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How parts of Britain are now poorer than POLAND with families in Wales and Cornwall among Europe's worst off


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(plenty of money for covert operations Syria & Ukraine ...but $$$ for the common man..no no no ...what you want more porridge !!!!!!)


May 05 09:01


Revealed: How parts of Britain are now poorer than POLAND with families in Wales and Cornwall among Europe's worst off




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Rule Britannia (With lyric annotations)


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If you dont understand = this is a coverup of bad economic statistics.........

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(plenty of money for covert operations Syria & Ukraine ...but $$$ for the common man..no no no ...what you want more porridge !!!!!!)

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Drugs and prostitution to be included in UK national accounts
Contribution of drug dealers and prostitutes to the UK economy boosted figures by £10bn according to estimates

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Thursday 29 May 2014 15.13 EDT
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Drugs and prostitution contributed £10bn to the UK economy in 2009. Photograph: Alamy

George Osborne famously declared "we are all in this together" when it comes to Britain's prosperity. The Office for National Statistics has now taken him at his word, adding up the contribution made by prostitutes and drug dealers.

For the first time official statisticians are measuring the value to the UK economy of sex work and drug dealing – and they have discovered these unsavoury hidden-economy trades make roughly the same contribution as farming – and only slightly less than book and newspaper publishers added together.

Illegal drugs and prostitution boosted the economy by £9.7bn – equal to 0.7% of gross domestic product – in 2009, according to the ONS's first official estimate.

A breakdown of the data shows sex work generated £5.3bn for the economy that year, with another £4.4bn lift from a combination of cannabis, heroin, powder cocaine, crack cocaine, ecstasy and amphetamines.

According to the estimates there were 60,879 prostitutes in the UK in 2009, who had an average of 25 clients per week – each paying on average £67.16 per visit.

There is also detailed data on drugs. The statisticians reckon there were 2.2 million cannabis users in the UK in 2009, toking their way through weed worth more than £1.2bn. They calculate that half of that was home-grown – costing £154m in heat, light and "raw materials" to produce.

The ONS will work in the coming months to bring the data more up to date. The figures will then be included in the broad category of household spending on "miscellaneous goods and services" alongside life insurance, personal care products and post office charges.

The more inclusive approach brings the ONS into line with European Union rules, and will eventually allow comparisons of the size of the shadow economy in different member states.

Joe Grice, chief economic adviser at the ONS, said: "As economies develop and evolve, so do the statistics we use to measure them. These improvements are going on across the world and we are working with our partners in Europe and the wider world on the same agenda.

"Here in the UK these reforms will help ONS to continue delivering the best possible economic statistics to inform key decisions in government and business."

The new elements will be published in the national accounts from September onwards, supplementing the more traditional measures of GDP including construction and manufacturing output. By comparison, the construction sector contributed around £90bn to the UK economy in 2009, and manufacturing £150bn.

The ONS said that in every year between 1997 and 2009 prostitution and illegal drugs boosted the economy by between £7bn and £11bn. Combined with other changes to the national accounts from September, £33bn or 2.3% will be added to the 2009 level of GDP, the ONS said.

Graeme Walker, head of national accounts for the ONS, acknowledged there were limitations to measuring the value of illegal activities to the economy, but said it was a useful exercise nevertheless.

"It's a model-based estimate but one that serves a purpose for the picture of the overall economy."

He said the ONS would attempt to "fill in the gaps" left by available studies but it would be impossible to measure illegal activities as accurately as other components of GDP. Other activities are measured using questionnaires but the response rate in the sex and drugs trades are unlikely to be high.

Alan Clarke, a UK economist at Scotiabank, said that although the government would not feel the benefit of illegal work in terms of income tax take, there would be a spending boost.

"A drug dealer or prostitute won't necessarily pay tax on that £10bn, but the government will get tax receipts when they spend their income on a pimped up car or bling phone."

Steve Pudney, professor of economics at the University of Essex, said he was sceptical about the methods used by the ONS to estimate the size of the drugs market.

"In my view, the ONS estimate of the size of the drug market is unlikely to be very accurate. It rests on some heroically large assumptions which would be difficult to test, and it also uses a measure of demand that is likely to understate systematically the true scale of drug use."

He added: "They are using a demand-side approach which loosely involves multiplying a survey estimate of the number of drug users by another estimate of the amount consumed by the average user.

"Average retail prices of drugs come from other sources – mainly police/customs/security service intelligence sources – and, multiplying this by the estimated demand, gives the size of the market in cash terms."

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Rule Britannia (With lyric annotations)

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(plenty of money for covert operations Syria & Ukraine ...but $$$ for the common man..no no no ...what you want more porridge !!!!!!)

