Starving British children are looking for food in rubbish bins

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bin, child, Conservative, David Cameron, Democrat, Fenton, food, food bank, George Osborne, income inequality, leftover, Lib Dem, Liberal, police, rubbish, scrap, Social Services, starve, starving, Stoke Sentinel, Stoke-on-Trent, Tories, Tory

Who said it could never happen here? Children are starving on the streets of Britain as the Tory-led Coalition’s hate policies bite ever-more-deeply into the poor [Image: Stoke Sentinel].

British children are sifting through bins left outside houses in search of scraps of food because they are starving, it has been revealed.

But Tories and their supporters in rich London won’t have to look at them – because they are in Labour-held Stoke-on-Trent.

The Stoke Sentinel reported that “Youngsters have been searching through bins in the Hollings Street and Brocksford Street area of Fenton before eating any leftovers.”

It said, “Dozens of hungry families are referred to Fenton’s food bank for help every week.”

What’s really sad about this story is that some of the people interviewed seemed to think the problem was with the mess left behind by these children – youngsters who are, remember, so hungry that they are rooting through rubbish for stale leftovers.

One said: “It’s horrible to see… Some days on the school run we have had to actually cross over the road because there’s so much rubbish on the pavement because of this. Luckily I keep my bins to one side so we haven’t been too badly affected.”

Clearly she is full of the milk of human kindness. According to the newspaper, that person was just 26 years old. Perhaps she should consider growing up.

Police in the area said the matter had been reported to them. What did people think they were going to do – arrest starving children?

Fortunately, Sgt Jason Allport demonstrated that police have the right attitude: “The issue isn’t theft; it’s children going around not having enough clothing and food.

“That issue is really something for social services to look at.”

In fact, it is something for every single citizen of the United Kingdom to look at.

This is the sixth-richest economy in the entire world. It is a land of plenty. Yet people here are happy to allow their neighbours to starve – probably to the point of death.

Their only concern is that they shouldn’t have to see it.

If I was living in Stoke, I would be ashamed to share the streets with people who think like that.

If I had voted for the political parties that have inflicted this misery on our nation, I would be ashamed of what I had done.

But you can be sure that David Cameron isn’t ashamed.

He doesn’t see the suffering, and neither does George Osborne, the Chancellor who inaccurately claimed in his budget speech in March that “income inequality is at its lowest level for 28 years”.

In fact – as is patently obvious to anyone who sees those children scavenging on the streets of Fenton – income inequality is rocketing.

But then, what else can we expect from a man who cannot answer a simple maths question?

Any of those starving children could be a better chancellor than him.

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Stop collecting death stats if you like, DWP – it’s what you’ve got already that we want to see!

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Atos, benefit, benefits, bin, claimant, Coalition, Conservative, death, Department for Work and Pensions, disability, disabled, ditch, DWP, Employment and Support Allowance, ESA, evidence, fail, government, health, Iain Duncan Smith, IB, Incapacity Benefit, increase, Liberal Conspiracy, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, people, policy, politics, rubbish, SDA, Severe Disablement Allowance, sharp, sick, social security, statistic, Sunny Hundal, throw away, Tories, Tory, Vox Political, WCA, welfare, work capability assessment

Public interest, not party interest: Thanks to Jim Moore for this cartoon. I’ve been waiting for a good moment to release it. Notice Iain Duncan Smith’s face looks like it’s behind bars – which is where many people believe he ought to be!

“The DWP has quietly decided to ditch statistics it used to collect on the number of deaths of recipients of incapacity benefits (now ESA) and its predecessors Incapacity Benefit (IB) and Severe Disablement Allowance (SDA),” according to Liberal Conspiracy.

The story, by Sunny Hundal, claims: “It is thought the numbers of deaths has sharply increased since the Coalition government’s severe cuts to social security benefits.

“But to ensure that deaths aren’t cited as evidence of failure of the changes, the DWP won’t be collecting and updating its statistics.”

No supporting information is provided and nobody from the Department for Work and Pensions is quoted. Does this change the chances of success for my Freedom of Information request, in which I asked for statistics in ESA/IB claimants who have died?

No. Not at all.

I requested statistics for 2012, which we all know already that the DWP has collected. They are there; they should be available.

The fact that they aren’t open for inspection is already incriminating, if you ask me!

My FoI request will be granted in the near future – even if the DWP finds another reason for refusal, the Information Commissioner’s office will overrule it. I’ve been through the rules. In this instance, it is Iain Duncan Smith who doesn’t have a leg to stand on.

If the DWP then claims that it has destroyed the figures – as seems to be claimed by the Liberal Conspiracy story – then we’ll be looking at a criminal investigation, I think.

There can only be one reason for hiding the figures – they must have risen and have not dropped. For the DWP to actually delete them, rather than allow them to be released, they must have risen sharply.

This would not only indicate the failure of Iain Duncan Smith’s policy – after everything he and his ministers have said, time and time again, about the fairness of the assessment regime, and how it is carried out in a humane way, this would prove that it is neither fair nor humane – and that, given the opportunity to stop the deaths from accelerating, these Conservative politicians allowed them to continue.

If a person knows that their actions are causing people to die, and does nothing about it, then an observer may rightly conclude that this person wants those deaths to take place. There’s a word for people who cause others to die – with the intention of causing them to die.

That word is “murderer”.

Or in this case, “mass murderer”.

The net is closing, Iain Duncan Smith.

Nobody will think it is a coincidence, if the DWP really has binned its statistics on claimant deaths at a time when public interest is focused on the issue.

And to any DWP interlopers, reading this site because it is on a ‘watch list’: This is a very dangerous time to be working for that organisation. People who help others to commit murder are accessories to the crime and may also be convicted for the offence.

Tick tock, Tory boys…