While I don't agree with PP on how he frames what poverty is.....I don't deny that we have a significant underclass and always have had. I also don't deny that the problem of the enlarging underclass is mainly a result of politicians ignoring social problems out of political expediency.....kicking the can down the road.

What PP also seems unable to recognise is that governments have used immigration to increase population size at the lower socio-economic scale for short term economic booasts have only increased the longer term burden on housing and infrastructure and hence lowered the lifestyle standard that the taxpayer is willing to provide for the unproductive or lower paid working class (excepting genuine medical situations).

In a successful environment of high life expectancy also adding to this burden by about the same amount it equates to political criminality.....Yet people like PP have no issues with ignoring these self inflicted crimes and continually point at the wealthy to solve the problems of others.

So essentially people like PP aren't the right people to be listening to in regards of these problems because their solutions would lead to even worse outcomes than now.

I think the use of foodbanks and payday loans which have rocketed in recent years are a good barometer. Homelessness has increased. Undeniable facts.

look at the high street and the only shops doing well are the low end retailers like Primark, lidl, then there's cash a cheque shops, betting shops, everything is so short term, cost of living has increased while wages have stagnated.

I think we are regressive as a nation due to current government policy on austerity, cuts in services, low minimum wage and workers rights, lack of affordable housing, this is gradually sucking the wealth from the bottom up to the top. So overall living standards are worsening for all but the wealthy

Deeply sad and largely rubbish. Uk poverty is a consequnce, it would seem, of immigrants and useless layabouts. Elderly bigots with triple locked pensions fat on the labour of others casting judgment from their cosy zero mortgage homes.

Ironic that they are one of the main causes of poverty. A diminishing working population being squeezed to sustain the growing pension age population because there are so many of them... and every bl00dy one votes. In 2016 the number of working families with children in poverty passed the number of pensioners in poverty. With current trends, the number of working families without children in poverty will pass the pensioners in poverty as the one curve inexorably rises to finance the ever falling trend of pensioner poverty.

This may be fair, However, dont point your finger at the very people who helped prop up the labour market and fund pensioner subsidies.

Yep, wage deflation. He doesn't seem to realise that low-skilled immigrants take those jobs from the natives because they will work for cheaper. It happens in almost every Western country in the world. Great for big business, bad for the working class.

I suppose that was predictable, you'll try to find any reason to shoehorn your prejudices into the debate, I guess you'll never realise how gullible you are, stories about immigration are sensationalised by the media because they want to stigmatise sections of society so people can blame other people, usually at the bottom of society for their problems rather than the root cause. Probably because they know you scratch the surface of alot of people and you find prejudice and bigotry. More intelligent people see through this and aren't manipulated in such a way. More and more are waking up to this but I wonder if that penny will ever drop for you?

Stirling's correct and you are continually wrong re- immigration 'economically'.
It's a useful tool (ploy) to continually drive wages lower, something you were concerned with in a previous post.
Govts don't let all and sundry in because they want new bloody friends!