Vox Political Puts IDS Right about the Growth of Food Banks in Germany

Mike has another piece over at Vox Political, correcting IDS’ comments about the rise of food banks. Returned To Unit, or the officer formerly known to his men as ‘T*sser’, does not believe that people use them because they are starving. He, like other members of his wretched party such as Edwina Currie, believe people use them because they are there. On the Sunday Politics this weekend he tried to justify his view that poverty and food banks are not connected by citing Germany’s example. Germany, said RTU, also had food banks, but its benefits system was more generous than ours.

Yes, it does. But a report by the LSE showed that the biggest growth in food banks on that side of the North Sea occurred in 2005, when Gerhard Schroeder introduced a series of cuts to their welfare system. This explains why the editor of the German equivalent of Private Eye, when he appeared as a guest on a chat show a few years ago, made it very clear that he had no respect for Schroeder. I think he called him a ‘Kn*b’, or something similar. Schroeder was the leader of the SDP, the German Socialist party, and has been hailed as ‘the German Tony Blair’. This shows the pernicious and detrimental effect Neo-liberalism has had on countries all over Europe and the wider world, and on the left-wing parties that have adopted it in the wake of Thatcher and Reagan.

And even with the Germany’s comparatively generous welfare system, it can still be extremely difficult making ends meet if you’re poor and unemployed. One of the papers over a decade ago carried a report on poverty in Germany, describing an official meeting of the unemployed and their families. Not surprisingly, they had the same kind of problems the poor and jobless face over here, such as purchasing food and clothes, especially good shoes for their children.

So IDS is categorically wrong about the use of food banks here in the UK and in Germany not being linked to poverty. Mike takes the view that IDS’ view is due to his own stupidity. That’s possible. One columnist in the I newspaper described him as the ‘thickest ex-guardsman I have ever met, and that’s saying something’. I think it’s something far more malicious. Smith is stupid, but even he recognises that people are using food banks from poverty. Hence his department’s extreme reluctance to publish any details regarding the deaths of the 70 people, who died after being declared fit for work, or who in despair took their own lives. He is, however, hoping that the majority of the British public will be too stupid, or stupefied from the constant right-wing propaganda from the press, not to believe him. You can hear the right-wing chorus now: ‘But IDS said that the Germans have food banks too, and their benefits system is much better! It must be true. And the people using them aren’t poor, they’re just scroungers.’

It’s a lie, and the people repeating it – IDS, Currie, and their friends in Sun, Mail, Express, Times, know that. Don’t believe them.

Tags: Daily Politics, Edwina Currie, Food Banks, Gerhard Schroeder, Iain Duncan Smith, Neo-Liberalism, Private Eye, SDP, The Daily Mail, The Express, The Sun, The Times, Vox Political