Chocolate and Toast

When I babysit the frog I get paid in toast and chocolate. I have sometimes babysat for money and I looked after those kids in the same way I look after the frog. I don't smoke, but if I did, and I was paid in cigarettes I'd do the same job I do for money, or for toast and chocolate.

There's been a lot to be angry about the way Nia Glassie's death has been reported. So many people refused to acknowledge that Nia Glassie's mother had a job, a job that paid really shit wages for really long hours, and so she was really short on childcare options.

But I can't get past how obsessed everyone seems to be that Lisa Kuka paid her boyfriend in cigarettes, even Jo* mentioned it.

I think there are some pretty nasty assumptions hiding in that statement.

It's not a crime to smoke; it's not a crime not to be able to pay the going rate for child-care, but they're both more common among people living on benefits or low wages than anyone else. To imply that the problem was with the cigerettes is trying to blame poor people, who are unwise enough to smoke and not have any money, as a group for the abuse.

It's part of a bigger project to blame people in poverty for making bad choices on an individual level, rather than seeing the structural issues which leave people so broken that they torture a three year-old. If we can tut-tut about the smoking, then we don't have to look at what capitalism does to people.

* I'm not saying that Jo intended any of these implications, I'm sure she didn't.