How I Turned into an Acorn.

BENEFITS STREET: - BRIGHTON.

I've been getting good mileage out of my angst for the past couple of years. But it's time now to put it to one side and start talking out.

It's not that I need to be heard because I have tidings of great joy or or nuggets of invaluable wisdom to impart. Nor because I have devised a plan to save the world; or discovered a wonder-herb that will cure all the ills of humans everywhere. Neither do I have any proselytising zeal.

But I can communicate. I have, by now, lost just about everything I ever had in life – my possessions, my future, my dignity. But one thing I still haven't lost is the ability to communicate.

In times BB (Before Brighton) I used this ability on behalf of the battered, the marginalised, the homeless, the mentally unstable. Because I knew that all the talks I gave, and the things I wrote, were reaching out to touch people. I was getting somewhere.

Yet, once I became part of the problem here in England, I let that suck me down to a place where I, too, lost my voice. I remained mute until, about a week ago last Tuesday, I finally realised I was in a unique position and I ought, by god, to utilise the fact.

The past few years are things I ought to be talking out about, now that I know so much more than most people of my own background and social class. Not more in the academic sense, but in the sense of how life is.

And how it is in England, despite all protestations to the contrary, is still strictly hierarchical. It's a country where a sense of Class (the one with the capital 'C' ) is still very much interwoven into the fabric that clothes all our societal groups. Especially those who are not just situated at the very bottom of the hierarchical ladder, but who inhabit the wasteland somewhere below even the very last rung.

I am not presenting this information merely as a social comment on the situation, but as a source of disenchantment...and a bloody great shock. From outside the country I had believed the Polyanna answer: class distinction is a thing of the past.

It was only as I sank deeper into the life that surrounded me that I realised I had been deceived by all the 'mission statements', and 'aims policies ' and corporate jargon. I had honestly believed that, coming from the 'other side' as it were, I would look impartially at both sides of the Benefits coin - from work experience both as a provider and as a recipient - and report back from Them to Us. My experiences from both sides of the great divide would endow me with insight.

But I hadn't counted on the fact that because of this class issue I was no longer one of Us, but one of Them. At others times in my life I might have slid a few rungs up or down the ladder: but my education, my clothes, my speech still counted. I was able to accomplish worthwhile things.

In England it's different. If you're on benefits in England nothing else counts. You are, it's fairly universally considered, pond scum. And no-one listens to pond scum.

While there might be those who admit that all people on Benefits aren't there because they want to be, everyone believes they are a sub-class. Even the labouring class can look down on the benefits class.

So far, postcards from the edge in the form of the odd double-page spread, or Women's Hour-type interviews with a genuine Benefits recipient don't really carry much import. They are letters in a bottle from a class of people without a voice and without power. The silence from this side is dark with suspicion.

Thus, most of the news which filters through from the dark sub-culture of those “on benefits” reaches the outside world at second hand. The situation is assessed, discussed and pontificated upon based on what is presented through the intermediary of a disassociated interviewer. Or by actors in a gritty reality film. Or by lecturers in Social Science tutorials. And, far too often, by politicians.

Yet people do listen to the tales of those who have been in contact; in the front lines, as it were. Great weight is also placed on the fact that lots of people - a group of students, one's peers or boss; or the woman at the corner shop, can give a personal account of people on Benefits behaving disgracefully. These Tales from the Crypt prove, comfortably, that media aren't biased: it's how it actually is . People on benefits really are a race apart.

So here I am: expensively and highly educated; well travelled; cultured; and living on benefits.

Sheesh! It's almost destiny: I came here so I could send out my own postcards from the edge.

So this is the first one – now I have to make sure I can put enough stamps on it.