Tuesday February 26, 2019		INDEX
The rich are getting richer (according to the Independent February 26, 2019). Incomes of richest fifth of households grow by 4.7% while poorest fifth of households suffer a 1.6% fall. The combination of high living costs, stagnating wages and, often, the rollout of Universal Credit and the wider benefits system, means that levels of hunger in Britain are some of the highest across Europe. BT January 10, 2019.
	This is an overview of child poverty (according to Unicef) after ten years of Tory neglect. To find the original Unicef data click on link go to section 2 (the league tables) and look at League Table 1 Change in child poverty (anchored in 2008).
UK austerity has inflicted 'great misery' on citizens, UN says. Report in The Guardian Friday 16 November 2018 The UK government has inflicted 'great misery' on its people with 'punitive, mean-spirited, and often callous' austerity policies driven by a political desire to undertake social re-engineering rather than economic necessity, the United Nations poverty envoy has found. Philip Alston, the UN's rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, ended a two-week fact-finding mission to the UK with a stinging declaration that levels of child poverty were 'not just a disgrace, but a social calamity and an economic disaster', even though the UK is the world's fifth largest economy, Cuts to benefits and tax credits mean the number of children living in absolute poverty across the UK has increased by 200,000 in a year-- to a total of 3.7 million. According to an article in the Independent of Thursday 28 March 2019, government data shows that while the rate of absolute child poverty had been gradually falling since 2012, it is rising again.
Posted by Jonathan Brind.
Tuesday February 26, 2019		INDEX