FROM: CONSERVATIVE CENTRAL OFFICE
PRIORITY: HIGH
SECURITY CLEARANCE: AS YOU WERE CHAPS

JUDGING by the number of emails we’ve received from members all over the country many of you are palpably distressed at the latest figures chronicling food bank use in Scotland. According to the Trussell Trust which keeps an eye on these things around 170,000 people had to avail themselves of a food parcel last year – the highest number ever. Like all of you we harbour deep concerns about this.

You don’t need me to point out that such unprecedented growth in this highly specialised market means that there will be a higher demand for more food banks. This increases the likelihood of one of these places encroaching into our sorts of areas.

READ MORE: Anger as Tory MP 'plagiarises' SNP's Bill at Westminster

Last week our emergency relief volunteers reported record numbers of calls to our 24-hour emergency helpline in Giffnock when it was revealed that a Lidl supermarket was to open in G46 to replace that rather wonderful Wholefoods store.

We had to send out teams of specially trained counsellors to deal with the fall-out from this news. What they saw and heard was harrowing. Many people had worked hard and saved up for years to land their dream bungalow in this anointed arboreal arrondissement of Glasgow so that they could take advantage of sending their pupils to the local high-achieving schools.

But what’s the point of all of this if our children are now going to be in danger of meeting Lidl customers during their lunchbreaks? By Jove, some of them might even be tempted in to these places by young and attractive local scheme goblins.

READ MORE: What will it take for a Tory minister’s head to roll?

You know how their hormones are at this age. From there it’s only a short distance to photographs of our children appearing on Instagram with that horrifying yellow and blue livery of Lidl giving the game away behind them and bang, there goes the neighbourhood. Reputations are gained slowly and surrendered quickly. Sic Gloria Transit and all that …

Now before I go on perhaps you’ll all join me in a rousing three cheers for our steadfast royal family. Really, they never let us down. The fecundity of the House of Windsor is a real blessing and no mistake. Just when it looked like the food bank story was about to dominate the front pages out popped another little royal prince courtesy of the indefatigable Princess Kate. There’s nothing like a fresh royal infant to avert the minds of the masses from unpleasant and beastly things.

So I’m well aware of the dangers inherent in the spread of food banks into our favoured areas. But before you all rush to join our stalwarts in the local Neighbourhood Watch let me tell you about the plans that we at Conservative Central Office have hatched to address the scourge of poverty. Now cool your jets as the hoi-polloi might say: this doesn’t involve state hand-outs and something for nothing. We are simply looking at ways of privatising poverty. In this way we all get the opportunity to feed off other people’s misery. What’s not to like?

READ MORE: How the Tories use statistics to mislead Scots on the NHS

The unprecedented growth of food banks means that they are ripe for privatisation. We simply gather them together as a state asset and then flog them off to some of our friends “close to the Kremlin” snort, snort; mum’s the word; say no more. Before long there will be a membership scheme to ensure that only the right sort of poor people get admitted to a local food bank. In this way you won’t have a queue of hoodies snaking round the block and causing fear and alarm among law-abiding citizens as food bank customers will be expected to be well turned out in specially designed uniforms perhaps with the name of a local sponsor emblazoned across them.

Your government is also giving serious consideration to the re-introduction of poor houses for the absolute dregs of society truly beyond redemption. We had poor houses in the time of Charles Dickens and a damned good thing they were too. People with no hope of work and in serious debt could be rounded up and enjoy an acceptable existence while being sent out in chain gangs trimming hedges and filling in pot-holes. We could out-source these places to companies like Serco and use some of the more indolent members of the royal family to be their patrons thus conferring on them a veneer of respectability. There are currently thousands of perfectly good and robust buildings all over the country lying empty and these could be targeted in a sort of compulsory purchase scheme.

Many of you will also have been aware of the recent and very sad death of the popular light entertainment figure Dale Winton. It got some of us thinking: why don’t we launch a national supermarket sweep contest but give it some added bite. Basically, our regional organisers would work with Serco to identify thousands of genuinely needy people who are still waiting on their Universal Credit payments.

Every neighbourhood in the UK would be invited to participate in the same manner as that futuristic cinema blockbuster The Hunger Games. The heat winners would all come together for a Christmas television spectacular hosted by Ant and Dec and be invited to ransack the shelves of Lidl. It would be a no-holds-barred contest complete with teams of fit and able youngsters and come with a genuine threat of death and serious injury provided by live hand grenades hidden among the comestibles and lurking death squads. The viewing figures would be off the radar and the winners would secure a year’s supply of food parcels for their impoverished local communities.

Our biggest and most ambitious project to privatise poverty pays homage to the cult cinematic classic Escape from New York. Instead of spending billions of pounds in poverty relief schemes which don’t work we would instead build massive walls around the UK’s poorest neighbourhoods patrolled by trained Serco operatives and just let them get on with it. Of course, being a civilised nation we would provide electricity and clean water and get the RAF to lob in food parcels from time to time. Only the fittest among them would survive and, every year, we would get them out and send them to the front-line of whatever war we were currently waging around the globe. The new royal baby could become the patron of this scheme to signify hope and the triumph of law and order.

We’ve even created a rather eye-catching slogan for all these new projects: Making Poverty Pay.