A Compassionate Conservative Speaks

I'd never heard of York Councillor Chris Steward before but something tells me that he will regret a tweet and a subsequent report in the York Press

Councilor Steward said on twitter that it insulted those in poverty to claim it existed in the UK. Asked to elaborate, he said Britain had relative poverty, like every country, but not absolute poverty.
He said: “We have lots of poor people, but living standards have surged over the years. There is certainly no need for food banks; no-one in the UK is starving and I think food banks insult the one billion in the world that go to bed hungry every day and ignore the fact a child dies of hunger every three seconds.

"The fact some give food to food banks, merely enables people who can’t budget (an issue where schools should do much more and I have said the council should) or don’t want to, to have more money to spend on alcohol, cigarettes etc.”


Unsurprisingly his comments have been pilloried. Nbody is saying that we have overty on the scale the poorest countries of the world ut tht does not mean that our wealth does not mask a lot of deprivation. Note to Cllr Steward and others: engage brainor face consequences.