child poverty

I think it might be time to remember what started the recession and general panic about the country's finances. It was banks, not the unemployed or the poorly paid, or the people on zero hours contracts, or the people with one spare bedroom in their rented homes, or the parents with more than one child. It was the banks with their cavalier disregard for anything but immediate and unrealistic profits and their idiotic toxic debts.

It might also be worth remembering that food inflation over the last five years is about 30%.

jendurham - 'And have you looked up about the right to food, Ana?'

Yes I have. I don't think it told me anything I didn't already know.

Yes our indebtedness has a lot to do with having to bail out some massive banks and the big dip in tax take in the months following those events. We have not felt the full impact of the cuts yet, but everyone seems agreed that the richest people in the country have not "been all in it together" as Osborne would have us believe. The cuts that are still going to bite into NHS budgets are terrifying.
It is not realistic to think that we can stop immigration and relocate lots of poor people and their dependents into the south east to fill the vacant jobs there. Which is what you would have to do.

And another thing.....when the government talk about the 'welfare budget' being something unmanageable like 45% of public spending, they are disingeniously including pensions in that figure, and I for one do not think that something I will have contributed to from the age of 18 to 66(thanks for the extra 6 years) is a benefit it is an insurance that working people have contributed to. This may or may not be the place to bring in another part of the argument, but if more people paid the tax they should then perhaps the people who need a bit of help wouldn't be vilified for needing that help. what about making foreign investors pay capital gains tax on the massive profits they make on London properties? And forcibly seize and sell those houses in Bishops Avenue in Hampstead that are sitting and rotting, roofs falling in .And if I hear one more MP use the phrases all in this together or hard working families I shall scream.

You are so right, Gill. I get a little bit of contributory UK pension over here in Australia, 'cos much of my working life was in Australia and NZ. Both my DH and I worked and paid rather large taxes for decades here, which means we get the Oz pension without question.

We are lucky in that we don't have as deeply entrenched a class system here as back home, so our politicians sound like, and look like the rest of us. They are easy to access too. Not that it helps much.

They use the expression 'Aussie battlers' as well as 'hard working families' a lot here. But it is all the same rhetoric; trying to get us to feel we are being listened to.

We're not.

I used to work in education welfare and spent a lot of time visiting homes where children didn't have the best start. Parents were 3rd generation unemployed. Parents did not even see the benefit of education or the need even to get to school on time.
Schools knew who the vulnerable children were, they often were given free places to breakfast clubs etc and support offered to parents. If there were serous concerns they would be referred to children's social care.
You did the right thing flowerfest. Child protecting concerns should always be reported.

Stoke Sentinel
Starving children are eating from bins in Fenton
July 2, 2014

Hollings Street
and
Brocksford Street
area of Fenton, Stoke-on-Trent

On their way to school, kids are bin-dipping for food.

This even though dozens of hungry families are referred to Fenton's food bank every week.

Food banks only grant 3 vouchers a year from recommended sources like Jobcentres (after they've sanctioned a claimant off all money with no other income), Citizen Advice Centres, Social Services, schools.

Obviously this school does not have a breakfast club, which is odd is such a poor part of England, even recognised by the EU.

Stoke council just voted themselves a 9 per cent rise in their expenses for their 44 councillors. While giving their basic council staff on minimum wage only a £1 per hour wage rise, after a 3 year wage freeze and cutting rights to overtime.

It is the working poor and the over one million poor pensioners who majority who go to food banks, who do not realise they could be eligible for pension credit (ask Citizens Advice help quick as Pension credit ends from April 2016).

Working poor in newspapers are seen to have only around £20 per week after household bills and such as council tax for food for the family. Working poor are on stagnated wages to the value of those in 2002.

Pensioners with only £11 per week for food after household bills, tax and fuel costs.

WHO WILL LOSE ALL STATE PENSION FROM 2016
THAT IS FOOD MONEY
This will be the fate of:

married wives / widows / divorcees
born on or after 6 April 1953
who lost state pension payout at 60 from 2013,

And to

Every man born on or after 6 April 1951
who also fall into the flat rate pension scheme by raised retirement age, who at the moment get a basic state pension even if
only 12 months NI credits,
but not from 2016 if less than 10 years NI credits.