Rampant Gentrification and lives of the ungentrified

Gentrification is a swear word, it goes side by side with rich toffee nosed people, people who've grown up with advantages throughout their entire life. Who had mothers and fathers in middle class or upper class jobs, they went into London to work or had their own business ran from the attic of the house. The underlying advantage to everything they have is money and the ability to use it to continue their advantage. Get decent baby sitters, take the kids to good schools because they bought a house in an area which was in the right catchment. Then they'll diligently discuss things with their children, find the time to play with them, ship them out to other well-to-do relatives during the holidays, perhaps even in another country where the kids can get some sun and learn the beginnings of another language in the place it should be learnt and not a class room. Whereas the working and lower classes fester continuously like overgrown rat populations, their poverty and neglect results in spite and biting off each others tails. Their insularness so short-sighted anyone who is different from them is looked on with suspicion. They are not given opportunities, their classes are full to the brim with kids to the point teachers are unable to teach. They are nothing but glorified baby sitting rooms where kids scream and shout for attention because they don't get it at home and in so doing prevent their peers from learning, they laugh when they can but they also learn to hate, to bully to create circles of social pressure as they try to find out who they are and what their life is all about. Guidance isn't even a blind man with a walking stick. For these kids are blind and can only feed of the knowledge of their own families mums, dads, uncles and aunts who have been raised in the same situations. No doubt some fall into a bad lot, some will have mental disorders their entire life, some will commit suicide some will be on the streets begging and the odd one may become a millionaire, because statistically given the numbers there will be successes. Just like populations and infectious diseases an exception will be immune.

Government policies create gentrification, policies which must have life times, policies which are like stones being dropped in a pond, the ripple and change the surface. They have a life time and then they die away. The problem is whether they have a long lingering death or not. The greatest and best policy ever was to create a welfare state in which financial and health care prevented the extremes of poverty and early death but even now under the current government of Teresa May this is being attacked and bitten away as the privatisation of the NHS is like piranah fish snapping and tearing away at a pork chop thrown into their water. The likes of Richard Branson who had managed to appear as a fun-loving entrepreneur are much more apparent as a vicious businessman out for himself, out to ensure he makes profit and to hell with the people. He is not a philanthropist he is a leech and the instance of Virgin East coast reneaging on their contract by successfully withdrawing without financial penalty because a Tory government decides to let them off the hook to the tune of hundreds of not billions of pounds. Money which came out of the pockets of tax payers, of workers, the workers who don't have tax dodging ways and find day to day subsistence difficult. The workers who may have to take a loan from a bank just to live. To get by and then repay with interest, the interest of which is plentiful as it goes into the pockets of the wealthy who in turn insure their losses via multiple financial instrutments as much as they disguise their profits. The workers support the toffee nosed pricks who see us as shit on their shoes, we are indentured servants to their needs.

Gentrification is a nasty word, for it now hits south east London and I see everyone getting in on the act. Compulsory purchase orders go up just down the road from me. Shops and houses being bought up so they can then be knocked down and better richer buildings put in their place. Buildings only well-to-do city types can buy or rent. Just so they can hop on the train and be in central London within 30 minutes. The working types can live on the streets or they can go and live in the outskirts of London they are not wanted here anymore. Fuck them. Those families lucky enough to buy their own house see the value increase with an incline greater than a ski jump. They raise their children and then find their children will never be able to afford a house near their own parents they will become a fractured family a diaspora with hundreds of miles between them. The kids will grow up remembering where they lived and realise how lucky they were to have been raised so close to London but also realise how unlucky they are not to live there again. Unless they can jump the social housing ladder, become vulnerable in some way, get pregnant be homeless and then compulsory housed by the local authority. But don't worry because if by some chance they make it good and do start to earn some real money. Their rented social accommodation will be taken away from them because the government have ensured future social housing tenancies are not tenancies for life, they will be tied into how well off the family unit is. Then they'll be shipped off to the outskirts of Mongolia, there they'll eventually lose their decent job because the costs of travel will be too much. But the best part of all they'll not live in London again and the rich would of taught the poor another lesson, don't have aspirations and think you can live toe to toe with us because you are scum and always will be. So goes the song of gentrification.

A life on benefits is not a life

After leaving school I spent a year on unemployment benefits, a year nearly to the day before getting a job. Getting the job was wonderful. I had self-esteem again and felt a hell of a lot better about myself, I had value to the world. However, there was difficulty making ends meet because it was less than minimum pay. 

I've also seen members of my own family live their lives on state benefits. There wasn't a role model to follow for us, there wasn't an understanding of how the world worked. They were capable and able to work, but didn't want to, they became institutionalized into the benefits system. I like to think some of this is because there has never been enough support to help unemployed and unconfident individuals back into work. There was no careers advice or a gentle guiding hand from the state, there was no encouragement or a discussion of options, but money was taken from the state to get by. Once I left school I was on my own and it was down to me to learn what the big bad world was really like. It was tough and I know living of benefits is not a life.

 As the years have passed the benefits system now has changed.   Too many people were in the situation of living their life endlessly and screwing the system, not contributing into it and just constantly taking out. Not paying taxes, not being part of society, living on subsistence levels, being ignorant and accepting they will continue in poverty for the rest of their life. The welfare state system was meant as a temporary safety net, not as a permanent solution and the constant strain now sees the UK in the place it is today. Those who are elderly, too young or sick either mentally or physically have reason to be on benefits, those who are able and capable should be working and in tandem to this there should be a universal career guidance and education system so career change is an option not an exception. After all it is pretty boring doing the same thing over and over again. The value of generalising and adapting knowledge has never been overtly imbred and accepted by successive governments. It's a shame for had it, this country would be a better place.

Employers are equally to blame.They do not train staff, do not have adult educational systems in place and expect employees to be job ready and productive from day one. Those potential employees who could run businesses and have the smarts but don't have the qualifications or the encouragement are passed on by. Whilst the arrogant, pompous likes of employees who went to private schools and education have continuous doors open to them, even if it is just in their ability to hold a conversation. Yet as with governments, such individuals are proven to do the walk but not actually fit do the job when they are in place. Further this can be witnessed in any workplace, it doesn't take much of a cursory glance to find dead wood or incompetent wood which has decayed inside out and is just waiting for the retirement clock to tick by.

It's not just about opportunities, but opportunities are right up there with qualifications, verbal literacy, self-confidence, both capability and ability. It's about living a life and a life on the dole is not a life for anyone.