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Category: poverty

  • Inflation static at 3.8% – but food prices continue to rise, hitting the poorest hardest

    The Office of National Statistics’ (ONS) new inflation figures are now out for August 2025. The banner headline is that inflation overall has held steady at 3.8%, far above the Bank of England’s 2% target. Food prices have also continued to spiral upwards ahead of that rate. Moreover, this 3.8% increase is significantly higher than those predicted for other major nearby economies like Germany and France.

    The Consumer Prices Index (CPI) increased by 3.8% from August 2024 to August 2025. The CPI measures how the costs of common goods and services that most people need – things like food, transport, recreation, and electronics – change over time. It serves as the main measure of inflation overall in the UK.

    Food and drink

    However, food and non-alcoholic drink prices rose by 5.1% for the year. This included far bigger increases for some very basic products. Coffee and chocolate prices both rose by 15.4%, dairy products like milk and butter rose by 12.6 and 18.9% respectively, and the price of beef rose by a whopping 24.9%.

    Supermarkets blamed a multitude of factors for the continual increases. These included the climate crisis and the combination of a wet Spring and dry Summer in the UK driving up the cost of basic goods, along with the ongoing war in Ukraine – previously a primary producer of grain for Europe.

    Alongside these rises, supermarkets and suppliers also complained about April’s rise in minimum wages and national insurance contributions. It would appear that these costs to producers and retailers have been passed directly to the consumer – and then some, in some cases.

    For example, Tesco posted an adjusted operating profit increase of 10.6% for 2024-2025. Likewise, Sainsbury’s underlying operating profit rose by 7.2% for a similar period. Both of these profit increases are far ahead of the average 5.1% increase in food prices. Both Tesco and Sainsbury’s were also guilty of above-inflation price gouging during the pandemic, as revealed in a 2023 investigation by Unite.

    So what gives?

    So if food costs are rising above inflation, what exactly is keeping the overall increase of the CPI basket steady?

    The ONS stats also showed that average house prices in the UK in July had increased by 2.8% compared to July 2024. That’s down from a 3.6% price growth from June to June. However, private landlords’ rent increases rose by 5.7% August to August. That’s the smallest annual increase since December 2022, but still well above general inflation,

    Prices in transport also rose overall by just 2.4% in the year up to August 2025. Air fares made a significant downward contribution to this rate, and petrol and diesel prices fell by 4.9% in the same period, compared with a greater fall of 6.7% July-July.

    Overall

    So what does this mean overall? As ever, it is the poorest people in the UK who will feel the brunt of changing prices. The fact the air fares are increasing slower will mean little to you if you don’t regularly leave the country. Rising rates of private renting are far more significant if you’re not in a position to buy a house. And, of course, the cost of the most basic foods rising at sometimes as much as six times general inflation will sting if you regularly struggle to buy groceries.

    Chancellor Rachel Reeves said:

    I know families are finding it tough and that for many the economy feels stuck. That’s why I’m determined to bring costs down and support people who are facing higher bills.

    Usually, the Bank of England (BoE) seeks to curb inflation by increasing interest rates. Interest rates account for both the cost of borrowing money and the gains from saving it. The logic goes that if borrowing goes down and saving goes up, then spending will go down, meaning that prices will fall, thereby lowering inflation.

    So, with inflation holding at 3.8%, experts are predicting that the BoE will keep interest rates fixed at 4%. However, Paul Nowak – general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, has warned that this won’t help the average family:

    Global challenges mean food costs keep rising. Higher inflation is also being driven by water and energy bills rising. Keeping interest rates high will not bring down these prices – but instead, rates are adding to the pain for families and businesses.

    The Bank of England should cut interest rates tomorrow to ease pressures on households and businesses. This will help to boost growth and make life more affordable for everyone.

    Autumn budget

    A lot now hinges on the chancellor’s Autumn budget, set to be released on 26 November. Reeves faces a very difficult balancing act. Increased minimum wages and NI contributions from employers were popular among low-wage workers, but big businesses immediately foisted those costs onto consumers.

    Last year, Reeves promised businesses that she wouldn’t hike taxes further – however, there is now widespread speculation that she will do just that, amid reports of falling productivity forecasts. If businesses once again pass these costs directly to consumers, it could spell disaster for the poorest among us.

    Featured image via Unsplash/Krzysztof Hepner

    By Alex/Rose Cocker

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Wigan Diggers Festival helps us remember our radical history

    We are in desperate need of remembering the UK’s rich history of social struggle. Fortunately, the Wigan Diggers Festival reminds us how this history holds the keys to improving our country today.

    Wigan Diggers Festival: bringing radical history into the present

    In celebration of the life and ideas of Gerrard Winstanley, the Wigan Diggers Festival on Saturday 13 September did just that. A free event for all with a day of live music, entertainment, inspiring poetry, stalls, and speakers, the community was able to come together and share in their common interests.

    Winstanley, a local legend, championed social justice in the 17th century, fighting for the oppressed people of England to have a right to share in the ‘commons’ and be able to work the land to grow much-needed food for their communities. This was in direct challenge to the status quo of the time, when wealthy lords restricted access and increased taxes on ordinary people for their own profits. People fighting for a better Britain in 2025 can, and should, draw inspiration from this movement.

    There were stalls representing the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Make Votes Matter, Your Party, Wigan’s local Green Party, the Socialist Worker, and several other social justice and reform groups.

    Addressing people’s anger

    After the anger that was on display at the ‘Unite the Kingdom’ protest on Saturday, the Wigan Diggers Festival was a markedly different space.

    As Winstanley said in his appeal to the House of Commons in 1649, oppression breeds anger, the flame currently ignited in our society, and Winstanley argued that the only way to “quench” that flame is to champion values of love, justice, and compassion. Winstanley instead appealed to the most wealthy and powerful to prioritise social justice and individual freedoms:

    And truly the hearts of the people are much falling from you, for your breach of Promises when you have the power to keep them, and for your neglect of giving them their freedom, and removing burthens; and what danger may ensue by that to yourselves, and the Nations, you know how to judge.

    Curbing billionaire power and wealth

    When we consider the social issues we face today – widening inequality, decreasing access to opportunity, and families struggling to feed their families sufficiently and nutritionally, it is hard not to see the relevance of Winstanley’s words, further signifying how our society still has a long way to go to ensure ordinary people have the right of freedom from exploitation by the richest in our society.

    This is evidenced even further when we see the growing disparity between the extreme wealth of the rich and the income stagnation affecting the majority. Oxfam says that currently 3,000 billionaires across the world hold 14.6% of global wealth, seeing a surge of £4.8tn, whilst the incomes of the majority stagnate and inflation keeps rising, costing hard-working families even more.

    In the UK, according to the Equality Trust, the average wealth of billionaires has increased by 1000% between 1990 and 2024, whilst paying a disproportionately low tax rate of 0.3% of their wealth, significantly lower than the average worker in the UK, who have also experienced stagnating wages since the financial crash of 2008. According to TUC, before the financial crash, weekly wages saw an increase of 1.7% each year, dropping to -0.2% since 2008.

    Proposing a tax of 2% on the annual wealth of billionaires, French economist Gabriel Zucman argued that “there is overwhelming public support for this idea”, with 130 countries in support of a minimum tax on multinationals. Zucman stated this is technically feasible and could raise up to £197bn per year.

    The commons of today

    In modern times, our essential services could be argued to be the commons of our day: the NHS, our schools, water and energy, together with our democratic freedoms of free speech and the right to protest.

    All of these face a severe threat from some of the super-rich in our society, and foreign wealth, who exploit the anger of our fellow citizens and our growing need for their own private profits. Through civil agitation directed at immigrants and refugees, there are blatant attempts to divert blame for our shared struggle away from the richest in our society, cashing in on monopolies and lucrative contracts, onto those suffering real hardship and trauma.

    Public and Commercial Services Union general secretary Fran Heathcote spoke on Saturday in the anti-racism counter protest:

    Trade Unions only succeed in winning for working class people when we unite working class people, all of us standing together. The billionaires, the corporations, the landlords and the media barons, they want us to be divided…Scapegoating migrants won’t get you better pay, reduce NHS waiting lists, or reduce your rent and mortgage.

    Class war and inequality have long been tools of the oppressor, as we see through Winstanley’s advocacy, and it is clear we’re facing the greatest threat to our society as it is currently working in the favour of the richest in our society, exploiting the anger of the majority, leaving minoritised people in fear for their safety.

    Time for hope and moral leadership

    As Winstanley predicted in 1649, in his Appeal to the House of Commons, and still relevant today:

    Unrighteous oppression kindles a flame; but love, righteousness, and tenderness of heart, quenches it again.

    Britain must listen to the calls to tax the richest, and support Brazil’s call at the G20 to implement a fair tax on billionaires and multimillionaires. Then we can finally address the urgent issues in our society, ensuring no community feels left behind or disadvantaged.

    Until then, people driven by love must fill the vacuum and address the anger in our communities. This is how we remove the hate that is blinding the disenfranchised, and strengthen the bonds in our communities.

    Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/Sadfish9889

    By Maddison Wheeldon

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • MPs join calls to end threatening bailiff action for council tax debt

    Over 40 MPs and MSs have joined urgent calls for the government to reform council tax collection, as council tax debt and bailiff use rises.

    Bailiff use rises in council tax debt collection

    The MP and MSs, from the Labour Party, Greens, Plaid Cymru, and Independents, have joined union leaders and councillors in signing open letters community union ACORN has published today, 15 September.

    The letter calls for the governments in London and Cardiff to take urgent action to tackle the growing crisis of council tax debt. It urges them to use early intervention and support for those struggling to pay, rather than heavy-handed enforcement action and court orders. All too often, this pushes people further into debt, where they’re made liable for a full year’s bill overnight, and leaves them living in fear of a knock at the door from bailiffs.

    ACORN is also calling for an end to the postcode lottery faced by people who fall into council tax arrears. It demands mandated protocols to make sure everyone gets access to support and fair treatment wherever they live. It’s also calling for the government to commit to replacing unfair and ineffective council tax with a proportional property tax.

    As well as improving the wellbeing of people and our communities, these changes could also help increase revenues for local councils.

    Bailiffs barging into homes with intimidation and threats

    The calls come as the government is considering changes to council tax administration, with a consultation closing last week. It also sits amidst rising council tax debt, with recently published figures showing that that constituents now owe £6.6bn to local authorities in England, up 11% on the previous year, and the public owes £264m in Wales.

    Campaigners delivered the letter to the new Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, Steve Reed, Minister of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Alison McGovern, and separately to Welsh Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Mark Drakeford on 15 September.

    ACORN National Chair Chelsea Phillips said:

    Council tax arrears have increased dramatically over the past couple of years, with more and more families struggling to pay as the cost of living crisis continues.

    Research shows that one in three people in council tax debt live below the poverty line – and the punitive way council tax arrears are collected means people are pushed further into debt, with added liability fees and charges from bailiffs, and can even be made liable for an entire year’s bill at once.

    Too many people are coming into contact with bailiffs, and these visits often involve intimidation, threats and shutting down the opportunity of other ways out, such as discussing repayment plans.

    It’s hurting people, it’s hurting families, it’s hurting communities, and it must end now.

    ACORN has already been successful in reducing bailiff use for council tax debt. It has won campaigns in both Manchester and Brighton, where the local council stopped sending enforcement agents out to anyone in receipt of council tax support, affecting around 50,000 low income families in each city respectively.

    Now the union has launched a national campaign, ‘Bailiff Free Britain‘. It wants to see the government change enforcement rules across the board to end what it calls the cruel and unnecessary use of bailiff intimidation against people in financial hardship.

