Wealth and poverty

A very curious afternoon of Green canvassing today, from the Regent's Park council estate - and some lovely polite pensioners - over 100 metres or so to the extreme wealth of the Georgian mansions lining the park. Not much luck there, it seems the rich are still in Barbados, or in the office working to pay for all of this. If anyone is at home it is usually "the staff".

Not quite as bad as Manila, where (when I was there anyway) there was a corrugated-iron shanty town in the shadow of the presidential palace, but close.

Seems an appropriate point to direct attention to this article on the measurement of poverty, which argues for adopting a poverty line that measures relative poverty. (And incidentally tells of the career of an obviously very formidable woman, Mollie Orshansky.)