LIVING UNDER THE THUMB OF INSTITUTIONALISED FALSE PARADIGMS : The food poverty scandal that shames Britain

 

SIGN OF THE TIMES UK NEWS

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Nearly 1m people rely on handouts to eat

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The shocking scale of food poverty in Britain is exposed today by new figures showing record numbers of people are reliant on handouts because of punitive benefits sanctions. 

More than 900,000 people were given emergency food in the past year, an increase of 163 per cent, according to figures from the Trussell Trust, the biggest food bank charity. The explosion in demand has coincided with an increase in those seeking help following a benefit sanction.

A coalition of anti-poverty charities, including the Trussell Trust, claims the figures show that the UK is breaching international law by violating the human right to food.

Separately, 600 church leaders from all major denominations, including 36 Anglican bishops, are writing to the Government today, calling for urgent action to address hunger among the poor.

The letter will say that Lent has been “a time of sorrowful reflection” on the huge rise of those using food banks. It marks the biggest Christian intervention on UK food poverty in modern times.

In its most hard-hitting report to date, the Trussell Trust said the Government’s use of sanctions was “increasingly harsh” and that half of those referred to food banks in 2013-14 were as a result of benefit delays or changes. Eight out of 10 of their food banks saw more cases relating to benefit sanctions over the past year. Tougher punishments for those on jobseeker’s allowance were introduced by the Coalition last October, raising the minimum sanction from one to four weeks. Benefits can now be stopped for up to three years.

In total, 913,138 people received three days’ emergency food from Trussell Trust food banks in 2013-14, compared with 346,992 in 2012-13

Static incomes, rising living costs, low pay, under-employment and other problems related to welfare reform also contributed to the increased demand, the charity said.

The Trussell Trust chairman, Chris Mould, said the figures were “shocking in 21st century Britain”. He added: “Perhaps most worrying of all, this figure is just the tip of the iceberg of UK food poverty. It doesn’t include those helped by other emergency food providers, those living in towns where there is no food bank, people who are too ashamed to seek help or the large number of people who are only just coping by eating less and buying cheap food.”

The latest Trussell Trust figures show that demand has increased in well-established food banks, refuting Government claims that the opening of new food banks has fuelled demand. Food banks that have been open for three years or more saw  an average increase of 51 per cent in the numbers helped in the past year compared with 2012-13.

The shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, Rachel Reeves, said: “Food banks have become a shameful symbol of David Cameron’s Government’s failure to tackle the cost-of-living crisis. Ministers must take urgent action to fix the broken system in which benefit delays or changes have led to 50 per cent of all referrals to food banks.”

More than 20 charities including the Trussell Trust, the Child Poverty Action Group and Church Action on Poverty have signed a statement accusing the UK of violating the basic right to food.

"It is our opinion that the UK has violated the human right to food and breached international law.

"This state of affairs is both avoidable and unnecessary. We call on the Government to take immediate action to ensure that the no one in the UK is denied their most basic right to sufficient and adequate food,” their common statement says.

A public vigil will be held opposite Parliament at 6pm today by members of the End Hunger Fast campaign. Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner, Senior Rabbi at Movement for Reform Judaism, will give the first public support of the Jewish community for it.

The Bishop of Oxford will be among those presenting a letter from religious leaders protesting against hunger to David Cameron’s constituency office in Witney.

Keith Hebden, spokesman for End Hunger Fast and Mansfield parish priest said: “With benefit changes, poverty wages and failing food markets leaving more than 900,000 needing food aid, Britain has become the hungry man of Europe.

“The Government ignores this call at its peril. I have never before seen religious leaders so united on an issue and I hope our collective words and prayers reach the ears of politicians who have the power to act.”

Leaders of the Methodist Church, Baptist Union of Great Britain and United Reformed Church said the figures should spark “shock and anger”. Methodist president the Rev Ruth Gee said: “Hunger should not and need not be a problem in a rich country like the UK – and yet clearly it is.”

A Department for Work and Pensions spokesman said: “We’re spending £94bn a year on working age benefits so that the welfare system provides a safety net to millions of people who are on low incomes or unemployed so they can meet their basic needs.

“Even the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development say there are fewer people struggling with their food bills compared with a few years ago, benefit processing times are improving, and even the Trussell Trust’s own research recognises the effect their marketing activity has on the growth of their business. The employment rate is the highest it’s been for five years, and our reforms will improve the lives of some of the poorest families by promoting work and helping people to lift themselves out of poverty.”

SOURCE
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/churches-unite-to-act-on-food-poverty-600-leaders-from-all-denominations-demand-government-uturn-on-punitive-benefits-sanctions-9263035.html

 

UK NEWS : UK CITIZENS Can't Afford to Die: Brits struggle with 'funeral poverty'

"Dead Expensive"...but drones are cheap

With so much efforts spent on making a living, 
few people address the price of dying. 

