It took a UN envoy to hear how austerity is destroying British lives

Philip Alston’s inquiry into poverty in the UK has heard a shocking truth that British politicians refuse to acknowledge writes Aditya Chakrabortty in The Guardian

 

Philip Alston with pupils from Avenue End primary school in Glasgow. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod for the Guardian


The room is packed, people spilling out of the doors. The atmosphere crackles. So it should, for this is what it feels like when an entire society is held to account. Over 12 days, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights is touring not Bangladesh nor Sudan but the UK. And what Philip Alston has discovered in the fifth-richest country on Earth should shame us all. From Newcastle to Jaywick, he has uncovered stories of families facing homelessness, of people too scared to eat, of those on benefits contemplating suicide.

'A political choice': UN envoy says UK can help all who hit hard times


This UN inquiry could prove one of the most significant events in British civil society this decade, for one simple reason: for once, poor people get to speak their own truth to power. They don’t get talked over or spoken down to, lied about or treated like dirt, as happens on any other day of the week. Instead, at these hearings, they speak to Alston and his aides about their own experience. The white-haired Australian academic lawyer doesn’t cross-examine; no vulgar TV debate ensues with some hired contrarian. In its unadorned humility, the process matters almost as much as the press statement on Friday or the report to be published in a few months. Here is someone above party politics, outside the parameters of national debate, determined to treat all sides – poor people, the politicians, the academics and NGOs – as equal.

Bearing their crutches and their prams, the crowd gathered in this east London hall on this Monday afternoon knows visitors like Alston come along but once. “We’re really glad you’re here,” one person tells him, to general approval. That enthusiasm is widespread: the UN team has been deluged by a record-breaking number of submissions (nearly 300 for the UK, against 50 when it toured the US last year); city councils have passed motions requesting his presence. After eight years of historic spending cuts, a decade of stagnant wages and generations of economic vandalism, these people and places want to bear witness.

Without media training, some speak off mic, others run over time. While talking, they clutch friends’ hands or break down. When the subjects are too raw, they look away. But the stories they tell are raw. In tears, Paula Peters remembers a close friend who jumped to her death after her disability benefits were stopped. With nine days to Christmas, “she left behind two small kids”. Trinity says she and her children eat from food banks and “everything I’m wearing, apart from my hair, is from jumble [sales]”.

The welfare secretary, Esther McVey, has never conducted such a listening project. Instead she makes up her own fantasies about the effect of this government’s austerity. This summer she fabricated stories about the National Audit Office’s report into universal credit, for which she was later forced to apologise. A couple of months later, she told the Tory faithful that claims of cuts to disability benefits were “fake news”, just days after House of Commons research showed that the government planned almost £5bn of cuts to disability benefits.

The effect of those malicious government lies resounds through this afternoon. We hear how ministers talking of “shirkers” creates an environment in which people in wheelchairs are spat at. Still in his school uniform, 15-year-old Adam talks about boys being knifed in his suburb and links it to cuts in youth services, in policing, in schools. In this Victorian-built hall, where Sylvia Pankhurst once spoke and the GMB trade union was formed, he half-shouts, half-pleads with Alston: “Label this government as criminal, because that is what they are.”

Over the weekend, I asked Alston whether he heard any echoes between British experiences and the testimonies he heard last December while investigating Donald Trump’s US. “In many ways, you in the UK are far ahead of the US,” he said. He thinks “the Republicans would be ecstatic” to have pushed through the kind of austerity that the Tories have inflicted on the British.

Like others at the Guardian, I have been writing on the debacle of austerity Britain for years now. Rather than the goriest details, what strikes me is how normalised our country’s depravities have become over the course of this decade. Ordinary people speak in ordinary voices about horrors that are now quite ordinary. They go to food banks, which barely existed before David Cameron took office. Or they go days without food even in London, the city that has more multi-millionaires than any other. They spend their wages to rent houses that have mice or cockroaches or abusive landlords. Any decent society would see these details are shocking; yet they no longer shock anyone in that hall. What will remain with me of that afternoon is the sheer prosaic weight of the abuse being visited on ordinary people who could be my friends or family.

Alston has heard so many stories about the toxic failings of universal credit and the malice that is the disability benefits assessment scheme that he is in no doubt about the truth. The question for McVey, who is due to meet the UN party this week, will be how she responds to the weight of people’s lived experience. None of those giving evidence this afternoon want victim status. They are, as Trinity says, “survivors”. What they want is to be heard – and after that they want remedies.

Whether it’s Tony Blair and his “big conversation” or Cameron and his false belief that the Brexit vote was in the bag, leading British politicians don’t do listening – for the simple reason that they wouldn’t like what they’d hear. The evidence about austerity, about economic hollowing-out, about a shoulder-shrugging bureaucracy was all readily available before Alston flew over from the UN. But the government, like most of the press, didn’t want the truth to be acknowledged – because then it would be compelled to act. This is what Britain has been reduced to: hoping that a foreigner has the stomach and integrity to hear and record our decade of shame.

Momentum - successful grassroots organising!

