Letter: A response to Lee Anderson and his poverty shaming

I am now back in Nottinghamshire and have no illusions of the hardships people are facing, especially the people in Ashfield – who are facing increasing and unfair rises in energy costs, food costs and now because of the lack of social housing because of a previous Tory government allowing the sale of council housing and no subsequent government including Labour replacing those homes.

Like the rest of the country, people in Ashfield are struggling to find somewhere safe and affordable to live.

Yet at the same time, their pay is the one thing that is not rising.

Every time Mr Anderson makes some off-the-cuff, poorly made unresearched statement about budgeting and living to your means, while not taking seriously working class people’s genuine concerns and fears because their income can’t stretch to the end of the week, he becomes further out of touch with the electorate in Ashfield, and all working class people.

The people in our region mostly earn the minimum wage.

Ashfield isn’t a high-income part of the country – yet a privately rented family home which is an ex-council house on my old estate Carsic, is now on the market for £850 per calendar month.

Mr Anderson needs to do the thing he often tells others to do – go and talk to his constituents. They are having a tough time of it and his 30p meal hacks and parading his wealthy, privately educated staffer on Twitter

to show you can live in London on a £30,000 wage is tone-deaf to the real hardships people are facing.

Dr Lisa Mckenzie, working class academic and anarchistic author.

Bestwood Village.

For another letter click here