Extreme poverty ‘will double by Christmas’ in UK because of Covid-19

[srb7677]

The problem is policy is what has increased poverty since May 2010, that plus a hostile environment from the DWP and JobCentre Plus.

In the labour parties 13 years in power , the poorest ten per cent of the popualtions share of income fell from 2% to 1.6%.

Labour massively failed to do anything about income inequality , while throwing billions the country couldnt afford at child poverty and pensioners.

You know I am going to say that it was New Labour that was in power between 1997 and 2010 and I was not a supporter of it. Nevertheless, bearing down upon pensioner poverty and child poverty was the right thing to do. When it came to pensioners though the mistake which made it so costly was to spread largesse of one kind or another to all pensioners regardless of wealth rather than focussing on actual pensioner poverty. Retired millionaires still got their free bus travel and free winter fuel allowance, etc.

But New Labour's gross failure to tackle income inequality effectively was a major failure. This should have been done by more substantial minimum wage increases, and an effective crackdown on the expansion of part time and zero hours work. Also opening the floodgates to eastern Europe and allowing employers to exploit this cheap labour source to keep pay down was a major error which I suspect may have been quite deliberate. All those middle class metropolitan faux lefties saw value in having access to cheap plumbers, builders, and electricians, whilst patting themselves on the back for helping the poor from elsewhere, without a thought for our own working classes, whom they mostly airbrushed out of existence on the assumption that we'd all become middle class now.

When it comes to those at the bottom of the income scale, New Labour was pretty much a failure. And with exponentially rising living costs, especially housing costs, which they also totally ignored, people at the bottom actually got poorer in real terms. Tax credits did help some of them but too many were exempted, eg the under 25s and many part time workers.

[Thomas]

Well here is some more for you, they had jock turn up at the border dressed like he was in some 70's sci-fi movie where the day of doom has arrived and now they reckon Sturgeon is causing trouble at the border. Not like they are all clinically insane then.

Heres a good one sheep about the westminster party looking after each other in scotland.....

Labour council boss rescued by Tory votes

The Labour leader of North Lanarkshire Council has survived a vote about his future after being bailed out by the Conservatives.

Jim Logue has been urged by the council's SNP opposition to step aside pending a police enquiry into the financial activity of two council-linked companies he was involved in.

The motions were defeated 40-33 when Labour and Tory councillors voted together.

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/15486836.labour-council-boss-rescued-by-tory-votes/

[Sheepy]

Tory doctrine my backside it was backed by the whole Westminster party, who are running the asylum, with that idiot Starmer thinking we are still playing along with it. Who now says it wasn't a big enough response, it is theatre pure bollox.

That's the truth, much of what Thomas is saying is indeed westminster party stuff.

Well here is some more for you, they had jock turn up at the border dressed like he was in some 70's sci-fi movie where the day of doom has arrived and now they reckon Sturgeon is causing trouble at the border. Not like they are all clinically insane then.

[Thomas]

THE senior labour council official in charge of dealing with poverty and neglect in Glasgow has received a golden goodbye worth almost £600,000 - the equivalent of a pound for every man, woman and child in the city.
When director of social work David Crawford took early retirement aged 54 in December, he left with an exit package valued at £589,000, accounts reveal

The exit packages come as ­Glasgow is being forced to make £42.6 million in budget cuts, with social work and education bearing the brunt.
Day-care centres are closing, nursery teachers are being replaced by nursery nurses, there are fewer trained staff for additional needs pupils, and school meals are rising from £1.15 to £1.50 by August 2014.

This story was from 7 years ago under the glasgow labour council.

There was massive shock and anger at labour awarding massive payouts to their party pals while cutting services and laying off staff , while blaming the tory government in london.

Its feckin comical , and they wonder why they got the boot after 80 years filled with labour corruption and empty promises on poverty.

[Thomas]

The problem is policy is what has increased poverty since May 2010, that plus a hostile environment from the DWP and JobCentre Plus.

In the labour parties 13 years in power , the poorest ten per cent of the popualtions share of income fell from 2% to 1.6%.

Labour massively failed to do anything about income inequality , while throwing billions the country couldnt afford at child poverty and pensioners.

