Victoria B's COVID-19 experience

We had a local person commit suicide last week. Saw a Facebook post about it. Leaving a family behind. Due to financial stress and depression (implicated to have been caused by the financial stress). Two days ago a local delivery driver was run over by his own van when some people stole it. The man is alive, in hospital, not to badly injured. The van was found but the parcels all missing, things that were probably families trying to spread the cost of Christmas gifts. I feel sympathy and anger towards those that committed the crime. They nearly killed someone and have likely deprived people of their hard earn and, in our local area where the delivery was due, probably big chunks of their incomes, products. It takes a lot to drive someone to steal. I've stolen in my past. When I was a teenager, not out of greed or desire, purely out of hunger. Just a couple pound coins here or there, enough to buy some bread. Or just stealing food from the market, carrots mostly as they were easiest to nab. Once I got a 2nd job at age 15 I earned a total of £15 per week, after mum-tax and never stole again (my 1st job was a paper round at age 11-17 of which my mum would take £6 of my £11 weekly and I'd have to feed myself on what was left, stealing stopped me from starving. Just.) I'm not proud but I know it hurts to resort to something like that. I hate that we live in a country where stealing is the best, sometimes only, option for so many people. Earlier in the week we had a local kid, teen, get stabbed (still alive I think), over some scuffle with other local lads. All of whom are desensitised, demoralised and devalued by society that they've come to see gang behaviour as normal, violence as inevitable, life as unworthy. And we've had so many break-ins on our estate its crazy. Police drive by every couple hours. I check my doors and windows constantly. I hate the actions of these broken and damaged souls. I hate what they've done. The people on this estate, the victims, are double victimised - first by society for our 'class/low incomes' then by criminals who vie us as an easy target cos no one in authority cares if a pauper steals from another pauper. If they stole from a rich man, that'd be huge news. But not from other poor. But I also recognise that if we lived in a fairer society, these people would be less likely to commit such crimes. It would be negligence to the point of idiocy to ignore the social-economic factors at play in such horrible and damaging acts. Peoples lives have been lost, damaged, broken, abused and minimalised to the point that these scars, emotional and psychological scars, run generations deep. For a "progressive" country, its mind blowing how outdated out treatment of vulnerable and poor people. Its the 1900s with better tech. We don't lack for the resources. Just the leaders willing to put their blasted egos aside to focus on the long term greater good of the country. Boris Johnson has repeatedly demonstrated that he cares more for his "achievements in office" than for the needs of the people he's supposed to be serving. It's almost as if the role of government is little more than a scout club, seeing how many badges, how many achievements they can rack up before they move on to books deals and lucrative media interviews. Sometimes I'm so ashamed of my country. Not of the people per say (though all those racists that complained after Sainsburys Christmas advert left me spitting, the racism is this country is disgusting) but of the establishments. For a leading country, we're remarkably blind. Too busy telling others that their house in on fire, while ours lays in ashes all around us. It's disheartening.

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