Food accessibility, food availability, and food affordability, are major levers of power. Historically, access to food is so crucial to human survival that food, its abundance or scarcity, has been weaponised. I detest that recent addition to our discourse, but it is a word ugly enough to be unambiguous. A siege is about food and water; near starvation diets are the tools of the oppressor, a exercise in power over and against others. On the other hand, provision of adequate food and water, home and heat, are signs of power exercised for and on behalf of others. In an affluent and well resourced country, food shortage and hungry families are largely the result of political choices to do something else with Government revenue from taxes and economic activity.
Granted even some truth in that argument, food poverty in a country as rich as the UK is a key indicator of political decisions inimical of social justice. The normalisation of the Food Bank is one of the baleful achievements of several Governments in the past decade or two. Food poverty arises out of a failure of political imagination and a constraining of moral and social responsibility amongst those supposed to govern in the interests and for the welfare of every member of our society.
Social justice, and compassion are essential elements of a moral climate in which everyone has a chance to flourish. This article is saying something about a society that tolerates other people's hunger. And the deliberate policies that cause it. Here is a brief extract, but it is worth reading the whole warning about the assault on the dignity of people who live hungry in a land of plenty.
"at least 480,583, food parcels were distributed by the Trussell Trust and independent food banks during the 18-month period.
The Trussell Trust’s most recent figures on Scottish food bank use, taken from April to September 2018, found a 15% year-on-year increase which it linked directly to the rollout of universal credit. A similar increase was detected across the whole of the UK.
The situation is becoming more and more desperate, and it doesn’t take much imagination to see that this is happening in England and Wales, too,” she said. “We need action that deals with the root causes [of food poverty]. We need a social security system that is fit for purpose, and wages that are related to the cost of living.”
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