Thinking about pooverty

No amount of moralising will alleviate the hardship caused by Tory austerity | Polly Toynbee | Comment is free | The Guardian: "Dishonesty about poverty, its causes, effects and cures, infects almost everything Duncan Smith says, as he pours an unction of moralising over the hardship he causes. His words are as misleading about the past and the present as they are about the future effects of his policies. He can't quite remove the goalposts of the old relative measurement – 60% of median income – so instead, he erects other ones to confuse. If what he claims for his own policies is less than the truth, his critique of the Labour years is pure fabrication.

"We must learn the lessons of the previous decade," he says, when "despite best intentions and an unprecedented level of spending" Labour failed to cut child poverty by half. "The 'poverty plus a pound' approach failed because the root causes of poverty were left unchecked, and not enough was done to break the cycle of disadvantage.""

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