Welfare Reform Blamed For Soaring Malnutrition

From The Void - http://johnnyvoid.wordpress.com/2013/11/16/welfare-reform-blamed-for-soaring-malnutrition/


Cuts to social security, stagnating wages and high fuel bills have been blamed for a trebling of hospital admissions due to malnutrition in Leeds.

According to the Yorkshire Evening Post, 93 people needed hospital treatment for malnutrition in 2012, compared to just 30 in 2008. These tragic cases could represent the tip of the iceberg says Councillor Lisa Mulherin, warning that the number of hospital admissions: “tells us something about the changes to the welfare system, wage stagnation and the way fuel prices have gone up out of all proportion with people’s pay.”

A shocking 27,000 people across Leeds were estimated to be suffering from or at risk of clinical nutrition said health professionals in the city last year.

Appalling the situation is likely to become far worse as a wave of cuts to benefits begins to bite. The Bedroom Tax is just a few months old and 9000 households in Leeds are estimated to be affected. Changes to Council Tax Benefit mean claimants in the city will now have to pay a weekly sum out of their already meagre incomes. The re-assessment of people on sickness benefits is still far from complete and many people are still to face having benefits slashed due to being found ‘fit for work’. When reforms to Disability Living Allowance finally take hold around a fifth of disabled people are expected to lose this vital benefit.

The pain doesn’t even end there. George Osborne’s benefit uprating bill represents a real term cut in almost all benefits, pegging annual rises far below inflation at just 1%. The poorest people in the country are set to be made steadily poorer over the next few years. The rise in benefit claims being sanctioned for not meeting ever more draconian conditions for claiming out of work benefits is leading to horrific suffering, and the number of people affected is rising sharply.

A recent report by Citizens Advice found that 70% of claimants serving sanctions were forced to cut down on food, with some people reporting having to beg or go through bins to find something to eat. For those with health conditions the situation is even more acute. One person told Citizens Advice that during a sanction: “We couldn’t afford a meal each day so often didn’t eat for days on end. I suffer with hypoglycaemia and need to eat, so this left me with many black outs, confusion, incredibly weak and sick.”

According to callous Ministers in the DWP, this kind of desperate poverty will ‘incentivise’ people to find work. Yet even if the Government’s manufactured unemployment figures are taken at face value, the miniscule rise in jobs has not been seen across the whole of the UK and certainly not in many northern cities like Leeds. The number of unemployed people in Yorkshire rose by 4000 in the last three months.

Forcing unemployed people to the brink of starvation will not create a single job. Yet still Iain Duncan Smith tries to foist the blame for poverty and unemployment onto the poor and unemployed. Rarely has any modern Government shown such cruel indifference to the suffering of their poorest people. That this kind of state-inflicted poverty is happening in one of the richest countries in the world should be a global scandal.

 

Labour failed in its delivery to the people - they were badly prepared and unelectable at the last General election,
It has done little in the way of / (Leadership) / in providing a confident alternative so far - though we 'cannot' allow another CON-DEMing Government - 'For the sake of the mild and the meek'
meThinks

 

everyone loves rickets..

 

Ramen Noodles!!! FTW!!!

 

CODEX and agenda21 working in Europe because they are no threat to their leaders. The brits have been suffering like hell for awhile and it's kept on the down lo here because that is exactly what osamabama wants to do to the US. A putrid muslim ghetto with the rightful citizens being starved because of both our leaders corruption and greed.

 

What have muslims got to do with anything ? None of the major players responsable for current Tory tactics are muslim...they're good old dyed in the wool 'christians'.

 

The trouble is, Labour continue to move to the right...and they've already indicated that they will continue with current Tory unemployment policies should they win the next election (also worth noting that it was them who introduced the 'sanctions' policy now being used as a class-warfare weapon by the Tories).

Who knows, we might even see a Con/Lab coalition next time round, there's not much between them policy-wise now (and the Libs have probably blown their chances for at least another generation.)

 

By any other name, a ghetto is the same. Under any other gun, it's still agenda 21. Both your parties are like ours - in it together and just tossing the ball back and forth to keep the feckless and hapless confused while the same music plays. It's not a matter of torys and labor as much as it is a condition of no high tories left in power of any kind. Just like here it is not dems and repubs as much as no positive future people getting anywhere. Just the shakedown and shove out crew. Not about anything but the money going uphill and staying there, with bad news for the people.

 

except squirrels! squirrels would have a real hard time running away from foxes if they had rickets… :love:

i've been malnourished and it shows… needed to lose weight anyway, but that's not the point… it's hard to live off £60 for three months… i went hungry… but i'm lucky… i'm fully grown and my kids are fully grown, and i'm quite happy to lose fat at the moment… it's the kids and the elderly i'm most worried about, they need a good balanced diet, regularly, and they are not getting it…. not in poorer households anyway…

this isn't a recession, it's daylight robbery btw!

 

do you like what Russell Brand has said about "No Vote"? None of the parties have anything to offer really as they are all fuckin' bought! I always voted for "none of the above" - it's what i wrote on my ballot paper… those votes shouldn't be chucked away… they should at least register apathy due to bollocks lies lies lies… don't you think?

 

No! Your vote either counts for the good or helps the bad. No one cares about "no vote" and if you see it comes down to two parties, you got to go with the one you think will do least damage. That's about as good as it gets until some of these other parties that get like "two votes" actually matter on the power screen (and someday they will). But yeah, No vote is like saying "Oh do whatever you want" which is exactly what they will do and what they are hoping you will say.