My own hope was cultivated in a country that doesn’t exist any more. It grew every time I found solace in times of precariousness – which I did, over and over again. I arrived in the UK in the mid-noughties, with little money and even fewer connections. I went to night school and survived by finding the cheapest canteens and supermarket deals, and taking temping jobs all over London. I stuffed envelopes and answered phones (badly – I was told I was too curt, and was not invited to return). And when cracks did inevitably appear, in jobs or homes or immigration applications, I came to depend on a growing network of friends and partners who came through for me.
OK, arrives in 2005 then. Aroundandabout. Peak of the G. Brown drunken sailor spending.
You might know this as “gentrification”, but it was really a sort of class cleansing. And it was down to a post-2008 settlement that determined that the financial crisis had been the result of public sector spending, rather than of a failure of regulation. It was decided that private investment and consumerism were the keys to growth, deficits had to be eliminated, and the welfare state simply was no longer affordable. So the country became inhospitable to those unable to spend, unable to earn high incomes, or unable to work at all.
The fallout of those slash-and-burn years is vividly clear in the shape of a cost of living crisis, a public health crisis and roiling labour discontent. I bring the promise of my history to these times with the expectation that that connection is surely clear by now: that divestment from the state has made us vulnerable to shocks; that we have been unable to effectively distribute the rewards of all that private wealth creation, which squatted on the site of the old public realm, unable to transform it into a hospital bed, a cheap home or an affordable energy bill.
Govt spending is higher than G. Brown’s, in nominal terms, in real terms, as a percentage of GDP.
The narrative constructed here is simply wrong. At odds with reality. As in, not true.
So she arrived here to find that she didn’t like the way we ran our economy.
Let me propose a solution both simple and radical…
@SV: Let me propose a solution both simple and radical…
And involving sex and travel?
It’s simple not true or relevant.
Keep up with the times, Tim.
Its HER truth and anyway facts have never been relevant to any Graun article I’ve ever read. Either of them…
AtC: And involving sex and travel?
Perhaps not the travel.
‘through for’ being a synonym for ‘in’ ?
I thought Murphy was good but this (to quote from the film ‘Con Air’) is ‘F$%&ing spectacular’
Life was not easy, but it was viable. What little disposable income I had stretched to cheap pubs, groceries, buses, entertainment and, eventually, the foundations of a life. Undergirding it all was the public realm. I rented rooms in council estates in east and west London where there was always a staffed office to help out.
Were those trips to ‘cheap pubs’ part of her cloaking herself in Islam for political convenience whenever she wanted to bring ‘Islamophobia’ up as part of her unremitting hostility to contemporary Britain?
She’s right about the staffed office ‘helping out’ – certainly when I lived in Harrow or Hillingdon, the access to council housing was prioritised to those of certain ethnicities, and despite ‘institutional racism’ I don’t think I’m revealing anything if I say that White British people on lower incomes were not usually the beneficiaries…
The council estates were sold off to developers, and with them the offices that gave support and advice, and the stalls and shops that sustained those communities. Every local library that I used has been turned into flats.
I doubt that’s even partially correct – the selloffs to a large extent predated her arrival in the country and the majority of councils in London barring two, even if nominally controlled by the ‘Conservatives’ (who it should be said since 2010 have arguably presided over an administration which is in many aspects on the extreme Left) have been controlled by Left wing bureaucracy since the 1960s. As Tim has pointed out – the councils were given a choice as well. They decided that ‘diversity’ and ‘environmental’ initiatives were of greater importance than libraries.
It was decided that private investment and consumerism were the keys to growth, deficits had to be eliminated, and the welfare state simply was no longer affordable. So the country became inhospitable to those unable to spend, unable to earn high incomes, or unable to work at all.
Which is why 500,000 per year make their way across the channel to get here every year, a policy which the likes of Malik describe any opposition to as ‘Far Right’…
The argument – the rebuke, in fact – is that you risk being able to achieve anything at all if you dare to suggest policies that might actually rebalance the economy. Why bother, if you can win without any of that headache? And so you cannot take on large corporates and redistribute their astronomical profits, or reverse a privatisation of public utilities that has done nothing but gouge customers for poor services, or deviate in any real way from the rightwing press’s poisonous line on immigration and race that obscures an expansive, diverse modern Britain
Goddamn it we need to allow those gangs that operated with impunity in Telford, Rotheram and other such places access to girls from council estates – that’s their ‘human right’ and to oppose it is of course, ‘far right’. And in terms of rebalancing the economy we definitely need to allow groomers and padeophiles access to women only spaces as a matter of some urgency.
But I can’t shake the feeling that if I had arrived in the UK in more recent times, I would not be here, writing these words you are reading, telling you that it is all right to have hope.
