Tuesday 3 June 2014

Government Uses Taxpayers Money To Deny Food to Starving


SO WHAT IS GOING ON?

The Coalition uses taxpayers' money to destroy 98 per cent of edible surplus food, with only 2 per cent of up to 400,000 tonnes of surplus food annually generated by the food industry, going to food banks.

This is a further waste of the green taxes that are half the energy bill we cannot afford and drive people down into fuel poverty, when there are so many other more affordable and self-funding means of self-generation of electricity and gas. 

So this effects, amongst many of all ages, women denied state pension payout at 60 from 2013, when half of women are within the working poor and the majority reason women over 50 not in work is due to being disabled / chronic sick and those benefits being lost or never gained, as well as benefit sanctions regime in Jobcentres.
Even worse is to come from 2016, when many women, and a lot of men, lose food money forever in old age.

See if you lose most or all of your state pension

Again today I met a lady born in 1963, who did not know that women's state pension had risen from 60 for over half a decade or more of life.

GOVERNMENT COULD NOT CARE LESS ABOUT FEEDING THE STARVING

Why is surplus edible food even within the green biogas electric generation power station system, called anaerobic digestor power generators?

Not one mention is made by the industry about feeding the hungry:

A nationalised energy from waste, would not even think of denying food to the starving.

Some nations in Europe have banned food waste from landfill altogether. 

Labour have said they would ban food waste from landfill, but makes no mention of saving the starving today from all the food not going to food banks. 

The hungry cannot wait til 2015. 

The government gives the current biogas 82 plants £29 million a year in subsidy (2013 figure), that consume 1.6million tonnes of food waste a year.

Another 213 plants have planning permission and are expected to consume around 3.3 million tonnes of food (Anaerobic Digestion and Biogas Association).



WHY ARE FOOD BANKS ONLY GETTING A TINY AMOUNT OF FOOD DONATIONS FOR THE STARVING?

The charity that supplies surplus food to food banks, Fareshare, informs us that government is spending millions of pounds subsidising the construction and operation of anaerobic digestion plants that convert up to 100,000 tonnes of edlible food a year into biogas, to generate electricity.

Fareshare supplies up to 1,300 charities and community projects, but gets only 5,000 tonnes of surplus food a year.

The government pays a subsidy to biogas industry worth up to £70 for each tonne of food received. 

Fareshare gets no government subsidy and so has to charge companies up to £80 for each tonne of food they donate to charities, so that the charity has the funding to store and distribute the food. 

Also the donor companies have to fork out up to £60 a tonne to deliver the food to Fareshare's depots.

THERE ARE MORE HUNGRY THAN JUST THOSE GOING TO FOOD BANKS

Actually the numbers are swelled by those on the borderlines of hunger, if the millions within the working poor, poor pensioners, and women denied state pension at 60 when so many were made early retired from half of women who work in public sector yet two thirds of jobs lost are to women, and those in work on zero hour contracts. 

Oxfam gave the figure of 13 million who struggle to make ends meet each day.

This is proved by more and more kids getting Rickets, that is a symptom of insufficient food. 

And I followed an elderly pensioner out of my local supermarket, who had but four of the cheapest basics food range that barely covered a couple of hand spans in the trolley. 

I am beginning to think of abandoning supermarkets and eating out in cheap cafes as a cheaper option - cooked food and no electric / gas heated water / washing up liquid used at home. 

WHY IS GOVERNMENT NOT PRIORITISING FEEDING THE STARVING POOR OF ALL AGES?

Source of this information is the newspaper you would least expect to care - The Times -whose readership are the richest in the land. 

And The Times Editorial is headed - 'Unsold Food Should Fuel People, Not Power Stations'. 

But the richest people remember human history. When the poor starve, it is never a good ending for the rich. Something politicians are immune from learning about. 

Roman Emperors gave free bread to all each morning, as he knew a hungry population is a dangerous one. 

In the Editorial, we are informed that in America, government gives tax breaks to supermarkets for giving food to charity. 

Fareshare had asked for government subsidy to them, to make a level playing field, but the government replied that 'it's not seen as a priority' and further said did not know how much of the food going to landfill could have been still edible and did 'not have any plans' to investigate the scale of the problem.

This, when up to seven million people are in food poverty. 

Europe, that creates so much starvation, actually feeds people every day, 7 days a week, with food banks that are actually kitchen canteens

WHERE ELSE COULD THE BIOGAS SOURCE FOOD WASTE TO ENERGY FUEL?



At the moment, rubbish collection is with private companies, if they were merged into all nationalised utilities, then the food waste from homes could be separately binned and collected directly by the digestor power stations. 

It is viable, as at the moment home food waste is about seven million tonnes a year. 

The digestors cannot do that now, because councils do not pick up organic household waste separately from other recycling, so now making waste collected unusable by the digestors industry when mixed all up with everything else. 

Examples in America (rubbish is called trash in USA) and Europe of compositing home food waste:

WHY ARE SUPERMARKETS PAYING THE SUBSIDISED PRICE AT ALL OF SENDING WASTE TO BIOGAS PLANTS?

Supermarkets were in a race with each other to send zero waste to landfill.

No-one - neither supermarkets nor government - gave any thought of surplus food going to the people, made hungry by government policies more and more each year. 

With all charitable food banks declaring about 2 million requests to food banks between 2013 and this year so far. 

Would fuel poverty even exist for any, if all this food was cooked each day, 7 days a week, as they are in council canteens, who provide the meals free not only to the homeless and unemployed, but also to the working poor and poor pensioners?

MORE INFORMATION

See my blogs on how to feed all every day:

See my blog on how nationalised utilities would give joined up thinking and leave none to starve at all:

Parties that offer nationalised utilities for joined up thinking are on my personal website homepage and other pages:

No comments:

Post a Comment