Rachel Shabi in The Guardian

Not so long ago, in the slur-filled era before this year’s election, Momentum, the grassroots group of supporters for Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, were routinely dismissed as armchair activists, cultish Trots, delusional young naïfs, or some combination of the three. Now, media coverage of the group carries headlines such as “How Momentum changed British politics for ever” and “How Momentum HQ perfected social media outreach”.

The 24,000-member group didn’t deserve those dismissive pre-election labels, but it has certainly earned the more recently positive ones. Credited with mobilising the youth vote, Momentum’s snappy social media campaigns gleaned millions of shares. The group also sent scores of campaigners – some of them first-time canvassers – into the country’s most marginal constituencies, helping to drive up support for Labour, house by house and street by street.

Using an online map of marginal seats as well as WhatsApp and phone banks to enlist and direct activists, the group transformed Labour’s canvassing game, helping to turn seats such as Canterbury, Sheffield Hallam, Derby North and Croydon Central into Labour wins. MPs who may once have criticised the group are now more enthusiastic, while Momentum organisers say that, since members and constituency campaigners worked so closely in the past six weeks, relations are more cordial. Those who were divided over past splits in the Labour party got to know each other – and found that they got along.

Now, Momentum wants to build on the – oh, let’s just go with it – momentum to militate against any complacency over Labour’s dramatic increase in voter share, now at 40%, or disillusion that the party nonetheless lost the election. Since the general election, the Labour party has gained 35,000 new members, while 1,500 have joined Momentum. With greater numbers, capacity and credibility, the task now is ensuring more activists join in and are election-ready – because who knows how soon we’re going to have to do it all again.

But elections aren’t the only focus. For a start, Momentum wants to move away from the idea that political campaigning only takes place when votes are needed. It plans to engage in community action, whether that’s voter registration campaigns or support for local causes, so that the group and, by extension, the Labour party, is organically active at grassroots level. Not to re-open old wounds – and definitely not now the Labour party is united in support for its leader – but this terrain might have been broached sooner, were it not for Momentum instead having to rally in support of Corbyn during last year’s leadership challenge.

In any case, such endeavours, however embryonic, have already begun. Last year, local Momentum groups started to collect and volunteer for food banks. Now, national organisers are looking at the possibility of running these independently, although the idea isn’t to provide tinned beans bearing party slogans so much as to support local communities in tackling hardships also addressed by Labour’s political offer. At a time when so many have been terribly affected by the recession and Conservative austerity cuts, there are multiple social issues where Momentum could get involved.

The focus seems to be on harnessing the political engagement unleashed by Corbyn’s leadership and fostering unity among Labour’s different voter groups. This pursuit of collectivism, in the face of decades of rampant individualism, was always one of the more radical aspects of Corbyn’s leadership. It was in evidence throughout his campaign speeches, where he often spoke of society’s many cohorts as one community, binding together groups – young and old, black and white, nurses as well as builders and office workers – that are more often encouraged to compete against each other in the current economy.

Momentum draws inspiration and cross-pollinates ideas with the leftwing Syriza party in Greece and Podemos in Spain, both of which were fed by practical, grassroots organising to counter the effects of crippling austerity cuts. In Greece, for instance, the social movements that ran health clinics, food banks and legal aid centres were the blood supply for the Syriza party now leading a coalition government. In the UK, Momentum is also looking at growing the information-sharing debates developed by the World Transformed, which launched parallel to the Labour party conference in Liverpool last year and hosts political events.

The intention is to convert social media clicks and shares into practical action: the demand for Momentum’s election campaign training and turnout on the doorstop has shown that there is a desire to get involved, given the means, confidence and skills to do so. It’s also pretty much what grassroots democracy looks like – a movement that chimes with and feeds into a viable political party. And it’s this combination – a left wing effective both at parliamentary and community level that could help turn the Labour party into an unstoppable political force and propel it into power.

Cricket is losing the popularity contest

George Dobell in Cricinfo


The absence of any cricketers from the BBC's annual awards bash is another stark warning of the invisibility of the sport in the British mainstream


Stuart Broad and Joe Root played key roles in the Ashes win, but neither man made the BBC Sports Personality shortlist © Getty Images



There are some things - good teeth, a parachute, a car that starts in wet weather - that you appreciate more in their absence.

So it was when the contenders were announced for the BBC's Sports Personality of the Year award. In a year when England have won the Ashes, when Joe Root has been rated - albeit briefly - the best Test batsman in the world and when Stuart Broad has bowled out Australia in a session, there was no room for a cricketer in the 12-strong list.

That is not to denigrate the merits of each contender or accept the somewhat self-congratulatory worth of the award. But there was a time when Ashes success warranted open-top bus rides through Trafalgar Square and MBEs all round. There was a time when cricket seemed to matter more.

But that was when cricket was broadcast on free-to-air television. And, whatever the many merits of Sky's coverage of England cricket over the last decade or so, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the game, starved of the oxygen of publicity in the UK, is diminishing in relevance by the year.

