How about... 1. Paul Harrison, Inside The Inner City (Penguin 1983). A survey of inner city poverty based in London's East End. 2.Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America. 3.Katherine Newman, No Shame in My Game And 4. Polly Toynbee, Hard Work: The other side of the tracks http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,873460,00.html Thirty years ago Polly Toynbee took a series of menial jobs to investigate life for Britain's lowest-paid workers. Last year she repeated the experiment to find out if anything had changed. In this exclusive first extract from her remarkable new book she travels a few hundred yards from her comfortable home... and enters a different world Monday January 13, 2003 The Guardian When the letter arrived, I thought briefly about it then dumped it in the cluttered tray of awkward ones where it lay unanswered on my desk for weeks. I would glance at it occasionally, then drop it back undecided. Church Action on Poverty were inviting me, among others, to live on the minimum wage for Lent. It would be impossible. When New Labour finally introduced the minimum wage in April 1999, it did raise the wages of some 1.3 million people a little, but fewer than the government expected because it was set far too low. Introduced an ultra-cautious £3.60 an hour, it has barely risen in relation to other wages since, now standing at £4.10 an hour [since the book was written it been raised to £4.20]. How could I possibly live on £4.10 an hour? That's £164 a week, twice what two of us paid the other night for one local restaurant meal in Clapham, nothing exceptional. Every time I thought about my own gold-plated life as a journalist - the taxis, the Guardian's car, my mobile phone, eating out, or the gifts for my family and what's called "discretionary spending" on pleasing non-necessities - it seemed undoable. I had to carry out my ordinary working life. How would I get from place to place in a hurry, to press conferences, seminars or interviews, with just a bus pass? I thought about my Victorian house bought decades ago and, like most in London, now worth a fortune. I thought about how much comes in each month, never needing to count the cost. It couldn't be done. Or at least, nothing remotely resembling my life could be lived on that sum. As a patron of the National Secular Society and profoundly anti-religious, I should have had no problem in scribbling Church Action a polite refusal. And yet the challenge chimed with something in my past: 30 years ago, when I was starting out in journalism, I wrote a book entitled A Working Life. It was a personal exploration of a world of manual work I knew nothing about. I had travelled the country taking jobs as they came, describing the lives of people, many just getting by, with hardship lurking around the corner. I worked in factories and on assembly lines; I was a hospital orderly and a private in the Women's Royal Army Corps; I visited steelworks and coal mines. My book now seems redolent of another era, a time of strong trade unions and comforting but sometimes malign social solidarity. Pay rates were rising at a time of social progress and the chance of upward mobility for working-class children was in the air. Then and now. There is no need for cloying nostalgia, but let's get it in perspective. The economic story of the past century was growth: national income multiplied by seven. After the last war, the gap in income between rich and poor got steadily narrower: we have never been more equal than in the late 1970s. Wealth as well as income was shared more evenly: the richest were taxed progressively, while more people started to acquire wealth by owning their own homes, building up pensions and savings. But that historic progress towards greater social justice stopped dead with Margaret Thatcher: then, the rich got richer and the poor were left behind, both in income and in wealth. I wanted to go back again and look at the world of work as it is now. How much social progress has there been since 1970 in these minimum-wage jobs? After all, the greatest single group of poor people are already in work. three and a half million poor people live in working households. There are more working poor than there are unemployed. There are more working poor than there are poor pensioners. As growing numbers of single mothers, people with disabilities and anyone else who possibly can is urged into work, it becomes ever clearer that most poor people are not the feckless/hopeless/helpless, but people who work very hard for long hours and yet still fall below the official poverty line. 1) Jenny from the housing office walked me over to my flat, swinging the keys in her hand as we picked our way across the estate between potholes and puddles. Yes, she said, there were plenty of empty flats in this block, unlettable in its present state while renovation work was unfinished. People who had waited years to reach the top of the council house list were given three choices. "But no one would choose the White House. It's the hardest to let of them all." For the past year I had been following the fortunes of a council estate near where I live. Clapham Park Estate had been picked as a New Deal for Communities project in Labour's flagship regeneration programme. As the biggest and worst estate in one of London's poorest boroughs, it had won a £56m grant to see what the residents themselves could do with the money to breathe new life into a semi-derelict community. They had agreed to