Poverty and inequality

“Human liberation is too important to leave to chance”

When I was growing up, I remember being really confused about why some people had loads and other people didn’t. It seemed really unfair that I was well fed, clothed and schooled while other children didn’t go to school, or had to work, or went to bed hungry. I grew up in a really middle-class environment, and a lot of what some people said made me angry. When I was about eight, I said that people should be made to give up their wealth. Some adults would just scoff, or laugh at me, or say I would change my mind as I got older. I may only be twenty-five — but I haven’t yet changed my mind about...

Build for 10 July strike!

Members of the public sector union Unison have voted by a 59% majority to strike on 10 July against a 1% pay offer and for a rise of at least £1 an hour. In the week preceding the announcement of Unison’s ballot result, the National Union of Teachers confirmed it would join a 10 July strike. Strike ballot results from Unite, GMB, and the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) (all over public sector pay) are yet to be announced, and the Fire Brigades Union has a live ballot that will allow it to participate in a 10 July strike. Transport for London staff (employed in central TfL...

Escape from God's Island

In ancient Rome, so I read somewhere, a senator, surrounded by his henchmen and servitors, would walk with a strutting, rolling gait akin to that of a present-day sumo wrestler. It was a mark of status. To reproduce that literally in a dramatic modern portrayal of a Roman Senator - imagine a performance of Julius Caesar in which Mark Anthony, Brutus, Cassius, Caesar and the others all walk like that - could produce only hilarity. Reality has to be translated into terms intelligible to the audience. So too with the film Angela's Ashes, set in the slums of Limerick. As everyone who encounters...

Tough On Kids, Tough On the Causes of Kids! (1997)

Labour's Shadow Home Secretary, Jack Straw, recently proposed a curfew on children. He opened his heart and mind to Workers Liberty reporter Patrick Avakuum. --- AS Tony Blair's team waits impatiently to cross the floor of the House of Commons and show that they can outdo the Tories, Jack Straw, Labour's Shadow Home Secretary has emerged as an unexpected Front Bench star in this brilliant company. For a long time Straw — "straw in his name, straw in his mouth, straw between his ears" as someone once unkindly said —was regarded as the village idiot of the Front Bench. Not any more. Straw has...

How the rich live

For once the Guardian (on 7 June) contained a useful article which asked: what can a week sat in an inner London courtroom tell us about the condition of British society? A parade of poor people, many accused of micro-scale shoplifting or petty theft, passed through the court. Mamadu earns £200 a month as a cleaner. He was caught on camera taking a small amount of money from his employer’s office because he did not have the fare home. He is embarrassed and humiliated. Bshart admits stealing £6 worth of condoms. He is addicted to alcohol and heroin. Now he will have £5 a week deducted from his...

Kool-Aid or truth?

Since 23 May, debate has raged among economists about an attempt by journalists on the Financial Times to refute the claim by Thomas Piketty, in his best-seller Capital in the 21st Century, that wealth inequality is rising and likely to continue to rise in the USA and Europe. Most economists, even quite conservative ones, reckon that Piketty has come best out of the row. There are other elements to the dispute, but the core argument is about wealth distribution in Britain, specifically, in recent decades. The background is that official figures for wealth are patchy and inconsistent. Piketty...

Rise up against inequality!

Economic inequality has increased. It is on a solid trend to continue increasing. The USA, the most unequal of the richer countries, may set a new historical record for income inequality by 2030, and other countries are following similar though not identical trajectories. So says Thomas Piketty in his book Capital in the 21st Century. It is a best-seller in France, where it was originally published, and now also in Britain and the USA, despite costing £30 and stretching to 640 pages. His other message, less expanded on by reviewers or even by Piketty himself, is that “the history of inequality...

Eight per cent own all the financial wealth

Two sets of data released in the last week show the extent to which the distribution of wealth in Britain is highly unequal, and increasingly so. The first data come from the government’s Office of National Statistics wealth survey for 2010 to 2012. This shows that the richest 10% own 44% of all household health, and the bottom half own only 9%. The top five billionaires own the same wealth as the poorest 20% of the population. The ONS carefully spun the figures to suggest that although the figures show inequality, this inequality is getting no worse. This largely rests on most people’s wealth...

More students using food banks

The National Union of Students (NUS) has expressed its concern at the rise of students using food banks. At the University of Hull, the number of students having to use the unistudent on’s food parcel service has doubled in the past 12 months to 200. Around half a dozen student unions have similar services. Other institutions, including Walsall College in the West Midlands, are having to look into initiatives designed to help their students cope with finding food. The increase in students using these services has been blamed on the rising cost of living, as well as the Student Loans Company...

Why I went to the food bank

Perhaps even two years ago I had never actually heard of such a thing as a “Food Bank”, and even then, despite growing financial difficulties, I would not have expected to need it. However, times change — albeit in a more or less predictable direction, in many cases — and I have since joined the percentage of the population that does need to use food banks. Three times now I have visited the People Before Profit Food Bank on New Cross Road, south east London. I signed up as a member with a minimal donation (£1) which I pay again each time I visit, with an occasional added contribution of spare...

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