The broadcast deal is not cricket's only issue. Many school playing fields are long gone and cricket, with its demand for time and facilities, cannot reasonably be expected to fit into many teachers' timetables. The world has changed and a game that lasts either a full afternoon or five days may have lost its appeal to a quicker, more impatient world.

When Warwickshire first won the County Championship, a huge crowd greeted their return to New Street Station; if they win it next year, the local paper will pick up a short report paid for by the ECB and find a column inside the paper for it. The warning signs are everywhere.

Which is why T20 cricket - and televised free-to-air T20 cricket - is so vital. It is the vehicle by which the game can reconnect and inspire another generation of players and supporters. The hugely encouraging spectator numbers in 2015, spectator numbers that owe a great deal to the marketing nous of some counties, shows there is hope and potential. It remains a great game. We just need to expose more people to it.

It seems the penny has dropped. While nothing is yet resolved, it does seem that some key figures at the ECB have accepted the counties' argument that free-to-air coverage - either on television or on-line - has a part to play in the next television deal.

They had hoped that a new, city-based T20 league would enable them to squeeze enough money out of the next broadcast deal to make the problem go away for a while. But the counties saw, to their credit, that this would have been a short-term solution. They saw that all the redeveloped stadiums in the land and a bank account boasting reserves of £80m or more (as the ECB have) was no use if those stadiums were rarely full.

They saw, unlike the previous regime at the ECB, that money does not make everything alright. That not everything of value can be packaged and sold. That they exist to nurture and develop the sport and the money they make is a valuable tool to that end, not the end in itself.

Cricket Australia have already journeyed that way. They took a hit on the Big Bash broadcasting deal, realising that it was more important for the sport to reach a mass audience on free-to-air TV rather than earn short-term riches on a subscription panel. They have pointed the way for the ECB.

It currently seems likely (it could change) that, between 2017 and 2019 at least, the English domestic T20 tournament will be played in two divisions with broadcasters focussing almost exclusively on the top division. Many of the counties hope that format will remain long after the new broadcast deals begin in 2020; some at Lord's hope it will be a Trojan horse for an eight- or nine-team event. If that latter argument wins in an era of subscription-only coverage, the game will become invisible across vast tracts of the country. It will retract yet further.

That would be a missed opportunity. For there is, right now, much to like about English cricket. While football - with its spoilt-brat millionaire heroes - has lost touch with the man in the street, cricketers have re-engaged. They play with a smile, they stop for autographs and photos. They remind us that it is perfectly possible to be hugely talented, successful and likeable.

The national team play exciting, joyful cricket. They have, in Jos Buttler, a man who can produce the sort of innings we used to see only when the finest Caribbean cricketers played the county game. They have, in Ben Stokes, an allrounder to make football-loving kids want to pick up a bat and ball; a man in Joe Root who might be the finest batsman in the world; a leader in Charlotte Edwards who has remained at the top of her sport throughout her career and done a great deal to further her sport. And, at a time when a few shrill voices would have us believe that communities of different faiths and cultures cannot coexist, a man in Moeen Aliwho gently shows us otherwise. There is much to celebrate in cricket.

But who will know unless they have a cricket-loving parent, they attend a private school or they come from an Asian community where the game remains relevant? How will the sport reach a new audience? How, in the long-term, will the value of the broadcast deals be maintained if the market diminishes? Cricket in England has become a niche and the absence of a cricketer in the Sports Personality of the Year list is another sign.

The money earned over the last few years has enabled the ECB to do many admirable things. They have led the way in the funding of disability cricket, the development of women's cricket and the improvement of facilities from the grassroots to the international game. All of this would have been desperately difficult without Sky's investment.

Nor is the past is not quite as marvellous as is remembered. Channel 4's coverage of two Ashes series - now talked about as if it were a golden age - was interrupted, in all, by 33 hours' worth of horse racing. Channel 4 also persuaded the ECB to start Tests at 10.30am one summer in order not to disrupt the evening scheduling of The Simpsons and Hollyoaks.

Equally, the BBC coverage of "Botham's Ashes" of 1981 was interrupted by programmes such as Playschool, Chock-a-block and The Skill of Lip-Reading while, for several years, their Sunday League coverage consisted of a single camera. Still, for many of us, it was our gateway drug to this great game. And yes, it seems to fair to reflect whether the BBC, for all the excellence of its radio coverage, for all its good intentions and the fine things it stands for, is currently keeping its side of the bargain when it comes to broadcasting sport.

Since 2006, Sky, with their multiple cameras, has taken cricket coverage to a new level. By broadcasting all England games home and away - something of which we could not dream 25 years ago - guaranteeing weeks of county coverage each season, and their willingness (a willingness we often take for granted in the UK but which is rare elsewhere) to ask the hard questions in interviews and commentary, they probably offer the best service cricket lovers have ever had.

Or at least those who can afford it. And there is the rub, because whatever the virtue of the Sky deal for the ECB's finances and whatever the virtues of their coverage, the fact is that vast sections of the country have no access to live cricket on television. In a nation where an uncomfortable number have the need of foodbanks, it is grotesque to think most could afford subscription TV if they only cared enough.

