I live no more than a mile from Sheffield S9 - Darnall. Please tremble at the name!
The only people without warm clothing are certain trendy - not to mention, rather dim - young people; I have never seen a single sign of malnutrition; walking past houses in the evenings, the glow of televisions flicker through the curtains; the ubiquitous mobile phone is glued to even more ears than in wealthier parts of the city; they have access to free education; to free healthcare; and benefits, to boot. On the subject of boots, how infrequently you do not see top branded trainers being worn by teens and older?
The numbers sleeping rough are so negligible as to have no numerical, value.
As far as I can work out, all houses have an inside toilet but they didn't when I lived there shortly after getting married! - And no, even as students, we did not consider ourselves in poverty. Our car was parked outside. Today, the vehicles are considerably better than our old HA Viva ever was.
You cannot budget for families where the parent/s are incredibly selfish. Their pleasures of: alcohol, drugs, tobacco, takeaways and gambling wrench money out of the family. What is the state to do? - Give them more money?
We return to that old chestnut, don't we? - Who decides where the 'poverty line' is drawn?
Poverty used to be obvious. Today, we have to closely define in order to insure that it does not go away.
I recently heard a politician speak on radio about "the millions of children living in absolute poverty in the UK ..." Did she not even understand her own terminology?
Clearly, she has not seen the poverty I have in: the shanty towns of South Africa, the centre of Mumbai, the outskirts of Port Said to name just a few.
Just because you are not middle class, this does not make you any more than "relatively poor".
In this 'thinking' if the average wage is £100k and you only have £75k - then you are poor. Such stats are utterly meaningless.
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