Today's UK budget is being billed as "giving priority to tackling child poverty." Apparently, ministers define the child poverty target as ensuring "no children live in a household earning less than 60% of national mean income, before housing costs". How strange to exclude housing costs, since this is the biggest single living expense, but then the whole concept of poverty definitions is dubious. I used to work in Catford, a poor part of South London. Yet customers who were obviously not well off had their trolleys piled high with expensive prepared junk, costing several times more than the basic ingredients. Like tinned potatoes, for heaven's sake. The food industry wants people to buy these things, which are called "added value products", though really they are subtracted-value products. This stupidity is not confined to poor working class families. The middle classes are no better. Marks and Spencer's branches now have yards and yards of she...
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