The foodbank at a Dundee supermarket was looking a little bare when I visited this week.
As I was looking at a lone packet of reduced Hob Nobs sitting beside a bumper pack of own brand tea bags, a member of staff seemed to read my mind.
“I know,” she said. “It’s not going to feed the masses, is it?”
She said fewer people have been buying extras, whether that’s biscuits or sanitary towels, and contributing fewer items for the foodbank than normal because everyone is watching their pennies.
“I see it all the time,” she told me. “Everything is getting more expensive – in here and everywhere.
“People who used to get the luxury range of food are now going for the standard stuff. And people who got the standard things are getting the economy range.
“Not many people have loads left over for the foodbank.”
Levelling up or levelling down?
We hear the phrase ‘levelling up’ bandied about all the time.
The new buzz phrase was barely uttered a year ago, but it’s now become common parlance after Boris Johnson declared ‘levelling up’ the defining mission of his government.
The aim was to give people and communities who feel they’ve been left behind a chance to catch up – an offer to the ‘Red Wall’ voters who deserted Labour to deliver his landslide General Election victory in 2019.
And as a slogan, it’s been a great success.
I hear it all the time.
Fitness experts on TV talks about ‘levelling up’ your programme to include weights.
I hear parents ‘levelling up’ on their attempts to entertain the kids over the holidays.
But the PR hotshots who came up with term in 2019 couldn’t have foreseen the reality of life in 2022.
Their levelling up dreams didn’t take in to account the fact that Covid would strike, that Putin would wage war on Ukraine, that the price of fuel for cars and energy for homes would soar, or that a cost of living crisis would come knocking at everyone’s door.
And now the reality is that almost everyone is levelling down.
Everyone is faced with different choices
It may be as minor as not using the tumble drier in a bid to save on energy bills.
It may be as major as choosing between feeding the kids or heating the house.
And while warmth is not so much of an issue during these summer months, what is going to happen when we come to winter?
Levelling down might not be ideal but at least it means there is still a choice.
To choose the 35p budget pack of spaghetti over the one at £1.
To keep the heating off a little more often.
To not go abroad on holiday this summer.
But what if you’re so close to the bottom of that ladder that you no longer have a choice?
What if the next step down is using a foodbank? What if you’re already needing a foodbank and you’re still not managing?
If more people need help and fewer are in a position to give it what then?
What if the only choice you are faced with feels like a matter of life and death?
Let’s help others to level up
Some of us will sail along, relatively unfazed by financial woes.
Others will see their lives change but will still have more than enough.
If you’re one of these lucky ones this might be the time to think about what levelling up means for our community.
There will be some people with enough money who may not have thought previously about adding a few messages on to their weekly shop for the foodbank.
Others may have a conservative (with a small ‘c’) approach towards saving for their own family and their future.
I’m not here to be preachy.
I’m simply saying that if we really are on the brink of a crisis that means people can’t feed their kids or heat their home, let’s all help if we can.
Whether that’s giving away clothes, money or food, it’s time to rise to the challenge and help others to level up if we can.
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