A BLEAK FUTURE EMERGES AS WINTER SLOWLY TIGHTENS ITS GRIP - MY FOODBANK WEEK

 

So we call them library bags. Hardly the most imaginative of names! Library bags are the food parcels we make up for libraries and various other locations – Social work offices, NHS, homeless accommodation. I'm sure you get the picture.

Each library bag contains basics enough for three meals a day for three days. For one person.

A hungry person of zero means.

A citizen of the winter of 2022.

Ten basic items. No frills. Calories with a long shelf life.

Only a couple of months ago, I would distribute 50 or 60 library bags in a busy week.

But of course things have changed now.

Changed utterly as WB Yeats once upon a time said.

There was a sheen of frost in the fields yesterday and darkness closed in at five o'clock.

Anyone associated with a foodbank has been dreading this week for many months.

The week of the first frost. The week when the reality of the coming winter starts to bite. The week when the rubber meets the road.

Showtime.

So did I distribute 50 of our library bags last week when a sheen of frost glittered in the morning light?

No.

Last week I distributed 200 of our library bags. A new record for First Base: a record which will probably stand for as long as the Truss lettuce.

Winter's not coming any more.

It's here.

When 'The Hunger Games' become a bleak and grinding reality.

Signs and signals.

A referral to a family of four in a small village which sees its fair share of tourists in the lazy days of summer.

Not a familiar location for a food parcel delivery. A leafy sort of street. Tidy front gardens with not a rotting old sofa in sight. Clean cars in the driveways. A backdrop of steep, forested hills.

For millions, a dream place to live. Not quite Cotswolds enough to be labelled a rural idyll. But pretty dammed close.

I open up the back of the van and unload food enough for four.

And a dog.

Are the curtains twitching?

Probably.

The door opens and the eyes upon me are a mixture of embarrassment and panic. For I am the visitor she hoped would never, ever call. The foodbank guy.

Right here right now. Not on the news.

Here. In person.

In 2022.

We didn't do much small talk. We didn't do any. I tried on a smile to try and make the whole thing normal. She smiled back and looked bereft.

And did the neighbours see? Did they work it out? Will they be next?

Back in the van.

Back along the highways and the by-ways.

A foodbank guy. A white van guy. A part of the coming winter of 2022.

James from Moffat calls.

We do pleasantries.

He says the local school has been on. Ten families are failing to cope. Could we bring an extra 25 of our library bags? Not just for this week. For every week? If that's OK?

Of course it's OK.

It's what we're here for when all is said and done.

It's the role we are deemed to play in the hunger games of 2022.

I end the call. Light up a smoke. I drive the highways and the by-ways as a renewed curtain of rain lashes the windscreen.

I do the maths.

25 library bags a week.

100 a month,

1200 a year.

1200 x £5 = £6000

Add it to your budget, foodbank guy.

A scene from 'Apocalypse Now' jumps into my head. Kurtz and Willard. Brando and Sheen.

“Are you an assassin, Captain Willard?”

“I'm a soldier. Sir”

“You're neither. Your an errand boy sent by grocery clerks …... to collect the bill.”

The bill.

Another £6000 worth of bill.

And as I drive, I hope to hell Aldi continue to come through for us.

Because right now Aldi are the only show in town. They are the only place who are willing to sell us the tins and packets we need in sufficient quantities to stand a chance.

A delivery to a couple I have been delivering to for months now. They're of an age. They're waiting on decision for PIP. Personal Independence Payments. A chance to be independent of feeling hungry. It's another nice house with another nice car in the drive. Appearances don't deceive any more. Not in 2022. In 2022 they appear at the door looking for all the world like Michelin people. Layers and layers and not a light switched on.

It's all a long way away from the miserable strutting and fretting of Westminster where they are hell bent on blaming all of it on dinghy riding Albanians. Or the French. Or Vladimir Putin. Or people who eat tofu. Which at least leaves me in the clear. I've never eaten tofu in my life. Maybe I should try some?

A zoom meeting.

Like being back in 2020 again. Peak pandemic

The emergency food providers of Dumfries virtually gather to share their news and thoughts.

A food provider from a less favourable area of town lays a problem down on the table and asks for ideas. Her project collects 'end of day' items from shops, bakeries and supermarkets. Pies and sausage rolls and hot cross buns. She lays the collected food out on a trestle table outside a community centre, takes a picture and announces it via Facebook. In the Covid days, people would carefully keep their social distance and go out of their way to share and share alike. Back in the days of disease. Back in the days when we all figured it was nice to be nice.

Not so much any more.

Now a crowd is gathered and waiting before she puts the table out of the door. No need for Facebook. And once she starts to lay out the day's offering, it becomes a case of grab what you can grab and grab it fast. One or two families with something of a local reputation fill their carrier bags whilst the more timid stand back, too feart to argue the toss.

The days of making nice seem to have faded away.

In 2022 things are different. In 2022 is hard to see an end in sight. There's no vaccine roll out for ingrained poverty.

A long dark winter awaits.

If you would like to help First Base do what we do, you can find our online fundraising page via the link below.

Thanks.

THE FIRST BASE ONLINE FUNDRAISING PAGE

A WINTER'S TALE - THE EVOLUTION OF THE FIRST BASE EMERGENCY FOOD PARCEL FOR 2022/23.

 

For the last couple of weeks I have had Sean Bean's voice stuck in my head.

The full fat Sheffield version.

Two words.

'Winter's coming.'

Oh yes. Is winter ever coming.

A couple of sayings have been in my mind keeping Sean company.

