THE eradication of child poverty is one of the cornerstone pledges of the Government. Yet according to a Barnado's opinion poll, almost 90 per cent of the country remains blissfully unaware of it, even though Britain has one of the worst records of all developed nations.

This is not helped by the airheads at the Advertising Standards Authority banning posters showing babies with a meths bottle, a cockroach and a syringe jammed in their mouths.

These are distressing images that leap out of the page - just as great ads should. Yet the ASA has banned them because Barnado's used "shocking images and photographs likely to cause serious or widespread offence". So what? That's the point. In this country, the fourth largest economy in the world with millionaires being created every day by the roulette wheel of the City of London, we still have 3.8million children living below the poverty line.

Because of the National Lottery, charities like Barnado's have to fight for every penny. These adverts were stunning, brutal and shocking and would probably have helped to save a few blighted lives.

Yet we hear nothing from the ASA about the hundreds of TV

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