41% of children in Redcar now in poverty

Can we define poverty, as a lad who has lived in two boroughs across Teesside, i see no end of kids in North face gear on expensive bikes, young lads with latest footy tops on and all the rest? Under no illusion there is massive problems here, trust me i know, but what exactly does poverty mean in this instance how can they say child poverty because that word just brings up images of the third world to me and even here in Grove Hill it's far from that. Honest.
 
There’s always been poverty and sadly there always will be in a capitalistic society.

but the big difference now is in WORK poverty.

That is new and that can never be acceptable as people who work, earn and contribute to society and are still in poverty.

That’s is real Tory legacy.
 
My wife in her job has seen this at first hand and some of the stories you here are genuinely jaw dropping and sad, giving ALL children the best opportunities in life should be the cornerstone of any government, violent abuse against children has risen 24% in the last 12 months, I'm not defending it at all but surely there must be some correlation between this rise in poverty rates and the incidences of these horrific, sometimes fatal, attacks.

These figures will only get worse as the cost of living crisis continues to worsen, I hate to think of the consequences that a cold winter could bring observing how bad things are currently and how little has been done that could genuinely bring widescale improvement, 1000's of hungry, cold children, what an advertisement for 12 years of Conservative misrule and 3 years of supposed levelling up.
 
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VestasBoro said:
Can we define poverty, as a lad who has lived in two boroughs across Teesside, i see no end of kids in North face gear on expensive bikes, young lads with latest footy tops on and all the rest? Under no illusion there is massive problems here, trust me i know, but what exactly does poverty mean in this instance how can they say child poverty because that word just brings up images of the third world to me and even here in Grove Hill it's far from that. Honest.
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Look beyond the surface, behind those closed doors that hide the shame and suffering of those who can`t even be seen outside.

Look for kids at school with dirty un ironed uniforms because the family can`t afford more than 2 shirts/trousers.

It`s there if you look hard enough
 
boroboy6872 said:
Look beyond the surface, behind those closed doors that hide the shame and suffering of those who can`t even be seen outside.

Look for kids at school with dirty un ironed uniforms because the family can`t afford more than 2 shirts/trousers.

It`s there if you look hard enough
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My mother in law relied on provident loans every year to make sure her kids got presents at Xmas

Cost them the rest of year and had to suffer because of social pressures of having to appeal to keep up with joneses.
 
TeaCider said:
50.7% in Middlesbrough.

Good old Boris.

Hopefully Jacob Young is voted out in the next few years, he can focus on tweeting and posting about Brexit constantly without the distraction of being an MP.
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That is a huge milestone in our town that should not go unnoticed. When over half of your children live in poverty in a democracy then something has gone awfully wrong.
 
Glover_elbow said:
agreed but lets not kid ourselves labour were much better, they tried to close the poverty gap and did to a small extent, but far far more should have been done.
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I think Labour made great efforts to do so, but it doesn't happen overnight and it needs to be a sustainable change.

Community Safety Partnerships gave public services a statutory responsibility to act together to tackle social issues,including child poverty.

The Tory government systematically dismantled this work, so I'm not entirely in agreement with your view on Labour's will to tackle social injustice.
 
Glover_elbow said:
agreed but lets not kid ourselves labour were much better, they tried to close the poverty gap and did to a small extent, but far far more should have been done.
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I don't know if your old enough to remember the decades of neglect under the tories that labour tried to reverse 97 onwards , much as I don't like Blair new Labour did lots for those at the bottom.
The tories meanwhile...
www.mirror.co.uk

Tories have closed 1,300 family centres in last 10 years, figures reveal

It is a serious issue that the services that Sure Start centres offer are much more thinly spread than they were a decade ago
www.mirror.co.uk www.mirror.co.uk
 
It's an appalling statistic but it's unclear whether it means relative or absolute poverty. The two are quite different.

It's appaling because any one area should not be that deprived when compared to other areas.

12 years of tory cuts would be the obvious reason, you would think. It is going to get much worse over the next 12 months too.
 
Scrote said:
The fact that we now have to differentiate between types of poverty shows how far down the rabbit-hole we've fallen.
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There has always been relative and absolute poverty. If we were all millionaires the poorest would still be in relative poverty even whilst driving to work in a porsche.
 
jam69 said:
I don't know if your old enough to remember the decades of neglect under the tories that labour tried to reverse 97 onwards , much as I don't like Blair new Labour did lots for those at the bottom.
The tories meanwhile...
www.mirror.co.uk

Tories have closed 1,300 family centres in last 10 years, figures reveal

It is a serious issue that the services that Sure Start centres offer are much more thinly spread than they were a decade ago
www.mirror.co.uk www.mirror.co.uk
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I agree labour did a lot of good things like sure start centres for preschool children which did make a difference across the country but what labour didn't do was any specific regional policies above that for the poorest regions like the north east and the mining communities on blairs door step. Thatcher left the mining communities on their knees but labour didn't invest to turn these comunities round. If labour got in tomorrow it wouldn't be about just reversing cuts in social care system yes that's essential but we also need more regional investment to create job opportunities for northern towns like middlesbrough
 
Subbuteo_171 said:
There was significant poverty around when my wife started her teaching job in the mid 90s, there wasn’t much improvement in circumstances under Labour when Blair was elected. Kids sleeping on mattresses in bedrooms with no carpet, coming to school without socks or coats in the winter, staff buying fresh fruit and other food for them as they only had one decent meal per day.

I mentioned on another thread yesterday no party has tackled this, and generations have been cast adrift. Blue, red, blue, whatever colour next it won’t change.

Its also worth noting circa 40% of children in London are classed as in poverty. Maybe this is what levelling up really means…
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A granted quick look at the figures shows a drop in child poverty when we had a labour government and increases when the tories are in power
cpag.org.uk

Child poverty in the UK

Find out what poverty is, the facts and figures about who is affected in the UK, how it affects children and how we can solve it.
cpag.org.uk cpag.org.uk
 
Laughing said:
If we were all millionaires the poorest would still be in relative poverty even whilst driving to work in a porsche.
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Mathematically that's not quite right. Relative poverty is less than 50% of average household income, so it depends what the top and bottom ends are like. If everyone earned the exact same amount, then nobody would be earning less than 50% of anyone else so there wouldn't be any relative poverty.

Obviously in the real world we will always have relative poverty if we insist on being a country that has 200 odd billionaires and does everything it can to avoid taxing them.
 
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