In the UK many realize too late that death 
isn't something they can really afford. 

What's not mentioned here is that when you die your Original Birth Certificate which has Matured as a Bond throughout your life cycle, is cashed in by the government for a staggering £20 million or there abouts, these are the same Bonds that the governments keep selling to other countries in exchange to a clear debt, example, the US sold all their Bonds to China, so in theory, China now owns all the American citizens, just a point of interest.

Dont forget, if your being cremated they dont burn the coffin, the coffin goes back to be resold ( as was found out in rotherham a few years ago ). And why would you want brass handles on your coffin when you are going to be cremated, they are nothing but rip off merchants. 

POVERTY : LINK

Kevin O'Leary says 3.5 billion people living in poverty is 'fantastic news'

The real image of the money-hungry sociopath ...

People like him controls the world (Banks, Rothschild etc ... ).

I'd like to see that man living tomorrow in africa, seeing his children die of hunger ... 

14 year old Rachel Parent debates 

GMO's MONSANTO SHILL 

Kevin O'Leary 

Living in poverty, which means they cant afford proper diet, is the death sentence and getting people out of poverty is the solution. Not manipulating crops on a genetical level which can have profound effects on eco systems, so that a select few mega corporations can enrich themselves.

All she is saying is that people should have the right to determine if they want to eat GMO food or not. If you don't want to buy a GMO modified apple that will last 6 months but want to buy one that only lasts a week you should have that choice. Why is Monsanto so against freedom of choice. Unless they have something to hide. These corporations' AGENDAS are about proffit they do not care about the farmers and they do not care about the HUMAN lab rats ...

Thousands of UK’s poor in court over non-payment of council tax

 

Hundreds of London's poorest and lowest-paid inhabitants attended a mass court hearing in south London on Friday, hoping to challenge non-payment of council tax orders issued by Southwark council, which had summonsed 5,800 people to attend.

The mass summons was one of a number of similarly large summonses issued nationwide over the past few weeks, as legal proceedings begin against unemployed and low-income people who have been unable to pay new council tax payments, introduced in April.

Around 400 attended court on Friday, most of them responding to a court summons for the first time, many of them anxious and angry about the process. Although the weekly payments appear low, averaging at around £2.50, those who attended gave detailed accounts of how this was a difficult sum to pay out of a minimum wage income, or out of benefit payments. All faced the additional £65 cost of the court summons, in addition to the council tax arrears.

Lisa Whitman, 33, a single mother who worked as a nursery nurse before her daughter was born, said: "I am short every week, after I've paid the bills and fed and clothed my daughter. This means I can't afford after-school activities for my daughter."

Until April, millions of people on low incomes in England paid no council tax, but this dispensation was removed as part of a package of cost-saving welfare reforms when the government cut the amount given to councils to reduce council tax liability for their poorest residents. Councils were given discretion to decide how much to charge low-income residents. In Southwark, previously exempt residents are now required to pay 15% of their council tax bill.

Duane Derby, 37, an unemployed painter and decorator, said he owed about £200, including the court costs. "How can I pay without the money?" he asked, waiting in line at Camberwell magistrates court to have his case processed by one of 22 council officials, who had set up makeshift desks in the waiting area. He is looking for work, but for the past six months has had his benefits sanctioned (cut), in punishment for failing to attend a job centre meeting. For the first two months, he received nothing, and is now receiving only about half the normal jobseeker's allowance rate. He says he missed the appointment because he did not have enough money for the bus fare. "The money goes on the first day – on gas, electricity, food, obviously, an arm and a leg for the launderette. It's not possible to save money to pay this."

Daniel Peters, 29, a pizza delivery man, owes a similar amount. He earns £120 a week and cannot see a way to pay the money he owes out of his wages. "I'm just trying to survive," he said. Ray Malone, 68, who lives in sheltered housing and was one of many who suspected he had mistakenly been sent the summons (the tax is not payable by pensioners), said: "I'm not paying anything. I'll go to jail before I pay. I'll do bread and water."

Many were muddled by the summons letter, which told them on page one that they should appear at 9.30am at the magistrates court, before informing them in huge block capitals on the third page that they did "not need to actually attend the court".

Sczerina Perot, a volunteer lawyer advising people on how to challenge the summons, said this was a "well-crafted" attempt to discourage thousands of people from turning up at the court. "But if you don't attend court, you automatically have a judgment made against you. It is an irritant for the court when people turn up," she said.

