From the Guardian
The central premise of the government's anti-poverty strategy, that work is the best route out of poverty, is questionable given that half of the 3.4 million children living in poverty have a parent already in paid work, the same proportion as in the late 1990s, the study concludes. A low-paid couple, it says, can only avoid poverty if both are working.
The big fall in poverty among pensioners, especially single pensioners, has been a major success of the anti-poverty policy, the researchers say. The poverty rate for pensioners overall has fallen from 27% in the late 1990s to 17% in 2004-05, and among single pensioners the rate has halved from 33% to 17%. But for working adults, the poverty rate remains unchanged since Labour took office at 19%, reflecting Britain's low wages.
I don't consider myself particularly intelligent but I had the pleasure to work in low paid jobs in London, years ago under the Tories with no minimum wage. In 1991 I was getting paid £1.90 gross per hour in a pub which in London considering that a room at that time was about £45 a week was nothing at all. The minimum wage might have helped to cut down the most extreme cases but to be paid minimum wage in London you are still too poor to raise a family full stop. Now the average bedsit in London is about £100 a week. If you look at job ads in the Jobcentre Plus website you find that lots of jobs are paying just the minimum wage and yet they ask for experience. So that means that if you are a barman or a kitchen porter in a few years your pay will be basically the same. What I am saying is that you cannot escape from poverty by working if your job keeps you poor. Yes, I know there will be those that say that you should improve yourself, study become a kitchen porter plus, a supervisor, a manager etc.
Well firstly there is never the need for that many chiefs. Secondly, OK Alfred is a kitchen porter gets an Open University degree and becomes an accountant, buys a car and does not feel poor anymore (can't afford to buy a house in London anyway). But someone else has to do Alfred's old job. It's always someone's turn to be poor. No, I don't have a quick solution, although I see lots of things that are really unfair and someone should have the political will to do something about it (have you recently seen in what conditions some people in London live? And they are paying good money for it,they spend most of their wages on it, why are some fat rich landlords allowed to make a fortune out of properties they are not prepared to put a penny in to maintain properly?)
Colette Marshall, UK director of Save the Children, said the government's strategy of getting low-income families into work was "clearly failing". "The government needs to address the issue of low pay but also acknowledge that work is not possible for all."