And whatever the benefits of sending coaches into primary schools - and Sky's money has helped fund Chance to Shine - it is hard to believe that 1,000 hours of helping kids hit tennis balls off cones will ever replace one hour of inspiration provided by watching the likes of Ian Botham, Andrew Flintoff or Ben Stokes lead England to the Ashes. Nothing can replace the oxygen of publicity. The benefits of the Sky money have long since been counteracted by the negatives in the reduced audience.

The water has been rising round our feet for some time. We have seen reports of falling participation numbers, we have seen England teams disproportionately reliant upon cricketers who learned the game either abroad or in public schools, and we have seen newspapers that used to take pride in their county cricket coverage abandon it almost completely. We have seen poorly attended international games - only the Ashes seems to be immune from the decline -  The absence of a cricketer from the Sport's Personality of the Year list - whatever the imperfections of that contest - is the latest symbol of the decline. We're fools to ignore it.

This is not meant to sound pessimistic. Were there a fire in the building, one could remain optimistic of escape while still sounding the alarm. We have a great game to offer. But, as Bob Dylan put it, let us not talk falsely now, for the hour is getting late.

Food banks in the UK: cowardly coalition can't face the truth about them

Conservatives cannot admit a real fear of hunger afflicts thousands

• 
• • Nick Cohen
  • The Observer, Saturday 28 December 2013 18.29 GMT

Donated food at a a food bank. Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian

I went to the Trussell Trust food bank round the corner from the Observer's offices just before Christmas. If I hadn't been reading the papers, I would have assumed it represented everything Conservatives admire. As at every other food bank, volunteers who are overwhelmingly churchgoers ran it and organised charitable donations from the public.

What could be closer to Edmund Burke's vision of the best of England that David Cameron says inspired his "big society"? You will remember that in his philippic against the French revolution, Burke said his contemporaries should reject its dangerously grandiose ambitions , and learn that "to love the little platoons we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ, as it were) of public affections". Yet when confronted with displays of public affection – not in 1790 but in 2013 – the coalition turns its big guns on the little platoons.

It would have been easy for the government to say that it was concerned that so many had become so desperate. This was Britain, minsters might have argued, not some sun-beaten African kleptocracy. Regardless of politics, it was a matter of common decency and national pride that Britain should not be a land where hundreds of thousands cannot afford to eat. The coalition might not have meant every word or indeed any word. But it would have been in its self-interest to emit a few soothing expressions of concern, and offer a few tweaks to an inhumanely inefficient benefits system, if only to allay public concern about the rotten state of the nation.

But the coalition is not even prepared to play the hypocrite. Iain Duncan Smith showed why he never won the VC when he was in the Scots Guards when he refused to face the Labour benches as the Commons debated food banks on 18 December. He pushed forward his deputy, one Esther McVey, a former "TV personality". All she could say was that hunger was Labour's fault for wrecking the economy. She gave no hint that her government had been in power for three years during which the number attending food banks had risen from 41,000 in 2010 to more than 500,000. Her remedy was for the coalition to help more people into work.

If she had bothered talking to the Trussell Trust, it would have told her that low-paid work is no answer. Its 1,000 or so distribution points serve working families, who have no money left for food once they have paid exorbitant rent and fuel bills.

But then no one in power wants to talk to the trust. As the Observer revealed, Chris Mould, its director, wrote to Duncan Smith asking if they could discuss cheap ways of reducing hunger: speeding up appeals against benefit cuts; or stopping the endemic little Hitlerism in job centres, which results in unjust punishments for trivial transgressions. In other words, a Christian charity, which was turning the "big society" from waffle into a practical reality, was making a civil request. Duncan Smith responded with abuse. The charity's claims to be "non-partisan" were a sham, he said. The Trussell Trust was filled with "scaremongering" media whores, desperate to keep their names in the papers. But he had their measure.

Oh, yes. "I understand that a feature of your business model must require you to continuously achieve publicity, but I'm concerned that you are now seeking to do this by making your political opposition to welfare reform overtly clear."

Ministers will not confess to making a mistake for fear of damaging their careers. But it is not only their reputations but an entire world view that is at stake. Put bluntly, the Conservatives hope to scrape the 2015 election by convincing a large enough minority that welfare scroungers are stealing their money. They cannot admit that a real fear of hunger afflicts hundreds of thousands. Hence, Lord Freud, the government's adviser on welfare reform, had to explain away food banks by saying: "There is an almost infinite demand for a free good."

My visit to the food bank showed that our leaders' ignorance has become a deliberate refusal to face a social crisis. Of course, the volunteers help working families and students as well as the unemployed and pensioners. Everyone apart from ministers knows about in-work poverty. As preposterous is the Tory notion that the banks are filled with freeloaders.

You cannot just swan in. You get nothing unless a charity or public agency has assessed your need and given you a voucher. The trust is at pains to make sure that the beggars – for hundreds of thousands of beggars is what Britain now has – receive a balanced diet. To feed a couple for five days, it gives: one medium pack of cereal, 80 teabags, a carton of milk, two cans apiece of soup, beans, tomatoes and vegetables, two portions of meat and fish, fruit, rice pudding, sugar, pasta and juice. That this is hardly a feast is confirmed by the short list of "treats", which, "when available", consist of "one bar of chocolate and one jar of jam".

