Only thing I would add is that there are plenty of pockets of Southend, including the one that grew me, that are also demographically very similar to the broader swathes of Basildon, Dagenham etc.. Although Jack wouldn’t dream of moving to any of them either, even if some of them
do have glorious estuary views, so I suppose it’s a moot point.
Southend ain’t all lovely Thorpe Bay (or Shoebury Garrison, or Leigh’s Marine/Highlands Estates), it’s still got some of the most deprived postcodes in the country, as in they’re in the top 5% of the IMD. (Southend is actually very like Zone 1/2-3 of London in that respect, the deprivation and wealth are often found very close together, unlike in an lot of other places where there’s usually more of a gradual transition between areas.) I raise this whenever the opportunity arises, because it always underscores the point that she really
does not care about people living in poverty and deprivation. It’s just a hook for her, the way she could become famous, and it worked until now because so few people were paying attention to it.
Jack could have been even more famous, and could have won her fame deservedly, if she’d been a good and effective activist, improving people’s opportunities, forcing local services to improve provision and resource allocation for the people in desperate need locally. (Southend’s current council cabinet are doing some good stuff actually, both policywise and the things they’re giving the nod to officers to do - one recent thing that caught my eye was a £25k grant bid that was won and used to buy slow cookers and electric blankets for households in fuel poverty, to help them cook and stay warm less expensively. But Jack had almost a decade of a
tit local Tory administration to challenge, yet didn’t change anything they did, makes you think.)
Even if she’d just done the damn foodbank volunteering she pretended to, except without the drama she caused on the odd occasion she demanded to have people’s time, she could have built a good solid reputation locally; if she’d platformed local people and groups who are doing the work, if she’d held up the examples in Southend of people working tirelessly to fill some of the gaps government has created over the last decade; if she’d done anything meaningful she could practically have been carried aloft to give evidence in Parliament on a cloud of people’s enthusiasm. But nah. Twitter and “Poor me” stories and paint and TROLLS instead. And fraud and grifting, obvs.
Anyway, Jack does nothing for people who live in deprived postcodes, only the postcodes where Farrow and Ball stockists are to be found.
short further readings
ALMOST half of Southend's residents are living in the most deprived areas of the country, shocking figures have revealed.
www.echo-news.co.uk
Southend-on-Sea City Council has donated slow cookers and electric blankets to help the most vulnerable during the cost-of-living crisis.
www.southend.gov.uk