    ‘Nobody should have to experience that’

    Viv Roberts (not her real name), an ACORN member in Manchester, experienced a bailiff visit in 2019 after she was late with a council tax payment. Viv, who was working as a childminder and had children with her at the time of the bailiff visit, was made liable for the whole year’s council tax bill.

    She said:

    There was a knock at the door. I was surprised – there were bailiffs there demanding I pay the council tax bill for the whole year.

    Of course I told them I couldn’t afford this, I didn’t have that money just lying around. I asked if I could pay with a repayment plan, in instalments, and they flat out refused.

    I asked the options, they said I would have to pay it there and then, or they would take my belongings – my TV, my kids toys, my cars, or I could go to prison.

    Luckily I was able to borrow the money from a family member, but that very easily could have not been the case. I was shaken, and that interaction still affects me today.

    Bailiffs threatened Niahl Hubbard, an ACORN member in Norwich, with enforcement action. He had liability order fees added, after missing an increase in his council tax bill.

    He said:

    I fell into council tax debt a year ago, after a period of struggling with my mental health. I fell behind on post and emails, and missed a 5% increase and subsequently didn’t update my direct debit.

    Over a couple of months this added up, and because I had previously been in council tax arrears, this was immediately escalated to the courts, with more fees added on.

    I had a letter saying bailiffs would be coming to my home, and this was truly terrifying. I was staggered at how quickly this had escalated, from £20-£40, to £hundreds, and the threat of bailiffs which only added to my health issues.

    Thankfully things improved for me, and I was soon able to get on top of it and managed to pay it off, but for many people I just don’t think this would be the case.

    Nobody should have to experience that – the threat of bullies coming to your home, your place of safety, to shake you down for money.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Joseph Rowntree report highlights that Labour are failing to meet minimum income standards

    While Labour claims to be “making Britain work for working people”, the reality is very different when it comes to quality of life. A new study from Loughborough University’s Centre for Research in Social Policy (CRSP) on behalf of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has come up with a new set of ‘real’ minimum income standards (MIS) that accurately represent how much people are struggling to afford to live, despite working full-time.

    What are minimum income standards?

    The minimum income standards are a yearly report which looks at the cost of food, housing, bills and all other outgoings. Importantly, it also includes things that allow people to have a “dignified life” such as a holiday once a year, hobbies, and nice toiletries. From this, they build a budget and contrast it with how much people actually earn across different household groups.

    The study found that to “participate in society”:

    • A single person now needs to earn £30,500 a year.
    • A working-age couple without children needs to earn £43,000 (£21,500 each) a year.
    • A single parent with two children, aged between 2-4 and 5-11, needs £61,000 a year.
    • A couple with two children needs to earn £74,000 a year between them.
    • Single pensioners need £17,400 if they are receiving pension credit, but those who are on a state pension need £19,000.
    • A pensioner couple on pension credit needs £29,000 a year, and those who only get state pension need £29,200.

    The report says

    For many in the UK, the gap between what they have and what they need for a decent standard of living has not reduced.

    It continues

    Many households in the UK do not have the income they need to reach a minimum socially acceptable standard of living, whether they are in work or not.

    So how does this compare to what people are actually getting? Well, it’s not looking good. The report points out that over a year into the current Labour government, not much has changed in terms of living standards.

    Work doesn’t pay, actually, Rachel Reeves

    The report points out that whether people are in work or relying on Universal Credit, they’re still falling short of their basic needs. Of course, these costs are much more keenly felt by those on benefits. One thing to point out here is that this is a report based on earnings. That means personal independent payments (PIP) aren’t included, as that is not a means-tested benefit. Single people with no children on out-of-work benefits are reaching just 27% of the MIS, while couple households with no kids, where at least one person is on out-of-work benefits, are hitting 26%.

    Working does raise the standard of living, but not enough. A single person working full-time still only has 75% of what they need to reach the MIS. Meanwhile, a couple where one works part-time and the other full-time still only reaches 83%. However, if they’re both full-time time it exceeds the MIS by a whole 13%.

    The report estimates that a working-aged single adult needs to make £30,500 a year to have enough for a good life. Couples need £43,000, or £21,500 each. However, in reality a full-time job on the national living wage only pays £23,875 a year. Such a wage leaves single people seven grand short of what they need to reach MIS per year.

    Even harder for parents

    Single parents on out-of-work benefits get just 44% of what’s needed to have a “dignified” standard of living. After housing costs, they fall short by around £362. Whilst working does increase a single parent’s disposable income, it still only gets them to 69% of the MIS.

    However, due to Universal Credit (UC) tapering, parents won’t feel much difference if they move from part-time to full-time work. As their UC is tapered, their childcare costs for a child who is not yet in full-time education, will also increase if they move into full-time work as they won’t receive as much support.

    A single parent with 2 children would need a huge £61,000 a year to have a good quality of life for them and their children. And, that’s gone up from £57,000 in 2024.

    A couple with two children who are on out-of-work benefits reach just 37% of the MIS. Under these projections, their weekly income would fall over £500 below what is needed to have a good life. Whereas couples without children who worked full time exceeded the MIS, couples with children who work full time on the national living wage still only reach 82%. To be able to fully meet their needs and their children’s needs, they would need to earn a humongous £74,000 a year between them.

    Pensioners fare better, but it’s still not enough. Pensioners reach 90% of MIS regardless of whether they have their pensions topped up. Single pensioners need £17,400 a year, but if they get a full state pension, they need £19,000. This is partly down to the fact that other benefits, such as housing benefit and council tax support, are tapered as income increases and that those on a state pension don’t get the winter fuel allowance.

    We all deserve a good life, but that’s not happening

    The report concludes:

    These findings come in a year when work has been prioritised as a key element of the new Labour government’s plans for economic growth, and a focus on ‘making work pay’ has underpinned its strategy for labour market reform.

    However, households where at least one person is in work make up an increasing proportion of those with incomes below MIS.

    It is apparent that for many households, paid employment is not enough on its own to provide a minimum living standard, despite substantial increases in the NLW [national living wage] over recent years.

    The report highlights more than anything that, despite Labour pushing the agenda that “work pays”, this is clearly not true. Those who do work still do not have enough disposable income to live a good and meaningful life, instead of just about scraping by.

    If Labour truly want people to live a good life, they need to prove it. They need to actually increase living standards.  Bills must come down through allowing companies to charge through the roof for basic utilities. Everyone deserves to live in a society where we thrive, not just survive.

    Featured image via Unsplash/Christina Radevich

    By Rachel Charlton-Dailey

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Phoenix Energy just doubled its profits – while North of Ireland households in fuel poverty

    On the same day that a new report from the Utility Regulator revealed a rise in complaints among domestic gas customers, gas network firm Phoenix Energy reported a doubling in profits.

    The 9% rise in complaints can be found in the annual report on the North of Ireland’s energy market overall, which also features data related to electricity supply. Most complaints relate to “bills, payments and accounts”, which account for 44,128, or 69.1%, of total complaints. Anyone familiar with gas bills in this part of the world will find this unsurprising, as they will have no doubt received many wildly inaccurate usage estimates, which strangely always seem to guess a figure in excess of the real one, rather than the reverse.

    Phoenix Energy: profiteering in the North of Ireland

    The report also revealed how few customers switch electricity supplier. The main supplier is Power NI, and 49% of its domestic customers have never switched. Changing supplier can be a notoriously bureaucratic process with credit checks involved for switching to direct debit from a typically more expensive prepayment metre. Such checks already disadvantage vulnerable or deprived households, and the checks themselves can often be wildly inaccurate, lacking up to date data. Suppliers will often take advantage of these switching difficulties, leaving customers on a higher tariff than the ‘special offer’ they perhaps initially signed up for. Tools like Power To Switch can help encourage customers to change their supplier on a regular basis and get a better deal.

    Meanwhile Phoenix Energy Group, which runs gas networks serving almost half of the six counties population reported pre-tax profits of £35.2 million. It attributed this to its right to recoup profits in 2024 following a cold year in 2023, with less gas being used. This is based on a “six-year price determination” agreed with the regulator, that allows a certain level of profit, while factoring in costs like maintaining the network.

    Customers of Phoenix Energy may well ask, however, why it is necessary for ordinary households to subsidise director remuneration of £700,000, including an amount of £600,000 paid to the highest paid director, in a region where fuel poverty is estimated to hit 40% of adults.

    Households going without heating and electricity

    The National Energy Action Northern Ireland (NEA NI) poll also found that:

    A quarter (27% of households) said they went without heating (oil/gas) or electricity at a point during the last 24 months because they could not afford the costs of energy.

    It also pointed out that:

    68% of households in Northern Ireland rely on home heating oil, a non-regulated fuel.

    This figure is dramatically higher than figures in England, Scotland, and Wales, with the antiquated source of energy also being hugely carbon intensive. While Ireland as a whole makes relatively good use of its unique geographic location to generate over 35% of its electricity demand from wind turbines, there is still huge underdeveloped potential in offshore wind and hydropower.

    Obstructing the North of Ireland’s energy transition means soaring bills

    The Renewable Energy in Northern Ireland inquiry identified:

    three key themes…obstructing Northern Ireland’s energy transition

    These included:

    • Inadequate infrastructure to support NI’s net zero transition, where the committee cautioned that NI should rely on a broader renewable energy strategy;
    • An unsupportive policy environment, including a disjointed planning system “weighed down with delays”; and
    • A lack of consumer awareness.

    A generally sclerotic political class must urgently refocus on these issues to ensure our obligations to the planet are met, along with lowering bills for long-suffering bill payers in a region that lags behind the rest of Ireland, England, Scotland, and Wales in terms of incomes.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Robert Freeman

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Absentee Landlords

    There are three major motion pictures that every working stiff should watch… and recommend to others. The first such film ( and of course there are so many more) this writer recommends is Martin Ritt’s The Molly Maguires (1970). Inside the disgrace of the feudal element of coal mining we have coal miners working for the corporation (weren’t they all?) and living in shacks owned by the company. Most of their wages goes to pay the rent and the foodstuffs sold to them by… you got it, the company store.  The big event for those men is the rugby matches sponsored by the owners against workers from other mines, also owned by the Super Rich masters of industry. The Irish and Scots caught in this web turned to secret, radical movements to give hope to a hopeless cause.

    The next film, and equally as disheartening, is John Sayles’ Matewan (1987 ), based on the 1920 Matewan Coalminer’s Strike that turned into what historians called the Matewan Massacre. The mine owners had the Baldwin Felts Detective Agency AKA Armed Thugs come in to intercede on the strike. The miners were outgunned, as usually was the case when Capital is paid to subjugate Labor. The similarity between all three films is how the workers had to pay too high rents and too high foodstuff prices to the owners of the mines. One does not have to look hard to realize why alcoholism became paramount in the lives of these working stiffs. Working at least 10 to 12 hours down in a mine and breathing in that Black Dust  gave little hope to the men… and their women. So, before falling into bed, many men would first go to the saloon nearby (owned by the boss) and drink it up.

    Claude Berri’s 1993 film classic Germinal captured the failures of coal miners in striking against the mine owner in late 1880s France. Once again we see the miners having to live in shacks owned by the Lord of the Manor and paying top dollar for it. And, as with ALL the feudal aspects of such a system, the miners paid top dollar for their foodstuffs and merchandise from the company store. Down the hatch each morning and returning with Black Lung each evening was just a fact of life for these poor souls. One scene from the film that has always stuck in my craw was when the miners formed a committee to go and negotiate with the boss. They arrived at his manor house, not too far from their own despicable accommodations, and were ushered into his drawing room. The Lord of the Manor sat at his desk as the small group entered. Then, each of the men took his cap off to offer indulgence to this feudal king. It turned this writer’s stomach!

