Social impacts of our situation...

A_fiend_for_life

This was a disturbing report in the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jan/17/eating-heating-furniture-cold-weather

lemonjelly

Good post.

Here's an anecdote for you - in certain relevant cases, I have supported people to apply to certain charitable trusts. Primarily, we do this to meet high fuel bills, or other utilities costs.

2 of the biggest charitable trusts have, since October 2009 contacted me & advised that they will only be able to support people where there are extreme exenuating circumstances".

Food banks have been on the rise in the past couple of years. However other elements of safety nets appear to be being taken away.

lemonjelly

Bringing it back, I saw this in the local paper:
http://www.expressandstar.com/2010/03/02/demo-by-far-right-group/

Now, dudley has a large muslim population, & there has been an ongoing debate raging about planning permission for a mosque (with a large tower). It has proved to be a heavy local debate, with many liberals I know having very strong views on the matter (from both sides). It seems to me that the EDL are intent on stoking up fires & provocation. The locations of their rallies are clearly designed to be in areas where racial tensions exist.

lemonjelly

It appears that the EDL & UAF are completely at loggerheads, & are determined to cause as much trouble as possible. We now have a number of arrests following the march this weekend in bolton. Seems to me that the EDL are targetting the areas where they know their presence will be incendary.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/8580205.stm

As an aside, I read through the local news pages on the red button last night. The majority of pages related to some serious assaults with police appealing for witnesses - it was a disproportionate representation of local news, & also was covering a range of areas.

lemonjelly

I wonder if this news story is linked to the post above....
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_yorkshire/8579858.stm
certainly similar to the racist graffitti on muslim & jewish sits when these 2 met in stoke...

lemonjelly

Taking a bit of kudos from dopesters media pimped homes thread, I thought I'd resurrect this nugget.

Protests are happening, cuts are going to kick in soon.

The cheif of the met is saying public order (& policing it is changing...:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11839386

His headline is "disorder on the streets!":eek:

ILW

It appears that a majority of the students kicking off in London are rather middle class. Just a sign of a slight shift in a society which thinks it is entitled to everything, but that other should be paying the bills.

Morglin

I think this government is doing what was previously thought to be impossible - they are uniting the benefit class, the working class, and the middle class - all of them are hacked off with the ConDems, and are quite cheerfully protesting together.:eek:

True British equality at last.

Lin