Obviously, An Archbishop Doesn't Believe Anything

But possibly facts are possible?

So we’ve the Archbishop of York here telling us all how it should be. Of course, given that that prelacy is Church of England he doesn’t actually believe anything, of course not. But he does roll out what he considers to be facts. Which, sadly, are not.

With all children across the UK back in school as of this week, I am reminded that almost one in three are in poverty. That statistic is shocking enough – but behind every number is a child, and what this statistic means is children arriving at school hungry, living in insecure housing, and missing out on the activities that help them thrive.

Well, no. His near one in three comes from this JRF report. Which is not measuring poverty at all. It’s measuring inequality - the number of people living in a household on less than 60% of median household income. Which is not, in fact, poverty.

No, think on it. If we doubled the - real - income of everyone in the country then clearly we’d have less poverty. But by this measure, the one of inequality of incomes, the number in poverty would change by not one single person nor child. Equally, if we halved everyone’s incomes - real incomes that it - there would be a lot more poverty. But by this measure there would be no change at all.

There’s also this:

I visited a school in the north-east of England a couple of years ago where many of the pupils turned up with empty lunchboxes. There was a breakfast club that fed them on arrival. They were eligible for free school meals, so got a hot lunch. After school, trestle tables were set up in the playground laden with food donated from the local food bank. As they went home, they filled up their lunchboxes so that they could have some tea.

I have rarely been so shocked. This is the reality of child poverty.

Kids are packed to the gunwales with food and this is a sign of poverty? Eh? Sure, sure, I know consubstantiation is pretty heady stuff but really, a little contact with reality please? Kids get two full meals and tuck to take home. This is all free. So, logically, their parents send them to school with empty tuck boxes so that they get two free meals and stuff to take home. I mean, free stuff, who wouldn’t?

Who goes to the pub to pay £7 a pint when booze is flowing free from the town fountain?

Last week, I spent the morning at the Junction Multibank in Middlesbrough, a town where more than 40% of children grow up in poverty.

The median household income used to measure that inequality is the national one. It is not - not - adjusted for prices in different places. Middlesbrough is a fairly cheap place to live. Not just housing, the prices of many things are lower. That people are on lower than national wages, lower than national incomes, is not proof that there is greater poverty.

In one of the richest countries in the world, the level of child poverty in the UK at the moment is quite simply unacceptable.

The thing is, ArchBish, by any historical or global standard - and with the usual exception of deep addiction or mental health problems of parents - we have no child poverty in Britain today. What is described as such poverty would, in fact, be quite lush by the middle class standards of both your and my childhoods.

Now, yes, obviously, CofE, the belief system that there’s nothing worth believing in. Fair enough. But facts still exist and it might be worth your grasping a few.

Jus’ Sayin’