VERSION|0.5.1|NAME|Steve|DATE|1360843555|CONTENT| [blockquote]Food banks are good things and it is a national disgrace that they exist[/blockquote] 

I don’t think it’s necessarily a disgrace that they exist. As Tom mentioned, they provide short-term stopgaps for people who find themselves in need of a few days’ food to help them over a short-term crisis. There is no government policy or action team or initiative whatsoever that can do this with the same level of accuracy and efficiency.

Government is huge; it is correspondingly good at doing huge things. It’s a mistake to think it is of any use whatsoever at doing small things. Individual churches are small; they are correspondingly good at doing small things, of which a local food bank is one. A church-run system wouldn’t work if it was being coordinated and controlled by a centralised bureaucracy. It’s the smallness of it that makes it work.

In any system there will be gaps of some sort. We either choose to spend vast amounts of money providing a government system to ensure that nobody ever needs a food bank under any circumstances whatsoever, or we accept that on occasion people might need one. The former idea depresses the economy, because it ties up large quantities of money that could otherwise be being spent, which perversely makes food banks more necessary. The latter system doesn’t tie up any money, it does the job it is supposed to, and as a bonus it gives the churches something to do that isn’t blathering on about sex. We sometimes forget that churches are for the most part made up of ordinary, decent people. Their appointed representatives are worthy of scorn, but good people doing good things in the name of whatever the hell the choose it to be in the name of - this should be celebrated.

Government is great, but we should keep it doing the things it is good at. Which is not ensuring that nobody ever occasionally needs a food bank, but is ensuring that the economy is sufficiently buoyant (i.e. has sufficient jobs) that nobody needs one for the long term. This is the bit that our recent governments (plural) have failed to do properly.|IP-ADDRESS|10.0.119.228, 217.36.222.79, 10.37.11.203|MODERATIONFLAG|