I FIRST came to understand the consequences of long-term hunger in 1984. The Ethiopian famine had begun, and my history teacher was taking lessons on Soviet Russia. It was inevitable, he said, that Ethiopian babies would become living evidence of the famine, if they survived. We know this, he said, as the Ukrainian famine of the 1930s which Stalin created, stunted an entire generation, leaving them shorter thanks to the childhood starvation they endured.

Later, as a reporter, I recall writing about the aftermath of the 1990s North Korean famine and the horrifying statistic that children born during that period were considerably shorter than preceding generations.

All three famines were either fully, or partly, caused by political cruelty. War and drought in Ethiopia. Ideology in Ukraine. Economic mismanagement and bad weather in North Korea. Political leaders had literally left an indelible mark on the bodies of their people. It feels medieval in its barbarism.

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Bear that in mind as you consider this fact: British children raised during the Conservative austerity years have been found to be shorter than their European peers. In 1985, British children ranked 69 out of 200 nations for height aged five. Today, boys are 102nd, and girls 96th. Professor Tim Cole, from Great Ormand Street’s Institute of Child Health, said the data “tells me austerity has clobbered the height of children in the UK”.

You know that old rallying cry from the Spanish Civil War – the slogan picked up by the Manic Street Preachers: ‘If You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Be Next’?

Well, too late. Your children are already claimed. Maybe not yours, but those of your fellow citizens

British GPs report a resurgence of rickets and scurvy. We’ve reduced our poorest youngsters to the status of the Victorian workhouse.

And worse is coming. It’s just around the corner. Let me steal another song lyric: ‘What’s that coming over the hill, is it a monster?’ Yes, it’s the mortgage crisis: ready to dwarf the cost of living crisis that we’re still drowning in. The cost of living crisis cannibalised Britain’s poor. Now the mortgage crisis is going to consume the middle class. Some households face increases of more than £5000 annually.

Now let’s join some dots. What’s causing the mortgage crisis? Inflation. And what’s causing inflation. Well, partly, evidently, it’s global, as we recover from pandemic and face Putin’s criminal war. But something else is happening in Britain: wages. Not your wages, not the average punter’s wages. The wages of the rich. You could call it the wages of sin, if you’re feeling biblical.

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Pay rises for Britain’s top 10% have been identified as the prime driver of recent inflation and rising interest rates. Office of National Statistics figures show that since January annual wage increases have become more generous for the top 10%, while the rest of the population suffers declining wage growth. Those in the top 1% – earning at least £180,000 – were paid 7.9% more last year.

And of course, you must remember not so long ago when Andrew Bailey, governor of the Bank of England, said ordinary workers shouldn’t ask for pay rises because we had a responsibility to help keep inflation under control.

Oh, and in 2021, the Bank of England paid staff bonuses amounting to £23m.

What would you like to say to Bailey if he stood before you?

I’d tell him he represents a modern form of vampirism. A cult comprised of bankers like him; their political sidekicks – in all the main political parties; profiteering corporations from energy giants to supermarkets; and the wealth-extracting super-rich who party while Britain sinks.

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We really are suckers. Or perhaps, given the vampire metaphor: we really are ‘suckees’. We offer our necks to be drained of blood, for our children to be physically harmed by this creed our rulers enforce. A creed which enriches them and their children, and ruins us and our families.

Here’s more fun facts: some British children were found taking school meals home to feed their parents. Kids are going to A&E after fainting from hunger. One pupil climbed over barbed wire to take home ‘slops’ from school waste bins.

Sharon White, chief executive of the School and Public Health Nurse Association, said: “I’m not over-dramatising at all when I say we’ve got starving, hungry, sad, worried children committing crimes so their families can eat. This could have lifelong, far-reaching consequences.”

A quarter of Scots parents say their kids worry over finances. God curse us for creating a society in which children cry themselves to sleep because they’re poor.

Kids’ teeth are rotting, their mental health declining. In Scotland, one in six people faced hunger last year, as food bank numbers doubled; as of last year, 9130 Scottish children were effectively homeless, living in temporary accommodation. London is becoming a tent city. If you’re on housing benefits only 5% of rentals are affordable. Prince William – a damn aristocrat – seems to care more about the homeless than the brutes we elect to parliament.

Our NHS is crushed to dust. Good luck if you’ve cancer. Half of Scotland’s stroke patients no longer receive the necessary care required. Britons are now dying sooner from cancer and heart disease than folk in similar nations. Why? Political underfunding, for pity’s sake. We know this. We know political choices are killing people and ruining lives.

To any rational mind – are any left in Britain? – this is criminal.

Why are we not on the streets? In any other country, the people would have toppled governments. Here, we turn on each other over culture war fantasies. We’re happier fighting make-believe wars in our minds, than battling for what’s true and decent.

We hear a lot about safeguarding children these days. How about safeguarding them from poverty, shame and ruin?

Here’s my fear: by the time we wake up and realise the damage that’s been done to us, our society, and most importantly our children: it will be too late. We won’t be able to roll back what’s happened, because our country will have been carpet-bombed by government. But I guess if you’re prepared to live like a slave, then you’re happy to die like one too.