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In my day, of course, poverty meant walking eight miles there and back from workhouse to school on bleeding feet; at both ends of the journey we were beaten black and blue by Harry Secombe in a silly costume. God knows how he got there so fast. All we had to play with was a stick. I called mine Jimmy.

In my Dad’s day, there was no such thing as a stick and the children were beaten at lunchtime too. In my Grandad’s day there was no such thing as lunchtime.

Today, children are poor if they haven’t got a decent case in which to carry their iPhone, right? Well…

There was a great deal of media coverage last week for the campaign group End Child Poverty, which brought the issue before us by cleverly offering statistics for virtually every corner of the country. Thus, we learned that in parts of Cornwall around a quarter of children are below the poverty line (22% in Liskeard, for example).

But what is poverty these days? Well, a child is poor if he or she lives in a household living on less than 60% of average income.

So, using 2008 figures, Barnardo’s suggests that a family of two adults and two children needs to have £352 a week to be above the poverty line.

To me, my father and grandfather this seems like untold riches – more than £18,000 a year! £352 a week equates to about £12.50 a day for each member of the family. Sounds a lot, doesn’t it? It certainly makes it easy for the Daily Mail to point out that poor children have got clothes, satellite telly, a roof over their heads and mum or dad or both can afford to smoke filthy cigarettes so where’s the problem?

But consider another shocking statistic: the average family – the average – spends £673 a week. £176 a person. £25 a day, each. Suddenly, half that looks a bit piffling.

And then consider that that £12.50 per person per day is the top of the poverty line, the level beneath which – and many can be quite a way beneath – beneath which you are poor. Severe poverty is defined as living in a household on less than 50% of average income.

And then consider that £12.50 a day must clothe and feed you, keep you warm, get you to where you want to be.

And then consider today’s household bills: the price of milk, the price of electricity. And then consider that many (more than 59%) of the people on £12.50 a day have got a job. A job that keeps them in poverty.

Now the Government is to adopt new indicators of child poverty more closely linking it to education, health and expectations, based on research carried out by the MP Frank Field. (Field was the man famously told to “think the unthinkable” and come up with radical solutions to our social security system. When he did so, fellow politicians reacted as politicians always do when confronted by reasoned, intelligent suggestions. They panicked and sacked him.)

The unfortunate thing is that even Field’s definitions are confusing and verbose – when clarity and a counter to the Daily Mail Position (they can’t be poor because they’ve got a telly and they smoke) are what’s most needed to create an electoral pressure for change.

Without clarity, people will continue to believe that poverty isn’t poverty. They will fulminate against crime, single parents, poorly educated kids roaming the streets intimidating others, drinkers, hooligans and junkies – without accepting it’s poverty, material and spiritual in terms of poverty of aspiration, that causes the problems, because nobody’s poor these days.

The poor are always with us and always will be. The point is: how poor? The poverty of today seems like untold riches to the paupers of yesterday – but then, the wealth of today would seem astonishing to the wealthy of yesterday. Surely it’s the gap that matters?

Moving on… I’ve been asked to speak at a friend’s memorial service today, and am very much hoping the good Lord has a sense of humour. John Feltham was a lovely man who loved a joke, some of them quite risqué. It seems to me important to feature one of his jokes as an accurate tribute to John, who served in the Navy, so I shall tell this one (unless the vicar bans it!):