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9 June 2014 By: BethPH

London Food Bank Demand Increases By 120%

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Demand for food banks in London has gone up again, according to a report released today, with 96,000 people seeking help over food poverty since April 2013.

The ‘Below the Breadline’ report, produced by The Trussell Trust, Oxfam and Church Action on Poverty, identifies the causes as changes to the benefits system, a punitive sanctions regime, a lack of decent work and rising living costs. It’s not just down to welfare reforms – a 43% increase in food prices over the previous eight years combined with an average fall of £936 in the annual disposable income of 20% of Britain’s poorest aren’t helping either.

Back in February, we wrote about the 400% increase in food bank use in just two years, and it doesn’t look like things have improved. Trussell Trust chair Chris Mould, said the fact they had to help 300,000 children is ‘a national disgrace’:

“The troubling reality is that there are also thousands more people struggling with food poverty who have no access to food aid, or are too ashamed to seek help, as well as a large number of people who are only just coping by eating less and buying cheap food.”

Unsurprisingly, the government rejects the charities’ findings. A spokesperson for Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) said welfare safety net was left out of the report:

“We’ve also helped families by cutting the cost of living, more people are in work helping to support their family, benefits are being paid to claimants more quickly and according to independent experts fewer people report struggling with their food bills compared with a few years ago.”

More people may well be in work, but as we’ve pointed out before, paid work doesn’t prevent people needing to claim benefits. According to the report, ‘protecting its citizens from going hungry is one of the most fundamental duties of government’ — the very existence of food banks amply demonstrates how the government have failed in this duty. Fortunately, not everyone believes the government’s risible claim that food bank usage has nothing to do with welfare reforms, or the tripe that was printed by the Daily Mail in April which led to a massive increase in donations to the Trussell Trust. The charity said it provided 23m meals to people nationally in 2013 compared to 13m in 2012.

Photo by leica0000 in the Londonist Flickr pool.

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NEW disability payments system responsible for deaths in Britain

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Dennis Moore

A new disability benefit, Personal Independence Payments (PIP), brought in by the UK government to replace Disability Living Allowance (DLA), has resulted in the deaths of thousands of people. In addition, many seriously ill people have been left without a payment months after applying.

Some of those who have applied for PIP are diagnosed with serious degenerative illnesses that are life-threatening and seriously debilitating.

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PIP was introduced in June 2013 as part of the government’s overall welfare cuts. The benefit is paid to claimants between the ages of 16 and 64 with a long-term health condition. The benefit is split into two parts including daily living and mobility activities. The claimant completes a form, and then most applicants have to attend a face-to-face assessment to determine eligibility. These assessments have been carried out via the private contractors Atos Healthcare and Capita Business Services.

PIP was rolled out nationally after only a short trial period two months earlier in the north of England. In February 2014, a highly critical report was published by the National Audit Office (NAO). It raised concerns over the rush to implement PIP, stating it “did not allow enough time to test whether the assessment process could handle large numbers of claims. As a result of this poor early operational performance, claimants face long and uncertain delays.”

The report found that the administration costs of PIP will be up to three-and-a-half times as much as the previous benefit (DLA) it was meant to replace and will take double the amount of time to administer. Each new PIP claim is worth between £21 and £134 a week to disabled claimants and costs an average £182 to administer, compared to £49 under the old scheme (DLA).

The NAO showed that in some areas of the north of England in the first six months of the introduction of PIPs, there was a backlog of 92,000 cases—three times the number expected—with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) only making decisions in 16 percent of cases.

Sharon Brennan, a freelance writer and journalist, explained the case of Malcolm Graham, a 56-year-old from Essex who was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer in September 2013. He had previously been employed for 40 years. He applied for PIP on advice from Macmillan Cancer support and his local Citizens Advice office. After applying for PIP, he rang the DWP almost daily for eight months to try to find out the status of his claim and if a decision had been made, but to no avail.

In that time, Graham was forced to endure a 10-hour operation in which large parts of his stomach and oesophagus were removed and undergo 10 sessions of chemotherapy.

Brennan said that as of June 23, when her article was published, Graham was still awaiting a decision on his claim and was dependent on his family for the extra financial support that he has incurred, due to not being able to get about because his mobility has been affected. The article said he was in debt with his electricity payments and has had a debt-recovery firm calling at his home.

The cases of those terminally ill who are expected to have less than six months to live is a disgrace. These PIP applicants should only have waited a short time to get an award due to the severity of their condition. However, claimants have regularly been awaiting decisions up to a month. Under the old rules governing DLA, the time limit was seven days in which a decision had to be made.

The government has attempted to defend these decisions by claiming that the rules are different for PIP. This is untrue, as the principles for offering help to the terminally ill are supposedly the same under PIP as they were under DLA.

The impact of this debacle is that many seriously ill people are left in financial plight, having to turn increasingly to family members for help and forced to resort to food banks, loans and charitable donations for assistance.

