My background and why its necessary to see things from another’s perspective.
I was brought up on a council estate in North London and went to school in Hackney. My dad was a labourer, my mum a cleaner.
Kids from my working class background weren’t expected to aim too high. A few GCEs would have been an achievement but I left school at fifteen so left qualification free, to work full time, encouraged by my mother who thought school was a waste of time.
We moved to a Paddington estate, where I met my husband to be who along with me wanted to get off the estate and travel, much to our parents bemusement and concern.
We, me and my husband, were lucky. We were inquisitive, determined, intelligent and different.
But I know I left behind people who didn’t have that determination. Who were told to ‘not get above themselves’ and to ‘know your place’ something I heard a lot, even from my own mother.
Few people I knew were on benefits, certainly not my family. It was a time when people could walk into a job in the morning, know that it wasn’t right for them, leave and go into another job that afternoon…I’ve done that. People were rarely unemployed for long periods.
However we knew that should we fall on hard times..sickness, unemployment, disability, old age, we would be protected.
I feel fortunate to have lived through those times. We were not rich, we owned nothing, our possessions were few, but there was a feeling of optimism and excitement.
Today is so different. People are afraid of losing their jobs so put up with zero hours contracts, unpaid internships, poor wages, rudeness from superiors, and jobs they hate.
People these days see the rich making massive profits and getting huge bonuses, while they are struggling to feed their families on a pittance, while being told that the rich are the wealth creators despite knowing that much of their wealth leaves the country without being taxed.
In my eyes the wealth creators include those people who get up at dawn and spend hours of the day getting into work often for minimum wage. They keep shops, restaurants, factories, banks and offices going. Take away these workers and there is no business, the wealth created would be zilch.
When I ask you to see life through a different perspective, I mean to imagine not having the advantages of a stable family background, a good education, good physical and mental health and hope for the future…many people don’t have that.
They begin with huge disadvantages and have to find the strength to overcome them and many can’t. They shouldn’t be blamed but helped, not punished. There is no such thing as the undeserving poor….everyone of them will have a story of deprivation and disadvantage .
Does parents’ income affect the development of a child’s brain? http://ind.pn/1HX5liZ
Recent studies on a thousand children have concluded that lack of a healthy diet and good health care and lack of a good education has an effect on the structure of the brain, with the poorest children being the most disadvantaged.
The study’s lead author was Kimberley Noble, assistant professor of paediatrics at Columbia University Medical Center.
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