    Do you think that things have changed much in 21st Century Feudal Amerika? The country, as with most capitalist nations, is inculcated with millions of rental housing owned by absentee landlords. Many are major real estate corporations. Others are private equity landlords who hide behind their own serfs, the Management class, who will sell their soul for another few shekels. Or, we have the individual so called entrepreneurs who always wanted to make money off of the urgent needs of another’s shelter. The old days that this baby boomer was raised under seem to fade from memory. In that era a couple bought a two family home and rented out the other apartment to help pay their mortgage. It made sense and devoid of any radical ideology. We need to go back to that world and outlaw absentee landlords. Let the community own the property and rent it out a fair rates… with the caveat of allowing the tenant a chance to save and buy that unit eventually.

    The guy in NYC is but attempting to chip away at that iceberg of feudalism. Let’s hope he sets the example that so many super rich are doing their upmost to sabotage.

    The post Absentee Landlords first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Trussell says 2.5 million more people are going hungry than three years ago

    A new report from the leading food bank charity Trussell has revealed that hunger and reliance on food banks have gotten even worse since 2022.

    Trussell’s Hunger in the UK 2025 report, released today Wednesday 10 September, found that in 2024, 14.1 million people across the UK lived in households that struggled to afford food. This compares with 11.6 million in 2022 – that’s 16% of households in the UK, and an increase of 2.5 million people in just two years.

    Trussell: food insecurity deepens, especially for the marginalised

    As Trussell points out, people were classed “food insecure” if at some point in the last year:

    They ran out of food and were unable to afford more, reduced the size of their meals or ate less because they couldn’t afford food, or went hungry or lost weight due to a lack of money

    The report also found that one in four children (3.8 million) are growing up in households where their parents are struggling to feed them or skipping meals themself so their kids can eat.

    As always, it’s even worse if you’re disabled. 74%, or three in four people referred to Trussell food banks in 2024, were disabled, which is a huge amount of disabled people, considering just 24% of the population is disabled. Eight in ten, or 79% people referred to food banks said they came from a disabled household. This compares to the fact that just 38% of all people say they live in a household with a disabled person.

    One in four disabled people (27%) experienced food insecurity in 2024, which is more than double the amount for non-disabled people (11%). However, 35% of people with a mental health condition struggled, along with 43% of learning disabled people.

    It’s not just disabled people, though: 25% of people from a racialised community experienced food insecurity, while just 14% of white people did. This shoots up to 38% of Black or Black British people. One in three LGBTQIA+ people (34%) had experienced food insecurity, which was well over double the amount of people who weren’t part of that community (14%).

    Deprivation leads to hunger, who would’ve guessed?

    Let’s pretend to be shocked that people in the North of England were worse off. 26% of households in the North West and 23% of households in the North East experienced food insecurity. This compared with 12% of households in the South East and 14% in the South West.

    Unsurprisingly, living in a more deprived area means that you’re more likely to struggle to afford to eat. Trussell found that those living in the most deprived areas of the UK were three times more likely to experience food insecurity than the least deprived areas. Children growing up in the most deprived areas were more than twice as likely to be in a food insecure household.

    While many politicians and the media act like being on benefits is a golden meal ticket, the reality is, of course, very different. Over half of the people who got Universal Credit (52%) went hungry last year. This rose to 62% for people who saw their payments deducted. Most people who accessed food banks last year (87%) were on some form of means-tested benefit, while 75% got Universal Credit – despite just 9% of the general population claiming it.

    Poverty becoming normalised

    One worrying part of the report is that 61% of people who experienced food insecurity last year did not access food banks or any other type of charitable service last year.

    Trussell said:

    There are concerning signs that unacceptable experiences of severe hardship are becoming normalised

    55% of people who didn’t access any services despite struggling to afford food said they didn’t consider themselves to be in financial hardship. 32% said they weren’t needy enough, and 23% didn’t want to use food banks as others needed them more. This is the grim reality that has been created by the government and media acting like working people should be struggling.

    However, the stigma around food banks also put many off; one in six (17%) people said they were too embarrassed to use a food bank, while one in eight (12%) were afraid of being judged for using a food bank. Many people who were surveyed by Trussell were scared of being recognised by others or saw needing to use food banks as a sign of failure.

    Trussell’s recommendations for the government – actually live up to your promises

    The reasons for needing food banks, however, remained the same: sky-high rent and bills, no access to secure jobs, and a social security system that just doesn’t give enough support and protection from food insecurity.

    Trussell has several recommendations for the UK government. It said:

    Recent analysis by Trussell shows that taking this action would not just mean fulfilling political commitments or moral obligations but deliver economic gains too

    The trust reminded the government that Keir Starmer pledged that:

    Tackling poverty and breaking down barriers has to be central to everything that we do

    It said that the government needs to “redouble its efforts” to this commitment to end food insecurity.

    Trussell continued that:

    There can be no serious pathway to ending the need for emergency food without investing in further updates to our social security system.

    Its recommendations reflect this. It pointed to the fact that scrapping the two-child limit would lift 670,000 people out of severe hardship, including 470,000 children, by 2026/27. If the government uprated and maintained Local Housing Allowance, this would lift 265,000 people out of severe hardship.

    The charity said that if the government did more to ensure that everyone who is eligible for benefits receives them, it would lift 565,000 out of severe hardship. Finally, it said that if the government took on the Essentials Guarantee, this would lift 2.2 million people out of severe hardship by 2026/27.

    Government needs to actually commit to ending poverty – not just for political point scoring

    Trussell said:

    This evidence is an urgent reminder of the need for more determined action. We need a clearer vision from the UK government on how we tackle the severe hardship that is so deeply rooted in our communities.

    And that’s what this should be about. For too long now, politicians have used poverty as a political football, when at the heart of it, their commitment to ending food insecurity should be because they actually care about lifting the poorest out of poverty.

    By Rachel Charlton-Dailey

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Public Transit ‘Death Spiral’: A Warning For Other Underfunded Cities

    Philadelphia’s transit system plunged into crisis on August 24, when the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) slashed bus, trolley, subway, and Regional Rail service by 20%. SEPTA eliminated 32 bus routes, shortened 16 more, and reduced the frequency of other bus and train lines. The crisis occurred as a result of state lawmakers failing to close a USD 213 million budget gap. The funding standoff left the city’s 746,500 SEPTA riders stranded and pushed the nation’s sixth-largest transit agency toward what officials call a “death spiral” – which has deeply impacted the disproportionately Black and lower-income SEPTA ridership.

    The post Public Transit ‘Death Spiral’: A Warning For Other Underfunded Cities appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • The Walking Cane and the Mantle

    Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.

    — James Baldwin

     The Film That Stirred the Ashes

    It came quietly, like a whisper from the margins. A DVD in the mail—When Did I See You Hungry? by Gerard Thomas Straub, narrated by Martin Sheen. A gift from a friend in South Carolina, sent after reading my essay on poverty. I watched it once. Then again. And then I wept.

    The film did not show me anything new. I had seen hunger before—in the eyes of barefoot classmates, in the bellies of children bloated from malnutrition, in the silence of mothers who had nothing left to give. But this film did something else. It stirred the ashes. It summoned the ghosts of my childhood and the fire of my rebellion.

    I remembered the beatings. I remembered the uniform I gave away. I remembered the food I carried from our farms to children who had none. And I remembered the fury of my maternal uncles, guardians of a feudal legacy, who struck me for daring to share.

    That was the beginning of my exile from my own family in silence, from complicity.

     Born Into Feudalism, Baptized By Rebellion

    I was born into a matrilineal tribe in Adeiso-Armaaman, Eastern Ghana—a place where my great-grandfather and his ancestors ruled as kings. Landowners. Lords of a colonial legacy. They owned the soil, the harvest, even the cemetery. My uncles groomed me to inherit this “small kingdom.” But I rebelled.

    I questioned the unequal distribution of land and harvest. I gave my school uniform to classmates who had none. I shared food from our farms. And for that, my uncles beat me. The more I gave, the more they struck. That was the beginning of my exile—from own family, from feudalism, from silence.

    Even as a child, I knew: power without compassion is tyranny. I began to rebel—not with weapons, but with witness.

     Kinship Not Only to My Bloodlines

    Thank God for my father.

    He was a man of kindness, with farms and a village of more than a hundred families—Sui-Attohkrom in the Western Region of Ghana. When I left my maternal family, I found refuge in his world. A world of generosity, humility, and communal care.

    I embraced his ethic. I housed Liberian refugees during their civil war—including relatives of Justice Minister Jenkins Scott, who was in political exile in Guinea-Conakry. I fed them. Clothed some of them. Funded two who were in Guinea-Conakry to their travel to other Countries in West Africa

    I sheltered Dragon Noire, the African world record wrestling champion, along with his wife and son, when they were in crisis. I gave them what I had. Not because I was wealthy, but because I was willing.

    My kinship is not only to my bloodlines. It is open to all humankind. I walk alone in America. But I stand with all who hunger.

     Poverty Is a Global Wound

    Poverty is not a local wound. It is a global affliction. I have seen it in Ghana, Liberia, Guinea in European Countries, and the streets of New York. It wears many faces, but its eyes are always hollow.

    It is not just lack—it is theft. It steals dignity, voice, and breath. And yet, we dress it in theology. We call it “God’s will.” We birth children into scarcity and say, “It is written.”

    But I say: we must rewrite what is written.

    We must think outside the box. No—think as if there is no box. We must exercise possibility thinking. We must calibrate our minds to be each other’s keeper.

    No man is born poor. Society makes him so. And only society can unmake it.

     The Walking Cane as Mantle and Witness

    I do not carry a cane for weakness. I carry it as a symbol of witness. It is the staff of memory, the rod of rebellion, the walking stick of those who refuse to forget. My grandmother, who saw children bulldozed in Germany at age 14, taught me that silence is complicity. I walk with her stories. I walk with the weight of history. And I walk to remind the world: we have seen this evil before. We must not see it again.

    America: Exile and Empathy

    I live in America without kin. No family to greet me in the morning, no one to mourn me should I fall. But I am not without witness. In a New York restaurant, a Ghanaian man recognized my father’s name. Even in exile, the roots remember. I walk alone—but I carry a village, a lineage, a rebellion. I write not to be heard, but to awaken. Each word is a drumbeat. Each sentence, a march.

    Faith Communities Must Rise

    I am a chaplain-in-training. I do not preach comfort—I preach conscience. The Riverside Church is my sanctuary, but the streets are my pulpit. Faith must not be a sedative. It must be a summons. We must stop dressing poverty in theology. We must stop calling injustice “God’s will.” The sacred is not in silence—it is in solidarity.

    The post The Walking Cane and the Mantle first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Over 5,300+ Actions Planned To ‘End War, Poverty, Racism And Environmental Destruction’

    Nationwide – Between September 21 and October 2, 2025, tens of thousands of people will participate in over 5,300+ nonviolent actions to protest violence, war, poverty, racism and environmental destruction as part of the 12th annual Campaign Nonviolence Action Days.

    Stretching between the International Day of Peace (Sept 21) to the International Day of Nonviolence (Oct 2), the annual effort rallies numerous national, international, and local groups to ‘build a culture of peace and active nonviolence, free from war, poverty, racism, and environmental destruction’.

