Quote ="Dally"These are facts. He was Chancellor for a long time then PM for a short while. The country we live in today is as a direct result of his policy-making. If that's trolling I'm guilty. However, I happen to think both issues are extremely important and a damning indictment of failed policy.'"
They are important but the idea either the economic or child poverty situations are down to a Brown legacy is completely idiotic.
On child poverty according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation there were 4.3 million children classed as in poverty in 1995 out of a population of just under 58m. By 2010 it was down to 2.3m out of a population of 62m. It hasn't been a linear trend to the lower figure with it increasing on 04/05 and 07/08 but only an idiot would assume it was not influenced by other factors. No Labour didn't meet their own targets to reduce the problem even further but the trend over their time in office was overwhelmingly a reduction in child poverty.
In fact child poverty shot up from 1981 to about 1993, went down a bit but then back up in 1997 after which it fell steadily bar the two blips mentioned but there is only one conclusion to draw from the figures and that us under the Tory administration child poverty overall went up from 1981 to 1997 and overall it went down from 1997 to 2010. You can see that from the statistics in the second of my links below (Look at page 9 of the PDF linked to).
It will be going up again now due to the state of economy and we all know the main reason for that is the banking collapse and the crisis in the Euro zone having a knock n effect to our economy neither of which can be laid at Brown's door given they are world wide problems. The austerity policies wil also no doubt increase it as well.
Here is dome links so you can educate yourself on the issue.
[urlhttp://www.jrf.org.uk/work/workarea/child-poverty[/url
[urlhttp://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/5303[/url
The latter is a warts and all assessment of the ten years prior to 2010 but even it mentions "the large overall reduction in child poverty since 1998-99" so just how you conclude Brown is at fault for child poverty God knows. The reduction in it was one of the biggest successes of the last government.
