Austerity and Hardship

I have been recently bombarded by politicians of all colours, telling me about Austerity. Some tell me that I have just passed through a difficult period of austerity.

Others tell me that I am passing through a period of austerity and others tell me that I have nothing to look forward to but hardships, austerity and cuts.

Good! I'm glad about that for I hope this austerity lasts as long as I do.

Yet of all the groups and legions of people, I can't help noticing that the politicians are the one section who have been least affected by austerity, hardships and cuts.

Land of milk and honey

This country of ours is a land of milk and honey, where no one is abandoned to hunger and want. Even those who do not wish to get off their arses are not left to starve.

I read of people who cannot go out to look for a job because they do not have a car to go in.
I read of a Nantwich person who had to give up a job at the Peacock because buses do not run conveniently to the location....Hell! Have they never heard of a bike?

Benefits......There are more kinds of benefits than I am aware of. I am conversant , with hardly any of the rules that govern the distribution of public money, but I am astonished some times at people who are. Apart from my retirement pension I have never sought a penny, and I don't know how.

I remember granddad Williams during the early part of WW2. He received ten bob...fifty pence a week to live on and thought it wonderful to receive anything for doing nothing. His father did not receive a pension. To granddad ten bob was great.

Now my pension is almost a hundred and twenty pounds a week. Even allowing for changes in the value of money, this period of intense poverty is unbelievably generous.

Granddad augmented his pension by (in his seventies) driving cattle on foot from Wybunbury to Crewe Cattle Market most Mondays....and then walked home. That was austerity!

Last week I saw a woman complaining that the bed given to her to sleep on, to be with her hospitalised child is very uncomfortable. In 1942 I spent six weeks in hospital and at age five years. I never saw a person I knew for the whole period, save seeing my dad through a window, shouting to tell me he had been drafted into the army. That was austerity!

My baby brother was hospitalised first at Crewe. Then the North Staffs, then Clatterbridge in the Wirral. Not one of us could visit him in the many months he was there. He finally died at Clatterbridge without ever seeing us again. He was two and a half years old. Yes thirty months. Now that was austerity.

Can you imagine the reaction of modern parents to that situation? But it did happen. I still have father's army pay book in which his application for compassionate leave (for the funeral) is noted and at first turned down. Austerity?

Primitive

The conditions that most of us lived in were primitive. It was common to visit a home that had no electricity. There was usually an oil lamp on the table. The only form of lighting and only in the living room. The lavatory was an earth closet down the garden.

Entertainment and news came through a radio, usually a Phillips or Marconi. My pal Jim had a weekly chore of carrying a wet battery to the local garage to get it re-charged and to collect the one that had been charged up. That was austerity.

Our family were somewhat luckier because we had electricity. But only for lighting. A supply of shilling pieces had to be on hand for when the metered shilling expired. If there was no shilling available, I was sent to ask neighbours if they could supply one. In the meantime everyone sat in darkness.

There were no electric kettles, smoothing irons, or cookers. Washing machines came along a generation later. Refrigerators and drying machines were way in the future.

In order to do her weekly clothes wash, my mother had to get up at 4am. and light a coal fire under the boiler. If an Item of clothing failed to be included in this was, it had to wait another week. That was austerity.

My school clothing was army surplus trousers army surplus tunic.......Rough but robust........They came in khaki or airforce blue.

Our school coke fired boiler had to be nursed into life by one of the pupils with coke brought in a wheel barrow from the pile a hundred yards away. I know this because it was I who had to tend the boiler. Two teachers were the only staff with no janitors or teachers assistants.

No new exercise books came into the school for English, Arithmetic or any other subject between 1939 and 1946. The school library was contained on the upper shelf of the store cupboard. I never saw a book added to that shelf.

Televisions...computers....mobile phones...language laboratories ...Don't make me laugh.

School trips

My grandchildren are contemplating a school trip to South Africa. Good! I am delighted. We were taken once to Chester Zoo. That was austerity.

If by some distortion these times that we live in are mis-named "hard times,", why the hell are we emptying Eastern Europe and Africa of people who really know the true meaning of austerity.

At the end of WW2 the army camp at Doddington became the home for DPs (displaced persons) mostly Poles. This meant that these families who had walked a large part of their journey crossing Europe to get there, now had to make their homes in Nissan huts with corrugated Iron roofs and a potbellied stove. Some lived there for ten years or more.

I wonder what the recent immigrants from Poland would have thought of that prospect. Now that was austerity.

The NHS

The NHS has twice stepped in to save my life. I have enjoyed twenty years of life that I could not reasonably expect. That was NOT austerity. That was living in land of plenty with many exceptional men who had taught themselves to fit spare parts into hearts and then re-starting them.

Prior to 1947 (when the NHS was established) a visit to the doctor had to be accompanied by the fee for the consultation. Our family were members of what were then called a 'friendly society'. Ours was the 'Independent Order of Odd fellows, who paid the doctors fee. We had to visit Mr Stewart (who administered the fund) and re-claim the five shillings which the doctor had charged.

The doctor did not operate from a splendid Medical Practice such as we have here in Audlem. He rented Mrs Symcock's front room for his weekly visit to Wybunbury. If his proposed treatment involved the preparation of a bottle of Tonic or Cough mixture he mixed and bottled it himself there and then. That was austerity.

Fruit and veg

Have you looked lately at the fruit and veg department of any of our supermarkets. To take an example, you can buy tomatoes every week of the year instead of for two weeks around July when granddad's greenhouse bore fruit. This is NOT austerity or shortages. Aren't we lucky.

When was the last time you read that there were shortages of any commodity. It was the most over used word in the years 1940 to 1955.

During my early lifetime you could expect to see a car in the doctor's drive. In the vet' s drive, sometimes in the Parson's drive and perhaps in the driveway of a couple of the most prosperous farmers. That was austerity. Now there are often two in most drives (His and Hers). That is not austerity.

That shows what working people may achieve for themselves when they live in a land of plenty. I would add that even a small market town like Nantwich is now often bunged up with cars. And why not!

Most of what you have just read is taken from my own knowledge and life. I don't pretend that my family alone suffered from austerity and hardships. We who lived through WW2 and up to maybe 1960 lived in times and circumstances which would not be recognised now.

The foregoing is not intended as propaganda for any political party or organisation. I have no political affiliations and not a lot of respect for them.

I would, however, like to think that we all can, from time to time stand back and consider how lucky we are. Politicians should take time to examine their words before they speak them. Cuts, Austerity, Hardships. Don't talk so bloody daft.

Geoff
1st May 2015

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