Poverty Safari: Understanding the Anger of Britain's Underclass

Product Information

Some critiques - erased all aspects of female experience WHOLLY. I think women and girls got one cursory mention. Also as per usual only quote male references a la Akala. He used intersectionality and his critique of it to further his own arguments but the way he described it made me think he didn’t quite get it - as he misses off class that Kimberly Crenshaw would kmt at. She literally includes class in her analysis and he says she doesn’t which is a bit :/ also the chapters where he discusses racism made me just about cringe and die inside although I thinkkkkk I understand where he’s coming from… A read that really had me questioning how I think about modern day class in Britain, as well as my own politics (which I wasn't expecting going into it). Particularly unexpected (and powerful as a result) were McGarvey's arguments in favour of personal accountability: When one political party blames another for the problem, it creates a false impression in the public mind that this complex issue is within the competence of one political actor or group to solve. This is a dangerous oversimplification. An oversimplification which forces us to cast one another as heroes and villains in the long-running saga of poverty, often based on our unconscious bias, false beliefs, and, increasingly, our resentments. Just like stress creates a demand for relief through alcohol, food, and drugs, so too does our refusal to get serious about grappling with the complexity of poverty; creating a demand for the sort of political juvenilia that reduces every person to a caricature and every issue into a soundbite. These partisan rivalries are now so toxic that the idea of getting round the table with your opponents, in good faith, is almost laughable. Proposing such an idea is regarded widely as naive.

And you get what he promises. Disjointed chapters that run along without any connection. We flit from topic to topic, without any sense of building. And McGarvey uses the word "outwith" several times in what felt like a deliberate attempt to force me to use a dictionary. (I don't think I've ever seen that word before.) If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month. Part memoir, part barnstorming polemic, the blinks for Poverty Safari take you through the gritty realities of social deprivation in the UK. You’ll get a glimpse of life in underfunded council flats, personal stories of drug addiction, and insightful commentary on how to fix systemic poverty. By the end, you’ll understand why this gripping work won the Orwell Prize for political writing, one of the UK’s most prestigious awards.

Sign up for updates

I can't say he didn't warn me. But, in my defense, I was reading the book electronically. Jumping around isn't exactly easy, in that format. And I just don't read that way. Nothing less than an intellectual and spiritual rehab manual for the progressive left. Irvine Welsh In the fourth chapter, McGarvey describes an experience in which a group of children behaved around him as he has learned to do around potentially threatening people. How has this experience shaped the author’s judgment of certain situations?

As well as white male privilege, intersectionality should allow us to better understand the phenomenon of affluent students on the campuses of elite western universities attempting to control how the rest of us think and discuss our own experiences, claiming to speak on our behalf while freezing us out of the conversation.” We must open another frontier in politics. Not one based on railing against the system, but about scrutinising our own thinking and behaviour. One of which is about reclaiming the idea of personal responsibility from a rampant and socially misguided right wing that has come to monopolise it. A new leftism that is not only about advocating radical change but also about learning to take ownership of as many of our problems as we can, so that we may begin rebuilding the depleted human capacity in our poorest communities. He invites you to come on a safari of sorts. A Poverty Safari. But not the sort where the indigenous population is surveyed from a safe distance for a time, before the window on the community closes and everyone gradually forgets about it. Poverty Safari aims to give voice to deprived communities that have been ignored and left unheard. Does the book succeed in achieving this?Brutally honest and fearless, Poverty Safari is an unforgettable insight into modern Britain, and will change how you think about poverty. But the second these kids are legally culpable, our entire posture towards them changes. When the truth, whether we accept it or not, is that the neglected and abused kids, the unruly young people, the homeless, the alkies, the junkies and the lousy, irresponsible, violent parents are often the same person at different stages of their lives." (Chapter 16: Great Expectations) George Orwell would have loved this book. It echoes Down and Out in London and Paris and The Road to Wigan Pier. It is heart-rending in its life story and its account of family breakdown and poverty. But by the end there is not a scintilla of self-pity and a huge amount of optimism. It made me see the country and its social condition in a new light.” – Andrew Adonis

There's no way someone like me would have been given the opportunity to write a book like this had I not draped it, at least partially, in the veil of a misery memoir. Okay then, first, we need to create the illusion of objectivity. It seems the most effective way to do this would be to completely dehumanise my family and me, to look at our experience through a statistical lens.

Poverty Safari

The McGarvey warns against investing too much energy and faith to the delivery of political silver bullets, because even if you do think that a change of government/the end of capitalism/Brexit/nationalism/Corbyn/Trump/not Trump will solve many of your problems, you could still be waiting for a long time, and if you aren't prepared to work within the current political system, then it become just another protest movement that wants to keep people angry for the benefit of the movement, not the community. When you think you have nothing to lose, then hoping for the banks to fail sounds like fun, but in reality, the poorest would still end up suffering the most.