Joanna Kennedy, chief executive of Zacchaeus 2000, a poverty charity helping many of those in arrears to negotiate discretionary relief from payments, said: "Most people on a means-tested benefit haven't got enough to live on as it is, because benefits are set at the lowest level needed for survival, and now that benefit is being taxed. The poorest are bearing the brunt of government's policy to restrict welfare payments." Many of the people who came in to challenge the summons were unwell or had disabilities, she said. "It is very, very stressful to receive a court summons. Once a court order is obtained, the threat of the bailiffs follows."
At least 157,000 people have already have already been summonsed across the country, according to figures published by Labour this week, based on freedom of information requests to councils. The shadow secretary of state for communities and local government, Hilary Benn, described this as a "new poll tax": "Those affected – including tens of thousands of disabled people, war veterans, war widows and carers – are receiving court summonses that could ultimately result in some of them being sent to prison."

Alan Sandiford, 57, a former warehouse worker, currently unemployed because of ill health, attended court with his friend Gloria Bell for support. He owes £106.32 in unpaid council tax and a further £65 in court costs. He had a letter informing him that back payments would be deducted from his benefits payments at a rate of about £30 a month. He calculates that after rent, electricity and food, that will leave him with about £6 a week. "There's no money left from week to week," he said.

Bell said her friend had been very distressed to receive a court summons. "It is frightening to get a summons. He is lucky he has friends helping him. You can't sit there watching a man starve," she said.

Defending the decision to impose the charge, Richard Livingstone, the cabinet member for finance and resources for Southwark council, said: "Court action is a last resort for us and not something we relish, but relatively small missed payments for individuals of as little as £2.50 per week would add up to a big hole in the council's budgets for the coming years if we did nothing about this."

SOURCE
http://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/oct/18/thousands-court-council-tax

UK CRIMINALISING POVERTY AND HOMELESSNESS : HER MAJESTY'S PRISON

By Tony Gosling

Beginning his working life in the aviation industry and trained by the BBC, Tony Gosling is a British land rights activist, historian & investigative radio journalist.



Click! Another notch on the ratchet turning the UK from civilization to fascism this week as Britain's Justice minister, Chris Grayling, announced ten year jail sentences for those who claim too much state benefit.

The latest statistics from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) show that £1.3bn was fraudulently claimed in 2012/13. Tax Justice Network figures estimating tax fraud by the super-rich at £60bn, which is around 50 times greater, seem to have 'evaded' Grayling; as has the estimated five times greater figure of £10bn in unclaimed benefits.


The sad fact is simply that tyrants are running the show and rather than pay their fair share they intend to squeeze the poor until the pips squeak.

Most government legal aid has also been cut off this year while destitute squatters who manage to find a derelict or empty home to spend the night have also been turned into criminals for the first time in British history. Rather than the wealthy owner of the empty property having to pick up the eviction tab, now it's a job for the taxpayers and police.


So who benefits from the unspeakable cruelty of criminalizing poverty and homelessness?


At 15% Britain has more private prisons than anywhere else in Europe. This particular US policy of containment, where 2.4 million, one quarter of the world's 'criminals' are incarcerated, means the more people go to jail the bigger the bags of cash for cold-blooded private interests.


This was illustrated in the US in 2009 when Pennsylvania Judges Mark A. Ciavarella & Judge Michael Conahan were discovered taking $2.6m from private prison firms and convicted of racketeering. The only surprise about that case was that they were caught and convicted. Those who gain from such backroom handshaking deals are more careful now.




A general view shows C wing at Wormwood Scrubs prison in London (Reuters/Paul Hackett)

In Victorian times the poor were sent to the workhouse: a state institution which was supposed to provide gainful employment and a roof over the head of the destitute. Charles Dickens portrayed the regime brilliantly in his 1839 classic Oliver Twist, but his lessons are being forgotten. If the present government gets their way the backbreaking days of the workhouse will be back.

In 1900, during the Boer war, Britain had the dubious honor of creating the world's first concentration camps where 30,000 political prisoners, mostly families of the Afrikaans enemy, were killed.


In the 1950s Kenya too, during the freedom struggles of the native Land and Freedom Army, 20,000 are estimated to have been killed. Nicknamed Mau-Mau by the dying British Empire, torture and labor camps were set up with summary capital punishment to eliminate political prisoners.

Back home there were a couple of decades of respite after the bloodletting of World War Two before 1980s Thatcherism created a permanent pool of millions of unemployed in Britain and deunionization began.


After 2000, economic migrants from an eastward expanding EU forced wages down even further. Mass mesmerism by the London media branded anyone who questioned the wisdom of driving down hard fought pay and conditions, as a racist.


It became taboo to even question what has been arguably Britain's biggest wave of immigration since the Saxons in the 5th Century AD. From 55 million in 1970 the UK population has grown to the present 64 million.


