Charity Warn They Will Have To Give Out Six Extra Food Parcels Every Minute This Winter.

The Trussell Trust, the charity operating most of the UK's food banks has warned that demand for its services is likely to rise by 61% this Winter. That is equivalent to having to give out six extra food parcels every minute.

 

The claim is made in the report Lockdown, lifelines and the long haul ahead: The impact of Covid-19 on food banks in the Trussell Trust network produced by the charity working in partnership with Heriot Watt University.

 

Research carried out to produce the report suggests some.846,000 emergency food parcels will need to be provided by the trust to meet demand during October and December.

 Many of the families receiving those parcels will be turning to a good bank for support for the first time as the pandemic takes its toll on their finances.

 

The report suggests that as a result of the pandemic 670,000 more people could become destitute, meaning they are unable to afford essentials such as food, housing and energy costs.

 

Figures produced by The Social Metrics Commission and reported by the London Economic in June show that 14million people in the UK are living in poverty. Out of these 4million are trapped in 'deep poverty'.

 

The same article cites data from The Money Charity showing that 3million UK households have just £1,500 in savings and up to 10million have no savings at all. Having to self-isolate would be likely to cause these households to experience severe hardship.

 

The Women's Resource Centre has drawn attention to government figures showing that 100,000 more children were living in poverty in 2017/18 than in 2016/17.

 

In a statement on their website they highlight the disproportionate impact of a decade of austerity and now the pandemic on women and children , saying 'even prior to the pandemic a decade of austerity, together with a rise in living costs  led to an increase in people stealing to eat'.

 

They illustrate their point by citing the case of a 31-year-old mother in South Yorkshire who was arrested for stealing baby good and other items worth just £17.50.

 

On their website the Trussell Trust say the purpose of the report produced with Heriot Watt University is to call on the government to 'make changes now to create a system where no one is left behind this Winter'.

 

They are calling on the government to use the Comprehensive Spending Review and Budget scheduled for this Autumn to take specific actions. These include protecting incomes locking in the £20 uplift to Universal Credit brought in at the start of the pandemic, suspending deductions used to claw back advance payment of benefits and investing significantly in local welfare assistance schemes.

 

At the start of the pandemic chancellor Rishi Sunak promised that the government would 'out its arm around' the British public as we faced an unprecedented situation. That must include those individuals and households who were struggling to get by before the crisis began.

 

As the Trussell Trust conclude in their statement 'we know what needs to  happen to make sure people have enough money for essentials and with unemployment expected to rise as the furlough scheme winds down, it is vital that we act now'.

Significant Rise In Suicides Driven By Men Taking Their Own Lives.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has published the latest figures for suicides in England and Wales. They make for grim reading; particularly if you're male.

In 2019 5621 people in England and Wales took their own lives, three quarters of whom (4303) were men, continuing what has been a consistent trend since the nineties.

Deaths by suicide of men are currently at a rate of 16.9 per 100,000, the highest they have been since 2000, death rates for women are at 5.3 per 100,000, also the highest they have been since 2004.

Nick Stipe head of analysis at the ONS told the Independent that the rise in suicides was 'significant', going on to add that 'while the exact reasons for this are unknown', but that it was 'largely driven by an increase amongst men, who have continued to be most at risk of dying by suicide'

If we were talking about deaths from coronavirus a rate of 16.9 in 100,000 and rising would be starting alarm bells ringing and ministers would be talking about interventions. Unfortunately this is suicide, about which there is still a powerful taboo, and so the response has been decidedly muted.

The comparison with the virus that has turned the world upside down is meant to do more than shock. These figures are for 2019 before it was even a malicious rumour, when the post COVID ones land next year they will be worse; much worse.

A spokesperson for the Samaritans told the Daily Mirror on the day the figures were released that while the focus of government is, rightly, coping with a highly infectious virus, 'it is of the utmost importance that the focus on suicide prevention is not lost'.

Adding that the impact of the pandemic on 'the nation's emotional well-being will take some time to play out, but we know that many people have struggled with mental health issues during this time'.

The government, the spokesperson concluded, 'cannot afford to lose sight of these long term impacts and must ensure mental well-being is at the heart of our national recovery'.

