Slough, United Kingdom, Dec 5 (AFP/APP): As record numbers of Britons are forced to use food banks and homelessness soars, for many people rampant poverty, not Brexit, is the main issue in next week’s general election. In Slough, west of London and just four miles (6.4 kilometres) from Queen Elizabeth II’s opulent Windsor Castle residence, ex-drug addict John unwraps Christmas chocolates. “Without these people, we wouldn’t be able to eat so… people like us couldn’t really exist,” he told AFP at a food bank operating out of a Baptist church near a sex shop. Anti-hunger campaigners the Trussell Trust, which runs the facility and more than 1,200 food banks like it, handed out a record 823,145 emergency parcels — which each comprise food for three days — in the six months to September. That was the busiest half-year since the organisation was created in 1997 and marked a 23-percent surge from the same period of 2018. In Slough, a large industrial town of 162,000 people best known in recent years as the drab setting for comedian Ricky Gervais’ cult comedy “The Office”, the increase was 29 percent. The jump in demand was partly from the working poor struggling to make … Continue reading Austerity — the backdrop to Britain’s ‘Brexit election’