First up, an old piece rock solid common sense.

'Hope for the best and prepare for the worst.'

And then a CIA adage I gathered up somewhere back in the 70's when Langley operatives were urged to always follow the rule of the six 'p's'.

'Proper planning prevents piss poor performance.'

Well I am happy to assure you The First Base Agency is every bit as willing to follow the rule of the six 'p's' as the spies of Central Intelligence Agency.

So.

The task at hand.

A plan for what is almost certainly going to be the hardest winter any of us has ever known.

Having spent a couple of weeks going through the planning process, it seems only right and proper to share it.

Warts and all.

For better or for worse.

Let's start with first principles.

The core role of our foodbank is to make sure anyone living in the 3400 square miles of South Scotland we cover gets something to eat if their cupboards are bare.

Our model is different to most foodbanks. We don't simply distribute the food donations we receive and reluctantly close the doors once all the food has gone.

Instead we have always managed to keep up with demand.

If there is not enough food donated to us, then we buy in what we need to keep up.

In twenty years we have never once had to tell someone we can't give them anything due to a lack of food.

I really, really hope I will still be able to make this statement in a year's time.

The big question of course is just how high the coming demand is going to be.

I have decided to work on what might be a very optimistic assumption. I am assuming our new Prime Minister is probably going to be truly awful but probably not suicidal.

Allowing the October price hikes to go through in full would surely be absolute political suicide as 75% of Tory voters back some kind of price cap.

If the new prices are indeed applied in full, then there is no way we will be able to keep up with demand no matter what we do.

I am therefore assuming the power prices will be capped at the level they are at now.

This of course is still double what they were last year. So far the true impact of the recent rises has been hidden by a long, warm summer.

But not for much longer now.

As Sean keeps on telling me.

Winter's coming.

So. Power bills up 100% and food costs up over 20%.

Benefits frozen and wages nowhere close to keeping up.

Way back in the days before the pandemic, we helped out lots and lots of families who were skirting along the very edge of financial ruin. Incomings would cover outgoings by the skin of their teeth. An unexpected one off expense would put them completely under water. A broken boiler. A stinging MOT. A sick cat.

With power prices double and food prices up by a quarter, each and every one of these families and individuals will be completely under water when the first bite of winter demands some heat in the home.

What will this look like in terms of demand for our services?

My best guess is a 250% increase.

So the money we now spend on one emergency food parcel will have to run to five emergency food parcels in November.

Will food donations increase to help us meet this growing need?

No, for a whole variety of reasons. Already food banks all across the country are reporting a steep decline in donated food.

Will cash donations increase?

I sincerely hope so!

There is a miserable reality here. We are entirely dependent on the Westminster Government borrowing enough cash to provide the kind of emergency relief the likes of First Base are going to need.

Some of this borrowed cash needs to be first of all sent up to Edinburgh and then down the line to local Councils.

The Scottish Government isn't allowed to borrow money.

Our local council isn't allowed to borrow money.

So its back to hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

And the worst is pretty bad.

How many emergency parcels might we be required to issue in January?

My best guess is 4000.

What kind of resources can we be confident of using to make this happen?

Maybe £8000 at a pinch.

A big pinch.

Which means £2 per emergency food parcel.

For First Base, an emergency food parcel needs to contain enough for 3 meals per day for three days for one person.

Nine meals delivering a minimum of 5000 calories and achieving a reasonably full belly.

And cost isn't the only issue to be dealt with. Ever since the pandemic, availabity has become more and more of a problem. In the days before Covid 19, I could log onto an online supermarket and order 100 tins of value baked beans. There is no such thing in the harsh reality of the new normal. Everything which is good value is strictly rationed. Asda have their value range rationed to five items per order. Morrisons don't even list their value range.

So the task has been to create a food parcel which meets both the nine filling meals requirement as well as the availability requirement as well as the whole thing costing no more than two quid requirement....

Yeah.

I know.

Well, it's time to smash the metaphorical bottle of Moet on the side of the metaphorical newly minted cruise liner.

It's time to unveil the 2022/23 First Base Winter Emergency Food Parcel.

4 x BREAD ROLLS

2 x BAKED BEANS

250g PORRIDGE OATS

250g PENNE PASTA

1 x PIE

1 x HOME MADE SCOTCH BROTH

2 x EGGS

100g SUGAR

20g KUCHERAK SEASONING

MEALS

1 x BEANS ON TOAST – 700 CALS

1 x EGGS ON TOAST = 400 CALS

3 x PORRIDGE – 2000 CALS

1 x PIE AND BEANS – 600 CALS

2 x PASTA WITH KUCHERAK – 800 CALS

1 x SOUP AND TWO ROLLS – 700 CALS

TOTAL CALORIES – 5200

This bears no resemblance to the kind of food parcels we have been providing for the last twenty years. Those who have used our service in the past will be very disappointed when they take a look inside the bag. We will be including an explanatory note and apologising.

It is what Scotland 2022 looks like.

All of a sudden a First Base Emergency Food Parcel bears an uneasy similarity to a UN Emergency Food Parcel in the South Sudan or Haiti.

Well.

Not quite.

But we're getting there.

It's what 5200 calories spread out over three days for £2 looks like.

And we couldn't have got anywhere close to managing this without a whole lot of help.

Massive thanks are absolutely required.

To Kerr at the Little Bakery in Dumfries for helping out with pies and rolls and homemade soup and storage space which enables us to order in three tonnes of baked beans from Bookers at less than 30p a tin.

