There is a curse that is attributed to the Chinese, ‘May you live in interesting times.’ Looking at the world both at home and abroad it is clear that someone, somewhere, has been a bit cavalier in the use of that curse because we are living in very interesting times indeed.
I give my niece a lift to work every day to save her the bus fare as the money she is paid for working two part time jobs is so far below what it is necessary to live on that every penny spent on one thing is a loss somewhere else in a no frills life that is a daily struggle to deal with. She has no contract with either job, is laid off at the convenience of the companies she works for and one company regularly ‘forgets’ to pay her for weeks on end despite reminders that she needs the money she has rightly earned.
It got me thinking about what a life is worth as employment rights are stripped away, legal aid is being ended, extra bedrooms for the poorest are being taxed, people out of work are being sanctioned into destitution and people in work are dependent on benefits like working tax credits and Housing benefits whilst big corporations and even utility companies are enjoying soaring profits. Something is terribly wrong.
Each hour that we live is an irreplaceable hour of our life, when it’s gone it’s gone, so how is it that our time on earth has been reduced to a demeaning monetary value which, on minimum wage for over 21’s, is a pitiful £6.19? What has happened to our values that we accept this even for a moment? Of course this is nothing new as Robert Tressell explored in The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists (1910), the philanthropy of the poor to the rich is extraordinary and often vehement in the defence of those who have created this appalling state of affairs.
There has been a sea change with the present government, though, no previous government would have dared to attack the poor so viciously, nor demonise them so persistently nor so blatantly asset strip our public services and our most precious institution, the NHS. What has become only too clear is that we are being branded enemies of the state and the government is pursuing a war of aggression against the poor in, this, the sixth wealthiest nation in the world. When the government no longer governs in the peoples interests, then, left with no other option, the people must resist the government because this is not a recession, it’s a robbery.
Keith Lindsay-Cameron