Sharon Cumberbatch, who runs the centre, tells me that she is so worried that shame will deter her potential clients that she packages food in supermarket bags so no one need know its source. The clients, when I met them, reinforced her point that they were not the brazen freeloaders of Tory nightmare. They trembled when they told me how they did not know how they would make it into the new year.

Most of all, it was the volunteers who were a living reproof to a coalition that can cannot correct its errors. They not only distribute food but collect it. They stand outside supermarkets all day asking strangers to buy the tinned food they need or hand out leaflets in the streets or plead with businesses to help. Sharon Cumberbatch is unemployed but she works to help others for nothing. Her colleagues said they manned the bank because hunger in modern Britain was a sign of a country that was falling apart. Or as one volunteer, Richard Moorhead, put it to me: "I am gobsmacked that people are going hungry. I'm ashamed."

The coalition can call such attitudes political if it wants – in the broadest sense they are. But they are also patriotic, neighbourly, charitable and kind. They come from people who represent a Britain the Conservative party once claimed a kinship with, and now cannot bring itself to talk to.

Iain Duncan Smith leaves Commons debate on food banks early

Jonathan Paige in the Independent

Tory ministers have been condemned for not taking the plight Britain's poor seriously after a rowdy Commons debate on food banks during which the Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith refused to answer questions and left early.

As Fiona MacTaggart, the Labour MP for Slough, described how people battled over end of day bargains in her local Tesco, she was almost drowned out by laughter and jeering from the government benches.

Ms MacTaggart could barely be heard over the braying as she described how the supermarket had been forced to draft in extra security and asked “Isn't that a shocking sign in the 21st century?”

Labour MP for Copeland in Cumbria, Jamie Reed told The Mirror: “I regret to say the laughter from the government benches says more about this issue than words ever could.”

Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, and the remaining government ministers from his department left the debate after an hour, well before its conclusion.

Barry Gardiner, Labour MP for Brent said it was “extraordinary” to see Mr Duncan Smith smirking as it was pointed out that half a million people are now using food banks - and the minister refused to answer any questions directly, instead leaving them to be fielded by his deputy, Esther McVey.

The Trussell Trust, the nation's largest provider of food banks, with almost 400 branches said it was “disappointed” by the attitude of those who jeered.

Labour had called the debate after nearly 150,000 people signed a petition backed by The Mirror, the Unite union and The Trussell Trust calling for an inquiry into the growing dependence on food aid.

Ms McVey said it was a good thing that more people were turning to food banks and that Germany and Canada had also seen a rise in their use.

The Tory MP for Wirral West said:  “It is positive that people are reaching out to support other people - from church groups to community groups, to local supermarkets and other groups.”

She went on to try to pin the blame on spiralling food bank use on the Labour party.

“In the UK it is right that more people are... going to food banks because as times are tough, we are all having to pay back this £1.5 trillion debt personally which spiralled under Labour, we are all trying to live within our means, change the gear and make sure that we pay back all our debt which happened under them.”

But Conservative MP Laura Sandys (South Thanet) said: “Food banks are not the answer. They must be seen as a transitional support mechanism for families in stress at particular moments.

"They are not a solution or something we want institutionalised."

Labour's Sir Gerald Kaufman described McVey's speech as the nastiest he had heard in his 43 years as an MP.

As Mr Duncan Smith and his colleagues left, the speaker John Bercow said he had no power to stop them, but said the view that it was a disgrace there was no minister there ”may be widely shared".

Shadow Environment Secretary Maria Eagle said “It's a scandal which is getting worse and the Government now has the humiliation of the Red Cross helping to collect and distribute food aid in Britain for the first time since the Second World War.”

And the former Labour cabinet minister Paul Murphy said he had never seen such poverty in his 40 years as a Welsh politician, apart from during the 1984 miners' strike.

Labour's motion calling on the government to reduce dependency on food bank was eventually defeated by 294 votes to 251, a majority of 43 as Tories and Lib Dems banded together to shout it down.

Let's admit it: Britain is now a developing country

We have iPads and broadband – but also oversubscribed foodbanks. Our economy is no longer zooming along unchallenged in the fast lane, but a clapped-out motor

• 
• • Aditya Chakrabortty
  • The Guardian, Monday 9 December 2013 20.00 GMT

A foodbank in the Black Country. Photograph: David Jones/PA

Elite economic debate boils down to this: a man in a tie stands at a dispatch box and reads out some numbers for the years ahead, along with a few micro-measures he'll take to improve those projections. His opposite number scoffs at the forecasts and promises his tweaks would be far superior. For a few hours, perhaps even a couple of days, afterwards, commentators discuss What It All Means. Last Thursday's autumn statement from George Osborne was merely the latest enactment of this twice-yearly ritual, and I bet you've already forgotten it.

