Scribbles of an Endeavouring Spectator: What does poverty mean in today's society? Ask the Evening Standard... (not)!

Did you know that, according to the statistics published yesterday by the Evening Standard, 41% of children in London live below the poverty line?

41% means that every time you walk in the streets of London, almost every other child you see is poor! Yes! And how come you never realised that? How come you never ever felt the rush of saving almost every other child you came across in the street?

The reason is simple: 41% of children of London do not live below the poverty line.
The problem with the statistic lies in the definition of poverty line. Poverty line is defined, according to the Evening Standard again, to be at 60% of the median income.
And what does that mean? I guess that means that if you are “poor” you cannot afford Sky TV or you don’t travel abroad. Tough yeah (especially Sky TV), but that is not what I call poverty.

But then the Evening Standard, not happy with just a statistic in its crusade against poverty in London, wants to make sure we get the picture by telling us the story of two “dispossessed” Londoners and, even more, making sure we understand it is all the government’s fault, i.e. yours.

The first “poor” we come across is an 18 year old Jamaican boy in Islington who lives with his single mother and his half-sister. He is a student and lives on benefits but he said he also applied for jobs, 32 times he claims (did he count them?) but never got an interview. Oh well, why not try for the 33rd time? He said it affected his confidence… but not his laziness, fortunately.

The journalist is then describing the story of the boy, and you have to feel sorry for him and I am not being sarcastic here. In fact, as per the article:

…several things happened to plunge the family into poverty. In 1998 his father, a chemical engineer who had split from his mother four years earlier, left the country and stopped supporting his son.

That is terrible, I agree, although no ground for blaming the government. Anyway, the next sentence baffled me:

And the following year, his mother had a second child. Unable to afford childcare, she gave up her job and went on benefits.

What? A second child? From whom? The Invisible Man? For goodness’ sake, if you have a child already and a low-income job, why have another child???

But then again, it is not her fault, the paper claims, but the government’s, which does not help the “poor” and so it is the taxpayers (me and you) who pay for that.

There is then the story of a 21 year old girl who left home at 17, got pregnant (obviously) and now lives on benefits. Fault of the government (again) according to the Evening Standard, and I and you pay for her again.

Now, what really pisses me off about these stories is reading about people who cannot find a job.

When I arrived in this country more than 10 years ago my English was non-existent and I did manage to find a job and, I now discover that I was living under the poverty line by earning (at the time) £96 a week and considering my rent was £55 and travel-card £13, I had £28 a week to live by and damn! How could I not realise that I was living under the poverty line? Was I stupid? Or had I been “indoctrinated”? Or was that maybe, just maybe, for me poverty meant my granddad eating rats in the Second World War or my granddad again as a child not being able to go out because he had seven brothers and only two pair of shoes for all of them?

And again, today, just to make sure we got the picture about “poverty”, the Evening Standard reports the story of a “hero” of a woman who is a single mother raising a family of…

(I have not made this up) 11 children