    Amidst concerns about gun violence, mass shootings, political violence, climate crisis, rising authoritarianism, war and genocide, Campaign Nonviolence brings people together in solidarity to work for an end to violence in all its forms.

    The post Over 5,300+ Actions Planned To ‘End War, Poverty, Racism And Environmental Destruction’ appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Labour is STILL refusing to scrap the two-child benefit cap

    Despite repeated pledges to tackle the deepest injustices, the Labour Party government has so far refused to scrap the two‑child benefit cap—a stubborn policy that continues to punish low‑income families and trap countless children in poverty. Now, a new report has shamed Keir Starmer over the cap – but will he and his government bother to act?

    Scrap the two-child benefit cap

    The Poverty Strategy Commission is a cross-party group looking at poverty. Now, as the Guardian reported it has called on the government to abolish the two‑child benefit cap—a rule denying roughly £3,500 annually for every third or subsequent child in households claiming Universal Credit. That means 1.7 million children are presently affected by this punitive rule.

    The Commission said that reversing the cap, coupled with strengthened investments in housing, childcare, and Universal Credit, could lift 4.2 million people out of poverty, including 2.2 million trapped in deep poverty—a figure that should shame any government that claims to put fairness first.

    Yet remarkably, despite widespread consensus on the cap’s cruelty, the Labour government remains unmoved, citing fiscal constraints and failing to deliver any timeline for change.

    This inaction comes at enormous human cost. Recent data show that the policy has plunged at least 350,000 children into poverty, while another 700,000 kids have been pushed into deeper hardship. That means over a million young lives are made permanently harder by a benefit rule that could be reversed tomorrow if political will existed.

    Critics are right to call the cap “brutal” and “shameful”. Meanwhile, charities such the Child Poverty Action Group are ramping up pressure.

    A May 2025 poll revealed that 73% of the public believe every child deserves a good childhood regardless of cost, and 71% say children should be prioritized in government investment—sentiments clearly at odds with Labour’s current posture.

    The government says…

    In response to the Commission’s report on the two-child benefit cap, a government spokesperson told the Guardian:

    This government is determined to drive down poverty and ensure that every child gets the best start in life. We are overhauling jobcentres and reforming the broken welfare system to support people into good, secure jobs, while always protecting those who need it most.

    In addition to extending free school meals and ensuring the poorest children don’t go hungry in the holidays through a new £1bn crisis support package, our child poverty taskforce will publish an ambitious strategy to tackle the structural and root causes of child poverty across the country.

    However, as the Canary has documented, Labour’s rhetoric around the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) masks the reality: that it has cut chronically ill and disabled people’s benefits – and, as we only just reported, it seems it is planning to go even further with that. This alone will plunge more kids into poverty – on top of the two-child benefit cap.

    Interconnected issues

    Even beyond the two‑child benefit cap, the interconnected overall benefit cap continues to deny meaningful support to families already reeling from soaring living costs. Removing one restriction without addressing the other leaves 100,000 children still vulnerable, according to earlier government estimates. 

    The government’s own numbers only underscore the urgency: parliament’s research estimates that abolishing both the benefit cap and the two‑child benefit cap could reduce child poverty by around 620,000, at an annual per‑child cost of about £5,400—a price far outweighed by the potential long-term social and economic gains.

    Meanwhile, the broader context is grim. In the financial year ending 2024, 2.72 million children across the UK—22% of kids aged 0–15—lived in relative low‑income families, a rise from prior years. The striking contrast between the scale of the problem and the government’s lack of bold action is inexcusable.

    Labour’s hesitation on this vital issue not only betrays its own rhetoric of fairness and progress but opens a moral and political vacuum. If the Party cannot lead on dismantling deeply damaging welfare constraints—especially ones that target children—what can it realistically promise?

    Let there be no more excuses. The two-child benefit cap must go. Children’s futures should not be collateral damage to fiscal incompetence. True leadership would scrap this cruel policy now.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The People’s Champion: Howard Zinn

    Go to school, but don’t become an educated dummy.

    — Eddie Zinn to son Howard when he was a boy, Howard Zinn: A Life on the Left

    Labor Day is a good time to pay tribute to the late Howard Zinn, a rebel historian who broke with the tedious orthodoxy of “patriotic” history to tell the tale of those consigned to the bottom of the social pyramid: Indians, slaves, factory workers, indentured servants, sharecroppers, farmers, immigrants, political prisoners, soldiers, socialists, pacifists and other anti-war protesters. His most famous work, A People’s History of the United States, has by now surpassed four million in sales, an unheard of success record for a history book.

    Raised in grinding poverty, Howard grew up resenting smug media commentators, politicians, and corporate executives who talked of how in America riches were the inevitable reward of hard work. No matter how well this lie was told, it implied with insulting clarity that people who had not become rich could only blame themselves for lack of effort. Howard knew better from personal experience, that hard labor was the least rewarded, and certainly no ticket out of poverty. His father carried trays of food at weddings and restaurants for decades until a sudden heart attack ended his life at 67. He frequently had to borrow to make the rent and never had the means to retire.

    Eager to rid the world of poverty for everyone, Zinn urged his students and readers to not only read history but also make it. He flatly refused to lead an uncommitted life, eagerly participating in protests, marches, and civil disobedience campaigns concerned with civil rights, economic and social justice, imperial war, and exploitation. In his early career he was a teacher at Spelman College, an all-black women’s school, where he was fired for his anti-Jim Crow politics; later he taught at Boston University, where his classes were so popular and so subversive of orthodoxy that president John Silber sought to limit participation in them, while denying Zinn salary increases at every opportunity.

    Unlike the vast majority of professors, Zinn was more comfortable on a picket line than in most academic settings, where the urgency of class conflict was easily ignored or dismissed, though not by Zinn.

    A revealing anecdote captures the spirit of the people’s historian better than any ponderous essay could even hope to. The year was 1970 and professor Zinn was due to appear in court in Boston for an act of protest he had engaged in. He chose to ignore his court obligation and participate in a Baltimore debate entitled, “The Problem of Disobedience,” which he had been invited to do. During the debate Zinn argued that the problem wasn’t civil disobedience, but obedience: “Our problem is the number of people across the world who have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their governments and have gone to war, and millions have died from that obedience. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and famine and stupidity and war and cruelty. That is our problem.” When he returned to Boston, two police detectives arrested him outside his classroom for violating his court date.

    The anecdote reveals what Zinn thought about history, that it had much more to do with how we act than what we think, a conviction that encouraged his conclusion that change comes when masses of people realize this and mobilize to resolve their grievances directly. Elections and politicians don’t produce change, they react to it.

    It shouldn’t surprise anyone to learn, therefore, that during the early days of Obama-mania a skeptical Zinn sounded a discordant note, warning that Obama would not implement change unless surrounded by a sufficiently powerful and persistent social movement forcing him to. “Our time and energy should be dedicated to educating, agitating, and organizing our fellow citizens at the workplace, in the streets, and at school,” Zinn said, pointing out that the great changes in the time of Lincoln, FDR, and the 1960s came about precisely because the American people rose up and took such responsibilities seriously in those years.

    Unfortunately, these waves of popular agitation can’t last forever, although the next one is always already on the way. Zinn regularly reminded us of that, showing that history is made up of fortuitous surprises only detectable in retrospect. He liked to point out that when his colleagues in the 1950s used to lament the apparent lack of prospects for racial change due to the failure of Americans to mobilize, just in those moments small and isolated acts of rebellion and disobedience were occurring in the South, eventually converging and exploding into the Civil Rights Movement.

    Given the way change actually happens, Zinn thought, progress should not rightly be seen as a gift handed down from above, but rather, as the hard fought reward for popular education and organizing over a period of years. Strikes, boycotts, soldiers refusing to fight, multitudes renouncing injustice and war, these signal the arrival of a better world.

    Given his commitment to social change, Howard could not be satisfied with transmission of knowledge as a measure of his teaching success. “I wanted students to leave my classes not just better informed, but more prepared to relinquish the safety of silence, more prepared to speak up, to act against injustice wherever they saw it,” he said.

    He rejected academic neutrality as a false standard. He believed in being as scrupulous as possible in adducing the facts, but did not feel objectivity was actually attainable. This was clearly a recipe for trouble, but submission to injustice was everywhere a permanent disaster.

    Economic security for its own sake never interested Howard, who lived by the maxim that “risking your job is a price you pay if you want to be a free person.”

    Daniel Ellsberg called Zinn “my hero,” while dissident intellectual Noam Chomsky held him in similarly high esteem: “There are people whose words have been highly influential, and others whose actions have been an inspiration to many. It is a rare achievement to have interwoven both of these strands in one’s life, as Howard Zinn has done. His writings have changed the consciousness of a generation, and helped open new paths to understanding history and its crucial meaning for our lives. He has always been on call, everywhere, a marvel to observe. When action has been called for, one could always be confident that he would be in the front lines, an example and trustworthy guide.”

    Chomsky was also impressed by Zinn’s remarkable performance on the speaker’s platform: “What has always been startling to me . . . is Howard’s astonishing ability to speak in exactly the right terms to any audience on any occasion, whether it is a rally at a demonstration, a seminar (maybe quite hostile, at least initially) at an academic policy-oriented graduate institution, an inner-city meeting, whatever. He has a magical ability to strike just the right tone, to get people thinking about matters that are important, to escape from stereotypes and question internalized assumptions, and to grasp the need for engagement, not just talk. With a sense of hopefulness, no matter how grim the objective circumstances. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

    Zinn had no use for history written without a social conscience behind it; or merely as a professional duty, if it was done only to get something published or get a university position, tenure, a promotion, or to earn prestige. He saw the profit system behind such shallow motives, making private gain the key to what gets produced while leaving a lot of valuable things unproduced, and many stupid things produced in great abundance. Most historians just play it safe and cash history in for their personal advantage. Howard refused to do that.

    He knew that courting controversy went with the territory of being a good teacher, honest writer, and decent citizen. In an interview with David Barsamian he noted that long before the Nazis there was a European holocaust in the Americas, that “perhaps 50 million indigenous people or more died as a result of enslavement, overwork, direct execution and disease. A much higher toll even than the genocide of Hitler.”

    Were Howard Zinn still with us today, there can be little doubt that he would be reminding us that the spectacle of two million Gazans being massacred or starved to death grotesquely insults any pretense of there being a human civilization in the world, and especially not in the United States and Israel, the countries most directly responsible for the unrestrained barbarism.

    He would be on the front lines of the struggle to liberate Palestine.

    Sources:

    Howard Zinn, The Future of History – Interviews with David Barsamian, (Common Courage, 1999)

    Howard Zinn (with David Barsamian), Original Zinn – Conversations on History and Politics, (Harper, 2006)

    Howard Zinn, The Zinn Reader – Writings On Disobedience and Democracy, (Seven Stories, 1997)

    David Detmer, Zinnophobia – The Battle Over History in Education, Politics, and Scholarship, (Zero Books, 2018)

    Howard Zinn, You Can’t Be Neutral On A Moving Train – A Personal History,  (Beacon, 2022)

    Martin Duberman, Howard Zinn – A Life on the Left, (New Press, 2012)

    Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, (HarperCollins, 2003)

    “American curios / El historiador rebelde,” La Jornada (Spanish), August 29, 2022

    The post The People’s Champion: Howard Zinn first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Structural Foundations of Africa’s Biggest Slum

    Poverty is an artificial creation. Join political activist Ajam Baraka and members of the Communist Party of Kenya on a trip, making the case using Kibera, Africa’s largest slum.

