“No teacher, no doctor, no police officer is trained to get rid of poverty, but they have to deal with the problems thrown up by poverty,” reads the statement in the small but perfectly formed manifesto I published last week for the next government’s attention. It is an unhappy truth that our public servants are in the poverty firing line, but are capable only of responding to poverty’s toxic outcomes.
Would we expect a doctor, teacher or police officer to have the tools, the skills, the knowledge to reduce poverty? No, of
