The result of austerity - a divided country

Café society in Lewes

Last Friday and Saturday we had a very enjoyable overnight stay with friends on the outskirts of Southampton.  We took advantage of the trip to have lunch in Lewes on the way over.  My only trips to Lewes in the past have been to take items over to Gorringes the auctioneers - and to ferry them back after they have failed to sell.  At the other end of town from the auctioneers, however, is the paved High Street, where, last Friday lunchtime, le tout Lewes seemed to be having a bite to eat.  Bill's is an attractive emporium with a decent range of salads and more substantial stuff, plus a grocery section dispensing such essentials as roasted artichoke hearts and fig jam.  Small blackboards pinned up on the beams display, in elegant italic script, handwritten hymns to the English dream of elderflower spilling over hedgerows in country lanes and into the bottles of elderflower cordial available on the premises.  

On the Saturday we had lunch with our friends in a waterside pub at Bursledon, on the Hamble River.  It was a beautifully sunny day, and you'd have expected the river to be a hive of activity, since it's packed with yachts.  But it was largely deserted.  The toys of the English middle and upper classes lay quietly moored, waiting for their owners to pay them one of their occasional visits.  

The impression gained from these two places was of comfort and prosperity.  However, on the Friday I had been reading a letter in the Hastings Observer from a worthy citizen who had been undertaking volunteer work in Hastings' food bank.  She was shocked by the people who had been coming to the bank: ordinary people, as she said, rather than the homeless we see on the streets - people who had, for one reason or another, found it impossible to feed themselves.  One family had been subsisting on porridge alone for three weeks.  The food bank distributes three tons of food a week, although it is only open on two afternoons.

This is the side of England you don't see on the television or hear about on the radio.  And there is no sign of it getting better.  East Sussex County Council is required to cut £27.8 million from its spending on adult social care: the impact will be felt by the elderly and vulnerable.   

I have no pat answer.  I am not a natural socialist.  But the divergence between the haves and the have-nots, café society and the hungry, the yacht-owners and the homeless, makes me feel increasingly uncomfortable.

Antony Mair