By Rab Bruce’s Spider

Lots of people like to clean their house at New Year. Sometimes they refer to it as Spring Cleaning, even though we’re in the middle of winter but that’s just a turn of phrase which everybody understands.

What some of us are struggling to understand is the latest call for us to get out and voluntarily tidy up the UK in time for the Queen’s 90th birthday.

What? Doesn’t the old dear have enough spare cash to pay for an army of people to do this if she’s so concerned about the untidiness of her realm?

More importantly, doesn’t she, or the people behind the campaign, realise that litter and graffiti are not the real issue, but are simply symptoms of the problem? The real issue is poverty.

A recent UNICEF report states that 1 in 4 children in the UK is now living in relative poverty. The Tory Government disagrees because it has changed the way it measures poverty but that’s the Tories for you. According to UNICEF, the UK now has a worse child poverty rate then North Korea.

Yes, that’s right. If you look at a militaristic, aggressive country which is ruled by a powerful elite and where the citizens are compelled to adulate the Head of State unquestioningly, you see that its child poverty record is worse than North Korea. (It’s hard to tell the difference between the two countries sometimes, isn’t it?)

I’m not advocating going out and tipping your rubbish into the street just to spite the Clean For The Queen project but I would rather our efforts went into helping people in real need.

Unfortunately, I expect we’ll be bombarded by news reports about the new project while the plight of children in poverty will be largely ignored by the media. That’s how the UK operates and, lie the poverty rates in what is alleged to be the fifth wealthiest country in the world, it is an absolute disgrace.