I was born in 1957. Back then this country was still getting back on its feet economically some 15 years after World War 2. I grew up in a country where around 13 million people belonged to trade unions. A country where work was plentiful. My dad worked as a diesel fitter/mechanic and mum did small cleaning jobs a couple of evenings a week.
Their joint wages were more than enough to pay the rent, feed, cloth, pay for holidays every year - all seven of us, five kids mum and dad.
At no time in my childhood was I ever hungry. Meat wasn't as readily available as it is today, for some. No, the Sunday roast was a treat. But we ate well, bangers, pies, offal, fish, etc during the week.
Leaving school in the early seventies I had the choice of the print, one of London's wholesale markets, an apprenticeship with McAlpines, etc. You could walk into a job, with or without qualifications.
40+ years on I speak to my niece who is a primary school teacher; and she tells me of her school children coming into class in the mornings, hungry! Kids hungry living in the second decade of the 21 century in the south of England in one of the wealthiest countries in the world.
Young people leaving university with little hope of decent employment; and as for a home to call their own, forget it, that's a luxury. Today many children are living with their parents into their 30s and 40s!
What an indictment to us as a society. Hunger, precarious employment, disabled people committing suicide as they are abandoned by government and homelessness on the increase. This is the bounty that has trickled down from the failed flirting with neo-liberal policies. What we have is the results of rampant vampire capitalism, a system that bleeds the many dry as the few luxuriate in obscene wealth.
At no time in my childhood was I ever hungry. Meat wasn't as readily available as it is today, for some. No, the Sunday roast was a treat. But we ate well, bangers, pies, offal, fish, etc during the week.
Leaving school in the early seventies I had the choice of the print, one of London's wholesale markets, an apprenticeship with McAlpines, etc. You could walk into a job, with or without qualifications.
40+ years on I speak to my niece who is a primary school teacher; and she tells me of her school children coming into class in the mornings, hungry! Kids hungry living in the second decade of the 21 century in the south of England in one of the wealthiest countries in the world.
Young people leaving university with little hope of decent employment; and as for a home to call their own, forget it, that's a luxury. Today many children are living with their parents into their 30s and 40s!
What an indictment to us as a society. Hunger, precarious employment, disabled people committing suicide as they are abandoned by government and homelessness on the increase. This is the bounty that has trickled down from the failed flirting with neo-liberal policies. What we have is the results of rampant vampire capitalism, a system that bleeds the many dry as the few luxuriate in obscene wealth.
On June 8th go to your polling station and vote Labour. Let's throw out May and her filthy Tory cohorts. Let's rebuild a social society where a safety net exists. A society where we build council housing; where food banks are consigned to the nightmare reign of the Tories. A society that doesn't punish disabled people but instead affords them a decent living without asking them to bare their souls.
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