Daily Mail attacks foodbanks, donations surge

[Zaune]

The Guardian

Britain's biggest food bank provider has seen a surge in donations after a Mail on Sunday article criticised the charity for failing to run proper checks on people claiming food parcels.

Before the article, there had been about 250 public donations since the Trussell Trust launched its JustGiving page in late January. That jumped to more than 3,300, worth more than £36,000. Several donors cited the article as the reason for contributing.

"The Mail on Sunday story appalled me. This is the least I can do to apologise for their crime," said Anonymous after donating £10.

Another, Spitting Feathers, said: "I am incensed by the disgraceful article. Call this journalism? I don't. I'm not a Christian and admire the work being done by human beings for their fellow human beings. Thank you."

The Mail on Sunday said it carried out an investigation which found that volunteers did not carry out adequate checks on those who claim vouchers and one of its reporters obtained three days' food simply by telling staff at a Citizens Advice bureau – without any proof – that he was unemployed. Many claiming food parcels were also asylum seekers, the paper reported.

The newspaper also cast doubt on the trust's widely reported claims that almost 1 million people would use one of its food banks this year, up 163% on the previous year and part of a trend that has seen use of the trust's food banks increase tenfold since 2010.

Officials at the Department for Work and Pensions accused the trust of "misleading and emotionally manipulative publicity-seeking" and "aggressively marketing their services". But David Cameron has praised the provision of food banks, indicating the government's ambivalent attitude towards them.

Chris Mould, chairman of the Trussell Trust, told the Observer the prime minister had a constructive half-hour meeting with the charity in February. Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, had refused to deal with the charity, accusing it of scaremongering and advancing a political agenda.

Christian leaders have increasingly put pressure on the government to tackle food poverty and recently signed a letter demanding action from ministers and the archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, mentioned food banks in his Easter Sunday message.

"In this country, even as the economy improves, there is weeping in broken families, in people ashamed to seek help from food banks, or frightened by debt," he said.

As for the Mail on Sunday article, the trust said in a statement – given to the paper before publication – that they disapproved of the methods the paper used to get its story.

"The Trussell Trust feels that these undercover methods used to enter the premises of our voluntarily run food banks is an unacceptable attempt to tarnish not only the name of the Trussell Trust, but also the valuable efforts of the 30,000 volunteers who selflessly give up their time to provide a valuable service to people in real need"

Following the surge in donations, first reported on the BuzzFeed news site, the Trussell Trust tweeted: We're blown away by the response to the article on Twitter! Over £15,000 raised for Trussell Trust's Easter appeal #THANKYOU

Best news I've heard all week.

[Iroscato]

The war against absurdity continues apace.

[TheFeniX]

I'm confused at the point of the Mail's angle in this. Are they angry "non-deserving" hungry people might be getting food? Unless I'm way off base, charity food isn't exactly something people would stock-pile to avoid having to pay food bills. There's also a lot of shame involved in going to one, at least in America. I've had a few friends over the years have to deal with welfare and other types of assistance. It is about as fun as hanging around the DMV and is much more humiliating. I helped a buddy out in High School at a food bank and the food could be described as "decent," but it isn't exactly something I would go out of my way to acquire instead of buying my own food, unless money was an issue. People were happy to get food, but they weren't exactly fucking ecstatic about having to be there.

How exactly is some guy getting 3 days worth the food based on his word some kind of over-reaching scandal? Am I missing something? Or is that the point: The Mail is being stupid.

From the original article:

Nigel Baxter, lead organiser at Bestwood and Bulwell food bank in Deep Valley, Nottinghamshire, said: ‘Sometimes you get professional people on £60,000 salaries dropping in.

‘They have just been made redundant and feel embarrassed to be here. They still have the trappings of a good job, like Sky TV and iPhones, which are under contract, but they can’t afford to eat.’ Another volunteer revealed: ‘Some people just hoover up everything and even complain that the product is a cheap one and not the brand they want.’

Senior Tory MP Brian Binley welcomed this paper’s investigation, saying he had ‘always been very suspicious’ of the level of abuse in some food banks.

The way I see it, these banks likely don't have the resources to check into every sob story they hear, merely relying on a gut reaction to determine if someone is lieing. Even if they might be, unless there's some kind of black-market for these food items, is it really all that big of an issue if charity donations might be going to be who may not necessarily need them as much as the next person?

[Iroscato]

TheFenix: As you may or may not be aware, the Daily Mail is famous in the UK (and increasingly around the world) as being a thoroughly unpleasant, rabidly right-wing and deeply hypocritical tabloid rag dressed up and presented as a beacon of British journalism.
It's a terrible, terrible thing and therefore we like to make as much fun out of it as we can.

