Children benefit from UK's pride

With the grossly expensive London Olympics set to cost the UK up to £10 billion, officials everywhere are now throwing money at the East End of London to improve conditions in time for an explosion of international tourists.

Tower Hamlets Council  hopes to improve the area with healthier school meals for children and plans to reduce adult unemployment in a new 3 year initiative.

Last week, Tower Hamlets Councillor Clair Hawkins told the East London Advertiser:

“We have serious challenges such as child poverty to overcome, but we are committed to making sure every child can grow up healthily, happily and safely.”

Hackney is the most deprived borough in London and last year, £1 million was awarded to community groups to improve green spaces.

Pounds not pence: Labour fails to deliver

Well done, Darling.

Children across the UK will surely be rejoicing at the news of an extra pint of milk a week, before crawling cold and hungry  into sheetless beds within decaying council estates.

After irritating optimism from our chancellor in the lead up to the annual Budget, Alistair Darling has now promised to add an extra 38p a week to family incomes.

After Darling’s feeble nod towards Labour’s 2010 pledge to halve child poverty,  children’s charity The Joseph Rowntree Foundation have suggested £12.50 is the sum needed to keep the promise.

Chairman of the Treasury  select committee, John McFall, has described the lackluster budgeting as a ‘bad omen’.He said:

“Even if spending to bring children out of poverty seems expensive now, in the long run, it is the right thing to do.” 

Quite. As Labour do their best to ease a credit crunched Britain, maybe we should budget a bit less for our MP’s porn collections and a bit more for children born into squalor and deprivation. Just a thought.

Peaceful Protest: P20

Angst and rebellion at the G20 protests on the 1st of April were well publicised. The boys in blue wrestled with the digruntled public and the world watched.

The protests for P20 have all the passion but less of the high profile anarchy.

The Campaign to End Child Poverty is calling on the Government to support children in the Poverty-20, the 20 UK constituencies with the highest levels of child poverty.

Hilary Fisher, Director of the campaign said: “Children are our future and the Government should not forget families while it takes action to stabilise the world’s financial markets. It needs to invest at least £3 billion in tax credits and benefits to safeguard the future of 3.9 million children living in poverty in the UK today.”

Children have suffered in the hands of feckless bankers and the cost of living is crippling low income families.

“We’re deliberately drawing attention to the fact that, at a time when the G20 richest nations are meeting to bail out the world’s richest economies, there are still children suffering terrible hardship in this country’s 20 poorest constituencies. That’s why we’re calling our campaign the P20.”

'Boris Hood?': Mayor gives a little

London Mayor Boris Johnson is hard to take seriously. A public school swagger  and a penchant for using the word ‘fantabulous’ means the high profile Tory often makes headlines for the wrong reasons.

He has this month raised £5 million for a new child poverty charity.  After he admitted recently, ‘not much’ had been collected for charity, these are small but worthy steps.

Johnson compares the move to be ‘Like Robin Hood’.  He said: “Like Robin Hood we want to draw riches from wealth creators to give life-changing support to the poorest Londoners.

“Sadly, some of our children live in unimaginable destitution. Over 600,000 live below the poverty line, and London is home to some of the most deprived boroughs in the country.”

The Mayor’s Fund for London, chaired by Sir Trevor Chinn, will aim to have an annual turnover of £20 million by 2013.

The End Child Poverty campaign says that the organisation need a further £3 Billion for Labour to half child poverty by 2010.

MODERN LOVE: New laws

Don’t let the 1 in 3 divorce statistics put you off a big white wedding. Combat cold feet as the threat of abject poverty moves further away.

Labour MP Mary Creagh has revealed that despite demands for a new bill to protect the rights of the unwed, married couples enjoy far greater financial security

Legislation was proposed by Labour in 2007 to give new legal rights to the approximate 4 million people who co-habit in Britain.

Creagh said: “The harsh reality is that men and women, whether gay or straight, who live together without a marriage or civil partnership can face devastating poverty and homelessness when their relationship ends.”

Children born out of wedlock suffer in the eyes of the law.  Fathers of “illegitimate children”  are not parentally responsible after the birth of their offspring.

