I was properly shamed this week. Shamed by the food writer Jack Monroe into thinking about something happening right in front of my eyes that I’d completely missed.
I’ve followed Jack on Twitter for ages. She rose to prominence by writing – brilliantly – about feeding herself and her family on a very tight budget.
And she earned my undying love a few years ago when she won a libel case against Katie Hopkins, costing Hopkins her job, house and credit rating in the process.
Man, what a result. (This was the same Katie Hopkins, you’ll remember, who once said that poor people in debt had no one but themselves to blame.)
Well, this week Jack tweeted a thread about something that goes to the heart of Hopkins’ untruth about poverty: the current rate of inflation. It’s since gone viral and she’s been all the over the news talking about it.
But in case you missed it, her point was this: rampant inflation disproportionately affects the poorest people in a terrible way.
She went through a list of examples from her local supermarket – which she said was “one of the big four” – pointing out price rises on everyday foodstuffs over the last year. In most cases she was talking about the cheapest, most budget version of the item…
Pasta: up from 29p for 500g to 70p.
Rice: up from 45p a kilo to £1 for 500g.
Apples: a small bag up from 59p to 89p.
Curry sauce: up from 30p to 89p.
Baked beans: up from 22p a can to 32p.
Canned spaghetti: up from 13p to 35p.
Peanut butter: up from 62p to £1.50
On and on this list went, detailing how the price of basic food items – the kind of things most likely bought by people on minimum wage, on zero-hour contracts, on benefits – had doubled, tripled and quadrupled, skyrocketing by hundreds of per cent.
Jack said that a year ago her supermarket had more than 400 items in its value range. Now it had 91.
Meanwhile, strangely, over in the high-end section of the supermarket, things were very different. On a luxury ready meal lasagne that cost £7.50 there had been no price increase at all. The “dine in meal for two for £10” offer was still £10. (Incidentally, £10 is what Jack used to spend to feed her family for a week.)
Had the same price increase that applied to basic rice been applied across the luxury food section of the store, then that lasagne would now cost £25.80.
The dine in for two for a tenner meal deal? It would now set you back a staggering £34.40. At which point many people would probably choose to dine out for two...
Now, here comes the shaming bit. Jack pointed out that the media had been largely silent about all of this. No one was talking about it.
She said: “I guess when the vast majority of our media are privately educated and come from the same handful of elite universities, nobody thinks to actually check in with anyone out here in the world to see how we’re doing.”
Now I was not privately educated. And I’m not sure that Glasgow University qualifies as “elite”.
But she was absolutely right on one count – I have not been thinking about inflation at this level.
She went on to say she was “lucky enough to have food in my cupboard now but I STILL hold my breath when I put my PIN in to pay for it. I STILL shop with a calculator and a notepad”.
For many years I have been fortunate enough not to worry too much about money.
I never even look at the prices in the supermarket, simply chucking whatever we want into the trolley and then, when I get to the till saying something like “bloody hell – that’s a bit steep” and just handing over the credit card.
I’d hear the chatter about inflation on the radio and think, “Yes, not ideal.” But, as an alleged socialist, I hadn’t stopped for a moment to think about how it was affecting those down and around the poverty line.
And I should have done. Because this scenario, this vicious pummelling of those who can least afford it, reminded me of something.
It reminded of when my brother died…
Regular readers will know my brother Gary took his own life back in 2010. He was poor and in debt.
After he died, when my sister and I went to his house, it was very cold. We tried to turn the electricity on but we couldn’t. It turned out that he had one of those purple key things you use to pay as you go.
We went and put £40 on it at a corner shop.
And the power still wouldn’t come on. It turned out he was in arrears. In paying off the arrears and getting the heat back on, I discovered what my brother was paying for his electricity under this pay-as-you-go system.
It was a fortune. A far, far higher rate than I was paying as someone of good credit.
At the time, and like Jack’s Twitter thread this week, it reminded me of the words of the activist and author James Baldwin. More than 50 years ago, Baldwin said: “Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.”
Needless to say: nothing has changed.
What can be done? In the short term, if you can, please give whatever you can to your local food bank or donate directly to an organisation like the Trussell Trust.
In the longer term?
Vote them out. Vote out the braying Tory scumbags who sit there in the House of Commons giving it “hear, hear” when their idiot leader gets up and, with a straight face, says that he’s “cutting the cost of living for everyone”.
Really? To check the veracity of this statement, just go to a supermarket and do what I haven’t been doing: look at the prices.
Because, as Jack Monroe pointed out, they don’t just affect you.
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