British Children In A Bad State?

This UNICEF report seems to suggest exactly that (although considering British children claim the most risky behaviour it is curious that second only to Sweden, the UK has the lowest deaths from accidents and injuries - perhaps British children are just more honest about their situation or prone to exagerate more? Both of which might explain why if you exclude all the stats relying on the children's opinions and rely on actual facts, our rating improves significantly).

I am not at all surprised by these findings, after suffering 18 years of brutal Thatcherism just 10 years ago, no wonder we still have close to American levels of poverty and inequality. Changes in income can take a generation to affect levels of accumulated wealth and we are still suffering the effects of the Tories.

As for the depressed state of our children and their poor education, is that really very surprising when most of their parents read the Sun and the Mail, something that almost guarantees increased ignorance and negativity.

And before you jump to conclusions about Labour's near 10 years of power, don't we actually need to see what the position was in 1997? For all we know things were considerably worse, and the actual child poverty figures from 1997 suggest exactly that.

If anything this report emphasises why we need more of a Labour government that has reduced child poverty by a third, not return to a Tory government that tripled it!