Zacchaeus 2000 Trust Chairman Paul Nicholson has gained a great deal of coverage in recent days over the Occupy London Stock Excahnge (LSX) protest.
As a Reverend, Paul has provided a voice from the clergy that supports the broads aims of the Occupy LSX movement, specifically ending poverty. Below is a list of articles that mention Paul and Z2K with their links. Continue reading
If you read last week’s post about Ms. L who was treated appallingly by Hounslow Council you will be pleased to hear that local paper the Hounslow Chronicle featured the story on their front page.
You can read the article on the Chronicle’s website but you can also read it here in full: Continue reading
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unemployment benefit of young adults age 18-25 is currently £53.45 a week. It is already too low for healthy survival and can be stopped if the claimant does not attend a jobcentre interview. The Prime Minister’s plan to allow the magistrates to deduct £25 a week in fines from that inadequate benefit when young people offend has two possible consequences. Some young people will continue go hungry and fall ill or some others will continue to take criminal steps to survive.
My sermon is directed at the Bishop of London and the Dean of St Paul’s because I don’t think they understand the enormity of the economic injustice that has happened and is happening now, or the hurt it causes, and about which we protest robustly but non-violently and peacefully. My understanding of our faith is that we love everyone and put our impoverished, our sick and our old fellow citizens first. We believe that love should inspire the use of power, which should be exercised in the interests of justice. The British Parliament lost sight of those principles when it deregulated lending while copying the government of the United States in the 1980s. The next governments in both nations continued to allow the City of London and Wall Street recklessly to profit from that lack of regulation and to allow landlords to profit from the consequent rise of land prices and rents; so housing benefit rose to £22 billion a year in the UK. Parliament never put the lid on it. It all blew up in 2008. Continue reading
Mrs Ali was introduced to us by an Outreach Worker from one of Westminster’s Children’s Centres. An Egyptian refugee with 5 children, Mrs Ali’s husband abandoned the family in May before returning in August, becoming violent and subsequently being prevented from harassing the family by court order. Unknown to Mrs Ali, when she informed the Housing Benefit Department that her husband was no longer at the property she had to make a new claim, for which the new housing benefit caps applied (£400 a week maximum). Having signed a tenancy with her husband in February (before the caps), Mrs Ali suddenly found herself with a shortfall of £395 a week and no other option but to present her and her family as homeless. Continue reading
After 18 months of struggle we have succeeded in saving from homelessness F. a 20-year-old single mother care giver who has been looking after her 2 sibling brothers since she was 16. She had been placed in private rented accommodation because of the shortage of social housing and her unscrupulous landlord agreed a rent level for which she would have received full housing benefit only if the tiny living space in her flat was treated as another bedroom. Continue reading
The dean of St Paul’s and the bishop of London have, among many other relevant issues, missed an opportunty to encourage the campers to support an anti-poverty policy agreed unanimously by the General Synod of the Church of England in 2001 and repeatedly raised with governments since then. Continue reading
Equip members of the community with the knowledge which will enable them to help each other when they encounter problems with household debts and fines enforcement.
Residents and those working in Southwark.
“I feel I no longer need to worry about bills, I can face up to them with the knowledge received from the training”
Last week Z2K received a call from client whose cousin was is desperate need of assistance due to persistent incompetence by Hounslow Council’s Housing Department. Continue reading