Oh my bad, it fell by 1.5% over 5 years according to the OECD report that statement uses as evidence (with no mention of sample size or location of the survey btw). Despite evidence to the contrary from the people actually running these food banks.
So which is it? You're presenting two conflicting arguments here; that more people are using food banks because more people are being made aware of them by the job centre and the likes, and that fewer people are using them as reported by OECD?
I'm not presenting that latter argument at all? That's not what the OECD is saying, either. What did you read that made you think that? They're saying that fewer people are responding that they're struggling to pay for food. And it was Gallup's World Poll that's the source for that data; they don't have sample information on their website but they are a "proper polling company" so I feel some faith that, at the very least, there's a reasonable expectation that the data's not wildly off.
At the same time, we can clearly see that use of food banks has gone up. Neither I nor the OECD are denying this, despite what the fictional argument you've clearly had with me in your head might suggest. If we combine these two, seemingly contrasting bits of evidence with a few other facts, we lead to my conclusion. These facts include the number 1 reason, beyond all else, that people visit food banks is because of a delay in their benefits being provided. IDS - and obviously you can disregard him as a source if you want, but to my knowledge we have no actual numbers - has claimed that the rate of benefits being paid on time has gone up since Labour's time in government. There's also the fact that - and you mentioned before a 12-week transitionary period - that a visit to the food bank gives someone a 3-day package of food, and the average number of times a recipient attends is twice a year, suggests to me that the problems that food banks are addressing are very short term. Also, there's the fact that job centres did not previously refer people to food banks (and even if they'd wanted to, they didn't exist).
To me, this all adds up to me thinking that the people now visiting food banks
always needed help, they just didn't get that help from food banks before. Perhaps they got emergency loans, emergency relief from job centres or relied more on families. Either way, I don't think the alternative of having local communities provide for people in need is a bad solution.
Let me simplify it even further for you - with all you've read, do you believe poor people and disabled people are better off, worse off or the same due to Conservative policies? Simple question, give us a simple answer.
Whilst I'm grateful for the patronising tone of the question - you know, so I can understand it - it's really
not that simple. Poor people and disabled people are overwhelmingly the largest direct beneficiaries of direct government spending when it comes to things like welfare (especially if we work on the assumption that cutting public pensions will simply create more poor people tomorrow, and the day after that, when they realise that what they thought they'd be getting is now lower and they've no time to make 'alternative arrangements'), access to services etc Even things like cuts to policing disproportionately affect poorer people. So, ceteris paribus, they're likely to be worse off after a sustained period of cuts. But this is where it gets complicated, right? Your question was a simple one, but not a useful one; Are these vulnerable people better, worse or the same as a result of Conservative policies? Well, going into the 2010 election Alistair Darling's proposed cuts were actually more significant than Osborne ended up actually doing ("The next spending review will be the toughest we have had for 20 years. To me, cutting the borrowing was never negotiable. Gordon accepts that, he knows that.") Nick "Swingeing Cuts" Clegg offered £15bn of cuts before the election before promptly becoming an enabler. So have the Conservative policies made those most vulnerable worse off? Ceteris paribus, yes, I suspect so - but did the Lib Dems and Labour have some way of cutting public spending without affecting the largest recipients of it?
Then there's another complication - I kept saying ceteris paribus up there for a reason. Since 2010, 1,750,000 people are working who were not working in 2010. Some of them will be on minimum wage and some will be on 0-hour contracts (which I also defend, btw - aren't I a bastard?) but I imagine that for most of
these people, they're better off and they're no longer considered amongst the poorest in society. How about the people who were working on minimum wage and paying tax in 2010 who saw their income tax slide down and save them literally hundreds of pounds every year? They're better off, even if they are still subjectively poor. How about the fact that more students from disadvantaged areas are going to university than ever before? And for those not suited to university, the number of apprenticeships almost doubled between 2010 and now (and the number of apprenticeships started by disabled people or those with learning disabilities also doubled).
We started this discussion because of a casual throwing-out of the idea that Tory policies kill people. You asked me a "simple" question about whether poor and disabled people were better off as a follow up to your apparently not-simple-enough question of whether the policies are more likely to cause someone to kill themselves or less likely. Well, for the person who now has a job who didn't before, or the kid who will be the first in their family to go to university, or for the person to whom the income tax cut will be the difference between their kids getting presents at christmas or not, it may well have a tangible, positive impact in their life.
But anyway, I went to go respond to your last post but I found myself constantly starting each paragraph with "Well, actually, that's
not what I said..." and it's a fucking Sunday, man. I'm not here to have fictitious arguments which involve me peddling back from things that I didn't even say. When I'm wrong, I'm more than happy to admit it - I've knelt down on all fours in front of Crab and conducted the infamous Tory "hog suck" enough times to attest to that - but I really don't appreciate arguments being put in my mouth I'm not making, and the bizarrely patronising and hostile attitude doesn't enamour me to it either. I get that this gets you bubbled up and that's great and everything, just, ya know, take some time to read what I'm writing.
