According to the Office for National Statistics, 93% of adults in Great Britain reported an increase in their cost of living in April 2023. The OBR expects real post-tax household income to fall by 4.3% in 2022-23, the biggest fall since comparable records began in 1956. Cost of living crisis in the UK – Statistics & Facts
Households in the United Kingdom have experienced a significant fall in living standards since late 2021. As of January 2023, 92 percent of UK households reported that their cost of living had increased compared with a year earlier. In the same month, 67 percent of households had experienced monthly increases in their cost of living, down from a peak of 91 percent in the Summer of 2022. The households in question mainly attributed this increase to higher food, electricity, and fuel costs. The crisis is even more acute for the poorest UK households, which typically spend a higher proportion of their income on food and housing costs. Based on forecasts from the Autumn Budget of 2022, real household disposable income in the UK will fall by 4.3 percent in the 2022/23 financial year, the biggest fall in living standards since the mid 1950s, when this type of data was first produced.
The war in Ukraine has also exacerbated inflation woes, particularly in relation to food and energy, the two sectors driving much of the high inflation. However government action/inaction must take some of the blame.
We all learnt something about exponential growth during the Covid Pandemic (except of course those in government who dithered and failed to make quick decisions and found things remarkably worse only a few days later – I guess this was in itself some form of learning experiment when the R-Number (The reproduction number (R) is the average number of secondary infections produced by a single infected person.) became reality and hospitals and especially ITUs became stretched to almost breaking point.
So if we can put this into the context of debt we recognise that unless we pay off our debts increasing interests rates especially on credit cards can lead to ever increasing debt which can easily spiral to a point of seemingly no return. So Covid and debt share exponentiallity where the rate of increase becomes quicker and quicker as the thing that increases becomes larger – a pandemic may affect society’s physical health but debt too can increase exponentially and cause a personal crisis.
I worked as a General Practitioner for the homeless for nearly 20 years. Although there were admittedly some who hadn’t helped themselves and fell into the trap of drink and drugs, many had a rapid decline with a failed relationship, lost job etc. Many of our fellow citizens are one or two pay checks from disaster.
Did you know that 59 percent of Americans are a paycheck away from being homeless, according to a survey by Charles Schwab?
Homelessness: A Paycheck Away for Most Americans I CentSai
Charles Dickens often made references of the consequences of debt, this quote comes to us from his novel David Copperfield, “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.”
So here I pass you on to another excellent Guardian article in the ‘A new start after 60’ series – Please visit the GUARDIAN for more of these truly inspiring stories.
Diane and David Rowsell were looking forward to spending more time with the grandchildren. Then they discovered how many of their neighbours in York were going hungry.
“We fell into it,” says Diane Rowsell, 63, of the community food support project that she and husband David, 64, started in 2020. “It wasn’t like we sat at home thinking: ‘What can we do with our lives now?’”
Pre-retirement they were busy: David’s job as a headteacher allowed them to live in the Czech Republic and the US, where Diane, a physiotherapist by training, also worked teaching music; they travelled extensively and adventurously in their free time. Back home in York, they were looking forward to more travel, plus time on their allotment and with their grandchildren. “Just that era of life – busy doing not much!” says Diane. But it doesn’t sound that quiet when she explains that the couple bought a camper van, David was working as a leadership coach, she was taking art classes, and both were volunteering – Diane gardening and David chairing the local school board of governors.
It was this that set them on their completely new course. In October 2020, when the House of Commons voted against extending free school meals into the holidays, David started strategising with the school headteacher: “I said: ‘What are we going to do about this?’” At the last minute, the local council stepped in to fund free holiday meals but a seed had been planted, leaving David and Diane pondering the wider issue of local food poverty. “It was evident there was a need for food support within the area,” says Diane. That came as a shock, she says: York’s South Bank area is affluent with large Victorian houses selling for vast sums, as well as bustling independent shops and cafes, but it lies next to one of the most deprived parts of the city.
David contacted a group of local residents who had expressed an interest – parents and shopkeepers, plus two acquaintances who had worked with the UK food bank charity the Trussell Trust – inviting them to join the couple on a Zoom call to discuss food poverty during the Covid crisis and beyond. “We decided, everybody together, that we could do something,” Diane says.
The school offered premises, and a local food bank promised a delivery to get them started; the group recruited volunteers and the project took shape. They chose the name, The Collective Sharehouse, rather than “food bank”, to reflect the fact that the project would meet not only the need for local food support, but also the pressing desire many expressed to do something meaningful at a time of crisis. “It’s like an exchange, rather than a bank,” says David.
The Collective Sharehouse opened just six weeks after that first call in December 2020. “We had seven people,” says David, but by the following week, they had 40 clients, and it built steadily. Now they support 100-plus families three times a week, and have gone from having 12 volunteers to about 40. The Sharehouse has also expanded its ambitions, working with local services to offer support on everything from IT to addiction, debt and benefits advice. There have been art projects, literacy support, a warm clothing donation pop-up and cookery classes. They have also ensured that people with experience of food poverty are involved in management – three out of 10 of the central management team are former or current clients. The local community has stepped up to support them in an extraordinary way with donations of food, time and money. “It never fails to amaze me – the generosity, the time, the effort …” says Diane.
It is complex, challenging work and some sessions, and clients’ stories, are desperately difficult. “None of us are specialists,” Diane says. “We learned from the ground upwards.” Welcoming a client for the first time is often one of the hardest moments. “Having to sit with somebody new and let it unfold – it’s very raw.” The Sharehouse has regulars, but other people fall off the radar, leaving Diane to wonder what has happened. “There are lots of people who pop into my head – I wonder where they are now; what they’re doing. It can be emotional.”
Does it take over their lives? More so for Diane, who still does most of the day-to-day, hands-on management (David is still coaching). She’s an all-or-nothing person, she says, and the Sharehouse is always in the back of her mind: what connections she could make; what opportunities there might be to do more. Although it’s challenging, “I’ve never not wanted to go and do it. I like making things happen and seeing things happen that benefit people – I love organising things!” she says. She’s assisted by an “amazing” team, who support each other emotionally as well as practically. Learning to delegate, she says, is a work in progress but the project has already taught her important lessons. “I’ve struggled with the acceptance of what getting older brings, but it’s OK not to be perfect or to need others to help.” Volunteering has enhanced her life and she’s passionate about what it can offer individuals and their communities: “It makes a massive, real difference. I would never have thought it would be possible to achieve what we have achieved.”
The couple complement each other: Diane likes to focus on details, while David prefers the big picture; he’s good at helping her tease out solutions, Diane says, when she comes home with a Sharehouse puzzle or problem. He’s also focusing on the project’s “exit strategy” and long-term ambition to no longer be needed. “If you were to say to us: ‘Where will you be in two years’ time?’ I have absolutely no idea. Sadly, we might still be here.” In the meantime, the Sharehouse serves as a reminder of how effective collective action and community can be. For anyone wanting to volunteer, or do something similar, Diane’s advice is: “Be led by what inspires you, don’t be frightened and don’t overthink it.”
“And don’t vote Tory,” adds David.
It's the Time Of Your Life 