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Ed Miliband For Social Mobility; What About Postcode Poverty?

 I’ve just read an article on Yahoo! News reporting how Ed Miliband went all against the Beecroft Report that suggests changes in labour laws that would facilitate employers to lay off the employees. The coalition Government, in his words, isn’t doing anything to attack social inequality; quite on the contrary, they uphold it by denying “bright youngsters from poor backgrounds to succeed“. He wants to make it easier for disadvantaged teenagers to go to the University and to enter the elite professions. And above all, he wants to build culture based on long-termism, investment, and training.

Since I have two native countries, I take to heart what is happening in Britain, especially in the social and education spheres. Now, the Government may be about to seal inequality and to pervert labour laws, but in doing so it is merely following in the footsteps of its predecessors. When I watched a 2005 programme on BBC about postcode poverty I was shocked and upset. In Moscow I have a neighbouring district that is separated from mine by a railway – to take that as a comparison, on my side we were middle-class with promising future; on their side, they were poor working class, forever dealing with money and drug problems.

Obviously, this cynical nonsense – to offer prospects based on one’s postcode – wasn’t the Labour creation; but as one understands, Labour did nothing to change the state of things. Quite possibly because within the party itself some people didn’t want to mix with someone whose parents were drug-abusing paupers.

It’s great that Mr Miliband voices the problem; it’s bad that voicing isn’t a solution. To solve the problem, people’s mindset has to be changed. I’m glad to have lived in a very typical working-class area to the north of Greater Manchester, for I have no illusions about the so-called “disadvantaged people”. Many of them enforce this condition on themselves and their children. But I also know about snobbery that accompanied a rather patronising mercy towards the poor – quite like in one Victorian story. An upper class girl decided to help a hungry street beggar, also female. She brought her home, gave her biscuits and sandwiches, and was convinced to keep her in – because it was so good to help common people! Unfortunately, the poor girl appeared a bit too pretty, and so she was sent away into a London night with 3 pounds in her pocket.

Is this what the Government, no matter of what political background, also doing?

Author: Julia Shuvalova

Julia Shuvalova is the author of Los Cuadernos de Julia blog. She is an author of several books, a translator, and a Foreign Languages tutor. She lives and works in Moscow, Russia.

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