Unregulated Hate

Yesterday a storm erupted. The Mail on Sunday printed an article involving 5 people: Simon Murphy, Sanchez Manning, Ross Slater (the reported mentioned in the article, bravely going undercover in a foodbank), along with Amanda Perthen and Tracey Kandohla, set out to smear the work of foodbanks, specifically the Trussell Trust.

The latter two are credited with ‘additional reporting’ at the bottom of the article. I have no idea who any of them are, but of the fact they are all venal mercenary scum, I am totally convinced. This is one of the nastiest pieces of ‘journalism’ (churnalism) I have ever seen. I am not even convinced it’s honest.

The headline claims that vouchers are given, without checks, for ‘sob stories’; neatly traducing the experiences of those in genuine need. However the third paragraph refutes this utterly; clearly this vain quintet couldn’t even be bothered to do their job properly:

“The woman, called Katherine, who was in her 60s, asked our reporter a series of questions about why the food bank vouchers were needed.”

Does that sound resemble the ‘no questions asked’ access claimed by ‘our reporter’; presumably the pathetic stick insect sat on the grass in the traditional ‘upset pose’ photo-journalists like people to assume. For reference, this is the pose used when papers find any crumb of a story to pimp their hateful agendas; the sort they get school kids, for example, to adopt while holding a letter that claims they were banned from climbing the local conker tree. You know, the tree surrounded by concrete where the lowest branches are 8 feet off the ground where a fall would smash little Johnny’s skull – these stories used to trump up notions of health and safety ‘gone mad’.

So, on Easter Sunday, a man, presumably this Slater character, claims he was given access to ‘free’ (it’s not free, someone paid for it and then donated it – that’s called charity) food after pulling a fast one over a 60 year old volunteer at the CAB. Someone that has also donated something – her time – to charity is the victim of a grotesque fraud on the part of the MoS and refers this liar to the foodbank. He is then given, and quickly (as if the efficiency of this service is part of the problem) supplies before:

“inviting the reporter  to help himself to the soap, toothpaste and hot dog rolls they had spare, the volunteers wished him a Happy Easter and he staggered out of the church with his bags. He later returned the goods.”

That’s right, they had some extras they let him help himself too before wishing him well. He subsequently staggers (presumably meant to represent the weight of his burden of freebies) out and off to sneer, along with his colleagues, at these gullible fools.

Because this government, with its hand up the arse of the press (or is it the other way around) wants you to think that scroungers are all like this; they are all fraudsters spending their ‘entitlement’ on booze bingo and fags and then lying to get ‘free’ food from the foodbank. This is the message the coddled privileged crooks in Whitehall want you to take away, but it says more about them than it does about the genuinely in need.

That’s what they think about the poorest in society. Rich scum with everything handed to them on a plate, the sort that bemoan having to lose their fine dining entitlements in Westminster, projecting their inadequacies on others. Who on earth would pretend they need foodbank help? What for? It doesn’t make sense, but the Tories, and the Mail, all believe that benefits are squandered by the poor – and presumably this is exacerbated at the very least by the existence of these foodbanks. That is, if they couldn’t’ get free food they’d have to budget more responsibly.

We can all guess what that implies, but I think – I hope – there would be merry hell if that happened.

I’d like to think this is actually a sign of an increasingly desperate right wing state losing the argument. They know they can’t attack the issue – that people are in desperate need for food – directly, they know they daren’t attack foodbanks, and so instead slag off the people using them in this way claiming that foodbanks are lax and open to abuse. Even the article refutes this by saying that the reporter was cross examined in the way foodbanks (and others) have consistently claimed.

Fortunately it seems this nasty vicious attack has backfired: donations to the trust shot up yesterday. One assumes this is a response to the vile politics played by the Mail.

We can only hope that the journalist team involved in this hit piece have returned the food. They have fraudulently helped themselves to resources earmarked for those in genuine need. They know that to be the case because, again by their own admission, they had to undergo an assessment (one which otherwise would have had real consequences for fiddling). Give that food back, it’s not yours. You are thieves and liars, that makes you scum.

In fact, postscript, I contend they didn’t even get access to a foodbank. I suspect that either they were refused or, upon actually realising you needed a proper referral, bottled it. Consequently their article is a fiction; the image is just the reporter surrounded by food purchased from a supermarket and presumed to represent an actual supply that would be given had theirs been an honest claim. This is all a lie in my opinion; they didn’t get access to a foodbank and are just making up spurious claims in support of their vile hit piece. I challenge them to prove me wrong, and in so doing prove what disgusting fraudsters the MoS really are.