To Nith Valley eggs for supplying us with empty egg boxes at cost price so we can break down half dozen boxes into 2 egg boxes.

To Farmfoods for not rationing us on their porridge and agreeing to order in half a tonne of oats per month for us to collect.

To Thompsons Foods of Dumfries for allocating us the storage required for us to buy in three tonnes of pasta ready for the winter.

To the volunteers at Summerhill Community Centre and Moffat Town Hall who have committed to prepare hundreds of portions of homemade Scotch Broth through the winter.

Without all this support, there is no way we could realistically plan to help out 4000 people a month through the coming winter.

Not a chance.

Well at least we now have a chance. A good chance.

Our food parcels will be plain and basic. But they will stave off hunger. They will get people through to the warmth of the spring.

We will still be looking for all kinds of help.

Every portion of pasta, oats, Kucherak Seasoning and sugar will need bagging up. If you fancy doing some bagging up at home in front of the tele, please give me a call on 07770443483 or email me at markglenmill@aol.com.

Every donation of baked beans, porridge oats or penne pasta we receive will mean we have to buy in less.

Every cash donation will help us to help more people if we have to.

And of course we will still be delighted with any donated food item which isn't on the list. These will be the extras we can add to the basic parcels. Maybe one item per parcel. Maybe two. Maybe three. I'm sure you get my drift.

I never thought we would ever be gearing up to provide this kind of food parcel.

But we are where we are.

We are in Scotland 2022 and it's going to be a very, very long hard winter.

If you are minded to help us out you can find our online fundraising page via the link below.

THE FIRST BASE ONLINE FUNDRAISING PAGE

MY OPEN LETTER TO THE SCOTTISH GOVERNMENT ON THE BRUTAL CHALLENGES FACED BY THE NATION'S FOOD BANKS

I've had this blog sitting for weeks now. It seemed right wait for the actual situation we all find ourselves in to to fully emerge.

Well it has emerged.

At first we were braced for a truly challenging winter.

Then things moved beyond 'challenging' and into 'crisis'. The much discussed 'Cost of Living Crisis'.

And now? Aye. And now. 

Now the coming winter is a looming catastrophe. 

Beyond challenging. Beyond anything we have seen since Hitler was strutting his stuff.

Sixty million citizens of the UK are suddenly wholly dependent on one ridiculously over promoted woman conducting a series of screeching U Turns to avoid complete civil breakdown.

If the UK Government allows the October gas and electric price hikes to go ahead in full the consequences don't bear thinking of. 

I can't believe Liz Truss has anything like the backbone to be so completely psychopathic. 

This blog assumes she will lose her nerve and somehow mitigate the projected price hikes which are looming in October.

If she does, then we are left with a huge crisis as opposed to an utter catastrophe.

It certainly is one hell of a crisis.

Literally millions of people were on the edge of needing to use a food bank before the world fell off a cliff in March 2020. 

With power prices twice what they were last year and food cost up north of 20%, the maths of life's very basics have become beyond brutal. All those barely managing millions will no long be able to pay all their costs any more.

By now we all know the maths. The desperate maths are laid out every night when we tune into the news. I will merely add a couple of thoughts.

In my sixty plus years, I have been there for two huge 'Pound a...' moments. I was 18 in the 'Winter of Discontent' of 1979 when the country chose Thatcher as the solution to our many ills. It was the first time a hard up 18 year old me paid £1 a gallon to fill up my venerable VW Beetle.

Eighteen years later, an older and still broke me got to know how it felt to pay £1 a litre for the first time.

This summer I had my third 'Pound a …' moment.

I was online in Tesco Groceries ordering the weekly First Base delivery and there it was right there on the screen.

As bold as brass.

Heinz Baked Beans. Not 440g any more. Only 415g now.

£1 a tin.

Quite a moment. And it seemed clear neither Heinz nor Tesco were in any mood to water it down. I mean they could have bottled it and gone for 99p. But no. They clearly were intent on sending a message.

£1 for a tin of beans.

Message received and understood.

My second thing. Just a simple bit of maths. The kind of brutal maths which leaves no wriggle room.

An individual adult relying on Universal Credit to keep their body and soul together receives £73 per week.

By the autumn, the projected average cost of domestic power is £70 per week.

It isn't the hardest of sums. It means a single adult is expected to feed, clothe and clean themselves for £3 a week.

45p a day.

Really?

When a 415g tin of Heinz Baked Beans is weighing in at a whole British pound?

Recently I heard the coming autumn nightmare described as a 'Social Emergency' by John Harris of the Guardian. I'll second that.

And of course you guys up in the Edinburgh Parliament are more than aware of all this stuff. I have absolutely no wish to give any lessons on egg sucking.

However, there are a few specific problems coming down the tracks for the country's foodbanks which you might not be fully aware of. 

As the coming social emergency draws ever nearer, there is lots of bad news and a couple of pieces of good news.

BAD NEWS

Foodbanks obviously rely on the public donating food. Well, duh! As the crisis deepens, people will start counting every penny. And there will be fewer and fewer spare pennies available to pay for a couple of extra items to drop into the Foodbank collection bin.

And how many of those who have made food donations in the supermarket collection box are actually in the store any more? A huge spike in grocery deliveries is one of the more noticeable legacies of the pandemic. If people simply are not physically in the store then they will no longer be dropping items into the foodbank bin.

Mass belt tightening will have a catastrophic impact on cash donations. The standing order to a charity will sadly be one of the first non essential costs to be cut.

