Dear All,
There’s more in the news today about the report of Professor Alston, who was appointed by The United Nations to report on Poverty in the UK.
His findings may have been pushed aside by our current fascination with other topics but they deserve and cry out for our attention.
‘much of the glue that has held British society together since the Second World War has been deliberately removed and replaced with a harsh and uncaring ethos’.
‘Government policies have led to the ‘systematic immiseration’ of a significant part of the UK population, meaning they had continually put people further into poverty’
‘Some observers might conclude that The DWP has been tasked with designing a digital and sanitised version of the19th Century workhouse made famous by Charles Dickens’.
Many politicians have rushed to deny the report but in our towns and cities, there are ubiquitous signs of austerity and hardship. Soiled cardboard and sleeping bags, in shop doorways. Schools bear witness that they now operate as a 4th Emergency Service; responsible for clothing and feeding children, before they can begin to learn.
Political realignments generate heat and excitement but they don’t focus on the human cost of austerity, which we will be paying for generations.
It’s all a long way from ‘the good life’ that Humanists hold dear and it’s happening on our watch.
Bob Jelley
Chair, Coventry & Warwickshire Humanists
Coventry & Warwickshire Humanists 
I’m one living on the edge a pensioner, my wife a school TA on minimum wage with two school age children. I have a small company pension that I paid for 37 yr, paid my stamp for 42 yr now my government pension is reduced to 148 because I looked too the future. I did receive Tax credit but I’m told i shouldn’t of and now having to repay 60 a month thousands fall into this trap, tax credit is from tax yr but they require information off your p60 that you receive end of may and you application form doesn’t turn up until june, any money they send for these 3 months could be wrong the form states any over payment will be recovered the next yr they never do, leaving any over payment to increase 3 or 4 yr then they demand overpayments I have to pay 60 a month but also they stop any payments due putting thousands into debt
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