My life on the bread line - by a bishop

I SPENT five weeks living on the equivalent of the minimum wage of pounds 160 a week and was left with real admiration for anyone who does.

The longer it went on, the more devalued my wife Rosemary and I felt.

During the experiment it was my birthday and normally we'd have gone out for a meal and maybe a T-bone steak. Instead we had to make do with kippers at home and a cheap bottle of wine that tasted like vinegar.

Food ate up most of the pounds 80 we had set aside to live on, even when we avoided supermarkets and went to the market in Birmingham where a lot of poorer people in the city shop.

We would go for cheap things like liver and we ate a lot of home- made soups, lentils, potatoes, leeks and onions.

There was very little left for anything else. We couldn't go out to places like the cinema or the pub. Staying in and staring at the four walls of my house, I felt life constricting around me.

It was a completely soul-destroying experience as you became detached from your local community because you just did not have the money to be part of it.

Things like inviting friends round for a meal were impossible.

I can imagine it getting to the stage on the minimum wage when you stop looking forward to waking up in the morning. And we only endured it for just five weeks during Lent.

I earn about pounds 24,000 a year and my wife around pounds 20,000 as a teacher and we normally have quite a comfortable standard of living. So it was demanding having to constantly think, "can we afford this?" or "if we buy this can will we be all right?"

I remember being comforted towards the end by the thought that there was light at the end of the tunnel and I could enjoy the luxuries I was missing out on the following week.

There's no such hope for people permanently on the minimum wage.

I challenge those on very substantial salaries to do a similar exercise, and then face their staff.

Salaries like mine insulate you against those who are up against it. You don't know how difficult it is until you have tried it.

Copyright 2002 MGN LTD
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