SANDRA CHAPMAN WRITES: ‘Protocol and EU Colonialism won’t feed hungry families’

She had a young family and with rapid rises in food prices she said couldn’t afford to buy what she would have liked for them.

Prices were getting beyond her and she had no idea how she, or others like her, could cope. Tinned food is better than nothing, as I know so well. As a busy working mother in days gone by I always made sure I had a supply of it.

Needless to say my heart went out to this mum. A constant diet of tinned food is better than nothing but not ideal.

She did part-time work but that still didn’t bring in enough money and this could only get worse. Most of my supply I regard as emergency food but useful nonetheless. I’m from a generation which watched our mothers bake on a Saturday to provide for the next week and have home-made food for us when we came home from school.

We went to school in the morning with a lunch of sandwiches or home baked scones and if you were lucky a bit of fruit cake and maybe an apple. Potato crisps weren’t invented then. Now they are an essential for every child’s food pack for school. The lucky ones get free school meals, others have to pay as many working mothers don’t have much time to make lunches to take to school. Hence the tins of food in the cupboard.

The Covid crisis has, sadly, made this an expensive option – yes even tinned food is rising in price. Many mums today are part of a working generation who wouldn’t know how, or have the time, to make an inexpensive meal and life will get harder for them as prices rise.

It’s when I read recently that certain obviously pampered civil servants in GB were demanding that the rises they face in National Insurance, for example, be covered by the government, that I realised that the public sector appears to have a one rule for us and one rule for them. This demand to cover their losses comes as the manager of a Belfast food bank was quoted this week as saying he is ‘not surprised to hear the worst of rising prices is yet to come’.

All food types are ‘skyrocketing’ he declared. He worried that when food prices rise ‘they rarely come back down again’. And that’s an important thing to remember and something that should be written down in bold letters and placed on Boris Johnson’s desk.

Kevin Higgins, head of policy at Advice NI said the situation had gone beyond crisis point for many people. And that’s a scary thing.

Here, our politicians are in chaos more concerned perhaps with ‘looking into a charter of rights for all NI citizens’, according to this newspaper this week.

Rights are fine and dandy but getting food to families who can barely afford to feed their children is, to me, far more important, particularly in our current crisis which shows no sign of being sorted any time soon.

Coming up shortly are annual rate rises, which I hope councils who set them will have taken into account how families are suffering.

Fuel at the pumps is extortionate and shop prices can only but rise but, hey, by the sound of some of our politicians, surely nothing is more important than getting rid of the Protocol?

Our politicians, even their like throughout the rest of the UK, are in a total tizzy about how to move forward.

Mercifully the numbers of Covid victims needing hospital care is declining and our own Health Minister Robin Swann is in the process of lifting our restrictions which as and from this week have been replaced by guidance. He’s a family man who understands.

While all this is going on our elected representatives were informed this week by Jim Allister that ‘EU colonialism’ is one of the biggest rights issues facing Northern Ireland today.

He may be right but families need affordable food now so maybe this subject could go on the back burner for a while.

A message from the Editor:

Thank you for reading this story on our website. While I have your attention, I also have an important request to make of you.

With the coronavirus lockdown having a major impact on many of our advertisers - and consequently the revenue we receive - we are more reliant than ever on you taking out a digital subscription.

Subscribe to newsletter.co.uk and enjoy unlimited access to the best Northern Ireland and UK news and information online and on our app. With a digital subscription, you can read more than 5 articles, see fewer ads, enjoy faster load times, and get access to exclusive newsletters and content. Visit https://www.newsletter.co.uk/subscriptions now to sign up.

Our journalism costs money and we rely on advertising, print and digital revenues to help to support them. By supporting us, we are able to support you in providing trusted, fact-checked content for this website.

Ben Lowry

Editor