Brown is Live, Blue is Neutral

It's Victorian Britain and the government has just announced a commitment to end poverty by 1890. Behold the rejoicing in the streets of the slums!

You know when you are trying to fix something, say an electric plug, and you keep methodically going through what you know - fuse OK? check, wires OK? check, power supply OK? check - and yet the problem of blown fuses keeps recurring? You sit and think about it for a bit and then you realise the problem isn't the plug anymore, oh no, it's just taken on a wider perspective - the problem is the appliance the plug is attached to. That is the root cause of the problem and that is why the fuse keeps going.

So, when it comes to governments and tackling poverty, well then the ruling class have a long and varied history of changing fuses, fiddling with wires and checking supplies. They will never look at the bigger picture because to do so would threaten their existence.

Capitalism doesn't just need a new plug. It needs to be overhauled and stripped out.