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27-01-2023, 06:30 PM
UPDATED JAN 26, 2023, 7:59 PM SGT
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Britain, one of the world’s richest countries, among the most shocking signs of the cost-of-living crisis is that a growing number of workers are struggling to feed their children.
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the crisis has been long in the making. Employment growth has left Britain with fewer out-of-work households, but many of those who found work still did not reach a decent standard of living, which left them vulnerable when inflation hit a 41-year high a few months ago, and wages failed to keep up.
Austerity measures under a decade of Conservative-led governments have also eaten away at the benefits paid to many low-income families, including working households. Since 2016, Britain has had one of the highest minimum wages in the world for most workers, benefiting some of the lowest earners. But many of them still cannot find enough hours of work, and the income of low earners has grown more slowly in Britain than in some other Western countries, including Germany and France.
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The Trussell Trust, which operates food pantries across the country and recorded more than 300,000 new users in the first half of last year, said that one-fifth of its clients in mid-2022 came from households with someone in a job.
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Some schools have started providing free meals for every student, not just those who qualify for them through the welfare system, and a headmaster in a deprived area of the city said that more children and their parents had started relying for their breakfast on the free toast the school gives out at the front gate.
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“You see ambulance crew, teachers going to the food bank,” Mr Kingsley Fredrick, who works for a food bank in east London, said at the end of another busy shift. “What does it say about a community, about a country?”
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Ms Sharon Grant, a part-time cashier at an Asda supermarket in London, said the cost of energy recently had often left her with little or no money for food. Like many low-income people, she has to pay for her heat and electricity up front, feeding money into a prepayment meter in her flat. In the winter cold, she said, 50 pounds in the meter can last only a couple of days.
Some days, she resorts to feeding her 15-year-old twin sons and 11-year-old daughter cereal for dinner. On the worst nights, she has nothing to give them, and she has noticed they have started to struggle with their schoolwork.
“They are not as bright as they used to be,” she said. “They are hungry.”
https://www.straitstimes.com/world/europ...d-children
......
Britain, one of the world’s richest countries, among the most shocking signs of the cost-of-living crisis is that a growing number of workers are struggling to feed their children.
......
the crisis has been long in the making. Employment growth has left Britain with fewer out-of-work households, but many of those who found work still did not reach a decent standard of living, which left them vulnerable when inflation hit a 41-year high a few months ago, and wages failed to keep up.
Austerity measures under a decade of Conservative-led governments have also eaten away at the benefits paid to many low-income families, including working households. Since 2016, Britain has had one of the highest minimum wages in the world for most workers, benefiting some of the lowest earners. But many of them still cannot find enough hours of work, and the income of low earners has grown more slowly in Britain than in some other Western countries, including Germany and France.
......
The Trussell Trust, which operates food pantries across the country and recorded more than 300,000 new users in the first half of last year, said that one-fifth of its clients in mid-2022 came from households with someone in a job.
......
Some schools have started providing free meals for every student, not just those who qualify for them through the welfare system, and a headmaster in a deprived area of the city said that more children and their parents had started relying for their breakfast on the free toast the school gives out at the front gate.
......
“You see ambulance crew, teachers going to the food bank,” Mr Kingsley Fredrick, who works for a food bank in east London, said at the end of another busy shift. “What does it say about a community, about a country?”
......
Ms Sharon Grant, a part-time cashier at an Asda supermarket in London, said the cost of energy recently had often left her with little or no money for food. Like many low-income people, she has to pay for her heat and electricity up front, feeding money into a prepayment meter in her flat. In the winter cold, she said, 50 pounds in the meter can last only a couple of days.
Some days, she resorts to feeding her 15-year-old twin sons and 11-year-old daughter cereal for dinner. On the worst nights, she has nothing to give them, and she has noticed they have started to struggle with their schoolwork.
“They are not as bright as they used to be,” she said. “They are hungry.”
https://www.straitstimes.com/world/europ...d-children
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