British welfare system resorts to Christian charity

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Take a look at this, everyone:

Job centres around Britain are to give food vouchers to people experiencing severe financial hardship.

The vouchers, which can be redeemed at foodbanks run by the Trussell Trust charity, will be handed out by staff at Jobcentre Plus (JCP) branches.

One voucher can be exchanged for three days' worth of food.

The scheme will be piloted in Salisbury and Gloucester from 4 January, before expanding across England, Wales and Scotland in April.

It will run in Jobcentre Plus branches that have a foodbank in the surrounding area.

...

A person experiencing severe financial hardship, caused by issues such as benefit delays or being ineligible for a JCP crisis loan, will be given a voucher that can be exchanged at a trust foodbank for three days' worth of food.

An individual can be given three vouchers in a row during one particular period of hardship, and can be helped three times in a year, meaning a total of nine vouchers a year can be given out per person.

...

The Trussell Trust is a Christian charity and its staff and volunteers arrange collections of food.

They ask supermarket shoppers in each foodbank area to donate an extra item from a predefined shopping list - then distribute the goods by means of vouchers.

The vouchers are distributed by "statutory professionals" such as doctors, health workers, social workers, the Citizens' Advice Bureau and probation officers among others.

Some 41,000 people were fed by 44 foodbanks last year, and the trust estimates that 35-40% of them had problems with benefits.

When the first foodbanks were set up in 2000 in Salisbury, employees of the local JCP were initially one of the main distributors of foodbank vouchers.

When the charity's foodbank franchise scheme rolled out around the country in 2004, other JCPs also began to adopt the process.

...

Mr Mould said: "We wanted to work with the job centres again because tens of thousands of people across the country are not getting paid their benefits on time.

This is fucking shameful, and nothing but a step backwards as far as looking after society's most vulnerable is concerned. What's next? Bringing back the workhouses?

[IronEastBloc]

You talk as if the system before it (namely, capitalist welfare that kept people dependent on the capitalist corporatist state, barely meeting their needs) was a step forward.

get a grip. this makes no difference in the grander scheme of things. You just want to complain about it because Christians are involved with it. so typical of anarchists and trotskyists. Instead of saying "we should abolish capitalism to make charity obsolete and unecessary, so that all needs are met through the state" you focus on the stupid details like how the charity system is run and by what religion, when there should be no charity system in the first place.

you're an anarchist (or a trot) aren't you? so why should this bother you to begin with? shouldn't you applaud this seeing as this is decentralizing the bourgeois state? I'm confused by your position.

my point is, I guess, that both systems (The previous and current) are shit and fail to meet the needs of working people, so I don't see what a minor detail such as being ran by christians really changes.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

You talk as if the system before it (namely, capitalist welfare that kept people dependent on the capitalist corporatist state, barely meeting their needs) was a step forward.

Why should people have to resort to Christian charity because the DWP can't do it's fucking job?

get a grip. this makes no difference in the grander scheme of things. You just want to complain about it because Christians are involved with it. so typical of anarchists and trotskyists. Instead of saying "we should abolish capitalism to make charity obsolete and unecessary, so that all needs are met through the state" you focus on the stupid details like how the charity system is run and by what religion, when there should be no charity system in the first place.

People can't get the essentials of life with the shitty literature of groups that hardly anyone has heard of. So in the meantime, until your glorious Revolution lead by the Party, what do you think people should be doing? Begging for more from the charities? Or putting pressure on the government to clean up the mess they helped to create?

you're an anarchist (or a trot) aren't you? so why should this bother you to begin with? shouldn't you applaud this seeing as this is decentralizing the bourgeois state? I'm confused by your position.

Because this is yet another facet of economic liberalism - absolving the State of any responsibility to those under its care by increasing the role of private charities.

my point is, I guess, that both systems (The previous and current) are shit and fail to meet the needs of working people, so I don't see what a minor detail such as being ran by christians really changes.

It's not a "minor detail". People aren't getting money, they're getting vouchers which they can exchange for a parcel of pre-selected food.

Also, it's fucking obvious that you have never experienced the degeneration of the benefits system in the UK - they go out of their way to make it as difficult as possible to actually get what you're entitled to, they treat everyone with the suspicion that they are scroungers and frauds no matter what your personal situation may be, and they drag their feet as long as they possibly can.

One of my friends has applied for statutory sick benefits, and the way they have been treating him has been nothing short of fucking disgusting. Even their own selected doctor examined my friend and confirmed that he was ill, yet they still stonewall him despite complaints. The staff at the local office have been unhelpful, in fact it would not surprise me if they have been trained so.

In fact, even before the current regime of swingeing cuts, the British benefit system is screwed up enough to drive a young mother to suicide.

[IronEastBloc]

Also, it's fucking obvious that you have never experienced the degeneration of the benefits system in the UK

I instead live in the USA, and I can tell you that Americans here don't have any system of benefits at all unless you're either pregnant, under a certain age, or recently unemployed. Be lucky you at least have benefits. us out here have to fend for ourselves.