In October 2013, PIP was due to be rolled out across the UK but there were concerns that Atos was not capable of reducing backlogs or managing higher volumes of cases. Contractually, assessment providers were supposed to have carried out 97 percent of assessments for PIP within 30 days. The report disclosed that Atos and the other contractor Capita had completed only 55 and 67 percent, respectively—clearly a substantial shortfall.

Atos had stated in its tender document that it had “contractual agreements” in place with a national network of 56 NHS hospitals, 25 private hospitals and more than 650 physiotherapy practices to provide assessments. Leaked government documents showed this not to be true. It was suggested that Atos’s PIP assessment backlog would not be cleared until March of next year.

As a result of Atos declaring many people to be “fit for work” who clearly weren’t, its £500 million contract has come under increasing scrutiny. An estimated 42 percent of appeals against the DWP were upheld, with the government admitting as many as 158,300 of those assessed were wrongly deemed fit for work.

Thousands of people have died as a result. According to information provided by Labour MP Michael Meacher, 1,300 people had died after being placed in the “work-related activity group” and another 2,200 died before the assessment process was completed. An additional 7,100 died after being placed in the group for those entitled to unconditional support, as they are too ill or disabled to work.

Earlier this year, Atos decided to end the contract early. A new provider is to be appointed early next year.

The government’s response to the PIP crisis has been to dismiss it, claiming that the figures used were out of date. Minister for Disabled People Mike Penning claimed the new PIP system ensured “support goes to those who need it most”.

There have been a number of private companies who have come under scrutiny following exposures of irregularities and failings with public contracts. Earlier this year, there were serious concerns raised about the government’s much-heralded scheme for unemployed people, Universal Jobmatch. This scheme was established supposedly to assist job seekers in finding work by matching workers with employers looking to fill job vacancies via the use of digital job searches.

The contract was won at the time of its inception by Monster Incorporated, one of the world’s largest Internet recruitment companies. This cost £17 million to set up with running costs of £6 million a year.

The Guardian estimated that a third of a million jobs—50 percent of all the jobs advertised on the site—were considered bogus, being falsely and illicitly promoted. An investigation by Channel 4 News found that thousands of the job postings on the site were fake and were set up to entice job seekers to spend money unnecessarily on fake criminal record checks, or were using individuals’ personal data for the purposes of identity fraud.

The carve-up of the welfare state and the ransacking of public services have led to a scramble for profits at any cost, whilst at the same time wreaking havoc against millions of the poorest and most vulnerable in society.

This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.

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  • 3 months later...
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One in three children living in poverty in parts of Ashfield Eastwood & Kimberley Advertiser 06:18
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  • www.independent.co.uk/.../uk/.../uk-child-poverty-soaring-due-to-governments-austerity-measures-unicef-says-9823049.html
    More than one in four children in the UK are now living in poverty – and the
    number is rising sharply because of the Government's harsh austerity measures,
    ...
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    British pensioner poverty among worst in the EU says new report by ...
  • www.express.co.uk/news/uk/.../British-pensioner-poverty-EU-worst ‎
    BRITAIN's pensioners are some of the worst off in the EU and are at a greater risk
    of falling into poverty than those in Eastern Europe.

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Food poverty is a British problem
  • By Clare Wiley | 10/27/14
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    © FareShare

    There are 13 million people living below the poverty line in Britain. In Manchester, one of the country’s fastest-growing cities, 38 per cent of children live in poverty. And the situation is only getting worse, as the last few years have seen extreme changes to welfare support, wage increases below the rate of inflation, and food prices steadily rising.

    Last year alone, almost a million emergency food parcels were given out across the country by foodbank charity The Trussell Trust –up from 347,000 the year before.

    Despite these shocking statistics, and how endemic the issue clearly is, many people still believe all kinds of myths about food poverty. For example: that it only affects people in poorer countries or that foodbanks in countries like Britain are frequented by benefits cheats.

    Such ill-informed stereotypes only serve to exacerbate the problem, fuelling a lack of compassion. .

    In reality, food poverty can affect anyone. In Britain, there are professionals who are not paid a living wage and who can’t cope with soaring food and energy prices. It affects working families, forced to take out payday loans, and who end up trapped in a cycle of high-interest borrowing. Lone parents, pensioners and those with disabilities, are also likely to be affected..

    There are less obvious reasons why people might turn to foodbanks: domestic violence, sickness, welfare reforms, delays in wages and benefits or lack of free school meals during holidays.

    Some argue that food charities make the issue worse because people become reliant on their help – essentially, that more people are using foodbanks because there are more foodbanks.

    Speaking at the launch of a new campaign in Manchester, Tackling Food Poverty Together, TV presenter Terry Christian likened this argument to believing that ‘the only reason people are getting cancer is because there are oncology wards.’