let me sit in on their meetings and get to know the local people who were trying to effect a miracle. I wanted to watch the scheme's progress at first hand, as a way of observing government targets close up, not just through reams of annual statistics. Now my connections on the estate gave me the chance to go and live there for a while, making my attempt at living on the minimum wage a little more realistic. Even among the grimmest blocks on the west side of Clapham Park, the White House was an eyesore. Its once-white facade was pockmarked all over with deep holes exposing concrete and metal wires, as if it had been bombarded in a long Balkan war, which was why the residents called it Little Kosovo. Jenny led the way into my staircase in the block. The stairway walls might once have been painted a pinkish beige, but they had been overlaid with layer upon layer of brownish stuff scattered on the surface, something indescribable and horrible. Jenny wrinkled her nose but said she'd smelled worse. There was a small lift just inside the passage with a battered, graffiti-covered silver door. "Sorry, but I never use the lifts in these places," Jenny said. "I was stuck in one once. Never again." So we walked up four floors past gaping broken windows on each stairway, past rubbish chutes clogged with filth. My fourth-floor flat shared a dark cul-de-sac landing with two other closed front doors, but all was silent. The doorway had been clamped over with a temporary heavy metal security door to stop squatters breaking in. "Not just squatters," Jenny said, as she tried to sort out the right keys to the maze of locks on the outer door and the three locks on the inner door. "It's the crack dealers who move in, set up in a flat and intimidate everyone else. But these doors don't keep them out. They use cutting machines and they just wrench the whole metal frame out." I didn't like to ask what was to stop them doing that to the flimsy door underneath once the security doors were removed and a tenant moved in. By now my expectations of this flat were zero. I feared the worst as Jenny finally pushed open the door and we stepped into a dark passageway. I felt immediate relief. Once inside with the door shutting out the smell from the corridor, it wasn't bad, not bad at all. A good-sized sitting room, two bedrooms, a small kitchen and bathroom were all in cream-painted good condition. "You want to remove the carpet?" Jenny asked. She wrinkled her nose at its uncertain spillages, dubious smears and brown sticky spots. I considered it, paced up and down, but thought whatever was underneath might be worse and I would have no money for anything else, so I said I'd keep it. I would just keep my shoes and slippers on. 2) The clock starts ticking. From the day I was given the keys to my flat I started to live on the income of a single woman alone and looking for work. I had just £53.05 a week in Job Seeker's Allowance, so I needed to find a job fast. But first I needed to furnish my flat. Where would I turn? The only place to go is the state social fund. It is a strange and fickle beast, a flexible friend, dubious and duplicitous, as I was about to find out. The main Lambeth benefits office in Blackfriars Road is an old-style monstrosity filled with rows of depressed or angry people gazing at a television set high on the wall, waiting for their number to be called. I had come to see Arthur Jones, a battle-hardened Lambeth officer with more than 20 years' service with the old DSS, now the Department of Work & Pensions. As he came down to greet me, he looked like a well-seasoned police officer in a short-sleeved white shirt with cotton epaulettes and grey hair cropped en brosse. As a social fund officer he had seen claimants by the thousand. He had heard every kind of entreaty and he had witnessed plenty of genuine hardship, he told me as he led the way to an upstairs interview room. I had arranged a hypothetical interview with him to find out what the social fund would give me if I was down on my luck arriving in an empty council flat with few possessions. I might be a woman fleeing a violent husband. I might be a refugee family. I might have had my home repossessed after losing my job and defaulting on my mortgage. "How much can you give me to furnish my empty flat?" I begin. "Nothing at all." "Nothing?" "I can only loan you money." "Even if I am destitute?" "Yes. That's all there is, loans." "OK, a loan then. How much can you loan me?" "What's your income?" "Right now I'm on Job Seeker's Allowance of £53.05 a week, but I hope to get a job soon that ought to bring in somewhere around £160 a week." "Well, how much do you want?" "My flat is completely empty so I want whatever you can give me." "No, it doesn't go like that. You have to make a bid and I have to decide if it's reasonable. I judge you on how reasonable your demands are." "So if I make a lowish request I'm more likely to get it than if I start too high?" "Perhaps. It certainly helps your credibility. Tell me what you need this loan for and I will tell you if I think it's reasonable." "First I need a bed." "Right. I'd agree a bed was essential." "How much will you give me for a bed?" "£75 from Argos." "What else can I have?" "We mostly reckon a cooker is essential, too, though some people don't cook." "OK, how much for a cooker?" "£99.99 from Argos, page 474 in the catalogue." "What about a table and chair?" "I might say you could sit on the bed. Some officers would say that. But if I said yes to you, then