‘Heavy heart’ at food poverty

Sir, – I read today’s edition of The Courier with a heavy heart (Minister’s anger over food poverty, December 20).

Your front page described the Rev Jim Stewart’s “dark shadow of injustice” after he was asked by a local head teacher to help families who could not afford to feed their children.

The reverend described his congregation’s generous donation of 50 food bags for the hungry families of Letham in Perth.

Hungry and crushed

with poverty in 2019, my word that is difficult to absorb.

Our UK Government donates billions of pounds in overseas aid and our own Scottish Government donates millions on our behalf for the same good causes and yet some of our own families are going hungry.

That seems to me to be very unfair.

I read in the same edition, “Festive fare revealed for inmates dining at Perthshire prisons”.

It seemed to me a simple temporary solution could be offered to those hungry families, that with good intentions, the dining kitchens in prisons and schools could be utilised for the benefit of those hungry families.

Perhaps the prisoners could pay back to the communities from which they benefited and serve Christmas fare to the families who need it, or is that too simple a solution?

No one in our society should go hungry.

So I say to those who are in positions of influence, please, do what you can to ensure that our families are at the very least fed and clothed.

Michael Moran. Greenhead Cottage, Kinross.