Same old biased drivel from the BBC's hard left Home Affairs Editor, Mark Easton - it's as if the election never happened

Easton, his facial expression and tone of voice combining aching compassion and righteous anger, increasingly reminds me of a Marxist lecturer at some former polytechnic up North whose class numbers have increased from seven or eight gormless youngsters spoonfed Marxist propaganda at school to several million more or less sentient adults, many of whom – like me - are responsible grown-ups with minds of their own. His television news mini-lectures are shot through with assumptions that the majority of people (in England at least) indicated at last month’s general election that they simply don’t share.

Yesterday, the subject of his latest political re-education harangue was homelessness, which, apparently, doesn’t mean actually living on the streets so much as living off taxpayer-funded benefits in temporary accommodation. Easton’s chosen “victim” was an articulate middle-class American woman whose husband had deserted her and their children. As a result she and her kids had ended up living in a bit of a dump. I’m sure few people watching would have felt anything but sympathy for the woman (who is suffering from clinical depression) and her kids. But I'm also sure that many viewers will have been left wondering how she got herself into this awful scrape - where exactly is her husband, and why isn't he being forced to pay for the upkeep of his family? And I especially resented Easton’s tawdry attempt to manipulate his mainly middle-class audience. The implication was clear: even smug, complacent people of our sort can end up homeless, and then we’d feel jolly sorry for not wanting to pay so much and thereby giving this heartless government carte blanche to destroy our glorious welfare system.

After interviewing a spokesman from that politically even-handed organisation, Shelter, there was an exchange from the day’s PMQs in which Harriet Harman aimed the following barb at David Cameron: “Now I know he doesn’t have to budget – but many families do.” This from a qualified lawyer who went to St Paul’s Girls School, who is related to the fabulously posh Pakenhams, owns a lovely house in Suffolk, and probably isn't short of a bob or two.

In the middle of his report, Easton, the Champion of the Poor, had this to say: “Official figures tomorrow are expected to show a sharp rise in poverty as cuts in welfare hit low income households.” The implication being, of course, that George Osborne’s further planned welfare cuts will leave millions starving in the gutter. Unfortunately for Easton, the official figures published today show no such thing: the number of children living in “relative” poverty remains at 2.3 million, and the proportion of children living in “relative” poverty is also unchanged. As Iain Duncan Smith reminded us, child poverty figures are better than they have been since Mrs. Thatcher’s glory days. Which, when you come to think about it, is a bit of a mystery, given that there have already been some welfare cuts. Since joblessness has been relentlessly falling, could it possibly be that cutting the sort of benefits that trap people in a web of dependency might actually encourage some of them to, you know, go out and actually get a job? Obviously not in Mark Easton’s fantasy universe.

Easton’s pay-off line was a classic of its kind: “The government thinks that the current definition of poverty – based solely on income – is too narrow, and would like a new measure. Critics worry that arguments about the measurement of poverty will distract from tackling its causes.”

Critics? What, like you, Mark? There are just so many lazy, outmoded, leftist assumptions behind that last barbed statement, it’s hard to know where to start. Listen, Easton, you deluded egalitarian pillock – any fool knows that not everyone who lives in relative poverty is living in genuine poverty. If I were to compare my circumstances with the people living in nearby Bedford Park (average house price well over £2.5m) I would be considered relatively poor. But, of course, I’m not. The use of relative poverty as a measurement has given politically committed “journalists” like you and all your chums in the Labour Party, the Lib Dems, the Scottish Nationalist Party and the Occupy Movement a useful stick with which to beat anyone even vaguely trying to curb the grotesque levels of welfare spending in this country. Why in the name of God do you imagine Calais is besieged by hordes of immigrants desperate to get into Britain (well, England, actually)? As one Sudanese gentleman succinctly put it yesterday when asked why he was so keen to get here: "Free house England! Free house England!" Maybe he should be shown a collection of your enlessly whining, wildly exaggerated, downbeat reports: he'd realise what a cruel, poverty-stricken hellhole he was attempting to enter, and instantly head back home , relieved at his narrow escape.

The majority of British voters (i.e. those who voted Conservative or UKIP) rejected your anachronistic left-wing nostrums just a few weeks ago. Do you honestly not feel some qualms about continuing to stick two fingers up to the majority of BBC licence-fee payers by peddling the same dreary old “New Marxist” approach to social problems, welfare and taxation? This country just came to its senses: it’s about time you did. It doesn't do anything for the people who are in genuine need in Britain to pretend that everyone currently in receipt of benefits deserves them.

You could start by using your report on today’s poverty figures to apologise for having misled the viewing public and for wrongly attacking the government in yesterday’s report. As if.