Who has really been hoodwinked?
While I would like to thank Jenny James for her response to my letter vis-a-vis food banks, I am afraid she doesn’t get it. While young people should certainly be taught basic cooking and budgetary skills, all the life skills in the world are no hedge against insolvency.
Ms James seems to be living in an alternate reality where there is no such thing as poverty. I suspect she has never been made redundant or anything of the kind. She offers no evidence whatsoever to support her claims of a relationship between food bank use and a dearth of culinary skills.
The majority of food bank users take no pride in having to use food banks. In your time, Ms James, the so-called good old days (good for whom?), there was no such thing as zero-hour contracts.
People turn up for work and can be offered any number of working hours or perhaps no work at all.
However, if these people don’t turn up at all, they stand to lose their benefits. They have no idea how – or even if – they are going to afford their next meal.
Dominic Raab’s insensitive remark about episodic cash flow problems are unhelpful. He twisted the Trussell Trust’s data for his own ignoble purposes. In the real world, change can be imposed on you from above, not necessarily to the good, and there is nothing you can do about it. We also have people working part-time and public sector workers subjected to a pay freeze while MPs award themselves an 11 per cent pay rise. If there is no magic money tree, how could Theresa May afford to make a questionable £1bn deal with the DUP just to keep herself in power?
The DUP is a pack of extreme right-wing religious fundamentalists who are anti-abortion and against gay rights. There is nothing Christian about their motives. Are you sure, Ms James, that it is Corbyn voters who have been hoodwinked and not people like yourself?If Corbyn is guilty of deficit denial, then by the same token, aren’t the Conservatives guilty of deficit obsession?
Sean Flanagan, Walsall
