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The Social Distance Between Us: How Remote Politics Wrecked Britain

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Darren ‘Loki’ McGarvey is a legend. I love his opinion’s in this book that I’ve read so far, and from having him as a Facebook friend I see his opinions on different subjects daily so I really am enjoying this book. this move to digitisation reveals perhaps the greatest absurdity of austerity Britain - you cannot own a phone if you’re poor but you can’t access benefits without the internet."

Join Darren McGarvey on a journey through a divided Britain in search of answers. Here, our latter-day Orwell exposes the true scale of Britain's social ills and reveals why our current political class, those tasked with bringing solutions, are so distanced from our lived experience that they are the last people you'd want fighting your corner. I am middle-class. I was sent against my will to a government-funded, fee-paying school which I hated. I was dragged reluctantly along the conveyor belt to a minor university. I dropped out. I started to hate the middle class and everything it stood for. So I left it. I became a class-refugee, 'déclassé' as we snooty class-refugees would term it. This was the mid-sixties. I got a job as a gardener at a Stately Home. I was fired because my bean-rows weren't straight. I 'signed on the dole'. I never worked again. Now, thanks to the EU I get an Old Person's dole (900 euros a month) from the French state. He describes how inequalities in education, housing, jobs - in fact just about everything - make it extremely difficult for those born into poverty to escape. Because the majority of people in local and national government, the criminal justice system, social services, and all the others who make decisions about the lives of poor people haven't experienced the same problems, their "solutions" often only make things worse. He also examines different political positions - literally left, right and centre - and how they have all failed the poorest and most vulnerable. He is fair in his assessment of how some actions have been well meaning but have not achieved their aims, while others may have been based on inflexible and outdated beliefs. This distance multiplies over time, as those who pass laws and oversee programmes to support the most vulnerable often live the kinds of lives that rarely interact with those who they are aiming to support.It is a book that managed to make me both sad and angry. It made me question myself, living in a middle-class bubble, oblivious to others. All of author and documentary-maker Darren McGarvey’s work is a provocation, and I am easily provoked. So I consume it in a state halfway between admiration and irritation. Admirritation, if you like. But here’s the thing: I always do consume it. Often, the parts that irritate me most are the ones that keep me consuming, just as the points I take greatest issue with are the ones I find myself thinking about long after I am done. When it comes to the haves and the have-nots in Britain, you don’t have to look far to see the damage. The recent pandemic revealed a nation in a spiralling downturn, its social systems and political connections incapable of pulling up those who lie in the gutter. Working alongside several contributors and utilising a large array of sources, Darren McGarvey’s The Social Distance Between Us is a scathing release, one that demands the attention of any reader. Possibly an uncomfortable read for the mandarins in British politics, but that's exactly the reason this book should be taken seriously. For me so called immigration anxieties are projections and pretexts that would take some other form if it were not for immigration. As the author put it in plain speak 'a political red herring '.

Ugaz’s case is all too familiar in Peru, where powerful groups regularly use the courts to silence journalists by fabricating criminal allegations against them.’ Towards the end, he worries success will blunt his firebrand tendencies. But then he provides a manifesto for transforming Britain that includes the abolition of fee-paying schools and the strengthening of trade unions, and it’s clear his enduring radicalism is a given. Since leaving the corporate world, I realise that putting shareholder value above all else will destroy the future of our children. found there were four times more prescriptions for strong opioids dispensed to people in the most deprived areas, than those in the most affluent areas." Join Orwell prize-winning author, BAFTA nominated broadcaster and celebrated hip-hop artist Darren McGarvey for his new show centred on his recent book, The Social Distance Between Us. In it Darren confronts the scandal of class inequality with passion, humility and a dose of humour.The poet Jo Clement gives voice to the stories and people of her family’s Romany past. In her collection Outlandish she has no time for Romantic impressions of British Gypsy ethnicity as she moves from ancient stopping-places to decaying council estates. Her poems are imaginative protests that cast light on a hidden and threatened culture. The book is at its best as a piece of reportage; powerful stories of individuals told with empathy.

Something that Darren did not point out: for the most excluded and socially-deprived, intellectually-unstimulated kids, the very set-up, the very classroom of a school, the very accent of a teacher can intimidate them into "stupidity" and refusal to learn. Overall I felt like it was trying to cover too much ground, and ended up being a bit scattergun. The second half of the book was more interesting and it was strongest when debating the ideas of class in British society.These days I live in a little terrace miles away from the nearest town. I work from home, and the work I do is business-to-business writing. The closest I get to experiencing working class people now is when I stop and chat to the cleaners on my monthly visit to head office. I’ve got to be honest, I like it that way. I’m one of the few people who, in the words of McGarvey, is ‘ grateful for the exacting dimensions of the sand box you’ve been allowed to play in’. I still think of myself as working class, but I’ve got to be honest, I’m much more of a reed diffuser kind of guy these days. The book covers topics such as unequal health outcomes, addiction, aspiration, class and much more, using this lens to show how inured many people's lives are from seeing the reality around them.

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