Gordon Clown .Com

Gordon has been desperately trying to keep under the radar this week, as his Budget of a week ago appears to have been exposed as a complete sham and nothing but a pack of spin designed to fool the electorate.  And then there was the horrendous nose-picking incident, the video of which has now had well over 70,000 viewings on YouTube.

But it seems the press just can’t keep away as it was revealed today that child poverty has begun to increase again after almost a decade of steady declines.  This will come as bad news to Gordon who has a target of reducing it by 1 million by 2010.

Opposition politicians and poverty campaigners said a core government policy was failing and warned that its 2010 target could be missed by a million children, in spite of measures announced by Gordon Brown in last week’s budget.

Official figures showed relative poverty - those living on less than 60% of average incomes - rose to 12.7 million people in 2005-06, from 12.1 million the year before.It brings to an end the longest period of falling poverty since records began in 1961. The number of children living in poor families rose by 200,000 to 3.8 million.

…

Mr Brown announced £1bn more in tax credits for poorer families in last week’s budget. Experts think that could lift 200,000 children out of poverty, but that would only be a fifth of the way to the 2010 target of one million. The IFS says the government would need to spend £4bn extra by 2010 on help for poor families to make its target achievable but Mr Murphy said the new strategy was about getting more parents into some of the 600,000 vacant jobs available. “People should never be better off on benefit.” The shadow chancellor, George Osborne, said the “depressing” figures showed “that poverty is increasing, inequality is rising, and the incomes of the poorest fifth are in decline. Gordon Brown made tackling poverty the great promise of his chancellorship, and yet he leaves the Treasury with poverty rising.” The Liberal Democrat work and pensions spokesman, David Laws, said: “These figures are dreadful for the government, with child poverty rising to almost a third of all UK children. Poverty in Britain is increasing again, and social mobility seems to have been falling. The government’s ambition to cut child poverty now looks in tatters.”

Not much good news around for Gordon at the moment, it seems.