    It is symptomatic of a larger issue because, despite Nairobi being the wealthiest county in Kenya, contributing 27% of the country’s GDP, 60% of its 5 million residents live in squalor across 200 slums. Successive governments since independence have done little to change the status quo, leaving the people to predatory organisations that, at best, provide a band-aid to a gaping wound, or at worst, serve to depoliticise the masses.

    Black Agenda Report & North-South Project for Peoples-Centered Human Rights have come together to re-release African Stream’s Mini-Doc.

    The post Structural Foundations of Africa’s Biggest Slum first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Gary’s Economics blasts ‘childish’ arguments against wealth taxes

    Gary Stevenson is an economist and former trader who’s one of the UK’s leading proponents for wealth taxes. In his latest video via Gary’s Economics, he’s taken apart the “childish” arguments against the UK implementing a wealth tax. He also gives reason to be optimistic about the future.

    Gary’s Economics: growing inequality

    In the blurb for “Welcome to Gary’s Economics”, he describes himself as follows:

    I’m Gary Stevenson. I made millions of pounds working in The City, betting inequality was going to destroy our economy.

    On this channel I’m going to explain what is really happening in the economy – what this means for you, and what you can do about it.

    Key to his message is that more and more money is held in the hands of fewer and fewer people, and this growing inequality is destabilising the country.

    Groups like the Equality Trust have done excellent work highlighting what this inequality looks like, highlighting:

    The UK has very high inequality of income compared to other developed countries; the 9th most unequal incomes of 38 OECD countries (OECD, 2022).

    The UK’s wealth inequality is much more severe than income inequality, with the top fifth taking 36% of the country’s income and 63% of the country’s wealth, while the bottom fifth have only 8% of the income and only 0.5% of the wealth according to the Office for National Statistics.

    The group has also shown that the problem of inequality was getting better for a time until the wealthy managed to regain the upper hand (not that the rich have ever been anything other than on top):

    Graph showing income inequality changing over the 20th century

    “idiotically simplistic discussions”

    Gary’s latest video on Gary’s Economics is titled “How to Build a Wealth Tax“, and it begins with him arguing:

    Correct implementation on tax policy is a job of experts and government and and civil service. It is not the job of fucking YouTubers.

    For those who come to his channel looking for answers, the opening might confuse them. The video does clarify the point, however, as Gary explains that establishing the finer details of a wealth tax require teams of smart people working on the problem:

    Listen, I would be more than happy, more than fucking happy to be involved in making sure this tax policy is designed well, obviously. But the way that you do that is you get the tax experts, you talk to me, you talk to the other guys, you build a team of proper good tax experts. You think about the question of how do we deal with people who leave the country? Can we still tax them on the UK assets like, like we did to Abramovich, like China does? You look at how these issues were dealt with in the past. You look at how wealth inequality was reduced significantly in the 20th century.

    You have sensible discussions, but I’m constantly faced with these like idiotically simplistic discussions which are totally bad faith, which is like, “Oh, okay. You’ve recognised that the ship’s going to sink. Well, why don’t you fucking fix the hole your fucking self then, you fucking idiot?” It’s unbelievably childish and it’s unbelievably chaotic. Like, listen, we’re supposed to be adult, grownup, mature countries here.

    Gary isn’t the only one working in this space, of course, with groups like Tax Justice UK pushing for:

    a new wealth tax: a 2% levy on individuals who own assets worth more than £10 million – it would affect 0.04% of the UK population and would raise £24 billion a year. We’re also campaigning to apply national insurance to investment income, raising up to £10.2 billion a year.

    He’s right, though, that there’s only so much independent campaigners and pressure groups can achieve. To genuinely tax wealth, it will require serious people and serious consideration. It may also depend on us getting money out of politics, with the Electoral Reform Society highlighting:

    Scandal after scandal reveals an ever-growing arms race when it comes to party funding, with voters often coming second to big donors and spending rules sidestepped. Left to themselves the big parties have failed to find a solution.

    A fifth of all major political donations in the two decades between 2001 and 2021 came from just 10 men.

    Our politicians urgently need to clean up the way parties raise and spend money.

    Good democracy always has a price tag. An open, clean and fair model of funding the parties would give taxpayers far better value for money. It would ensure our politicians don’t have to dance to the tune of trusts, union bosses or City interests.

    All the parties have been tainted by party funding. It’s time for action.

    British taxes on British assets

    One of the examples Gary gives on Gary’s Economics is that of Roman Abramovich, the Russian oligarch and former owner of Chelsea football club. The UK government sanctioned Abramovich following Russia’s invasion, with the “£2.5bn in proceeds” from his sale of Chelsea currently frozen “in a UK bank account”, according to the BBC. In January 2025, a joint investigation from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the BBC, and the Guardian unveiled:

    Roman Abramovich may owe as much as a billion pounds in UK tax and potential penalties on profits made through a vast offshore hedge fund operation, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism can reveal after an analysis of leaked documents.

    If HMRC found wrongdoing and levied the maximum penalties available, this would surpass former F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone’s £653m record tax settlement last year.

    Between the late 1990s and early 2022, the billionaire – who is now sanctioned in the UK and EU – held as much as $6bn in a global network of hundreds of hedge funds. The sums totalled nearly half his estimated fortune.

    These generated huge returns, which were then used to bankroll other parts of his business empire – including his financing of Chelsea Football Club.

    The relevance of Abramovich is that:

    In simple terms, Abramovich’s companies were registered offshore but were apparently being run from the UK. That would mean they should have been paying UK taxes.

    Gary uses the Abramovich example to counter the argument that rich people will just flee the country if we try to tax them:

    The truth is, and I’ve always said this, I’ve never tried to hide this, actually raising taxes on the rich is going to be really, really hard for a variety of reasons, right? One of the biggest reasons is obviously they control a lot of the media narrative.

    They can sell lot of scare stories. “If you tax us, we’ll leave.” Or they can do a lot of sort of personally attacking of me as an individual. But the truth is there are things they can do and you need to deal with those things. Like the truth is they can leave, right? And I’ve always said, and I constantly believe, you know, look at the Abramovich situation, which shows like here’s a rich man who tried to leave. And we just said, “Okay, well you can leave, but if you’re going to own British assets, we can tax British assets.”

    And that’s always been my comeback to that. And that is true, but you need make sure that you have your legal systems in place.

    All together

    Another interesting point Gary makes is that:

    And people sometimes criticise me like, “Oh, that form of wealth tax is not good. We need another form of wealth tax.” I’m here for that. Let’s have those discussions, let’s build a tax policy, you know?

    It’s a good attitude to have, as the more people we have arguing for taxes on the wealthy the better. An example of someone with good faith criticism of Gary’s slogan “tax wealth not work” is Richard Murphy who argues that there are plenty of millionaires who work (as opposed to just siphoning money from their assets), and we need to be taxing those people too:

    This sort of discussion is good as it expands the case for reducing inequality, and the more people we have making the case the better.

    Gary’s Economics: progress

    While it’s always enjoyable to see Gary’s Economics take down “idiotically simplistic discussions which are totally bad faith”, the video also provides a welcome dose of optimism. As he notes:

    the reason I’m here and I’ve finally done a video on implementation is because we’re winning the debate

    If anything, the fact that the arguments against a wealth tax are becoming dumber and dumber is a sign that the arguments for implementing one are winning. The key now is for everyone to keep shouting about it until the case for ending inequality becomes undeniable.

    Featured image via Gary’s Economics YouTube Channel

    By Willem Moore

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • ‘Inequality In Kenya: View From Kibera’ Documentary Premieres

    Poverty is an artificial creation. Join political activist and Black Agenda Report’s contributing editor Ajamu Baraka and members of the Communist Party Marxist-Kenya on a trip to Kibera, Africa’s largest slum. It is symptomatic of a larger issue because, despite Nairobi being the wealthiest county in Kenya, contributing 27% of the country’s GDP, 60% of its 5 million residents live in squalor across 200 slums. Successive governments since independence have done little to change the status quo, leaving the people to predatory organizations that, at best, provide a band-aid to a gaping wound, or at worst, serve to depoliticize the masses.

    Black Agenda Report & North-South Project for People(s)-Centered Human Rights have come together to re-release African Stream’s Mini-Doc: “Inequality in Kenya: View from Kibera”.

    The post ‘Inequality In Kenya: View From Kibera’ Documentary Premieres appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Trump’s Invasion Of Washington DC Costs Over $1 Million A Day

    President Trump mobilized the D.C. National Guard under the guise of restoring security in the nation’s capital — despite D.C.’s crime rate being at a 30-year low. What began as a deployment of 800 D.C. National Guard troops has grown to encompass 2,091 as of this writing, as Republican governors send hundreds more.

    Trump hasn’t just complained about alleged crime in the district — he’s placed a target on people experiencing poverty and homelessness. Claiming that we’re “getting rid of the slums,” Trump has called on troops and police to forcibly remove unhoused people from the city.

    Federal law prohibits deploying the military on U.S. soil, except under certain extraordinary circumstances.

    The post Trump’s Invasion Of Washington DC Costs Over $1 Million A Day appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • The Poor Bear the Brunt of the Pain

    In the theatre of global conflict, where empires clash and ideologies contend, one truth remains tragically constant: it is not the architects of war who suffer its consequences, but the poor. The dispossessed, the voiceless, the expendable—these are the true casualties of geopolitical ambition. Their pain is not incidental; it is structural. It is the very currency by which power is transacted.

    Ukraine: A War Between Blood Brothers and Colonial Ghosts

    The war in Ukraine is often framed as a struggle for sovereignty, democracy, or territorial integrity. Yet beneath these abstractions lies a more intimate tragedy: a fratricidal conflict between peoples bound by history, language, and blood. Slavic brothers now spill each other’s blood—not for ancient grievances, but for the ambitions of post-imperial actors manipulating borders and allegiances from afar.

    This war is not merely a regional dispute—it is a symptom of unresolved colonial legacies. The descendants of former colonizers, now cloaked in the garments of liberal democracy, stoke the flames of division while the poor—Ukrainian and Russian alike—are conscripted, displaced, and buried. The pain is not evenly distributed. It is the peasant, the pensioner, the factory worker who pays the price through lost sons, shattered homes, and economic ruin.

    Gaza: A Fire Ignited by Promises and Betrayals

    The tragedy of Gaza is not an accident of history—it is the consequence of deliberate design. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 was not a gesture of goodwill but a colonial maneuver that set in motion a century of dispossession. Palestinians were displaced to make room for Jewish refugees—many of whom were themselves victims of European persecution. Thus, the persecuted were resettled through the persecution of another people, not by moral necessity but by imperial convenience.

    Today, Gaza is ablaze. Not metaphorically, but literally. Homes reduced to ash, families annihilated in seconds, children buried beneath rubble. And yet, much of the world hesitates. It equivocates. It attempts to rationalize genocide with the language of security and self-defense. The perpetrators, led by Netanyahu and his coterie of war profiteers, are shielded by a U.S.-led order that privileges power over principle.

    The Moral Logic of Emergency

    In moments of crisis, humanity instinctively prioritizes the most imperiled:

    • In a burning building, evacuation begins with the floor most engulfed in flames.
    • In a hospital, triage dictates that the most grievously wounded receive immediate attention.

    This is not ideology—it is moral logic. So why, when Gaza is engulfed in fire, does the world avert its gaze? Are Palestinians not human enough to warrant the same compassion? Has our moral compass been so thoroughly colonized that we no longer recognize suffering unless it is politically convenient?

