This piece by AndyMac in AltNewsMedia is well worth reading. It reminds us yet again of the moral and political downsides of the welfare state.
For Richard (my best mate) and I to spend that blazing hot Saturday afternoon in the November of 2007 kicking a football around with some of the slum kids in Bombay’s Dharavi commune was one of the most unforgettable experiences of my life...
As a tourist there, don’t be surprised if you’re swamped by schoolchildren asking you to appear in a selfie with them. And it’s all ‘Sir this’ and Sir that’. There’s none of this ‘Got the time on yer, mate?!’ from the precocious little swines you find in this benighted land.
We spent over three hours kicking that ball around with those lads. They literally had next to nothing in terms of worldly possessions, but not once did they ever exhibit anything except appreciation and contentment…and they relished the opportunity to talk to us and find out more about us. It’s not hyperbolic to say that afternoon was one of the real life-changing events for us. !..
Why am I retelling this story? Because of the shame I feel at having to live in a society where so many (already in receipt of a panoply of welfare payments) are encouraged to abandon what little financial support they provide for their own children and instead seek to grasp still more from weak politicians, attention-seeking celebrities and agenda-ridden news outlets. No child in Britain will ever come anywhere near to enduring the levels of hardship my mate and I saw that Saturday. They haven’t the slightest clue what poverty is all about. Oh yes they throw the word around like broken plates at a Greek wedding, yet simultaneously have about as much appreciation of the realities of the term as I do. Probably less, actually, because they’ll never see or feel what Richard and I saw and felt that weekend 13 years ago.
2 comments:
It was largely due to 1960s sociologists like Peter Townsend that the definition of poverty moved from absolute to relative. Now it is very difficult to talk about personal responsibility or people having enough, without accusations of hard heartedness or worse. They won't rest, of course, until they have achieved equality of outcome by any means.
Sam - I'm sure it is worth being cynical about changes such as this, because they contribute to ensuring that social problems never disappear and never become less acute because "acute" also becomes relative.
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