THIS year marks the 175th anniversary of A Christmas Carol, written by Charles Dickens, the man who invented Christmas.

Charles Dickens tried to make life a little better by explaining the root causes of poverty, not just in this country, but in the world.

And it’s just the same today as it was 175 years ago.

No, actually it’s worse because we know exactly how we can stop the suffering of abject poverty because we have the wealth to stop it, but we just don’t have the political and public will to stop it.

We have a Christian Prime Minister for once, but one who is not prepared to stand up and be counted.

We talk about the homeless, we talk about how many children living in poverty and, of course, we must do something about it.

I know we will have several committees where we will pay a lot of people a lot of money to discuss it and come up with schemes that sound good.

Some will be acted on, but never with enough money to really make a difference.

We want to involve charities because that means on the cheap ­— or it used to be. Now charities are just big business, I’m ashamed to say.

The spirit in Christmas Carol shows Scrooge a boy and a girl.

He says that this boy is ignorance and this girl is want; beware of both but most of all beware of this boy for on his brow is written doom.

To raise the money needed means that we all must take a little less and give it to the some 12 million children and adults living in poverty.

The problem is we are not prepared to do it; we weren’t prepared to do it 175 years ago and we are not prepared to do it now.

The Prime Minister knows that and she knows she can get away with ignoring the problem and so it has been throughout the ages.

Not enough people really care ­— we all live busy lives, we care for that seven-second sound bite on our TV news.

The politicians know that it’s a game, but at the heart of it is people and they suffer.

We can make a difference, we should make a difference, but quite simply it’s just too hard so we let the rich and the politicians off the responsibility because we are our brother’s keeper.

I hope everybody had a very Merry Christmas and I wish a happy New Year to all. God bless everyone.

Ian Greenhalgh

Smithills