This is a truth so important it should be carved in stone, unfortunately it is also a deeply inconvenient one and therefore is likely to be ignored. The inconvenience rests in the fact that much of the harm involved is the direct result of government policy. Austerity and an economy based on a race to the bottom where all but the lucky few live on a knife edge of uncertainty is bad for your health; sometimes it can be downright deadly.

Every suicide is, to some extent an enigma, understandable only to the individual who has been pushed to the limit by a very personal trauma. They do though also exist within a social context over which we all have some degree of control.

We have in recent years got better at talking about mental illness in general, even Tory cabinet ministers can stand up at press conferences and say that its 'OK not to be OK' and sound almost like they mean it. Suicide though is still a subject that makes pretty much everyone in the room start taking an inordinate amount of interest in the light fittings whenever it is mentioned.

Too often the lazy stereotypes about suicide being the sort of thing that weak or selfish people do, probably to get attention are trotted out because they make a noise loud enough to make our collective feeling of being uncomfortable with vulnerability. For men, who are often still fed the line at an impressionable age that admitting to being vulnerable is shameful this is a disaster. Their learnt response is to clam up and clamp down on difficult feelings, sometimes until it is too late.

Things aren't helped by the permanently parlous state of mental health services. Imagine being a man who has overcome centuries of cultural programming to ask for help, only to find that accessing it involves jumping through an assault course of hoops. One where at any moment you can be sent sliding down a snake back to the start.

I'd like to hope that these latest suicide figures, along with the society wide crash course in experiencing anxiety provided by the pandemic, might provide a massive wake-up call. The cynical devil sat on my shoulder keeps whispering into my ear that it won't though.

Humans are are social animals, faced with an existential threat we, in the short-term at least, tend to all pull together. We are also though programmed to seek security and certainty, never more so than in the wake of a massive cultural shock.

There is a reason why the Second World War, with which our current troubles are often lazily compared, was followed by a couple of decades of social conservatism. After years of upheaval people wanted leaders and policies that reminded them of happier and safer times, not the shocks and scares inherent to creating a new and hopefully better society.

We will want the same when COVID is finally consigned to the history books, an arm wrapped around our shoulders, not a stern hand pointing towards the future. That, alas, does not make for an environment conducive to talking honestly about mental distress or what is sometimes, though thankfully not nearly always, its outcome.

More Trouble for Labour as They Lose A Member to the Tories.

Four members of Stoke-on-Trent City Council have crossed the floor to join the Conservatives, making them the largest party in the chamber with 19 councillors, but leaving them short of an overall majority.

Three of the councillors, Lesley Adams, Shaun Bennett and Janine Bridges, were previously members of the City Independent group. The fourth, Ally Simcock has crossed from Labour.

Members crossing the floor is not an uncommon event in local government, over the years I have known some elected members who moved party so often they needed a post-it nots on their desk to remind them who they were voting with this week.

Out of the current group two of the former Independents are young enough to have ambitions beyond Stoke-on-Trent. In which case it makes sense to hitch their fortunes to the party that is in the ascendant.

What is more interesting is the 'defection' of Ally Simcock from Labour, a party she has only represented on the council since May 2019. Speaking to the Sentinel she echoes here other new colleagues, all of whom sing a variation on the theme of wanting to be 'part of the team that is getting things done'.

Fair point, there are serious questions to be asked about the direction of travel, but there is no denying that the Tories have been busy. On their watch the Smithfield development has started to look like a miniature Manhattan on the outskirts of Hanley, whether the returns on this and other dips into property speculation pay off in the long term remains to be seen.

Ms Simcock goes on to cite a 'divided Labour Party' as another reason for her departure, suggesting that replacing Jeremy Corbyn with the more moderate Keir Stamer hasn't ended the party's woes.

The real concern though for Labour locally is the loss of a member with, potentially, a long and productive local government career ahead of her. This points to the parlous state of the party in what was once amongst the most secure of its strongholds.

The problems within the Labour Party in Stoke are long standing and include a lacklustre leadership, an ageing active membership and a lack of political direction. Put simply there are too many middle aged and decidedly mediocre people in leadership roles holding back anyone with talent or drive from progressing.