Over the years, churches have been major collectors of emergency food. But things have changed in a big way over the years of the pandemic. Church goers are of an age. They have spent years in isolation. Many are still frightened to spend time in crowds. Church attendance has plummeted and so have the donations of food they are able to distribute. Churches who three years ago used to bring us a car boot full of donations every week now come with a couple of carrier bags.

And the church funds? Just imagine what it now costs to heat up a big old drafty church to the temperature required for an elderly congregation. There won't be much left for a cheque for the local foodbank.

Many emergency food projects rely on a either a subscription to Fareshere or the chance to collect the day's unsold or about to to be out of date goods from the local supermarket. Fareshare is a national charity which takes in vast quantities of surplus food from the supermarkets. Small charities pay Fareshare a couple of thousand pounds a year and in return they get a weekly delivery of food. Which is all good of course. Less food goes to landfill. Hungry people get a meal.

However things are slowly changing. Another news bulletin regular is the story of people gathering in the supermarket at seven in the evening to get a chance of buying 'yellow sticker' items. 'Was £1, now 20p'. And as the Social Emergency escalates, there will be more and more of these seven o'clock people.

The supermarkets are suited down to the ground by this. Why wouldn't they be? The yellow sticker opportunity is advertised regularly on the news. This equates to huge amounts of free publicity which will help the retailers to sell off more and more stuff and therefore give less and less away to the likes of Fareshare.

This will mean the emergency food projects relying on weekly Fareshare deliveries will start to receive less and less food. And projects relying on collecting unsold goods from their local store will also receive less and less food.

So basically, as the social emergency escalates and the demand for food rockets, the nation's foodbanks will be receiving less and less food.

Which leaves us all with only one option if we are to somehow keep up with the rising demand.

We're going to have to buy in more food.

But even this is getting harder with every passing week. It's not just a case of raising the required funds to buy in all the food we need. It's also the problem of actually being able to physically buy enough. Before the pandemic I could log on to the online supermarkets and order 100 tins of 'Value' baked beans.

Then came Covid.

Rationing.

Tesco limited us to 16 items of any given product

Asda limited us to 10 items.

And as of last week, Asda have reduced the ration to five items. If I order a delivery every day from Monday to Friday, I can only lay my hands on a lousy 25 tins of Asda's 'Value' beans. 

By December First Base will very possibly be expected to come up with at least a thousand emergency food parcels per week.

The maths are not exactly on our side!

And all the while, Foodbanks will be on the news. Every single night. And the story will always be the same. Things are dire! Many, many more people need to use their local Foodbank!

In these so familiar news pieces, there is always an assumption the local Foodbank will have some food to give. 

But will we? 

We're all pretty good at what we do, but none of us are miracle workers. Right now First Base is helping out 400 people a week. At the peak of the pandemic it was 600 a week.

Are we able to go back to 600 a week when the Autumn reveals the full extent of the social emergency?

Almost certainly.

But what if the Social Emergency means 750 people a week? Or a thousand?

Well logistically we can do it. But financially? Not a chance. There is no way we can raise enough cash to buy in enough food for such high numbers. And that is assuming we can find a way to work around the new rationing regimes of the retailers.

Instead I guess we might well have to change the parcels we give out to the kind of emergency food we see being provided in famine hit areas of Africa.

Not a great look for Scotland 2022.

BUT THERE IS ACTUALLY SOME GOOD NEWS!

Reason for optimism number one.

We all have a reasonable amount of time to get ready. There is no need for us to be blindsided by the coming social emergency. We have been given plenty of advance warning. Right now, heating is switched off all over Scotland and it won't be switched on until the first cold snap of the autumn. That will be the week when the impossible reality hits hundreds of thousands of people. The week when many will walk through the doors of their local Foodbank for the very first time. The week when demand will go through the roof.

Reason for optimism number two.

The Scottish Government has proved it is more than capable of stepping up to the plate to meet this kind of challenge. You did it in March 2020 when the pandemic threatened to tear apart the social fabric much like it is doing in China right now. You made quick and decisive decisions. You informed councils there would be funds available for front line charities to meet the spiraling needs of self isolating communities. You insisted these funds should be made available quickly and with minimal red tape.

And it worked. It worked better than anyone could possibly have imagined. All over Scotland, new community projects joined with existing projects like First Base and by hook or by crook, the vulnerable were looked after.

We all proved it could be done and it was done. It was done in double quick time and it was done unbelievably well. And it was done by an army of volunteers.

You guys provided the funding and the community did the rest.

Reason to be optimistic number three.

And here is the best news. 

The network which exploded into life in the early months of the pandemic is still in place. The premises. The volunteers. The expertise. The ability to support the vulnerable. All of it.

We all know how to deal with an huge crisis. We proved we could do it in 2020. We can do it again. As a legacy of the pandemic, every Council in Scotland now has a relationship with the community groups who stepped up when everything was grinding to a halt. You know who we are and you know where we are because you provided us with the funds we needed in the pandemic.

You can do it again. In 2020 our communities learned how to look after ourselves in the very darkest of times. In the coming winter, we're going to have to do it again. And we can do it.

But we can't do it on fresh air. We're not miracle workers. If we are to meet the coming demand, we're going to have to buy in an awful lot of food.

And you guys? Well you need to do exactly the same job you did in 2020. You need to make sure no emergency food project ever has to turn people away due to a lack of food.

It didn't happen when 2000 people a day were dying of Covid in the darkest days of 2020.

It doesn't need to happen in the darkest days of the coming winter. You have two months to make sure you have your side of things all sorted out and ready. 