“The new rights would also protect 1.25 million dependent children—children who have no choice about their parents’ living arrangements, but suffer devastating hardship on the breakdown of their parents’ relationship.”

As Atheism begins to dominate the faith stakes in the UK, laws are needed to protect the children of modern families.

Guardian Journalist and respected commentator Polly Toynbee has given her opinion on Labour’s poverty pledge in a video podcast for the Guardian Daily website.

In 1998 Tony Blair made an announcements to abolish child poverty by 2020. Toynbee said:”It was probably the most ambitious and extraordinary of Labour’s policies. The poverty experts knew how very difficult it would be as Britain has some of the highest levels of child poverty in the western world”

“The figures published by the Rowntree Foundation suggest they will be off by a long way. Labour would need to have of put in another 4.1 billion pounds.”

Toynbee expresses concern over the implications for Labour government if they do not reach the 2010 half way mark for eradicating child poverty:”It will be one of Labour’s great failure’s, if the conservatives came into power again they will probably abandon the target too.”

She also said that the high levels of child poverty in the UK are mostly a result of the recession in the 1980′s and Margaret Thatcher’s reign.

Toynbee has been described by Sun columnist Jon Gaunt. He said: “Top politicians, police chiefs and those in power love her and often slavishly parrot her ideas, which then quickly become policy.”

In 2007, 66.6% of all children in Tower Hamlets were living in income-deprived families.

A Beacon award has been given to the council of ‘the most deprived borough in England‘ for their contribution to tackling child poverty, Children & Young People Now revealed. This is a brilliant development, and evidence that the borough are not willing to remain defined by statistics.

‘Children & Young People Now’ is run to inform social service bodies about children’s issues, they said: “These awards mark the tenth year of the Beacon Scheme, which is run by the Improvement and Development Agency and rewards excellence in local government and public services.”

I reported on The Spitalfields Farm in December and met many people living in Tower Hamlets determined to improve life for the children in Tower Hamlets.

In an attempt to hit targets and silence Tories, the government have kick started a new scheme.

The fight for child poverty in Wales is to be pin pointed by local councils. New teams of ‘intensively trained’ social workers will start free targeted childcare in specific areas.

Local councils, police and fire services will “identify and take action to assist” to tackle child poverty. The conservatives have attacked Labour’s use of “rhetoric” instead of “effective action.”

Welsh ministers are now being urged to create their own plan to ease child poverty as the country draws closer eradicate it nationally.

Conservative social justice spokesman Mark Isherwood slammed the assembly government record for being”one of failure”.

Gordon Brown could do with some positive press in the dark days of 2009.

He might be pleased to know that the boffins across the pond at Harvard University are suggesting Obama takes inspiration from the otherwise uninspiring PM.

Harvard have rightly pointed out that when Labour came into power, the country was in trouble. 25 percent of British families lived below the poverty line after the near 20 year reign of the Tories.

Social scientist Jane Waldfogel is writing a book about the UK’s battle against child poverty. She said: “Progress is dramatic, though not on target, with poverty down by a third, not by a half.”

Waldfogel believes that the progress is down to the “really idealistic set of investments” set out by the Labour party in 1999, she said: “Maybe there’s something for us (the USA) to learn about the value of setting targets.”

Waldfogel believed we are one step ahead of the Americans. New welfare reform measures mean that the USA are reducing levels of poverty, but not at the speed of the U.K. model.

Its not much to ask is it Gordon?

Barnardo’s children charity have reminded Labour of their long shot promise to half child poverty by 2010. On the 10th anniversary of Gordon Brown’s pledge, the  charity have urged the government that unless 3 million is invested in 2009′s budget there is  no chance of hitting the original target.

The charity also gave a voice today to the UK’s school children after a survey found 78% of children in the UK think the Prime Minister should never break promises and 74% think £3 billion should be spent now.

You could argue the children surveyed above have little idea of the current difficulties Labour faces running Blighty amongst a recession among other things.

However, Brown promised to eradicate child poverty by 2020 and until then current statistics show that 3.9 million are still living in the depths of poverty.