The comfortable story which assigns blame to those living in poverty has become easy to believe because it is so widespread and often repeated. Yet there is danger in comfort. The typical family in poverty in the UK is not made up of the feckless, workless scroungers of popular imagination. More typical is a person in low-paid work, or a person recently unemployed and soon to find another low-paid job. More typical is someone who scrimps and saves and does without to make sure their family is able to make it to the end of the week. The comfortable story of poverty allows the majority of people to live in comfort and security, largely unaware of the diffi culties that many others face. It neutralises our response to people who struggle - not with criminality and anti-social behaviour, but to cover the essentials of feeding a family, clothing growing children and heating homes. The comfortable myths about poverty allow us to believe that people in poverty are deserving of their poverty, and that it is neither our fault nor our problem. communitiesagainstthecuts/2013/03/03/myths-about-poverty/
Posted on: Tue, 17 Sep 2013 23:52:21 +0000