Ireland was pretty dire as well and the occasional visit to London or working in a pea canning factory in Spalding didn't add much to the experience!

But poverty is relative: "we didn't know we were poor until the social worker told us". When a night out was take-away chips, and if you were feeling wealthy, fish AND chips you didn't miss the fact that some people, not in your social circle, ate out in one of the few fancy restaurants of the time.

More recently charity workers have been drawing the poverty line at 45 inch TV's - they report that charity recipients won't accept anything less, and broadband will soon become a human right. It is the growth of inequality that is the most pernicious together with rationed access to essential healthcare and educational services. Overcrowding on public transport is the new norm and public housing a rarity.

In the 1950's JK Galbraith invented the phrase Private opulence and public squalor" to describe this growing disparity, and for a time - up to the Reagan Thatcher era - serious efforts were made to to reduce it. It's been downhill ever since.

Index of Frank's Diaries