U.N.’s Expert on ‘Extreme Poverty’ Is Investigating Britain. Why?

No doubt there are cases of genuine hardship and bad luck. But why should we bankrupt ourselves to pay for the poor lifestyle choice of people who go to food banks having spent their handouts on cigarettes booze and lottery tickets - or have four kids with no prospect of ever independently supporting them. We have the lowest unemployment on record with employers struggling to fill vacancies. Why? We should be grateful we live in a country where despite all that people feel civic minded and charitable enough to run food banks at all

From King George to the post World War II socialist governments, poverty in England was seen as the sole responsibility of its victims. To truly understand the punative system of debtors prisons, work houses, and the sub-subsistence dole, one need only reread Jonathan Swift’s acerbic satire “A Modest Proposal”. Since the poor produce more children than they are able to support, he suggests with devasting irony that the government create a capitalist market to sell the excess supply of suckling poor infants as food for the poor. Whatever the corrective that pure English conservatism provides for the excesses of the social welfare state, the conservative party in England from Thatcher to May has confirmed its allegiance to what Swift illuminated with his satire. Family poverty is caused entirely by the profligate poor. To use government policy to reduce poverty only encourages the poor to become a greater burden on society and on the entitled prosperous classes who must pay to supprt them. What Mrs. May dearly needs is another Swift who will re-imagine government imposed austerity as a potent force to increase the productivity of the poor

Come here [the US] for an eye opener on the subject of poverty in a rich country.

Missing in this excellent piece is a picture of Mr. Osborn. The Perpetrator.

Everyone wants to blame the government in these situations, but 600,000 children in poverty to me says maybe someone should start telling people to have less kids. Ms. Whitenstall, a single mother of 3, and it never occured to her that having more children than she could reasonably take care of was unwise? This is the root of poverty, it’s having too many children that cannot be taken care of by their parents, so the rest of us have to do it for these people in the form of taxes.

This article ought to point out that many of the people claiming welfare and using food banks are people are full time workers. Many years ago (possibly New Labour era) it became apparent that wages for many were not keeping pace with rises in price of simple commodities. The govt, instead of raising the minimum wage to adequate levels and legislate to force companies to pay it, introduced additional state benefits to certain people as an additional source of income; “tax credits”. Now, many such payments are being clamped down on, while price rises continue unabated. At the same time they go after the disabled, the sick, the mentally ill who can’t find adequate employment nor keep it. Homelessness has spiralled since 2010 as people cannot keep pace with mortgage or rent increases. There have been examples of Nurses living in their cars. Again, so in thrall are British governments to businesses and corporations that they won’t cap prices or legislate for high wages, nor will they adequately tax the profits skimmed out the backdoor by multinationals. No, to all recent British governments, profits and companies must come first, and people must be kicked into the gutter.

Most people are comfortable assisting someone who has had a stroke of bad luck or misfortune. When it becomes a lifelong commitment we start to as questions. When it becomes an inter-generational family business then there is something seriously wrong.

What an absurd waste of time. There's problems in the UK, there's problems in Canada, there's problems in the US. But these problems are not even in the same category as places like Mali or rural Nigeria. But none the less, we have the genius idea to have the cash strapped United Nations waste its funds to "investigate" the UK. Social credit's roll out has been botched, utterly, but to even imagine that poverty in the UK is nearly as extreme as the third world is insulting to these places. The people this man is interviewing are just as bloody baffled it would seem. Things are bad for them right now, they know it, but they know that things could be infinitely worse were they not in the UK.

What I have found interesting about the BBC, is that it tells you about every conceivable problem that has ever existed in any and every Leftist Government -- in pains-staking detail. Listen to their broadcasts about African countries, Asian countries and of course about South American countries out of favor by the Western Deep States. Nicaragua and Venezuela are their favorites to describe in detail --- as being pure Hell's. BBC reporters, who never ever feel that they need to describe the horrendous way that the poor live in Capitalist South American countries, suddenly become the guardians and protectors of the misery of the poor in Leftist countries. China and Russia are another ever-present subjects of the same derisive dis-information that the BBC propaganda machine is so fantastic at. The BBC, that survives with taxing the British public, only deals with Britain in one way. It is, to tell us about the Royals in fawning terms -- either getting married or giving birth, and of course to make sure to tell us that--- every one just adores them --- according to their 'unbiased reports. Capitalist and Aristocratic Britain is a totally dysfunctional society, but don't expect to learn about it from their own ever-present BBC. So much for the 'free' and 'unbiased' Western Media that is the accepted norm in Western societies.

There isn’t a wall long enough to put the Conservative Party up against for what they have done to individuals, lives and the nation. If there were any justice there would be prosecutions for manslaughter. Today’s UK is akin to being trapped is a dusty gothic mausoleum as the floor falls away to nothingness brick by brick, while far above in an overlooking gallery the minority elite class clink glasses and enjoy themselves while tourists among them snap photos of quaint red phoneboxes. What do you do when you loathe your country and half your countrymen for their arrogant yet anachronistic Little England attitudes, yet can’t afford to move?

