Okay, and how do you explain the fact that the statistics don't bear this out? The North East has the second-lowest proportion of young people attending university in England.

Everything that I said is also based on data. There are stats on who is attending uni, there are stats on sexual violence in schools, there are stats on bullying.

What is surprising is that you imply that my account is not representative in some way, and then say that I am wrong because you did it...how does this make sense to you? What you did makes no difference.

And, unless you are more specific about where you came from, it makes no difference because, as I took great care to mention, the issue is not about poverty. There is nowhere else poorer than Middlesbrough in the UK but the issue is that there is nowhere else with lower opportunities for you in life. So this is a problem that is specific to regions, it is largely non-existent below Birmingham. In all of these areas which have poverty, there is high social mobility...this is least true in the North-East, some places along the East coast, some places in the Midlands, many places in Wales and Scotland.

Also, I think it is truly tragic when someone points out things like bullying in schools and sexual violence against children for someone to say..."Oh, you must be a Guardian reader"...is it only people who read the Guardian who care about children being raped? Well...at least we know your views on the subject. I bet the moral high ground feels great. University was wasted on you.

not sure I want to spend time responding to someone who resorts to "you don't care about child rape"

classy

Not sure I want to respond to someone who suggests that only people who read the Guardian care about child rape.

classy

But yes, take the moral high ground...you are showing everyone how smart you are.

You have to keep in mind that not all people are intelligent enough to be admitted to a top university. It’s not a path anybody can pursue.

Perhaps the whole notion that there exists some path to financial freedom that anybody can pursue is just misleading wishful thinking.

There are some paths that lead to financial freedom, but most of them have some barriers that not everybody will overcome; and universally applicable suggestions (like the financial literacy suggestion) may be helpful and make people a bit less poor, but they are not going to have a sufficiently large effect to lift someone out of poverty and into financial freedom; that will need a bit more and that "a bit more" might not be feasible for all people.

hence including more than myself in the anecdote

growing up in one of the poorest parts of the country: I know of no-one who wanted to attend that couldn't