If Charles Dickens were alive today, he could write a modern version of one of his best-known works.
A Christmas Carol highlights the appalling treatment of the poor in London in the 1840s.
It is typified by the greed of one individual, Ebenezer Scrooge, who turns away two men seeking a donation to provide food and heating for the city’s hungry citizens and their children.
If Dickens were to write a contemporary version of that same story today, he could set it here in the north, where thousands will be without food, heat or housing (and maybe all three) this Christmas.
They are denied these basic necessities, not by a miserly, 19th century, London-based businessman, but by a miserly, 21st century, Belfast-based government.
Welcome to the Dickensian world of Ebenezer Stormont, where “Bah, humbug” is not just a sentiment for poor and homeless children at Christmas, it lasts all year, every year.
Over 5,300 children will be homeless here at Christmas. This represents a 121% increase in the past five years. Over 103,000 children (almost 1 in 4) will live in poverty during what we call a magical time for children
A recent Audit Office report stated that there were no targets to reduce child poverty in Stormont’s 2016-22 Child Poverty Strategy. In any case, it said, there was no money set aside to tackle the problem.
Children who grow up poor are four times more likely to develop a mental health problem by the age of 11. On reaching primary school, they are already up to a year behind middle-income children in cognitive skills. Their life expectancy is 11 to 15 years lower than the national average.
Nelson Mandela pointed out that poverty is not an accident: “Like slavery and apartheid, it is man-made and can be removed by the actions of human beings.”
The human beings in the Stormont Executive do not intend to take action to remove child poverty, as evidenced by their recent draft Programme for Government (PfG). It did not even mention the problem.
Stormont doesn’t do comfort and joy.
So the poor rely on charity, just as they did here in 1752 when the Belfast Charitable Society was formed “for the support of vast numbers of real objects of charity in this parish”.
Today, Councillor Paul Doherty, of the foodbank charity Foodstock, explains: “We’re going out to homes that haven’t been heated in months and people are going without eating just to be able to provide for their children.”
It’s not that Stormont does not know the problem it has created. A recent report from its Public Accounts Committee concluded that “Urgent action is needed to tackle child poverty” (what an insightful committee) and promised that it would hold the Department of Communities to account.
So the 1 Alliance, 1 UUP, 3 DUP and 3 Sinn Féin members of the committee intend to hold their own parties in the Executive to account.
In decision-making terms, this hovers somewhere between farce and insanity. The poverty of people comes from a poverty of political principles.
Meanwhile, the main party leaders had more important things on their minds than child poverty.
Mary Lou McDonald told this newspaper that her party had effectively won the recent southern election (copyright Donald Trump Esq) even though it received 116,968 fewer votes than in the previous election.
The outcome, she claimed, had brought a united Ireland closer. That’s the same united Ireland which Colum Eastwood claims everyone is now talking about.
Does he really believe that this is a topic of conversation among the poor, the homeless and those waiting over three years for a hospital appointment?
He wants unity with Dublin, where last week the Capuchin Day Centre gave out 3,000 Christmas hampers to those in need in just over two hours, leaving hundreds more without a Christmas dinner.
Sinn Féin and the SDLP are talking about flags at Christmas when they should be talking about people.
Christmas, we are told, is a time to reach out and instead of making a virtue out of stubbornness, we should say hello to those we have ignored for years.
Stormont might follow that same creed and stop ignoring child poverty.
A Christmas Carol tells how a spirit shows Ebenezer Scrooge the future, where no-one mourns his death and whose funeral is attended by local businessmen only on condition that lunch is provided. He then changes his attitude to what is important in life.
Ebenezer Stormont might usefully learn that same lesson.