Quote:
Originally Posted by O.A.F.K.1.1
Its still impressive to increase the national debt by 50% in five years though. Imagine the narrative if Labour had done that.
Yes, and it's a sign of how anti-Left most of the media is that this point hardly gets a mention.
The posters who are saying that the idea of real poverty in Britain is a mirage aren't far off the truth, however much this pains me (as a person broadly of the Left) to admit it.
I've spent some time in West Africa so find it very hard to accept the measure of poverty used in the UK (and probably other countries) as income below a % of a measure of "average" earnings.
In an affluent country that could mean that you're deemed to be in poverty if you can't afford to replace your HD TV with a UHD box, when the term becomes effectively meaningless (as well as pretty insulting to large numbers of people around the world).
For me, the real problem in the UK isn't poverty or even the threat of it, it's how the current implementation of capitalism (eg eschewing investment in favour of short term profits) has led to the effective entrenchment of hopelessness by area and/or class that for the majority of those people means that unless they're either very gifted or very lucky their lives will be largely mapped out from birth, and will probably have very little hope of attaining a measure of independence from the state that many of us take for granted.