What does it mean to be poor in Britain and America? For decades the primary narrative about poverty in both countries is that it has been caused by personal flaws or ‘bad life decisions’ rather than policy choices or economic inequality. This misleading account has become deeply embedded in the public consciousness with serious ramifications for how financially vulnerable people are seen, spoken about and treated. Drawing on a two-year multi-platform initiative, this book by award-winning journalist and author Mary O’Hara, asks how we can overturn this portrayal once and for all. Crucially, she turns to the real experts to try to find answers – the people who live it.
Put your headphones on, close your eyes. Embrace the possibility of the life-changing power of music. And perhaps one of these songs will change your life too. Music can inspire our greatest creations, salve our deepest wounds, make us fall in – or out of – love. It can also be a window into another’s soul. Based on the popular live storytelling series, OneTrackMinds is a collection of twenty-five compelling answers to the question, ‘What was the song that changed your life?’ Featuring pieces from a stellar cast of contributors including Peter Tatchell, Inua Ellams, Cash Carraway, Rhik Samadder, Ingrid Oliver and Joe Dunthorne, alongside some of the UK’s most exciting new voices, the book compiles many of the standout stories from the live show so far. Just as rich and varied are the songs themselves, by artists ranging from Nina Simone and Joni Mitchell to Aphex Twin and the Replacements via Tupac, Prince and the Spice Girls. The result is an entertaining, enlightening musical guide to the best of what makes us human.
Much like theology itself, the experience of trauma has the potential to reach into almost any aspect of life, refusing to fit within the tramlines. A follow up to the 2020 volume "Feminist Trauma Theologies", "Bearing Witness" explores further into global, intersectional, and as yet relatively unexplored perspectives. With a particular focus on poverty, gender and sexualities, race and ethnicity, and health in dialogue with trauma theology the book seeks to demonstrate both the far reaching and intersectional nature of trauma, encouraging creative and ground-breaking theological reflections on trauma and constructions of theology in the light of the trauma experience. A unique set of insights into the real-life experience of trauma, the book includes chapters authored by a diverse group of academic theologians, practitioners and activists. The result is a theology which extend far into the public square.
I Could Be So Good For You is a unique portrait of north London's working class from the 1950s to the 21st century, and how it lived, struggled, survived and sometimes thrived. I Could Be So Good For You tackles head-on the pernicious and implicitly racist fiction that London, most especially north London, has no "real" working class in comparison to a more "authentic" working class in a place called "the North". In doing so it offers a history and a portrait of north London's working class from the 1950s to the 21st century, based on a wide and original range of sources including personal memoirs, autobiographies, collected oral histories and new interviews conducted by the author. The result is an important social history and a rich panorama of working-class life — its struggles, work, celebrations, events, triumphs, tragedies and the occasional nice little earner. For good or ill, from the start of post-war affluence in the 1950s to the economic crash of 2008, north London's working class had a life experience like almost no other part of the British working class, one not just of poverty, racism and exploitation, but also of bold new housing schemes in the heart of the city, of great opportunity and diversity and enjoyment. Its about time to tell that story.
What does the UK's exit from the EU mean for health and the NHS? This book explains the legal and practical implications of Brexit on the NHS: its staffing; especially on the island of Ireland; medicines, medical devices and equipment; and biomedical research. It considers the UK's post-Brexit trade agreements and what they mean for health, and discusses the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on post-Brexit health law. To put the legal analysis in context, the book draws on over 400 conversations the authors had with people in the north of England and Northern Ireland, interviews with over 40 health policy stakeholders, details of a film about their research made with ShoutOut UK, the authors' work with Parliaments and governments across the UK, and their collaborations with key actors like the NHS Confederation, the British Medical Association, and Cancer Research UK. The book shows that the language people use to talk about hoped-for legitimate post-Brexit health governance suggests a great deal of faith in law and legal process among 'ordinary people', but the opposite from 'insider elites'. Not What The Bus Promised puts the authors' knowledge and experiences centre frame, rather than claiming to express 'objective reality'. It will be of interest to any reader who cares about the NHS and wants to understand its present and future.
