City's poor have zero chance of being heard

We're UK leader in teenage pregnancy, one in three of all city kids lives in poverty and thousands need food banks.

With 800,000 people in Scotland also in poverty, why are we not taking to the streets in far greater numbers than the few thousand who rallied in George Square at the weekend?

Other than those committed trade unionists and anti-poverty campaigners, who else is willing to go out on a limb for those on the breadline?

I know, we all "care", but are we concerned enough to agree, for instance, a rise in our taxes on behalf of the poor (not that any political party would ever find the bottle to consider such an electoral death wish).

I'm no different.

I can rant here, like many others I can salve my conscience with a bag of groceries for the food bank at my local Morrisons, but the poor and their plight don't directly impact on our lives.

During the referendum, voters were asked in a TNS/BBC poll to rank their concerns in order of priority.

The economy and employment comfortably came top, followed by the NHS, pensions and benefits, then education.

Currency, defence and the EU hardly rated a mention. Poverty wasn't even on the list.

It's like Ebola.

As long as it remained in darkest Africa, anonymously killing folk since 1976, First World governments could ignore it.

But when it reached the US and Europe, well, cue global panic and recriminations, and pharmaceutical giants falling over themselves to find a vaccine now they have some mugs to pay for it.

It will be a similar scenario with UK poverty.

The people we elect will start listening only when the majority in this country - the increasingly ignored so-called middle class - eventually are squeezed so hard they start squealing.

And with growth predicted to slow next year, we could soon be hearing plenty of squealing.

The UK now consists of three distinct groups - the rich, the poor, and the rest of us.

Thanks to the Tories, six years after the 2008 crash the UK's 1000 richest people are richer by almost £200billion and those earning £1m-a-year got a tax cut. Tory fat cats are asking: 'What austerity?'.

Labour as ever promises more welfare for the poor to keep them dependent and guarantee their vote.

It remains to be seen whether their referendum horror show will be repeated in next May's general election, but we live in hope.

Meanwhile that squeezed middle has seen government money flowing only up and down, while their own incomes stagnate and actually plummet in real terms as the cost of living rockets.

Austerity has made them poorer and middle-class pensioners now also see their adult kids struggling to get a foot on the ladder because the economic crash obliterated the first rung and left the rest even farther apart.

The squeezed middle hold the balance of power at the ballot box, thus ensuring they are thrown the occasional bone when there are elections to be won, but no political party actually champions their cause.

And if their fate doesn't concern the millionaires on either side of the Commons despatch box, then the poor have zero chance of being heard.

For generations we've been fed political mouth music on poverty, about the wasted lives, the lost potential, the self-inflicted vicious circle that leads to crime and alcohol and drug abuse.

But what have successive Westminster governments in the world's seventh richest economy done to eradicate it.

Foreigners are seen as more deserving of aid.

What have our Labour rulers in George Square been doing for the last 50 years? They were talking about the "Glasgow effect" on health when I was a kid, but they've done damn all to solve it.

I don't know how to cure poverty. Decent social housing and a living wage would be a start, since the DWP's own figures confirm that those one in three poverty-stricken kids in Glasgow, 2.3m in the UK, are now twice as likely to come from working families than those on benefits.

But families desperately need ­education in health, diet, and lifestyle to reverse that vicious circle at least among their kids.

Some folk will always have too much, others will always have too little. No need to guess which way those in the middle would choose to jump.

"If you won the lottery," a noted do-gooder was asked, "would you give money to the poor?"

"Of course."

"And if you had four cars, would give one to your neighbour?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I've got four cars."