Why it’s worse being in the squeezed middle

A few weeks ago I noticed a conservatively worded, but nonetheless angry,  comment on the SU shop blackboard. It went something along the lines of “stuff you and your ethics, your prices are way too high and not all of us have posh parents”.

It’s not exactly how I would have phrased it, but I do remember the shock of being a fresh-faced first year and expecting bargain prices throughout the union but was peeved to discover that just isn’t the way it is. Better than that, someone has written a follow up comment telling said complainant to “get a job”. I take issue  with this.

Alright, it’s probably because I assume the person who wrote that has been riding along on their dear papa’s coat tails their whole life and thus has no sympathy for the rest of society whose fathers wear less fancy dinner jackets, but I’m probably just bitter from being in the latter group. However, whilst that may be the case, I’m also not deemed poor enough to attain adequate financial help.

In other words when friends try to quell my money worries by reminding me its loan day soon, I have to calmly remind them for the 10^th time that my loan doesn’t even cover my rent; it briefly touches ground in my account and swiftly disappears into Mr Landlord’s pocket.

This, my dear friends, is what comes from being a member of the “squeezed middle”. You aren’t worth headline grabbing welfare reform and you aren’t the Tory favoured upper-class. No grants, bursaries or extra help because we’re expected to lean heavily on our parents, who, in most cases, can’t afford to do that to the extent the government assumes they can.

However, they are expected to finally publicise an inquiry-led realisation that we are likely to be the first in over a century to be worse off than our parents. Merely an observation however, not a call to arms.

So if I moan about the prices at the SU shop, don’t tell me to get a job as I’ve had successive jobs since the age of twelve; just for a minute, reflect on the fact that some people at uni might be finding it harder than you think to make ends meet, and they might not be the ones you expect.