Most people, it seems to me at least, hate poor people more than they hate poverty. This is classic, the old pull yourself up by the bootstraps trope. It ignores that people are not inherently good or bad, and that even ‘bad’ decisions are made in a context. For example, my aforementioned gangster uncles universally encouraged me to stay in school, paid me pocket money for reciting the theory of evolution to them as a child and even threatened to give me a bloody good hiding if I tried to be like them – i.e. a criminal. My good friend, a retired Premier League footballer from the notorious
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