[Dalton]

As an American I am not surprised that a right-wing tabloid is chastising poor people for being poor.

[Borgholio]

Yeah it's their fault after all...ya know?

[Terralthra]

"Daily Mail reporter commits fraud on foodbank, gets food."

[Crazedwraith]

TheFenix: As you may or may not be aware, the Daily Mail is famous in the UK (and increasingly around the world) as being a thoroughly unpleasant, rabidly right-wing and deeply hypocritical tabloid rag dressed up and presented as a beacon of British journalism.
It's a terrible, terrible thing and therefore we like to make as much fun out of it as we can.

Quote A Bit Of Fry & Laurie: I like the Daily Mail. I prefer it to a newspaper.

[Darth Nostril]

The Mail isn't even any use for wiping your arse, totally non absorbent and the ink just smears all up your crack.
Frankly the only possible use is to get a fire started when you're burning a Mail hack at the stake.

[Zaune]

Oh, this just gets better and better.

David Cameron’s constituency office has come under fire for calling the police on the Bishop of Oxford and Reverend Hebden as they attempted to present him with an open letter on food poverty.

[madd0ct0r]

when he was busy writing an article for the Anglican Times no less!

The stats in that article are damning. So much this problem is of the goverment's own making.

[Steve]

This is really the mentality of most of the American right as well; that welfare benefits only the lazy who refuse to work and the people who give them benefits to get their votes. It's considered nothing more than bribing jobless layabouts to vote Democrat in the inner cities and using taxpayer money in the process. And that attitude easily spreads to all forms of charity.

The issue being that saying they "hate the poor" comes off to them as intentional scaremongering and labeling of their thoughts; in their heads they don't hate the poor at all and believe that the working poor will be just as benefited by a reduction to wasteful programs and thus taxes. Because, unfortunately, their common attitude is that if you're on welfare you're obviously not working, or not working hard enough to support yourself, and therefore you're being lazy.

This entire mindset falls apart when you consider employment is never at 100%, but they usually don't think of it that far, they're too busy fretting about how their taxes are going to go up to pay for lazy people to buy lobster with food stamps.

[Simon_Jester]

One thing I think is missing in American education (only one!?) is a serious, comprehensive effort to educate citizens in the basic facts about their own country's political, social, and economic organization. As in:

"This is how a courtroom operates. These are the most common causes of collapse in small businesses. These are the most common causes of death in America, and how to avoid them. These are the federal programs that exist to support you if you are poor, and what they do and don't do. This is the amount of money they offer."

The bare existence of something like this would do a lot to counter "welfare queen" myths.

[Tanasinn]

"Basic living" should be a multi-year mandatory high school course covering topics such as those and basic finances. Shit, a class immediately applicable to real life instead of rote memorization for the purpose of vomiting up answers on standardized tests? What a pipe dream.

[Elheru Aran]

I've always considered a class in basic parenting skills to be highly necessary in secondary education... That could be well integrated into something like that, though.

[Irbis]

Oh, this just gets better and better.

David Cameron’s constituency office has come under fire for calling the police on the Bishop of Oxford and Reverend Hebden as they attempted to present him with an open letter on food poverty.

It's their own fault, really. If they taped the third word on 'donate to food banks' headline over, they would have gotten king's greeting with Cameron standing ready to hand them handjobs and noble titles. They were just not savvy enough, is all

[Simon_Jester]

"Basic living" should be a multi-year mandatory high school course covering topics such as those and basic finances. Shit, a class immediately applicable to real life instead of rote memorization for the purpose of vomiting up answers on standardized tests? What a pipe dream.

Then again, a lot of the reasons people fail so hard at basic living is tied up with being:

1) So innumerate that they can't manage money because 'eight hundred' and 'four thousand' and so on all sound more or less the same to them and they don't think "wait, spending 800 a month means that my 4000-dollar account will be gone in five months!"

2) So illiterate that they don't pay attention to documents warning them about future consequences.

3) So bad at researching subjects that they cannot find out basic information, or that it simply doesn't occur to them to ever seek out any new knowledge beyond what they already know, unless someone is holding a grade to their head. Or...

So there's also an argument for emphasizing the "reading, writing, and 'rithmetic" aspect of school instruction. The problem is figuring out how to do it in a way that doesn't just pander to said standardized tests... while satisfying political demands for lots of constant feedback on how the schools are doing. It's that demand for feedback that's become the threat in some ways; by intruding on the system in order to observe it, you can break the system.

[Borgholio]

So there's also an argument for emphasizing the "reading, writing, and 'rithmetic" aspect of school instruction. The problem is figuring out how to do it in a way that doesn't just pander to said standardized tests

In college finance, we balanced checkbooks. No, really. That's an effective way of teaching mathematics, understanding cashflow, and practicing for real-world situations.