Being poor

About an hour ago, I read a post on Facebook about a Tory MP who thinks food banks are used by 'alcoholics, drug addicts and' - I can't remember the third set of people he named. I can't find it now - bloody Facebook newsfeed!

I wonder if this man is mentally separating people - into two categories in the 19th century style: the deserving and the undeserving poor. It also crossed my mind to wonder if this man had ever been anywhere near a food bank.

I am enjoying a decent old age, not because anyone paid me big bucks in my job, but because my parents gave me an education and I was able to make provision for myself. But when I was young, I was poor. And I'm here to tell you it takes a lot of backbone and resourcefulness to get by when you're poor. I used to reminisce with a friend, who had also been born poor, but in the country rather than Glasgow, that when things are that bad you don't actually need a few thou to manage. A tenner a week will do. And the desperate thing is, you just don't have it. She grew up in a family of 9 and saw her siblings do well in life, as she did. But they had a rough start. That was in the 50s. Nothing much has changed as far as I can see. And things are getting worse.

You need to be organised to survive poverty. Drug addicts and alcoholics tend to live chaotic lives and often don't survive. The people I've met at the food bank usually have no illnesses. They're just poor. Sometimes fallen on hard times. Sometimes poorly educated. Sometimes working part-time but not getting enough money in to keep their families. Some are ex-service people. A few are asylum seekers but not that many. The homeless don't appear. What would be the point in them getting cans and packets of food?

To access the food bank, for a start you need to know when you can go. Twice a year. You have to know which agencies will give you a 'pink' (actually, it's red) slip that entitles you to collect provisions. It can be a doctor or the social work department, etc. Then you have to get to the food bank. Usually on foot. I met one woman who had walked from Knightswood to Ibrox because she had no money for buses. She collected her bags of groceries and was about to set off to walk home when one of the volunteers offered to run her back.

You can turn up without a pink slip but all you'll get a day's provisions and a recommendation to go to one of the agencies for a pink slip.

I'm ashamed to be living in a society where one million people depend on food banks. And even more ashamed that there are politicians in this society who think they can dismiss people as 'unworthy' because they are poor. To repeat the old saying: people don't need a handout; they need a hand up.