The South East is the second richest region in the fifth
richest country in the world – yet every district council area in Kent now
hosts a food bank.
We have enough wealth and enough food to feed everyone – but
we don’t distribute wealth equitably enough. It’s not only people on benefits
who use food banks – families with children where only one parent is earning or
there is only one parent are struggling too.
Energy bills are rising, the cost of food is rising, but
wages are not. This government refuses to enforce a living wage, even though research
shows this would be a net gain to the Treasury through reduced benefits bills
and increased tax take.
Even the opposition
is only proposing to force firms to pay a living wage if they want to bid for
public contracts. Why? Surely decency demands that everyone should be paid a
living wage. Why should people work if they can’t feed and house themselves and
their families from what they earn?
We are supposedly a
Christian country, I see no Christian principles in allowing people to be
forced to work for less than their needs – or even worse, to work as unpaid
interns because that is the only way they can eventually get a job in many
industries (if they are lucky). We have legalised exploitation and created Victorian
levels of poverty. TB and rickets are making a comeback. Is this really the
country we want? We should be ashamed of ourselves – and of a government which
allows this to happen.
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