But the way he goes about explaining this, in an aggravating, ranting way for 300+ pages ruined the message for me. The problem, in McGarvey’s view, is that Britain’s political class is out of touch with the everyday lives of working-class and deprived people. But in his latest book, Cloudmoney: Cash Cards, Crypto and the War for our Wallets he argues that social inequality will only increase if cash is allowed to disappear. But it would be wrong to point to this special pleading as a reason to disregard the main message - which is that we need to get a bit more creative with our policies and try to get back to a cohesive society that works for everyone.

editor-at-large at the Guardian, he is the author of five books, including Another Day in the Death of America (shortlisted for the Orwell Prize and the Jhalak Prize) and the recently published Dispatches from the Diaspora a collection of journalism on race, racism and black lives and deaths. Worth a read or even better look for audiobook, tried a few chapters read out - it does come even stronger in author's voice. The problem was also that the managers coordinating the building works (and the housing officers involved) regarded most of the tenants as an alien species, beneath their contempt and only out to screw the system and claim compensation.My job was to help the tenants prepare for the massive amount of work and tradesmen who would be disrupting their lives, and act as a facilitator for access and appointments. I got a bit worried when he said he was "exhausted" from doing "emotional labour" at one point, but it was just a blip and he went back to talking like a human again straight after. After a dozen or so years in the forces, my first civilian job was working for a builder which was appointed to renovate council houses as part of Prescott’s Decent Homes scheme. If you identify with the left and you live in a house from which it’s impossible to see a sofa in a neighbour’s garden, and if you don’t live in constant fear of the sound of the letter box, this book is for you. YES: Darren McGarvey delivers a searing indictment of the UK system that everyone needs to read, regardless of their individual place and circumstances.

I'm not sure about making voting mandatory, but I do believe that our politicians need more real life experience before carving out a career in politics.An organisational jigsaw puzzle where decisions with life-and-death implications are made behind a curtain of unaccountable officialdom. At times I found this quite repetitive and would lose a bit of steam however the next chapter usually picked right back up. For those wishing to gather with friends or colleagues to watch in-person, this event will be live-streamed on The Steps in The Coffee Houseon the day of the event from 13:00. The following quote picked at random illustrates: "the British Welfare State is a vast, malevolent enterprise, engaged in the daily manufacture of death, despair and dysfunction, perpetrated from behind an administrative perimeter, fortified by media-generated public ignorance and a political class, spanning all parties, which is either complicit in the cruelty or skimming over the detail.