The concept of a recession must be difficult to grasp if you are one of the millions in Britain who live near the poverty line. To most of us, "recession" suggests that a little more prudence may be required when managing the monthly finances: perhaps losing a bottle or two of chardonnay from the shopping trolley and eschewing someone else's coastline for the summer holiday in favour of Fife or Ayrshire. In extreme cases, we might even try public transport or shop at Lidl.

But when all you have experienced is the eternal chill of economic winter, I wonder if you can resist a bitter smile when someone such as George Osborne tells the country that we will have to be "austere" for another six years or so. Of course we now know what the chancellor and his Bullingdon Club confrere David Cameron really mean when they insist that we are all in this together: there may be plenty of lifeboats, but you still need a platinum card to get into one of them.

And so we also now know that the poorest 30% will be made to bear most of Osborne's cuts in the age of austerity and that the safety ladder for the most vulnerable and the most needy in society is now missing another couple of rungs. The means tests already being deployed by Atos, the inquisitors of the disabled, betray the gut instincts of every member of the coalition government: that there is a presumption of benefit fraud before any claimant is given a single penny of welfare. It's an unfortunate stain on Glasgow's forthcoming 2014 Commonwealth Games that they chose this shower to be among their commercial partners.

The Tories are insisting that their austerity measures will make equal demands on all levels of society. Thus the very rich will have their bloated pension pots trimmed by a few inches and the affluent middle classes might need to keep an eye on the school fees because a few more of them have been pulled into the 40p tax rate bracket. In essence, though, these people will only know that there is a recession happening because it will become cheaper over the next few years to get their grass cut, their trees pruned and their drives paved. It will not change the direction of their lives, but merely slow the pace for a couple of years.

Those who can least afford any further cuts in their household budgets will suffer long-term job losses and find it more difficult to feed and clothe their families. They will be much more susceptible to mental and physical ill health and another couple of years will be deducted from their life expectancy. Many will turn to alcoholism and drug misuse as a pitiful means to get to the end of the day in one piece. A particularly cold winter will carry off the vulnerable and elderly people. They will then be told by the forces of the right that they are feckless and that they ought simply to knuckle down, get a grip and stop eating fish fingers all the time.

When the sheer greed, corruption and rapacity of bankers and hedge fund managers destroyed the economy, the same forces told us that they shouldn't be punished for their avarice because the country needed their expertise too much.

The reality of real poverty can be witnessed all over Glasgow this Christmas. The people who will suffer from its worst effects are simply, in the eyes of our chancellor, the people who live under the stairs. To him, they are beyond consideration while the Labour party long ago abandoned them.

With Kids is a charity that works with vulnerable and isolated families in the East End of Glasgow. At any one time, they are in contact with 120 families caring for 336 children. But to reach all of the children and their families who will need emergency help this Christmas there would need to be another 10 charities such as With Kids. The charity has witnessed massive reductions in the disposable incomes of these families due to a combination of increasing food prices, huge increases in fuel costs and Osborne's cuts in welfare benefits.

This Christmas in Glasgow's East End hundreds of mothers will face a dehumanising dilemma. They must choose either to disconnect their gas or electricity supplies so that they can feed their children. Some of them will try to predict from weather bulletins what day will be the coldest of the week and may aim to sleep the entire family in a single heated room that night. Almost 40% of the mothers with whom With Kids engages have said that they have chosen to go without food to ensure that their children have a meal.

At Christmas, the desperate desire of many single parents to bring a little happiness into the lives of their children drives them straight into grasping arms of companies or the ever-increasing number of payday loan companies. These firms exploit the poorest in society by charging them obscene interest rates. It is nothing other than usury and every bit as vile as loan sharking. It is 2012 and not one single political administration nationally or locally has been able to prevent these despicable firms from fleecing the vulnerable.

Every Christmas, With Kids runs an appeal to help hard-pressed families by providing presents, food parcels and fuel cards. It aims to help 65 families caring for 178 children with a main present, food and fuel to help them cope with the period that the rest of us refers to as "festive". In November 2011, the Trussell Trust established a food bank in the south-east of Glasgow. During the Christmas period last year, it helped 168 people, including 103 children. The Trust estimates that up to 60,000 of our fellow Scots will need its help every year.

We live in one of the most affluent countries in the world that possesses the larder of the Garden of Eden. No Scot should be living without food or heat. Every single one of the rest of us will, one day, be called to account for permitting this to happen.