Ish.
Two months ago I wrote a piece about my englightening trip to a food bank. What stunned me after 1,600 views was the lack of comments, and to be perfectly frank, the lack of acknowledgement to the post, except from a small proporption of my connections. Every day I trawl through pages and pages of adonyne, banal, largely self congratulatory guff from a variety of different sources. Somebody will post about an event they are running…. now it’s on zoom…way hay. I’ll then get a notification that an organisation has been nominated for having the best recycling policy in Kettering or that they have come 321st in the world’s best places to work. There are some gems. Some pieces shared that englighten me. Teach me. Stir the emotions in me. Even make me guffaw and in the way they were meant to. Then you get a myriad of pieces about how the future will be post you know what. The “new normal” if you will. I guarantee, nothing, NOTHING! causes me to squirm more than that shonky term: “new normal”. There is no “new normal”. There might never be a “new normal”. The only thing I do know is that we cannot predict the future.
“Nothing dates the past like its impressions of the Future”. Philip French 1990.
*Ahem*. I digress, all of these, “wonderful” posts illicit responses from the “club”. Those that “know”. See it as a vehicle to promote themselves. Promote conerns about hunger, in England in 2020…. How very dare you?!. Even Marcus Rashford, a beacon, a change maker for his generation drew stinging rebukes from those on the Times online this morning. For the avoidance of doubt, in addition to using his profile and personal contributions to raise over £20m to help resolve hunger, he has made a sizeble contribution to society via Tax and National Insurance payments to HMRC.
Hunger though is on the increase in 2020. Even before the pandemic, it was on the increase with an estimated 8-10% of UK Households estimated to have been severely “food insecure” in recent years. This means skipping meals, under eating, going hungry or unable to follow a balanced diet. (source Trussell Trust). An estimated 1.4 million children in the UK live in “food insecure” households. The number of foodbanks and usage thereof was also on the increase, with an estimated 2% using them in 2019. (Trussell Trust).
Then came along the global pandemic. The economic collapse as a result is still largely unknown, and given my tendancy to shy away from those “pretending to see the future” I’ll stick to what we know and what I have seen. ONS estimated that close to 900,000 had joined the ranks of those claiming unemployment benefits during May (note not the actual number of people becoming unemployed) and as of this time last week, approximately 8.9m people (or a quarter of the UK workforce) were currently furloughed. Real life experience tells me that patronage of food banks is on a steep upward incline.
Wytheshawe is an area in South Manchester, close to the airport, Cheshire and the affluent surburbs inhabited by a significant number of famous football players past and present. It may have once had it’s own stately home, but it was the largest council estate in the country until many of the properties were transferred to Housing Associations. The New York Times reported as recently as 2007 that Wythenshawe represented an ” extreme pocket of social deprivation and alienation”. Average houshold income per capita is one of the lowest in the country, but will I am sure, compare with many other similar areas in large cities throughout the UK.
I’m not sure how many food banks there are in Wythenshawe, but there are more than there should be. We support one that my sister in law (a local GP in the heart of the community) is actively engaged in and we have now done 9 weekly food drop offs. We made our first “drop” on a Thursday just after lockdown. The queue stretched as far as the eye could see. Two hours before it opened. It was undoubtedly one of the most humbling experiences I have had in my life and as someone that has travelled to Africa over a dozen times, that in itself is quite remarkable. This week, in line with the past few weeks, we “dropped” on a Monday. It means taking one’s place in the Sainsbury’s queue on a Sunday afternoon and stocking up. We do this rain or shine and this being Manchester, means that the former is often more likely. However on a Monday, in line with most other food banks, “ours” has next to no food (save for yesterday’s bread) to hand out. Imagine that. You wake up with a starving family on a Monday morning and you might just manage to secure them a loaf of “Mighty White” by noon if you are lucky. The queue at “our” foodbank is getting longer each week. We know that usage of it has significantly increased since the pandemic took hold. There are a huge number of people amongst the population who not enjoying the extended spring holiday courtesy of Mr Furlough.
I read yesterday that following the partial opening of the retail sector, the Government’s advice is to “hit the shops”. I know, what’s not to like about queueing in a face mask for forty minutes before joining a one way system around a store being glowered out by Retail’s finest as you pick up items off a rack before hastily putting them back again? My advice is to hit the shops, but the ones you have been hitting, remorselessly since 23rd March. Buy extra for those that literally are not eating and then drop it off at your nearest foodbank. Lots of pasta, rice, tinned items such as soups, stews, fruit and fresh vegetables. Don’t worry, most of them have enough medium sliced white to supply a greasy spoon for a month.
I do hope that this has made its way to you through much of the vacuous sludge that passes for content these days. I get how life has not been easy for many people in recent weeks, trust me it isn’t a cakewalk for anybody. At this point there isn’t an end in sight for many of us either. What I do know though is that for any more of our fellow citizens it has been worse, much worse. Admirable though the stand that Marcus Rashford has taken to bring the issue of food poverty to the masses, don’t you think it’s rather shameful that not only are most people not aware of this, they do nothing to alleviate it?
Please feel to comment on this blog, criticise it or even share it. But, please do done thing: don’t bloody ignore it!
We can hold it all
Hold it all together
In this never ending
Game of hide and seek
James: Living in Extraordinary Times
David Watts grew up on what he thought was a rough council estate in a mining town in the 1970s.* After graduating from Nottingham Trent Business School (Trent Polytechnic), he stumbled into a career in technology despite lacking the rudimentary schools required to wire a plug. After watching his esteemed sales colleagues earn a fortune for seemingly “swanning around aimlessly in a big car” he decided to join the ranks by becoming a Sales Professional. He quickly realised that sales was genuinely much harder than that, particularly if one was to apply effort, diligence, process and an overidding methodology to it. David used the next 30 years to acquire experience in a broad range of organisations; a myriad of different cultures and several, alternative selling methodologies to reasonable effect. In May 2019, David set up DWSL (David Watts Sales Leadership, I know catchy name isn’t it?) to share his experience in organisations ranging from small, high growth entities to large, high growth corporations. Assignments range from initial problem diagnosis, prescribed and implemented solutions and full time, interim CRO. Improvements have been demonstrable and references are available.
