When Amazon and Tesco join a ‘coalition of compassion’, you know the welfare state is failing

theguardian.com:

J ust over a decade ago, I was in Downing Street planning our country’s pathway through the global financial crisis, completing our long-planned exit from Iraq, anguishing over soldiers’ deaths in Afghanistan and implementing the second stage of the Good Friday agreement on policing in Northern Ireland. I never once imagined that, just over a dozen years on, I would be having to negotiate a supply of 1.5m toilet rolls for my local family centre’s anti-poverty work.

And because 2023 finds mothers reusing nappies, sharing toothbrushes, going without period products, washing their clothes without washing powder and washing themselves and their children without soap, next week fellow helpers and I have set ourselves the task of securing all these essential toiletry products for families in need.

These are the latest supplies being added to the 600,000 surplus goods (worth around £10m) that 30,000 families have so far received from the new multibank that volunteers have created in Fife, where I live. Helping the hungry is the life-saving work of food banks, now more than 3,000 in number, alongside the growing number of community kitchens, pantries and larders. But now communities need not only a local food bank but a multibank – a bedding, furnishings, toiletry, clothes and baby bank all rolled into one. The biggest demand over the winter has been for duvets, blankets and sheets to keep people warm and given to our multibank by Amazon, Fishers laundry, Scotmid and the Textile Services Association. As spring moves to summer, these founding corporate donors are being joined by Tesco and the Online Home Shop, which are donating clothes and homemaking goods, tins of food from Morrisons, PepsiCo, Scotmid and Heinz, toiletries from