Nearly 1.1 million people received at least three days of
emergency food from the trust’s 445 food banks in 2014-15 – up from 913,000 the
previous year. Back in 2009-10, before the Liberal Democrat-Conservative
coalition took power, the then little-known charity fed 41,000 people from its
56 food banks.
The Trussell Trust figures show the biggest proportion, 44%,
of food bank referrals last year – marginally lower than the previous year –
were triggered by people pitched into crisis because their benefit payments had
been delayed, or stopped altogether as a result of the strict jobcentre
sanctions regime. More than a fifth, 22%, of food bank users were referred
because of low income – meaning they were unable to afford food due to a
relatively small financial crisis such as a boiler breaking down or having to
buy a school uniform. This group includes people in low-paid, zero-hours or
part-time work who were forced to turn to food banks.
Chris Mould, the Trussell Trust chairman, said the figures
showed many people were experiencing “catastrophic” problems as a result of low
incomes, despite signs of a wider economic recovery. He said: “These needs have
not diminished in the last 12 months.”
Experts warned that the figures were the “tip of the iceberg”
of food poverty in the UK. Experts said the Trussell Trust figures did not
capture the scale of emergency food aid provided by hundreds of other
charities, churches and community groups. Hannah Lambie-Mumford, a research
fellow at the University of Sheffield and a food bank specialist, said the data
was “an urgent call to policymakers to address the root cause of food poverty
in the UK”.
Meanwhile doctors said the inability of families to buy
enough food had become a public health issue. Dr John Middleton, the
vice-president of the Faculty of Public Health, said: “Poverty is already
creating massive health issues for people today, and if we do not tackle the
root causes of food poverty now, we will see it affecting future generations
too.”
Also revealed is that the NHS plans to dramatically increase
rationing of patients’ access to care and treatment in an effort to balance its
books, a new survey of health bosses reveals. Almost two in five of England’s
211 clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) are considering imposing new limits
this year on eligibility for services such as IVF, foot-care and hip and knee
replacements. Smokers and those who are obese will be among those denied
surgery and other treatment, according to a survey of 80 CCG leaders conducted
by the Health Service Journal, in an extension of the controversial policy of
“lifestyle rationing”.
Jeremy Taylor, chief executive of National Voices, which
represents 140 health charities, said the plans were very worrying and would
threaten the NHS’s status as a service that treated patients based on their
clinical need. “It’s very worrying to hear this because access to services that
people need is a key aspect of what makes the NHS the NHS. It’s comprehensive,
it’s national, it’s free at the point of use and it’s not based on ability to
pay, so if you want to ramp up rationing then you call into question the extent
to which it’s still a comprehensive service based on clinical need. This is
worrying but not surprising, given the overall financial state of the NHS.”
Comedian-turned-activist and outspoken critic of capitalism
and Britain’s political system Russell Brand said he felt “angry all over
again” after watching a special screening of his documentary criticising
growing inequality between the rich and the poor in Britain. He attacks the
behaviour of the banks, tax avoidance schemes and austerity measures in his
film ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes.’ “I think people want me to talk about the
election but watching it again it just makes me think there’s no justice, it’s
dead…. What I most support is people becoming activated.”
Now let us compare the above with another current news item.
At its heart, theoretically, stock exchanges are supposed to be there to help
companies to grow by providing investment and funds, not to be glorified gambling
casinos nor to enrich traders or marginalise all those who can't afford the
latest technology. High-frequency trading is a process that simply does what it
says on the tin. It uses computers and fast communications to buy and sell a
variety of things, normally shares, at high speed. The speed for a trade to be
done in the US is at 98% of the speed of light. And, just in case you've
forgotten Einstein, the speed of light is as fast as anything can go.
Imagine a big institution wants to buy a million shares in a
company, so one of its people presses a button on a computer to authorise that
deal. Now slow down time. Imagine that the electrical signal to buy those
shares, from all sorts of different places, is whizzing down a line. It knows
that those shares are up for sale at all sorts of places, and they cost, say,
£1 each. So you're expecting to spend £1m. Now freeze time. Your first purchase
has just landed - let's say you've bought 10,000 shares for £1 each. You're
about to buy the other 990,000. But hold on... because something very sneaky is
about to happen. My computers have instantly worked out that you're buying
these shares, and that you want to buy loads more of them. And because my
computers are faster than yours (thanks to these ludicrously quick fibre-optic
cables) - I'm going to buy them ahead of you. And then I'm going to sell them
to you at a slightly inflated price. And what's more - you probably won't even
know it's happening. So your remaining 990,000 shares might each cost you an
average of a penny or two more. You might not even notice, but I've just made a
£20,000 profit out of buying and selling shares within the same second. Now
imagine that happening hundreds, thousands - tens of thousands - of times a
day. And whoever has the fastest cable can make the most money.
"Back in 2004, the boss of a hedge fund complained to
me that it was taking him 43 milliseconds to do a trade. I didn't know what he
meant... a millisecond is only a thousandth of a second, and I thought 43 of
those couldn't be very long. A blink of an eye is 300 milliseconds, right? But
he moved his operation from Kansas to New York and cut that time from 43
milliseconds to 3.9. And in the first few days of trading after that, he told
me he'd made $450,000 of additional profit." explained Ronan Ryan.
No comments:
Post a Comment