[IronEastBloc]

Why should people have to resort to Christian charity because the DWP can't do it's fucking job?



People can't get the essentials of life with the shitty literature of groups that hardly anyone has heard of. So in the meantime, until your glorious Revolution lead by the Party, what do you think people should be doing? Begging for more from the charities? Or putting pressure on the government to clean up the mess they helped to create?

It's not a "minor detail". People aren't getting money, they're getting vouchers which they can exchange for a parcel of pre-selected food.

One of my friends has applied for statutory sick benefits, and the way they have been treating him has been nothing short of fucking disgusting. Even their own selected doctor examined my friend and confirmed that he was ill, yet they still stonewall him despite complaints. The staff at the local office have been unhelpful, in fact it would not surprise me if they have been trained so.

the "appeal to emotions" fallacy changes nothing--I stand by my belief that, the more you increase your reliance on the capitalist state, the more power you entrust to it. I feel bad that many suffer from lack of support, but at the same token, I don't see this as a step forwards or step backwards--I see it as just a step. you see this as some major blow to a system that was crap in the first place.

[RadioRaheem84]

Our welfare system in the US was long ago reformed and you have to be nearly destitute to get anything from the government.

The GOP instituted "compassionate conservatism" which gave charity organizations, mostly Christian, the task of welfare.

I've been seeing this a lot lately though. There is this sickening Carnegie-ish mentality floating about that welfare is best left to charity organizations usually funded by rich men.

Everything development wise should have a market oriented bent.

The welfare state is going the way of the dodo. People should fight.

[IronEastBloc]

The welfare state is going the way of the dodo. People should fight.

I think we should fight to desolve the welfare state completely. fuck welfare. what we need is a right to work, a right to an income, a right to housing, a right to food, etc.

as to those folk who say "we'll never achieve that" are the bastion of quitters and quitter talk. I wonder how far the Old Bolsheviks would've progressed should they have whined and whimpered all the way to the Winter Palace.

[RadioRaheem84]

the "appeal to emotions" fallacy changes nothing--I stand by my belief that, the more you increase your reliance on the capitalist state, the more power you entrust to it. I feel bad that many suffer from lack of support, but at the same token, I don't see this as a step forwards or step backwards--I see it as just a step. you see this as some major blow to a system that was crap in the first place.

But Iron, the gains were from class struggle.

They didn't give us anything. We tore it from their greedy claws and they conceded.

Sure it should not be seen as the ultimate end all, but it should also not be seen as something we should lose because the State wants to redistribute that money upwards.

Class struggle is essential and bound up in the welfare state. It's demise should be met by revolution not by bourgeois deconstruction.

[IronEastBloc]

But Iron, the gains were from class struggle.

They didn't give us anything. We tore it from their greedy claws and they conceded.

Sure it should not be seen as the ultimate end all, but it should also not be seen as something we should lose because the State wants to redistribute that money upwards.

Class struggle is essential and bound up in the welfare state. It's demise should be met by revolution not by bourgeois deconstruction.

point noted.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

I instead live in the USA, and I can tell you that Americans here don't have any system of benefits at all unless you're either pregnant, under a certain age, or recently unemployed. Be lucky you at least have benefits. us out here have to fend for ourselves.

That's unfortunate, but no reason to sneer at those who want to keep what was fought for, especially since the dismantling of the welfare system isn't motivated by anything remotely revolutionary or even by any concern for people.

the "appeal to emotions" fallacy changes nothing--I stand by my belief that, the more you increase your reliance on the capitalist state, the more power you entrust to it. I feel bad that many suffer from lack of support, but at the same token, I don't see this as a step forwards or step backwards--I see it as just a step. you see this as some major blow to a system that was crap in the first place.

Taking shit away from people who have little, and in some cases less than nothing, is always evil. This is an attack on the working class, or don't you care about silly shit like that?

[IronEastBloc]

Taking shit away from people who have little, and in some cases less than nothing, is always evil. This is an attack on the working class, or don't you care about silly shit like that?

of course I do; I just believe the Malcolm X view that, "how much can you be against something if you throw all your support into it?" that is, Malcolm X took that view with black businesses versus white businesses, wondering how blacks could be against white racism when they bought from racist companies.

my view is similar: can you really be against a capitalist state if you take freely from it's trough? maybe I came off as combative but that was my overall point.

[RadioRaheem84]

The matter of contention should really be not just about the fact that they are taking away welfare, but the mere fact that they can rescind a vital component of working class livelihood. That in itself is a class act and one that blatantly favors their interests over ours.

If we even suggest that we should raise taxes they call it class warfare, but they can dismantle welfare and tell us that we should tighten our belts with relative ease.

This is where class relations should really be at their breaking point! Fusil contra Fusil!

Not about the welfare, which is really a concession, but the power relations which have us at the whim of their illogical and callous decisions.

The fight is a class one, welfare is just merely intertwined with that. One aspect of the whole.