Today an independent group of nine women published Our Lives: challenging attitudes to poverty in 2015 – I’m one of them. Our report takes seriously the experiences of people dealing with poverty; we started with the stories told to us by people in poverty and built from that to wider…Read more…
Saving Our Safety Net Fact of the Week: Unions reduce inequality
I take every opportunity I can to promote The Union Advantage – it’s a TUC pamphlet that sets out the reasons why workers are better off in unions. It sets out all the hard-nosed “what’s in it for me?” stuff like higher pay rises, safer workplaces and fairer treatment. But I’m proud that it…Read more…
Saving Our Safety Net Fact of the Week: even small victories should be celebrated
Last year we began our Saving Our Safety Net campaign by focusing on the “Five Week Wait” for benefits. One of the policies that will force thousands of new claimants to spend weeks with no income is the introduction of seven “waiting days”, which were due to be brought in next month for Universal…Read more…
Saving Our Safety Net Fact of the Week: 58 per cent of benefit cuts will hit working families
As we come up to the election, the government’s plans for benefit cuts are going to be a vital issue. The reality of this policy is that most of these cuts have hit families in working poverty, but the politics of this debate mean that the key issue is whether the government can persuade…Read more…
Saving Our Safety Net Fact of the Week: 800,000 children live in families that are behind on their energy bills
(Warning: long post.) This week’s headline comes from Show Some Warmth, an excellent new report from the Children’s Society that looked at the problem of energy debt – families falling into debt because they cannot pay their energy bills. The report found that 3.8 million children live in…Read more…
Saving Our Safety Net Fact of the Week: men in the richest areas live nine years longer than men in the poorest areas
If, like me, your New Year’s Resolution was to switch to a healthier lifestyle you may have been thinking a lot about life expectancy. (I wonder how many people had a look at the Death Clock at the start of the year!) And that’s what prompted me to think about poverty and inequality and life…Read more…
Saving Our Safety Net Fact of the Week: Jobseekeer’s Allowance costs 0.3% of GDP
Why does George Osborne emphasise the government’s benefit cuts? As The Economist noted after the Conservative Party conference, even when his cuts are a comparatively small element of his plans, he still talks them up. Mr Osborne is a notoriously ‘political’ Chancellor, and he knows that polls…Read more…