    The Architecture of Global Oppression

    The so-called “rules-based order” is not a neutral framework for peace and prosperity. It is an architecture of oppression, meticulously designed to preserve the privileges of the powerful and diminish the aspirations of the poor. It criminalizes resistance, monetizes suffering, and pathologizes poverty. It is a system in which the pain of the Global South is treated not as a crisis, but as a constant—an ambient hum beneath the cacophony of global capital.

    This order does not merely fail the poor; it feeds upon them. It is sustained by their labor, their displacement, their silence. And when they speak—when they resist—they are labeled as threats, extremists, or terrorists.

    Conclusion

    The poor bear the brunt of the pain. Because they have no lobbyists, no media machines, no seats at the table. But they have graves. They have scars. They have stories. And those stories must be told—not as footnotes to history, but as its moral center.

    Let us not be seduced by the ill-conceived language of diplomacy while children are incinerated. Let us not mistake silence for neutrality. In the face of systemic violence, silence is complicity.

    The post The Poor Bear the Brunt of the Pain first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Clutching At Pearls, The World’s Largest Criminal Enterprise, The US, Cracks Down On Crime

    Sociologists correlate high homicide rates to high unemployment and poverty rates; known historically as the Black Belt, Chicago’s predominantly African American South side is home to both. Characterized by disinvestment schemes such as tax increment financing districts which divert property tax money from the neighborhoods to white elephant projects that benefit the wealthy, southside Chicago was also home to the late police commander, Jon Burge, whose detectives extracted confessions from more than 100 people, mostly Black, by shocking them with cattle prods, smothering them with plastic typewriter covers and pointing guns in their mouths while pretending to play Russian roulette.

    The post Clutching At Pearls, The World’s Largest Criminal Enterprise, The US, Cracks Down On Crime appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Activists just demanded that ‘champagne-guzzling, private jet-owning billionaires’ pay up

    Activists from the Make Them Pay coalition have projected message onto the Houses of Parliament to demand the Labour Party government make the super rich cough up their fair share.

    Time to tax the super rich: projections on parliament

    On Wednesday 20 August, activists sent a clear message to the government to “Protect workers, not billionaires” and “Tax the super rich”:

    'Tax the super rich' projected onto the Houses of Parliament.

    'Protect workers' projected onto the Houses of Parliament.

    Activists made sure to tell the government in no uncertain terms that it’s time to “Make them pay”:

    'Make them pay' projected onto the Houses of Parliament.

    Direct action group Climate Resistance coordinated the stunt as part of the Make Them Pay coalition campaign. It comes in advance of a major mobilisation the coalition is coordinating in central London for 20 September. It expects to draw tens of thousands of people to the streets.

    Climate Resistance spokesperson Sam Simons said:

    Champagne-guzzling, private jet-owning billionaires are profiting from hardship, plundering the resources of communities around the world, and trashing our planet for profit. We’re facing a climate emergency and runaway poverty, because the super rich are treating the world as their playground. It’s time to abolish billionaires, redistribute their ill-gotten wealth, and fund urgent climate action.

    As we gear up for the Autumn Budget, this government has a simple choice: tax the super-rich and invest in climate action, or cosy up to Nigel Farage and chuck future generations under the billionaire bus. Join Make Them Pay on 20th September and make sure they make the right choice.

    Uniting against big billionaire polluters

    The Make Them Pay coalition aims to bring together a diverse coalition of groups from the climate justice, trade union, and social justice movements. They will unite in a call for increased action from the UK government. The coalition will demand that it accelerate a green transition with justice for communities, workers, and the planet at its core.

    The rally will add to the variety of mass mobilisations and protests groups are planning in London that week. These will be targeting Trump during second state visit.

    Global Justice Now’s campaigns and policy manager Izzie McIntosh said:

    From climate change to global trade, this government seems intent on protecting billionaires and destructive corporations over working people. The economy is broken, the climate is collapsing and many of us are looking to the future – or even the end of the month – with fear.

    The money is there to protect us all, but it is currently concentrated in the hands of a staggeringly wealthy few. Our message to Keir Starmer is to be brave enough to make them pay, and rebuild society for the people who keep it running, not the rich and powerful.

    Billionaires are ‘breaking Britain’: enough is enough, say Make Them Pay

    350.org’s head of public engagement Namrata Chowdhary added:

    Billionaires are breaking Britain, in the same way they have been wrecking the world. From the devastating floods in Asia to the wildfires across Europe, the impacts of climate inaction are hitting communities everywhere. Meanwhile, fossil fuel companies continue their vandalism unchecked. It’s time to draw the line under this unfair and extractive system, that lines the pockets of the super-wealthy while fuelling the many crises we are living through today. We need urgent solutions, including a tax on extreme wealth, so that those who are most responsible for this destruction are held accountable. A fair tax on billionaires’ disproportionate wealth can free up the funds we need, and help secure justice for people and the planet.”

    Echoing this, Tyrone Scott, senior movement building and activism Officer at War on Want, said:

    Last year, UK billionaires pocketed an extra £35 million every single day, while families skipped meals, food banks were overwhelmed, and climate disasters intensified. This is the injustice we refuse to accept. It’s time to make the super-rich, corporations and polluters pay their fair share, so we can rebuild a society that works for people and the planet, not billionaires.

    Featured image and additional images supplied

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • How Mexico’s Welfare Policies Helped 13.4 Million People Out Of Poverty

    Toothless and frail, Gloria Palacios, 84, stooped as she set up her rickety sidewalk shop in Mexico City’s roughshod Doctores neighborhood. On sale: peanuts, cigarettes, chewing gum, chocolates and chips.

    When asked how much she made in a day, Palacios’s disabled son Gustavo, who helps run the tiny store, simply laughed. “If we make 100 pesos ($5) it’s a lot,” he said. Happily, said Palacios, the family has a different lifeline.

    With their house crumbling and bills piling up, the only thing keeping them afloat is a bimonthly transfer of 6,200 pesos ($330) implemented by the government of previous president Andrés Manuel López Obrador for adults over 65.

    The post How Mexico’s Welfare Policies Helped 13.4 Million People Out Of Poverty appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Is Assisted Suicide About Autonomy or Coercion? A New Film Asks Hard Questions.

    Reid Davenport’s new documentary Life After intervenes in a contentious debate around assisted suicide. The film offers a timely and critical look at the issue through interviews with disabled people, their loved ones, and advocates, as well as Davenport’s personal reflections, informed by his lived experience as a disabled person. Currently authorized in 11 states and Washington, D.C.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The Monsters Of The Global Crisis Interregnum

    The famous quote by Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci seems to have been written for the moment humanity is currently experiencing: “The old is dying, and the new cannot be born. In this interregnum, monsters arise.”

    The world is going through a civilizational crisis in which the neoliberal capitalist order, although mortally wounded, continues to impose its predatory logic, that of the use of force and the resurgence of fascism, while emancipatory alternatives fail to consolidate. In this vacuum, monsters proliferate: wars and attempts at recolonization, climate crisis, structural hunger, collapse of multilateralism and international law placed at the service of the world’s powers that be.

    The post The Monsters Of The Global Crisis Interregnum appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Campaign Nonviolence Action Days In Challenging Times

    For 12 years, Campaign Nonviolence has worked with tens of thousands of people to build a culture of active nonviolence. Looking at the devastating violence in our world — from racism to war to poverty to the climate crisis — we asked people to join us in engaging the transformative power of nonviolence in our lives, communities and society. 

    Thousands of groups joined in. Over the years, they’ve marched against gun violence. Created zones of peace in violence-prone areas. Shut down military bases. Trained thousands of students in anti-bullying practices. Held racial healing circles. Distributed tens of thousands of meals in mutual aid. Pressured banks to divest from fossil fuels and weapons. And so much more. 

    The post Campaign Nonviolence Action Days In Challenging Times appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • There Is No Revolution Without Revolutionary Consciousness

    A wind of despair blows relentlessly across the world. This wind of panic is the result of poverty and social inequalities. This has given rise to widespread wars that take various forms depending on the reality. Faced with the ravages of this phenomenon, Haiti is not spared (in fact, it is one of the biggest victims).

    Haiti is plunged into insecurity in all its forms: poverty, arms trafficking and trade, organ and drugs trafficking and a lack of transportation, all of which have plunged the country into total financial insecurity. For many, Haiti has never experienced such a chaotic situation in history.

    This critical situation is not without consequences for society. It forces the population to adopt a different understanding of life; many essential sectors in the society including the universities, the media, organizations and political parties, etc. have suffered an unprecedented state of discouragement.

    The post There Is No Revolution Without Revolutionary Consciousness appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Summer Days and Dark Nights

    One never knows where fascism “lite” might appear. We have one bumper sticker for our state which has confounded the foreign tourists along our coast:

    Oregun™ - Oregunian® Archives -

    Qu’est-ce que ça veut dire . . . Qué significa . . . was bedeutet es?

    Decals/Stickers Archives -

    These French, Mexican and German tourists asked me last week, What does it mean when they pointed to a big jacked up dual-rear tire pick-up truck with this huge sticker in the rear window: Oregunian-Oregun-zed with six AR-15 rifles on the image.

    Well well, I was at the Brooks Great Oregon Steam-Up (7/26) event, and ran into some of that fascism lite. At the outdoor swap meet one vendor was selling 1 Reich Mark postage stamps with Adolph Hitler’s bust (a real stamp) printed on it, alongside another one of those Trump fake items: postage stamps with the 47th POTUS in various odd situations printed on it.

    This was not a Norman Rockwell moment. There were other items with swastika and SS and Gestapo emblems marked on them.

    I have a client who works and lives in Newport and who lives with developmental disabilities. I am his support professional helping him navigate life and daily activities of living. He doesn’t drive.
    I had to keep my mouth zipped at the Brooks event when I saw this 6 foot eight guy wearing a t-shirt with this verbiage on it: “If This Flag Offends You I’ll Help You Pack Your Bags.”

    If This Flag Offends You I'll Help You Pack T-shirt Hoodie — T-Shirt Factory: Shop Printed T-Shirts, Sweatshirts and Hoodies

    That is the American flag.

    These Colors Dont Run Mens Patriotic Front-Zip Hoodie With Custom Eagle Art & Embroidered American Flag Patch

    I did get a whisper in the hulk’s ear without my client hearing: “I’m offended by your t-shirt, buster.”
    I kept walking through the Caterpillar museum and looked at the fabled E9 tractor-bulldozer. Another offense, but I’ll get to that later.

    A flag I made for Jewish Americans. Details in the comments. : r/vexillology

    The beauty of my job is that I meet people where they are. I can’t or won’t start attempting to teach clients what I know and have read and experienced as a way to mold them to my thinking.

    This particular client is worried about losing Oregon Health Plan, Social Security retirement – he’s 60 and has worked since age 18. He hates Trump in that sort of funny way: “He’s a real jerk.”

    But my client has a smartphone and reads headlines like this:

    • Trump administration’s budget cuts endanger Meals on Wheels: ‘Life and death implications’

    Trump administration's budget cuts endanger Meals on Wheels: 'Life and death implications' | Trump administration | The Guardian
    • Trump’s “Health Reform Vision” Includes $1 Trillion in Cuts to Medicaid and ACA

    In Trump's Budget, Big Health Care Cuts but Few Details - The New York Times
    • The Trump Administration Is Recklessly Axing Funding and Staff for America’s National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands

    The Trump Administration Is Recklessly Axing Funding and Staff for America's National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands - Center for American Progress
    • Nation’s Disability Services System Begins To Buckle As Funding Threats Intensify

    Nation's Disability Services System Begins To Buckle As Funding Threats Intensify

    The reality for my clients – and my own employment – is that this existential threat is more than some theoretical attack. They are seeing the evidence as they go to their service providers and hearing about this or that benefit being cut. They see it with refuse bins overflowing at national parks. They hear fellow Senior Center folk whispering about hot meals at the 60 Plus Center going the way of the dodo.