As if it were not enough for our 'owners', unencumbered by the interests of the majority, to force pay below survival level, bills are now increasing way above inflation while pay remains static, forcing millions into poverty whether in or out of work. It's miserable social engineering on a massive scale.




Prison officers attend a meeting outside Birmingham prison in central England (Reuters/Darren Staples)

So, like the loan shark firms, Britain's Prison Industrial Complex gawps longingly at the new underclass of desperate Untermenschen and licks its collective lips. The shameless generals in charge of this business battle group will have those contracts come hell or high water.

Around 15% of Britain's prison population is presently behind private bars. According to the Howard League for Penal Reform, G4S and Serco jails are the worst.

The world's biggest private security firm G4S, famous for the Olympics fiasco when the British Army had to be drafted in less than a month before the games, are suffering criminal investigation with Serco over their joint £50m government fraud.


Serco's contract for managing Britain's nuclear weapons establishment at Aldermaston, amazingly, has carried on unperturbed. Are bored civil servants deliberately courting disaster to add a little excitement to their lives?

Britain's National Association of Probation Officers, NAPO, who manage murderers, sex offenders, pedophiles, the country's most dangerous criminals, began opposition to their service being sold off this week. Likely bidders being known fraudsters G4S and Serco, the directors of which should, themselves, be behind bars.

The privatization of the criminal justice system is a strategy of malice. It is about dehumanizing the people who most need society's help. The greedy simply scapegoating the weak. They're turning our cities into 'people farms' where only the fit deserve to survive, justice is ditched, and money is the only law in the human jungle.

Back in the 1940s Nazi Germany perpetrators of 'crimes against the party' were worked to death in labor camps. Under the Claims Conference scheme companies that still existed after the war such as Volkswagen, whose slave laborers manufactured the V1 flying bomb, Porsche and Mercedes put their hands in their pockets, compensating the families of the concentration camp victims.

One company though was peculiarly reluctant to contribute. The Quandt family employed 50,000 slave laborers during the war. They owned the Mauser gun firm and AFA which manufactured essential batteries for submarines, tanks, aircraft of the Nazi war machine.





A homeless woman from north Wales, sits huddled under a sleeping bag next to her dog in a shopping arcade near the Victoria rail station in central London (Reuters/Chris Helgren)

At the end of the war, with marital ties to the Goebbels family and a tidy fortune, they sold up to buy a controlling share in the private car manufacturer Bayerische Motoren Werke or BMW. The family felt the money had been made elsewhere so exonerated them from paying reparations to the Claims Conference.


Not all Germans agreed and on October 2007 an award winning documentary 'The Silence of The Quandts' appeared one night to a shocked nation. The surprise film was kept off TV schedules so as to avoid the billionaire Quandts getting an injunction to halt the broadcast. In most of the rest of the world, sadly, where the documentary has not been shown the BMW brand has survived intact. Several months ago I stopped to give some change to a rough-shaven Bristol beggar in his late twenties who, it turned out, was a skilled electrical worker, just released from prison. 'It can seem worse on the outside', he said, 'I left with nothing but the clothes I went in with and nowhere to go'. He went on to tell me about the prison labor he'd been doing for pennies an hour over his 12 month stretch: wiring up thousands of indicator stalks for BMW.

AUSTERITY QUEEN CONVICTED FOR CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY GETS PAY RISE WHILST FAMILIES STRUGGLE TO EAT

The Queen's salary for the year ahead has been announced. And she's in a bit of luck, as she's been given a whopping £5 million pay rise.

She will receive £36.1 million from the tax payer, up from £31 million last year.

Well, actually it's a £6 million rise, because last year she was given an extra million for the jubilee and that hasn't been removed this year either.

The International Common Law Court of Justice has issued an International Citizens Arrest Warrant, of one year duration, authorizing the detaining and imprisonment of these thirty fugitives from justice under the terms of the Court Verdict of February 25, 2013.

The public seizure of the property and assets of the guilty parties and their organizations will also commence today, in Canada, the United States, England and Italy, in accordance with the Court Order.

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The fugitive criminals include Catholic, Anglican and United Church officers in Canada, corporate and RCMP officials, and the Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper. But they also include former Pope Joseph Ratzinger, three top Cardinals in Vatican City, the head of the Jesuit Order, and the Queen of England and the Archbishop of Canterbury ...

READ MORE HERE

Waste Amid Want: Tons of food binned as thousands struggle to subsist 

Over 10 billion pounds (US$15 billion) worth of food is thrown away in the UK each year while thousands of families struggle to feed themselves in a country where one in five lives below the poverty line, according to Oxfam. Supermarkets and restaurants add fuel to fire embracing a throw-away culture and binning tonnes of perfectly good products each year.