Food bank usage is up and at least a part of this rise is being blamed upon the roll out of Universal Credit. We're willing to believe that this might be true even if we aren't convinced of it. It's the next piece of logic that amuses us:

However, food banks in areas where the full universal credit service had been in place for 12 months or more were four times as busy, recording an average 52% increase in the number of three-day emergency food packages distributed.

The trust said many universal credit claimants had come to food banks after long waits for payment and administrative problems pushed them into debt, ill health and rent arrears.

“This completely unacceptable. We need to move towards a UK where no one needs a food bank’s help, not a country where charity provision is the only defence from utter destitution,” said Emma Revie, the trust’s chief executive.

We have a problem therefore we must get rid of the system which solves our problem.

For note what the claimed problem is. Not that Universal Credit isn't generous enough, but that it's incompetently delivered. Well, we can believe that, yes. We've thus got this other system, this charitable one, which makes up for that incompetence. We'd rather consider the problem solved at that point.

But the claim here is rather different, isn't it? The government is incompetent at handing out free money therefore we must rid ourselves of that other, charitable, system which makes up for government incompetence. By, presumably, giving the job to that incompetent governmental system. Government fails so government must do more!

Well, yes, that would all be amusing, wouldn't it, if it weren't for the pain and grief yet more government incompetence intruding into the lives of the poor would cause. Food banks, the Trussell Trust, they actually work at alleviating want. Great, isn't that what we want?