    One adage has to be broken down, as my clients ask me for input, and I can only be that dude who is a journalist from the old school of daily newspaper grinds, balanced with my outspoken Substack columns and articles in dissident publications and even here in Lincoln County on my radio show, Finding Fringe, KYAQ FM.

    I never heard this in my home growing up, but I sure did hear it at in-laws’ homes and other places: “Don’t talk about religion or politics at the dinner table.”

    That’s been extended to, “Don’t talk about Biden or Trump or money or MAGA or socialism or sex or drugs or education at the dinner table.”

    My other clients ask me about this local headline: “Man accused of assaulting elderly Army veteran during Newport political protest”

    Sure, a Lincoln County grand jury indicted a Klamath Falls man on three charges as a result of his arrest for assaulting a 74-year-old anti-Trump protester in early June.

    Police: Man arrested for assaulting elderly man during Newport protest

    The conversations are what we call tough and difficult if people just do not understand the context, history and intent of protest in the USA.

    How many suffragettes were injured and jailed in the fight to get the vote for women? Over 500 women were arrested in the U.S. for their involvement in the Silent Sentinels protests for women’s suffrage, with 168 serving jail time. In England, that number is 1,000.

    Silent Sentinels - Wikipedia

    For my clients’ own personal DD and ID journeys, most do not know that the disability rights movement, even though less visible than other civil rights movements, has roots going back to the 1800s.

    In 1990 the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed and signed into law, prohibiting discrimination based on disability in employment, public accommodations, transportation, and other areas.

    Those dinner and work water cooler conversations do matter, as this headline belies: “The Trump administration withdrew 11 pieces of ADA guidance. How will it affect compliance?”And that old adage,

    “Love it or Leave it” never applied for social justice and civil rights activists.

    Love It or Leave It – Let's Try Democracy

    Yep, some of us have had trouble with that flag, and find many offenses in and around it.

    Now to get back to that E9 Caterpillar? This headline rarely gets put into small and medium-sized newspapers: “Caterpillar Inc’s Role in Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.”

    CAT equipment has been used to uproot olive treesopens in a new tab and destroy other agricultural products and landopens in a new tab. During ‘Operation Cast Lead’ in the Gaza Strip two years ago, Israel used armored D9 bulldozersopens in a new tab to demolish wide swathes of homes, factories, agricultural land and civilian infrastructure, including water pipes and networksopens in a new tab needed for basic survival.

    There have been several Palestinian deathsopens in a new tab during home demolitions, most of them occurring during the second intifada in the early 2000’s. A Caterpillar D9 bulldozer is directly involved in the death of U.S. citizen Rachel Corrie in March 2003. An Israeli soldier drove the armored bulldozer over Rachel as she protested an imminent home demolition in the Gaza Strip. An IDF investigation ruled it an accident, but the Corrie family has filed a lawsuit and the current trial underway in Haifa, Israel, ‘Rachel Corrie v. the State of Israel  has uncovered discrepancies and short-comings in the investigation.

    Who Profits - The Israeli Occupation Industry - Caterpillar

    We have much work to do in order to reverse all those offenses, but the fear in my clients’ voices is palpable. Unfortunately, fear can cause stasis or inaction. And that’s the death knell of justice.

    As Israel Keeps Killing Americans, U.S. Officials Give It a Pass

     

    (July 13 2022) Nearly two decades before Israeli forces killed Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, shooting a single bullet into her head while she was reporting from the occupied West Bank city of Jenin, an Israeli soldier drove a bulldozer over American peace activist Rachel Corrie, crushing her to death.

    Both killings left little real doubt about the dynamics at play. Abu Akleh was standing with a group of colleagues, wearing a vest clearly marked “PRESS,” nowhere near the fighting that had taken place earlier that morning. Corrie was nonviolently protesting the demolition of a Palestinian family’s home in Gaza. She was wearing a fluorescent orange jacket with reflective stripes and had been on the scene for several hours, at times speaking into a megaphone.

    Note: First published in the Lincoln County Leader, August 13, behind a Pay Wall.

    The post Summer Days and Dark Nights first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • DWP admits to the Canary it failed to consider impact on 140,000 children in PIP cuts plan

    The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) failed to consider the compounding impact of its plans to cut Personal Independence Payment (PIP) on Universal Credit households hit by the two-child limit policy.

    Stark new figures obtained by the Canary show that in combination, the two policies would have decimated tens of thousands of households.

    As ministers seek to blame its row-back on PIP for its failure so far to commit to scrapping the two-child limit, the revelation should serve as a major embarrassment for the Labour Party government.

    While it ultimately abandoned its cruel PIP proposal in a last-minute U-turn, it once again illustrates the point that the government’s rushed attempts to ram through disability welfare cuts would have had devastating consequences – ones it utterly failed to account for. Worse still, in failing to assess the two in conjunction, it ignored the fact that more than 140,000 children would likely be hit by the two policies at once.

    DWP two-child limit policy:

    The Conservatives brought George Osbourne’s austerity-fueled two-child limit on benefits into effect in April 2017. The policy restricts households from claiming child tax credits or Universal Credit for more than two children, including those born after the policy’s introduction.

    As the Canary’s Steve Topple recently reported, the DWP’s latest data on this from April 2025 showed that:

    • 469,780 Universal Credit households were affected by the two child limit policy. This was an increase of 13,520 (3%) on last year.
    • There were 1,665,540 children living in the households affected in April 2025, an increase of 37,150 (2%) on last year.

    Damningly, single households, female, Black and brown, and disabled households were disproportionately affected. What’s more, nearly 130,000 households had at least one disabled child who qualified for extra monthly amount of Universal Credit disabled child element. In total, the two-child limit impacted 172,550 disabled children getting this.

    DWP PIP cuts: a callous eligibility policy

    Meanwhile, DWP PIP is a welfare payment that’s meant to help disabled people with their extra costs of living. In practice however, the entitlement often falls woefully short.

    The government had originally planned to freeze the benefit. However, immediate backlash at its callous proposal prompted it to quickly ditch this before introducing its Green Paper. Of course, DWP boss Liz Kendall infuriatingly presented this as a major concession. This was all as she laid out a catastrophic catalogue of welfare cuts.

    Specifically, it planned to increase the number of points a person would need to score in their DWP PIP assessment. This would have required people to score four points or more in a daily living category to claim this component.

    The notorious ‘4-point policy’ would have stripped hundreds of thousands, if not more than a million claimants of access to the disability benefit.

    DWP PIP cuts: U-turn chaos

    Concerted campaigning from chronically ill and disabled people eventually shamed MPs into opposing it, and eventually, the government into dropping these plans from its bill. However, the U-turn at the eleventh hour – mid-passage of the bill – was not some magnanimous concession. The decision was an entirely cynical move to curb a growing internal MP rebellion, and save face from an embarrassing defeat. In short, it was to obtusely push its remaining bill through parliament.

    However, it wasn’t without the Labour Party government managing to propose a grossly unfair two-tier DWP PIP system first. Notably, ahead of its second reading on 1 July, it put forward revisions to its plans for the policy. In particular, these meant the new criteria would only apply to new claimants. Existing claimants would remain unaffected until at least 2030. Of course, its intention was likely always to bring the two in line eventually.

    Tens of thousands of disabled people and children caught up in the two policies

    The latest figures from April 2025 show that:

    • 65,280 Universal Credit households that the two-child limit hits had at least one individual claiming PIP.

    Now, the Canary can reveal that 39,600 of those – 61% – did not score four points in any daily living category at assessment. This equated to 41,800 current DWP PIP claimants in total. So that’s more than 40,000 current PIP claimants in UC households affected by the two-child limit who would likely have lost some or all of their PIP under the new rules.

    What’s more, there are 148,100 children living in those households. This is out of 235,270 children who live in UC households under the two-child limit with at least one PIP claimant. In summary, 63% of these children would have been in households impacted by the PIP 4-point policy.

    And atrociously, it doesn’t look like the DWP actually explored the impact of its PIP cuts on claimants it hits with the two-child limit on UC.

    No consideration of the compound impacts

    The Canary obtained these PIP-related figures via a Freedom of Information request to the DWP. We also requested that the department breakdown these figures by household earner composition. However, the DWP refused this part of the request claiming it would exceed cost limits under the FOI Act.

    In other words, the figures the DWP evidently had to calculate the figures it did provide to the Canary. Of course, what this confirms is that the DWP had not previously estimated this. It means it likely didn’t assess the impact of its reforms on families it hits with the two-child limit.

    Moreover, we already know that the department did not consider this in its impact assessment. Moreover, it did not include this in its evidence packs it set out for its Green Paper. Yet, it’s clear the compound harm of these two policies in tandem would have affected huge numbers of children the state keeps in poverty.

    Blaming disabled people for the two-child limit

    To date, the Labour has maintained the two-child limit. It went so far as to expel MPs who voted against it.

    This is despite the fact that the policy is maintaining staggering levels of unconscionable poverty. According to the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG), scrapping it could immediately lift 400,000 children out of poverty. A further 950,000 children would also be living in less deep poverty thanks to the change.

    Government ministers have since shamefully suggested that the U-turn on DWP PIP means it may no longer be able to scrap the two-child limit policy. On 6 July, education secretary Bridget Phillipson was the first to throw disabled people under the bus for this. She told BBC hack Laura Kuenssberg over the PIP climbdown and the two-child limit that:

    The decisions that have been taken in the last week do make decisions, future decisions harder.

    Then, on 15 July, DWP minister Alison McGovern was cagey on the future of the DWP’s callous poverty-entrenching policy. She echoed Phillipson, stating that:

    we will not commit to any policy without knowing how we are going to pay for it.

    This was after the Tories – who want to maintain the policy –  laid down a symbolic motion in parliament. It saw 344 Labour MPs vote against it, inadvertently implying they wanted to scrap the policy. However, given Phillipson and McGovern’s responses, it seems unlikely it will actually come to fruition.

    Instead, as the Canary has previously pointed out, its big plan to reduce child poverty ultimately seems to revolve around forcing more chronically ill and disabled households into work.

    Threat of future DWP PIP cuts haven’t gone away

    And of course, while the government has currently set aside its DWP PIP plans, it doesn’t guarantee it won’t reintroduce them. Contrary to claims, the DWP did not drop its plans altogether. Instead, it merely postponed them, with the option of bringing them forward again once it meets certain caveats. For instance, one is that disability minister Stephen Timms completes his review into PIP assessments.

    Given Timm’s disingenuous back-pedalling on promises to genuine co-production with disabled people on this, it’s not unfathomable that it’s all just a ruse to build the case for some version of the same cuts. Its track record to date gives chronically ill and disabled communities every reason to be wary of this.

    Labour: shamefully engineering poverty for disabled people and children

    So as it stands, the Labour government looks set to maintain the two-child limit on benefits. It’s also plausible it might backtrack on dropping its DWP PIP cuts at a later date. Yet, these new figures are a damning indictment for both policies. Together, the two repressive policies could harm tens of thousands of chronically ill and disabled people. What’s more, the PIP 4-point policy would compound the injustice of the two-child limit’s state-induced poverty for vast numbers of children.

