Poverty, Letters, Covid Handouts

 How ingenious are the British! Like the legendary Inuit people who coined 57 words for snow, we have devised a long list of clever aliases for the stuff that dominates everyday life. Know the ones I mean? Try food poverty. Fuel poverty. Child poverty. Clothing poverty. Transport poverty. Period poverty.

These are phrases mouthed in Westminster and plastered across newspapers... But this ever-growing jungle of subcategories obscures the one true problem they have in common. It is poverty: The condition of not having enough money to live your life.

When Poverty Enters the Door
unknown artist
Photo Credit: Worthing Museum and Art Gallery [CC BY-ND]

If your only choice of an evening is between skipping dinner or going to sleep in the cold before waking up in the cold, then you are are not carefully selecting between food poverty and fuel poverty, like some expense-account diner havering over the French reds on a wine list. You are simply impoverished.

If you are using a sock as a sanitary towel, the problem lies not in the time of the month but in your lack of income - which doubtless means you're also not getting enough food or heating...

Poverty cannot be shelved tidily under different classifications, like books in a library...

Cabinet ministers hate using words as simple and shaming as poverty. It's why the welfare secretary, Therese Coffey, refers to those forced to live on donated tins as food bank "customers"...

"Oh, it's about "cashflow problems", as the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, so delightfully put it...

Because anything is better than admitting that this all stems from one deep structural problem: that, going into the pandemic, more than 14 million Britons - more than one in five of us - did not have enough money to live on. Far more agreeable to dole out food parcels for a week here or there, or to cut VAT on tampons.

Much better to wave around vouchers and an outsourced half-pepper than give money and power to people who have none... This is why Coffey's predecessor, Ian Duncan Smith, blamed the problem of child poverty not on his colleagues for slashing benefits...but on the parents themselves being drunks and smack addicts.

In IDS's world, the undeserving poor are always with us. The undeserving rich, such as he, on the other hand, get to live in a £2m mansion owned by an obliging father-in-law, and deliver speeches to moneymen at £5,000 a time...

(Aditya Chakrabortty, The Guardian, 2021)

Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, had this to say:"There is no system in the world that will stop people having problems, but we must have a structure of support for people that meets not merely their financial needs but also their need to be treated as distinct human beings of infinite value."

Agreed, but poverty in the UK can be alleviated by raising taxes on those earning extraordinary amounts of money, increasing the wages of those who are poorly paid and decreasing the wages of those earning substantial sums. Food parcels are a necessary plaster for poverty- they do not address the main illness. 

(See Wealth Gap, Jan 22, Taxing Millionaires and CEO Pay, Jan 15, Bankers, Jan 8)

Letters

Is it possible that the compiler of Wordsearch (18January) - "Can you find 14 breakfast items in the grid?" - is inadvertently revealing their southern softie credentials? The grid includes such effete items as bagel, prunes and croissant, but no sign of the real breakfast stalwarts of sausage, mushroom, tomato, or even toast, never mind black pudding. That's more like it - a full English; pass the brown sauce!

(David Evans, Market Harborough, Leicestershire, The Guardian, 2021)

Covid Handouts

UK

There are concerns the virus is continuing to spread because some people are ignoring the instruction to stay home when they show symptoms or test positive. Downing Street has said there is already a £500 sum for those on low incomes who could not work from home and had to isolate. But this must be applied for and there has been high rejection rates in England.

Portugal

In Portugal, even those who are just at risk of contracting Covid - having been in direct contact with a confirmed case - are entitled to 100% of their basic salary for 14 days. 

For those who show symptoms, or have tested positive, the same is available for up to 28 days. And the normal waiting times people are used to when claiming while ill have also been done away with - these Covid payments kick in on day one of isolation.

Slovenia

Slovenia has been offering compensation to people forced to self-isolate after exposure to coronavirus since it first introduced emergency measures in March.

Depending on the circumstances, this covers anything from 80% to the full amount of usual earnings. The payments may be made directly to people in quarantine, or as compensation to employers.

Germany

In Germany financial support is generous for people ordered to self isolate by the authorities because of infection risk.

As a result there hasn't been a debate in Germany about breaking self-isolation rules because of financial need. Fines can be huge - tens of thousands of euros - and are strictly enforced. Overall there's no great issue with compliance and Germany's financial package has widespread cross-party backing, and is supported by voters.

Employers who are unable to work at home receive full pay for up to six weeks. This is paid by the employer, who is then reimbursed by the state. After that, workers may be eligible for sick-pay.

Sweden

Employees receive about 80% of their salary while they isolate and the self-employed are entitled to payments. The government has also introduced an allowance for people isolating because they live with someone who has coronavirus.

(BBC World News, 2021)

How interesting to read how various European countries approach the same problem in such a different manner.