The poet Jo Clement gives voice to the stories and people of her family’s Romany past. In her collection Outlandish she has no time for Romantic impressions of British Gypsy ethnicity as she moves from ancient stopping-places to decaying council estates. Her poems are imaginative protests that cast light on a hidden and threatened culture. This is McGarvey at his best, asking discomfiting questions of many – most? – of his readers and also pointing out that class inequality is endlessly reproduced by people who either do well out of it or are too institutionalised to see what is in front of them. “If you’re a teacher,” he says, “you could stand up to your colleagues who believe placing children who misbehave in social isolation as punishment represents anything but child cruelty… If you’re a copper, you could grass up some of your colleagues now and then instead of turning a blind eye… If you run a business, you could commit to paying your staff a little more than the living wage and if that is unaffordable, you might question why the business model you have adopted only works when you pay poverty wages.” Appropriately enough, The Social Distanc e Between Us feels like a huge and sometimes onerous book. McGarvey divides it into three “acts” and begins with 11 chapters that cover homelessness, drug and alcohol addiction, the treatment of immigrants, land ownership, the benefits system and much more. His freewheeling writing style sometimes feels too digressive – one minute he’s explaining the Peasants Revolt of 1381, the next he’s on to the appeals system used by the latter-day Department for Work and Pensions. He occasionally tumbles into suggestions of a stark divide between working-class angels and toffee-nosed villains, as when he makes the improbable claim that imperialism, racism and sexism were “all ideas either dreamed up or imported from overseas by highly educated, sophisticated and wealthy individuals”. Given that his primary focus is Scotland and his past criticisms of the SNP, there is also a noticeable reluctance to pin any blame for the issues he explores on 15 years of government by that party, which, despite Nicola Sturgeon’s impeccable working-class credentials, has failed to get to grips with Scotland’s howling inequalities (and, for that matter, the country’s huge issues with addiction and drug-related deaths). McGarvey asks potent questions about the links between our school systems and a low-end labour market millions of us are only too happy to take advantage of

I am middle-class. I was sent against my will to a government-funded, fee-paying school which I hated. I was dragged reluctantly along the conveyor belt to a minor university. I dropped out. I started to hate the middle class and everything it stood for. So I left it. I became a class-refugee, 'déclassé' as we snooty class-refugees would term it. This was the mid-sixties. I got a job as a gardener at a Stately Home. I was fired because my bean-rows weren't straight. I 'signed on the dole'. I never worked again. Now, thanks to the EU I get an Old Person's dole (900 euros a month) from the French state. The rules are decided a group of people, many of whom are privately educated, personally wealthy & from the middle & upper classes, who have rarely suffered through the severe hardship that poverty brings, some even being 'parachuted' into safe parliament seats. The author asks: how can those who are socially removed or at a distance to those experiencing these problems fully empathise & legislate accordingly? For example, how can a millionaire Chancellor of the Exchequer know how it feels to try & survive on Job Seekers? The author doesn't tirade against the middle & upper classes as being deliberately harmful or fundamentally bad people but argues that this "social distance" disproportionately harms those who are already the most vulnerable. These days I live in a little terrace miles away from the nearest town. I work from home, and the work I do is business-to-business writing. The closest I get to experiencing working class people now is when I stop and chat to the cleaners on my monthly visit to head office. I’ve got to be honest, I like it that way. I’m one of the few people who, in the words of McGarvey, is ‘ grateful for the exacting dimensions of the sand box you’ve been allowed to play in’. I still think of myself as working class, but I’ve got to be honest, I’m much more of a reed diffuser kind of guy these days.The book covers topics such as unequal health outcomes, addiction, aspiration, class and much more, using this lens to show how inured many people's lives are from seeing the reality around them. As I steadily plod on in years, the number of experiences I've had that reflects Darrens commentary or insight similarly grows. I've seen first hand the effects that Darren discusses in his book, not least due to living in similar communities but also in working in the homelessness sector in Scotlands biggest city. He absolutely hits the nail on the head with this commentary and explains valuable and thought provoking concepts in an incredibly real and expressive manner. I found myself saying 'Exactly!' out loud several times in agreement with his, and other folks, observations.

Why are the rich getting richer while the poor only get poorer? How is it possible that in a wealthy, civilised democracy cruelty and inequality are perpetuated by our own public services? And how come, if all the best people are in all the top jobs, Britain is such an unmitigated bin fire? Some years ago, I was dragged along to Barnsley Civic Centre to a concert by the Pitmen Poets. I have a general rule that I don’t like any poetry that I haven’t written, and the fact that this concert was going to be two-plus hours of traditional folk songs interspersed with other peoples’ poetry left me cold. Much to my surprise, Bob Fox and his band were amazingly good, and I was soon swept along with the moment. At the end of the book, he makes a number of quite radical recommendations as to how we could close the distance between us. I learnt a lot from many of the stories that he told throughout the book,

His analysis of existing political positions and parties is equally insightful; I found his analysis and critique of the left (with whom I share many of his sympathies and frustrations) particularly so. Since leaving the corporate world, I realise that putting shareholder value above all else will destroy the future of our children.

Britain is in a long-distance relationship with reality. A ravine cuts through it, partitioning the powerful from the powerless, the vocal from the voiceless, the fortunate from those too often forgotten. This distance dictates how we identify and relate to society's biggest issues - from homelessness and poverty to policing and overrun prisons - ultimately determining how, and whether, we strive to resolve them. So why, for generations, has a select group of people with very limited experience of social inequality been charged with discussing and debating it?Too simplistic and down with the people for my liking. However did have several points which I believe could be expanded on in separate chapters or as stand alone books. For myself the American Corporatization of Britain. The book has it's merits and touched a lot of ground. ITV’s Robert Peston - a man so middle class he ought to have a reed diffuser scent named after him." Darren ‘Loki’ McGarvey is a legend. I love his opinion’s in this book that I’ve read so far, and from having him as a Facebook friend I see his opinions on different subjects daily so I really am enjoying this book.