• Contact
  • About
  • Authors
DONATE
NEWSLETTER SIGN UP
  • Login
North East Bylines
  • Home
  • News
    • All
    • Brexit
    • Education
    • Environment
    • European News
    • Health
    • Politics
    • Science
    • UK News
    • World News
    Set her free placards

    “There is still time to stop this flight”: protest against forced deportations of women at 10.30pm tonight

    Steve Bray and police officer

    “They might as well have called it the Steve Bray law”: huge support for Mr Stop Brexit

    Police speak to Steve Bray

    Noisy protest warning and now a court summons for Mr Stop Brexit

    maths mind

    The mathematics of human behaviour: how my new model can spot liars and counter disinformation

    woman on boat

    Where have all the EU citizens gone, long time passing…?

    to seek asylum is not a crime

    Momentous week ahead for women trapped in detention in County Durham

    RMT official picket

    Rail strikes: is class solidarity back?

    Curfew bracelets

    Curfew bracelets

    Sign saying welcome refugees

    World refugee day 2022

    Trending Tags

    • Ukraine
  • Culture
    • All
    • Animation
    • Books
    • Illustrations & More
    • Music
    • Performance
    • Poetry
    • Social Media
    • Theatre
    • TV & Radio
    Arial performer

    South Tyneside’s parade set to be the most colourful yet

    Rich and poor

    They want this

    doctorbird

    Doctorbird (Jamaica 1998)

    Curfew bracelets

    Curfew bracelets

  • Lifestyle
    • All
    • Fashion
    • Food & Drink
    • Health & Fitness
    gymnast

    Culture of fear in British gymnastics uncovered by the Whyte Review

    Kennedy and Rhind

    Kennedy and Rhind: more time to enjoy a North East favourite

    Hoppings

    The Hoppings is back in Newcastle!

    Chi Onwurah MP

    Chi backs watchdog for fast fashion industry

    High Force waterfall

    Feeling the full force of Teesdale at the High Force Hotel

    A group of swimmers stand in the sea at sunrise.

    Interview with cold water swimmer Sarah Rowland

    Meat feast pizza

    Bella Italia launches new menu

    Ukrainian necklace

    Ukrainian Cultural Heritage: jewellery, accessories and some morale boosting art

    Leek and mushroom bake

    Leek and mushroom bake

    Trending Tags

    • Business
      • All
      • Economy
      • Rural
      • Technology
      • Trade
      • Voluntary Sector
      Friends Action North East

      Friends Action North East: supporting people’s lives

      Söke

      Reflections on Söke and lessons to learn

      Visitors in the former Holy Trinity Church, Sunderland

      Seventeen Nineteen: Hidden Stories in Sunderland church

      Refugee week

      Sing up for refugee week in Newcastle!

      Lachlan and Ryan

      Top sports stars step in to help male suicide charity

      Older person enjoying TikTok

      Go glammas! How older people are turning to TikTok to dispel myths about ageing

      A group of volunteers in high vis jackets, with their backs to the camera, operate a table giving out food distributions.

      Charity helps feed communities amidst the cost of living crisis

      young people talking

      Counselling support for young refugees in the North East

      Russia and China flags with two people shaking hands

      Russia’s quasi-colonial dependence on China

      Trending Tags

      • Region
        • All
        • Co. Durham
        • North East
        • Northumberland
        • Teesside
        • Tyneside
        • Wearside
        Arial performer

        South Tyneside’s parade set to be the most colourful yet

        RMT official picket

        Rail strikes: is class solidarity back?

        Visitors in the former Holy Trinity Church, Sunderland

        Seventeen Nineteen: Hidden Stories in Sunderland church

        Nigel Todd

        Nigel Todd remembered: a socialist legacy

        Three boys stand in front of a man. All three of them are stood in front of a fire engine.

        Firefighting Uncle helping to raise £260,000 for nephew with rare cancer

        Kennedy and Rhind

        Kennedy and Rhind: more time to enjoy a North East favourite

        Campaigning for Samuel in Loftus Market Place, 1906 - "More Boots - less Beer."