Once upon a time that wouldn't have mattered, joining a political party was like getting married, it was a relationship that lasted for a lifetime. Things aren't that way now, if the old guard insist on doing the things they've always done in the way they've always been done, then the younger people behind them aren't disposed to wait quietly in line. They pack up their loyalties and move on to where the grass is greener and the opportunities better.

If they are ever to get out of their current rut and be an effective opposition, let alone regain control of the council, then Labour are going to have to take a long hard look at their own benches. If they see, and they will, too many hacks holding on to what is a very comfortable berth whilst the handful of eager younger members grind their teeth in frustration, then it is time to do some judicious pruning.

If they don't, and it is hard to imagine the current moribund leadership having the guts, then expect more departures between now and the next election.

By Cauldon Canal I Walked and Remembered.

I have always held to the theory that if you want to truly see a place, then you should travel around it on foot. This is something I am hoping to put to the test in this series of occasional articles about walks taken around my home town of Stoke-on-Trent

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On a warm, if slightly overcast morning I accessed the towpath of Cauldon Canal by crossing a narrow footbridge by where the old Lock-keepers house and the new health centre faced each other. 

On one side of me a couple of short streets of terraced houses ran down to the waterside, one of which ended in a tiny and not very well cared for park. If someone had spent half an hour or so there with a lawnmower and a litter-pick it might have been a nice place to sit and watch the barges go by.

On the other the last bit of the Cauldon College I knew as a teenager was being turned into rubble and a slicker, shiner new one taking its place. This, a sign facing the car park helpfully informed me included an Enterprise Hub and an Atrium Restaurant. Very nice, back in the day the best we could hope for was a canteen serving up tepid coffee and soggy toast.

Passing under the bridge that takes College Road over the canal I entered Hanley Park, where on one side the pavilion and bandstand stood surrounded by an honour guard of bright municipal flowers. On the other grass sloped down to the lake with its fountains firing jets of water up above the treetops.

It was easy to imagine the Edwardian families who must have walked along these paths when the park first opened. Men in tall hats, women in long dresses, their children dressed in either sailor suits or like miniature versions of their mother playing with sticks and hoops. 

Under another bridge and I had moved out of the park to where a development of new apartments fringed the water. As new build developments go it looked like a nice place to live, I could almost imagine myself sitting on one of the benches placed by the water's edge like something out a property developer's glossy brochure.

At least I could until I noticed that the waterside set aside for the use of people living in the new apartments was fenced off from the older tower blocks that loomed over the site. It was, probably, unintentional, but made me think about the drawing of lines that 'the wrong sort of people' aren't allowed to cross that is so much a part of modern life.

Passing under the Litchfield Road bridge on slippery and uneven cobbles I stepped into a reminder of why the canal is there at all. This is where the Emma Bridgewater

pottery factory stands, through the grimy windows of which I could see racks of ware waiting to be fired, somewhere beyond the weedy nearside bank someone bashed out a steady rhythm on a piece of metal.

This is the version of the canal that hasn't been tidied up, here things are still made for sale, even if these days they are transported by road rather than by barge. Here graffiti, of which there is a lot, is the real thing, a silent scream from people with little or no agency over their lives, not self-consciously hip 'art'. 

Then it was back to the land of apartments, the Waterside development that has replaced the pottery works that still lined the canal when I first walked here as a boy in the eighties. 

They look nice enough, each one has a tiny balcony for the owner to put a couple of chairs on or a BBQ. The trouble is looking at them you can't help thinking about the community of work that had to be swept away so they could exist at all and feeling a little sad.

On the balcony of one apartment a wooden heron looked sadly upstream, I knew how he felt. Given the choice I'd rather be back where things are less tidy; and a lot more lively.

My walk ended at Bucknall by the sprawling Goodwin engeneering works where a swing bridge carries a narrow road over the water. As a child I was fascinated by this bridge and longed to see it opened up to let some great vessel pass. It never happened and it didn't this time either, one more reason to come back again.
 

There is More Than A Little Flabby Thinking About the Government’s Plan to Tackle Obesity.

The UK has a weight problem to the point where a large proportion of the population could be said to be digging its collective grave with a plastic fork from the local take-away.

Two thirds of UK adults are overweight and a quarter are classed as being obese, nationally in 2018/19 there were 876,000 hospital admissions related to weight problems.

