Category: Longform
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Abandon all hope
I reported an abandoned car to my housing association.
It’s been left in our little communal car park since the middle of last month, taking up a neighbour’s parking space.
I previously reported it to the police, who got back to me to say “it’s not of interest” to them, and to my local council, who have apparently done nothing. Presumably because it’s not classed as being on a public road.
Let’s hope the HA removes it.
An Ancient History Of Welfare
In 1997 the UK government was spending an annual £24 billion on sick and disabled benefits.
In 2010 it was spending an annual £24.6 billion on sick and disabled benefits.
Some 2.6m people claim incapacity benefit, or its successor, the employment and support allowance, at an annual cost of about £12.5bn.
There are now 3.16 million people receiving DLA and forecast expenditure on the benefit for 2010-11 is £12.1bn.
There was a £93 billion total welfare benefits cost in 1996-97:
Now, that has more than doubled, pretty much like everything else:
In 2009, £0.9 billion was due to fraud. (Of course, the figure we're most likely to be familiar with is the £5.2 billion spun by David Cameron, which included tax credits and bureaucratic errors.)
It was a 'previous' government which introduced Incapacity Benefit as a cost-saving measure in the 1990s, yet spending on disability benefits doubled during this time:
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Yet, it makes sensational headlines and presumably makes some people feel better to scapegoat people worse off than them for the nation's ills. Especially so, when every day we seem to be subjected to political rhetoric labelling benefits claimants as 'scroungers' and 'cheats' living off hard-earned handouts from the better off (after all, that's what the Welfare State is for, isn't it?), words which could equally and more fairly be used to describe those same mostly Christian and church-going politicians' expenses claims and their rich friends' tax avoidance and evasion. Who better to target than the sick and disabled who are well used to it, after all?
That sickens me more than the people who choose not to work even if they are mentally and physically able to.
Strawberries for pigs?
Little did we know at the time, but these little strawberries were usually engulfed in a toxic plume of benzene, naphthalene, and god only knows what else.
Sensibly, the wife refused to eat them.
We later discovered that official planning documents for the nearby old gasworks, which was being dug up in the open air for new homes to be built on the contaminated land, stated that no vegetables should be grown on the land. Ever!
Ealing Council Leader Julian Bell publicly blamed 'the wrong kind of wind', and – quite possibly – privately blamed 'fucking moaners'. All the while racking up over £30,000 in declared gifts and hospitality from developers including Berkeley Group, who were digging up the gasworks land.
Our soon-to-be local ward councillor and (ex-)Head of Planning Peter Mason knew all about the dangers (he tells us on Twitter) from the contaminated land back in 2009 when he campaigned against its development along with our MP Virendra Sharma (who said the development would be 'a disaster environmentally').
Yet no one told people living nearby to expect to be gassed in our own homes and gardens during the three month heatwave that was shortly to arrive.
In fact, Ealing Council announced on Twitter that the odours, while 'unpleasant', were 'not harmful to health' would be 'gone in a few days'.
I later discovered that there is scientific evidence that some people with Asian and African heritages are genetically more vulnerable to very serious and sometimes fatal health conditions from inhaling naphthalene, a fact acknowledged (although later denied, despite the published evidence) by Public Health England at a packed public meeting in July 2019.
No one told us.
Ealing Council, despite being fully aware of the potential dangers to health (and to the environment) failed to carry out any kind of Equalities Impact Assessment, and only helped Berkeley Group to rush through the decontamination process to maximise their profit from Crossrail in Southall.
Profit over people. Labour Council. Our lives didn't matter to them.
Now, we are being asked to believe that our MP (who has begun making the right noises two years too late – what happened to the nearly 1,000 signature petition I gave you in 2018 Mr Sharma?) cares and is on our side, and that our local ward councillor cares and always has done. Only Bell is – unusually for him – honest enough not to suddenly pretend he gives a shit about anyone but himself and looking after his own family.
At the packed public meeting in 2019, which our local ward councillor chaired, he and Bell refused to declare their financial interests with Berkeley Group, refused to let me speak with the microphone so that people couldn't hear that the Council, Berkeley Group, the Environment Agency and Public Health England had all colluded to cover up the real level of toxic and carcinogenic air pollution – that it was consistently above legal limits and rising – by manipulating, removing, and presenting the air quality data in such a way as to make it look like it was mostly within legal limits.
At the same meeting, our MP arrived late, mostly unseen, sat silently at the back of the room, and left early, mostly unseen. At the same meeting, a strangely truthful Bell admitted that he had 'known about the nuisance, the BAD nuisance, for two and a half years'! Yet nothing could be done.
Now Peter Mason, free from his constraints as Head of Planning after resigning following his failed coup attempt to take the leadership from Bell last year, is telling us that something could and should have been done, yet all of them remained silent and did nothing for years.
Unbelievable!
