A witness stated that inside 90 minutes it looked as if a tornado had hit the store. All the store’s shelves had been totally stripped in that short time.
Starving? No. Greedy? You betya!
“the more roads that are built mean that more cars will use them”
———————————————————————
Although I disagree with the huggers on this – car use usually a function of gdp growth.
The M6 Toll road is always empty when I’m on it. Makes me feel like the President of North Korea
ps needless to say I disagree with the huggers on everything.
I tell you what – if I find my church is giving £18k a year to the Trussel Trust for these guys to claim so much off it, I will stop donating to the church. The charities commission should look into this and publish, and hopefully prosecute when a charity is being used as a wealth-creation vehicle for a family with political ambitions.
Nice idea but I don’t think the prisons could cope with the influx.
Maybe if they freed the license fee defaulters…..
The last Labour government loosened the rules barring charities from engaging in political campaigns. As it appears that the higher echelons of these same charities have been infiltrated by Labour party members and their affiliates, the law change was part of a deliberate attempt to co-opt well known and respected charities to work on behalf of Labour.
Everything the Left touch they corrupt.
I would question the use of the term charities
,How many of these ‘charities’ get the majority ,or any thing like, of their funding from people putting their coppers in a tin. Or little old ladies sending postal orders every pension day?
Most of them seem to derive most of their funding from government grants of one sought or another and ultimately, the tax payer
It is an example of how the bourgeois liberal left has entrenched its self into the fabric of the state in ways that are both unaccountable and irreversible .
For the time being.
“In 2004 the UK foodbank network was launched” – bang in the middle of the last long almost bankrupting Labour catastrophe!
Like turkeys voting for Christmas, there has been and always will be huge consequences of stupidly voting Labour.
How about a campaign that any charity or public body that is shown to use itself for political purposes then it is to be closed. Then use that as a reason to shutdown the bBC.
What, close food banks down and risk loads of starving, Monster Munch and alphabet spaghetti-loving lefties desperately resorting to cannibalism and eating each other?!
I wouldn’t be able to sleep.
Even my local news program (Points West) was running with the Foodbank story, their synopsis was that it was all the governments fault, bedroom tax, job centers coming down hard on claimants etc etc.
High time vouchers were given for the essentials (food, heat etc) in lieu of cash that gets blown on fags,tattoos, Sky TV, Pit Bulls and Adidas trainers.
Count yourself lucky-we got Vicky Pryce blaming men for everything on Solent!
Do they get both national AND local license to lie and to prove-yet again-that crime pays if you`re one of the Golden Bores?
Any sign that the BBC DON`T use tie ins to saturate us with their Golden Showers like Huhne and Pryce…Mullard and Hilda Baker without the songs!
When I want Vicky Pryce opinion on jails, women or nasty blokes…I`ll ask Nana Mouskouri myself-much more credibilty on all things moral or Greek!
LOL Priceless!
….But at least Nana Mouskouri was strangely seductive. Huhne seems to like ’em butch see his new squeeze Colin Trimmingham …
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/11/23/article-0-0DFB9CBE00000578-521_224x423.jpg
And that bit of crap on the way up to the news at 8am on Toady confirmed the “narrative du jour”.
Walthamstow High St…payday loan shops…and none of them want to talk to the BBC cub sniffing around sensing hurt and pain amongst the poor.
Maybe that`s because they are actually WORKING…trading if you will…and the BBC don`t grasp it at all.
Isn`t all work mere bitching bellyacing and crapola(BBC)-and mere shooting the brezze(not that we want guns on our streets of gas and good intentions!)
Anyway our payday ponce pimps away-the poor apparently needed credit…but it never occured to ask what for?
Pay off Mr Big?…mobile top up?…skins for the homies?…petrol siphin to create a shrine to Mr Duggan(PBUH)?
Nah, we`ll never know now…so let`s all say that there`s another potato famine due in Walthamstow sometime soon.
