Poverty Safari: Understanding the Anger of Britain's Underclass

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It's his bitter proof against the populist right as well as the Left, whose socioeconomic abstractions cannot appeal anymore. As for the anecdote he provides of the different class-based motivations for the emotional upset of children in a playgroup - well, all I can say is that if this really happened, McGarvey has no business working with vulnerable people and children. If he has no awareness that children with "Bearsden accents" can feel emotionally upset, and that only working-class children have feelings that are worthy of attention, then I actually despair! The McGarvey warns against investing too much energy and faith to the delivery of political silver bullets, because even if you do think that a change of government/the end of capitalism/Brexit/nationalism/Corbyn/Trump/not Trump will solve many of your problems, you could still be waiting for a long time, and if you aren't prepared to work within the current political system, then it become just another protest movement that wants to keep people angry for the benefit of the movement, not the community. When you think you have nothing to lose, then hoping for the banks to fail sounds like fun, but in reality, the poorest would still end up suffering the most.

Our system is riddled with internal contradiction, injustice and corruption, but is also very dynamic and offers a great many freedoms. For example, our current system, for all its flaws, is so dynamic that it can provide food, shelter and employment, as well as education, training and resources, for the very movements that are openly trying to overthrow it. This sort of liberty is not to be sneered at or taken for granted. Nor should we pretend that such freedom is easy to facilitate. Poverty comprises many domains of the human experience: social, psychological, emotional, political and cultural. Some things we can’t immediately impact, like the economy. Others we can affect intermittently, like political parties. But other areas, such as our mental health, consumer behaviour or lifestyle, which also play a significant role in our quality of life, are not as intangible and inalterable. What we now need to ask ourselves, as a matter of urgency, is which aspects of poverty can we positively affect through our thinking and action? If poverty is negatively affecting our quality of life, is there any action we could take to mitigate this harm? Ultimately, which aspects of poverty are beyond our control and which are within our capability to change? In what ways does Poverty Safari provide starting points for political discussion that could lead to change? Are the topics discussed represented properly in politics and the media?McGarvey is able to connect with his students because his own life has been shaped by the dual forces of poverty and violence. He grew up in Pollok, a poor, working-class neighborhood on the southside of Glasgow. In the early nineties, when McGarvey was a child, this area often ranked as one of the most economically deprived places in Europe. I laud McGarvey for his open discussion of the deep and severe trauma he experienced in his family growing up, and I have no doubt that had grave repercussions for his initial trajectory into an early adult life blighted by addiction and destructive behaviour. My difficulties are when McGarvey tries to generalise from his experiences to society as a whole. Savage, wise and witty….It is hard to think of a more timely, powerful or necessary book.” J. K Rowling. Can a leftwing structural critique be married to an ethics of personal responsibility? This is the big question at the heart of Darren McGarvey’s vivid, passionate and relentlessly self-questioning memoir, which all the judges agreed was a book for our times”– Lorien Kite Several times I thought about telling my brother, a social worker, about this book. The text actually reads like a manual for social workers. "Here are some things to think about while organizing a community!"

This then presents another challenge for EPs. As well as seeking to use our professional voice to support and advocate for marginalised and disadvantaged communities, are we also a profession that really listens to the communities that we serve? Are we a profession that seeks to facilitate and empower the solutions that local people advocate to their identified needs? I’m not sure I have the answers to these questions yet, but they’re certainly worth considering. And for that reason, I’d really recommend reading this book which doesn’t shy from asking them. No one ever seems to be writing a dissertation on the link between emotional stress and chronic illness or an op-ed about how they managed to give up smoking. As if somehow, these day-to-day problems are less consequential to the poor than the musings of Karl Marx. As if we can postpone action on the things that are demoralising, incapacitating and killing us until after the hypothetical revolution. Beneath all the theoretical discussion, these problems of mind, body and spirit and what we do to manage them are the unglamorous, cyclical dilemmas that many people are really struggling with. Just as we are products of our environment, our environments are also a product of us – from the food we consume to the products we buy; the newspapers we read to the politicians we vote for. So many of the problems we face, which we often attribute to “the system”, are, to some extent, self-generated. Therefore, many of these problems (though certainly not all) are within our individual and collective competence to positively affect. Darren McGarvey stands in front of a group of prisoners. The air is tense, his audience, all young incarcerated women, are apprehensive. He needs to break the ice and to earn their trust. So, he does what he always does: he raps.self awareness, critically cross-examining your own beliefs and being willing to admit wrongs + apologise.. always It's difficult to condense the main points of 'Poverty Safari', because it approaches its topic from such a variety of directions: class, economics, built environment, politics, mental health, food, and education, among others. The chapters link together neatly to create an original and profound examination of poverty in Scotland, and Britain in general. It's tempting as is for me, and likely many others who've never experienced real poverty either, to carelessly blame Tory policies since Thatcher for its persistence. McGarvey refuses to be so reductive:

The authenticity of McGarvey’s message confers an ambassadorial role as a representative of the socio-economically disadvantaged communities for whom he advocates. And who is the message for? Those who are privileged by virtue of the lottery of where and to whom they were born. Those who haven’t lived the experience of being poor with all that accompanies it. As uncomfortable as it may make us feel, that would include many EPs, myself included. Guess which story got more press coverage. You already know the answer. The media was more interested in the wealthy family’s vacation woes. Considering this, and in the absence of a bloodless revolt soon, the question for people on the left is no longer simply: “How do we radically transform the system?”, but also: “How do we radically transform ourselves?” Much as I hate to admit it, I should have taken some time to properly consider the best way to respond to Ellie's project. I'd been raised to think that any anger I felt was legitimate, merely by virtue of the fact that I was lower class. But even if this were true, the anger itself was only useful when expressed at the correct moment, in the correct way. It's only legitimate when it's deployed with the right quality of intention and even then, its utility is time-limited. Just like the booze, the fags, the drugs and the junk food, the novelty of righteous anger soon wears off, leaving you only with a compulsion to get hot and bothered, when often the solution to the problem is staring you right in the face. This isn't a popular thing to say on the left, but it's an honest one. In this case, I used righteous anger as a smokescreen to conceal something more self-serving. I had used the 'working class' as a Trojan horse to advance my own personal agenda. And I did all of this while believing myself to be well informed and deeply virtuous, unaware of how personal resentment was subtly directing my thinking." (Chapter 31: The Changeling) My wife shared the Kindle edition of Poverty Safari with me, maybe a year ago. I managed to completely ignore it until I needed to do some research last month and since then have been working my way slowly through.You may change or cancel your subscription or trial at any time online. Simply log into Settings & Account and select "Cancel" on the right-hand side.

Of course this is learned behaviour, passed down through the generations, and clearly this is a level of distrust that successive governments and prime ministers have well earned. He talks about the insidious role of the poverty industry, a murky business of bureaucracy and not speaking up against the status quo, “Where success is when there remain just enough social problems to sustain and perpetuate everyone’s career. Success is not eradicating poverty but parachuting in and leaving a ‘legacy’.”We feel like the people who make the news – and the rules – are either too removed from the reality of our lives to accurately portray them, or worse, that they are deliberately misrepresenting us as part of some broader conspiracy.” If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month. For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial.