Not anorexic …
Grumpy has opined before on how certain institutions with otherwise entirely laudable objectives (and which do contribute to society) nevertheless resort to hyperbole, and intentionally misleading and often disingenuous statements to promote their political messages. ( http://grumpy.eastover.org.uk/numbers-that-dont-add-up/ ) One of the common ways this is done is to conflate topics (often easily done with the ‘flexibility’ of the English language) to deliberately leave an impression with the reader which is removed from reality.
Grumpy’s eye was caught by a headline on the website of US based CNN, ‘holiday hunger is haunting British Families’, driven by the statement that ‘31% of children in Coventry live in poverty’ from a UK Community Trust. It goes on to say that ‘millions of parents … face stress over whether they will be able to provide food for their families’. One can forgive a US reader getting the impression that that vast swathes of UK citizens are on the point of starvation. Poverty = poor; the authors know exactly what they are doing in this conflation.
The data stems from data issued in a leaflet by the ‘Coventry Partnership’, which also stated that 18.5% of residents of the City are living in circumstances of multiple deprivation. Oddly, it also says that over 24% of Coventry children are obese, and that this is increasing – giving the image of a third of the population being anorexic whilst one quarter are wobbling about as flesh mountains. [Incidentally, the picture at the top of the page is of a family who use a food bank because they are unable to otherwise feed themselves. However, at the risk of being cruel (but Grumpy at least deleted the word ‘porky’ from this post), neither of the two women depicted have any obvious signs of food deprivation, so the food bank clearly provides copious calories.]
This piece of lexical sleight of hand comes from a favourite trick of the many agencies vying for more government monies, which is to conflate relative poverty (which is what the 31% was based on) with being poor; it is not. One can construct a scenario where people ‘living in poverty’ by this definition all drive BMW 520 cars.
The same article has links to another current bandwagon on which Grumpy has previously written (http://grumpy.eastover.org.uk/news-round-up-july-2018/ ) is about ‘period poverty’ i.e the cost of feminine sanitary products. The Salvation Army food bank stated that with Tampons costing £3.14 for 20 at Tesco, and women using 11,000 tampons in their lifetime, they would have to work 38 days to afford this.
This is using a 1950’s advertising trick of quoting usage by lifetime to maximise a quoted cost and by the hour / day if it is wished to minimise it (“only 50p per day”). However, setting aside that tired cliche, it is clear that based on reputable figures (e.g. from the Office of National Statistics) this is more inflation. Do the math.
No-one can doubt that a considerable number of people have a relatively miserable life from a material perspective (which doesn’t mean that they do not find value and happiness in life nevertheless). However, Grumpy is of the view that the constant inflation of statistics and disingenuous conflation of topics by various agencies to deliberately obfuscate reality and promulgate false impressions to gain political and general visibility is not necessary; if the truth were known, it probably hardens the heart of the more fortunate towards charity.