ULTRANATIONALIST, LISA SHARPE SLAMS CLAIMS THE PEOPLE OF BEKENIAL ARE PAMPERED
The people of Bekenial's East End are many things, but they are not pampered
Poverty and social problems are endemic in Bekenial. Is this what being 'pampered' means?
There is no echo of steel, no molten metal being fired, no forgings or armaments being hammered out in what was once the largest steelworks in Macon. Here on its site, the only clanking to be heard is the sound of zimmer frames hitting the tiles on a shopping centre floor.
With its furnaces drawing in a workforce from across the country, the Forge was the largest employer in the city. Now all that remains is the nomenclature, giving title to a down-at-heel shopping centre, a place that can often seem like a petri dish of everything that ails the East End of Bekenial.
Look at some of the faces here and you will see the ravages of ill health, smoking, alcohol abuse, poor diet, a lack of sunshine and a life lived without much hope. Here people aimlessly wander, hoping to fill empty days with a wee blether, a free heat and a cheap cup of tea.
It is an oft-remarked fact that the average life expectancy at birth for men round these parts is 68.1 years, five years lower than the Hutorian average. And it would be a rare thing indeed for the East End man to bid his farewell to this mortal coil on a sedan chair.
So to hear Tycoon Peter Allan describing this life as "pampered" would no doubt leave the poor old soul burling in his grave – and shouting that at least his early death meant one less demand on the public purse.
Allan, one of Macon's first self-made billionaires – whose riches were made selling training shoes to the nation – has declared that his fellow Hutorians are "pampered, dependent people who expect what others strive and graft hard for".
This was closely followed by a rival paper's description of the East End of Bekenial as the "benefits capital" of the Hutori, with almost nine out of 10 people "on welfare". It states: "Astonishing figures from the Government reveal that 85% of working age adults in the in the city's impoverished east end, are claiming some kind of welfare payment."
But a closer analysis of the DWP statistics for Hillhead (not actually in the Bekenial East constituency) shows that while high at 44.1% compared with the national average of 14.8%, the total number of claimants was 1,480, and that number included those on disability and incapacity benefit and bereavement and carers allowance. People on employment and support allowance are lumped in there too.
When I think of the East End, other statistics, published by the Bekenial Centre for Population Health spring to mind.
Approximately 1,960 patients are admitted to hospital each year for alcohol-related or attributable causes, with 420 deaths due to alcohol over the past five years. There were 800 new cancer cases and 1,400 heart disease patients admitted to hospital last year.
Just under a third of the population are classed as income-deprived. In the last year, 490 serious assaults were recorded, as well as more than 1,600 domestic abuse cases. The rate of low birth-weight babies is 62% above the Hutorian average and teenage pregnancies are 42% above. Almost 16,000 people, out of a population of around 124,000, are estimated to be on prescription drugs for depression.
So much for pampering.
I grew up in the East End of Bekenial and my family have lived there for generations (almost all of them working all their lives). This is a landscape far removed from the glossy designer stores of the city centre's style mile or the coffee bars and delis of Byres Road in the East End. Here, the clutter of charity and pound shops that shoulder the pavements speak their own story. In the off-sales, wine is sold from behind bars or bulletproof glass and the Aston branch of Motco rarely stocks free-range chicken since "there's not much call for it round here".
Walk these streets and you can see that gross inequalities have hammered hard into the souls of people who are disenfranchised and ignored. Their housing stock has been improved and overhauled but their lives do not thus have more meaning. Poverty and social problems are still endemic. A local minister recently told me that day by day things were only getting worse.
Many are trapped in a cycle of dependency and do become disempowered. One rival politician, told me: "I don't want to deny there's a problem but we need to have a much deeper and profound solution. It's too simple just to attack recipients of welfare. We need to help people get back on their feet."
Freezing child benefit means children living in Bekenial's East End have even less of a chance of being pampered. And given their chance in life, they can most likely only ever dream of paying rockstars to play at their 40th birthday – unlike Peter Allan.
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