So we’ve had the budget in the U.K. and, who would have thought, more retrogressive tax cuts rolled out; that is to say tax cuts that benefit the well paid more than the less well paid. This is not unexpected. What is bugging me is a consensus which seems to be growing in both major parties that says Taxation Baad! Spending Baaad! What is the purpose of government if not to tax and spend? If not to oversee where funding is required and supply it?
We’ve had nearly 50 years now of the neoliberal experiment that purports the market will provide and ensure prosperity and income inequality is soaring and anyone who works in or uses the NHS, schools, social services, local councils in general, prisons, courts, transport could tell you how desperate these services are for funding. So that’s got to be pretty much all of us isn’t it? In one way or another. The public sector has been cut to the bone, and now one in five councils face bankruptcy, the very decaying carcasses being carved up.
At the same time, in the hailed remedy for all ills, the good old free market, the major oil and gas companies are making record profits while people shiver in their homes and the earth burns.
My energy supplier British Gas made a staggering ten fold increase in profit last year, “Centrica released figures on Thursday showing that British Gas, which supplies energy to UK households and businesses, showed its profits jumped to £751m in 2023, up from £72m a year earlier.” And there was I patting myself on the back for saving the planet a smidge, while simultaneously saving a quite a few hundred quid, by keeping my thermostat at 18 degrees! U Switch here I come!
While government subsidies introduced in response to the cost of living crisis, what happened to them? Payments to were wound up last month. Let’s face it we’re all doing so well aren’t we? Especially the low paid, the precarious workers, those too old or sick or disabled to work. There’s no food banks, there’s no homelessness, no housing crisis, oh please ignor my caustic tone!
Couldn’t help but laugh hearing the U.K. has been deemed the second most unhappy country in the world just below Uzbekistan. I’m somewhat bemused though by this, after all we don’t have to put up with Berlusconi, Putin or Trump. Perhaps it’s the “inclement” weather, ULEZ or the fact certain elected representatives are veering so far to the right they might as well join Reform U.K. Oh too late one of them has! While the Home Secretary, former Home Secretary and the Prime Minister haven’t quite said, “Rivers of blood,” yet use words just as caustic, just as dangerous. The latter in a piece of pure theatre, rolling out the lectern outside Number 10, as the light faded, to speak of “protecting democracy” and the danger of extremism read: Palestine protesters calling for a ceasefire.
The other day I got down to Streatham to get my bloods done. Blood test not transfusion or anything tricky like that. Lithium level, kidney and liver function. It’s the deal I have with the NHS since the mid 90’s; I take the meds and they give me the blood tests to see they’re not damaging my organs. The best thing about this quarterly trip is the clinic is like literally (soz for the Americanism) five minutes from Poundland and the Streatham Poundland is immense.
It’s like a day out! I guess it’s a case of you can take the girl out of Stevenage but you can’t take Stevenage out of the girl. Not that we had Poundland back then but we did have Woolworths and oh how I lament the demise of that. Mind you when I stood in the queue I overheard a women on her phone saying, “‘E’s at this stage where it’s all want, want, want, an’ ‘e don’t get we just don’t ‘av it.” An echo of, “It’s all want, want, want and money doesn’t grow on trees you know, “ as I, as a child, stared wistfully at the apple tree in the back garden, through the kitchen window, wondering why I’m being told the blatantly obvious. And back then in the 1970’s there really were no food banks, homelessness, no housing crisis.
Later at the bus stop overhear another women on the phone saying to a child, I assumed, “There’s a tenner on the card, it is working! Just stick it in, give a good shove.” A tenner on the card, how long is that going to last? At this point I just felt like a tourist in poverty porn land or had just tuned into some poverty porn reality TV. Not that there hasn’t been times I had the electric on a card, would go to three shops just to get 5p off the price of a can of baked beans. A time too ill to be working really, on reflection, with a recent diagnosis of bipolar, a recent MA, struggling as a self employed tutor/workshop facilitator wondering if I’d be better off going back to cleaning and life modelling, flirting with the idea of table dancing.
There was almost an incident in the queue in Poundland between a European Deliveroo worker and two women, probably black British from the accents. The queue stretched right back up the isle. The Deliveroo guy appeared to be either unaware of queuing protocol or unwilling to queue and was hovering at the front of the queue, it was getting very heated. Arms flying, voices raised. At one point I heard one of the women say, “If you don’t speak English I ain’t talking to you.” Then she crossed her arms and turned her back. It was becoming apparent he didn’t or wouldn’t.
I heard him say, while gesturing to the women to go ahead of him, “Sigue, sigue!” The Portuguese for follow/proceed, but he was still resolutely refusing to move. At this point I called out, “Hablas espanol?” “Do you speak Spanish?”using the familiar form of the verb. He looked round, saw me, turned away again. Then I added, “Usted?” The polite form of “you,” he turned back, approached. I then tried to say, “The end of the queue is there,“ but couldn’t remember the word for queue!
