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Poverty is costly. As James Baldwin once wrote, “anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.” The current government seems determined to ensure that the poorest get the largest bill for their economic recovery.
This month, in the latest of a series of ideological attacks on access to higher education, George Osborne announced that the Conservatives are set to scrap maintenance grants for the poorest students. There was uproar, for a bit. Then people were told that it would be replaced with increased student loans. National Union of Students President Megan Dunn trotted out a slogan fit for the Troika - #cutthecosts. Facebook murmured with false outrage in the form of status updates which said ‘this is sort of bad’ in all manner of creative ways. Apparently the guilt ridden middle classes were placated by the myth that university would still be “free at the point of entry”.
