20p/hour is an insult

Still not a living wage

Well it has been announced that there will be a 20p rise in minimum wage taking effect in October 2015 ...

and quite frankly that is insulting, just like it’s insulting in the warehouse when they tell us that there will be sweets available to us at meetings that are targeted to making us work more efficiently …

Is it me? 

Am I just too sensitive?

There is a big drive these days for efficiency, and of course it’s the workers that get pushed for greater productivity,

So we’ve mostly we've reacted by slowing down, and the offer of sweets and meetings is simply condescending, extremely condescending, makes me want to react...

However there’s a nice bloke Freddie, we both have 14 year old sons, not exceptional really but my son lives in Tehran so I only get to be with him a few times a year, I often consult Freddie to get an insight in to the world of 14 year old boys.  This started one day as we were both browsing Sam Stern’s cookbook, Cooking up a Storm, ISBN 9781844287741 and wondering if it might be suitable for our respective sons, as a Christmas present for his son and for me to take on my impending visit to my son in Tehran.  So the conversations have continued and recently Freddie has been very concerned about getting enough shifts because he hasn’t been able to save enough money to cover his boy’s bus pass for the term ahead and payment is due at the end of the month.

I don't see Freddie every day, he isn't getting the shifts he needs, during the winter slump in book sales we've all had to take a cut in the number of shifts we get offered each week and this can be very problematic in terms of covering living expenses, in Freddie's case, he's struggling to save for his boy's bus fare to school, but he's been saving gradually and when asked him last week he told be that he's getting there, £70/term is what he's needed to save.

Bloody hell.

Yesterday  there was a book sale, I chose novel that I thought might be a good read for my boy, I asked Freddie at the sale what his boy liked to read ... but I've forgotten his answer, may be because I was in awe that he could tell me with such accuracy, I felt like a voyeur to an intimate parent child relationship, so I blanked it immediately, not that I'm jealous exactly, just that it's another world, one from which I've been excluded. My boys have grown up with paid carers or family of their step mother, while I've been excluded so this domestic insight was  somewhat tittillating, and definitely   problematic. My conversations with Freddie about our teenage boys allows me to play at being a parent again, takes me back to the school gate and banal conversations about lost PE shorts and costumes for the Christmas play, I'm role playing of course.  The reality of my parenting experience is pounding the streets of Tehran.

At lunch time Freddie approached me as I was sitting among the group telling silly stories and they were all wondering if I would actually be able to eat the bucket load of cooked beetroot I'd brought in for  my lunch!!

Freddie asked if my boy likes football ... no I said, he's into skateboarding and magic tricks.  Later back in the warehouse, Freddie told me he's seen a book on football and thought that my boy might like it because boys all over the world are in to football (I'd made an aside at lunch table that my boy was far to cool to be into football), and now I really regretted this, ouch, he'd actually bought a book for me to take for my boy and I'd rejected it, God, I'm and idiot.

Shit, he's saving for his kid's bus fare and bought a book for me to take for my boy, ouch, I need to accept this and cover the cost.

About £1, he accepted.  And I will take the book to my boy and tell him about Freddie, who struggles for save money for his boy's bus fare.

And the point of telling all this is that his struggle will not be relieved by the insulting gesture of minimum wage set to rise by 20p rise/hour.