This is Britain today. Staff at the Trussell Trust, which coordinates a network offood banks, have come up with the idea of kettle boxes and cold boxes because they're seeing people who cannot afford to heat their food, or simply don't have what's required to do so. Morecambe Bay food bank is giving out a couple of each of these every week to its clients.

When government apologists tell you their welfare reforms are working, they don't tell you about the people surviving on kettle boxes. They know most people won't ask.

The other day a friend told me about people he sees on a Sheffield estate who go into a takeaway twice a day for cheap, fatty food. 'No wonder they're obese,' he said. "They're just bone idle.'"

Another friend was shocked to hear that around 30,000 people in Sheffield are undernourished. 'Don't these people get benefits?' she asked.

Of course some people are bone idle, and not all of them are in the House of Lords. But studies of people who are long term unemployed suggest that most people on out-of-work are desperate to work and have a work ethic at least as strong as those in employment

The people who go to takeaways twice a day may find it cheaper to buy hot snacks than to pay gas and electricity bills. They may be seriously depressed and struggle to find the energy to cook the same basic ingredients week after week. It's much easier, though, if we can assume they're idle and blame them for their predicament.

There are people who struggle with budgeting and who mismanage their income, or who seek oblivion in drink and drugs. It's more obvious when they have little than when they are hidden behind suburban curtains. But the reality is that many more are having to cope with the consequences of decisions taken by others, in particular the unforgivable delays in paying out of work benefits, which leave families relying on friends and charity (see this report on Sheffield food banks, or Church Action on Poverty's Walking the Breadline). This is likely to get even worse as the government targets welfare recipients for the worst of its next tranche of cuts.

This doesn't give people incentives to improve their lives. It's the institutionalised kicking of people when they're down, and my friends' comments show just how successful our political and media culture has been in perpetuating the lie that if your life is in a mess, it's almost certainly your own fault.

What the purveyors of blame fail to recognise is how utterly counterproductive this punitive mentality is. Depriving people of the little they get doesn't make them more able to cope: it only makes them more desperate. They may vanish from the unemployment figures and the claimant count, but they're still with us.

This is why we need to rethink welfare in a way that treats people as adults who can and should make their own choices about their lives. To do that we need to guarantee everyone the basics of life and to centre our policies on human needs, as I argued in this report last year.

Instead of taking away the little people have, a far more positive approach would be to guarantee them a sufficient minimum income to cover all the basics of life. We can then dismantle much of the costly and vindictive apparatus of Jobcentre Plus and the Department of Work and Pensions and redirect those funds to provide real help to those who don't have the skills to manage or who are in crisis.

A basic minimum income isn't a utopian dream. As Frances Coppola has argued, it's an alternative that needs to be considered seriously; and as Matt Leach posted the other week, it's an approach that could take housing in particular out of the ideological battleground and enable landlords to think more creatively about their role in improving their tenants' lives and life chances.

A minimum income could free people to do work that is life-enhancing and builds community, rather than the drudgery of the despairing. It could defuse the culture of blame and finger-pointing that has contaminated political debate and strangled serious thinking about how to built a better society.

What Britain lacks is the political imagination to shift the terms of debate. Until more of us discover and articulate that imagination, we'll be stuck with the worst of solutions: kettle boxes, cold food parcels, and an uncomprehending culture of blame that changes nothing

Personally I am not a big fan of  this Christmas structure either, I LIKE real trees – so I am delighted to walk to the Christmas Market – around 400 meters from where you took your photograph and see the dozens of trees, festive cabins full of local independent traders, illuminated churchyard oh, and just along from there, another massive tree overlooking our illuminated riverside. Could it be that your photographer and reporter are only able to look at things from one angle? SURELY NOT! For your information, the works going on around the end of the high street where you kindly visited and decided to focus on meant that the positioning of a tree or lighting a pointless and cost-ineffective waste. Your regular readership would love such strategic ‘efficiency’ surely. I believe the structure you call a tree is part of a much bigger lighting scheme for next year. Sadly that, I presume is the year you will be concentrating on slating someone else’s efforts within our recession torn country.

So, next time you come to my town Daily Mail… I would personally like to meet you. I would like to tell you of our heritage; of our regeneration and of our vision. I would love you to meet some of the 2000 participants of last week’s community event; or the massive numbers of small, specialist shops who are bucking the trend and successfully setting up shop in the high street; I could take you for a coffee in one of a number of cafes and tea rooms; perhaps you could enjoy a gig, a comedy night, or theatre show in our thriving arts centre. We could pop to the world class watersports centre or visit Durham University Queens Campus And then, once you have visited, I will wait – and enjoy your complete lack of coverage and silent ignorance of a community that is real, dynamic and regenerating.

I look forward to meeting you.

Best Wishes

A Man You Don’t Meet Everyday

After months of being shifted from developer to service provider, from service provider to local council and back around, Alex was told they needed to measure the distance involved to determine the cost.  Nothing has happened so Alex joined resident, Chris Andrew, and measured the distance themselves.
They found that around 100 metres of cable is needed and the nearest property is just one metre from a service point.

Alex said:  “This is a very frustrating situation for residents in Brunel Walk who, through no fault of their own, are unable to access a service which is increasingly vital for everyday living in the modern world.  I would like to see Keepmoat, Virgin Media and Stockton Council get together to rectify this bizarre situation – especially as cable boxes are located so close by.”

Keepmoat Homes, who are currently responsible for Brunel Walk, have insisted that Virgin Media should bear the costs for fully relaying the footpaths which would have to be dug up in order for Virgin’s cables to be laid.  This is intended to satisfy an agreement with Stockton Borough Council, under Section 38 of the 1980 Highways Act, that the Council will not adopt land from a private developer until work is completed to a necessary standard, which includes the reinstatement of whole footpaths, as opposed to the refilling of trenches only.  However, Virgin Media have declined to commit to full reinstatement of footpaths on cost grounds, leaving residents of Brunel Walk without access to broadband.

Resident Chris Andrew, who lives in Brunel Walk with his wife and young son, said:   “It is ridiculous that we cannot access superfast broadband internet services in a newly built estate like this.  The irony is that we still receive general mail outs from Virgin Media boasting that Virgin broadband is in our area.”

Read More Blog :     Incidents on Teesside | Facebook page removes or prevents commenting