Polly on Poverty

Tee hee, very good Polly.

It was a piece of breathtaking cheek and bare-faced larceny when David Cameron pledged to "Make British poverty history" this week, stealing Gordon Brown\’s slogan and Labour\’s policy stronghold. Cameron snatched the starting day of a month of action on child poverty, run by the End Child Poverty campaign, an umbrella group of 90 children\’s charities originally assembled by Gordon Brown himself, as a counterweight against other spending demands.

Most amusing. Getting all het up about one pol stealing the policies of another….when said pol hadd just stolen several the other way around, you know, the non-doms thing and so on. Most amusing: but what\’s really wonderful is that you\’re complaining about Cameron stating that he\’s going to do what you want. Is ending poverty something that is only a valid goal when pushed by Labour? How tribal of you!

Ofsted spelled out the stark social, economic and racial divide that determines how well children do at school: low-income children are half as likely to get five good GCSEs as the well-heeled.

Gosh, I wonder, could that be something to do with the structure of the school system? Does your beloved Sweden do this better? (They do not, for those interested, spend more money.) And if they do, what is the Swedish system…..why, it\’s a voucher system!

If nothing is done it will be lethally worse by 2050, and not just among the poor. Some sensible and easy things can be done – no more advertising of rubbish food to children on TV or anywhere else,

Will that be like the current ban on TV shows? The one where the bureaucrats were so incredibly good at deciding what was good and what was rubbish that Marmite may no longer be advertised to children? Because they based their salt numbers on 100 g servings? Instead of the 3-4 g that Marmite might be served in? We\’re going to work at that level of efficiency, are we?

What is needed now is nothing less than a national culture change, embracing every aspect of life. Step back and look which nations have the fewest obesity problems. You guessed it, it\’s the Nordic countries, where social divisions are narrower.

Excellent! We\’re going to be more like the Nordics! Vouchers! No inheritance tax! No national minimum wage! No National health service! Be more like Sweden!

Both these reports and the shocking Unicef revelations on UK children suggest another way.

You remember that UNICEF report? The one that was comprehensively trashed when it came out? But, see, this is how they work: it\’s now an accepted part of the Canon, a reference point. Used as a throw away line, no one now remembers all of the qualifications that need to be added to the conclusions of the report. That, of course, is why it was written. Not to provide a dispassioned analysis, but to provide ammunition after those caveats are forgotten.

With children as the focus, universal children\’s services would need to be good enough to be appreciated by rich and poor alike. That means the best childcare and nurseries, better subsidised for all, with breakfast clubs and extended afternoon schools that really do match the activities of middle-class children.

And there\’s the real aim. All children to be placed in State podding hutches, there to be propagandised into the social democratic way. For you to raise your own, as you wish, would be doubleplusungood now, wouldn\’t it?