    Another charge levelled at foodbanks is that they are turning food from being a human right to a charitable hand-out.

    But I believe that the potential social value of foodbanks and food charities is being underestimated.

    Take FareShare, a national charity which rescues thousands of tons of surplus edible food and redistributes it to charities, including foodbanks, breakfast clubs, and women’s refuges.

    At the vast FareShare depot in Greater Manchester, large quantities of fruit, vegetables, cereals, crisps, pasta, are waiting to be sorted and delivered by a group of volunteers.

    Development manager Miranda Kaunang says that many of the volunteers are unemployed, and have come forward to support communities like their own. ‘People who volunteer may be currently out of work, or may feel excluded from their community,’she said. ‘We engage and empower our volunteers by offering training for job interviews. There’s a lot of team spirit here.’

    FareShare improves the lives, employability and self-worth of its volunteers. Since 2012, there have been 70 people at the Greater Manchester depot who have progressed through a structured volunteering programme. Eight of those went on to higher-level training and 35 people secured paid employment.

    FoodCycle is another national charity, which takes surplus food and cooks up a nutritional three-course meal every week, at centres across the country. Diners aren’t beggars: they’re a community that gathers to share a meal and some conversation, and sometimes listen to live music. FoodCycle also provides information and resources to help people out of food poverty.

    There’s a important environmental factor: in Britain, 400,000 tonnes of surplus edible food is thrown away each year. Charities like these are redistributing food to people in need, while also cutting food waste.

    Let’s be clear: foodbanks should not be a permanent fixture in society. In one of the world’s wealthiest countries, it’s shameful that they are even necessary.

    We need serious political, social and economic change to ensure no one goes hungry. But until that happens, let’s support foodbank charities, and not underestimate the significant and varied contributions they make to society.

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Charity: 25,000 UK pensioners to die in winter (click link)

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A report says that a pensioner will die from cold weather every seven minutes in Britain this winter, amid soaring fuel bills.

The Age UK charity released the report on Tuesday, saying that, this winter, 25,000 elderly people in England and Wales will die as a result of the cold weather and due to high fuel costs and poorly insulated homes.

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The Economy Is Worse than During the Great Depression :news

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We noted in 2013 that the British economy is worse than during the Great Depression.

The Washington Post’s Wonkblog pointed out in August that Europe is stuck in a “Greater Depression” … worse than the Great Depression.

Well-known economist Brad DeLong agrees. As does Paul Krugman.

Historian, economist and demographer Neil Howe provided the following charts via Forbes last month, showing how dire the situation is in Europe:

Read more: whatreallyhappened.com http://whatreallyhappened.com/#ixzz3Lli20KKD

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Rule Britannia (With lyric annotations)
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UK Poverty - Huffington Post (CLICK LINK)
www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/news/poverty/
Annabel Burn. The UK is the world's sixth largest economy, yet 1 in 5 of the UK's
population live below our official poverty line, which includes 3 million children.

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The young are the new poor: Sharp increase in number of under ...
www.independent.co.uk/.../uk/.../the-young-arethe-new-poor-sharp-increase-in-the-number-of-under25s-living-in-poverty-while-over65s-are-be...
Young adults and people in work are now more likely than pensioners to be in
poverty in Britain following a huge increase in insecure employment such as zero
...
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Poorest UK households pay almost half their income in tax (Click link)

According to The Guardian: The poorest 10% of households pay almost half of their gross income in tax, analysis by a campaign group claims.

The TaxPayers’ Alliance research found that direct and indirect taxes accounted for an average of 47% of the gross income of the poorest decile, with VAT accounting for the biggest share of the bill.



Read more: whatreallyhappened.com http://whatreallyhappened.com/#ixzz3MpD1mqo0
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Millions of Britons struggling to feed themselves and facing malnourishment (CLICK LINK)

The use of food banks in the UK has surged in recent years. The Trussell Trust, a charity which runs more than 400 food banks, said it had given three days worth of food, and support, to more than 492,600 people between



Read more: whatreallyhappened.com http://whatreallyhappened.com/#ixzz3NCUMhbAV
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see post # 13 above

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Police dismantle soup kitchen for London homeless, evict activists (CLICK LINK)

In a statement Tuesday afternoon, the group, who call themselves the “Love Activists,” said that the situation facing the homeless in central London has hit crisis point. Services to help the homeless in the area are woefully inadequate, they argued, with all dedicated centers due to remain closed until January 3.



Read more: whatreallyhappened.com http://whatreallyhappened.com/#ixzz3NZJLgQQY
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Nearly four out of 10 households with children, or 8.1 million people, live below an income level regarded by the public as the minimum needed to participate in society, according to new research commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
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