Banks bailout limited

Not all banks are getting bailed out. Food banks sure aren't.

This isn't all bad. I was a user of the food banks until my disability kicked in. I still sometimes use low cost restaurants who use food from the central food bank.

What I learned is that food banks are a critical necessity. But donations are down apparently. This carries some irony because at this time donations are needed more as more laid off people stream onto the unemployment rolls. Food banks become critical.

For me, food banks worked. However each user must be warned of the health risks associated with this food source. I was sick almost constantly while I devoured food from the banks. It was a tough choice. Endure hunger pains. Or, endure the ill health so common to this food source.

Why is this? First consider the sources.

Food bank food is almost always either second hand food. It is definitely not fresh by any view.

With fresh food there is a limited numbers of handlers before one purchases. The farm, sorters, packagers and retailer. This limits the access of bacteria. In the case of food bank food, the food is handled many times before it hits the plate.

Fresh food means that usually food is below the expiry or best before date. Food bank food is almost always stale, or close too it. Often the best before date is a historical entry.

Canned food from a primary store is often pristine regarding the condition of the containers. Food bank cans are almost always dented. And they are often dented severely. Denting comes from the retailer who would have written off the dented can as unsafe for his/her customers. Denting also occurs because of the excessive handling of the food stuffs.

In the extra handling, not all the hands are clean hands. Often food banks are dirty old warehouse space which was donated by some rich guy who couldn't use the space. Or they could be located in ancient church basements with questionable sanitation conditions.

Also the food bank stores don't have the right handling conditions. The food undergoes frequent changes in temperature and humidity.

Now these are the problems encountered by the food banks which receives food from the well intentioned. There are a few donations that could be called malicious.

First there is the donation from people cleaning out the fridge. Instead of parsing into the recycling system, these people who consider the food unfit for their consumption put the food into the food hampers seeing as poor people are like dogs. Dogs eat anything and don't appear to get sick from it.

Second there are the poisoners. There are people who intentionally put spoiled food into the second hand food system. I once opened a jar of apple sauce only to find a thick layer of mold. The person who donated the food must have thought this was a good joke. Poor people have great senses of humor after all.

Another category of intentional malice comes from the commercial sector. Sometimes retailers donate the food to get a better tax credit rather than sending it to the dump where they know it should have gone.

Why the silence about all this? Fear. First the food is needed. Food bank food is a necessity. The large quantity of food comes from caring Samaritans. The fear is that by complaining it will kill the system and the larger good. The reason that poor people seem to die younger and have more health problems derive from the use of food banks and the charity meal system.

But if you are heading for the food bank system, I would encourage you to think again. No matter the care taken at the food bank apparently there are lax health standards. The volunteers are not experts in food handling, at any point. You are putting your health at risk. But if you need the food, use it with your eyes open. And say thank you.

Merry Christmas...

Decline of the Canadian righteous

In the time of plenty, Canadians show a peculiar quirk. Last night, I had the extreme displeasure of witnessing the magnificent arrogant pomposity of a leading light of one of the New Democratic Party(NDP). Gerald Caplan hung his spiel on the program of a supreme media pompous ass, Steve Paikin.

Caplan flogged his book on Africa, the name of which I will not mention. Caplan waxed fondly on his magnificent contributions of caring. Paikin tossed the lob ball questions in a rehearsed sympathy. Smothered in hyperbole caring, Paikin seduced the book's regurgitating major themes about Africa. All the information contained therein is commonly known for the last 100 years. Caplan killed a lot of trees barfing up his whining data about the problems of Africa.

Yet this headlight of the party which claims to be the guardian of the vulnerable and depressed, walks draped in his own righteousness without failing to observe the abysmal failure of his own political stripe. For the last thirty five years the NDP remains kidnapped by a small clique of elite intellectuals with no grasp of the lower grades of society. Unions slowly abandon this small group of no good, do-gooders.

When formed the NDP was created by the group of gritty socialists and disinfected Liberals. They ate meat. They had fought in wars. They supported the military. They drank and drove. They hunted animals. They fished. They ate meat. They ate processed foods. They earned money working with their hands, not their mouths. They wanted universal health care. They sought safer workplaces. They believed that everyone should be housed. They wanted people to have viable and affordable access to justice. They worked to see that everyone could share in the wealth of Canada. They only bought Canadian made goods. They wanted jobs for all those who wanted to work. They wanted adequate support for those who weren't able to work. They cared about fellow Canadians without any tinge of whiny hypocrisy. They listened. How much changed the NDP now is.

Not meaning to portray the “Good Old Days”, rather to essay the divorce of political aims and the failure of NDP policy distancing its place from the common good. The Jack-off Layton portrays a righteousness arrogance that makes Stephen Harper look good. Worse, if you actually met him, you would know that and he still won the party leadership.

How-weird Hampton, of the Ontario provincial party cannot grasp the concept that he is not a good political leader. He makes McGuinty look good. How bad must one be to do that.

You see one cannot be mad at the Conservatives or Liberals. Inside the party meetings, they know that they are compromised jerks, they act like compromised jerks, and all their political acts proves that they are compromised jerks.

Today's NDP excel beyond jerk status. Caplan's great performance proved this. While he lines up for the poor of Africa, the poor of Canada are cast into deeper poverty. Two downtown food banks are closing before this summer during a period of time when fuel prices are literally driving food prices up beyond the level of affordable. He and his fellow NDP'ers wax fondly in academic arguments on Health Care. Increasingly the medical community with the assistance of the provincial government bureaucracy works to decrease and marginalize the health care that the poor have access to.

While transsexuals have gained funding for sex change operations, the Ontario provincial government and the responsible minister George Smitherman have reduced funding for families on welfare. They eliminated the Winter Clothing Allowance and a monthly grant to each child. They claim a federal tax credit will mostly cover this withdrawal of funds. Ironically the mean federal Conservatives came up with an idea to actually boost the income of the poorest families, and the provincial Liberals clawed this back.

Smitherman still brags about the withdrawal of the Special Diet funding for thousands who need it. He considers a feather in his political cap. Ask him.

And the bad news still pours in as the City Council of Toronto led by that champion of the poor, Mayor David Miller, fixes its new pay scale at least 25% higher refuse to add funds to social action. Due to his leadership, one quarter of the Regent Park residents lost their homes. Their homes were seized to provide low cost housing for middle income supporters of the NDP and the city government. They are literally destroyed a community because it housed poor people not worthy of belonging to the city of Toronto and its image.

Everyday people are loosing their homes in Toronto. The city and provincial have reduced funding resulting in closing half of the homeless shelter spaces in the downtown area of Toronto during the last twelve months. The first act of the Miller regime was to bar homeless people from gathering in Nathan Phillips Square. Miller claims a political affinity with the NDP. Some affinity. Such a friendship leads to the conclusion that the NDP is the new enemy of the Canadian poor, the Canadian worker.

A new high water mark will be achieved this summer in Toronto. While people yell that the Toronto Transit is an essential service, the Meals-on Wheels program is ceasing operations since the cost of fuel exceeded any funding given to it. The aged, shut-ins and poor who trapped in homes will face certain malnutrition perhaps even starvation. Yet this is considered less essential because it serves the poor. All this occurring under the seats while hypocritical pompous people like Miller, Caplan, and Paikin twaddle about Africa on the other side of the planet.