Being dangerously overweight and deprivation are linked with levels of obesity being highest in parts of the Midlands and the North of England that have been battered by decades of economic decline. Just to add a cherry on top of the not so appetizing cake being obese is, as Public Health England pointed out this week, linked to a greater risk of general ill health and a higher likelihood of dying from coronavirus.

Dr Alison Tedstone chief nutritionist at Public Health England told the BBC earlier this week that ‘the case for action on obesity has never been stronger’.

Quite so and the government have helpfully stepped in with a ‘plan’ for reducing the national waistline. Included in this are banning ‘buy one get one free’ offers on unhealthy foods, another ban on advertising junk food before the nine o’clock watershed and plans to make restaurants print the calories contained in dishes on their menus.

The traffic light system used to indicate the fat and salt content of food will be reviewed and GP’s will be able to prescribe exercise to their podgier patients.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph health secretary Matt Hancock says the coronavirus has ‘given us a wake-up call about the need to tackle the stark inequalities in our nation’s health and obesity is an urgent example of this’.

He later helpfully adds that if ‘everyone who is overweight lost five pounds it would save the NHS £100 million over five years’, it would help to turn coronavirus back from our shores too.

Health experts have expressed qualified support for the plan whilst at the same time pointing out that some of the messages being sent out are decidedly mixed. For example the ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ scheme applies to fast food outlets and, more pertinently, public health budgets have been cut to the bone.

Making a pun for which I have no intention of begging pardon there is something decidedly flabby about this grand plan to make us all slimmer.

For a start most of the measures announced have been around the policy block so many times it’s a wonder they aren’t dizzy. Food labelling has been ‘reviewed’ almost as many times as the exam system and is in about as much of a mess. Consumers, like parents, are left trying to make sense of competing systems trying to tell them the same thing but in different ways, sowing confusion and frustration in the process.

Public health budgets haven’t just been cut; they’ve been dissected by a decade of austerity; and that’s before the horror show that has been the first half of 2020 gatecrashes local authority balance sheets. GPs can prescribe exercise all they want, in fact in an ideal world or one that just works that would be the first option rather than reaching for the pill cupboard; but if there isn’t funding available the scheme will fall at the first hurdle.

What really rankles though is the breezy attitude of the government towards solving a problem that has built up over decades. They seem to think that all they need to do is publish a ‘plan’, commission some slick TV adverts and; shazam; problem solved.

When Matt Hancock prattles about the ‘stark inequalities’ in our nation’s health I find myself wishing his aides had tied the string of the natty ‘Save the NHS’ mask he has taken to wearing tight enough to keep his jaws still while his brain catches up. He is part of a government that created those inequalities, not to mention egging on cash strapped councils to sell off their playing fields.

Being poor and experiencing worse physical and mental health than more affluent members of the community have been links in a chain of misery for the past forty plus years. Along with environmental and cultural factors they weigh individuals, communities and whole regions down.

Solving the resulting problems is about far more than getting more people to choose salad over burgers. It is about government truly understanding the needs of those parts of our society that have been left behind and working with local communities to find solutions.

That can’t be done over to lifecycle of a single parliament, it will take as long to put things right as it did for them to go wrong. Like losing weight fixing inequalities in health and areas requires patience and commitment, neither of which are the current government’s strong suit.

Parents are Floundering in the Backwash of the Pandemic.

Family has been one of the things that has brought us all closer together during these strange and unsettling times, at least that is the image portrayed in the media.

Behind the by now rather weary tropes about the trials of schooling and the self-consciously cute imagery of the family that bakes together staying together another and less comforting picture can be seen. One of parents who feel lost and confused and children who have been damaged, maybe permanently, by the events of the past few months.

This is something highlighted by a YouGov survey of 2000 parents carried out for the charity Action for Children. The survey found that a third of parents said they felt 'out of their depth' when it came to helping their children cope with the aftermath of the pandemic.

A third of the parents who responded said their children had talked about feeling isolated and anxious, this had impacted on their own mental health with 43% reporting that they too felt anxious.

Nikki Willis (32), a mother of four who took part in the survey talked about how the  'uncertainty of everything ' has had a negative impact on her own mental health and  that when her children asked her questions 'I just don't know any of the answers and can't reassure them about anything '.

