Britain’s Hidden Hunger Puts Spotlight On Cameron Budget Cuts [Bloomberg]
July 8, 2012 Leave a comment
When the British economy fell back into a recession at the end of last year, Ryan Hall, 24, lost his job, his home and the means to feed his family.
His employer, a retail company, first reduced his hours and then eliminated his job altogether. No longer able to pay the rent, he was forced to seek emergency shelter at the home of a friend. He relied on food charities to help feed his wife and four-year-old son.
“We had nowhere to go, no money, things were really, really hard,” said the resident of Bradford in northern England. “I was looking for jobs, but there was nothing out there. We were barely surviving.”
The plight of Hall and tens of thousands of other Britons living on the breadline is fueling the debate over Prime MinisterDavid Cameron’s unprecedented austerity program as the economy struggles to emerge from its second recessionsince 2009. His Conservative-led government plans to all but erase Britain’s budget deficit by 2017 with spending cuts and tax increases that exceed those planned by former Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling by more than 50 percent.
