Soup kitchen Britain

                                                Soup Kitchen Britain

“Are you all right mate? Are you hungry?” the woman with a foreign accent asked me as I was returning late at night. “Here I have some biscuits”

“No thanks I am fine” I replied as I walked on.

This begs the question of what is happening in the UK as regards to people's nutrition. Stories abound as to soup kitchens that have been set up and various charities are going around London distributing food. This is a new development as previously the social security system had ensured that nobody starved. Today however a combination of high energy bills, changes to the social security system and inflation have ensured that for some people having enough to eat is problematic.

Initially there was a problem of the poor eating healthy food. In many ways somebody on benefits would have the problem of eating healthily. For any mothers the solution was to buy the children chicken and chips which while being the cheapest food to buy is not necessarily the healthiest. In many cases eating healthily was the preserve of the salaried middle classes.

Today there is a general assumption that food poverty has returned. This is now defined officially as people spending more than ten per cent of their income on food. In some ways this is a generalization as many people are scrimping and scraping, and in most cases not eating very healthily.

Recently I as approached in my local supermarket and given a sheet by my local food bank detailing the things they would like me to buy. I bought a can of tinned vegetables and donated it to them later

“God Bless You Sir”

The woman beamed and thanked me profusely. To some extent prior to the economic crisis this would have been considered unlikely that anybody would be going to bed hungry. However the complexity of the social security system and the various attempts to change it have brought about the situation where people can often be left without a penny. The food banks are delivering food across the country to people in food poverty

However there is also a situation where many people are forced to rely on moneylenders who charge extortionate interest rates and take the payments often directly from bank accounts. In this case many people are forced to go without food. There can be a situation where people literally do not have enough to eat

Nearby where I work is a shop that is run by a charity that feeds the hungry. I was told by the woman in charge that they fed students with a nutritious vegetarian soup kitchen. Students are not people traditionally considered to be in this state as they are considered part of the privileged classes as their degrees will earn them more money at a future date. That does not translate into the now for the moment and many struggle to make ends meet. Due to the plethora of loans they now get from the government they have hard time paying all their bills and many are left in food poverty.

Normally it is rare to spot people looking emaciated. This is not a situation such as in Africa but the malnutrition can appear in many forms. A lot is made of the postcode lottery in this country where in some postcodes the services do not exist and in many cases it is difficult to get a crisis loan.

Previously soup kitchens were considered the preserve of alcoholics who spent their money on drink and then had none lefty over. The new users however are people who plainly do not have the money to spend on food, let alone alcohol. The experience of food poverty has come to stay in the United Kingdom despite the country generally regarding itself as having a cradle to grave social welfare system. In many ways the experience is new and as many as five million Britons are now considered to live in food poverty.

The issue of food price inflation has also contributed to the hunger crisis in the country. This can be seen in the working and non working alike. In most cases inflation is running rampant and in the public sector at least and most of the private sector as well wages have been frozen. This has resulted in a vicious circle in which living standards are steadily being squeezed. Many of the people relying on food banks and soup kitchens are people in work. Many jobs are low paid leaving the worker dependent on some input of state benefits.

All of these contribute to the idea of a third world Britain where things usually associated with images of Africa are appearing again in our streets despite the best efforts of a welfare state created so many years ago to provide cradle to grave social security.