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You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/25/cameron-poverty-children-britain-cuts-agenda
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| However Cameron defines poverty, it affects too many children | However Cameron defines poverty, it affects too many children |
| (about 2 hours later) | |
| How do you define poverty? This is the question David Cameron has been grappling with in advance of the release of the Households Below Average Income statistics, which today have shown no improvement in child poverty. | How do you define poverty? This is the question David Cameron has been grappling with in advance of the release of the Households Below Average Income statistics, which today have shown no improvement in child poverty. |
| The timing could be better. When you’re pursuing an ideological cuts agenda amounting to £12bn that is reliant on a heavily marketed narrative of strivers versus skivers, poverty-stricken children are the last thing you need. Especially when you’ve just signalled that you’re considering shaving £5bn off child tax credits (a measure which, according to the Resolution Foundation, would be largely borne by the poorest 30% of households and would mean an annual loss of £1,690 for families with two children). Now that we no longer send poor children up chimneys, it’s somewhat difficult to label them feckless and lazy as the government does their parents, who are part of “a damaging culture of welfare dependency”, but there are other steps that can be taken. | The timing could be better. When you’re pursuing an ideological cuts agenda amounting to £12bn that is reliant on a heavily marketed narrative of strivers versus skivers, poverty-stricken children are the last thing you need. Especially when you’ve just signalled that you’re considering shaving £5bn off child tax credits (a measure which, according to the Resolution Foundation, would be largely borne by the poorest 30% of households and would mean an annual loss of £1,690 for families with two children). Now that we no longer send poor children up chimneys, it’s somewhat difficult to label them feckless and lazy as the government does their parents, who are part of “a damaging culture of welfare dependency”, but there are other steps that can be taken. |
| Related: Child poverty does not only exist in a vacuum filled with hard-done-by urchins | Related: Child poverty does not only exist in a vacuum filled with hard-done-by urchins |
| Never mind. When you’re rich and powerful, if you don’t like a story, you can always change it. At the moment, child poverty is measured in terms of relative poverty (the current definition being when a child lives in a household with an income less than 60% of the national average), but measure it in terms of absolute poverty, as Cameron has considered, and things start to look a bit better for you, less Dickensian. Though the teachers who say children are turning up to school coatless and hungry, in ragged clothes, and the food bank volunteers who handed out a total of 1,084,604 emergency parcels last year may beg to differ. I’ve come to the conclusion that when the Tories pledged in their manifesto that they would “work to eliminate child poverty” what they really meant was “work to eliminate child poverty statistics by replacing them with something altogether more pleasing to the public”. | Never mind. When you’re rich and powerful, if you don’t like a story, you can always change it. At the moment, child poverty is measured in terms of relative poverty (the current definition being when a child lives in a household with an income less than 60% of the national average), but measure it in terms of absolute poverty, as Cameron has considered, and things start to look a bit better for you, less Dickensian. Though the teachers who say children are turning up to school coatless and hungry, in ragged clothes, and the food bank volunteers who handed out a total of 1,084,604 emergency parcels last year may beg to differ. I’ve come to the conclusion that when the Tories pledged in their manifesto that they would “work to eliminate child poverty” what they really meant was “work to eliminate child poverty statistics by replacing them with something altogether more pleasing to the public”. |
| I’m not going to get bogged down in definitions of relative and absolute poverty because you’ll be enjoying lots of that over the next few days. Suffice to say that even if you believe the current measure is unsatisfactory (“these kids could be hungrier!”), the fact that 2.3 million children are living in households where the income is only 60% of the national average at the very least highlights the rampant inequalities in our society. Not that structural inequality is what you’d call a “root cause” of poverty of course. It’s all down to “entrenched worklessness, family breakdown, problem debt, and drug and alcohol dependency”. Symptoms, not causes, remember. | |
| Yet however the government decides to define poverty, the experience of it for a young child will be the same. It doesn’t matter how the statistics are measured if your shoes don’t fit, or you’ve had a runny nose for months because your bedroom is damp, or there’s nowhere for you to do your homework. If you haven’t had breakfast for days, the government’s definition of child poverty is unlikely to be at the forefront of your mind. Survival is. | Yet however the government decides to define poverty, the experience of it for a young child will be the same. It doesn’t matter how the statistics are measured if your shoes don’t fit, or you’ve had a runny nose for months because your bedroom is damp, or there’s nowhere for you to do your homework. If you haven’t had breakfast for days, the government’s definition of child poverty is unlikely to be at the forefront of your mind. Survival is. |