The effect of lockdown and the uncertainty that has followed on her children had, she said, been equally damaging. Macey (8) had gone from being 'a quite spirited, happy child' to bring 'a little girl who isn't interested in anything'. Even her eldest daughter Katelynn (10), who 'usually takes everything in her stride' has ' started to struggle'.

During lockdown Action for Children saw a 415% surge in the number of contacts made to its online support services. In response the charity has launched a new Parent Talk website to offer advice to parents who are struggling.

Lynne Giles, who manages the Parent Talk service said ' the pandemic has triggered a crisis for Mums, Dads and children on an unprecedented scale', adding that 'huge numbers of children will need extra support over the coming months and parents are telling us they don't know where to turn'. This, she said, meant a service like Parent Talk was 'needed now more than ever'.

Even as restrictions, for the moment, are starting to be relaxed many parents are fearful about the long-term impact on their children's mental health. The YouGov survey found that 37% of respondents were worried their children would struggle to socialize and were fearful of encountering people outside their immediate family. They also reported a higher incidence of bed wetting and behavioural problems.

Action for Children warn that the situation is likely to get worse as the long-term impact of the pandemic on the mental health of the nation as a whole becomes clear.

There lies the run of a problem that could be with us long after COVID-19_has been relegated to the history books. The children who have had their young lives mauled by this crisis will grow up to be the generation that truly shapes the new normal, because they will have known little else.

A society created by people who have grown up feeling that anxiety and uncertainty are the norm is at risk of being a stiflingly conservative one. When our collective confidence has taken a serious knock, it is human nature to retreat into the comforting bubble of convention.

Economically that is dangerous because it discourages the innovation necessary for success and prosperity. On a social and political level of could be downright dangerous, opening the door to  darkness.

Dictatorship thrives when people are afraid because it purports to offer them comforting answers and easily identified scapegoats. It fears and does all of can to stamp out democracy because it empowers people to ask tough questions of themselves and the society in which they live.

Childhood is when we learn to recognize the things we fear and how to walk with our fear in order to live meaningful lives. That is why the government must put protecting the mental health of children, and adults too, at the heart of its recovery plans.

Despite the best efforts of Prime Minister Boris Johnson to do his Tigger routine to cheer us all up, the pandemic will not be over by Christmas; more to the point its shadow will be on us for decades.

Government Wires Still Crossed Over Mask Use- For Now Anyway.

To wear or not to wear, now that is the question, well it is when it comes to face coverings anyway. To date the government’s attempts to answer it have made Hamlet look like a model of decisiveness. 

 On Friday prime minister Boris Johnson dropped a pretty heavy hint that wearing a mask or face covering was soon to be compulsory in shops in England. Then on Sunday morning cabinet secretary Michael Gove said on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show that wearing one was ‘basic good manners’, but that people shouldn’t be made to do so by law.

 Confused? To adapt the tag line from seventies American sit-com Soap, you will be listening to this lot.

 If you’re feeling generous it is possible to see how the government has got into such a mess over this issue. 

 The advice from experts hasn’t always been clear, at the start of the pandemic mask wearing was discouraged because it was feared doing so would give people a false sense of security. Over time though the consensus has moved to a position where masks are seen as a useful way of controlling the spread of the virus. 

 Then there is the near limitless capacity for the wing of the Tory core vote once described by David Cameron as the ‘turnip Taliban’ to misconstrue pretty much anything as an assault on their civil liberties. Somewhere in the vaults of the Daily Mail and its sister in woe the Daily Express there will be a stack of editorials blaming the edict to wear a mask on either Europe or the permissive society or the 1960’s; or both.

 In the wider and saner world mask wearing may be less of a problem than the government has keyed itself up into thinking. Face coverings have been required on public transport for six weeks, if there were protests in the streets as a result, I failed to notice them. 

 Today Boris Johnson dropped another and heavier hint today that the issue was going to be discussed again with an announcement later in the week. For which it is best to read that masks will be mandatory in shops in the near future.

 To this he added the hope that the ‘instruments of enforcement’ wouldn’t have to be used to get us to do so. For once I am in agreement with the uncombed one, I hope they won’t either, partly because they sound like something the Spanish Inquisition might have used, but mostly because if wearing a mask lets a little more normality return to our lives; then it’s a compromise worth making.