Today’s the first time I’ve seriously tried to get my head around the developments in the UK on benefits and welfare since I left, prompted by Sarah Ditum’s blog post on the attempt by Tories in marginal seats to persuade Cameron to toughen benefit rules for teenage single mothers. Using the Guardian’s society coverage purely for ease of use, this is an incomplete list of what’s happened since I left to come to Australia on May 18, less than three months ago. This is neither an exhaustive list nor a cherry-picked one, and it’s biased to a single source.
- Costs soar as wealthy councils rehouse families in hotels and B&Bs
- Child and pensioner poverty reductions under Labour at risk, says report
- Britain faces ‘colossal’ child poverty bill, report shows
- Homeless? Here, have a tent…
- Food banks struggle to feed hungry as demand rises
- Bedroom tax ‘could make thousands of poor people homeless’
- Fitness-for-work tests unfair on people with mental health problems, court says
- Work Programme staff struggle to help unemployed when ‘jobs aren’t there’
- Night shelter crisis: ‘Find your own money,’ say ministers
- Welfare to work scheme failing to get people work, say figures
- Benefits cap is rolled out across Britain
- Welfare curbs ‘risk food banks and loan sharks’
- Huge rise in use of food banks since welfare changes, says aid body
- Most of London’s new housing benefit claims are from working families
- Carers facing debt and eviction because of bedroom tax – study
- Extra million people in absolute poverty since coalition came to power
- And, to cap the list: MPs brace for public fury over pay rise of nearly £10,000
I am struggling to understand what is happening at home as anything other than a war waged by some of the richest people in the country against some of the poorest.