Food for thought for the Tories over helping Britain’s poor

IT is beyond contempt that the modern-day Tory party refuses to accept the role of food banks in our society. It’s a natural progression of the way our nation is organised and technological change.

The Tories gleefully signed up to globalisation which saw 200 million working class jobs disappear to the Far East. All for the purpose of reducing business costs and more profit.

Then we got the classic divide and conquer. The unemployed are without work because they’re lazy. Cut their benefits. Force them into unacceptable jobs, zero hour contracts, low part-time pay. And if that can’t be done, sanction them.

A recent Freedom of Information request has received the following information. Over 221 people in receipt of benefits are dying every month.

This is from starvation and suicide. Something the odious Iain Duncan Smith never mentions.

Dr Glynn Powell (The Yorkshire Post, December 16) has warned of revolution. That will not happen until the middle classes are denied their comforts.

As the working class jobs disappear, so do the management jobs. It’s only a matter of time.

If I were a Tory, I’d be looking for new ideas… fast!

From: John Watson, Hutton Hill, Leyburn.

I TOTALLY agree with Hugh Rogers (The Yorkshire Post, December 17) regarding child poverty and food banks.

The welfare budget in this country costs us round about £160bn per year. You may wonder how that is possible, and where does it all go.

It is possible for a family with more than one child to receive £26,000 or more per year when all the benefits are claimed.

When you digest those sort of figures, it would seem impossible for certain clergy and trendy social workers to come to the conclusion that this is the cause of food banks and child poverty.

It is becoming a political argument, not a clerical one.

I am no politician or economist, but I have said for years that child benefit should only be paid in vouchers or something similar.

How often does that money end up in the pub or the tobacconist or even the travel agents?

A friend of mine says that where he lives some pubs are full at 10 o’clock in the morning.

Of course we have to have a welfare system, run properly and strictly, and anybody abusing it at other people’s expense should be given the harshest penalties.