Monday 7 July 2008

How Much?!

Have you noticed that everything in the supermarket costs a bloomin fortune these days. Bread, milk, meat, veg - everything.

With oil and food prices at record highs on the international markets it costs more to make our stuff and transport it to us so we get hit in the pocket (and amazingly some of the firms involved are recording record profits - hmmm....!). So this combination of scarcity and selfishness means that a loaf that was 60p a few years ago is now £1.20. That's a 100% increase - ouch!

But lets say I live in the less developed world on a, well, I was going to say 'extremely low' wage but lets get our head round the fact that over 1 billion people, 1 in 6 on the planet live on less than about 50p a day - anyway lets say I make 50p a day, 7 days a week 52 weeks a year, that's £182.50 a year. Because I am very poor I spend much more than the UK average of about 9-15% of household income on food. I spend more like 50% on food. Ok lets do the maths-

Income £182.50pa
Spend on food £91.25

Food prices go up by 100% in last few years but of course I get no increase in wages so -

Income £182.50
Spend on food £182.50

Oh shit! - no rent for our home, money for schooling kids (get them working, what else can we do), no money for antiviral drugs to keep Mum and Dad's HIV at bay, etc, etc...

Feel like baking our own bread and doing something to help people who are being hit in the coffin rather than pocket?

Try this link for more from the Jubilee debt campaign - if there ever was a time when the global poor should be using their money to put food in bellies, skills in kids and medicine in bodies and NOT PAYING BACK DEBT SO THE RICH GET RICHER - its now.

Click on the logo to send a message to Alistair Darling and the G8 right now.

And seriously - anyone know how to bake bread, grow veg etc?!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

http://asbojesus.wordpress.com/2008/07/11/508-509/