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The US turmoil over fiscal matters has a mirror in the crisis approaching the welfare state, argues Dan Silver, as use of UK food banks rises six-fold Share 320 inShare7 Email Food banks are getting busier as austerity hits those least well-prepared to cope. Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian The six-fold increase in the use of food banks reveals a growing social crisis and the abject failure of the welfare state to provide the basic support that is required. Sadly, this is set to get worse in the New Year. The financial crisis of 2008, which for many has discredited the dominant model of financial capitalism, has been maintained by those currently in power. It has been reconstituted as a debt crisis caused by government deficits. Indeed, Ian Duncan Smith has argued that not only did welfare transfers (such as the tax credits that provide support to many underpaid workers) increase people's dependency on the state – worse still, it pushed the public finances

William Gladstone will scrutinise his boyhood surroundings, where he bathed on the beach now dotted with the sculptor's large men Share 38 inShare11 Email Antony Gormley's Another Place. Not dissimilar to Gladstone taking a dip. Photograph: Colin McPherson Antony Gormley's famous iron men on the beach at Crosby are to be joined by another piece of metal sculpture, safely on dry land. Less than a mile from the hundred huge figures, which were saved from being shipped elsewhere six years ago, an over-lifesize bronze bust of William Gladstone will be unveiled next month. Standing on an eight foot stone column, the piece shows "every nook and cranny" of the Liberal Prime Minister's craggy face, looking "as if he was always in a rush" according to sculptor Tom Murphy whose past subjects include John Lennon and Dixie Dean. The ' Grand Old Man' had plenty to think about, as the only person ever to serve as Prime Minister four times and a s

The Guardian Northerner's Ed Jacobs takes a post-holiday headache pill and spots possible light at the end of the recession tunnel Share 9 inShare1 Email Northern prosperity could be a trigger for national prosperity, says the OECD Photograph: Murdo Macleod The holiday is over and - as with all good festive seasons - we now enter the hangover period, with people up and down the country going back to work after nearly a fortnight of celebration, balancing excessive eating with quality family time. If this prospect isn't sobering enough, the economic predictions for 2013 should do the trick. Just before the Christmas break came the news that growth for the third quarter of 2012 had been revised down from 1% to 0.9%. Not a substantial adjustment, but enough to point to growth taking a downward trajectory, with the fourth quarter unlikely to be anywhere near that 'good' given the absence of revenues from the Olympics and the British Retail Consortium's assessme

The coalition promised to restore the authority of parliament, so why wasn't its mid-term progress report delivered there? Share 3 inShare0 Email Nick Clegg and David Cameron answer questions during a joint press conference inside No 10 Downing Street. Photograph: Peter Nicholls/AFP/Getty Images The detail which struck me forcefully about Monday's No 10 press conference went largely unreported, namely that it took place at all in the format it did. David Cameron has virtually abandoned Tony Blair's innovation, the monthly press conference. In any case, if he and Nick Clegg wanted to give a mid-term coalition report, surely they should have done so to MPs who just happened to reconvene on Monday? We all know what's going on here. Despite political reporters' efforts to put the PM and his deputy on the spot with some good questions, a press conference is a more easily orchestrated event. Journalists aren't elected, the terms of trade are harder, there&

Former foreign secretary challenges shadow chancellor by reframing Labour's economic policy Share 51 inShare1 Emaila David Miliband told MPs that the last Labour government had made mistakes. Photograph: Wpa Pool/Getty Images Has David Miliband just delivered one of his most significant speeches since his brother defeated him in the 2010 Labour leadership contest? The initial headlines on his speech on the welfare bill have focused on his attack on the government after he described the measure as "rancid". But this misses the most significant aspect of his speech – an apparent attempt to reframe Labour's economic policy which is being run by his great rival Ed Balls. The former foreign secretary told MPs he accepted the government's "envelope" in a key part of the public finances – a line Balls has yet to cross. *Miliband said the debate should not focus on affordability but about priorities within the "envelope" of "all benefi

