Tag: Poverty

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]

53 it’s not as if nobody knew

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They kept food in plastic bags
in the shed;
the cold night air.
They couldn’t afford a fridge,
couldn’t afford to heat their house.
They lived in one room.
Every Sunday they walked
six miles each way
to a soup kitchen
to have something to eat
and pick up food bags,
free vegetables
to cook into a broth
on a camping stove.
It’s not as if nobody knew.
 
A year ago,
they appeared in a film
about living below
the breadline.
She had learning difficulties
and needed support from her husband,
an army veteran.
He was her full-time carer.
The Jobcentre decided she couldn’t sign on;
she wasn’t fit
for work.
Her benefits were stopped.
He worked in the army
as a PE instructor,
but fell on hard times
after the service.
Struggled to cope with
civvy street.
Their 12-year-old daughter
was taken into care.
He fought to get a carer’s allowance
but they wouldn’t recognise his wife’s disabilities.
He was told he could not claim
until she had been fully diagnosed:
month after
month after
month of specialists, living
hand
to mouth.
They were terrified she was about to be sectioned.
They stayed with relatives and friends
to avoid the authorities.
They walked everywhere
hand-in-hand
like young lovers.
Neighbours raised the alarm.
They had not been seen for several weeks.
This is where despair ends.
They were found
lying side by side
on the settee.
A police spokesman said
post-mortem examinations
had been carried out.
The deaths are being treated
as unexplained.

[The Daily Mirror, 11/11/2011, The tragic story of suicides Mark and Helen Mullins is a tale our politicians should pay attention to; Coventry Telegraph, 08/11/2011, Bedworth ‘suicide pact’ couple found lying side-by-side; Coventry Telegraph, 11/05/2021, Death of Warwickshire couple included in review into serious harms of people claiming benefits; Channel 4 News, 09/11/2011, Police investigate death of couple; BBC News, 09/11/2011, Inquiry call over Mark and Helen Mullins deaths; Metro, 08/11/2011, Married couple driven to commit suicide by utter poverty; Mail Online, 09/11/2011, Army veteran and his wife die in tragic ‘suicide pact’ after becoming ‘too poor to live through the winter’]