A TRAGICALLY POOR STATE OF AFFAIRS

IT MAY be an urban legend that Red Cross parcels were given out in Glasgow's East End last year to the vulnerable and impoverished - I can't find evidence of people who allegedly received them - but I do have a cousin who is so poor that she wants one.

She is married with three kids under ten and both she and her husband work. It took her at least eight years to get off unemployment benefits and, despite this, her family suffers an appalling level of poverty.

Two days a week, my cousin cannot afford to heat her house, so the family eat dinner with their coats on and a bath before bed is out of the question. She gets the minimum working family tax credits and child benefit and, after rent and heating costs, they are left with £20 a week to feed five mouths and pay for childcare. It is virtually impossible to manage and, without help from friends and family, her children would not have shoes or a decent winter coat.

She is not the only one in this situation and while governments and the media bang on about hoodies, carbon footprints and melting ice caps, there are children in Scotland still living in Dickensian conditions.

Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, may assume his Budget will help bring children out of poverty, but it isn't nearly good enough. Mr Brown said his Budget was "for Britain's families, for fairness and for the future", but Save the Children has warned that the government still had a long way to go to meet its pledge of reducing child poverty by 50 per cent.

As Claire Walker, a spokeswoman for the charity, said: "While these measures will lift 200,000 children out of poverty, that still leaves 3.2 million missing out on the best start in life and the government off its target. These children can't wait."

As long as we keep voting in a government that is more interested in replacing Trident than ensuring free meals for kids, then hunger will always be part of our history.

I grew up in Shettleston in Glasgow and I know poverty; I recall being hungry and wearing other people's castoffs My mum got a jacket from a woman across the road whose son was in my class. Having to wear the anorak of a boy who bullies you can make a school term feel like a prison sentence and leave you emotionally scarred for life.

Last week, my cousin and I went shopping with her two boys. She was looking for trousers for her four-year-old son. In one local shop, a pair of kid's jeans was £10 and that was way over budget. I suggested we hit town for the cheaper big stores, but she told me not all buses would take the pram and a return ticket would cost £1.90, which would eat into the cash.

So we went trawling the charity shops for clothes. The look of shame and defeat in her eyes was painful. Yet another generation of my family living in other people's clothes.

Poverty affects people on so many levels. The utter demoralisation of being poor can crush a child's confidence and sense of personal worth.

It leaves them with low self-esteem and they feel they can never fit in.

I still have deep feelings of insecurity when I am among affluent people and often feel I don't belong - maybe they will know I used to eat scraps from plates in my local café in 1968?

Poverty is an issue that needs to be addressed in our country. We know drug addiction and alcohol problems add to the stress of families living on the breadline and it's always the children that suffer.

I run workshops that deal with youngsters who have challenging backgrounds. Trying to boost their confidence can be an uphill struggle.

I see how poverty can affect young people and the psychological damage it wreaks. Some teenagers feel totally excluded from society merely because they come from the 'wrong street'. It feeds them low expectations and they have little aspiration for their own future. They are "forgotten and slagged off" - their words not mine - and we need to give them hope. There are many social inclusion schemes that help address the issues of child poverty, there are charities that come to the rescue and some families that can financially bridge the gap.

My point is: if my cousin is paying tax, why isn't the government helping her? She doesn't want to be a charity case all her life; she wants to raise healthy, confident children who have a strong, educated work ethic and it's this government's choice whether they will help her achieve that or not.

CLEANING AWAY THE SINS OF THE PAST

NAOMI Campbell was a cleaning lady last week.

Her penchant for whacking maids on the scalp with a diamond-encrusted mobile phone earned her a stint cleaning with the New York sanitation department.

I owned a bar for 15 years and cleaned the toilets daily.

You find the craziest stuff in toilets.

Over the years I worked there, I found a pair of odd shoes, a kite and a prosthetic arm.

Who left the arm? It bewilders me to this day. Did someone just decide they didn't want it any more? If it was a drunk that left it, why did they never come back for their prosthetic limb?

I don't think Naomi found anything curious, but maybe she discovered a sense of compassion and resolved to stop banging phones off women's heads.

IT'S ENOUGH TO DRIVE MY HUSBAND RADIO GAGA

THERE can't be anything stranger than hearing your own voice come out of a wall in a hotel room.

That's what happened last Wednesday when I slumped into bed after a gig at the Carnegie Hall in Dunfermline.

It was one of those old-fashioned radios that are stuck into the bed surround. I lay there chatting about the gig to my husband - in the background, the radio was tuned to his favourite channel, BBC Radio 4 - and then heard: "And now, Janey Godley."

Out came three quick jokes then a huge applause and some big laughs. I realised we were listening to a rerun of 28 Acts in 28 Minute, a show that I had performed in last year.

My husband rolled over, looked at me with dull eyes and said: "Great! You in stereo."