IT SEEMS OUR WESTMINSTER MASTERS ARE ABLE TO TURN POVERTY ON AND OFF LIKE A TAP.

We have been giving out emergency food parcels for over fifteen years. We were a foodbank long before foodbanks were even a thing. In fact when we became a foodbank the very word foodbank didn't even exist.

My point? My point is we know a bit about this thing we do.

One thing I have learned is that it is almost impossible to predict how many people will turn up looking for emergency food on a day to day basis. Over the last year, our monthly demand has risen from 400 parcels per month to 500 parcels per month. Am I surprised? Not really. Wages are stuck. Benefits are frozen. Food prices are up. Power costs are up. So it's hardly rocket science. The safety net of the Welfare State is increasingly filled with holes. So of course demand is up. How could it not be?

So if you ask me how many emergency food parcels First Base will give out in January, I will say about five hundred and I won't be very far wrong. But if you ask me how many parcels we will issue tomorrow all I can do is shrug my shoulders. The maths should be easy enough. 500 parcels. Twenty or so working days. So 25 parcels a day, right? Nope. Not even close. It might be sixty or it might be four. It is entirely up in the air.

That said, there are a couple of times of the year when things are easier to call. This is the time of year when people say to us 'you guys must be really busy right now.'

Why? Because Christmas is a couple of weeks away. And we are hard wired into the idea that Christmas is a brutal time for the poor. Which it is of course. Much of this is probably down to Dickens and the whole 'Christmas Carol' thing. Scrooge and Tiny Tim and all that. But that is hardly the full story. If you are either relying on Universal Credit or sick pay to put food on your table, Christmas is by some distance the best time of the year.

Why? Well I can't prove it, but the answer seems clear enough. All of a sudden from about the third week in December, people stop getting sanctioned. Sick people are deemed to be sick. Benefits are paid in full and on time. Why might this be? Well I'm a pretty cynical sort of soul. Maybe the powers that be are scared to death of the papers getting hold of the story of some desperate individual hanging themeselves on Christmas Eve in a house of empty cupboards and no power. Recently sanctioned. Hungry and desperate. Driven to utter despair. A Christmas Carol story for the twenty first century, yeah? The media would lap it up and the studios would be filled with head shaking, hand wringing guests on the verge of tears.

Nor a good look for our gallant Tory rulers, right? So they send the word down to their minions in the Department of Work and Pensions. Ease up lads. Make nice for a while. Pay in full and on time. And lo and behold the two weeks of Christmas are the quietest two weeks of the year for the likes of First Base.

On about 12 January everything goes back to normal. The DWP resumes its cold hearted war on the poor. Sanctions kick back in. Sick people are once again deemed to be fit as fleas. Because when all is said and done, who really cares if someone hangs themselves on 12 January. In a house with empty cupboards and no power.

The second time when demand is predictable has just happened. Sometimes it comes in October. Other times it is November. It is the week when the first frosts of winter arrive. All over Britain, people face a moment of truth. They have had the heating switched off all Spring and all Summer and most of the Autumn. But now there is no choice. It's -2 degrees outside and there is ice on the inside of the windows. Time to use some gas for the first time in months. Time to feed the meter.

Time for a moment of truth. 

Understandably, people figure if they haven't used any gas, then they can't have spent any money on gas. It makes sense, right? Except it doesn't because there's a catch. Small print. A sting in the tail. Whatever. It goes by the name of the 'standing charge'. A sneaky few pence a day which adds up quietly through the bright days of spring and the hot days of summer and the wet days of autumn. It adds up and it adds up. Out of sight and out of mind, until the day comes when it is -2 degrees outside and the moment of truth can no longer be avoided.

So you put £20 on the meter and most of it is eaten up by the standing charge. Which means you are suddenly confronted with a very Britain 2019 question. You've got £20 left. Is it to be heating or eating? Pop quiz. No middle ground. And the cupboards are bare. And it's -2 degrees outside. What's it to be?

Of course most people opt to switch on the heat and come to us to get something into the cupboards. Of course they do. Wouldn't you? I certainly would.

So on the week when the first frosts of the winter arrive, demand for our food parcels jumps. 10%. 20%. Just up.

Except this year it didn't happen. For the first time in over fifteen years, it didn't happen. In fact on the week the temperature dipped all the way down to -5 degrees, demand for our food parcels actually fell. How very strange.

Which begs the question, why? Why this bucking of a fifteen year long trend? Why did it suddenly feel like Christmas?

Well I can't prove it, but I am pretty sure the reason is exactly the same as the reason for our being quiet at Christmas. For the first time in decades we have a winter election. And of course the last thing Boris and his boys would want would be a desperate, dismal tale of a sanctioned benfit claimant hanging themselves in one of their target seats in the 'Red Wall'. In Hartlepool. In Bolsover. In the Don Valley. In a house with bare cupboards. In a house devoid of a trace of heat.

So it looks like the word has been sent to the DWP. Make nice until 12 December. Let the sick be sick. Let the unemployed turn up five minutes late. Allow some slack. Pay up and smile.

And on 13 December you can go back to business as usual. Come down on them like a tonne of bricks. Put a bit of stick about. Let them know their place. On 13 December you can do your thing and you can keep on doing it for five years. Long, endless years.

It would appear they can turn poverty on and off like a tap. Can I prove it? 

Nope.

Do I think I'm right?

Of course I bloody do. And in a few short weeks we will no doubt be busier than ever before . And in five year's time.....?

Christ. I shudder to think.

If you can spare a quid or two to help us meet the demand which is coming as sure as night follows day, you can find our online fundraising page via the link below. 

THE FIRST BASE ONLINE FUNDRAISING PAGE