Compare his forecasts and fossicking with our fundamental problems. Start with last week's Pisa educational yardsticks, which show British teenagers trailing their Vietnamese counterparts at science, and behind the Macanese at maths. Or look at this year's World Economic Forum (WEF) competitiveness survey of 148 countries, which ranks British roads below Chile's, and our ground-transport system worse than that of Barbados.

Whether Blair or Brown or Cameron, successive prime ministers and their chancellors pretend that progress is largely a matter of trims and tweaks – of capping business rates and funding the A14 to Felixstowe. Yet those Treasury supplementary tables and fan charts are no match for the mass of inconvenient facts provided by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the WEF or simply by going for a wander. Sift through the evidence and a different picture emerges: Britain's economy is no longer zooming along unchallenged in the fast lane, but an increasingly clapped-out motor regularly overtaken by Asian Tigers such as South Korea and Taiwan.

Gender equality? The WEF ranks us behind Nicaragua and Lesotho. Investment by business? The Economist thinks we are struggling to keep up with Mali.

Let me put it more broadly, Britain is a rich country accruing many of the stereotypical bad habits of a developing country.

I began thinking about this last week, while reporting on graphene, the wonder material discovered by Manchester scientists and held up by cabinet ministers as part of our new high-tech future. Graphene is also the point at which Treasury dreaminess is harshly interrupted by the reality of our national de-development.

Briefly, the story goes like this: Osborne funnelled a few tens of millions into research on the substance. It's the kind of public-sector kickstart that might work in a manufacturing economy such as Germany – but which in Britain, with its hollowed-out industry and busted supply chains, has proved the equivalent of pouring money down a hole. One university physicist described how this was part of a familiar pattern of generating innovations for the rest of the world to capitalise on, then sighed: "One day, we'll stop thinking of ourselves as a major economic power, and realise we're more like South Korea in the early 60s." South Korea, by way of comparison, has already put in over 20 times as many graphene patents as the country that discovered it.

How can any nation that came up with the BBC and the NHS be considered in the same breath as India or China? Let me refer you to one of the first lines of The Great Indian Novel by Shashi Tharoor, in which a wise old man warns International Monetary Fund officials and foreign dignatories: "India is not, as people keep calling it, an underdeveloped country, but rather, in the context of its history and cultural heritage, a highly developed one in an advanced state of decay."

Stop thinking of development as a process that only goes in one direction, or which affects a nation's people equally, and it becomes much easier to see how Britain is going backwards.

Even banana republics have cash: it just ends up in the hands of a very few people – ask the bank managers of Switzerland or the hotel concierges of Paris. In Britain, we have become used to having our resources skimmed off by a small cadre of the international elite, who often don't feel obliged to leave much behind for our tax officials. An Africa specialist could look at the City and recognise in it a 21st-century version of a resource curse: something generating oodles of money for a tiny group of people, often foreign, yet whose demands distort the rest of the economy. Sure, Britain has iPads and broadband – but it also has oversubscribed foodbanks. And the concept of the working poor that has dominated political debate since the crash is also something straight out of development textbooks.

Nobel laureate Amartya Sen defined development as "the removal of various types of unfreedoms that leave people with little choice and little opportunity of exercising their reasoned agency". Yet when it comes to social mobility, Britain now has the worst record of all advanced countries – and will soon be overtaken by the newly rich countries of east Asia.

And it's when wealth is concentrated in too few hands that the forces of law and order get used as a militia for the elite – and peaceful dissent gets stamped upon. That's why police are now a presence on our business-friendly university campuses; it also explains why Theresa May had the front to try to deport Trenton Oldfield for disrupting a student rowing competition (sorry, the Boat Race).

This isn't a sub-Rhodesian moan about Britain going to the dogs. But as my colleague Larry Elliott said in his most recent book, Going South, the sooner we puncture our own complacency at having created a rich economy for the few, and think of ourselves as in dire need of a proper economic development plan, the better.

Otherwise, we're well set to corner the world market in pig semen. The United Kingdom of spoink.

UK's first 'social supermarket' opens to help fight food poverty

Community Shop in Goldthorpe gives local shoppers access to surplus food from supermarkets for up to 70% less

• Rebecca Smithers
• The Guardian, Monday 9 December 2013

Community Shop customers will not only get access to cheaper food, but will also be offered social and financial support. Photograph: Murdo Macleod

Britain's first "social supermarket" opens its doors on Monday, offering shoppers on the verge of food poverty the chance to buy food and drink for up to 70% less than normal high-street prices.

If successful, the Community Shop, in Goldthorpe, near Barnsley, south Yorkshire, which is backed by large retailers and supermarkets, could be replicated elsewhere in Britain.

Community Shop is a subsidiary of Company Shop, Britain's largest commercial re-distributor of surplus food and goods, which works with retailers and manufacturers to tackle their surpluses sustainably and securely.

It sells on residual products, such as those with damaged packaging or incorrect labelling, to membership-only staff shops in factories. The new project goes one step further, located in the community for the first time and also matching surplus food with social need.

