“..Middle-class self pity..it’s the angst of our age..”
“..Watch out.
Middle-class self-pity is at an all-time high as recession is anticipated by the “hardworking” folk who own nice homes and dependable, large cars and holiday many times a year.
All too soon, such well-earned luxuries have turned to essential entitlements.
Those now accustomed to these extras are restive, expecting the worst, almost as panicky as those across the Atlantic awaiting hurricanes.
And of course when this downturn hits, some will have to decide to sell up that abode in Andalusia and go sometimes to Asda, instead of M&S or Waitrose.
I would count my family among these newly anxious.
Even though we own only the flat we live in, we have two cars, too much stuff and a growing, disproportionate sense of doom.
At dinner parties now I notice, organic one-upmanship is pushed out by Prudence and Parsimony, the new guests at the table.
Highly paid journalists are penning advice on thrift (how to knit your own blankets and resuscitate dead oranges) and the joys of Lidl and Aldi.
Many of the same people who rejected the idea of relative poverty when applied to those in the bottom strata of our society..
..now shamelessly claim relative poverty for themselves.
It is all awfully unbecoming, this collective self-obsession; this playing at poverty.
It is an affront too to the really deprived and indigent – who got more and more so under Blair’s New Labour because that son of Thatcher believed his mission was pleasing the rich.
Gordon Brown has meekly carried on the same punitive polices.
Harriet Harman’s speech last week on persistent, generational inequality could be seen as a tacit admission of this sorry truth.
What’s more the idea has been fostered that the needy in our midst are wilfully down and out..and bestial.
An excellent new report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation reveals how this stereotype has been manufactured by the mass media..”
(recommended-read..)
go to source/story>>Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: Middle-class self pity, it’s the angst of our age - Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Commentators - The Independent