Child Poverty, Fuel Poverty, Food Banks And An Early Death.

      Do you not get sick in your stomach, and very angry when you keep being fed this crap about how the economy is recovering and the UK is now doing well. That babbling brook of bullshit, the media, are always trotting out goody-goody figures of how things are now on the up and up, while the vast majority of us are facing the worst attack on our living conditions in living memory.

       In this Britain on the rise, we have the Trussell Trust which runs 400 food banks in the UK, claim that it has seen the numbers of those applying for food, triple in the last year. 2012-2013 saw 346,992 people relying on food banks to survive, of those 126,889 were children. In this prosperous growing economy we have 13 million people living below the poverty line.

       In this land of growing opportunity we have 3.5 million children living below the poverty line, that is 27% of all children. In some local areas that figure is dwarfed, by numbers like 50%-70%. Another interesting figure regarding child poverty is the fact that 66% of those children in poverty, are in homes where at least one person is working.

      From child poverty to adults relying on food banks, to fuel poverty, that is the  true picture of the UK's growing economy. It is estimated that 24,000 people in the UK will die from the cold this winter, simply because they can't afford to heat their homes. Cold homes bring on increased blood pressure, strokes, heart attacks, respiratory problems and a host of other problems. More than 6 million people in the UK are worried that they may not be able to heat their homes properly this winter. Millions of pensioners face the winter with dread and anxiety, as they know the dangers of a cold home, but can't afford to heat theirs.

 

       With this depressing picture of the real UK, we get those arrogant, pompous, parasitic millionaire MP's claiming that poverty is due to those scroungers and drug users living on benefit, however the facts don't bear that out. According to G Hay and L Bauld, Population estimates of problematic drug users in England who access DWP benefits, Department for Work and Pensions, 2008, suggest that 6.6 per cent of the total number of benefit claimants in England were problem drug users. While drug misuse may prove to be a key reason this group of people finds it hard to escape poverty, it clearly has no explanatory power for the other 93.4 per cent of claimants.

     The truth is the system is designed to syphon wealth upwards and it is working exceedingly well at the moment. If we want to eradicate child poverty, fuel poverty, and the need for food banks, and the attendant misery, then we have to destroy the system of capitalism. Turning to the managers of this exploitative system and asking them to share a little bit more of their wealth, (which we created) with us, may temporarily get you a few more crumbs, but they will keep the cake. and we will keep our poverty.

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Bedroom-tax - Poll-tax!!

      We in the UK are heading for some real battles and should be preparing now. Come April there will be the implementation of the "bedroom tax"  on top of increasing food poverty and fuel poverty. This "bedroom tax" will put three options before all those in social housing, if they are deemed to have an extra bedroom. As an "under-occupier" you can pay extra, take in a lodger or get out, non-compliance will trigger eviction notices. This is probably the most vicious attack in decades on the ordinary people of this country. The legislation comes into force and they are well aware that there isn't enough right sized accommodation to fulfil that legislation, but that won't stop them going for evictions. Even if there were enough right-sized apartments for everybody, but there isn't, the monumental upheaval to people's lives, sick, disabled, elderly, young families, as they are shunted around to the satisfaction of some millionaire cabal's bullshit economics, is inhumane, unjust and downright vindictive. This is "poll-tax model two.
       While our millionaire parasites that lord it in those Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption are spewing out crap about it all being necessary and "for our own good" a UN official, Mr De Schutter, the UN's Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, has stated that the explosion of people in the UK, depending on food handouts could represent a human rights abuse. He points to the dramatic rise in the number of food banks as evidence that governments had "failed in their responsibility not to leave the poorest behind". Here in the UK the number of food banks as exploded tenfold  since the start of the recession.
       This is the UK today, massive fuel poverty with energy prices still rising. Food poverty with food banks the only growth industry in town. A third of children living in poverty. Unacceptable unemployment among our young people. Being forced through "workfare", to work for free in some tax dodging corporate greed machine. Now the threat of evictions being heaped on the shoulders of the already struggling public.
        These are drastic times and drastic action by the organised public is the only answer. We may not yet be where the people of Greece are as far as deprivation is concerned, but we are moving inexorably in that direction, it is only a matter of time. It is inevitable, unless we the public, by mass organised resistance, come together and drive our society in a different direction. Another world is possible. 

POWER CUTS, a daily reality in Greece by docupraxi

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Rich Countries and Foodbanks.

      The capitalist system is now a world wide system, but a system that has failed miserably to see to the needs of the people of this planet. The world is split between rich, so called high income countries, and devastatingly poor countries. To the apologists of the capitalist system this is an ongoing process, to them, soon all the countries will be high income countries. However the facts on the ground tell a different story. Today most of people in those high income countries are seeing their incomes drop and in some case very dramatically, Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Ireland, to mention a few. So called poor countries are not always poor in resources, Niger and Mali spring to mind. Even in the so called high income countries poverty tugs at the sleeves of the ordinary people.

       In the “rich” high income countries approximately 60 million people turn to food banks to just get by. That is almost equivalent to the entire population of the UK. A staggering 7.2% of the entire population of all the high income countries need to get help from food banks to survive. This is the success story of capitalism in the rich countries, consider the poverty and hunger in the poor countries. It is not that the food and resources just aren't there, we live in a world of abundance, wealth is stockpiled, we have food rotting in shops and warehouses, a recent study showed that 50% of all the food we produce is thrown away. We could all sit at the planet's table and eat our fill. However we have devised a system that won't allow that to happen, unless a few parasites can make money from the process. Until we end this insane capitalist system, millions will go hungry and poverty will continue to grow.

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