While the Conservatives privatize public services and starves the rest, they blame the European Union for their troubles (and open borders with EU countries). Well, maybe the people of the UK will see who is ruining their lives-their own Conservatives members of Parliament and the big CEOs who are hoarding their profits.

No one in the pictures has patched or worn out clothes (compare to the illustrations in any Dickens novel). No one appears to be emaciated, and some are quite chubby. They are in short-term financial crisis, but have not been living lives of deprivation. Most of the stories involve breakdowns in the payments of benefits: government incompetence, but not deep poverty. If you are not crippled, employed or caring for children (none of these people seem to be), you should regard a three mile walk as an opportunity to get some fresh air and exercise. I do.

Capitalism is based on the idea that each person, working for their own individual self interest, will somehow produce a common good through the magical hidden hand of the market. The idea that selfishness will magically produce a common good is, on its face, ridiculous, and the evidence is consistent that each person working to enhance their own self interest will not produce anything like a common good. The inevitable outcome of collective selfishness is that a few people who are more adept at exploiting others will end up with most everything and huge numbers of people will end up suffering terribly. How could any thoughtful person have expected anything different? Selfishness does not, and can not, produce a common good. The common good requires the suppression of self interests. That's why we can call it the common good. The hidden hand producing a common good clearly is magical thinking akin to believing that Santa will arrive on a sleigh led by a red-nosed Rudolph to give me a bicycle next month. A common good requires that we recognize that we are all in this together and have to take care of one another.

If the conservative policies were working, then it seems the government officials would want to the U.N. to witness the results. Instead; they attempt to make his visit political and put him on the defensive. Cronies and hacks.

This is sad but, in a deeper thought, Brexit only hastened an inevitable phenomenon: uneven wealth distribution. Indeed, a lot of sectors in UK received funds from EU, but that money and resources had to be gathered from somewhere else (Greece, Spain, African/American colonies, etc); so Brits and in general Europeans could live at expenses of other people. Sooner or later this greedy-farming scheme would become unstable. The main problem starts with the economic model itself. Economies can't grow forever since natural resources are not limitless. although economist won't like it, there is a de-facto limit on the overall wealth that can be produced, and once it is reached (or the wealth-production slows down), the capital will start leeching from somewhere. Consider that the main role of a private company is to produce wealth, while the one of the government is rule and distribute resources, hopefully in a fair manner. UK's biggest mistake was privatizing everything. By privatizing, the focus changes from an inefficient mechanism of assigning wealth and resources, to a very efficient way to reassign resources to produce wealth for a few. Companies and corporations are meant to produce capital, but only for the rich; it is obvious that at some point they would start taking from those who have the less. Being that the engine of UK's economy, whatever the government patches on is doomed to fail.

I have a 18 year daughter she lives with her mother and they both earn minimum wage. They are immigrants yet they manage to stay off welfare because they are prepared to work for minimum wage. The welfare system in the UK got out of hand and now it is payback time.

"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar", Sigmund Freud's quaint way of saying that sometimes things are obvious. You see, if you import a lot of poor people, well, you are going to have---how can I put this delicately---a lot of poor people. And, not just the poor people you imported. You are going to impoverish a lot of people as jobs become scarce and wages are hammered downward.

Sounds just like the US. Interesting how upon making such changes and creating such austerity they stoke the fears of 'not enough' that then keep their party in power to continue to make more cuts.

The backdrop for all this, and many other things, is that it is increasingly apparent - year by year - that many members of parliament, including some ministers (even in the cabinet) are clearly not up to the job of comprehending or creating national policies that properly serve the needs of our 60 million souls. One only has to observe and hear MPs in the circus that is the House of Commons, or in countless TV interviews, to appreciate what a motley crew we have conducting our lives. Televising the House and then giving us the web has provided us with the truth behind the myth of parliamentary sagacity, integrity and honour. Senior members of the Conservative Party, almost by definition, do not know first hand what austerity is. How could they? There could be so much more to say, but enough said. The man we need back to take over again is Gordon Brown.

With Brexit and the generally sour state of the Conservative minority gov't things can only get worse. The UK benefitted less than most during the recent global economic upturn. Cameron's austerity was poorly planned and implemented. It seems to violate basic economics to cut gov't spending when private spending is declining. But the richest Brits have done quite well.

Where is the investment in the economy? Education, rehabilitation and retraining, and building and staffing infrastructure? Same question in the USA...

Another victory for neo-liberalism and well-heeled lovers of austerity (as experienced by other people).... Small wonder the objects of this punitively engineered social misery turn to extremist movements, and all the Tories (theirs and ours) claim to be shocked and aghast. Then, of course, they come around, and profess their love for the Trumps of this world. These people really are determined to destroy everything, in their own glorified image.

You think poverty is bad here now, just wait until after Brexit.