I just had this e-mail from Calum at Crisis. I was replying to him, and then I remembered that I was asked to share the story. Calum already knows what’s what. It’s other people who need to hear this.
This is what I had typed up for Calum:
Hi Calum,
I agree that the consequences of Britain’s extreme inequality and its bonkers class ideas are serious and devastating. I was actually sitting at my desk here in another country, still reeling from what happened to me in nearly twenty years in England, still trying to come to grips with it and trying to overcome the fear and insecurity it’s caused, thinking about all of this.
The contrast between England and my own country is so utterly surreal, my mind has trouble putting it all into a framework that still makes sense. (I can’t explain any of this to people in the Netherlands; the contrast is just too surreal.)
Then I saw your e-mail.
I am educated and intelligent but I was homeless in England twice. The homelessness is not the shocking part. The shocking part is that homelessness and extreme poverty is so accepted in the UK and that people don’t realize that it’s the attitudes of and decisions made by politicians and so-called respectable people in the UK that cause these problems. Situations like Andrea’s are too common and too easily shrugged about. They should not happen in the first place.
I was in a crazy town, but – out of some bizarre kind of spite or vengeance for fellow members of the local traditional old-guard Establishment – I was also terrorized and sabotaged by a real estate developer. He is a good buddy of the Lib Dem city council leader as it turned out. I voted for this latter guy and his colleagues for years; it makes me feel like a fool now. (I later became a member of the Green Party.)
The city council even sponsored my participation in a community leadership course. What were they thinking?
This real estate developer literally told me that he and his Lib Dem buddy wanted me to leave the town.
I’ve stood up for tenants’ rights, and I’ve also successfully taken a letting agency to court, as a LIP, and settled for slightly over 10,000 pounds, about half of which I gave to someone who had also been disadvantaged by what had happened, even though that person was not poor. It does – should – not matter if someone is rich or poor, we all deserve the same respect. That clashed with traditional local values, it seems.
It is all about greed, greed for power and greed for money. Human values and consideration for others are just props that are used to win votes. All these folks are of the same ilk, apparently. I’ve previously lived in the US for a while and I am no stranger to hardship, but the callousness and viciousness of a lot of folks in England has shocked me deeply. It’s not just the Tories.
I agree that living like Andrea, having no certainty about anything, is incredibly taxing. You can’t really build a life in such circumstances either, can you?
What is it that Andrea needs?
[That’s when I realized that I needed to share this instead of write to Calum.]
Equality. The absence of other people’s callous greed at her expense.
Being stuck in limbo the way she has been, it’s horrible, it’s just horrible.
What is it that Andrea needs? Someone who steps to the plate because he or she has the power to make things better for Andrea.
Someone like… David Abingdon. Or Deborah Meaden.
Meet Cal Buffery.
Cal Buffery is a university lecturer now, a legal scholar, making a good living, doing things she enjoys and is good at.
Cal and David met in a Channel 4 TV series:
https://www.gazetteseries.co.uk/news/8097338.schoolgirls-become-friends-after-appearing-in-channel-four-series/
Cal wanted to become a barrister, but not even David Abingdon could get Cal a pupilage. That’s how immensely impenetrable the English class system is.
That’s what Andrea is up against.
Tory values. Upheld by so many more people than just Tories.
Fortunately, Andrea does not need a pupilage. She just needs a decent home and a decent landlord. A life. A future.
I know a Dutchwoman with a PhD from Delft University of Technology who was forced to move just about every year, first with her partner, then with partner and kid. That’s how English housing law (or, rather, the class system) works; you can’t explain this to Dutch people in the Netherlands who have never lived abroad and who assume that this woman and her partner must have done something bad to get kicked out that often. (Nope.) As soon as she received her mother’s inheritance, she bought a house of her own. Now she finally has a place that she can call home.
