Homelessness is on the rise globally, and the Czech Republic has the highest rate in central and eastern Europe. The Guardian visited Prague, for a long time a popular destination for tourists, to see how even this sector caters for the city’s visitors – and to meet the range of people aiming to tackle the causes of homelessness in all its forms. Continue reading… Source link
A movie steeped in ignorance will likely not affect Nicola Peltz Beckham’s career — but its messaging could potentially bolster unfair stereotypes about poverty. Nicola, who is the daughter of billionaire businessman and investor Nelson Peltz and daughter-in-law of power couple David and Victoria Beckham, is receiving criticism for her film, Lola. The movie, which marks Nicola’s writing and directorial debut – as well as her first leading role – premiered in February with a limited theatrical and digital release. However, it is now garnering attention thanks to a scathing review published last week in The Guardian by writer and filmmaker Kady Ruth Ashcraft, who described the film as “a bad movie” and “poverty porn”. “Peltz Beckham did achieve something with Lola: it’s called ‘poverty porn,’” Ashcraft wrote. “And in film, that means the exploitation of the conditions of poverty for entertainment and artistic recognition.” She later added: “What makes Lola such a flagrant example of poverty porn is just how careless the project feels in the context of Peltz Beckham’s exceptionally lavish life.” HuffPost …
Some children living in dire housing conditions have been woken up by chesty coughs caused by damp, others by the smell of sewage leaking down their walls. Toby* was woken by rats on his chest. “It was midnight and he came to me crying,” said his mother, who does not want to be named. He is one of more than 3,800 children living in temporary accommodation in Lewisham, the council with the 10th highest number of children living in such housing in the UK. Nationally, 142,000 homeless children are living in places like commercial hotels, converted offices and dingy hostels, an all-time high, after rents and no-fault evictions have soared across the country. Schools have seen the impact of this first-hand. Last week, a National Education Union survey found that 59% of teachers in England and Wales had seen their students experience frequent ill health due to poverty, with housing a major factor. In Lewisham, south London, 11 headteachers have signed a letter to the council declaring a local housing emergency is jeopardising the health …
Johannesburg, South Africa – On a chilly afternoon in Soweto, Mlindelwa Mtungwa, 61, cooks in his tiny, dimly lit room at the Diepkloof hostel, using a small two-plate stove connected to an electricity source outside. The father of six from Msinga village in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) province moved to South Africa’s economic hub in 1979 in search of a better life, settling at the hostel some 14km (9 miles) south of the city centre. He has lived there ever since. Gently turning pieces of chicken in a pot, he recalled with surprising fondness how orderly the strict, male-only dormitories were when they were run by the repressive apartheid government and how jobs were abundant, helping him pay rent and send money back home. “Even though we were oppressed by the system, we had jobs. The hostel had electricity, flushing toilets and showers that had warm water,” he said, lamenting how many of those basics are unobtainable today. Hostels were first introduced on the mines, and later townships like Soweto, as a place to house Black men …
All things considered, the world’s richest countries have emerged from the global pandemic in better shape than they could have imagined when Covid-19 first appeared just over four years ago. To be sure, the impact of lockdown and its aftermath has been painful, but the effects on poor countries have been far more severe. Rich countries were able to rack up budget deficits to pay for furloughs and prevent mass unemployment. Rich countries could print money through quantitative easing schemes without the risk that the financial markets would punish them. Rich-country governments could subsidise energy bills after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Poor countries could do none of these things. In 2015, the international community set itself targets – the sustainable development goals (SDGs) – to be hit by 2030. The first two goals were the elimination of extreme poverty and achieving a world with zero hunger. On current trends, both are going to be spectacularly missed. About 600 million people will be living under the extreme poverty threshold of $2.15 a day – twice the …
Gordon Brown’s article is certainly timely (Britain seems stuck in a doom loop of poverty. I have a plan to raise billions to address that, 27 March). However, his proposal for a new, temporary partnership of communities, charities, companies and government, creating “headroom” to fix our social security system, risks further institutionalising a charitable response to poverty. The mind-blowing Department for Work and Pensions poverty statistics published on 21 March are incontrovertible. A record 3.7 million people reported severe food insecurity in 2022-23, up by 1.5 million on the previous year. Charitable support in any form might alleviate hardship, but won’t address the root causes of poverty, nor bring down those figures. And, as last month’s data also makes clear, most households struggling to afford food don’t seek out help. Why would we waste further time and effort creating yet another temporary sticking-plaster response to destitution based on charity and surplus? The endless extension of the household support fund also proves that short-termism has passed its sell-by date. Food banks aren’t asking to be made redundant to …
A new exhibition brings together Chris Killip and Graham Smith’s seminal shots of England’s north-east from 1975-87, when heavy industry and working-class life were transformed Continue reading… Source link
An election year is the time to confront the paralysing gloom and declinist thinking besetting our country and, by rediscovering our moral compass, inaugurate a new age of hope. The British people long to feel part of a shared national endeavour. But instead, near-zero growth is giving birth to a zero-sum mentality, a belief that you can only do better if at someone else’s expense. Young people – historically the most optimistic about the future – yearn to believe in something bigger than themselves, yet this generation is fast losing faith in the very idea of progress. But the most devastating twist in this doom loop is the one created by rising poverty, the despair and divisions it causes, and the mounting public concern about its impact on our social cohesion. To break out of this downward spiral, Britain needs a reason for optimism – and a good starting point is a new partnership to end destitution and poverty that, by bringing charities, companies, communities and government together in a common national project, shows the …
Poverty is a political choice – one that Conservative governments have much to answer for. Since 2010, Tory administrations have chosen to have a significant percentage of our population impoverished, including, especially, our country’s children. The Child Poverty Action Group’s analysis of official data last week showed that a third of those between infancy and adulthood – 4.3 million children – were in relative poverty, up from 3.6 million in 2010-11. Even by the government’s preferred measure, absolute poverty, the share of children in penury rose in 2022-23 by its highest rate for 30 years. No principle of economics says such a degree of immiseration should prevail in one of the richest countries in the world. The reason for this extraordinary rise in poverty? The most obvious explanation is the low level of benefits and the restrictions on accessing support. Benefit levels have fallen by 8.8% in real terms since 2012. Cutting back on welfare produces more poverty, not less. There is money. But not specifically for the poor. Ministers tout tax cuts worth £9 a week …
Poverty figures published last week show that in 2023 one in six British children lived in families suffering from food insecurity, up from one in eight children in 2022. And one in 40 children lived in a family that accessed a food bank in the previous 30 days, almost double the proportion the previous year. The growing number of children whose parents struggle to afford to feed them properly in a country as rich as the UK is a shameful reflection of just how low a political priority tackling child poverty has been for Conservative prime ministers and chancellors since 2010. Child poverty is rising on every official measure. Almost one in three children now live in relative poverty, defined as households with incomes of less than 60% of the median. And one in four children live in absolute poverty, in households with incomes of less than 60% of the median income in 2011. This represents the fastest rise in child poverty for almost 30 years. Almost half of children from black and minority ethnic backgrounds …
