What do you think should be done about food poverty?

Well the government are trying. Unemployment is coming down. What more can they do? They're not miracle workers.

There are a lot more people to find jobs for today, or to support.

I'm not saying it CAN be done; I'm saying poverty and the associated ills will continue until that miracle happens.

They can't even manage full employment here in Australia, with vast mineral wealth underground, and a well-educated and comparatively low population.

Some sort of radical change is needed, but seeing that governments are in thrall to big business, and big business is only interested in profit not people, I can't see much more happening than tinkering around the edges.

Yes. We are back to the richest having too much influence.

Joan; your last two posts. Sum up everything I feel on the subject but couldn't find the words to say. Thank you.

I'll second that 'Tegan' good analysis from Joan. There are no easy answers, but in order to find solutions, you must first identify the root of the problem. e.g there is no point in forcing the work shy off benefits until there are jobs paying a living wage for them to take up.

My dear friend is employed in a shop. The shop owner is crippled by business rates and makes just enough of a profit to keep her head above water. My friend was therefore taken on as a 'self-employed' person, although she works regular hours for the same days each week on a minimum wage. She gets none of the benefits of being employed and has to do a tax return each year. I feel for both of them, but especially my friend who can't even take holidays because if she doesn't work she doesn't get paid and who is pathetically grateful to have a job as she is nearing sixty and couldn't get any other work.

I so agree Gr23 - a lot of people supposedly in jobs have zero hour contracts or contracts of four or eight hours guaranteed work a week - whatever the pay it is not good enough to be able to live but it does get the statistics going in the right direction!
Also many jobs are now paying thousands of pounds less than they were four or five years ago - jobs in SWales paying £20k then are now only paying £15-16K.
Does anyone know what happens to people on zero hours the weeks they have no work? I would hope they are able to easily get back JSA or similar and not just have to go without for the week.

I agree with all Joan and Granny23, etc. say.
The latest worrying trend is that over 50% of those landlords who now take people on benefits will not when universal credit arrives in their area. What happens to them then?
I get the feeling that this government just wants whole families to disappear off the radar. It won't happen.
I said earlier I did not know anyone who would be in this situation. That was before my sister phoned up. She is having an exploratory operation on Monday to find out if she can have her second hip replaced. She is walking with sticks, and has had an operation on one shoulder because the joint kept coming out. She cannot lift her arm above shoulder height so her husband has to help her get dressed, etc.
She used to work in a post office and gets a disability pension from the post office as well as DLA.
In March she has to go for an assessment to see if she is fit for work. She is 62, and two years from retirement. She would have been getting her pension by now if she had been born a year earlier.
The ESA forms are 57 pages long!
She says that if they say she is fit for work she will agree because she cannot be bothered to argue, and will ask to go on a computer course.
However, whem she worked at the post office, she had to have her drawer put at the opposite side to everybody else, because she could not pull it out from where it was supposed to be, when she was working on computers.

durhamjen If your friend was 62 last year she will already have her state pension or if she turned 62 this year will get it within 2 months.

Something went drastically wrong here when it became better to remain on benefits yet jobs were available which were filled by immigrants, who presumably were able to live on the wages paid. I know that the government of the time were sending highly paid civil servants to eastern europe to recruit workers. I do think IDS is trying to right some wrongs, there is resentment amongst low paid workers with families who see people getting more on benefits. ANd pensioners who are just above the limit for any help (which is not a very high threshold) seeing other oaps getting all kinds of topups. My mum' s mantra was always "God helps those who help themselves". Well, I think everyone may need a helping hand at some point, you never know if it could be you, but for a lot of people it's a way of life. We need more encouragement for young men to take responsibility for their offspring, not leave the mums of their children to struggle on their own.

I think ninny's right about your friend's pension age, jen. Even if she's only just 62 she should already be receiving the state pension.

Something went drastically wrong here when it became better to remain on benefits yet jobs were available which were filled by immigrants, who presumably were able to live on the wages paid. I know that the government of the time were sending highly paid civil servants to eastern europe to recruit workers. I do think IDS is trying to right some wrongs, there is resentment amongst low paid workers with families who see people getting more on benefits. ANd pensioners who are just above the limit for any help (which is not a very high threshold) seeing other oaps getting all kinds of topups. My mum' s mantra was always "God helps those who help themselves". Well, I think everyone may need a helping hand at some point, you never know if it could be you, but for a lot of people it's a way of life. We need more encouragement for young men to take responsibility for their offspring, not leave the mums of their children to struggle on their own.

Sorry, seem to have posted the same thing twice!

Is unemployment coming down, or is it a case of the government changing the way its calculated.

Can you consider someone to be fully employed on zero hour contracts, how can anyone live from week to week not knowing if they are working 1hr or 40hrs so what happens on the weeks they have 1hrs work do they then have to then depend on the food banks to make ends meets. This is just one of the reasons that unemployment seems to coming down as companies can "employ" people and they are taken out of the calculation but thats not full employment!!!

I agree with absents post.

One thing I remember from doing either politics or economics at college [probably the only thing I did learn cause I found it soo boring at the time] was how statistics mean very little and can be manipulated in all sorts of different ways.

Exactly tegan you can get figures to say whatever you want.

from: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statistics

"Lies, damned lies, and statistics" is a phrase describing the persuasive power of numbers, particularly the use of statistics to bolster weak arguments. It is also sometimes colloquially used to doubt statistics used to prove an opponent's point.

The term was popularised in the United States by Mark Twain (among others), who attributed it to the 19th-century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881): "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." However, the phrase is not found in any of Disraeli's works and the earliest known appearances were years after his death. Other coiners have therefore been proposed, and the phrase is often attributed to Twain himself.