Category Archives: poverty industry.

Wonder did anyone out there catch the debate on Today this morning  concerning the claim from the Kids Company that there are “at least one million” kids in Britain who are starving? Well, when I say debate, it wasn’t.

Instead we had two people, one from Netmums (who else? Yawn) and another from Leon restaurants who came on to agree that the one million starving figure was, if anything, underplaying the monumental scale of the problem. This suggestion that we have huge numbers of children in the UK  at starvation level is a constant theme in BBC reports and it always can be tracked down to the Poverty Industry sticking out press releases based on the most spurious “research” and the answer is always the same – more Welfare benefits please.

During this particular interview (7.48am) when it was suggested that good food awareness might help, one of the poverty hustlers explained that whilst this might have some merit how would it help a single mum, maybe a sex worker, stressed out on crack cocaine and thus unable to feed their kids. The BBC interviewer didn’t bother asking how a Mother can afford crack cocaine but not food for their kids. The Poverty Industry can always rely on the BBC to run with its contrived and vacuous headlining.

I know that fantasy football is quite popular but there was a remarkable demonstration of fantasy politics on the BBC this morning. Yvette Cooper, she who is is as close as a female politician can get to McDoom, was allowed to waffle for five minutes about something which does not exist in the UK – I refer to “child poverty.” She got a free ride as she blustered about Labour’s latest initiative to impose legal obligations on government, local authorities and other organisations to help to end “child poverty” across the UK. At no point did the interviewer challenge the fundamental premise on which all this nonsense is based – namely the leftist political construct of relative poverty. Cooper kept referring to “fairness” – a Labour euphemism for stealing from the industrious and giving to the workshy. When there is so much genuine poverty affecting children in other parts of the world – like Zimbabwe for instance – it’s sickening to hear Labour using the BBC to advocate their own left wing fantasy politics. When we will get to hear someone challenge the poverty industry advocates on the BBC?

I was reading this BBC report which is little more than a PR item for those in the ever expanding poverty industry. Basically it just presents the little fantasy dreamed up by Unicef, Barnardo’s and co that there are “millions” of children here in the UK suffering from “poverty.” In a wonderful example of creative maths, they estimate that this could be almost 10% of the total UK population and..wait for it..up to 98% in some areas. Well, before we contact Band Aid to seek them to reform to re-record “Feed the World” (UK remix) maybe the BBC could try and find the space for those who dispute the phony statistics behind all this nonsense from these fatcat charities. They are retailing a liberal invention- “relative poverty” – and trying to pass it off as if it were real poverty. It is nothing of the kind. But why does the BBC only allow one side of this debate to be heard? The suggestion I make is that the liberals in the BBC are actually propagandising on behalf of the poverty hustlers and refuse to countenance another point of view.

I listened to an item on BBC Radio 4 “Today” this morning just before 7am concerning how government is allegedly failing those MILLIONS of British children are living “in poverty” All the cliches were trotted out and for good effect the couple that the BBC interviewed – Elvis and Alex – even had one partner working but alas Elvis was on minimum wage. At no point did the BBC explain that what is measured these days is “relative poverty” – a leftist invention in recent years to allow them to beg for even more lavish public funds to alleviate a non-existent problem. A figure of an extra 2.7bn was bandied about as if it were nothing during this item. You can understand why the Poverty Industry is attracted to the BBC to pump out its propaganda – undiscerning transmission of faux statistics is the name of the poverty game and Auntie plays along.