What a surprise it is to learn that the healthy living expectancy (HLE) has fallen to 61 years for both men and women. Wealthy individuals can expect to enjoy 20 years more healthy living than the poorest. Who knew? How about everyone?
It’s almost as if the poorest people in society are more likely to eat bad food, assuming they can eat at all, don’t have access to gymnasiums, work in low paid, insecure work, are more likely to get into debt, to suffer more from poor mental health and to get into the murky world of drugs. Yet these are some of the reasons why the poor are more likely to endure poor health and die young.
I have spent my entire working life at the coalface of how working class people lead their lives and from 1974, when I started work for the DHSS, I became acquainted with a dark and depressing world many of us know nothing about. Now, I spent some of my time volunteering at a food bank (have I ever mentioned this?) and if anything things appear to be worse than they ever were.
For one thing, the DWP, which was called the DHSS back in the dark ages, is no longer the last port of call for the desperate. The government has fobbed off its responsibilities to charities, like food banks and a cursory glance through the window of a food bank tells you will ever need to do about poverty and its pernicious effects on actual human beings.
All my life, through the portal of my job, I came across people who were never going to make it into old age. Some, many actually, barely made it into middle age. Young people, with their brains addled and rotten teeth extracted as a result of drug-taking, on the way to oblivion is today’s new normal. In one of the wealthiest countries on the planet.
The word that people have forgotten is hope, for they have none. Hope was sucked out of them years ago in lives devoid of opportunity, no direction except to an early grave. I see them today, especially when I am walking through town, I see them at our food bank, I see them when I am simply driving through the city.
“How can people live like that?” you hear people say. And you know the answer is that there is no other way. It’s that or nothing. It’s no wonder, sometimes, when people choose nothing.
The government is taking action, like removing the two child benefit cap, but look at the reaction from the political right when they do that. Led by the gutter press, they would rather see people starve to death, it must be very satisfying for them to learn that without food banks, people would starve to death. They see the poor as the deserving poor.
Poorer people are more likely to smoke, with all the health issues that brings. They are more likely to eat terrible food, with all the health issues that brings. They are more likely to suffer debilitating mental and physical health conditions. Benefits has become a dirty word. But in reality, without the benefits system and the welfare state in general, things would be even worse.
The liars on the far right pretend that benefit claimants have an income of circa £30,000. As if. Benefits are historically low in value, pitifully so. And while there are anomalies that need addressing – like the motability car scheme which is the second biggest fleet of vehicles in the world, after the Chinese Army – it is not possibly to live a life of luxury when you’re on benefits, unless you are simultaneously committing fraud.
It’s always been the case that the poor live shorter and often more miserable lives than the better off. All I will say is that I don’t think it’s fair, that your entire life is to be governed by the social class from which you come. I’m not saying that everyone should earn the same money but I am saying that everyone in life deserves a fair chance at having a good life. Come and join me at the food bank and I will show something that will make you change your mind.
