Hungry Nation

Earlier this month I spent the day volunteering with the Rhondda Foodbank at their depot in Ynyshir. This small lock-up garage just off the main road and its contents of food has been instrumental in preventing around 800 people in the Fach and the Fawr from going hungry in less than two years.

The contribution of the foodbank in helping those who are struggling to make ends meet cannot be underestimated. It is unacceptable that adults and children are going hungry in 21st century Wales. I was only too glad to donate my time to pack food parcels during my republican boycott of the royal visit to the Senedd.

The foodbank network relies on volunteers giving up their free time and the generosity of the public at their monthly supermarket food collections. Around half a tonne of non-perishable food is collected on any given day during these collections and this has been enough to sustain the charity’s work to date.

However, due to a combination of word getting around and increased need due to the policies of the Con/Dem Government, more and more demand is being placed on the Rhondda Foodbank. At the beginning of the year in the Rhondda alone they distributed around 300kg of food every month in their parcels designed to last recipients three days. However, this has now jumped to 500kg of food distributed each and every month which means that almost every can collected outside a supermarket is being sent out soon afterwards. It is heartening that so many people who can’t afford to feed themselves are receiving help, but it is clear that more needs to be done to help the foodbank network in the Rhondda.

I saw first-hand the difference this charity is making to people’s lives when a package was delivered to a couple who had experienced a benefit delay. However long it takes the Department of Work and Pensions take to determine their case, the couple will receive no money. Presumably they are expected to live on fresh air?

I therefore urge anyone who can to give as generously as posible if they come across Foodbank volunteers on their collection days. Forthcoming collections will be held on July 9th at Asda in Tonypandy, September 10th at Morrisons in Porth and on October 22nd at Asda in Tonypandy.

For more details you can contact the organisers of the Rhondda Foodbank by visiting their website www.actscommunitychurch.co.uk, by emailing admin@actscommunitychurch.co.uk or by calling 07928 451374.

Hunger and Hypocrisy

So the United Nations' eight Millennium Development Goals are not on track.

The eight aims of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, combating HIV/Aids, malaria and other diseases, ensuring environmental sustainability, and developing a global partnership for development now look unlikely to be achieved by the target year of 2015.

With the amount of wealth on this planet, there should not be millions of children in the world today dying of malnutrition. Those lucky enough to survive a childhood, face a bleak life without opportunity and education.

Conditions need to be changed so that developing countries have the opportunity to carve out their own future and generate their own wealth, otherwise talk of equality at the UN headquarters will be nothing more than rhetoric. The vicious circle of debt that sees a significant proportion of dependent countries’ GDP going on interest payments has to end, as must the external pressure to concentrate the economy’s fate on one or two cash crops that are vulnerable to volatile market forces. The demand to clamp down on the business elites in poor countries who hold their money in off-shore accounts also has to be taken seriously. The world's wealth has to be shared more equitably.

One of the more interesting stories from the New York meeting to discuss the Millennium Development Goals has centred on the views of Gordon Brown. The former Prime Minister expressed “anger” at the failure of rich nations to honour their pledges.

Is this the same Gordon Brown that as Chancellor and then, Prime Minister, protected the business elite in the city of London and failed to take action to restrain the casino capitalism that almost brought the UK's financial system to its knees? The money that has been found to prop up the institutions headed by greed-fuelled fat cats would have made a significant difference towards meeting the Millenium Development Goals.

This is the same Gordon Brown who presided over a widening of the gap between rich and poor in the UK in the 13 years New Labour had to correct the ills of a Tory Government.

He failed to lift a finger to prevent an illegal war in Iraq that saw endemic poverty increase throughout much of the country and essential services decimated.

The next time he gets onto his high horse, it may be wise for Mr Brown to consider the legacy he has left during the years he had power to implement real change.

Things can only get better?

I was dismayed, if not surprised, following the publication of the report today into the inequalities within the UK. The analysis, which was commissioned by the UK Government, should provide a short, sharp shock to the system and deliver home the message that people are not being lifted out of poverty, in fact, the situation is getting worse.

Evidence of a growing gap between the rich and poor can be found throughout the 56-page document, An Anatomy of Economic Inequality.

One measure indicated that by 2007/08 income equality levels were the greatest since just after World War Two. It also said the richest 10% in our society are now 100 times wealthier than the poorest 10%.

Discrimination against minority groups and women is also rife. Workers from nearly every national minority group are less likely to be in paid work than white British men and women. Furthermore, men are still paid up to 21% more than women up to the age of 44 despite having, on average, inferior qualifications.

This report came out the same week Save the Children found that 1.7 million children across the UK are living in severe poverty. In Wales this proportion is even higher than in other nations in the UK with 96,000 living in severe poverty.

These two reports will really test powers of spin that have propelled the UK Labour Government through the last 13 years. They have already been trumpeting that the undeniable growth in equality over the last decade or so is, according to some indicators, slowing due to measures they have implemented.

This looks to me like the last thrashings of a dead animal that knows its time is up. The UK Labour Government is failing to see the facts, just like they have failed the poorest in society. How else could the non-doms, the Russian oligarchs and super-rich bankers be allowed to flourish if this was not the case?
In their attempts to woo Middle England, the UK Labour party has forgotten their core support; the ones who voted for them in their droves after two decades of a Tory Government that did nothing but tread on the hopes and aspirations of the working class.

No amount of spin will be able to masquerade this failure at the ballot box.