Why is meals poverty a truth of life in Twenty first-century Britain? | Letters

Aditya Chakrabortty’s article (One Welsh city gives a window on to the disaster going through Britain. However the place are the politicians?, 19 August) jogged my memory of Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel North and South. Written within the mid-Nineteenth century, it appears on the residing circumstances in a mill city in the course of the Industrial Revolution. A mill proprietor rejects a union’s request for a pay improve and hires company staff. This doesn’t finish effectively for him or his staff. In the direction of the top of the e book, the mill proprietor, in allegiance with a union consultant, opens a eating room to supply free dinners for his staff. Now, greater than 150 years on from the novel’s publication, we’ve got a CEO having to do the identical. How have we returned to the necessity without spending a dime meals and speak of hiring company staff in a wealthy nation within the Twenty first century?
Karen Wynyard
Whitstable, Kent

As a volunteer at my native meals financial institution, I learn Aditya Chakrabortty’s article on meals poverty with nice curiosity. This was a sympathetic piece and highlighted the appalling incontrovertible fact that in Twenty first-century Britain, a lot of our residents reside in poverty. Nonetheless, I take exception to the view of the meals financial institution mannequin expressed within the article by Robbie Davison, who says: “It’s not meals that individuals would select for themselves. It’s a mannequin that claims, ‘We all know you’re poor, and this’ll do.’ That’s proper wing.”

It’s true that meals financial institution shoppers have restricted alternative relating to the meals they’re given. Nonetheless, this meals stops individuals from going hungry, there isn’t a cost and, at my meals financial institution, individuals are handled with the best care and respect. The view that as a result of individuals are poor what we give them will do actually shouldn’t be one which I recognise from my very own work on the meals financial institution.
Susan Le Jeune
Gateshead, Tyne and Put on