How I caught covid
I tested positive for coronavirus yesterday.
I started to feel unwell – like I had flu – on Sunday afternoon. After a night felling too hot and too cold, Monday morning I had a temperature of 38.3°C.
I went to my local walk-through testing clinic later that afternoon.
It was a self-test. If I'd known, I would have ordered a test-at-home kit, although I wouldn't have got my result as quick.
I couldn't do the throat swab as it made me want to throw up. The nasal swab was faintly pleasurable.
• • •
The walk-through experience was generally quite anxiety-provoking. I can't wear my glasses or hearing aid while wearing a mask, so found it stressful trying to follow instructions. The testing marquee itself, for all the hand gel, seems like as good a place as any to catch covid.
In eleven months, I've been out to the supermarket maybe three times, the pharmacy the same, to the park occasionally. During the summer, we visited my mother-in-law after she had recovered from covid.
I took my six year old to and from school every day up until the Christmas holidays, and that is the last direct contact any of us as a family have had with other human beings.
• • •
So, it's a bit of a mystery how I caught the infection. The most likely source I can think of is our communal stairwell to our flat, which we share with our next door neighbours and their visitors, posties, delivery drivers.
When the pandemic began, we always used to wear a mask to go out, but we stopped doing that (and got out of the habit) in the summer when infection rates were low. I had still been wearing a mask to bring our grocery deliveries in, but not when I put the rubbish out....
Chaos and Confusion
If you thought last year was bad…. No one could have foreseen this!
British coastguard sued by French charity for failing to save drowned refugees.
Nationalising Sausages
Navy gunboats defending our fish from the French.
An army of Sikhs feeding European lorry drivers caught up in Kent.
Shortages of broccoli and lettuce.
Nationalising sausages doesn’t seem like such a crazy idea, now, does it?
High Traffic Neighbourhood
Took me an hour (as opposed to 10 minutes) to drive my lad home from school this afternoon, thanks in part to the High Traffic Neighbourhood (‘Improving access for HGVs’) in Southall ‘Green’.
Like a rat, I tried the side streets and back roads option and found those to be jammed, too, and Scotts Road - although confusingly still two-way throughout - is now No Entry from the eastern end.
I would have abandoned my car and got out and walked/scooted home, but there was nowhere to leave it - all the pavements (and even the double yellow lines) were parked on, or being used by, er, pedestrians.
The more virtuous brothers and sisters amongst us may righteously question why me and my lad weren’t scooting/walking anyway? Why are we driving when Southall is known for its traffic gridlock?
We have done it a couple of times. It takes us 40 minutes each way in fine weather. My lad would love to do it every day, I’m sure, although not in the wind, cold and rain. I don’t believe my dodgy feet/knees/hips/back would manage it daily, either.
And why are we going to a school so far away from where we live?
Well, it’s the best (and happiest) school in Southall. And it’s the one that is furthest away from the gasworks stink and toxic air. We wanted to give our little asthmatic boy some clean air five days a week, if we could. (Of course, we since found out the school is under the Heathrow flight path, and next to the smoky narrowboats moored on the canal….).
(In case you are wondering, the ambulance somehow squeezed down the middle of Western Road, fortunately no well-intentioned bollards or planters in the way.)
A Successful Home Delivery and the Lockdown/Lock-in.
My second son was born late Saturday night (what would normally have been my beer night) two weeks ago, after a short, but intense, labour.
He was delivered at home by two brilliant midwives, who were fully protected courtesy of customised #tinap bin bag aprons, unused clean air protest dust masks, and disposable gloves my wife stocked up on back in February when – without any scientific advice whatsoever – she somehow accurately foresaw the current coronavirus global pandemic somehow reaching the UK's shores (and airports). Practising prudent use of valuable PPE supplies, the midwives wore their own prescription spectacles to protect from splashes to the eyes. (This is, of course, not true. They had NHS supplied aprons, surgical masks, and gloves.)
Home delivery
Now, we've had our groceries, pizza and most other household and personal items delivered to our home, rather than dealing with the stress of actually going out and having to interact with other people, for years, so a home delivery of our new son might have seemed like an obvious choice.
But a home birth was definitely Plan B, and only came to be Plan A due to coronavirus related issues with hospital birth and childcare arrangements for our nearly six year old, which now favoured delivery at home.
Preparing for birth
My boss had told me a few days prior that 'home births are great, because you can make a cup of tea'.
So, I stocked up on tea bags, and prepared myself mentally and physically for the big day by repeatedly ignoring my wife's pleas to listen to her hypnobirthing mp3s on the expected role of the 'birthing partner' (whatever that is), and getting through the last of my beer stockpile in anticipation of several years of enforced sobriety (in order to deal with nighttime and next morning emergencies).
I'm just thankful we never got around to implementing my boss's idea for a work appraisal, because his multi-tasking expectations are clearly way beyond my capabilities.
