Poverty isn't helped by governments bunging parents hand-outs which are supposed to help their children, though, mrussell - poverty is eroded by insisting that children stay in school, learn a vocation, and then get into work. It's not eroded by breeding six, seven, eight kids by assorted or unknown sires, smoking, drinking, and watching tv soaps all day - but that's a life which is often lived, while the State-funded kids still go hungry, neglected, unwashed and unsupervised. That's why so many of them are roaming the streets in the small hours of the morning, stoned or stonked at age 12. They probably do count as 'poor' but they're mainly 'poor' because their parents don't, frankly, give a damn about them.
There's been a huge reduction in what was once real poverty, the sort that old b&w photos show existed in the early decades of the last century - where my schoolteacher grandmother wept at the sight of her little ones arriving for class without shoes, or even little clogs, on their filthy feet. And again when, aged about 9 or 10, they had to leave because their parents insisted they work. They were destined for the factory floors, the mines, the heavy industries, domestic service if they were 'lucky' - try getting today's 'poor' kids into any jobs, and it's impossible. They're not wanted because they haven't been educated. They haven't been educated because their parents, far from taking them away at 9 or 10 from their schools, have failed to insist that they attend them. They don't have to worry about going out to find work, because the parents are paid to keep them, and after that, no problem - the 'benefits' will take over. Sorted.
