Bristol at the tip of austerity iceberg

On the 2^nd of April, a crowd of local traders based in Clifton village gathered outside Bristol City Hall to show their opposition to a proposed resident’s parking scheme. In response, Bristol’s Mayor George Ferguson issued a statement claiming that local officials would ‘bend over backwards’ to address their concerns.

Mayor Ferguson gets down with the locals.

In a perverse confusion of priorities, no such assurances were given to the 150 protesters, myself included, who marched on College Green just 2 months earlier, demanding that the city council reject the £90 million cuts proposed by the same mayor. The message is clear: Ferguson considers the concerns of those who run boutique fashion outlets and expensive delis in Clifton far more pressing than the hard pressed public sector workers who have been left no other choice than to sit and watch their libraries, children centres and leisure facilities disappear.

Ferguson has some advice for public sector workers.

This discrepancy points to one of the more sinister consequences of growing income inequality across the UK. The wealthy continue to influence policy, while the vulnerable are marginalised and even scapegoated by a coalition whose relentless determination to wage war on the poor shows no sign of letting up.

If you were to believe the spate of articles that come out every month lauding Bristol as the ‘best place to live in Britain’, you might conclude that Bristol was some sort of anomalous utopia. Outside the student heartlands, however, the non-profit organisation Equality Bristol has unearthed some indicators of severe inequality. The Centre for Cities estimates income inequality by looking at the difference between the lowest and highest rates of those claiming Jobseekers Allowance. At the time of the study in 2012, the lowest claimant rate was in 0.2% in Stoke Bishop North, while the highest was 15.2% in Stapleton Road. Even this shocking differential in concentrations of unemployment pales in significance compared to Bristol’s rates of homelessness, which are the worst outside London.

 ‘Glorious’ Bristol is not immune from austerity.

On a national level, the picture is even more bleak. The UK is now one of the most unequal countries in the developed world, ranking 28^th out of 34 counties in the OECD equality league table. Force fed a bitter medicine of austerity and cuts, Britain’s poor are forced to endure Victorian levels of poverty, while the kleptocrats in the capital award themselves gargantuan bonuses at the expense of low paid workers.

The most damning indictment of Cameron’s ‘moral mission’ of welfare caps and slashing to public services was the story recently broken by The Mirror that now nearly a million people in the UK rely on food banks. These Dickensian scenes of destitution are the real face of austerity Britain, a winner-takes-all society where the cries of its victims are largely ignored by the Bullingdon Club bullies in Whitehall.

Cambo was too busy feasting in Nando’s last week to worry about the queue at the food bank.

The fact that growing inequality is a global trend does not exonerate the current administration. While George Osborne repeats his mantra that the recovery is underway, cuts to public spending are as ruthless as ever. These cuts are often enacted in such a way that the most impoverished areas are targeted the most. According to figures by Labour, the ten most deprived areas of England have suffered average cuts of 25.3%, while the ten least deprived areas have faced only 2.54%.

Income equality erodes social trust, undermines confidence and leaves deep scars in communities that will not quickly heal. It is the symptom of a profoundly dysfunctional society and, until our politicians seek to readdress the balance, it will continue to be the root of many of the social ills both Bristol and Britain face today.