        Opposition to the first immigration bill

        dead fish

        Defra on the defensive over toxic dumping in Tees Bay

        Secret Garden

        The Secret Garden at Hexham Abbey Gardens

        Trending Tags

        • Opinion
          Titanic coming out of Southampton

          The 110th anniversary of the Titanic’s departure

          There is an England

          There is an England

          Prime Minister Boris Johnson signs the Withdrawal Agreement with the European Union"

          The parody of disinformation: Boris Johnson on Ukraine and Brexit

          Boris Johnson’s comments on Ukraine and Brexit are an insult

          TV Agency staff jumping in the air

          The TV Agency celebrates 10th anniversary with global success

          North East of County Dublin

          North East of England and North East of County Dublin: Compare and contrast

          North Sea oil rig

          Copping out of COP: Ukraine, fossil fuels and nuclear fusion

          Placard with Boris Johnson as a clown

          Dictators, media and mobility: erosion of identity, sustenance and safety

          close up on a child's eye

          Racism and misogyny where there should have been safeguarding and security

        No Result
        View All Result
        • Home
        • News
          • All
          • Brexit
          • Education
          • Environment
          • European News
          • Health
          • Politics
          • Science
          • UK News
          • World News
          Set her free placards

          “There is still time to stop this flight”: protest against forced deportations of women at 10.30pm tonight

          Steve Bray and police officer

          “They might as well have called it the Steve Bray law”: huge support for Mr Stop Brexit

          Police speak to Steve Bray

          Noisy protest warning and now a court summons for Mr Stop Brexit

          maths mind

          The mathematics of human behaviour: how my new model can spot liars and counter disinformation

          woman on boat

          Where have all the EU citizens gone, long time passing…?

          to seek asylum is not a crime

          Momentous week ahead for women trapped in detention in County Durham

          RMT official picket

          Rail strikes: is class solidarity back?

          Curfew bracelets

          Curfew bracelets

          Sign saying welcome refugees

          World refugee day 2022

          Trending Tags

          • Ukraine
        • Culture
          • All
          • Animation
          • Books
          • Illustrations & More
          • Music
          • Performance
          • Poetry
          • Social Media
          • Theatre
          • TV & Radio
          Arial performer

          South Tyneside’s parade set to be the most colourful yet

          Rich and poor

          They want this

          doctorbird

          Doctorbird (Jamaica 1998)

          Curfew bracelets

          Curfew bracelets

        • Lifestyle
          • All
          • Fashion
          • Food & Drink
          • Health & Fitness
          gymnast

          Culture of fear in British gymnastics uncovered by the Whyte Review

          Kennedy and Rhind

          Kennedy and Rhind: more time to enjoy a North East favourite

          Hoppings

          The Hoppings is back in Newcastle!

          Chi Onwurah MP

          Chi backs watchdog for fast fashion industry

          High Force waterfall

          Feeling the full force of Teesdale at the High Force Hotel

          A group of swimmers stand in the sea at sunrise.

          Interview with cold water swimmer Sarah Rowland

          Meat feast pizza

          Bella Italia launches new menu

          Ukrainian necklace

          Ukrainian Cultural Heritage: jewellery, accessories and some morale boosting art

          Leek and mushroom bake

          Leek and mushroom bake

          Trending Tags

          • Business
            • All
            • Economy
            • Rural
            • Technology
            • Trade
            • Voluntary Sector
            Friends Action North East

            Friends Action North East: supporting people’s lives

            Söke

            Reflections on Söke and lessons to learn

            Visitors in the former Holy Trinity Church, Sunderland

            Seventeen Nineteen: Hidden Stories in Sunderland church

            Refugee week

            Sing up for refugee week in Newcastle!

            Lachlan and Ryan

            Top sports stars step in to help male suicide charity

            Older person enjoying TikTok

            Go glammas! How older people are turning to TikTok to dispel myths about ageing

            A group of volunteers in high vis jackets, with their backs to the camera, operate a table giving out food distributions.

            Charity helps feed communities amidst the cost of living crisis

            young people talking

            Counselling support for young refugees in the North East

            Russia and China flags with two people shaking hands

            Russia’s quasi-colonial dependence on China

            Trending Tags

            • Region
              • All
              • Co. Durham
              • North East
              • Northumberland
              • Teesside
              • Tyneside
              • Wearside
              Arial performer

              South Tyneside’s parade set to be the most colourful yet

              RMT official picket

              Rail strikes: is class solidarity back?

              Visitors in the former Holy Trinity Church, Sunderland

              Seventeen Nineteen: Hidden Stories in Sunderland church

              Nigel Todd

              Nigel Todd remembered: a socialist legacy

              Three boys stand in front of a man. All three of them are stood in front of a fire engine.

              Firefighting Uncle helping to raise £260,000 for nephew with rare cancer

              Kennedy and Rhind

              Kennedy and Rhind: more time to enjoy a North East favourite

              Campaigning for Samuel in Loftus Market Place, 1906 - "More Boots - less Beer."

