http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/07/03/food-banks-lord-freud_n_3538747.html?utm_hp_ref=uk Nice to see that we have such intelligent and in-touch-with-reality Lords looking after our Work and Pensions Department. The bloke sounds like a right fookwit, and I am being polite.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/07/03/food-banks-lord-freud_n_3538747.html?utm_hp_ref=uk Nice to see that we have such intelligent and in-touch-with-reality Lords looking after our Work and Pensions Department. The bloke sounds like a right fookwit, and I am being polite.

Yet another attempt to demonise those who are suffering the most as being to blame themselves.

I don't even think Thatcher's lot were as despicable and brazen as this lot.

JerryChicken wrote:http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/07/03/food-banks-lord-freud_n_3538747.html?utm_hp_ref=uk Nice to see that we have such intelligent and in-touch-with-reality Lords looking after our Work and Pensions Department. The bloke sounds like a right fookwit, and I am being polite. You're not wrong there. I watched him intently for days on end in the HoL when they were thrashing out the disability/sickness reforms and (just like the rest of them) the guy doesn't have a clue. I wonder how his great grandfather would analyse him and his idiologies. aka Lord Fraud in disability circles.

JerryChicken wrote:http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/07/03/food-banks-lord-freud_n_3538747.html?utm_hp_ref=uk Nice to see that we have such intelligent and in-touch-with-reality Lords looking after our Work and Pensions Department. The bloke sounds like a right fookwit, and I am being polite. You're not wrong there. I watched him intently for days on end in the HoL when they were thrashing out the disability/sickness reforms and (just like the rest of them) the guy doesn't have a clue. I wonder how his great grandfather would analyse him and his idiologies. aka Lord Fraud in disability circles.

On another thread I linked to an article the other day where he was saying that the bedroom tax was necessary to keep interest rates low.
Not just callous but economically clueless.
Fits in well with this current government.

I clicked on this link expecting to think yes he's an arrogant Tory nice guy but reading his actual quotes they make sense. He is saying there's no evidence on whether the increase has been driven by greater supply or greater demand. There might have been unmet demand before but there wasn't enough provision of food banks and now there are more food banks the demand is being met.

Also he is right in what he says about free food having an almost infinite demand. If you supply it, its likely that people will use it. Probably not the rich, but anyone from a lowish middle income downwards will accept free food if you provide it as it helps the weekly budget.

When Clement Attlee's government introduced the NHS and healthcare became freely available I expect there was a large uptake in visits to doctors, use of medicines etc compared to before. But this wouldn't be a sign that the country was getting less healthy.

Now this guy may be an arrogant nice guy that has said other obnoxious things, but on this I think he's just made a reasonable point.

You are aware that food banks are not drop-in centres where anyone can just rock up and load their trolley with freebies?

I think he and you are wrong.

I doubt people who were not sick suddenly started going to the doctors just because it became free. People may have visited because they could now afford to get ailments treated they may otherwise have let fester but I doubt any increased take up of treatment was simply because the (free) supply created a demand.

Likewise I doubt people who aren't struggling to make ends meet visit food banks. It takes a special kind of selfish git to cash in on such charity and this is what you and he are ignoring because it is NOT a simple case of supply and demand. There are social factors to consider not just economic.

To that end any suggestion people who don't need charity will access it simply because they can does imply in this case an automatic abuse of food banks is taking place. He must have a very low opinion of peoples morals if he thinks that is widespread.

Someone should physically drag him by his ear to the nearest foodbank, sit him down and let him listen to the reasons why people are visiting, from the people who are visiting. He might just realise it's got buggerall to do with marketing

Thats not quite what I mean - I was referring to unmet demand, ie where there is a demand but the supply isn't there to meet it or its too expensive so some people can't afford it. In the healthcare example, the free supply would increase uptake not because people thought "oh, may as well go to the doctors because its free" but because before people that were ill couldn't afford it anyway, so they were just doing without healthcare.

It's plausible that its the same situation with foodbanks. The figures being talked about here are the rise in uptake of food banks in the last two years, but we aren't told if there's been an increase in supply or not. It could easily have been the case that two years ago (remember this was already 3 years in to a major economic downturn) there were far more low income families that would have benefited from food banks than could be met by the food bank supply at the time. So obviously when you increase the supply you get more uptake.

Now if the supply is fixed, and before there was unused supply, that is now being used, that is a sign of increased demand. But we don't have figures on supply and demand so can't make that judgement.

Any idea Sally how you get to use a foodbank? You don't just pop in on your way home from Waitrose for that salmon steak you forgot from your list.