You have two months to be ready for the worst.

And when the tsunami hits, you can be ready to press the button and the community will do the rest.

Please don't blow it.

If you would like to help First Base to gear up for the coming social emergency you can follow the link below to our online fundraising page.

THE FIRST BASE AGENCY ONLINE FUNDRAISING PAGE

SHAFTS OF SUNLIGHT IN A DARKENING WORLD - PEOPLE FROM DUMFRIES AND GALLOWAY TRANSFORM THE LIVES OF HUNDREDS OF GIRLS IN AFRICA.

It has to be said, we are living through very dark times. Every night the news is filled with images of genocide we all hoped would be forever consigned to the History Channel. 

Victorian levels of poverty are starting to stalk the land and before we know we'll all be spending a tenner to boil a kettle.

Finding a reason to be cheerful isn't an easy task.

Anyway.

Enough already.

The purpose of this missive is to inject a shaft of light into the gathering darkness.

When things are universally bleak, it is all too easy to feel helpless. Overwhelmed.

To batten down the hatches.

Fair enough.

And yet many of us feel the need to find a way to do something tangible. Something which makes things better, even if only in a small way.

Thankfully every day sees millions of people do exactly this when they put a tin into the foodbank collection box in their local supermarket.

A tin of beans makes a small difference. A million tins of beans makes a huge difference.

Which brings me to the photographs at the top of this blog.

Bullet points.

The Kupata Project is a small charity based in Dumfries and Galloway.

We raise money here in Scotland and we spend it in Uganda where the Covid 19 pandemic has taken abject poverty and turned it into desperate poverty.

What we do is really simple.

We provide sanitary pads to school girls. In a place where the average wage is £1 a day, sanitary pads are an unaffordable luxury for the vast majority of families.

Without sanitary pads, Ugandan girls miss up to 25% of their time in school.

Which basically makes their already limited life chances 25% worse.

We don't act like 'know it all' Westerners.

There's been more than enough of that kind of thing in Africa over the last few centuries.

We don't pretend to know better. Instead we solve a simple but significant problem.

The photos tell what we hope is an uplifting story. They paint a picture of a few people in Dumfries and Galloway making a direct and life changing difference to the lives of hundreds of girls in the heart of Africa.

The sums of money are not from the Bill Gates playbook.

£20 a month, £34 a month, £300 and £1000.

A school full of girls each.

A direct connection.

A vast difference made to many, many young lives.

And fair enough, in the midst of all the gathering darkness, it is only a small difference.

But when enough people put a tin of beans into a collection box it can soon add up to a million.

Anne and Bob and Maggie and Fiona and Richard and Suzie and Michelle and Shona and the members of Dalbeattie Rotary Club are separated from the girls in the photos by many thousands of miles. From rain swept Dumfries and Galloway to the green hills of Africa.

And yet the photos tell a story of a distance rendered obsolete. Instead there is a connection. An umbilical cord. Four schools adopted. A thousand lives changed.

A bright shaft of sunlight breaking through all the dark clouds.

If you would like to help out, you can find the link to the Kupata Project's online fundraising page via the link below. And if you would like to adopt a school for £20 a month, give me a call on 07770443483.

And by the way, putting the flags of Scotland and Uganda together on the posters wasn't our idea. It came from our young volunteers in Uganda.

What's not to like about that?

THE KUPATA PROJECT ONLINE FUNDRAISING PAGE

AND SO IT STARTS. THE CATASTROPHE OF 2022 ARRIVES AT OUR FOODBANK

 

It's March and it is already crystal clear. History will recall 2022 as a year of catastrophe. We don't yet know just how great the catastrophe might be. God forbid, it might still end in mushroom clouds.

Let's all pray otherwise.

Right now, all eyes are all on the pictures of 1942 in HD which fill our TV screens. How could our eyes not be?

But soon our attention will inevitably be drawn to disasters closer to home.

The cold hard economic facts are unlike anything we have seen since 1973.

Petrol is about to hit £10 a gallon and the price of a loaf of bread will double in the next couple of months.

A sixty mile round trip is about to cost £20.

The consequences are beyond comprehension and as the manager of an already over stretched foodbank the near future has become a thing of utter dread.

And in a way it started yesterday. The first clap of thunder from the approaching storm.

I parked up the van and clicked off a podcast describing how hell had come to earth in a city on the shores of the Black Sea.

Check messages.

A quiet voice on the very verge of tears.

“I don't how how I am supposed to do this. Do I need to register? Do I need to bring in some documents?”

She wasn't a Ukrainian refugee facing the UK's wall of bureaucracy.

She was a lady living in abject rural poverty twenty or so miles from First Base.

Our near abroad.

Choking back the ever present tears, she ran through her story. Her tragedy. Her small, unnoticed tragedy in a world of vast tragedy.

A tragedy of various parts which had suddenly come together to make her life impossible.

The bare bones I will lay out are anonymised.

She has a serious long term disease which is getting steadily and inevitably worse.

But she can still work. And she has worked. She has worked for the same employer for all but 20 years.

Steady. Reliable. A part of the furniture. A model employee.

But over the course of a few days, everything has fallen apart.

Driving to and from her place of work involves five round trips of 50 miles per week. 350 miles in all.

And all of of a sudden the cost of travelling to and from work has gone up by £25 a week.

A straw to break the back of a camel.

Already going to work was costing her money. Staying at home in perpetual isolation on Universal Credit would put a few more pounds coins in her purse.