Ann Czernik reports and photographs regularly for the Guardian Northerner on the social challenges facing our three regions as austerity takes its toll. In the last year, she has looked at York's housing crisis, action to defend jobs and teenage binge drinking as well as public reaction to 2012's byelections and police commissioner and local council polls. Here's her calendar with a precis of prospects for the year now under way. Share 6 inShare0 Email Lots of protests - and lots of votes, as here at the Rotherham byelection in November. Photograph: Anna Gowthorpe/PA Cuts to benefits and services and political infighting are likely to dominate the political agenda in 2013 as under-25s and public service workers bear the brunt of the Government's austerity agenda and families find it harder to manage from dwindling resources and higher costs of living. The transformation of the welfare state begins in earnest in April with the implementation of the bulk of the c

David Miliband clearly believes Nye Bevan's adage that the language of priorities is the religion of socialism Share 14 inShare0 Email Is it time for David Miliband to add his heft to an under-punching shadow cabinet? Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian An evidently warm-hearted Guardian reader came up to me at a conference on Tuesday and asked why Britain currently has such a feeble opposition. The question was not unkindly meant, so I answered in the same spirit. "It's hard to get a hearing when voters still remember your own mistakes in government, especially so when coalition ministers keep pointing out that many of the policies you now attack are ones you introduced when you were ministers." Cheer up, I have some modest words of encouragement and my provisional verdict is not intended to encourage those who say – as some do – that "all politicians are the same" which is such a dull, stupid and revealing observation. What it show

n my experience nearly everyone breaks the law occasionally – and I'd be surprised if the prime minister was any different Share 11 inShare8 Email Footage of David Cameron apparently riding his bike through a red light has been unearthed. Photograph: Getty Images Has David Cameron ever broken the law? I hope so. He'd be a very odd sort of driver, let alone citizen, if he hadn't. Why do I even ask such a silly question? Because when challenged at PMQs over the fox-hunting ban, Cameron seemed to some listening MPs and reporters to assert (unprompted) that he never does break it. What he probably meant, in answer to Labour's John Spellar, is that when he hunted with the Heythrop – you remember, the Oxfordshire hunt recently fined after a private £300,000 prosecution by the RSPCA – he'd not done anything illegal because hunting foxes with dogs was not banned at the time. That seems reasonable enough; this particular hunt was targeted because the Cameron link

The planet faces the prospect of having to feed 10 billion people by 2050. We need to stop throwing good food in the bin Share 227 inShare6 Email We are often too fussy, too ignorant and too careless to reject the soft option of throwing stuff in the bin. Photograph: Nick Ansell/PA I had to throw away the outer layers of a cabbage last night, a victim of over-stocking in the run-up to Christmas, a personal defeat in the battle against food waste. Never mind, it was a rare loss and I ate the rest with a piece of salmon which my local supermarket had assured me should have been eaten or thrown away by 19 October. Such advice is mostly nonsense in my experience, though my wife has a more delicate constitution and ate a bit of fresh cod from the fishmonger rather than join me in the salmon. But a new – and disputed – report today suggests that Britons may be wasting half the food we buy in supermarkets, £10bn worth each year, at a cost of £480 per average household. It's sh

Polling suggests that even in its traditional heartlands, Labour has a lot of convincing to do. The Guardian Northerner's political commentor Ed Jacobs stacks up the figures Share 20 inShare0 Email Welfare reform protest outside the House of Lords Photograph: Guardian There's little doubt that this week's big political topic has been welfare, a subject which goes to the heart of the scrap now taking place between the Government and Labour. Each is determined to chant the all-important mantra of 'fairness' most loudly. For ministers shuttling this week from one studio interview to the next, the decision to scrap child benefit altogether for households where at least one person is earning £60,000 or more whilst simultaneously capping benefit increases by 1% is a twin symbol of fair play. In this view, those with the broadest shoulders take the pain while those on benefits don't enjoy increases higher than pay rises for those in work. Iain Duncan Smith: m

