The romantic notions foreigners often have about England, that’s Hollywood nonsense.
People who can’t afford toilet paper, that’s the real England. 40% of the Brits are currently in poverty. A great deal of that is deep poverty.
People who can’t afford toilet paper can very easily be recruited as pawns by psychopathic and narcissistic stalkers, too, by the way. Narcissists and psychopaths seems to have a knack for being flush.
By many, they are considered inferior human beings, England’s poor people. They get signs on the table for how to behave if they go to some of the places that hand outs free warm meals. They get mocked and ridiculed. They are supposed to have defective genes, low IQ and character flaws.
But all their “flaws” are caused by their poverty – such as by prolonged malnutrition – and that poverty is imposed by the government and by society.
(They have no need for anything like scientific services or art reproductions, by the way.)
University students in England are expected to be living on 50 pence per week, after rent, now. That’s about 2 pounds per month. It tells you the entire story of how England ‘s elitist class system works. (https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/oct/26/university-students-england-50p-a-week-after-rent)
(It also tells you the story of a predatory real-estate market that is out of control. The high rents, that’s like demanding that people pay 30 or 40 bucks for a loaf of bread.)
The contrast with where I am now is so surreal that I feel I have very little in common with the people here. England is like outer space. That’s been my world for far too long. I’m like a UFO now.
The heating went on here before the end of September. In many English homes, the heating actually never goes on. Many people can’t afford it, but it’s also very un-English to have the heating on before December or January.
It’s nice to be warm, though. Certainly if you’re a little older.
Even already before the pandemic, tens of thousand of Brits died each winter as the result of not being able to heat their homes (properly), far more than in counties with cold climates.
I find the mindless consumerism that comes with prosperity immensely depressing when I look at it from a climate change and broader planetary perspective, but so is the vengeful destruction of poor people’s lives and things in England. The place is becoming one big torture chamber, isn’t it?
The poverty mindset in England is stifling too, though. I hate it. Because people impose it on each other. It’s paralytic. But I understand where it comes from.
Mustn’t have ideas above our station.
Besides, poverty shrinks your world immensely. From the moment you get up to the moment you crawl into bed, all your thoughts are about where you will find food.
Those thoughts include whether you will have enough energy to walk over to St Jude’s or St Agatha’s and back if you haven’t eaten much for too many days. The vile cruelty you get treated to for free at some of these places that hand out meals can be pretty soul-destroying. There are days on which you’ll rather go hungry than get a mouthful of that crap again. That too will go through your mind.
No wonder there is often so much loud drunken agony in England. People often scream like banshees, on the street, day and night. People are hurting very badly there.
If you’re from a famine-stricken or war-torn country, England will still seem pretty sweet though.
I’ve discovered that I really like English supermarkets and English foodstuffs. English supermarkets are no longer the display of sad paucity that they once offered, with just a few turnips, carrots and onions, but on the other hand, do not have the ridiculous fulltime presence of Japanese sushi chefs either.
The acceptability of the relative seediness of the storage-room look, and whether hot chocolate should be placed with coffees and teas or with jams and peanut butters or whether cake and laundry detergent go together, that’s a mere matter of opinion.
