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Comment by kybernetikos | Hacker News Reader

I know some people working in this area and they tell me that there is absolutely a problem with hunger in the UK. The existence of the safety nets is more a sign that there is a problem than that there isn't, as such charities get started when people who have the wherewithal to act realise how bad the situation is.

You seem to be dismissing it on the basis of the fact that you simply haven't heard about the problem, which is partly because there is no official monitoring, and the current government like to claim that it doesn't exist.

The red cross apparently stepped in last year to try to help: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/exclusive-red...

If you want to know more, check out some of the charitable campaigns:

http://endhungerfast.co.uk/

http://www.trusselltrust.org

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Put it in perspective. When Stalin was speaking, there were people actually dying of starvation, millions of severely undernourished people, and huge structural problems with food production. In the UK today, most people have copious amounts of food, a lot actually goes to waste every day, and while some people might find it hard to put food on the table, it's within the means of private charity to help them without the government having to intervene. The reported increase in the problem seems a bit dubious to me, e.g. here is an actual food bank founder speaking:

Consider again the views of Robin Aitken of the Oxford Food Bank, a former BBC journalist who now collects unsold fresh food from supermarkets and distributes them to charities in Oxford. He says: ‘Some people like to believe that there has been this enormous upsurge in food poverty. My point is that there have always been poor people in this country. You could have gone back ten, 20, 50 years and there would be people who don’t get enough food. ‘The fact is that food banks are a new phenomenon. Now we have got up to 500. If you provide a service, people use it.’ Significantly, he believes that people suffered greater hardship in the recessions of the Seventies and Eighties than today, when food banks didn’t exist.

Which groups are hungry in England? How bad is it?

On a sliding scale: Mentally ill? Illegal immigrants without jobs? Drug users? Unemployed? Retired?

A related question for ending up homeless?

(Not English, just curious about the safety net there. Not trying to argue about anything, please. :-) )

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