Thanks to Dotty for alerting me to this.
On Channel 4 News tonight, on children in relative poverty:
The picture is indeed stark. UK child poverty has climbed from 3.6m in 2013, to 4.3m, in 2023.
The level of poverty in parts of England, other than in the affluent South-East, ranges from around 20% higher in the North-East to 60% higher in the West Midlands and is 25% higher on average.
In Scotland, the lower rate has been attributed, in the main, to the introduction by the SNP Government, of the transformational Child Payment.
Sources:
https://www.channel4.com/news/the-reality-of-uk-child-poverty-explained
Talking-up Scotland / Facts on NHS, Crime, ferries and everything else you can think of 
It is noteworthy that Gordon Brown, interviewed on Channel Four News about child poverty, didn’t mention the Scottish Child Payment.
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Conclusion: Old Brownie is a backstabbing unionist ratbag.
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I posted this btl as an O/T contribution earlier. It fits better here:
BBC Radio 4’s Today programme had a long interview this morning with ex PM Gordon Brown. It focused on his latest published views on addressing child poverty in the UK.
In his pitch, he talked about how bad things have become and how damaging Tory welfare policies and Universal Credit are proving to be. To emphasise his contention about how dire things are, he chose to refer to his own observations in his former parliamentary constituency.
Despite (supposedly) being a supporter of devolving more power away from Westminster – with the implication that different centres of political power may come to do things differently and achieve different, sometimes better outcomes – Mr Brown in his interview – and in his paper as I understand it – opts to makes no mention of difference within the UK. Could that be because it is an SNP government that is making a positive difference?
Mr Brown made no acknowledgement of the following: (a) the better statistics regarding child poverty in Scotland relative to other parts of the UK – even if still at too high a level; (ii) the unique, beneficial Scottish Child Payment which his own former constituents have access to, something not available to families even in Labour-run Wales; and (iii) that his former constituents live within Scotland where the government has intervened to mitigate the harms of the Westminster’s welfare policies like the two child cap.
The Today programme interviewer obviously didn’t ask Mr Brown about any of these facts pertaining to Scotland even as he sought to use a Fife constituency to exemplify his contentions about matters UK-wide.
Scotland is destined to be tarred with one negative UK brush again and again by Labour and other Unionist politicians in the media regardless of what good a pro-Indy government in Holyrood achieves.
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Well done for reducing poverty. It saves on SNHS and other social services.
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Slightly OT but relates to ” the affluent South-East ” – I was watching a clip of Mick Lynch and Mick Whelan give evidence to a HoC transport committee, and was taken aback by an observation from Lynch – The newest trains and carriages almost always go to south and southeast England, then are offloaded to other parts of England when newer versions appear.
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When British Rail ruled the rails it was a well known fact that the new trains went to the South of England first then gradually worked their way north to Scotland by which time they were pretty clapped out. I used to commute to work by train in the ’70s and it was not a happy experience.
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