Aram Zucker-Scharff

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“I’m not unusual. I’ve been on zero-hours contracts for some time and it has finally got to me. I’m tired of thinking I’ve secured a future for me and my child, tired of thinking I won’t have to worry about whether we both eat or whether we have heating, tired of worrying how we will cope if my child loses their school coat.[…]

I’ve decided to leave teaching for a supermarket job that will give me the security of knowing how much I’ll have available to pay my bills each month.”

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– Zero-hours contracts are forcing me out of teaching.

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You cannot get a job in broadcasting unless you are prepared to work as an intern. In most cases, you cannot work as an intern unless you have family money to feed and house you.

But then who am I to criticise Stephenson when journalism is as much of a rich kids’ game? Lindsey Macmillan of the Institute of Education found that journalists used to come from families 6% better off than average, whereas now they come from homes that are 42% richer. Indeed, British journalists, the supposed tribunes of the people, now hail from wealthier backgrounds than, er, bankers, an awkward fact that ought to cause embarrassment all round. I look at my younger self today and wonder if he could become a journalist on a serious newspaper.

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– The privileged few are tightening their grip on the arts.

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“The report claims that low- to middle-income workers have been hit hard in the capital because rents are around 50% higher than in the rest of the UK. […] Rent now accounts for about 41% of their incomes.

It warns that ‘endies’ who do not own a home have almost no chance of buying one. ‘There are now only three boroughs – Tower Hamlets, Newham and Barking and Dagenham – where home ownership is potentially affordable for two people earning that borough’s median wage,’ the report says.”

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– ‘Endies’: Employed with No Disposable Income are struggling in London.  Centre for London report says a million workers can hardly make ends meet and feel politically disenchanted.

Rickets returns to the UK as poor families find healthy diets unaffordable.:

Poverty

 is forcing people to have dangerously poor diets and is leading to the return of rickets and gout – diseases of the Victorian age that affect bones and joints – according the UK Faculty of Public Health.

A quick reminder that our society being economically f*cked isn’t limited to the US. Enjoy the global economic contagion.