I grew up on this leafy council estate in west Birmingham in the 1980s and 90s. I used academia as a route to escape, and found myself in the middle class comforts of Hertfordshire and then Solihull.
I feel very privileged to have experienced life at three levels of society: working class, working poor and middle class. It has given me a well-grounded and diverse outlook on life.
These are the thoughts of someone who came from "Your Town" ... Margaret Thatcher's utopia.
If you read nothing else, cast your eyes over:
- my account of food poverty
- the awkward truth that we are all privileged
- why you can't beat someone out of poverty
- how we delude ourselves into believing the job market rewards hard workers when in reality there is an absurd approach to pay:
We want our hospitals to be well run, but we pay directors six-figure salaries whether they run the hospital well or not.
We want our hospitals to be clean, but we pay cleaners minimum wage whether they clean the hospital well or not.