UK Poverty Post

Benefits and the Robin Hood Tax

We’ve already told you quite a bit about what poverty looks like in the UK. But, you may well ask, don’t we have benefits, welfare and social security, in short, a safety net, which tackles that very problem? Allow me to point you to 13.5 million people who might well query how effective that safety net really is.

Of those millions in poverty in this country, there is pretty much a 50/50 split between those in working and in non-working [...] Continue Reading…

Get your MP to do the Robin Hood Dance (or just sign the EDM)!

You’ve probably already heard about the Robin Hood Tax, a tiny tax on bankers that would give billions to tackle poverty and climate change, here and abroad. If not, make sure you read all about it!

Now that you’re clued up, have a look at this hilarious video of the Robin Hood dance. Have a bit of a wiggle and then why not get your local Member of Parliament to do the dance too?

Okay, so maybe that seems a bit impossible but what you can [...] Continue Reading…

Why does the UK need Robin?

Most people don’t know how much poverty there is in Britain. The ugly truth is much worse than most realise, making a Robin Hood Tax even more important.

Structural impoverishment in Britain is rife.  13.5 million people live in poverty, that’s one in five. The historical trend and outcomes of recent attempts to make things better indicate that without radical reform this situation won’t change much in our lifetimes. If this was widely understood, decision-makers would be far more likely [...] Continue Reading…

New campaign to stop single parent stigma

Kate Bell is Director of Policy, Advice and Communications at the single parent charity Gingerbread.

Gingerbread is the national organisation supporting single parents in England and Wales. It is 92 years this month since we were formed as the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and her Child – but some of the problems we’re facing today would have looked pretty familiar to our founders.

In 1918 we were campaigning against the Bastardy acts which stigmatised the children of unmarried [...] Continue Reading…

Mind the gap

Charlotte Morris, press officer for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation

Like all good press officers, I listen to the Today programme every morning. This morning I heard two things I had heard already. The first was an interview with the RSPB – how often are they on the Today programme? I’m sure it’s at least once a week. Who knew there was so much to say about birds? They must have a fantastic press office.

 The second was that the inequality gap [...] Continue Reading…

Single parenthood doesn’t equal social breakdown – further evidence

Kate Bell is Director of Policy, Advice and Communications at the single parent charity Gingerbread

Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett’s book ‘The Spirit Level’ set out comprehensively to demonstrate that more equal societies are better for everyone. In their update, which they wrote about in this Saturday’s Guardian, they also knock on the head some all too prevalent myths linking single parenthood with social breakdown.

They state that ‘national standards of child well being seem unaffected by high rates of single [...] Continue Reading…