The apartheid of wealth State we're in
Preface by Alan Wheatley
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| Frank Dobson lived among the voters who elected him their MP election after election |
I originally published this re-publishing of a Community Care magazine Social Care Experts blog post, at the
Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group Web Log that I used to administer. In a way, my yet republishing it again here is a tribute to the example set by the late Frank Dobson MP in living among the people he represented, though that was much despised by right wing tabloid newspapers.
Further, since I republished the below blog posting by Bob Holman at a Web Log that I administered, it has been apparently deleted from the Community Care website.
The blog posting below is originally from Community Care magazine and
the days of Gordon Brown as Prime Minister. The matters of geographical
social inequality raised in that piece have become more urgent as a
consequence of the social cleansing that has arisen since the 2010
General Election brought in a cabinet of millionaires with no real
electoral mandate for the policies that they and their successors attempted to excuse
with the backdrop of the crash of 2008 that really stemmed from the
perils of investment bankers being rescued by the State.
The pull quote in the Bob Holman article is:
"The affluent elite tell the government about poverty. Those who endure it are shoved aside."
These days, that shoving of poor people aside gives rise to the sharp
rise in out-of-London-dispersal of poor people. While the definition of 'affordable housing' laid down by
investment banker-turned 'ennobled'-welfare reform minister David Freud
and his ilk have made a mockery of social housing, the debt induced by
linking definition of 'affordable' to "80% of [a deregulated housing
market] rate" results in a steep rise in homelessness and out-of-London housing dispersals.
Yet with property developers and Central Government pulling Camden
Council by the purse strings, we are in for further segregation of
wealthy and poor people as this paragraph from a recent Camden New Journal item highlights:
The so-called “affordable” section of the development appears not to
have the same entrance, amenity areas and roof terraces as the rest of
the building. Even rubbish disposal seems to be segregated; tenants of
the affordable flats are expected to take their own rubbish to the bins
while the other flats will be provided with a rubbish chute. Moreover it
seems that this section, together with the community space, will be
directly over one of the most polluted and noisy traffic junctions in
Camden.
It can, ideally, be instructive for people to be 'up close and personal'
with what they emit. I close this preface with a link to an item from
2011 about Jeremy Clarkson's sad discovery about such matters.
Poor must meet Gordon
by Bob Holman
Originally posted in
Community Care magazine, 20 February 2008
Many of those committed to
reducing poverty make the time to lobby the rich but have little
contact with those at the sharp end Papers recently released show
that
Tony
Blair had regular meetings with the ultra-rich. They lobbied the
prime minister on tax breaks and pensions for themselves and their
companies. No doubt they now meet
Gordon
Brown.
If a lobby for the rich meets in Downing Street
why not one for the poor? I do not mean the leaders of national
charities who have regular meetings with ministers. Odd that those
on salaries of more than £100,000 a year, which help reinforce the
idea of inequality, should take it upon themselves to be the poverty
lobby.
 |
Bob Holman: "The affluent elite tell the government about poverty.
Those who endure it are shoved aside." |
Anyone who lives in a deprived area knows that
many people on low incomes are intelligent and articulate about
their plight. In 1998, I encouraged some residents in Easterhouse,
Glasgow to write. They did not need to be taught to think or
analyse. They did need help in finding a publisher. When the book
came out as Faith in the Poor, it soon ran to a second edition.
One
problem is that people in poverty are segregated from the powerful.
When I joined the
Labour
Party in the 1960s, some MPs still lived in council estates,
cheap housing areas and pit towns. Not now. As the research of Danny
Dorling, professor at Sheffield University, shows, Britain is an
increasingly segregated society.
Poverty lobby
The affluent – MPs, leaders of think tanks,
government advisers, other senior public figures and all who make up
the chattering classes – are geographically and socially distanced
from those who struggle to survive. Consequently, it is almost
impossible for them to have close friendships with and to act
jointly with those who experience inequality. It is the powerful,
affluent elite who tell the government and the media about poverty
while those who endure it are shoved aside.
The poverty lobby should now campaign on the
issue: “listen to poor people rather than us”. If the government
agrees to breakfast with those on low incomes, how could it be
organised? I don’t know. I do know that organisations such as ATD
Fourth World run community and service user groups made up of single
parents, pensioners, those on disability benefit, asylum seekers and
many more.
Their representatives would be a start.
The agenda? That is for them to decide. I do
believe that they would demonstrate to politicians that poverty is
not because of an underclass or fecklessness or defective
personalities but is something imposed by the powerful – the kind
of people who make up the ultra rich lobby.
Bob Holman is an author and voluntary
neighbourhood worker in Glasgow
