Out of touch and shocking poverty that is on the rise
THE Prime Minister keeps claiming that poverty is decreasing in Britain.
However, absolute poverty as he’s quoted shows a shocking rise with 12 million people affected. Every official measure shows child poverty is rising, affecting 1 in 6 children. Child poverty has risen fastest in Britain among all OECD countries.
71% of people hit by poverty live in a household where at least one person works. The Government’s austerity, wage stagnation, and extreme housing costs have been devastating. Their decisions to slash benefits have hugely impacted the least wealthy in our communities, among which are families with children who have lost about £4000 a year in real terms.
The super-rich have seen massive financial growth due to rising property prices and a tax system much more lenient on existing wealth than earned income.
Through the pandemic key workers kept us going, but in their households the TUC found that a million children lived in poverty. “Levelling up” was the crowning Conservative promise of the last General Election. What has that promise come to? Sunak himself said that he’s diverted money away from deprived areas.
Even Tory sources admit this Government is out of touch. The Conservatives are trying to distract from the facts, the statistics, the damage 14 years of their rule has done to our country. When the elections come the voters will decide who rules, and we have the chance to change the statistics for the better.
UK faces catastrophic weather conditions
HAS the human race decided it no longer wishes to exist? We’ve just had 10 consecutive months of record breaking global temperatures - several over the 1.5C the Paris Agreement of 2015 committed 196 countries to take action to stay under.
The UK is facing catastrophic weather conditions - with farmers unable to grow crops in waterlogged fields. We face vastly reduced crop yields and yet higher food prices when we already have much of the population missing meals and facing destitution.
Most climate models say we are in for around 3C of heating by 2100. But global heating is accelerating and climate models which predict much worse outcomes may well be more accurate.
There are people who work tirelessly to increase greenhouse gas emissions and others who seek to slow the pace of decarbonising. A ‘phase out’ of fossil fuels was called for at COP 28 but blocked by fossil fuel interests. No countries have a convincing plan for decarbonisation - many are expanding fossil fuel use amidst calls for Net Zero to be scrapped, calling it eco-zealot hysteria.
The Lancet Countdown Report 2023 reported that global heat deaths are likely to quadruple because of global heating and yet right wing media and politicians are decrying the landmark ruling from the European Court of Human Rights that inadequate government action on climate change, not in line with science, constitutes a violation of human rights.
Simon Stiell, UN Climate Change Executive Secretary, said in a recent speech that 80% of global emissions come from G20 countries and that it’s time to redirect trillions of dollars ‘from the energy and infrastructure of the past, towards that of a cleaner, more resilient future. To resist this transition is suicidal insanity - a crime against humanity. To enable it, I hope, is to survive and thrive.