I don’t do political posts very often. There are a number of reason for this, one of which this is a writing blog, not a political activism blog. I write escapist fiction, there are other places you can go to be better informed about political reality, if your one of my regular readers I suspect you don’t come here to be reminded what a shit place the world is at times….

However, on occasion, having a politics based degree and a social conscience does tap me on the shoulder and suggest I have a word with the world. Not that the world much cares what i have to say I’m sure, but still sometimes the urge to comment is too much…

Back in 2017, with an election on the horizon, was one of the occasions I was moved to ‘do politic’s’, and I put up a blog called ‘Selfish Desires and Taxation…’ A gripping title I am sure you will agree. I was I hope a better read than it was a title, but it had much to do with my principle opinion that as much as I like buying guitars to hang on my wall, if I had to pay a little more tax and so wait a little longer before I could buy another guitar for the wall under a labour (or as was my forlorn hope a Liberal) government, I wouldn’t mind if the money was going towards pushing back on poverty.

This is because the simple truth is that I am better off financially than a great many of my friends, I have a full-time job and earn more money than I need to live comfortably. In return for me being unable to buy another guitar ‘to hang on my wall’ for a week or so, friends of mine who are currently struggling to pay bills or put food on the table without going to food banks, cover the cost of rent, and just to get by week to week, stand half a chance if they have a government that cares about them.

I was prompted to this epiphany because of a simple statistic from the Trussel Trust in 2017

• Over 1,182,000 three day emergency food supplies given to people in crisis in past year – 436,000 to children

As I said at the time the UK, in case you’re unaware, is one of the largest and most successful economies in the world. Yet there we were in 2017 with families are struggling to feed themselves…

Of course, while in that post I was advocating people not vote for the Tory’s in 2017, I could well have been wrong to do so. For all I knew the Conservatives if they won (which they did) would do a great many thing to end poverty in the UK and reverse the trend. Certainly they claimed then , and since that this is exactly what they are doing…

I could have been wrong… After all the conservative government keep telling us they are ‘levelling up’ Britain etc…

Surprisingly, or not, however, when I looked back at the original post and thought I should go look at at what The Trussell Trust is saying now, 5 years later…

So, a million more, as near as damn doubled in 5 years. So not so much levelling up,. as levelling down…

As I said I have a politics based degree. Politics Philosophy and Economics, to be exact. So I know this is a single aspect of a complex system and the last few years have had unprecedented issues for the government to deal with. But as a barometer of this governments success in tackling poverty, I would argue, food bank use is as clear and indicator of their lack of success as it is possible to find.

Anyway, that is the end of politics on here for a while, I’ll go back to irreverence. I may even tune one of the guitars… But before I do that here is the link to The Trussell Trust an organisation dedicated to the aim of creating a UK without the need for food banks, Something you would have thought a UK government of any strip would support. Sadly the current one only support the need for The Trussell Trusts existence…