Bonnets?…shawls?…nosegays for the new Frys and Stopes`s?
Elizabeth?..Stephen?…must be related!…cue onion tears please camera 1….
I heard that report as well. I also noted that the interviewees were a bit hesitant to specify what, exactly, they required the money for. The closest to getting an explanation was from a young lady (it sounded like) who sort of said she ‘needed it to pay her bills’. I am not sure if it was the same young lady who later declared that, far from being put off by such a horrible suituation, she was thinking of borrowing maybe another £400 that day.
it’s sort of a stupid question they ask, really…. have you taken out a ‘payday loan’, and did you like paying it back after you’d spent the money you borrowed ? Who on earth is going to tell them anything but the answers they got ?
“Who on earth is going to tell them anything but the answers they got ?”
As I could have told you, and in fact did so– fifty bloody years ago now, innit?
Preeeeeecisely.
Nice combo. 🙂
For a number of years my late mother was administrator of a small charity in which a local 17th century benefactor had set up a trust to provide the poor people of the parish with a joint of meat every Christmas. But there was no definition of ‘poor’ – they only had to prove that they lived in the parish – so every year, the majority of the (fairly affluent) village turned up to get their free meat. Some even complained if the butcher had run out of beef steak so they had to take lamb chops instead.
Outrageous, but on the whole the smaller the charity the less the corruption.
We get the ‘food bank’ stories once a month or so on Look North. They are pretty much all the same , we have an interview with a nice middle class worthy type who runs the ‘food bank’ showing us their little office and a very small store room with tins on shelves (barely enough to feed a family of 4 for a month). We then get told tales of woe and how it is all the fault of the cutz ™ and the Tories. From time to time we get to see a ‘food bank’ customer who is always a nice clean middle class type person who tell us that without it her children would starve.
The weird thing is at the end of the report there are no details on how to contribute to the ‘food bank’ (all other charity stories get this) and no number to call to get the food if you are a starving victim of the evil Tory cutz.
Its almost as though its all made up !
My experience with these type of charity donations is that the charity demands with due blackmail from the supermarket who claims the credit for the donation, BUT then duly blackmails the supplier with de-listing from said supermarket if they don’t provide the demanded products and it is the supplier who bears the real cost.
Goebbels & Riefenstahl would be proud – ‘Triumph Of The Swill’
Apologies if I’m repeating the gist of previous comments, but aren’t we the fattest nation in Europe?
I seen to recall the epidemic of ‘cardboard box cities’ that graced our streets the last time the Tories were in power – and which magically vaporised when the glorious Blair junta took power.
History repeats itself. Especially when the BBC writes the scripts.
Ah! The Rough Sleepers Scandal.
When the poor souls vanished there were rumours of camps being set up in the countryside around Bicester to ‘house’ them – turned out they were for ‘asylum seekers’ in reality …
I heard a Labour Minister declaring that they had solved the Rough Sleeper problem and had done a survey that showed a remarkable decrease in the numbers. Unfortunately, for her, it was also let slip that they only counted those who were asleep at the time the count was done. So when a Labour researcher, Bobbies in tow for protection, blundered round a squat she only counted those who did not wake up !!!
Why anyone believes a word Labour says only Scott knows!
“Who on earth is going to tell them anything but the answers they got ?”
As I could have told you, and in fact did so– fifty bloody years ago now, innit?
Given that it is accepted that the benefits system is wide open to fraud, are we seriously expected to believe that the Foodbank operation is any different?
Read the Trussell Trust mission statement. They could have copied and pasted it from the Starbucks annual report.
‘In the last 12 months alone we have launched over 150 foodbanks nationwide. The exceptional need, a growing awareness of foodbanks and our highly effective social franchising model has enabled The Trussell Trust to launch three new foodbanks per week, compared to two per week in the previous year.’
Yadda yadda yadda.
Driven by people starving because of the nasty tories or driven by the charity’s own desire to expand.
You be the judge (and don’t expect the BBC to help you).