Hungry children in Stoke-on-Trent have been rummaging through bins looking for something to eat.
Hungry children in Stoke-on-Trent have been rummaging through bins looking for something to eat, leading to experts being called in by the council to assess the problem.
Stoke-on-Trent City Council is reportedly setting up a Hardship Commission to get to grips with the issues facing the poorest people in the region after a local paper reported that local children were “scavenging through bins to eat leftovers”:
“Youngsters have been searching through bins in the Hollings Street and Brocksford Street area of Fenton before eating any leftovers…Concerned residents have raised the issue at a police meeting in Fenton.”
A commission has now been set up by the council to look at account evidence from individuals who have been affected by poverty and hardship.
The commission is being urged to look at payday loan companies and calls for more employers to pay the Living Wage to the city’s lowest-paid workers, according to the Sentinel.
Local MP Rob Flello has blamed the disturbing development on coalition cuts:
“The demand for help from foodbanks is increasing and I suspect the numbers are just the tip of the iceberg because they don’t include people who are too embarrassed to seek help or those who are surviving in other ways. But while foodbanks are doing a great job meeting desperate need, they cannot be seen as a long-term solution to food poverty.”
The revelations come at a time when it has been revealed that the top 20 per cent of households in Britain increased their disposable incomes last year. This at a time when most incomes fell.
Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) for 2011/12 to 2012/13 show that the Gini for disposable household income is now 33.2 for 2012/13 – up from 32.3 in 2011/12.
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26 Responses to “Coalition Britain: hungry children eating out of bins”
Cole
The Tory line being that all poor people are drug addicts or just lazy.
Cole
Which is one reason why Tories hate the ECHR.
Leon Wolfeson
Actually, Labour condemned the ruling as well.
Leon Wolfeson
Tory? Labour have said the same.
rat man
This article presents NO evidence, no one has been “charged”, no one says who the kids are, no one knows why the parents cannot afford food, why they can’t get food from food banks (putting aside any arguement about their existance.
This is amerturish rubbish, the only “evidence” is to pull out a load of statistics that may or may not have anything to do with these kids scrounging for money.
Yet again this “evidence based blog” is anything but.