March against child poverty

I congregated with a group of Lib Dems recently to go on a march against child poverty organised by the Child Poverty Action Group.
Nick Clegg is determined that the Liberal Democrats have a high profile on this issue. It was a dominant theme at our last conference with lots of fringe meetings. Martin Narey of CPAG had a high profile at conference and is helping the party develop our policies on this theme.
So I was delighted to see Nick Clegg join the march. I may not be his favourite activist given my opposition to some of his policies, but I was happy to help out holding a banner as background to his photos.
Demonstrations have changed over the years. These days the London School of Samba come along with there drums, and you can put on a special costume and have a dance! I remember the times when it was more serious and if you did anything like that then you were a wierdo and you had to go to the back of the demo. Well it is better the way it is now.
The title was "Keep the Promise". Will Labour stick to it's pledge to eliminate child poverty by 2020? We will probably never know of course. The hardest thing is keeping on track with child poverty when we have serious fuel and food inflation, an economy about to go into recession, and ever worsening public finances.
Despite the gloomy prognosis, we will remain one of the richest countries in the world, so there isn't really any excuse. It is a matter of priorities.
Combatting child poverty should be priority over replacing Trident and ighting an unwinable war in Iraq. But there is a lot more to those arguments of course...