Labour of birth
While I fully accept that I had the easiest job on the night (bar my nearly six year old, who thankfully slept through it all in the adjacent bedroom), I was very pleased the main bit was over relatively quickly (three hours) as my right arm and hand were getting tired.
To ease the pain of contractions, and in the absence of any pain relief other than 'gas and air', my wife insisted (on pain of death) that I massage her lower back for two minutes every three minutes.
In between massages/contractions, I had to top up her glass of filtered water and hold it to her lips for her to drink.
Birth
When the baby's head came out, slowly, I remember thinking it was weirdly like watching a picture coming out of a printer.
When he was out, I immediately noticed his testicles seemed abnormally large, the size of giant tea bags. (Turns out they were swollen with fluid.)
'He's a boy, he's definitely a boy!' I said.
I could have done with some gas and air myself at this point.
After birth
My wife has been pretty amazing through it all. I don't know how she copes with the lack of sleep, although I'm doing my best to make sure she gets a couple of hours whenever she can when she's not busy feeding baby.
I have done a few nappy changes. Son no. 1 is always delighted whenever his little brother pees all over me, which was really his main reason for wanting a little brother in the first place.
Lockdown/Lock-in
We're mainly homebirds, so the lockdown/lock-in has not been too bad for us. And we're lucky to have had everything we needed, including toilet paper, flour, use of our communal garden and area where we live for exercise, sunshine, unusually fresh air, and seeing red kites and egrets flying over, among other lesser spotted wildlife.
My eldest lad has suffered the most, as he misses his school routine and friends, which is compounded by his not realising that he would no longer be the centre of attention now his little brother is here.
Return To Work
I returned to work last week after my extended absence due to respiratory illness, which may or may not be related to three years of breathing the poisonous gasworks’ air.
I find I now have to literally climb over two rough sleepers camped outside the door of my workplace in order to get in. There is no more space in the nearby doorway, and the doorway around the side entrance is similarly occupied.
By my reckoning, we have five more rough sleepers than we did two months ago, or two years ago, or four years ago.
Meanwhile, Southall’s skyline is rapidly changing from terraced family houses to much-needed ‘genuinely affordable’ skyscraper studio flats, while ‘parklets’ are opening up in the posher parts of Ealing.
To be fair, I did see that the Bell regime have cut a deal with Compton’s foldaway bikes so that residents on the Copley estate can hire them without having to pay a membership fee, and improve air quality at the same time.
Trigger Vote for Sharma
In July 2019, I attended a public meeting with Public Health England to discuss air pollution problems created by the development of the old gasworks site.
At this meeting, I asked Public Health England if it is true that people with Asian and African heritage are genetically more at risk from poisoning from naphthalene – one of the main causes of the stink coming from the gasworks site.
Do you know what they said?
Yes.
Yes, Asian and African people are genetically more at risk from poisoning from naphthalene – one of the main causes of the stink from the gasworks site.
Our MP, Mr Sharma, who had been publicly supporting the need for this meeting, arrived ten minutes after it started. He sneaked in, sat at the back mostly unseen by anyone there, and then left early.
A bit like his time as an MP!
So, at this meeting.
We discovered that Asian and African people, the majority of people in Southall, are genetically more at risk from poisoning from naphthalene.
What did Mr Sharma have to say about that?
Nothing.
For two years or more, Southallians have complained to Mr Sharma about the oppressive stink, and poison air, coming from the old gasworks site. I have suffered numerous chest infections, my wife had serious and severe health problems, and my young son has been hospitalised with asthma and now has to take steroids every day of his life so that he can breathe. I know neighbours whose loved ones have now got cancer, and some who have died from cancer. All, we believe, caused by the poison air.
What has Mr Sharma done to help us?
Nothing.
A year ago, a group of us presented Mr Sharma with a petition signed by 900 Southallians and their families and friends begging Mr Sharma to do something to get Berkeley Group, the developer of the old gasworks site, to stop poisoning Southall.
What did Mr Sharma do?
Nothing.
Finally, throughout the last couple of years, while his constituents in Southall Green have been poisoned by the toxic air from the old gasworks site, and getting ill with breathing problems, and cancer, the developer Berkeley Group has sponsored numerous local events, mainly to 'clean up' Southall.
What did Mr Sharma do?
He attended every one and was photographed smiling broadly wearing his hi-viz jacket with the Berkeley Group logo emblazoned across it.
So tonight, I'm voting in favour of the trigger ballot for Mr Sharma, so that we have the opportunity to have a new Labour MP for Ealing Southall, one who will stand up for local people rather than help those who oppress them.
And I ask all of you to do the same.
Solidarity!
UPDATE: Sharma was triggered for reselection, but survived without having to stand again thanks to his old pal Boris Johnson, who called a general election shortly after.