And already her incomings were incapable to filling the oil tank and thereby allowing her to heat her damp abode.

A real terms pay cut of £25 a week might as well have been £1000 a week.

She had arrived at the gates of impossibility.

And now she really has to fight her way through the tears.

Because her place of work was behind the till in a garage.

She laid out her tragedy to her boss. Piece by piece.

Maybe he could help make the impossible possible with a weekly splash of petrol?

Surely twenty years of reliable service had to be worth something?

In a perfect world it would be.

But this is anything but a perfect world.

This is planet earth in the year of Our Lord 2022.

Her boss gave her the same answer Putin has given to the people of Mariupol.

Niet.

Not a litre, not a pound, not a penny.

Not my problem.

Plenty more fish in the sea.

So she resigned.

What other choice was there?

A dictator invades a neighbour and an ill lady in Dumfries and Galloway has to give up her job of twenty years in favour of a life of endless cold and utter isolation.

Dominos, right?

In their own way, basic sums can be as life ruining as cluster bombs.

The catastrophe of 2022 will come in many different forms.

For the people of Mariupol it is beyond every nightmare.

For the countries of the Middle East and Africa who rely on affordable wheat from Russia and Ukraine, it will mean famine.

And for us it will mean a vast rolling tragedy for those who could barely manage in the days before petrol hit £10 a gallon and the price of a loaf of bread doubled.

She came in to us yesterday. She is in town once a week for unmissable doctors appointments.

She came to us with the tears still flowing.

And of course we gave her a week's worth of food for herself and her dog and her cats.

And of course we assured her we would help her for as long as she needed our help.

And of course we told her there would be no documents required to enable her to keep her body and soul together.

First Base is not the UK Home Office.

First Base does not make people prove the extent of their desperation.

First Base does what it can and to be frank, it isn't going to be remotely enough.

Yes, we can keep food on the table. But we can't keep the heating on. Or the lights. And we can't pay the rent. Or buy clothes. Or drive bailiffs from the door.

And there is no parcel to drive away fear and despair.

I put the phone down after half an hour or so and couldn't escape a growing feeling of dread.

And so it starts.

Our part in the catastrophe of 2022.

Our resources are desperately limited. We do a pretty good job of distributing 16,000 emergency food parcels across and area which spans 3400 square miles. And our parcels are decent. Varied and reasonably nutritious. Three days worth of eating.

Not Fortnum and Mason. But not bad.

I wonder what one of our parcels will look like in six months time? Milk and a bag of porridge oats?

In the year when petrol is about to hit £10 a gallon and the price of a loaf of bread is about to double, how many emergency parcels will we be required to hand out in the 3400 square miles we cover?

I have no idea.

Nobody has any idea.

And so it starts.

THE FIRST BASE ONLINE FUNDRAISING PAGE

IN THESE DIRE TIMES, DO YOU EVER LOOK BACK TO THE 2014 INDEPENDENCE REFERENDUM AND THINK 'IF ONLY?....' I DO!

 

I did an interview for 'Scotland Tonight' yesterday evening. It was actually rather a bizarre experience - High tech and low tech all rolled into one.

The high tech part involved a mind boggling link which enabled my ugly mug to appear on a large screen in the STV studio in Glasgow via my Iphone. The low tech part was setting the aforesaid Iphone up on a dusty old paperback and the shut down screen of my laptop whilst all the while storm Dudley rattled away at the windows.

My role was to state the blindingly obvious. The party line for every front line charity trying to mitigate the endless nightmare of London rule.

Since 2008, real wages have gone down.

Slowly but surely, millions of families have been sliding down into a kind of grinding survival mode. A place where the incomings are never quite able to square up to the outgoings. A place where the end of the month gap keeps on getting that little bit wider, only made bridgeable by money borrowed from family or squeezed into the last remaining space on the plastic.

Like slowly boiled frogs.

There is new economic name for the people who are stuck in this slow moving nightmare.

The Precariat.

So let's take a precariat family in 2019.

Incomings - £20,000

Outgoings - £21,000

How did they bridge the gap? Let's say £500 from mum and dad and £500 onto Barclaycard.

Not great.

In June of the year in question, the annual MOT had rolled in at £543 including VAT – an eye watering £342 over their rather optimistic budget of £200.

This meant three months of frantic belt tightening and multiple visits to the foodbank.

So how are things looking now?

Aye right.

A couple of modest pay rises have lifted the family incomings up to £20,500.

And the outgoings?

Oh my god the bloody outgoings.....

What is 7% of £21,000?

It's £1470.

Which brings the pot to the boil and duly completes the long term task of killing the frog

£22,470 - £20,500 = £1970

As in two thousand quid bar the shouting.

And mum and dad are broke as well.

And the Barclaycard is all maxxed out.

And so the foodbank is the only show in town and it will continue to be so for the foreseeable future.

Working in a foodbank in February 2022 feels a bit like living on some island in the path of a coming hurricane.

You know it is coming and there isn't a damned thing you can do about it.

Only two questions await answers.

When will it arrive? And how bad is it going to be? Will the roof stay in place or will it be blown clean off?

So in a nutshell, I stated the obvious.

And once the director up in the studio bid me a good evening, I couldn't help but wish I had been able talk about a far bigger picture.

Well this isn't an STV interview and I don't have to wear my sensible foodbank manager's hat. Instead I can don my 'YES' hat and let off some steam.

Imagine, as the man once said.

Imagine 'YES' had won in September 2014. We would have been fully independent now and the world would look like a very different place. We could all be watching the antics of the pound shop Fascists in Westminster and thinking 'there but for the grace of God....'

