End Child Poverty.

Somebody I know rather well recently spent a month or so living in one of the worst estates in the North of England. All the children had a roof over their head; all had access to education; all were clothed; all could access healthcare; all had televisions in their homes and the majority had a large number of products which would be deemed 'luxury items'. (On his way to Wigan Pier, Orwell would have been pleasantly surprised by the conditions - if rather less by the morality.)

Were they well fed? - Yes, but not particularly healthily.

Were they brought up to achieve educational success? - Not often.

Were they socially minded? - No.

The standards of parenting were appalling - swearing in front of - and even at the children was the norm. Dishonesty was also the norm - fuelled pretty much equally by lager, cigarrettes and cannabis.

You might argue that 'unemployment is the driving force' behind this - and to an extent one would have to agree. But we must ask why the rampant poverty - real poverty - in which my parents, one step above starvation levels, were brought up did not have even a fraction of these negative outcomes.
Lack of a Christian base is far more likely to be the the root cause of the problem than the unemployment - which must be admitted - rather suits quite a proportion of these parents.
So when a charity such as End Child Poverty begins to make proclamations (Radio Humberside) that Kingston Upon Hull has 'the worst child poverty' in the region at 42% - we have to ask precisely what they mean.
Don't you just know that for them 'more taxpayers' money poured into these estates' is the solution!
Let us always remember that as long as we use 'relative poverty' as our marker - poverty is guaranteed to exist. That is the essential nature of the word 'relative'.