    It demonstrates how little the government understands – or seeks to – about the dire impacts of its policy-making. When push comes to shove, this Labour government is perfectly content to ignore how the DWP’s disgusting cuts and caps interact in the real-world for chronically ill and disabled claimants, and children living in poverty.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Hannah Sharland

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Trump’s Homelessness Crackdown Has Been Tried Before. It Didn’t Work.

    Earlier this week, President Donald Trump announced that his administration is removing homeless encampments from around Washington, DC. The announcement illustrated how the federal government’s approach to homelessness is dramatically changing. It follows an executive order issued last month that makes it easier for cities and states to involuntarily commit unhoused people and eliminate encampments. It also prioritizes treatment over housing for people struggling with mental health issues or substance abuse. The policies represent a 180-degree turn away from an approach the federal government has used for years called Housing First, an evidence-based program that prioritizes the opposite: housing before treatment. It was first developed by clinical psychologist Sam Tsemberis almost 30 years ago. On this week’s More To The Story, Tsemberis sits down with host Al Letson to examine the potential effects of Trump’s executive order.

    Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Digital producer: Nikki Frick | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson

    Listen: The Churn (Reveal)

    Read: Trump’s Plan to Eliminate Homelessness Is Just Cruel. Here’s Another Option. (Mother Jones)

    Learn more: Pathways Housing First Institute

    Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • Top CEO pay just got so ridiculous that even shareholders are rebelling en masse

    Even shareholders at the Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE), which is made up of the largest 100 UK companies, are up in arms over CEO pay. The largest revolt came from two thirds of shareholders at aerospace company Melrose. They voted down a bonus for CEO Peter Dilnot. Nonetheless, the company has paid him £45.4m – also the largest pay packet – setting a new record for fat cat greed.

    That’s all despite Melrose owning GKN Aerospace, which produces parts for the notorious F-35 fighter jets that Israel is using to eradicate Palestine.

    CEO pay skyrockets, workers out of pocket

    More broadly, FTSE 100 bosses took £550m, at an average packet of £5.5m each – another record. Just a few days into 2025 and these CEOs had already earned more than the median average yearly salary of a UK worker.

    FTSE 100 bosses pay is up 11% on just the year before. Meanwhile, real average worker pay is actually almost 3% lower than back in 2008 – when the neoliberal system collapsed.

    Companies other than Melrose are facing shareholder revolts, with the number more than doubling from last year. 11 FTSE 100 companies had rebellions of more than 20% of shareholders. At Centrica, owner of British Gas, 40% of investors voted against CEO Chris O’Shea’s £4.3m packet, along with other payments. Even O’Shea himself has admitted that it’s “impossible to justify” his obscene cash intake while the public are struggling to pay their energy costs. He didn’t return the pay though, which was delivered through those higher bills.

    It’s worth noting that fat cat salaries are one reason why energy should be in public ownership, including gas, while we transition to renewables.

    High pay for rinsing the NHS

    Some FTSE 100 CEOs may have their pay climb even higher. For example, Emma Walmsley, boss at pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), could see her pay double to £22m. That’s despite GSK being one of numerous drug companies that overcharge the NHS for products.

    In 2016, GSK was fined £37.6m for conspiring to inflate the price of anti-depressants that the NHS buys. That said, when profit is involved in healthcare, the price is always inflated. It’s cheaper to develop these products in-house. Especially when pharmaceutical companies simply buy up research and medicine from organisations like universities and then make profit from it.

    The system needs rebalancing in favour of the people doing the work, while essentials like healthcare and energy should be brought in-house.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By James Wright

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • ‘Criminalizing Homelessness Only Perpetuates It’CounterSpin interview with Scout Katovich on criminalizing poverty

    Janine Jackson interviewed the ACLU’s Scout Katovich about forced institutionalization of poor and disabled people for the August 1, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

    Janine Jackson: Poverty and homelessness—and their confluence with mental health challenges, including addiction—reflect societal and public health failures. But rather than take on rising rents and home prices, unlivably low wages and the retraction of social services and healthcare, the Trump White House has issued an executive order titled “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets,” that calls for involuntary institutionalization and the elimination of federal support for evidence-based lifesaving programs. Oh, and also increased “data collection” on unhoused people. 

    As Southern Legal Counsel puts it, the order is a “continuation of [this administration’s] strategy of depicting anyone whose rights they seek to take away as inherently dangerous.” 

    This White House is what it is, but this development also trades on years of media coverage that defines poverty, and the cascade of harms attendant to it, as a “crisis” not so much for the people who experience it, as for those made uncomfortable by being exposed to it. 

    Scout Katovich is senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Trone Center for Justice and Equality. She joins us now by phone from the Bay Area. Welcome to CounterSpin, Scout Katovich.

    Scout Katovich: Thank you, I’m happy to be here.

    JJ: There’s been some coverage of this July 24 executive order, but I know that many listeners won’t have heard about it. Could you just please tell us what this order says, and what it calls for?

    SK: Absolutely. So this order came out last week, and it is somewhat wide-ranging in terms of the mechanisms that it puts in place, but the gist of it is that it’s taking aim at people who are at the intersection of homelessness, mental health disabilities and substance use. And what it does is it directs federal agencies to use the power they have over funding, as well as over technical assistance, to encourage states and local governments to criminalize people for living on the streets, to push people into involuntary treatment and civil commitment, including lowering standards to get there, and to destroy programs like housing first and harm reduction that we know save lives. 

    So the way that the Trump administration is trying to go about this remains a bit to be seen, because it’s directing agencies to take certain actions. And so we’ll see what those agencies do. But it is really troubling in terms of the entire framing of pushing for criminalization and institutionalization as a “solution” to homelessness. We know that’s not a solution. We know that that only makes homelessness, mental illness, substance abuse worse, and it’s really troubling to see this coming out from the federal government, though I can’t say it’s too much of a surprise.

    JJ: The order basically says, “Let’s get them into treatment,” which sounds good as a phrase, if you are just blissfully ignorant of anything to do with unhoused people or the history of involuntary warehousing. But for a lot of folks, it sounds like, “Well, golly, just help them.” What do people who think “get them into treatment,” what do they need to understand?

    SK: That’s a great point. And this is not the first time that compassion has been co-opted. We actually see this on the left as well, as Governor Newsom in California pushed for the CARE Courts as this compassionate solution, and, really, it was doing a lot of the same thing: targeting unhoused people perceived as having mental illness for forced treatment and institutionalization. 

    And what this kind of cloaking in care does is it obscures the fact that involuntary treatment is not effective. If you care about providing people who need help with help, the most effective way to do that is by providing accessible, voluntary services that match a person’s need. And it’s really disingenuous for the federal government to be saying this now, saying people need care, while at the same time blasting Medicaid, and stripping all the voluntary mental health treatment, substance abuse treatment, that actually works.

    The Register Citizen (7/29/25)

    JJ: The University of New Haven journalism professor Susan Campbell, in one of the few media pieces that I’ve seen so far, describes this order as essentially “fact-free.” And she was noting some kind of baseline falsehoods, like it starts out saying the “overwhelming majority of individuals [who are unhoused] are addicted to drugs, have a mental health condition, or both.” And it also says both federal and state governments “have spent tens of billions of dollars on failed programs that address homelessness but not its root causes, leaving other citizens vulnerable to public safety threats,” which is another thing. 

    I know it’s a lot. But it seems like there are some undergirding ideas for this measure that are simply without foundation.

    SK: That’s absolutely correct. The idea that homelessness is caused by individual failures or individual conditions is just absolutely false. We know that we have an affordable housing crisis in this country, and there are, in addition to the nearly 1 million people who are homeless on any given night, there are millions more Americans who are spending over half of their income on rent. 

    We can’t close our eyes and pretend that this is an issue that’s just about an individual’s inability to get treatment for themselves. We have a structural problem here that we need to address, and without addressing the underlying housing crisis, we are not going to solve homelessness.

    JJ: Boston Globe columnist Joan Vennochi is no doubt speaking for many in saying, “Don’t law-abiding citizens have a right to live without

    Boston Globe (7/30/25)

    stepping over needles or encountering violence in front of their homes?” in an op-ed that is headlined, “Involuntary Commitment Should Be on the Table in the Opioid Crisis.” 

    Alright, I have thoughts. Not for nothing, but the words “Purdue” or “Sackler” appear nowhere in the piece. Still, it’s playing on this idea of public safety, and don’t we all deserve to feel safe? There’s something powerful at work in that narrative.

    SK: Yeah. Look, I agree that we all deserve to feel safe, and that includes us all having a safe place to sleep. That includes us having a safe place where we can get treatment that’s appropriate for us. The pitting against each other of people who lack housing and people who have housing is so insidious and counterproductive. The goal is not to just have there never be enough housing, affordable housing, for people to be able to live inside, and to tolerate that. No, of course not. The idea is for everyone to have access to safe, affordable housing, and to services that allow them to be healthy, without it being something that’s pushing them into institutions or criminalizing them.

    JJ: Yeah, we talk about ending homelessness, but if that’s genuinely your goal, then criminalizing unhoused people just doesn’t work. So I think we just have to accept the idea that some of the people who talk about ending homelessness, that’s not their goal. It has to do with something else, and we need to peel that apart, to understand the difference between punitive responses and responses that actually have been shown to be effective, if ending homelessness, or if helping folks with mental health conditions, if that is genuinely your goal.

    SK: Yeah, I think that’s accurate. We know that criminalizing homelessness only perpetuates it, and it’s logical, if you think about it, if you have someone who doesn’t have housing, who’s trying to get into housing, and then you give them a criminal record, that’s only going to make it harder to get housing. So it’s really counterproductive. 

    But I think what is attractive about it to politicians is that it’s a quick way to push people out of sight. It isn’t something that’s going to take a long-term investment, which is what we need right now. It’s something that you’re going to be able to say to your constituents at the next election, “See, look at how clean our streets are.” And that’s because you’ve pushed people into institutions, oftentimes while violating their rights. So, yes, maybe someone is temporarily pushed out of sight, and you don’t have to confront the massive problems we have as a society with poverty and inequality, but that’s not a solution.

    JJ: Let me just ask you, finally, what forward-looking media reporting would look like? What would it include that is maybe not included now? What might they toss out that they’ve been entertaining? What would you look for from journalists on this set of issues?

    SK: I think it’s really important to understand the humanity of individuals who find themselves living on the street, and to show that this is not about needles, this is about human beings, and the devastating effects that a lot of these punitive policies can have on these human beings, that sets them back, that hurts all of us. I think it’s so important to lift that up. 

    I think in terms of this executive order, I also think there’s a need to encourage states and local governments not to feed in, and not to comply with the tenor of this executive order, and to do what they can to stay the course, or start on the course, of adopting policies that are actually effective: affordable housing, housing first, voluntary accessible services. There’s room for courage here, and I think states and local governments have the opportunity to take it.

    JJ: All right, then. We’ll end it there for now. We’ve been speaking with Scout Katovich from the ACLU’s Trone Center for Justice and Equality. Thank you so much, Scout Katovich, for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

    SK: Thank you.

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  • Food Prices And Stagnating Wages Weigh On US Residents

    New economic data and surveys reveal growing financial anxiety among US nationals, who are grappling with rising food prices and slowing wage growth. Nearly seven months after Donald Trump returned to the White House, the promised “golden age” has not materialized for most, according to polls.

    According to a recent Associated Press–NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey, the vast majority of US adults feel stressed about food costs. This concern is particularly acute for low-income US residents, among whom 64% say grocery prices are one of their top sources of stress.

    The post Food Prices And Stagnating Wages Weigh On US Residents appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.