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Category: Poverty

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Feb52014

Growth and Inequality

Last night I watched QI and it was all about happiness.  The wonderful thing about QI is that every 30 seconds you have your perceptions challenged.  You look at the TV and say “Eh, what, really“?

What made me do the double take last night?  Stephen Fry said that there is a 10% wider gap between the rich and the poor since John Major’s government.  In the long history of humanity, that is a staggeringly small time frame – it is within my lifetime!  It was so startling that it made me start looking things up.  Surely there can’t be such a gap between the have’s and the havenots.  As you can see in the video above, what we perceive to be the distribution of wealth in the UK is very different to the reality.

We live in a world of finite resources and wealth is a relative term.  For there to be “rich”, there need to be “poor” because wealth is a relative thing.  If we all win the lottery tonight, bread will be sold at £10.50 a loaf in the morning.  In my wallet I have a meaningless piece of paper (financially): a million Zimbabwean Dollars, worth less than a single penny.  In reality it is one of the most meaningful pieces of paper I have because it illustrates that “wealth” is only “wealth” if it is relative to “poverty”.

There has been a lot of research into the current discrepancies between public perception about benefits and the reality.  Perceptions are much more powerful than facts as people tend to view anecdote and narrative highly if it is told to them by people they trust.  It came as a great surprise to the last person who told me about “all the scroungers claiming benefits” when I pointed out that he was the only person in the room receiving any benefits.  He clearly didn’t see himself as being a benefits claimant.

‘Our data poses real challenges for policymakers. How can you develop good policy when public perceptions can be so out of kilter with the evidence? …First, politicians need to be better at talking about the real state of affairs of the country, rather than spinning the numbers. Secondly, the media has to try and genuinely illuminate issues, rather than use statistics to sensationalise. – Hetan Shah, executive director of the Royal Statistical Society

Dec112013

Child Poverty

Yesterday I was watching TV when this advert came on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysJwddnqx-I

The day before that Dave Walker posted this cartoon.

foodbank-9

Today I watched Prime Ministers questions where they jeered at each other like a bunch of 18th century toffs fighting over a slice of pie whilst arguing the pros and cons of an 11% pay rise for MPs.

I have another statistic.  48% of the children in my community where I live are in child poverty.

Can you stop taunting, mocking, sneering and scoffing at each other for two minutes and look around at the real people we are talking about?  Two minutes of behaving like lives matter?  Two minutes of pretending you’re not sat in a swanky all expenses paid members club for the privileged?

Jul52013

Welfare Reform in Today’s Political Agenda

A society which allows large numbers of its citizens to live in poverty is unlikely to be sustainable. We have seen, since the 1980s, how whole communities hit by economic contraction can sink into a kind of collective depression from which some, especially young men, seek to emerge through violence, gangs and other destructive (and self destructive) ways of life.

Nick Morgan linked to the Church of England’s report on Welfare Reform on The Book of Face. It is a long read but has some good insights into the current UK government’s policy and how it relates to our faith.

I think the key phrase in the above quote is “since the 1980s” as it is telling about the current trajectory of the UKs economic policy. This report doesn’t quite give a bloody nose in the way that Faith in the City did to Mrs Thatcher’s government, but it does point out many of the failings of the current regime.

20130705-105012.jpg

Jul32013

Lord Truro and the “Undeserving Poor”

Once more all decent folk found themselves under attack from the ever hungry and multiheaded mythological beast. Fortunately Lord Freud was able to defend us all once more from the onslaught of the “undeserving poor”.

20130703-074824.jpgThe daemonisation of the poor is a well documented phenomenon and a tool that is being used to drive ideological political change. “Why don’t they help themselves out of poverty?” We have a situation in the UK where food bank use has trebled in the past year. Lord Freud seems to be of the opinion that food banks are one of the many choices that people mmakes when planning their weekly shop. “We can get some cold cuts from the farmers market, they do that lovely Brussels Pâté. We need to make sure we get to Waitrose on the way home for the loo roll and dishwasher tablets. Ooooo, and we’d best stop at the Food Bank and get some beans for the kids”.

The Bishop of Truro challenged Lord Freud on his statements to The Lords. Church Action on Poverty challenged these ideological beliefs five weeks ago. Oxfam challenge this ideological belief daily. Everyone who works with people in poverty challenges this blame culture, designed to shift the focus of blame for the current global economic climate to the most vulnerable in our society. The people who aren’t challenging this are those who are using the myth to drive ideological political change.

The growth in food aid demonstrates that the social safety net Is failing in its basic duty to ensure that families have access to sufficient income to feed themselves adequately. The exponential rise in the creation of food banks reflects a growing problem and only delivers mitigation. Food banks provide a vital emergency service to the people they support but they do not address the underlying structural causes for the growth of food poverty. – Walking the Breadline