Meet FRED
April 7th, 2009 by Will Horwitz Posted in Livelihoods
The UK is fast becoming a nation of FREDs. Forgotten by those in power. Ripped off by taxes and the benefits system. Excluded from opportunities. Debt-ridden because they can’t afford to get by.
We’re introducing the world to FRED today to symbolise the people in the UK least equipped to cope with the effects of recession. FREDs have different back stories and experiences: they may have been living below the poverty line before the economy went downhill, or they may have been getting by. They could be men or women, older or younger, working or not working. What they have in common, though, is that they’re vulnerable.
Unless we act now, this recession could take away FREDs’ jobs, their incomes, their homes – and their life chances. Once these things have gone, they’re hard to replace – and people who suffer the worst effects of a recession often don’t ever recover.
As well as introducing FRED, we’ve set out in a briefing, launched today, what we’d like to see the government do to help people like her. We’ll be blogging on how the recession will affect different people in the days and weeks ahead, and talking more about what we’d like to see from Alistair Darling in this month’s Budget.
If you’d like to find out more about FRED, you can follow her on Twitter, as well as downloading a range of resources from her page on the Oxfam website.
Politicians have already accepted that times are extraordinary, and that business as usual is no longer an option. We’ve seen a huge rescue package for the banks and financial sector. But while the British economy needs help, so too do FREDs. We’re calling on the UK government to put Oxfam’s six-point rescue plan into action.