Membership of the pilot store – in Goldthorpe, an area of social deprivation – will be restricted to people living in a specific local postcode area who also get welfare support.

Individuals who shop at Community Shop will not only get access to cheaper food, but will also be offered programmes of wider social and financial support, such as debt advice, cookery skills and home budgeting.

The scheme is being supported by retailers, brands and manufacturers, including Asda, Morrisons, Co-operative Food, M&S, Tesco, Mondelez, Ocado, Tetley, Young's and Müller. All are diverting surpluses to the pilot.

Company Shop hopes to open Community Shops in London and beyond next year should the pilot prove successful and sustainable.

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Gurdwaras-turned-food banks: Sikh temples are catering for rise in Britain’s hungry

Each week across the UK, around 5,000 vegetarian meals are served to the needy

It is lunchtime at the Karamsar Gurdwara, where worshippers are tucking into the free food. But Sikhs are not the only ones enjoying the temple meals. Religious leaders report that an increasing number of non-believers are visiting their place of worship to eat, treating them as food banks while the effects of austerity and economic slump bite.

The Sikh Federation UK estimates that around 5,000 meals are now served to non-Sikhs by Britain’s 250 gurdwaras each week. They say the meals have been a lifeline for homeless people and overseas students swamped in debt.

Harmander Singh, who worships at the Karamsar Gurdwara in east London and is a spokesman for the Sikhs In England think-tank, said: “It’s noticeable: more people coming in and more people coming frequently. Some are working in low-paid jobs, cannot afford lunch and come here to subsidise living costs. They are also women with kids.”

He said that Sikhs welcome anyone into the gurdwara as long as they are not drunk, they remove their shoes and cover their head, adding: “It’s not a free buffet, it’s a way of serving the community.”

In the Karamsar Gurdwara’s dining area, most people sit on the floor while eating. The food is made round the clock by volunteers and funded by donations. In Sikhism, only vegetarian food is served in the gurdwara so the cuisine includes lentils, roti Indian bread, vegetables, yoghurt and Indian sweets.

Foodbanks fed 346,992 people across Britain in the UK last year, according to the Trussell Trust. The Sikh temples cannot help that many people, but the service is welcomed.

Among the 6,000 visitors a week lunching at the Karamsar Gurdwara was a group of overseas medical students.

One student from China, who wished to remain anonymous, said: “My friend brought me here. I found it very welcoming and peaceful. People were very friendly. They are taking care of me. I like the variety of the food. I haven’t seen this before I came to England. People seem to be very nice.”

Another student from India, who is Catholic, said: “For the last 10 days we have come here regularly. They have a welcoming attitude. People don’t discriminate. I was surprised to see a mini Punjab here. The food is like home-cooked.”

Amrick Singh Ubhi of the Nishkam Centre in Birmingham and vice-chair of the Council of Sikh Gurdwoaras, explained how their local community group does outreach work for people worried about visiting a place of worship.

“Nishkam Help is one example of a project to help feed people in the centre of Birmingham which has had to extend its provision to three nights a week and we have supported the initiation of similar programmes with gurdwaras in Leeds and Glasgow.

“The Birmingham Community Support Network has been set up to deal with the increase in demand especially as a result of the welfare reforms.

“We are hearing and seeing an increase of other nationalities frequenting gurdwaras specifically for langar.

“We have to realise that while we see our respective places of worship as a sanctuary, not all people will.  We see that people of other faiths and none do mix, but there is always that apprehension of “the other” and until we break down those barriers and start working together that will remain so.”

Is Britain's economy really on the path to prosperity?

Osborne's autumn statement will likely present a rosy picture of growth. But is it to be short-lived?

• 
• • Heather Stewart, economics editor
  • The Observer, Saturday 30 November 2013 23.12 GMT

George Osborne is expected to be in bullish mood when he delivers his autumn statement on Thursday. Photograph: Goh Chai Hin/AFP

Brightly coloured New Balance trainers are beloved of celebrities, from Ben Affleck to Heidi Klum. But if you buy a pair of the US firm's shoes in Europe or Asia they are most likely to have been made on the edge of the Lake District. From its British factory in Flimby, on the Cumbrian coast, the hi-spec trainer-maker will turn out more than a million pairs of shoes this year, with more than a third of those made from scratch – cut out and intricately stitched by its 245 skilled staff, who spend more than a year learning their trade.

Since the great recession of 2008-09, when production of the high-value "lifestyle" lines that occupy most of its machinists' time was slashed in half, factory manager Andy Okolowicz says things have gradually improved: "We have had three or four years now of very steady business, both in the UK and for export." It has stepped up output of these fashion shoes by 24% this year and hired more than 10 new staff.

This is the US firm's only European factory, selling to markets across the world, including Germany, France, Japan and Australia – and with the union flag stitched prominently on to the back of many of the models, it's exactly the kind of Made in Britain success story the chancellor hopes to see more of as economic growth picks up.

In George Osborne's 2011 budget speech, he laid out a stirring picture of a new model for the British economy: one driven by a "march of the makers", such as Flimby's trainer-stitchers, instead of what he called "debt-fuelled" growth: buy-to-letters, non-stop shoppers and high-rolling City gamblers.

