Winter/Dry Skin

I decided to write this post both as a help to anyone who suffers with the horrors of wintery dry skin and also as something for me to read back on when next winter rolls around and I'm panicking because I can't remember what I use to cure myself.

I don't just have dry skin, I also have eczema so winter is a complete bitch for me. I can often find my skin so dry that it causes me great amount of pain and I don't want to leave the house. Prescription creams from my doctor tend to do nothing for me as they never feel like they really get into my skin. This is where the Body Shop and Lush have been a great help.

Child Poverty and Low Pay.

Nine thousand and two hundred children in Blackpool are currently living in poverty. That's almost a quarter of the town's children.

Last week my local paper, The Gazette, posted an article about the council's aims to tackle child poverty, which you can see here. In this article there were six aims set by the council to tackle the increasing problem of child poverty.
Their six aims are:
1. To remove barriers to children achieving their full potential through education and employment.
2.  To provide appropriate support for vulnerable children.
3. To ensure children have a healthy start to life.
4. To build stable communities.
5. To improve the financial stability of families.
6. To embed tacking child poverty in all other areas of council work.

Deprivation and Blackpool

(Picture from this depressing article on Blackpool)

A couple of months ago I started a voluntary job with Oxfam. In my constant quest to eliminate poverty I figured they're a pretty good group to side with. I'm pretty obsessed with the whole tackling poverty thing mainly because of where I'm from and how I grew up.

I was brought up in South Shore, Blackpool. I lived here up until I went to university and my parents moved to the slightly wealthier (and older and more Toryish) Bispham.

The other day this news article was on the BBC and it stated that South Shore was one of the top 10 most deprived areas in the country. This does and doesn't surprise me, as South Shore is a really deprived area but I really didn't think it was top 10 worthy. I do think that part of the reason I don't really see the deprivation is because I'm desensitised to it. When I left home for uni I remember thinking THIS IS SO POSH and then I quickly figured out that I think anything that isn't a terraced house or a flat is posh. No joke, guys, I live in a 3 bedroomed semi-detached house now-a-days and I'm still getting used to the fact we have a garage. I mean, we don't use it properly or owt, BUT WE COULD, and that's fancy.

Work Harder

(picture from http://torympslookingsinister.tumblr.com/)

I got home from work the other day to hear that William Hague thinks people should work harder. I'd just got two buses home from my minimum wage job and it was half eleven at night. Nah. Soz.