I'd allow you £75 for a table and four chairs from Argos." "Curtains?" "Only if you tell me you are overlooked and you need them for decent privacy. If so then it's £35 for those." After that he allows me £15 for crockery, £25 for pots and pans, £10 for cutlery and £50 for bedding. So, I ask, how much in all will he give me? "OK, £400 in your case," he says. "I think that's all you can afford. That will be £8 a week off your benefit, 15%." "How long for? When do I have to pay it back by?" "Fifty weeks." "Does it matter what I spend it on?" "Not at all. Spend it on anything you like." "Thanks. Is that it then?" "Just one other thing. How much I loan you also depends on how much I have in the fund on this particular day. We're very low at the moment." "Does that mean you might turn me away altogether?" "No, it just means I'll trim the sum I give everyone. Maybe instead of £75 for that bed, it'll be £35." "I see. So where do I buy a bed for £35? Second-hand, perhaps?" "Yes, but we're not allowed to recommend second-hand. We only recommend new." "Is there anywhere else except Argos?" "Sometimes I suggest Crazy George's in the Elephant and Castle. Try there." 3) I found the stores on the ground floor of the Elephant and Castle shopping centre. Amid the shabbiness, Crazy George's emporium stood out as a gleaming beacon filled with brand-new bright furniture and electrical goods, all bathed in golden, glittering light. It is laid out like Argos with each item in the cat alogue on show, but the customer must go to the desk to order from the stockroom the items they want. On the counter are the Crazy George catalogues with this message: "Discover Affordable Shopping Made Easy!" Inside it promises, "All our products are available with NO DEPOSIT AND NO CREDIT CHECKS." Unlike discount stores such as Argos or Ikea, everything here is extraordinarily expensive, way beyond ordinary department-store prices for things that looked bright but shoddy. All the prices are quoted at the per-week hire-purchase price in bold letters. The total cash price is in small letters underneath, because people don't come here to pay cash. The cheapest double bed they offered, the "Nicole", was a basic metal-barred number. It cost £4.99 a week for 156 weeks - three years. I was not convinced Nicole would last that long. Even smaller print said, "Mattress available separately", with no mention of what the mattress cost extra. The APR was 29.9%. The small print underneath the picture said the Nicole cost an astounding £432.38 cash, without mattress. Checking around locally, I saw a bed that looked much the same in MFI in Clapham High Street for £189, with mattress. Other items in the catalogue were equally bad value: take the Accessory Package consisting of a small hearth rug and a small lamp with a matching coffee table. That also costs £4.99 for three years, or £432.38 cash. But I could see why it was tempting to shop this way. However much better value it would be for me to buy the MFI bed from the remnants of my Social Fund loan, I just hadn't got £189 to buy it and I could not borrow that money from anywhere else. If I really needed a double bed, I could see how easy it would be to persuade myself that a mere £4.99 per week was more affordable, in my circumstances. Crazy George would give me the bed on production of nothing more than a payslip, a tenancy agreement and two IDs, even though I was penniless. Like most of the well-off, I had never heard of Crazy George because the well-off never need credit at these usurious rates when every bank is tripping over itself to lend cash to the rich at good rates. We who own cars can drive out to vast department stores such as Ikea and pay cash for a house full of good bargains. They who have no cars and no cash end up paying 29.9% APR. 4) By chance, the very next week, as I scoured the pages of the South London Press early on Friday morning before all the best jobs had gone, I found this: "Are you persuasive, persistent, confident, tactful and able to deliver results? Do you want the opportunity to prove it? Crazy George's have a number of opportunities across London... You will be a central point of contact for clients in resolving all queries or issues relating to late payments. This will involve telephoning or visiting them at home. It will mean using your initiative and problem-solving skills ... We can offer fantastic career prospects and exceptional rewards - so act NOW!" I called the number. "Yes," said an enthusiastic voice. "Crazy George's always has loads of jobs for debt collectors." But it wasn't really the kind of work I was looking for. ------------------- Problems/Questions? Send it to Listserv owner: [log in to unmask] To unsubscribe, send the following message in the text section -- NOT the subject header -- to [log in to unmask] SIGNOFF SDOH DO NOT SEND IT BY HITTING THE REPLY BUTTON. THIS SENDS THE MESSAGE TO THE ENTIRE LISTSERV AND STILL DOES NOT REMOVE YOU. To subscribe to the SDOH list, send the following message to [log in to unmask] in the text section, NOT in the subject header. SUBSCRIBE SDOH yourfirstname yourlastname To post a message to all 1000+ subscribers, send it to [log in to unmask] Include in the Subject, its content, and location and date, if relevant. For a list of SDOH members, send a request to [log in to unmask] To receive messages only once a day, send the following message to [log in to unmask] SET SDOH DIGEST To view the SDOH archives, go to: http://listserv.yorku.ca/archives/sdoh.html