Politicians have no idea how unfair life is for those at the bottom...

I was a real loner at school...

A pretty smart kid from a pretty poor council estate I just didn't fit in anywhere - my middleclass fellow students seldom included me in their social gatherings and frankly I was glad about that...

Like most of my classmates I had dreams of going to university -  I wanted to study Psychology and Politics, I thought I would make a good war correspondent (analyse that one!)  But there was little encouragement for girls from working class homes to take that path and instead I was ushered into college to learn how to type and do shorthand - still clinging to my dream, I told myself these were essential skills to learn for the career I had ahead of me...

At the end of that year there was still no talk of uni... instead I was assigned a Youth Opportunity Programme advisor who quickly got me a job in a local factory answering the telephone and typing memos.  It didn't fulfil me at all but everywhere around me were the messages that this was what girls like me did.  More than once I was told "don't get ideas above your station" so I didn't...

As a Labour Party member through the 80s and into the 90s I fiercely defended free education for those who did have the opportunity to go to university, this was such a fundamental principal I'd always held dear - people have a human right to as much education as they desire -  This would have been around the time David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband were getting their free degrees, funded by my taxes while I was working in jobs with poor pay and conditions.  I always told myself I would have children one day who would be bright enough to go to university - so in my mind, it all seemed kind of fair...

Last summer my own son got excellent A level results... Raised by a single mother who works part time and living for most of his life in a run down private rented house at the rough end of town, he deserves so much credit for his achievements and proves all the Daily Mail bigotry quite wrong...

Having thought long and hard, and despite all my encouragement, he decided not to go to university but instead to get a job and pay his way...

Politicians have no idea how desperately unfair life is for those at the bottom...

Or perhaps they do..............


Piss Factory - Patti Smith
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6aUbrZYjYE