UK Poverty Post

Beat inequality: support The Spirit Level film

Spirit Level producer and director Katharine Round writes about how you can help bring the message about equality to the screen.

Most of us can see in our daily lives how our world is beset with social problems: we’re stressed, mistrustful, our communities have eroded, crime is a constant problem, and the lives of growing numbers are dominated by despair and depression.

Some commentators have bemoaned our moral decline, blaming the laziness and criminality of those at the harsher end of [...] Continue Reading…

A stitch in time… Examining the move from Income Support to Jobseeker’s Allowance for single parents

For the past 14 years, government after government has put single parents at the vanguard of welfare-to-work initiatives. The Welfare Reform Act 2012 is no exception, and from today (21 May), it will see single parents whose youngest child is five no longer entitled to receive income support (IS). Instead, they will need to claim Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) or another benefit.
But is it as simple as off to work we go? A new report – “It’s off to work [...] Continue Reading…

Zero-Hours Contract. Zero Flexibility.

With more than one million 16 to 24 year-olds out of work in the UK today, and the lack of well-paid stable jobs, the future doesn’t look too promising for young people. Jennifer Glinski, an Oxfam volunteer, has experienced herself the difficulty of finding a suitable job, and the woes of a zero-hours contract.

At first, I thought a zero-hours contract would be a great solution to my “need income whilst seeking full-time employment” conundrum. The contract would offer [...] Continue Reading…

Putting people at the apex of policymaking

So as the usual economic statistics tell us that we’re entering a stage of ‘recovery’, we need to think about what it is we want to recover. What is important to salvage from the car crash that was the financial crisis? The answer to that question might be in the Oxfam Humankind Index, the new measure of Scotland’s prosperity, launched today by Oxfam Scotland.

This is not another top-down measure of the country’s economic growth, like GDP.  Rather, it measures [...] Continue Reading…

Scotland and the Social Decathlon

For many years, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has been the one simple number that can clearly gauge one country’s economic performance over time, and in comparison to other countries. As the Olympics draws closer though, we could perhaps make a comparison between this kind of political economics and elite athletics.

Usain Bolt is probably the greatest sprinter of his generation and perhaps the greatest of all time. Over 100 metres, he can run faster than anyone else in the world. [...] Continue Reading…

This Budget is more of the same, and that’s bad news for poverty

This post first appeared on Oxfam’s Policy and Practice blog.

Sometimes, it’s helpful to take a step back from the chatter of the moment, all the better – hopefully – to observe a fuller picture.

Clearly, a Budget that allocates billions of pounds and affects, in one way or another, every single person in the UK is more than just chatter. Nonetheless, for all the dramatic headlines of the moment – change is news; stability goes unremarked – the story today [...] Continue Reading…