School leaders said that as well as hunger they were now trying to mitigate exhaustion, with increasing numbers of children living in homes without enough beds or unable to sleep because they were cold. They warned that “desperate” poverty was driving problems with behaviour, persistent absence and mental health.
The head of a primary school in a deprived area in north-west England, speaking anonymously to avoid identifying vulnerable children, said: “We have a child who we put in the shower a couple of times a week.” He described the family’s bathroom as “disgusting” and said they couldn’t afford to buy cleaning products.
Horrifying how far our country has sunk. We are supposed to one of the 10 wealthiest countries in the world, yet this is how an increasing number of our people are living.
To say the country has been mismanaged would be the greatest of understatements. Change can not come soon enough, and it also must be sustained for as long as possible. One term of government will not be enough, the rot that taken hold could take a generation or more to truly fix.
30 years ago, France, Germany and Italy were about as wealthy as one another. Now, Italy is markedly poorer. That is the direction they’ve taken the UK, and it’s probably too late to fix that.
It’s what “conservatives” always do