Share breaking news, leave links to interesting articles online and chat about the week's events in our weekly open thread Share 2 inShare0 Email Share your favourite links, news, thoughts and comments from the political week in our open thread Photograph: Purepix / Alamy/Alamy I'm not writing my usual Politics Live blog today, but, as an alternative, here's Politics Live: readers' edition. It's intended to be a place where you can catch up with the latest news and find links to good politics blogs and articles on the web. Please feel free to use this as somewhere you can comment on any of the day's political stories - just as you do when I'm writing the daily blog. It would be particularly useful for readers to flag up new material in the comments - breaking news or blogposts or tweets that are worth passing on because someone is going to find them interesting. A lot of what I do on my blog is aggregation - finding the good stuff and passing it

Just like Lance Armstrong, Mandelson and Clarke should apologise for past errors if they want traction with the public in future Share 10 inShare0 Email Britain is edging towards its European showdown. Photograph: Yves Logghe/AP As Britain edges towards its European showdown it's worth asking what Ken Clarke and Peter Mandelson have in common with Lance Armstrong, the disgraced ex-winner of multiple Tours de France. No, not a systemic and fraudulent use of performance enhancing drugs to the detriment of a much-loved sport. Clarke and Lord M have no need of stimulants to get them excited over Europe or fiscal policy. The problem the Westminster pair share with Armstrong is the one he is preparing to tackle when he appears on Oprah Winfrey's "no holds barred" TV sofa this week: how to atone for error and thereby regain the respect and – for politicians, more important – the attention of disillusioned voters. Failure to get it right will end arrogant Armstron

There is good and bad news in the coalition's announcement – and it reminds us to start thinking about our plans Share 13 inShare12 Email Most of us avoid thinking about pensions until retirement looms. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA A friend I bumped into in the street yesterday complained that she has persistently misjudged the timing of her life. By being born later than expected in the early 50s – in April instead of March – she had deprived her parents of the full year's tax rebate then available, to her mother's recurring annoyance. Now my friend finds herself having to wait 3½ years longer than her older sister to get her pension because the pension age for women is no longer 60. I avoided using the P-word until the end of the previous paragraph because any mention of "pension" is an efficient way of stopping passing readers in their tracks. As the Guardian's editorial on Monday's coalition pensions reform notes this morning, most of us

Scotland's deputy first minister has opened a new battle front with the UK government, urging pre-referendum talks to smooth the way for quick and seamless Scottish independence Share 15 inShare1 Email Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland's deputy first minister, says advance talks on Scotland's divorce from UK are in both government's interests Photograph: Russell Cheyne/Reuters Like any sharp-witted political operator should do when the going gets tricky, Nicola Sturgeon and her colleagues in the Scottish National party have deftly opened a new front in the independence referendum. This is beginning to smack of guerrilla warfare. After a difficult few months, with hard questions raised about her government's stance on EU membership, sterling and the Bank of England and then oil revenues, Sturgeon has switched attention back onto the UK government by posing a novel question: why not start preliminary work on an independence settlement? Get some of the boring but n

The loyalists' rolling riot is a reminder of the dangers of complacency in the face of widespread alienation Share 147 inShare0 Email Loyalist protesters hold union flags outside Belfast city hall. Photograph: Peter Muhly/AFP/Getty Images The horsemeat discovered in some hamburgers produced in the Republic of Ireland will do no harm to anyone's health. But what about the horseshit that currently passes for political discourse, and which is causing nightly rioting, over Belfast city council's "compromise" decision to fly the union flag on only 17 designated days of the year? (One of them, by the way, is St Patrick's Day.) Despite the robust efforts of the British media to play down the riots – they are rarely on page one or at the top of news bulletins, even during a slow news Christmas period such as the one just ended – they are unsettling to the brittle peace that slowly replaced the 30-year Troubles after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. No one h