So Marcus Rashford is shaming the government by calling out their intransigence in the wake of pandemic inspired child poverty. Their response, voiced by Clown Bojo, is to say what a terrific job he's doing...of calling them out!
Meanwhile, in response, they do nothing.
Is this gaslighting? Yes, it is.
Today I went into town, again, this is starting to become a dangerous habit! I ended up spending a tenner more on food than I would have liked. Now, this is a small thing (for me) but it is pertinent. I can afford this so I'm not complaining. However those in the cohort affected by the Tories' selfishness don't have that flexibility and this is beyond Tory understanding. This issue is more complex precisely because of that. Poor people constantly have to micromanage what little they have with no margin of error. I struggled, so to speak, because I wanted to buy the cheap beef I normally buy for the week. However it was out of stock - probably because other, perhaps poorer, people also want to be thrifty. They can't be blamed for that. Had that been me, after spending £7 to travel to the shop, I could well have been screwed. Fortunately I can afford a less cheap alternative.
It's an inconvenience for me. For someone that needs things like free school meal vouchers, that could have been disastrous. That money spent to travel is committed. They don't get a refund with which to try again in the food lottery that only the poor are forced to endure. The bus service aren't going to show any sympathy if the shelves are empty. You go without and get what you can and hope next week is different. Maybe you can find a better time to shop, maybe you can't, if you've got kids. You have no way of knowing what's in stock. Shopping online might well be a better choice but sadly even that has a minimum cost that makes it difficult for people in poverty.
That's what poverty is like. It is exhausting, tiring; a constant calculation and measurement of means and methods. There is no respite. Maybe you'll get lucky in the shops one week, but how much can you carry? You have no flexibility to plan in advance and you're screwed if you don't. Do poor people have vast freezer space to store all the stuff they might be able to carry (along with pushing pushchairs and dragging stroppy kids around the shops).
It's become far too easy for the great and the good, especially half brained poverty pimps or the virtuous thrift merchants beloved of TV (how to cook for less, how to clean your house with elbow grease, how to graduate from the school of hard knocks). It is an endless trial forced on people in liue of simply recognising the nature of life in the working class and the iniquities of capitalism. No one is at fault for being poor. They have no choice in the economic whirlwinds that surround them. But some people think it's OK to berate and lecture, presumably to assuage their own shortcomings. Feelings that would disappear if they acknowledged the simple reality: we are the working class, we have to sell our selves to live, that is wrong. People living in poverty work a damn sight harder than any of these self aggrandising twitter moralising narcissists. Remember that.
And any one of us could end up in poverty; after all who would have thought, this time last year, where we would end up in 2020?
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