For many people it has become de riguer to claim childhood poverty. However, this must stop. It is a valid claim only to those of us who really experienced childhood poverty. What is that, you might ask? Well, no shoes to go to school in for a start, just a pair of tatty pumps. Or how about sharing out the tin of mandarins, 7 segments each. Or one packet of biscuits each week, to share with 2 adults and 5 kids. That is poverty; sheer want. If you include a smattering of physical and verbal abuse, it adds further integrity. By contrast, I am appalled by those who claim things were tough when they leave school and promptly go to RADA or get a job at posh Couttes Bank. Get real. Childhood poverty in the UK is a life qualification, one that I claim.

Distorted poverty

Firstly, I will ignore the thick ice on the bedroom windows. Polar bears had it warmer. Secondly, oh, the chilblains. If I craved protein then it would be eating the silver fish from the pantry cold slab. That is poverty, freezing want. Sadly, I have to deny the claims of the cheats. Like the author from a council estate in Dundee, where waste land next to the houses was called the dump. However, a picture of him as a child lacks the drawn, scrawny face of the poor. He actually smiles. No wonder, he wears a shirt no less, a white shirt and a tie. The poor don’t choose white and a tie holds up your trousers. Who could even knot a tie in my community?

Shorty

Neither did the poor kids wear trousers. Consequently, I was the last in my class to wear shorts. That was not because I wanted to but because boy’s trousers never appeared at rummage sales. Yet, a Times review of this author’s book includes a picture of children playing football in front of tenements. Every child wears trousers and newish clothes. There are no patches. However, far more pointedly, every child has shiny, black leather shoes. One child, playing on crutches, clearly broke a leg. Kids with rickets didn’t play football.

Childhood poverty in the UK

This author claims to have been obsessed with sex from the age of three. Firstly, to be sex obsessed you need testosterone. That hormone seems to have passed me by. Even with three sisters, or because of three sisters, I had no interest in sex as a child. Little wonder, my body was starved of the nutrient necessary to create testosterone. I recall talking to schoolfriends about sex, surely, nobody would be doing these animalistic activities. I was 57 at the time. When you are poor you fantasise about food, decent clothes and warmth. Sex, if it existed, was for confident kids. You needed smart clothes, toothpaste rather than salt, real shoes, the accoutrements that gave you the necessary gloss and confidence. I had none of those, I was shamed and anonymous. And so to, are the genuine poor.