The poorest in society should be looked after

COMMENT

I am sat on board a ferry. In my ignorance I assumed I might be able to send this column to The Clare Champion office  from my current position.

I was wrong. Perhaps it is a tad presumptuous, a little too ‘BBC’ to be able to lodge reports from anywhere in the world but as Helen and I are currently on route from Cairnryan in Scotland to Ireland, it hardly seems like too big an ask. In my ruminations on this week’s column, I had been juggling a number of topics but at the moment it is difficult not to feel an immense sadness at the decision of the British public to elect a Tory government, even if it is with the mixer of a Liberal Democrat twist.
Every news report brings fresh news of “cuts” and government explanations of same. I have written extensively in these pages of the need for cuts to pay for past excesses but the extent of them in many “developed nations” is a cause of much heartache. I ask anyone with a shred of human decency to describe these cuts as anything but an assault on the poor.
So far, this has been vague. Perhaps the best example is the policy announced by the new government in Britain regarding housing benefit. In limiting the amount that can be paid to a family, the proposals are estimated by some to mean that up to 17,000 people in London will have to move out of the city.
What this amounts to is an attempt to take all the poor of London and expel them from the city. The British government would be better asking itself why rents are so exorbitant in London in the first place.
Another valid question for any administration choosing to examine the topic would be where will the workers who spend their days filling menial positions come from if they cannot live within 30 miles of their place of work? Mr Cameron and his Lib Dem lackeys have not considered this fact in my estimation. 
Any reasonable reader might ask what on earth this has to do with County Clare, Ireland in general or anyone else who reads this paper? Unfortunately, it has a huge amount to do with all these people.
In the attitude of the Con/Dem alliance in Britain, we can see expressed a perfect picture of modern, capitalist, liberal democracy, to which for an example everyone in Ireland can look to NAMA for an example of its profits.
This is a system which allowed negative equities to be sold as positive investments, the system where the well-healed benefitted from a system of patronage, indulgence and self-delusion.  
Although not a beneficiary of any of the things listed above, I have found myself in the world a product of incredibly attentive, intelligent and middle-class parents.
As a result, whatever my life choices in adulthood, I am formed as a middle-class individual.
I have not thought about this fact in times gone by, when I evaded the landlord’s visit with all the stealth of a lame fox but as I now make a life and a nest for myself and my wife, I come to realise that there are others who, despite a similar set of formative years, have found themselves on the wrong end of a bank balance. 
Combined with this is the realisation that there are many millions of people born on the wrong end of a bank balance. If it is taken as a given that all people are born equal and we should hope that it is, then a major question must be asked about this system.
The reason I brought up wireless access on this form of transport is because we are taking a late ferry. Our departure time was midnight and the number of “ordinary” passengers is negligible.
This is a freight ferry and as such feels to be geared for those who supply the countries concerned with the consumer goods they desire. By contrast, in airports, those who supervise, control and supply to the countries concerned enjoy wireless internet access at all times.
How would the world work if those in control could not access each other from anywhere in the world at any time?
I tease and undermine those I know from Britain about their concept of class and how much of a role it plays in their society. Ignorant, from time to time, of the reality that their concept of class has been subsumed into the capitalist reality of globalisation and is now an Irish reality too.  
Just as it happens in Britain, the concept of the ‘undeserving poor’ has come to dominate public discourse. It is not an unreasonable question to ask how the “working poor” are doing.
There are many thousands of people in Ireland who are working in industries that do not pay terrible wages because that is what the work deserves, usually the opposite is true, but because that is what convention says. Convention is not justification.
The captain told us before we left that our departure would be delayed because another ship would be late arriving owing to “treacherous sea conditions”.
As I write, the boat is bobbing about in a fashion that brings a landlubber like myself great unease. The staff are calm as can be. Watching them in admiration a thought occurs to me. Historically, how many poor, desperate people have taken to the sea to fund the fortunes of the few?
Their number will never be counted and their contribution to the construction of the modern world will never be acknowledged. The concept of Mayday arose in shipping terms and means a general catastrophe but in situations such as this, women and children are saved first.
Is it too much to be asked that our welfare system be the same?