Two-and-a-half years later, as he prepares to deliver his autumn statement on Thursday, the chancellor can finally boast that the long-awaited economic recovery has arrived: growth has rebounded sharply, unemployment is falling, and business surveys suggest confidence has been restored. As Simon Wells of HSBC puts it, the economy has moved "from a state of despair, to repair".

In March, the independent Office for Budget Responsibility, which draws up the forecasts Osborne uses to plan his tax and spending policies, was expecting negligible growth of 0.6% this year. City experts now forecast more than double that. Similarly, the OBR's 1.8% projection for 2014 now looks far too pessimistic. New forecasts, to be published alongside Osborne's statement, are expected to be rosier and the chancellor is likely to repeat his claim that the UK is now set firmly on the "path to prosperity".

In fact, with a number of eurozone countries barely out of recession, it would hardly be surprising if the chancellor allowed himself a Gordon Brown-style bout of economic Top Trumps, comparing the relatively upbeat outlook for the UK with the gloomy prognosis elsewhere.

"Osborne is probably looking forward to this autumn statement, because he doesn't have to announce that growth forecasts have been revised down for the umpteenth time," says Lee Hopley, chief economist at manufacturers' group the EEF.

Yet, as James Meadway of the New Economics Foundation puts it, "this is definitely not the recovery the coalition wanted or forecast". The breakdown of the latest growth figures showed that business investment – critical for rebuilding a new-style, more productive economy – is down by more than 6% year on year; exports are all but flat, despite the 20% fall in the value of the pound since the crisis; and manufacturing output remains 9% below where it was in 2008, despite the successes of the likes of New Balance and Britain's rampant car-makers.

In Flimby, Okolowicz explains that, while it's undoubtedly a success story, his factory is the final remnant of a much larger shoemaking industry in the area: K shoes and Bata once had plants locally, employing several thousand staff, instead of fewer than 300 at New Balance. Britain is a long way from recapturing its role as an industrial powerhouse.

Hopley, of the EEF, says for her members, this year has been, "good, but not spectacular".

Meanwhile, consumer spending is expanding strongly, borrowing is up and house prices are reviving across a swath of the country. Meadway says: "This is not a recovery, it's essentially a reversion: we're going back to the same kind of economy we saw in 2004 or 2005." Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, recently said he expected three-quarters of growth over the next year or so to come from consumption or housing – but many economists fear that's a risky model.

In the capital, some of the worst excesses of the property boom years are back. Aggressive estate agents are pushing leaflets through homeowners' doors and lining up scores of buyers to jostle with each other at "open days". Penthouses in the lavish Battersea Power Station redevelopment are expected to go on sale – most likely to overseas buyers – for £30m. And official figures show the UK now has a record number of estate agents.

In many parts of the country, the housing market is barely stirring from a five-year slumber. But the Bank's financial policy committee – the 10 people with the job of bursting future bubbles – have become so concerned about signs of froth that they have scaled back the government-backed Funding for Lending scheme so that it will no longer subsidise mortgages.

Some lenders have said the removal of the Bank's support, which Carney described as "taking our foot off the accelerator", will make little difference because the market has now gathered momentum of its own. But others believe the rise in mortgage rates that is likely to result will be enough to pour cold water on the growing mood of optimism.

As for consumer spending – the other major support for economic growth over the past six months – since wages have continued to lag behind inflation this latest shopping spree appears to have been fuelled not by consumers' growing spending power, but households dipping into their savings or taking out loans – including the short-term, high-cost payday loans that have caused growing political controversy.

"It feels as if there's a significant lag factor between the economic indicators and what it means for real people in their real lives," says Gillian Guy, chief executive of Citizens Advice, whose advisers see two million people with debt problems each year. She says that the spread of insecure, short-term contracts and part-time work, together with benefits cuts and paltry wage growth, have meant that many people in work are struggling to make ends meet.

That's a picture echoed by Chris Mould, executive chairman of the Trussell Trust, which runs 400 food banks up and down the country, providing three days' worth of emergency produce for people in dire straits. "We're seeing more and more people in crisis coming to food banks and we anticipate the numbers of people who find themselves in financial crisis as a proportion of the population to go up in the next few months. Generally, people are being severely squeezed by price rises – energy costs, rent, food – and the price rises in these areas are running way ahead of inflation."

Osborne hopes that, as the recovery gathers pace, employers will start to loosen the purse-strings, hiring new staff and offering more generous pay, helping to ease the squeeze for consumers and validating the mood of rising optimism. But both Guy and Mould fear it may be a long time before the people who come through their doors are able to make ends meet; and if rising real wages fail to materialise, the consumer upturn could prove short-lived. There's no doubt that the backdrop to the autumn statement is far rosier than anyone, not least Osborne himself, could have hoped six months ago. But Britain's economic resurgence is far less of a victory for the likes of Flimby's highly skilled machinists, and more of a blast from the "debt-fuelled" past than the coalition would have wished – and, as yet, there's no telling how long it will last.