They've stacked the deck

Hello, lovelies. 

             How many times have we all said to ourselves that we just can’t catch a break? A break from a large and unexpected bill landing on our doorstep, surviving Covid to the gas prices going through the roof. Why can’t we just get a couple of months off from one in pending saga to the next? Is this all just down to being an adult? Is this what we can expect from now on? Just waiting for that one bill to tip us over the edge. What if we just worked harder? Maybe get a second or third job? Would that help? Or does that just lead to burn out? Then what? Would the system be there for us in those hard times? We live in a country that believes in having an even playing field, don’t we? Or has the system been set so that we never have the odds in our favour? 

        I am an avid reader, and for a time I was completely obsessed with the book trilogy The Hunger games. And one of the famous tag lines that came out of the series is ‘And may the odds be ever in your favour!’ The irony being that the odds were most definitely not in your favour. The whole premise of the books was that the game, The Hunger games, were rigged. That there were no real winners. Everyone was the loser. Well, all those who must follow the rules, that is. But its only fiction and could never really happen. There is no way that those who set the rules do not need to follow them. Ha! If only! The odd thing is, that once upon a time those in power had to hide their nefarious intentions, whereas now, now they flout their indifference to the struggle of others. They no longer hide in the shadows, now they jet off on holiday, have family members over for Christmas and accept donations in the full view of the world stage.

         Is the deck really stacked in the favour of others? Have we reached a point where we can now say heads they win and tails we lose? But lose what? We don’t really have any more to give. They have taken everything from us. The cost of living is going up. Add in surging inflation and record high taxes, household incomes barely rise at all over the next five years. Living standards are set to stagnate. So bad is the picture that the head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Paul Johnson, said its ‘actually awful!’ Our futures are looking grimmer than ever. 

          We waited with bated breath as Rishi Sunak reviled the latest budget. But has he got it right? Have we passed through the worst patch of austerity and hardship, and can now look forward to having all our hard work pay off? No, in a nut shell. We heard our government as they declared it a triumph of their own making, a government, with both the majority and confidence to tell whatever story it likes to the media and voters. We see a country where motorists punch each other for petrol, which is now at the highest level since the early 2000s. Supermarkets share of their empty shelves, and everything from your fuel and grocery bill just keep on rising. The chancellor gets off on his own spending pledges, and worst of all, Johnson actually believes in his own boosterism. In the 90s’ and early 2000s, budgets would be assessed on their feelgood factor. 

      This financial package is the very opposite, it looks great but is feel-bad. The realisation that none of this matches up to what teachers and organisations who work to alleviate poverty actually asked for. Sunak brags of spending as much on school pupils as in 2010, which is not much of a boast, seeing as it is nearly 2022 and pupil numbers have risen sharply. Preliminary estimates indicate that school funding is still £1,000 less per pupil than it was in 2010. £6bn was taken away from some of Britain’s poorest people when they reduced universal credit, and only half of that was given back yesterday. Those on universal credit who are unemployed will get nothing from his largesse. 

      The Tory’s may say that they have now called off their decade-long austerity programme, but they will never reverse it. Beyond the NHS, much of the public realm have now been permanently shrunken. Thanks a lot! And sadly, Labour has let Johnson off the hook for the way his predecessors smashed up public services. Moreover, Keir Starmer allowed Johnson to pose as an anti-austerity prime minister and to swear that he will stay loyal to net zero carbon. And worse still, if that is even possible, Johnson has been allowed to blatantly lie about his seriousness in reducing the regional inequality his party did so much to create. 

         So, yes, the odds have most definitely been stacked in their favour. But we can fight it. We can demand that those in charge are held accountable for this. We must never perpetuate the myth that the poor and vulnerable are to blame. They are not. Just like the migrants and asylum seekers. We can never turn our back on them, just because we are too scared that we might lose that one little lifeline that we have left. If we do not stand up for those who have nothing, who will be there for us when they come for us?