CHILD POVERTY IN OUR BIGGEST CITIES.


Last week’s child poverty figures showed Deputy PM Nick Clegg’s Sheffield Hallam constituency had the least poor children in the country. A family is classed as living in poverty if its income is less than 60% of the national average income, £359 per week.
In contrast to well off Hallam’s less than 5% in poverty, the highest in the country was Manchester central, with a disgraceful 47% of its children living below that level.
Belfast, Glasgow, Middlesbrough, Newcastle, Liverpool, and Birmingham were all in the top 10 poorest cities.
There is an obvious Northern pattern to the table but just looking at constituencies does not paint an accurate picture.  Many of our biggest cities experience a massive divide with areas of affluence at one end and their neighbours living in absolute hardship.
The total amount of children said to be living in poverty in Sheffield in another study, is actually a much less respectable 22%.  This not only highlights the massively varying level of deprivation in a small area it shows the difficulty in calculating poverty. While some surveys simply use income, others take into account things such as crime, education, health and well-being and environment.
The undeniable fact is that while some families in well off Hallam constituency live in relative luxury, just down the road in Sheffield central some families live in absolute poverty in almost all of the categories named above. The majority of homes in Hallam are privately owned or rented from private land lords while the other side of town is made of neglected council properties, built close to motorway and experiencing some of the highest levels of crime in the country.
A report by charity, Save the children revealed that in Manchester, England’s poorest city, claimed a boy of only10 years old was forced to go out steeling to provide food for his younger siblings. His mother, an alcoholic was at home wheelchair bound. The story was revealed in the Manchester evening news and claimed school children are sleeping in houses with no heating, waking up to no breakfast and going to school tired hungry and not in proper school uniforms.

A separate story in the same paper published in September last year told that Manchester has more multi-millionaires than anywhere in Britain outside of the capital. It went to say that Manchester boasts fine dining, designer shopping and internationally recognised cultural events. 
Census results announced in July showed the population of Manchester had grown by 1/5 in the last 10 years.
In December 2011 unemployment had risen to 82000. Youth unemployment in the city was higher than the national average.

In Bridgeton, on the east side of Glasgow, 85% of adults are said to be claiming benefits.  A Sunday Times rich list printed in April last year revealed 5 billionaires lived in Scotland.

Liverpool another northern city in the top 10 child poverty areas has widely varying income levels. One area, Wavertree has an average income of £21767 while the Walton area has an average income of just £16027. 

With such massive differences up and down the country in almost every major city in the UK, how the government talk of fairness? The “we’re all in it together” mantra has not been muttered for a while but it is clear from policy, slashing local governments funding and punishing the unemployed and most vulnerable while giving millionaires a tax break,  that they still believe that the poor don’t matter.

“Children in poverty” is in itself a misleading name- there are not many children in poverty with well-off parents. The way to tackle child poverty is surely to tackle all poverty. It has been said many times in the last couple of years that the cuts and the austerity package is necessary because there is no money left. That is simply not true. We have continued to print money. It doesn’t disappear when spent, it transfers ownership. The problem this country has is not that it has no money, it is that many people have little money while a few have lots and lots of money. Unfair distribution of wealth, unfair opportunities,  unfair lack of opportunities, unfair cuts and unfair government policy is the problem this country has. The rich are getting ever richer and the poor are getting neglected and abused.