Get On Your Weekend Bike And Look For Another Job

Research commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation indicates that, amazingly enough, the last five years of New New Labour and Daveybloke's Cuddly Coalition have resulted in record levels of poverty among the employed work-shy. Three-fifths of the indicators used, including child poverty, inequality and Daveybloke's own favourite of the moment, well-being, have either stood still or gone backwards. A fifth of the population is living on less than sixty per cent of the median income despite at least one member of the household being waged; ignorant and backsliding persons are of course already blaming this on a denial of the rights of the work-shy rather than insufficient rights for the likes of Sir Philip Green. The chief executive of the Child Poverty Action Group missed the point by the margin one would expect of an agitator for yesterday's cause when she said: "We cannot hope to end child poverty when more and more children whose parents are in work find their lives damaged by poverty regardless". As Daveybloke himself has intimated, it is time for charities and others in the idleness reform industries to drop their attitude of doctrinaire materialism and realise that there is more to life than money; that child poverty is both a challenge and an opportunity, not least for the lean, tough, virtually Tebbitesque human resources with which it may grace future decades; and that the right thing to do with challenges and opportunities is not to end them, but simply to ensure that the right people have them.