The announcement today by the Trussell Trust that in the past six months, the number of people receiving food parcels from them has tripled to over 350,000 is indeed ‘scandalous’. The news last week that the British Red Cross is to start providing food aid to people in Britain is further manifestation of the continuing rise of food poverty in Britain. Despite the evidence, the government continues to fail to acknowledge the scale of the problem of food insecurity yet alone tackle it.
With a survey from Netmums revealing that one in five mothers regularly skip meals to make sure their children eat properly, it is clear that the number of people in Britain who are struggling to put food on the table at the end of the week is much higher. With gas and electricity prices going up, the dilemma of heating or eating will increase further this winter. Continue reading
Osborne and IDS (both members of the Nasty Party, and each as nasty as the other) have under the new rules announced at the Tory conference put thousands of young people into a double bind leading in many cases to destitution. With 200,000 long-term unemployed now targeted by Osborne (the same who gave 40,000 millionaires a ta break of more than £2,000 a week), the longer a person is out of work, the tougher the rules become and the more punitive for even the slightest infringement, even ones that are the fault of the DWP and not of the jobless person himself. 