The Fascist Painting is a serious, rich and deeply intelligent piece of work that will radically alter the way we view culture in schools and will be a key text for anyone designing a curriculum. The Ofsted Inspection Framework states that cultural capital is 'The essential knowledge that pupils need to be educated citizens' and that schools 'should be introducing [students] to the best that has been thought and said and helping to engender an appreciation of human creativity and achievement'. They are now considering, 'the extent to which schools are equipping pupils with the knowledge and cultural capital they need to succeed in life.' But what does this term mean? And how are schools to respond to this? In this densely argued and wide-ranging text, Phil Beadle answers those questions and many more by using the work of Pierre Bourdieu to prompt a discussion of how we improve the provision of cultural capital in our schools. Where does the best that has been thought and said come from? Why is the government importing the unexamined language of the private school into the state sector? What is the real purpose behind character education? Does sport, as is reputed, teach resilience, and why would anyone think it was appropriate to teach children a quality they already have? Is cultural capital just ruling class culture? Chiefly, does using a term originated by a French intellectual and radical sociologist to instate the culture of the rich as being superior prove anything other more than a complete absence of thought, or have they accidentally given us a radical tool to change education for the better?
Poverty remains one of the most urgent issues of our time. In this fully updated edition of her important and widely acclaimed intervention on the topic, Ruth Lister introduces readers to the meaning and experience of poverty in the contemporary world. The book opens with a lucid discussion of current debates around the definition and measurement of poverty in industrialized societies, before embarking on a multifaceted exploration of its varied interpretations. Drawing on thinking in the field of international development and real-life accounts, the book emphasizes key aspects of poverty such as powerlessness, lack of voice, insecurity, loss of dignity and respect. Ruth Lister embraces the relational, cultural, symbolic as well as material dimensions of poverty, and makes important links between poverty and other concepts such as capabilities, agency, human rights and citizenship. She concludes by making the case for reframing the politics of poverty as a claim for redistribution and recognition. The result is a rich and insightful analysis, which deepens and broadens our understanding of poverty today. It will be essential reading for all students in the social sciences, as well as researchers, activists and policymakers.
For years the world has been torn apart by pandemics and civil war, but at last the country is getting back to normal. Daisy lives in a care home and, with her friends, begins to explore the city beyond the Water Meadows where she has grown up.
'Everyone has their price. It's just not always monetary. Mine is though. 20 quid.' Single mum. 'Stain on society'. Caught in a poverty trap. It's a luxury to afford morals and if you're Cash Carraway, you do what you can to survive. Skint Estate is the hard-hitting, blunt, dignified and brutally revealing debut memoir about impoverishment, loneliness and violence in austerity Britain - set against a grim landscape of sink estates, police cells, refuges and peepshows - skilfully woven into a manifesto for change. Alone, pregnant and living in a women's refuge, Cash Carraway couldn't vote in the 2010 general election that ushered austerity into Britain. Her voice had been silenced. Years later, she watched Grenfell burn from a women's refuge around the corner. What had changed? The vulnerable were still at the bottom of the heap, unheard. Without a stable home, without a steady income, without family support - how do you survive? In Skint Estate, Cash has found her voice - loud, raw and cutting. This is a book born straight from life lived in Britain below the poverty line - a brutal landscape savaged by universal credit, zero-hours contracts, rising rents and public service funding cuts. Told with a dark lick of humour and two-fingers up to the establishment, Cash takes us on her isolated journey from council house childhood to single motherhood, working multiple jobs yet relying on food banks and temporary accommodation, all while skewering stereotypes of what it means to be working class. Despite being beaten down from all angles, Cash clings to the important things - love for her daughter, community and friendships - and has woven together a highly charged, hilarious and guttural cry for change. 'What an astonishingly brilliant memoir. I'm speechless. So beautifully, passionately written without a shred of self-pity and brim full of this unbreakable mother daughter Love at the heart of it all... Raw, gut-wrenching and immensely moving' - Ruth Jones 'New voice of a generation ... a funny, outrageous, defiant, visceral book' - Janice Turner, The Times Magazine 'Cash is the definition of edgy, a truly distinctive voice' - Lionel Shriver, bestselling author of We Need to Talk about Kevin 'Skint Estate will stay with me forever. Cash's brutal honesty will leave you wanting to make a change, stand up and be heard. A must read, and when you've read it pass it on' - Vicky McClure 'Cash Carraway's unique voice, filled in equal measure with rage and inspiration, tells a story of hope amongst state violence. Brilliant and compelling' - Anna Minton, author of Big Capital and Ground Control 'Give s powerful voice to the often silent story that explains so much of Britain's current fracturing' -Tim Adams, Observer New Review