| Better a silent victim than a clever, furious teenager equipped with statistics and a will to change the world | Better a silent victim than a clever, furious teenager equipped with statistics and a will to change the world |
| Child poverty is isolating. You might be living in temporary accommodation and keep having to move, or the shame and embarrassment could lead to you being bullied at school. I doubt the stigmatising of the poor under the coalition has helped matters much. You wonder to what extent the “benefit scrounging” rhetoric has trickled down to the playground. Less than 50 years ago, unmarried mothers were responsible for the moral decay of society, and their children would be taunted as “bastards” by their peers. Now those on benefits have taken their place as feckless scapegoats; media figureheads; reality television stars. | Child poverty is isolating. You might be living in temporary accommodation and keep having to move, or the shame and embarrassment could lead to you being bullied at school. I doubt the stigmatising of the poor under the coalition has helped matters much. You wonder to what extent the “benefit scrounging” rhetoric has trickled down to the playground. Less than 50 years ago, unmarried mothers were responsible for the moral decay of society, and their children would be taunted as “bastards” by their peers. Now those on benefits have taken their place as feckless scapegoats; media figureheads; reality television stars. |
| The consistent “othering” of poor people is another means by which society absolves itself from responsibility for austerity. Either they are scroungers, or they are silent, powerless victims. You rarely hear their personal stories in the media, not just because the media is dominated by people who have never experienced poverty, but because this would disrupt the pact that has been made. It’s easier to lump all those people on low incomes together than to confront the reality – that large numbers of people on benefits are actually in work, that enduring poverty actually requires a huge amount of courage, resourcefulness and strength. Better a silent victim than a clever, furious teenager equipped with statistics and a will to change the world. Better a benefit scrounging mother than one who managed to feed a family of seven on 30 quid a week and never said a word (“I don’t know how she did it,” a friend of mine said. I don’t know how mine did, either. I don’t know how anyone does, but they do. They keep going.) | The consistent “othering” of poor people is another means by which society absolves itself from responsibility for austerity. Either they are scroungers, or they are silent, powerless victims. You rarely hear their personal stories in the media, not just because the media is dominated by people who have never experienced poverty, but because this would disrupt the pact that has been made. It’s easier to lump all those people on low incomes together than to confront the reality – that large numbers of people on benefits are actually in work, that enduring poverty actually requires a huge amount of courage, resourcefulness and strength. Better a silent victim than a clever, furious teenager equipped with statistics and a will to change the world. Better a benefit scrounging mother than one who managed to feed a family of seven on 30 quid a week and never said a word (“I don’t know how she did it,” a friend of mine said. I don’t know how mine did, either. I don’t know how anyone does, but they do. They keep going.) |
| The erasure of those suffering under austerity from the public debate is part of the reason why the march last Saturday was so cheering. It showed that, in a society where we can look suffering in the face and say “not my problem”, there are thousands of people, many of them poor themselves, putting forward a united front against the cuts to our social security system. It felt as though, for the first time in several years, people were grabbing back the narrative for themselves and insisting on their own agency within this debate. The atmosphere was one of anger, but also one of hope. You can fiddle the statistics all you want, but when people start using their voices, and telling their stories, that’s usually a tipping point. | The erasure of those suffering under austerity from the public debate is part of the reason why the march last Saturday was so cheering. It showed that, in a society where we can look suffering in the face and say “not my problem”, there are thousands of people, many of them poor themselves, putting forward a united front against the cuts to our social security system. It felt as though, for the first time in several years, people were grabbing back the narrative for themselves and insisting on their own agency within this debate. The atmosphere was one of anger, but also one of hope. You can fiddle the statistics all you want, but when people start using their voices, and telling their stories, that’s usually a tipping point. |