[Borg Refinery]

Tory doctrine my backside it was backed by the whole Westminster party, who are running the asylum, with that idiot Starmer thinking we are still playing along with it. Who now says it wasn't a big enough response, it is theatre pure bollox.

That's the truth, much of what Thomas is saying is indeed westminster party stuff.

[Thomas]

As I have pointed out a couple of times, I was poorer under Labour than i ever was under the Tories. (or SNP)#

Same here john.

How many times do i need to point out under the labour party , glasgow and scotland suffered massively in terms of poverty.

While labours record on poverty was constantly being questioned ,

Labour's record on poverty in tatters
Ministers abandon targets for children as new figures reveal rising number on breadline

The full scale of Labour's failure to help the poorest in Britain was laid bare yesterday with revelations that hundreds of thousands of people were being plunged into deprivation even before the recession hit, and that the Government had been unable to make any impression on the numbers of children and pensioners in poverty.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labours-record-on-poverty-in-tatters-1681047.html

Do you remember when the party of the poor , the labour party  , were advertising their socialist soul was for sale when they took money from a formula one boss in exchange for an exemption on tobacco advertising?

Or when Derek Draper announced his "circle of influence" in the labour government and offered acces to it for hard cash?

Or what about when racheal reeve , starmers best mate , was promising to be tougher on welfare than the tories?

Every time the labour party are in charge of thee islands , i am worse off financially.

They bankrupted glasgow city council so that council tax receipts didnt cover their debt interest , while paying their friends in the labour party outrageous back handers while closing vital services for the poor , and then trying to blame everyone else for their incompetence and corrpution.

Councillor Hendry called on Labour leader Gordon Matheson to justify the sums.
He said: "These figures will be horrifying to Glasgow taxpayers.
"For one person in social work to get a package of over half a million pounds in the same year that the vulnerable elderly are forced to pay for safety alarms and adults with learning disabilities are thrown out of their day centres is callous."

http://archive.is/TChTJ

As ever though , its easy to carp about extreme poverty in the yookay , and blame the tories or snp , but labour are the biggest culprits in politics.

[papasmurf]

I don't see poverty as something that is either a) inflicted by policy

The problem is policy is what has increased poverty since May 2010, that plus a hostile environment from the DWP and JobCentre Plus.

[DeppityDawg]

Well, it was a question not an accusation, also "sure" was written non-sarcily.

I wouldn't try to extrapolate too much nationally from my own anecdotes, but I wouldn't dismiss them either just as I haven't dismissed yours.

Don't mistake brevity for me being dismissive, it's early.

Ok - I was just making the observation too, I hadn't intended it to suggest you were being sarky, sorry if it came across that way

No, you appear to be doing a Javert and putting words in my mouth.

That definitely requires an apology, as I wouldn't ever wish to come across as doing a Javert 

The point of me acknowledging your point was to acknowledge your point that it is a combination of factors.

Erm...ok. Can I have one on Sport please?

The govt as you acknowledge yourself, have been wonderfully incompetent in so many areas. I don't know about the lockdown zealots but their incompetence is well recorded by now.

Not everything, as you say, is the govt's fault but they do deserve to be held to account where they have clearly failed.

Yes, I'm not denying they should be held to account where they have failed - I think like you I tend not to have a partisan position and I don't see poverty as something that is either a) inflicted by policy or b) self inflicted by the individual, but as a combination of many factors

You would think that trying to have a balanced view on matters would be a good thing, but apparently not in the eyes of some

[Sheepy]

Tory doctrine my backside it was backed by the whole Westminster party, who are running the asylum, with that idiot Starmer thinking we are still playing along with it. Who now says it wasn't a big enough response, it is theatre pure bollox.

[papasmurf]

As Depitty says, 100% blaming the Tories for everything ever is pointless and untrue, a lot of it is due to other factors, but a fair amount of blame must be apportioned to them too..

The problem is Tory doctrine based policies have poured petrol on a fire. What the population of Britain has done to end up with such a shower of incompetent callous bastards in government will take some explaining.
That total pillock Jacob Rees Moggs comments in Parliament were bloody disgraceful.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-54194333

[Sheepy]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/society/2020/apr/11/uk-hunger-crisis-15m-people-go-whole-day-without-food

Well, if we want to be like China, we need to install suicide nets outside workplaces and make sure good quality egg noodles don't cost £1.75!

