A donation bin appears in the supermarket for families who can't afford soap or toothpaste. Terms such as "bed poverty" emerge in the news because we now need vocabulary to describe children who are so poor that they have to sleep on the floor. Then one day you read a statistic that somehow feels both shocking and wearily unsurprising: about 3.8 million people experienced destitution in the UK last year. That's being unable to meet their most basic needs to stay warm, dry, clean and fed.
The research-released last week by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) - lays out the scale of destitution and how potently it has spread. The number of people experiencing destitution in the UK has more than doubled in the last five years - up from 1.55 million in 2017. One million children are living in destitute homes - a staggering increase of 186% in half a decade. The research, part of a project that has been monitoring the scale of destitution since 2015, found almost two-thirds of adults who are in severe poverty have a disability or long-term health condition; cancer patients going to chemotherapy and coming home to wear a coat in their freezing homes.
Denne historien er fra November 03, 2023-utgaven av The Guardian Weekly.
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Denne historien er fra November 03, 2023-utgaven av The Guardian Weekly.
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Finn family murals
The optimism that runs through Finnish artist Tove Jansson's Moomin stories also appears in her public works, now on show in a Helsinki exhibition
I hoped Finland would be a progressive dream.I've had to think again Mike Watson
Oulu is five hours north from Helsinki by train and a good deal colder and darker each winter than the Finnish capital. From November to March its 220,000 residents are lucky to see daylight for a couple of hours a day and temperatures can reach the minus 30s. However, this is not the reason I sense a darkening of the Finnish dream that brought me here six years ago.
A surplus of billionaires is destabilising our democracies Zoe Williams
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'What will people think? I don't care any more'
At 90, Alan Bennett has written a sex-fuelled novella set in a home for the elderly. He talks about mourning Maggie Smith, turning down a knighthood and what he makes of the new UK prime minister
I see you
What happens when people with acute psychosis meet the voices in their heads? A new clinical trial reveals some surprising results
Rumbled How Ali ran rings around apartheid, 50 years ago
Fifty years ago, in a corner of white South Africa, Muhammad Ali already seemed a miracle-maker.
Trudeau faces 'iceberg revolt'as calls grow for PM to quit
Justin Trudeau, who promised “sunny ways” as he won an election on a wave of public fatigue with an incumbent Conservative government, is now facing his darkest and most uncertain political moment as he attempts to defy the odds to win a rare fourth term.
Lost Maya city revealed through laser mapping
After swapping machetes and binoculars for computer screens and laser mapping, a team of researchers have discovered a lost Maya city containing temple pyramids, enclosed plazas and a reservoir which had been hidden for centuries by the Mexican jungle.
'A civil war' Gangs step up assault on capital
Armed fighters advance into neighbourhoods at the heart of Port-au-Prince as authorities try to restore order
Reality bites in the Himalayan 'kingdom of happiness'
High emigration and youth unemployment levels belie the mountain nation's global reputation for cheeriness