I’d imagine if she wanted to head back to Khartoum then no-one would be stopping her getting on the plane….
Malik was born in Khartoum, Sudan, and was raised in Kenya, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. She attended The American University in Cairo and the University of Khartoum as an undergraduate, and completed her post-graduate study at the University of London.
Oh the poverty, the oppression, the lack of opportunity, the inhumanity etc etc etc
It was not easy finding details online of her 10 years working in emerging markets private equity. However I was able to establish that for at least part of that time she was at Morgan Stanley.
Repeat chorus:-
“Oh the oppression, the lack of opportunity, the poverty (on a Morgan Stanley salary. Really?)”.
@John
On a starting MS salary, struggling to live in London is very believable. Assuming, of course, that you are too incompetent get any commission, bonus or promotion.
“Govt spending is higher than G. Brown’s, in nominal terms, in real terms, as a percentage of GDP.”
And yet everything that involves the State is utter shit. How are we spending more and more and yet getting less and less?
Personally I think its two things, firstly illegal immigration means (I suspect) that public spending per head of actual population (not the pretendy govt figures) is at best stagnant, could even be falling. Secondly constant addition of regulations means everything costs more and more to do. Add those two factors together and you have a recipe for everything turning to shit pretty rapidly. The private sector manage to survive by increasing productivity, or by just sending all the over regulated processes overseas, but the public sector is incapable of increasing productivity and can’t offshore social workers (tho according to an article I read in the DT the other day, its quite OK for social workers to ‘work from home’ many tens or even hundreds of miles from the people they are supposed to be supporting, so on that basis we could just pay some Indians in India to do social work in the UK, the effect would be much the same).
The only solution is a mass bonfire of regulations on everything, but I can’t see that happening any time soon, so as far as I can see there is nothing in prospect but a downward spiral ever closer to the plug hole.
@Sam Vara – “So she arrived here to find that she didn’t like the way we ran our economy.”
No. If you read the article, you’ll find she arrived here and liked it so much that she stayed. She’s complaining that things have now changed.
@Van_Patten – “Which is why 500,000 per year make their way across the channel to get here every year, a policy which the likes of Malik describe any opposition to as ‘Far Right’”
It is rather a puzzle why that is regarded as right wing, when the right is usually associated with free markets and the left with state control. Though your figure is a huge exaggeration.
@Jim – “illegal immigration means (I suspect) that public spending per head of actual population (not the pretendy govt figures) is at best stagnant”
That is impossible. The number of people here legally is so overwhelmingly larger that any difference is far too small to be noticeable. The only thing which makes illegal immigrants cost money is enforcing regulations against them.
“The only solution is a mass bonfire of regulations on everything…”
Well, start with the immigration regulations. Get rid of all that lefty nonsense.
That is impossible. The number of people here legally is so overwhelmingly larger that any difference is far too small to be noticeable. The only thing which makes illegal immigrants cost money is enforcing regulations against them.
The trouble is that people here illegally don’t tend to advertise the fact for some strange reason, so we’ve really no very precise idea how many there might be, though we can make estimates by using various proxies.
@Chris Miller
We don’t need a precise idea to put bounds on the possibilities. As of 31st December 2018 HM Passport Office reported that there were 50,702,966 UK passports currently valid. None of these people can be illegal immigrants. We can compare that with the estimates of the population from lots of other areas, such as numbers registered to vote, total estimated population etc. There just isn’t scope for large numbers of illegal immigrants – especially as they cannot open a bank account, rent accommodation, or get employment.
And, of course, someone here illegally that we cannot practically detect is not costing us much. They’re not claiming benefits or using most public services.
Well, yeeeees. See your point, but the latest census said there are 67.33 million people in the UK. Which is a bit more than 50.7 million.
Yes, but considering that there are quite a few known legal immigrants, and a substantial number of British people do not have passports (especially those too young or too old to travel beyond the British Isles), how many is a reasonably plausible number of people here illegally? Bear in mind that a survey conducted in connection with the new voter ID scheme found that only 91% of voters said they have a passport that would allow them to vote (UK, commonwealth, EEA).
Back when Polly Toynbee was insisting that local councils must have much, much, more money she was insisting that we can measure the population by sewage volume. And there were many, many, more people. Oddly, that claim has gone all a bit quiet since the vox populi started to worry about immigration numbers. That claim that there are lots and lots of unregistered people that is.
I wouldn’t pay much attention to what she says. Just think about what happens if people get the idea they shoud eat more roughage for bowel health and what that does to sewage volume. And how do you measure sewage volume in the first place if rainwater runoff ends up in the same pipes?