It would be very easy to go on and on and on about how much better things would be, but I haven't got the time and neither have you.

So I will contain my rant to a couple of things.

Fair enough?

OK.

As we all know only too well, right now there are 130,000 Russian soldiers on the Ukrainian border. Only one person on God's green earth knows the answer to the big 'will he/won't he' question and that person of course is Vladimir Putin.

What does or does not happen in Ukraine isn't really our business and even if it was, there isn't a whole lot we can do about it.

And yet it is our business in a very big way.

Right now, somewhere under the world's oceans, a Trident submarine is gliding silently through the dark waters. On board are multiple nuclear warheads, each and every one targeted at a Russian city. On board is the capability to wipe out tens of millions of Russians should the word be passed down the line to the captain.

This inescapable fact leads to another inescapable fact. Right now, one of the first targets on the Russian nuclear hit list will be the nuclear sub base at Faslane. And should Faslane be vapourised, then Glasgow will become collateral damage.

So all of a sudden, any sudden escalation in Ukraine is very much our business.

Had we voted 'Yes' in 2014, the nukes would have been away by now. Would any town or city in an Independent Scotland be worthy of being high up on a Russian nuclear hit list? It seems highly doubtful.

Of course a large majority of Scots don't want to play host to Britain's last vengeful vestige of Imperial power. But we have no choice in the matter. The word from our lords and masters in London is to put up and shut up. Defense of the Realm is and always will be a reserved matter and Big Dog is the duly anointed great leader with the authority to kill off all those tens of millions of Russians. 

It is for us to learn to stay quiet and deal with it.

And if Glasgow gets wiped clean off the map? Well, them's are the breaks I guess. It's all part and parcel of being a colony.

We voted for it, right?

Anyway. Here's a bunch of facts. I will leave it for you to piece them all together.

How would these facts have come together had we voted YES back in 2014?

OK. Here goes.

In France, the Government has control over EDF, it's main energy provider.

This means President Macron has cracked the whip and told EDF it can only put up its prices by 4%

Unlike the 50% increase we are about to suffer.

Oh and by the way, French electric prices were a whole lot lower than ours before this bloody nightmare started.

Next.

In 2020, Scotland's wind farms produced 97.5% of Scotland's power needs.

Where this power goes is a reserved power. Every last kilowatt of electricity we produce belongs to London. Lock, stock and barrel. We are required stick it into the National Grid and we are charged top dollar to buy our own renewable power back.

Between 2020 and 2022, the price of Scottish wind has not risen by so much as a penny.

In 2020 the cost of Scottish wind was £0.

In 2022 the cost of Scottish wind is still £0. There has been zero inflation when it comes to the price of Scottish wind.

Vladimir Putin has no ability to lift the price of Scottish wind, no matter how many nukes he has.

In fact, Scotland is one of the very few countries on earth with the ability to be able to withstand a huge spike in global gas and oil prices.

Had we voted Yes back in 2014, our First Minister would now be in an even better position than President Macron.

How many companies would be eyeing up a move to Scotland right now?

How many people would be eyeing up a move to Scotland right now.

We would be vibrant newly independent country powered by a source of energy free at the point of use...... forever.

And ever.

But we didn't vote 'YES'.

We voted 'NO'.

We voted to be 'Better Together'.

We voted for the right to go down with the London ship.

We voted for the right to think 'if only.....'

Surely we couldn't possibly be so utterly brain washed and stupid when we get the chance to vote again?

Could we?

If you're interested on my efforts on STV you can get there via the link below. The piece arrives after 14 minutes but the adverts are non negotiable. Check out the state of the First Base ceiling!

STV - 'Scotland Tonight'

SAVE BIG DOG? OH PLEASE, PLEASE DO!

A few months ago I found myself in what I guess might be called a double pinch myself moment. You know the kind of moment, right? As in this is all so utterly extraordinary I really must be dreaming.

Some context.

Liverpool were in the midst of their annual journey into the beating heart of the Evil Empire.

As in Old Trafford, that great crumbling, boxy monstrosity squatting like a malevolent Soviet era eyesore in the heart of Salford.

As in Mordor.

Complete with a full complement of 76,000 baying Orcs.

Sixty minutes on the clock and there were words and letters on the TV screen I never thought possible.

Manchester United 0 - Liverpool 5.

Yup.

Not a fever dream on the back of a tab of acid.

Cold, hard, actual, really happening reality.

Manchester United 0 - Liverpool 5

Pinch, pinch, pinch.

I pinched until my flesh was bruised and still I didn't wake up to a world more familiar.

Not only was it it five nil, it looked like at any second it would be six. Then seven. Then eight. Nine?

The forces of darkness were imploding in front of my disbelieving eyes.

A result for the ages was in the making. Half a century's worth of bragging rights.

My mind wandered back a couple of years to one of my more bizarre experiences of watching the lads taking the East Lancs road to Mordor.

I was in front of a big TV in the bar of a somewhat threadbare lodge in Queen Elizabeth Game Park in South West Uganda. 

Rift Valley. Ruwenzori Mountains. Eighty degrees of heat undeterred by the lazy rusty fans on the paint cracked ceiling.

People had driven in from far and wide to take advantage of the rare satellite signal. Sky Sports in the heart of Africa.

The much vaunted global tribes of two clubs followed by hundreds of millions.

The two guys beside me soon revealed themselves as Mancs as Marcus Rashford opened the scoring and sent the Orcs in the stadium into overdrive.

