Austerity Bites: A Journey to the Sharp End of Cuts in the UK
“Mary O’Hara’s mission is to give voice to those experiencing hardship or injustice who are rarely heard. She travelled the UK for a year to bear witness to the effects of austerity in Britain and we should all pay attention to the result.
”
“Austerity Bites should be required reading for every MP, peer, councillor, civil servant and commentator. The fury and sense of powerlessness that so many people feel at government policy beam out of every page.”
After coming to power in May 2010, the Coalition government in the United Kingdom embarked on a drastic programme of cuts to public spending and introduced a raft of austerity measures that had profoundly damaging effects on much of the population.
This timely and apposite book by award-winning journalist Mary O’Hara chronicles the true impact of austerity on people at the sharp end, based on her ‘real-time’ 12-month journey around the country when the most radical reforms were being rolled out in 2012 and 2013.
Drawing on hundreds of hours of compelling first-person interviews, with a broad spectrum of people ranging from homeless teenagers, older job-seekers, pensioners, charity workers, employment advisers and youth workers, as well as an extensive body of research and reports, the book explores the grim reality of living under the biggest shakeup of the welfare state in 60 years. A ‘must-read’ book, Austerity Bites seeks to dispel any notion that “we are all in this together” and offers an alternative to the dominant and simplistic narrative that we inhabit a country of “skivers versus strivers.
Austerity Bites
Austerity continues to blight the UK in 2018 with councils going bankrupt and the most vulnerable at risk of losing vital services. Through her writing and journalism Mary continues to expose the colossally harmful effects of this grossly misguided set of policies - especially on the most vulnerable. In a new book: The Violence of Austerity, edited by David Whyte and Vickie Cooper, a number of writers including Mary document in a series of essays the most damning evidence of the brutality of austerity including on physical and mental health.