Tag: Men

48 Dirge 2: declare war

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In the years of plenty
it was easier to placate
and complicate
than simplify.
The argument for welfare reform
is not just one of affordability.
In too many cases
welfare has entrenched poverty.
Get a job tomorrow
earning between ten
and thirty thousand a year,
you’ll only take home
thirty pence out of every extra pound
after the first ten thousand.
Twenty pence
will go in income tax
eleven pence
in national insurance
thirty nine
in lost tax credits.
Our poverty trap is deep.
A strange legacy
for a government
that wanted to
make
work
pay.
The fear
of not being able to scramble
back on to the lifeboat
if you fall off
is a huge disincentive
to change your circumstances.
One in seven
working age households
is dependent on benefits
for more than half its income.
More than half
of lone parents
depend on the State
for at least half their income.
The safety net
has become a trap.
It has also created
a glut
of unemployed
unwanted
unmarriageable men.
Men who can find
neither work
nor a wife.
These men were overlooked
during a decade of prosperity
that did nothing to change their lives.
They stayed put.
In the Welsh Valleys
in Liverpool
in Glasgow
in Birmingham
Strathclyde
and Newcastle
they stayed put. While
Eastern Europeans
travelled a thousand miles
to pick up work
on construction sites in London.
Immigration
reduced the opportunities
available to
white
British
men
men
whose poor education
made them less attractive
overlooked by society,
irrelevant to employers,
unwanted by women.
The man
who has no work
or a series of short-term jobs
is a problem.
Without steady work
he will struggle
to acquire
a family.
Without a stable relationship
he is less likely to grow
into a good
family man
less likely
to raise
good
sons.
The government
must start to question
the feminisation
of education
and the workplace.
It is no solution
to say that women
don’t need men
or that men
should become
more female.
Nor is it any good
waiting for growth
to dig them
out of poverty.
These men need a chance
not a benefits system
that undermines them.
One in four mothers
is single,
more than half
live on welfare.
A lot of these women,
who can raise families on benefits
without their help,
describe
the real
fathers of their children
as ‘useless’
or worse.
The State
has helped to create
a class of jobless
serial boyfriends
who prey on single mothers
on benefits.
The men have no role.
The taxpayer has become
the father.
Poverty
and benefits;
if the Government
is going to make inroads
it will have to declare war
on both.

[The Times, 28/05/2010, Editorial: Useless, jobless men – the social blight of our age]

62 stop worrying

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You are a fucking bitch”: a man’s voice.
Then the sound of violent banging,
a woman’s sobs.
Officers were on the way;
sobbing and breathing heavily,
she said the man had retreated.
Police arrived and arrested him.
She had opened her window.
If the man had succeeded in getting through the door
she was prepared to jump two floors to escape.
The woman was calling from her bedroom.
She had been placed in ‘exempt’ supported housing
after leaving prison –
a five-year term for serious fraud and deception.
She had a history of mental illness:
suicide attempts, spells in psychiatric hospitals.
She had been the victim of violent abuse
at the hands of a former partner:
twice he had fractured her skull;
marks on her arms; burn scars
snaking across her chest,
where he had set her on fire
while she slept.
The man hammering on her door that night
was a troubled alcoholic with demons of his own.
He was under
a suspended prison sentence
for making threats with a machete.
Police ultimately did not bring charges against him –
a result of conflicting versions of events that night.
“Officers attended the address just after midnight
and arrested a man.
It was alleged he had
been verbally aggressive to the woman,
made threats, and
damaged the door to her room.
The woman was not injured.
The man was later released without charge;
the property owner said
the damage to the door
was already there.
He would not support
a prosecution.”
A Probation Service spokesperson said
“Prisoners released without somewhere to live
are 50 per cent more likely to reoffend.
Providing basic accommodation on release
helps cut crime and make
our streets safer.”
The man was moved to another property.
Exempt accommodation: supported housing
funded through a higher rate of housing benefit, exempt
from caps applied to normal housing.
Prison leavers, rough sleeper, refugees and migrants,
substance abusers, people with mental health issues,
disabilities, people at risk of homelessness:
strangers
housed together, mostly left
to their own devices, with arms-length help
amounting to an hour or so of dedicated support a week;
a support worker
at the end of a mobile phone.
She has lost weight and become more ill;
thefts were so common
she now stored her kitchen pans and cutlery in her bedroom.
She described a fellow resident:
he had not been out of his pyjamas or had a wash
for five weeks; he kept her awake all night.
Access is via a steel staircase.
Inside, the corridors and shared kitchen and common room
are monitored by CCTV with audio mics;
private conversations may be listened to.
Bedrooms are small.
A hole burnt in the kitchen top,
rusted hobs. The common area and kitchen
are full of the belongings of one of the tenants;
crudely written notices in felt tip
on stereo, tv, kitchen gear:
‘hands off’.
Heating comes from plugged in storage heaters.
In the night it’s freezing.
“I eat two sausages and vegetables every night,
cereal in the morning.
I don’t drink, don’t take drugs, yet
it’s all around.
Nobody seems to do anything much about it.”
At her lowest point she tried to jump in front of a train.
She was pulled back at the last minute;
another spell in psychiatic hospital.
“While living here
suicide is the only thing
that goes through my head,
day in,
day out.
The owners say I am too much hard work for them,
they said
they didn’t have problems
before I moved in.
It’s not a great place to be.
The landlord told me
‘just ignore it’, stop worrying
about other people.”

[Birmingham Live, 25/09/2021, Chaos, fear and suicide attempts – life inside ‘exempt’ housing in Birmingham]