Is poverty a growing disgrace in the UK?

THE fact that according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation an additional 700,000 UK children and pensioners have fallen into relative poverty over the past four years must act as a wake-up call to the Tory Government (Mail). According to the report, since 2013 an extra 300,000 pensioners and 400,000 children are now living in poverty and the ‘prospects for solving’ the problem ‘currently look worrying’. Despite the Government protecting the value of the basic state pension since 2010, Pension Credit, a benefit paid to the poorest pensioners, has not kept pace with rising costs. Child poverty has also been driven by stagnant wages for low-income families and a freeze on benefits and changes to tax credits, which many families rely on. AleX orr, edinburgh. TALK of the ‘rise of poverty’ makes me laugh. Growing up, we had no double glazing, no central heating and put our coats and jackets on top of our bedclothes to keep warm. We sometimes had ‘bread and dripping’ as a meal, often only jam sandwiches for tea. Everything we had was on hire-purchase, and the house was rented from the council. We were not a poor family. Some had much less than us! Phil north, Brigg, n. lincs. MOST of the people the BBC was hyperventilating about live like kings compared to working-class families of a century earlier. Even when I was born, most people had no fridge, phone, TV, car, central heating or foreign holidays. Today, those on benefits have these as normal. There is real poverty, but the bottom percentage will always be there, no matter how much things improve. simon cAmPBell, glasgow.