Pleading poverty

It's Blog Action Day today, it happens every year (apparently) bloggers are encouraged to write about a given subject, this year it's poverty.

With that in mind, here we go, poverty and Bad PR.

The global financial meltdown is dominating the majority of the UK's media channels, yet most of the people worrying about rising inflation, soaring unemployment and falling house prices know nothing about poverty. Real, actual, poverty.

I look around me day to day and see no real evidence of depression. Well, not economic depression anyway. Like most people in this country I'm incredibly lucky. Lucky to be living in one of the wealthiest places on earth. Where, given a small amount of effort, poverty can be overcome. Poverty, for me and the vast majority of people in Britain, simply isn't an issue.

That said, when I got an email inviting me to a Halloween press party earlier, I nearly spat out my ethically sourced, fair trade tea.

The agency hosting the party are charging journalists £10 to attend.

Poor impoverished journalists are being asked to pay for beer, pizza and a celebrity quiz master. Does Gordon Brown know about this?

It's all going to a good cause apparently - but even so, ten quid to go to a press party!!!! Don't they know there's a bleedin' credit crunch happening?

Charity begins at home so the saying goes, which is exactly where I'll be when that party happens.

bah humbug