Embarrassingly it came out as, “The end, there.” Which sounded more like an order than a helpful suggestion. I think he got my drift, replied with something completely unintelligible in an air of irritation and stomped off back to his spot, hovering near the front of the queue to the annoyance of other customers. I know it all might seem a storm in a tea cup, apologies for that cliche, but I couldn’t help thinking: Well here we are in cost of living crisis Britain; people on zero hours contracts, battling mothers wondering how to get through the Easter break without treats, feeling lucky if they can keep the lecky on, for a space in the queue.
I do like Streatham High Street though. Still a few independent shops and cafes, old fashioned pubs, among the charity shops and pawnbroker. Apart from the air quality that is. It has benches along the side of the road. Never noticed them before. Though I imagine sitting there too long might take of a few years of your life. If it’s anything like Brixton High Street which exceeds annual emission levels in the first five days of the year.
I got a weeks worth of fruit and veg for a fiver from a stall on the corner of the street. The guy that served me looked so cold and so unhappy, he may have been Mediterranean or perhaps Middle Eastern. The blossom on trees at the side of the road was saying Spring, the cutting wind saying Winter. So I said, “Hello! Chilly isn’t it?” He said, “Eh?” I said, “Nippy…” Blank look. “Cold!” I say rubbing my arms, “Ah,” he replied.
It’s such a nexus, culturally and transport wise. I only had five minutes to wait for the little 201, it was number 10 on the screen when I arrived at the bus stop. The guy sitting next to me was talking to his mate on the phone in English while urging his rather unattractive bull terrier to, “Sientate! Sientate!” Spanish for “Sit down. Sit down.” For some reason this immensely amused me.
A bit of an aside though it leads back in. Getting on the bus, an oldish white guy, about my age, stepped back making way for me, bags swinging, saying, “After you,“ in a soft Irish accent. I was thinking that’s an old punk if I ever saw one. It wasn’t his appearance or attitude, more a feeling. I sat down my the middle doors. When he moved to get off he was standing right in front of me. I don’t know what came over me but I felt to say to him, “Excuse me, I was looking at you wondering if you used to be a punk, am I right?”
He smiled, perhaps noticing the safely pin holding my coat together, said, “Aye, you’re right enough,” paused, took a deep breath and added, “So long ago.” And I said, “Yes, but doesn’t that time back then stretch out in the memory.” He touched my hand resting on the bus rail as he prepared to leave. Kissed my hand and said, “Love and peace.” And I, smiling, replied, “Love and peace.” And he got off.
Later still I remember the cover a Clash single with the words, “Hate and War,” which I’m sure he was obliquely referencing. And how we understood only too well those words reflected not our desires or intentions but were a statement of what we were living through back then. “Hate and war/ The only things we got today/ And if I close my eyes/ It will not go away/ You have to deal with it/ It is the currency”. Remembering how The Clash railed against poverty and oppression.
And yet here we are forty years on with poverty, energy insecurity and malnutrition the currency for so many. I reflect on how Gandhi referring to underdeveloped countries, said, “Poverty is the worst form of violence.” And yes it is because it limits, it grinds you down. And now we’re living through hate and war again, poverty has become globalised like everything else and “telling it like it is” is no longer enough. I reckon we need also to articulate what could be.
Let’s forget the cost of living for a few moments and consider the value of living, of life. It’s an opportunity to “know thyself” as Socrates advised us. An opportunity to “be here now” as Ram Dass put it. An opportunity to learn and grow and change within and without. And as many spiritual traditions suggest, “to accept reality as it is and change it.” Is that a contradiction? I don’t think so. It means to me to not deny the existence of climate change, the housing crisis, poverty, inequality, racism, misogyny, transphobia, homophobia. And they are all connected.
Only by accepting what is can we even begin to change these things. Some pay a very high price to change what is. Some give their life or freedom. Some spend their whole lives in the struggle. Arguably it’s very hard when you’re struggling to make ends meet to engage in activism and yet while hardship leads some to lash out or draw in, it does invite others to question, build solidarity, strengthen connections.
Surely the nature of this system is becoming clearer every day, when you can’t afford to heat your home and the energy supplier and energy companies are raking it with record profits subsided by a government promoting more oil rigs and coal mines, flying in the face of internationally agreed targets to prevent further climate change. A government threatening to try and find wriggle room in order to break international contracts with the EU, a government desperately seeking a scapegoat. Look out! First they came for the people on “small boats…”
It’s time to consider not only that another world is possible, but to embody, live and proclaim its values, birth them into being; justice, equality, empathy, compassion, dignity, respect, love and peace. And that is already happening. I’ve witnessed “dignity, respect” on the banners of the Independistas in Barcelona and precarious workers outside the Ministry of Justice in London, the words “empathy, beauty, compassion” on banners on XR rebellions, and “peace, love” on banners and placards on the Palestine Solidarity protests.
While we all call for justice and equality, in the name of George Floyd, Sarah Everard, Breonna Taylor, Chris Kaba and the names of the countless unnamed subjected to violence and oppression, because, to use an old trade union slogan, “an injury to one is an injury to all.”
Our movements, which are evolving into “a movement of movements”are organically linked, connected, co-creating the new world within the old and emblazoning the streets with its values. And this, this is priceless.
A blog post by Anne Enith Cooper
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