So, what are we saying now? That the government is ultimately responsible for the effects caused by CV19 containment measures, eg lockdown, and the resultant damage to the economy? Which in turn is going to result in an even bigger unemployment spike, rent arrears, defaults and people being pushed further into debt?

Isn't that damage to the economy what several of us were saying would happen as far back as April, and were told to STFU?

the media and the government were told from the beginning what the outcome would be, they did it anyway and pushed the official narrative even harder. Even when it was pointed out the Swedes were taking a common sense approach they tried to destroy any clarity it had.

[srb7677]

As Depitty says, 100% blaming the Tories for everything ever is pointless and untrue, a lot of it is due to other factors, but a fair amount of blame must be apportioned to them too..

Indeed. They struck a supposedly "oven ready" deal that was so poor that they are now threatening to break it along with international law. That is utterly incompetent.

[Borg Refinery]

Ok - I still believe lockdown has/will be heavily responsible for making poverty worse

In Britain worse from an already bad position, then add to that the disaster that a hard Brexit will be is frankly frightening.

It's like that old US Marine saying "all in all the time"

You pursue a policy and take it 100% of the way like all the countries in East Asia did, and even in Sweden.

Same for Brexit - the uncertainty is the killer. Even Juncker wanted the 'divorce letter' sent immediately in 2016... Last weekend multi cars got knocked out of the F1 race because of an uncertain restart to the race, 3 people crashed because of the leaders throwing everyone off.

It is incompetence and fudging things.

As Depitty says, 100% blaming the Tories for everything ever is pointless and untrue, a lot of it is due to other factors, but a fair amount of blame must be apportioned to them too..

[Borg Refinery]

Sure. How would you measure that apart from of course anecdotally?

Oddly, "anecdotal evidence" always seems to be frowned upon on here by certain posters...except when they do it themselves, in which case it then becomes perfectly acceptable

Well, it was a question not an accusation, also "sure" was written non-sarcily.

I wouldn't try to extrapolate too much nationally from my own anecdotes, but I wouldn't dismiss them either just as I haven't dismissed yours.

Don't mistake brevity for me being dismissive, it's early.

Not sure how you'd measure inflicted vs non inflicted poverty. One stat I do remember from the days of a certain poster (not me and not on this forum) almost getting sued by some DWP employees, is that 'fraud' counts for around 2% of wasted money by the DWP, and with specially revised estimates to account for estimated undetected stuff they thought it might be 3%.

So, in the absence of a "measure", we must give people the benefit (no pun intended) of the doubt, and we must assume that all poverty is inflicted upon them by policies or by the state itself?

No, you appear to be doing a Javert and putting words in my mouth.

Certainly, some posters give the impression that all poverty/injustice is a malevolent practice rather than combination of factors, and there is never or barely un acknowledgement that the system is gamed or the that "work-shyness" is anything other than a false invention

The point of me ackknowledging your point was to acknowledge your point that it is a combination of factors.

Sorry to use an "anecdote", but my own mother got benefits (supplementary benefit I think they called it back then). She worked part time, but again, was her poverty solely a result of government actions/policies, or did her (by then dead) husbands inadequacies and problems contribute to her poverty?

As above.

, but I remember telling people to stay open minded when Javert and co were having a go at you for saying it. As I recall, I pointed out that maybe (not definitely) Sweden and Japan's voluntary measures would work better.

As I recall, that resulted in accusations of me being a flat earther too.

Ok - I still believe lockdown has/will be heavily responsible for making poverty worse in this (and other) countries, and I believe I also stated that you could bet the usual suspects (most of whom were lockdown zealots) would be along to blame the government at the first sign of the negative effects of the very policies they were advocating

The govt as you acknowledge yourself, have been wonderfully incompetent in so many areas. I don't know about the lockdown zealots but their incompetence is well recorded by now.

Not everything, as you say, is the govt's fault but they do deserve to be held to account where they have clearly failed.