Blog Action Day: Poverty

Today is Blog Action Day, when thousands of bloggers around the world all blog on the same topic and this year it's poverty. I've left it a bit late in the day to post this, but if I type fast I should just scrape in before midnight!

Here in Lewisham, Greens had a success a few months ago when we got the Council to sign up to commit to paying at least the London Living Wage to all its employees and require its contractors to do the same. The Council already was paying at least London Living Wage to all its employees, but there are plenty of cleaners, care assistants and others working for contractors that are still earning less than this. I have yet to see a Council contract where this stipulation was inserted as a result of the motion, but we keep prompting and asking about it and it will in time become the norm as contracts come up for renewal.

Lewisham Oxfam Campaigns have a busy few days coming up as part of the Stand up against Poverty Campaign. This Friday there is an Oxjam event at Jam Circus, on Sunday they have a collection and event in Lewisham Shopping Centre and on Monday they have a 'Stand up Take Action' comedy night at the Amersham Arms in New Cross. See their Facebook group for all the details of these 3 events.

Thanks to Jim for the prompt on this, I was suffering from poverty of imagination for a while there.