Chris Grayling MP is Shadow Secretary of State for Work & Pensions.
The contrasts in British city life have seldom been so stark.
Cities today have social divisions as wide as has been seen in Britain for generations – in many respects since Victorian times. Areas of the same City where almost every child lives in poverty, while nearby virtually none do. A life expectancy gap between the rich and the poor that is as wide as it has been since the nineteenth century.
Within our Cities we have local areas of extreme deprivation and social alienation from which few people escape. It’s as if there are glass walls around them – a parallel culture existing alongside all of us in our daily lives. Where the violent and controversial world of the films Adulthood and Kidulthood come to life.
It’s a world where generations do not work. Where children are falling behind before they even start school, and struggle through their education underachieving and falling further behind still. Where often the gang culture on the streets offers a kind of stability and support that family life could never offer. And where educational failure is followed by worklessness and all too often crime, antisocial behaviour, welfare dependency and often mental health problems.
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