…my dad left school at 16 and joined the army as a squaddie in the Royal Engineers. Go find out how much they earned in the mid 60s… he did that as he had to help out his parents as my grandad had broken his back in a fall and could not work… to help pay the council house rent. My dad married a 19 year old German girl in 66 who came from equally humble stock - her father died in '70 aged only 54 crippled with RA possibly accelerated by the 2 years it took him to walk back from Siberia after being POW having been shot in the shoulder on the Russian Frot in 1944.
My dad spent 22 year in teh engineers finsishing as a Warrant Officer 1 and leaving the army in 1984 - he struggled to finsd a job for nearly 8 months at a time when my parents had were only 2 years into their first mortgage and interest rates went up to 15%… we were close to repocession. I was reasonably smart had passed the selection tests and went to the local Grammar (in Kent) - not some posh gothic place but a 1950 purpose built technical high school as it was called that had kids from the bread line to the very well off… we still had plenty of nights of beans on toast… better than a nice girl in my class whos mum killed herself after murdering her abusinve husband.
Worst happened to me when night before first A levels, when my dad never came home - police called around 3am having found him in his car in a field, hose from exhaust into window. He was in hosital. later we found out he had been made redundent almost 8 months previously and had struggled with depression, but had got into debt trying to keep us all going… he survived, but after fucking up my exams, I left to work in a lab earning 3k a year 70% of which went to pay my parents mortgage… I resat my exams and did enough to into St Andrews (I wanted to get as far away as possible). Dad got a job in Devon and parents got back on an even keel but could not afford to help top up the last few years of small grant so had to take stutent loans which were new at the time… Had a great time, met future Mrs AG, who just after graduation decided to go and develop leukemia…
shit happens
I had a job in London that left me with about £700 a month after tax… shitty flat in teh eastend was £380, Travel card as it was then £110… bills, food and fortnightly trips to Edinbrugh on the red eye cheap coach on a Friday after work meant bigger overdraft…
Got married, and moved to Oxfordshire working in medical communications, mrs as an academmic secretary at the university… as a result of chemo and radiotherapy at the age of 22, we could not have the family we wanted… spent 7 years doing cycles of IVF requiring egg donation, so we had to pay more… every spare penny for 7 years until eventully we got lucky and our daughter was born. The best fucking thing in the world.
I worked my arse off to do the best i could, and have in the last 10 years worked my way to good position. Well forgive me if I dont give a flying fuck what anyone thinks of private education, but all we were intereseted in was in making sure she got the best start we could give her and with loacl state comps here having some of the worst academic records we decided to do what we did… sacraficing other things most likely our own longer term security and retireent - OUR choice.
I have never pretened to be hard up or hard done by, but I have had just about enough of fucking assumptions as if I should be ashamed of my choices. Life is too fucking short, and its why all the jingoistic, nationalistic blue passport waving fucktards who think that sovereignty is more important than living within a system that lets poor people from other countries take opportunities to better their lives are just wrong IMHO. The EU might be a selfserving bloated undemocratic heap of shit for all I care… if it provides opportunity through freedom of movement, it will always get my vote. The selfserving, bloated undemocratic heap of shit is no different from Westminster… just in a different location, and it would be no different under Corbyn…
