I Had Zero Interest in Politics
Until I heard the results of the UK Referendum and started to do my homework.
At first, the title image quote put me in mind of good things happening. Yet, I quickly realised it is equally true of bad things.
I should have got involved sooner. I’d seen the film called I, Daniel Blake. It had horrified me. I was embarrassed to be British. That my country could treat the most vulnerable humans with such disdain.
This article was prompted by Chris Gardiner who said:
“We are all living in La-la land.”
The Conservative and Liberal Democrat Coalition conceived their Universal Credit system in 2010. The number of food banks in that year was fifty-six. In 2015 the number had risen to four hundred and forty-five.
In April 2015, The sickening truth about food banks that the Tories don’t want you to know, highlighted the extent of the problem.
If a prison decided to implement a policy of punishing its inmates by cutting their food supply, it would be universally condemned as a human rights abuse. But this government is doing essentially the same thing to its own citizens. It is the sole source of money to people on benefits just as the prison is the sole source of food to its inmates. Cutting their access to this essential supply is cruel and inhumane. And, worst of all, this government is being allowed to get away with it. — Lee Williams, The Independent
The number of food banks throughout the UK increased further in the years 2016 to 2019. The Trussell Trust has all the annual figures, but the figure is now twelve hundred. Twelve hundred food banks in 2019, from fifty-six in 2010. It does not take a maths degree to calculate there is something nefarious afoot in the UK. The people who don’t see it or choose not to are indeed living in La-la Land. Exactly where the government wants them.
In November 2019, the government by way of the Department for Works and Pensions plotted an advertising campaign …
So let’s end with some truth on universal credit. Last week in these pages I wrote about Maureen Powell in Colchester, a sick pensioner driven to set up lunch clubs because of the families she sees driven to starvation by universal credit. Tuesday’s report from the Trussell Trust concludes that those claiming the benefit are two and a half times more likely to have to use food banks. And a report last month from the work and pensions select committee reported that women were being driven into “survival sex” to make ends meet because of problems with UC. Among the testimony quoted was one woman who told MPs she was about to be moved on to UC: “I will lose £200 a month. The thought of going into debt and having no money is really frightening. I have children. I will sell my body.”
It takes a particularly rotten government to be confronted with such evidence and think that, rather than fix the policies, it will instead lie about them. But that, apparently, is the one we have.
— Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” ― Edmund Burke
There are people and foundations who do care and are working to fix the shameful state of affairs in the UK. Joseph Rowntree Foundation or JRF is one.
And finally, a writer, who overcame many of the hardships British citizens are recently barely surviving, and went on to write for a much respected news provider.
I sign off from this column at a dispiriting time. With racism, cynicism and intolerance on the rise, wages stagnant and faith that progressive change is possible declining even as resistance grows. Things look bleak. The propensity to despair is strong, but should not be indulged. Sing yourself up. Imagine a world in which you might thrive, for which there is no evidence. And then fight for it.
• Gary Younge is a Guardian columnist
