Just give up, mun, person and writer and all and sundry between the two. You, it, this, you’re inadequate, selfish. I lurch right to the queue for the Food Bank at the back of St. Anthony’s, straight across the dual-carriageway to the Gospel Hall Foodbank. And, let me say, unlike the ‘reality’ twittering of commentators false and knowing usually, but tossed in not at all accidentally or innocently, for their and not our benefits, actually mate it is at max 2 plastic bags of tinned food and some toilet rolls once a week. It is not every day. It is but once a week. First, humiliate yourself asking at the dole office for a written piece of paper saying you are useless before you are sanctioned to stand in line.
‘Fuck, Why in hell do we take this?’
‘Totally right. The UK is one of the richest countries in the whole world. I don’t understand. What happened to a caring local community? The welfare state used to step in.’
‘The post industrial, gig economy, zero- hours neoliberalism of the UK. Gov. com. is what happened. Doesn’t need mass workers. We are redundant. The UK is London, its money-markets, its £200.00 expense-account lunches and bonuses and all in thrall to the relentless burning up of the planet’.
‘Double that with red plonk to wash it down. I heard on the radio that a child in London living near a main road died of inhaling fumes. An official that. You get bladder cancer too from industrial pollution.’
‘ We are the underclass. We don’t even vote. Then there are those brain-washed aspiring- to- b like the rich and famous in the jungle shows. They don’t change nothing. We aint Sam Beckett waiting around for Godots.’
‘I think the Stranglers Hanging Around ‘ is more us.’
‘Look, we are materially well-off but have also the the biggest discrepancy between those who have i-‘
‘-and those who don’t.’
‘It is drummed in that it’s our fault, you know labelled as the won’t work poor. The Winter digs in. We eat or heat. Nothing works in the hospitals, the GPs, the care services. You know around here -‘
‘ – in most inner-city areas it is walk through junkies, alchies , the mad, the bad and the homeless. And that is just the daily shop to the poor people’s supermarket NISA.. The bag of pasta or chips get smaller. This is not a temporary blip or a local thing.. It is a world crisis, one comes after another because of the system.’
‘Don’t let us expect to survive on what we are given. Be more involved.”
The Stranglers is heard. They both sing –
‘Something’s gotta change .
Nothing’s gonna change.
Change. Change. Change.’
