Today the Daily Mirror that some desperate families are driven by hunger to trudge 20 miles on foot to get to food banks. It's a heartbreaking insight into how increasing numbers of people in Britain are being crushed by austerity, rising food and fuel prices, rising rents and shrinking welfare benefits.
Also today the Chancellor George Osborne gave his autumn statement announcing that biting austerity cuts will continue until 2018. That signals a decade-long downturn, far longer than the Great Depression of the 1930's, and for many there is no end in sight.
A further one percent cut in benefits has to be measured against the cost of living. Retail inflation is 3.7 percent, food inflation is eleven percent and the average heating bills have climbed by over £300 since 2008 along with energy companies raking in record profits.
The Telegraph a further rise of up to £65 before Christmas which will leave many of the poorest in society, including pensioners, unable to heat their homes during the cold winter.
Official unemployment stands at 2.6 million and a new wave of austerity cuts in the public sector - particularly in local government - is set to throw many more thousands on the dole - while the TUC estimate the 'real' level of unemployment is over six million.
Add to the mix a in homelessness and the rise in soup kitchens and food banks and it feels like we're not so much back in the 1980's as the 1880's.
And all for what? All the deficit reduction targets Osborne set for himself are being missed and an increasing number of economists, including the IMF, believe that austerity is actually making the economic downturn worse.
The country is crying out for stimulus, public investment, not more cuts. This failed economic strategy is going nowhere fast and may even be making our deficit increase. We clearly need a Plan B to avoid permanent recession yet the chancellor's autumn statement made clear that he is intent on continuing the pain with no gain.
As always, under the Tories, it is the poor who suffer most while the rich enjoy a top-rate tax cut, and the richest of the lot - companies like Starbucks, Amazon and Google - are getting away with paying no tax at all.
The lessons of Japan, who failed to recover from a recession in the 1990's and 'lost' the following decade as a result of economic policy decisions, must be heeded. Driving the poor into even deeper abject poverty while squeezing the state 'til the pips squeak, protecting the super-rich and failing to stimulate the economy is a recipe for long term stagnation.
We hardly needed the autumn statement to confirm the failure of the current economic strategy, we just have to look at the real stories about ordinary people brought to their knees in a Britain careering headlong back to Dickensian times. The Daily Mirror reports:
In an FT article headlined Britain does not have to accept stagnation , respected writer Martin Wolf says: " The UK does not have to accept stagnation. It should explore its options, not pretend it has none." He argues that Britain should not only reassess its' fiscal policy but take advantage of historically low rates of borrowing to boost investment.
There is simply no justification for suffering a purdah which is threatening to leave lasting scars on the economy and damage generations of people who make up the economy. Why leave a legacy of despair, of education-leavers who head down the wrong road because there are no opportunities? Of families torn apart by poverty and debt. Rising crime, health problems and mental illness caused by stress.
It is grossly unjust, unacceptable and intolerable. One cannot be a progressive person in politics and not speak up loudly and clearly against the heavy human cost of the current economic strategy.
With mounting evidence from independent experts, and today from the Chancellor himself, that all this pain is failing miserably to achieve its' aims, the clamour for a change in direction will surely grow. Another two years of this is more than many can bear. Another six years... unthinkable.