The Undeserving Poor

What am I, Governors both? I ask you, what am I? I'm one of the undeserving poor: that's what I am. Think of what that means to a man. It means that he's up agen middle class morality all the time. If there's anything going, and I put in for a bit of it, it's always the same story: "You're undeserving; so you can't have it." But my needs is as great as the most deserving widow's that ever got money out of six different charities in one week for the death of the same husband. I don't need less than a deserving man...
(Alf Doolittle in Pygmalion, By George Bernard Shaw)

Three and a half million of us according to the BBC News, will take out short-term, payday loans in the next six months. These are loans that tie people over until the next payday and the interest on them is in the 100s percent. Among those who do so 62% will be in the 24 to 44 age group. R3, which represents "professionals working with financially troubled individuals and businesses" says the survey reveals money worries at the highest level it has ever recorded.

Yet on the same programme on which this disturbing piece of news was given, "The Today Programme," there was also a feature on how the UK is the most judgemental country in Europe when it comes to the poor, blaming people for their poverty; and that since the 90s we have been developing ever hardening attitudes to those who are poor. In the 90s it seems people were willing to pay more taxes to support a better National Health system and education system that cared for all the citizens of this country. Now we are all for "individual responsibility" and this in a country where the divide between the rich and poor has grown more in the last 30 years than in any other country in Europe.

I can understand why people have got so fed up when we hear so many stories of people using and abusing the system (particularly in our tabloid press who just love such stories!). I, like most people, know one or two people who I am pretty sure would turn pale at the sight of a full time job and have always managed to do very well thank you out of the "grey" economy. But for us to tar all people who are poor with the same brush is simply lazy thinking on our part.

At the same time as all this is going on, a survey from UNICEF in September stated that British children are the unhappiest in the developed world because they are trapped in consumerism. Things are given to children by their parents rather than time, attention and love.

You and I can't solve the problem of growing poverty but perhaps we can check out our own attitudes and ask the question, why is this country getting it so wrong? What is missing in us that the gap between rich and poor has grown so hugely that a third of our children live below the poverty line, and our unhappy children across the board suffer from another kind of poverty; the poverty of time, love and attention they most need and want?

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