In the world of Conservative and Unionist ideology one company stands alone as a beacon of success in the face of austerity. This company – a UK-wide operation but with a large customer base in Scotland – must soon be in line for an award from one of those organisations which prizes entrepreneurial excellence. The numbers are quite stunning and show the rewards that can be gained by iron discipline and resisting the hand-wringing overtures of liberal do-gooders.

In 2009 this company had only one outlet in Scotland. Yet, in the seven years or so that have since elapsed that figure has grown to almost 60. That this growth has occurred in the teeth of a global economic recession is quite astonishing. The directors of any other company which had increased its customer base by more than 7000% in less than eight years in these circumstances would find themselves feted annually by the Confederation of British Industry and the Conservative government.

Earlier this year the company announced that a new, deluxe product, one which was designed specifically to meet the changing needs of the market in which it operates, was flying off its shelves. The demand for this product, which comes with its own bespoke, polythene bag, had increased by 13% in the space of the previous 12 months.

A spokesman said that there was no knowing when demand for the product, much of it gleaned from natural resources, would cease. But at the current rate it’s clear that the company’s future is assured. The spokesman added that it had shifted more than 130,000 units of its core product in the last year alone, up from 117,689 in the previous year.

“It’s amazing,” a company spokesman told The National. “I mean, it’s not as if we freely advertise our product. We’re not exactly extolling its virtues with trumpets and advertising it on prime-time television. In fact we’re all quite embarrassed about our success. It’s not something that any of us ever planned for when we first set out on this venture.”

In normal circumstances the company directors would be receiving invites to attend black-tie dinners and bid £100,000 to play a chukka of polo with Boris or take tea with Theresa at a Cotswolds vicarage.

Yet the people who have overseen this remarkable rise in demand will be waiting a long time before they receive their gilt-edged invitations to a CBI dinner.

Instead they were to be found gathered in a small meeting room of a Glasgow hotel on Saturday morning to reflect on the secret of their success. The man whose job it is to administer his company’s main retail centres said: “I won’t be truly happy until I am out of a job and I lock up our last depot for the last time.”

For, this is the Trussell Trust and, at a fringe event off the main drag of the SNP conference they were trying to figure out why, in one of the most affluent countries in the world, they are now operating almost 60 food banks when, less than 10 years ago, they only had one.

Why, after 40 years of receipts from the North Sea’s black gold, are record numbers of Scottish families being forced to swallow the last of their pride and come knocking on the door of a food bank?

Last year the trust reported that food bank use had increased by two thirds on the previous 12 months. They were proud though, that each of its emergency parcels now contained enough food for 10 meals. And they were re-assured that of the 113,726 handed out across Scotland last year, 43,952 went to children.

But still the big questions remain. Why does a country which prides itself on its education system and the number of centres of higher learning that figure in the world’s top 200 nevertheless play host to such a disproportionate number of monuments to inequality and unfairness. How does a country which is also rich in tourism and the fruit of land and sea yet find itself incapable of feeding and clothing and sheltering its most vulnerable citizens?

The Scottish Right (which is a lot bigger than we have always been given to believe) insist that food banks are unnecessary; that they arise out of an ingrained sense of victimhood and that they are the inevitable result of sparing the whip when we ought to crack it. They claim that if you give something away for free that people will inevitably chance their arms and take it, whether deserving or not.

Yet, the stories on Saturday morning in our little, windowless hotel room, came from once proud and hard-working people who had contributed to the wealth and wellbeing of this nation with their taxes and National Insurance contributions for decades; both them and their families. Unexpected twists of fate such as illness, divorce and unemployment had left them seeking help from a state to whose treasury they had freely and dutifully contributed.

They found though, that the treasury was in the hands of a conservative mafia eager to pluck the low-hanging fruit of a vulnerable person’s entitlements. After all, this is a far less risky enterprise than pursuing the well-protected assets of an army of billionaires and bankers whose corruption has done more to impoverish this country than the needs of its poor.

Can anyone remember just how soon the BBC and right-wing press in this country forgot about the UK citizens and companies whose names cropped up in the Panama Papers? I’ll hazard a guess; for as long as it took for the cash to be deposited in the bank accounts of London’s top PR and lobbying firms.

Throughout the long weekend of the SNP conference delegates and politicians disputed with themselves the extent to which a hard Brexit will assist the cause of Scottish independence.

In Glasgow and Dundee, the cities that voted Yes and where the next referendum will again be won and lost, there are many who simply don’t give a toss about Brexit and trade barriers. They are still waiting to see if they will ever be included in this wealth and technological sophistication they keep hearing about.


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