Lucy Farmer
In the spirit of 2020, school children have been denied free school meals over the holiday, just as MPs are promised more golden nuggets for their wonderful, indisputable work this year.
You see, it’s better to give money to an already non-functioning system of Universal Credit then to individual schools, MPs argue as each of them stuff their pockets with a predicted extra £3,000 per year. Nothing could be done to help.
Kids just stop starving when they can run outside all day instead of being hunched over a desk.
There has always been a brick layer between the thick, trudging muck of working-class life and the blissfulness of being able to afford rent this month
The logic of governments has always been flawed when it comes to economics. And this isn’t just the conservatives (although note that 322 of them voted against the bill)- the LibDems helped privatise university education further by increasing fees to £9,250 per year.
There has always been a brick layer between the thick, trudging muck of working-class life and the blissfulness of being able to afford rent this month.
Let’s do some quick maths- there are 650 Members of Parliament as of currently. That’s, based on the assumption no hidden extra raises or more subsided meals crop up, an extra £1 million for an elite group of people already bathing in their privilege.
Although not a lot in the grand scheme of national economics, it could restart a heart, shelter those between housing, provide a ventilator to another COVID patient desperate for air.
The NHS is already bracing under the pressures of a pandemic, with the second wave already in full swing.
But a step back from the foreboding MPs with their private school degrees and overwhelmingly white skin might permit us to look at a powerful figure paving the way for class equality.
Nadia Whittome was voted in as Nottingham East’s Labour MP on 12th December 2019- one of the youngest women of colour to snatch that role from beneath the grips of nepotism.
Still working and living from home, she went from a low-wage job as a care worker to the £79,000 salary of a Member of Parliament overnight.
But a taste of this lifestyle did not deter from the decision to improve the lives and employment conditions of working-class people. Pledging to take home only £35,000 and donate the excess to charity, she is taking a stance where the rest of the government is too precious over pennies and policies to care.
Like eager children in overly priced gift shops at the end of museums, we accept their offerings without knowing the kinder, easier options just out of eyesight
They claim to stand for the people, shaking the right amount of hands and smiling just enough to prove it. And, like eager children in overly priced gift shops at the end of museums, we accept their offerings without knowing the kinder, easier options just out of eyesight.
So just when will they step down from their high castles and stick their hands in dirt that isn’t another sex scandal or slathering of anti-Semitism?
NHS workers can hardly breathe with the surging COVID cases and lack of financial support, and they’re risking their lives every day. Money won’t solve their issues, but it would definitely make it just that little bit smoother.
Already, there has been a wave of support from all kinds of people, big or small, rich or struggling, to feed children over holidays. From a curry house in Leeds to Marcus Rushford himself- everyone with an extra bite to eat seems to be chipping in where parliament has so miserably failed.
The exceptions to greed are ever-present, yet MPs continue to take what they don’t need. How long are we going to sit by and let this happen?
Lucy Farmer
Featured image courtesy of Ugur Akdemir via Unsplash. Image license found here. No changes were made to this image.
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