Food, Govious Food

Since there is no immediate prospect of any realistic routes out of poverty in the world's sixth-largest and ever more shrinkable economy, a food redistribution charity has pointed out to the Government that Britain produces plenty of waste food which might equally well serve as shirker-fodder. Minions of the jabbering homunculus Michael Gove are understood to have held "informal discussions", doubtless in a suitably charitable and ascetic atmosphere, about the possibility of financial incentives for food producers to feed the undeserving, given that it would be an unpardonable heresy to consider paying the undeserving enough to feed themselves. At the moment, only about six per cent of surplus food is redistributed to charities, rather than to landfill or to the more quadrupedal of the country's beasts of burden; but of course the problem is complicated by the possible consequences of permitting the undeserving an excess of license not to starve. Charity is all very well; but without the threat of famine what would happen to their motivational gumption?