Both were well fed and watered and they wore the clothes of the Ugandan one percent. Maybe politicians? Maybe policemen? Definitely well heeled Government.

At one point, the guy next to me cocked an ear to the screen and picked out the song the Orcs in the stadium were belting out.

Our song with their words.

He grinned and lent in to me to spell out the words in his rich African voice.

"Sign on, Sign on with hope in your heart and you'll never get a job...."

Seriously.

Half an hour or so later Adam Lallana equalised and Liverpool grabbed an undeserved draw.

We went on to win the league.

They didn't.

Just for the record.

Anyway.

Back to my pinch myself moment of a few months ago. 0 - 5 with thirty opportunity rich minutes left on the clock.

It was at this moment I arrived at pinch myself moment number two as the cameras zoomed in on the ashen face of the United manager.

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.

The one time 'Bay Faced Assassin'.

Three years into the role and doing the kind of job for Mordor Robert Mugabe once upon a time did for Zimbabwe.

Every day he hung on meant more long term damage.

Every day he hung on to his job was a day of joy for us.

Every day he hung on to his job was a lingering nightmare for the Orcs.

Would he survive 0 - 5? 

Doubtful, but there was a sliver of a chance.

Would he survive 0 - 8?

Not a prayer. Not in a million years.

So what to hope for? Settle for 0 - 5 and the chance of a few more catastrophic weeks in Mordor?

Or go for the utter blissful nemesis option?

Short term gratification or long term damage?

A actually surprised myself by choosing the long term strategic option and had no complaints when the lads played quiet disdainful keep ball for the last thirty minutes and allowed the scoreboard to be frozen at 0 - 5.

For all of history.

And now in the grey cold of January it seems a kind of Groundhog Day has arrived.

Another Mordor is under siege. A different Mordor. A Mordor sited two hundred miles south of Old Trafford.

A Mordor at the heart of another vindictive, shrunken dark empire.

The Mordor of Prime Minister Boris Johnson and all his hideous cronies.

My utter contempt for Johnson is as absolute as contempt can get. I knew plenty like him at college. Preening, entitled Etonian twats. But he is next level. 

This is an article he signed off on when he was Editor at the Spectator.

"The extreme reaction to Mr Bigley's murder is fed by the fact that he was a Liverpudlian. Liverpool is a handsome city with a tribal sense of community. A combination of economic misfortune — its docks were, fundamentally, on the wrong side of England when Britain entered what is now the European Union — and an excessive predilection for welfarism have created a peculiar, and deeply unattractive, psyche among many Liverpudlians.

They see themselves whenever possible as victims, and resent their victim status; yet at the same time they wallow in it. Part of this flawed psychological state is that they cannot accept that they might have made any contribution to their misfortunes, but seek rather to blame someone else for it, there by deepening their sense of shared tribal grievance against the rest of society.

The deaths of more than 50 Liverpool football supporters at Hillsborough in 1989 was undeniably a greater tragedy than the single death, however horrible, of Mr Bigley; but that is no excuse for Liverpool's failure to acknowledge, even to this day, the part played in the disaster by drunken fans at the back of the crowd who mindlessly tried to fight their way into the ground that Saturday afternoon. The police became a convenient scapegoat, and the Sun newspaper a whipping-boy for daring, albeit in a tasteless fashion, to hint at the wider causes of the incident."

Yeah.

Over fifty? It was ninety six in case you're remotely interested. Ninety seven now.

I was one of those fans at the back of the crowd. Not drunk by the way. Just there. Alive by the roll of a dice.

There are no words.

I have never truly hated a politician before. But believe me, I truly hate Johnson. I have reached the stage where I can't even stand to look at him any more.

The good people of Liverpool are not alone when it comes to being the butt of a pathetic Johnson joke.

Here are some more words the bastard signed of on during his days at the helm of the Spectator. This time the good folk of Scotland are in his pig eyed sight.

"The Scotch – what a verminous race!

Canny, pushy, chippy, they’re all over the place,

Battening off us with false bonhomie,

Polluting our stock, undermining our economy.

Down with sandy hair and knobbly knees!

Suppress the tartan dwarves and the Wee Frees!

Ban the kilt, the skean-dhu and the sporran

As provocatively, offensively foreign!

It’s time Hadrian’s Wall was refortified

To pen them in a ghetto on the other side.

I would go further. The nation

Deserves not merely isolation

But comprehensive extermination.

We must not flinch from a solution."

Yeah. He actually thought this vicious drivel was funny. Fit for publication. "The nation deserves not merely isolation but comprehensive extermination. We must not flinch from a solution."

I think I should repeat the last line 

"We must not flinch from a solution."

Is it a bit too Adolf Eichmann 1942 for your taste? It is for mine.

So believe you me I am enjoying every second of watching his slow and dismal demise. I am relishing the sight of every knife being eased into his flailing carcass.

But do I want to see him yanked out of 10 Downing Street and tossed unceremoniously onto the street?

Well, no, actually.

I'm back to a 0 - 5 shaped dilemma. I keep telling myself to look beyond short term gratification and to focus on the bigger picture.

The 'Yes' campaign will never have a greater asset than Johnson. Every day he clings to power sees a few thousand more make the move from 'No' to 'Yes'. 

Every day.

A few more months of Johnson might well be enough to seal the deal. 

Forever.

So 'Operation Save Big Dog'?

Absolutely! Bring it on. And please let it succeed in spades because a few more months of this uniquely hideous human being will surely be enough to make an Independent Scotland a nailed on certainty.