About that Daily Mail on Sunday story that was all over the place yesterday –
Yes, what about it? Just, how horrible it is; how perfectly hateful it is.
What the hell is that even for? To demonstrate that someone who goes to considerable trouble to ask for help eventually gets help to the tune of a few bags of food items? Why is that supposed to be a bad thing?
Why do so many people make a point of being so hateful?
“We must never help anyone because there are assholes out there who will try to take advantage of our kindness and generosity. Who cares that the assholes are only 0.0000001% of the people we help?? The fact that assholes are able to take advantage means we should cut off all help for everyone. Fuck them. Stupid, useless, annoying needy people.”
Doesn’t this remind you of the ACORN undercover?
It seems many people were not taken in by the scam
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/21/mail-on-sunday-food-bank-twitter
it also seems that the reporters story may have been “tweaked”-but he would say that woudn’t he (as Ms Rice-Davis said)
Sounds to me like there were plenty of questions asked! Being handed a form to fill out is also being asked questions. That title is seriously misleading. It sounds like the only question he wasn’t asked was “Can you prove any of what you’re telling me?”
I’m glad to hear that there is a service out there where people who need help can go to get it without having to jump through more than an hour’s worth of hoops. Good for the fine people at Nottingham’s Citizens’ Advice Bureau!
And shame on Ross Slater for spinning their willingness to serve as a problem.
Yes it does indeed remind me of the ACORN undercover. First thing I thought of yesterday – or second thing, after the blood-red mist of rage cleared.
The piece refutes its own headline–There were several questions asked: name address, phone number, why, how much other allowance, how much do you need…
“Senior Tory MP Brian Binley welcomed this paper’s investigation, saying he had ‘always been very suspicious’ of the level of abuse in some food banks.
He said: ‘There are also a lot of dishonest people who will cadge their way into situations.
‘Food banks are run by very kind people. They do not understand that there are some people who will take advantage.’
I doubt that the kind people are as clueless as Binley says.
I hope the reporter donated at least L38.35 so some kid could eat his 21p of processed peas.
The reporter donated only a tenner.
Not just a creep, but a cheapskate too.
It’s an age old problem – if you are part of an aid organization chartered with the task of providing actual aid, you have to accept a certain amount of breakage to ensure that people in need have access. If you are a bureaucrat charged with providing excuses, then you can do all the due diligence you need.
Blanche Quizno @1, I agree. I have made that point many times to the local rightwingers. I’m willing to pay a little more because of the tiny bit of fraud, in order to support the thousands that actually need assistance, most of whom only use public assistance for a relatively short time.
Hell, one of those fraudsters was my stepmom. For many years, I’ve said if she worked half as hard…working…as she does trying to avoid work and get public assistance, she would have done ok for herself. Eventually, she got old enough to actually qualify legitimately….
It would cost many times as much money to check if someone is in genuine need than the food costs.
I hope this guy goes undercover to ‘expose’ homelessness and gets burnt to death by his readers.
Brian Binley? This Brian Binley?
Yep, that Brian Binley. He’s got a nerve criticising a charity for giving an apparently penniless man £40 worth of food for his family.
Yeah, there’ll always be some people who will take advantage and game the system. I wonder whether the proportion of fraudulent food bank use approaches even one tenth the proportion of MPs who flipped their second homes, paid family members for non-jobs or otherwise abused the “no questions asked” expenses system?