POLITICS can be served up in many ways. It contains different flavours and tastes change.

There is the politics of wisdom and compassion, which is often undermined by the politics of fear and those individuals who see power and control as their right and privilege.

They dismiss poverty and injustice as some kind of threat.

Underprivileged people are the product of those whose greed creates it.

We see poverty, it is all around us.

It is a distortion of the truth, projected by deception and a game played out by sections of the media, that portrays the poor as undeserving and a burden on society. We need to get real.

There are 1.6 million children living in extreme poverty, defined as surviving on less than 50 per cent of the average UK household income. This means getting by on less than £134 a week for a single parent with a child, or less than £240 a week for a couple with two children.

Then there’s basic poverty, with a family surviving on less than 60 per cent of the average household income, which takes the number of children living hand-to-mouth to 3.8 million.

That’s a staggering one-in-three under-16s in the UK.

It is appalling that these statistics apply to what is considered a wealthy country.

Let’s see a champion for the poor and child poverty.

Bernie Walsh, Coxhoe.