Eight years of unnecessary austerity has played havoc on the most vulnerable people of the country. Prime Minister Theresa May says austerity has ended whereas her Chancellor of exchequers Phillip Hammond says it is coming to an end.
This means it is still hanging on and not gone. Even the government does not know whether it has ended or it is coming to an end. This whole issue of austerity and hardships facing people has been lately been over shadowed by Brexit making the situation worse.
'Austerity has created vacuum being filled by drug gangs exploiting children. Where public services have shrunk there’s a vacuum, and what’s stepped into it is ‘gangs'. Austerity and rampant drug dealing have created a “lost generation” of children living in fear of violence across the UK, police and former gang members have said.
There are fears the recent spate of bloody street stabbings in London, where 20 teenagers have been killed so far this year, will not be the last if funding to police and public services is not urgently increased.
Professor Philip Alston, the U.N.'s special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights lambasts Austerity and Government cuts. Government cuts have inflicted “unnecessary misery in one of the richest countries in the world” and entrenching high levels of poverty, a UN investigation into poverty in Britain found. He has spent 12 days investigating the impact of austerity measures, Universal Credit, and Brexit in Britain.
In a remarkable conference in London he came to present his preliminary findings. Speaking on the impact of austerity, Alston said: “In the fifth richest country in the world, this is not just a disgrace, but a social calamity and an economic disaster, all rolled into one.”
In the view of the foregoing it is high time the British Government got its act together and ended austerity for good and to put a stop to the suffering of the British people who facing homelessness, poverty, increase in crime, violence, and depending on food banks.
Baldev Sharma
Rayners Lane, Harrow
