EVEN though I was brought up in a comfortable home some of my school classmates lived in poverty.

At the time I didn't think of it like that. I noticed it but I didn't think it was out of the ordinary.

I just believed some people slept on a mattress in a bare room and I was lucky for getting a comfy bed in a room I didn't even have to share with my sister.

As a teenager I remember being invited round to friends' homes and feeling uncomfortable at times...

Uncomfortable that some of them had no food in the house.

Uncomfortable that they had no wallpaper on their walls, and uncomfortable that they were not given any breakfast.

Cereal in the morning was surely just a normal part of the day?

I grew up in Aberdeen which has areas of deprivation so it was always around, but I didn't realise what it was until later.

I thought of my old classmates when I read our report on statistics published by the End Child Poverty Campaign yesterday. We told how a third of children in Glasgow are still living below the breadline.

MEANWHILE, more than one in five - 220,000 - of Scotland's children are living in poverty.

Sometimes it's hard to see behind figures or newspaper headlines.

But when it comes to child poverty, we have to think of the lives behind the numbers.

I can understand why people feel shocked but I don't think the extent of child poverty is surprising.

How can it be when we have foodbanks in every area of Glasgow and the rest of Scotland?

Politicians like to pretend everything is rosy when the number of people in jobs increases.

However, the Child Poverty Action Group in Scotland says low wages and underemployment - not just unemployment - are causes of child poverty.

It frustrates me that having working parents does not even guarantee their children a route out of poverty.

The problem is that most politicians have no idea what it's like in some cities and towns across the UK.

The people at the top do not come from a variety of backgrounds, they don't understand how increasing the minimum wage significantly, for example, could be life-changing.

That is holding us back from changing the system.

Even if you know poverty exists and see the numbers, if you've never had any personal experience, it is difficult to relate to it.

People are angry about child poverty and they should be.

I wasn't lucky to get a proper bed and I wasn't lucky to get cereal every day - every child deserves that.