              Opposition to the first immigration bill

              dead fish

              Defra on the defensive over toxic dumping in Tees Bay

              Secret Garden

              The Secret Garden at Hexham Abbey Gardens

              Trending Tags

              • Opinion
                Titanic coming out of Southampton

                The 110th anniversary of the Titanic’s departure

                There is an England

                There is an England

                Prime Minister Boris Johnson signs the Withdrawal Agreement with the European Union"

                The parody of disinformation: Boris Johnson on Ukraine and Brexit

                Boris Johnson’s comments on Ukraine and Brexit are an insult

                TV Agency staff jumping in the air

                The TV Agency celebrates 10th anniversary with global success

                North East of County Dublin

                North East of England and North East of County Dublin: Compare and contrast

                North Sea oil rig

                Copping out of COP: Ukraine, fossil fuels and nuclear fusion

                Placard with Boris Johnson as a clown

                Dictators, media and mobility: erosion of identity, sustenance and safety

                close up on a child's eye

                Racism and misogyny where there should have been safeguarding and security

              No Result
              View All Result
              North East Bylines
              No Result
              View All Result
              Home Region North East

              Teesside Tommo’s tax and spend turmoil: what will the new Red Wall voters do?

              What will the new Red Wall 'apolitical' voters do in the light of Rishi Sunak's announcement this week? David Walsh considers.

              David WalshbyDavid Walsh
              25-03-2022 06:00
              in North East
              "Dale Moor View, Rossendale by Taylor Wimpey" by mrrobertwade (wadey) is marked with CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

              "Dale Moor View, Rossendale by Taylor Wimpey" by mrrobertwade (wadey) is marked with CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

              Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
              ADVERTISEMENT

              So the inquest on Rishi’s announcement starts on the left.  It is par for the course, advancing propositions none of us argue with – benefits and state pensions still effectively frozen, spending on the NHS capped, no reprieve for slashed overseas aid.

              And it’s ‘par for the course’ because for many of us it’s OUR course, our familiar home turf.  But for many that turf is utterly alien to their thinking, almost as if it’s in a parallel universe. The left is, after all, deeply tribal. We live with each other, socialise with each other and drink with each other.  It’s true of social media too; I looked at my facebook “friends” list the other day. About 80% of them were of the left. But that is probably a low number for many. Up to a couple of years ago I lived in an East Cleveland village, which had recent private build estates springing up around it, and as a result new friendships in local pubs were struck up with the predominantly younger incomers – much to the bemusement of some of my political colleagues.

              So, I now want to see Sunak’s announcement through their prism – not mine.

              Teesside’s ‘Tommo’

              I saw a blog from some years back who began to tread this path through the perspective of a man they titled “Deano” and his wife. (See  here).  So here’s the same world through the eyes of his counterpart I’ve invented; Teesside’s ‘Tommo.’

              Thomas (‘Tommo’ as in his normal nickname at work and in the pub) is 36.  He is an uncomplicated person. He works as a senior middle £45k manager in an otherwise anonymous credit reference agency based on Stockton’s Teesdale Business Park, working for a whole set of high street and web based retailers. (On occasions he feels the public would really be worried if they knew how much is known about them through their shopping and laptop habits). He lives, along with long term partner, Janice, on a Taylor Wimpey estate on the eastern outskirts of Darlington (a 30 minute commute along the A66 with good traffic). It is a 3-bed house in an earlier expectation of a brood of a couple of future Tommo’s and is on a joint mortgage with Janice and which has many years left to run. 

              So far his life has been one of quiet home centred contentment.  His job is not all that demanding, acting mainly as an overseer collecting data and leaving his firm’s clients to make the decisions on that data – not him.  Janice is working too. She is a part time Branch Library assistant in Darlington, a job she enjoys as it gives her the time to organise activity sessions, now Covid has waned, for both local school children and OAP’s.  It is not that well paid, but it provides the family top up for the treats she and Tommo crave.

              You see, Tommo is a prisoner of the very system he checks for clients – consumer credit.  He is as bound in its tentacles as deeply as those he checks for creditworthiness. And now – for the first time in his life, there are dark clouds on the horizon; Low growth means his bland, regional, boring, but pretty nice and fairly well remunerated job is suddenly not as secure as before. The same for Janice. Every budget year her employing council issues a HR1 statement warning jobs may be “at risk.”  And every year nothing ever happened. But not this year. Things look bleak, and library services have to be judged against things like social care and regeneration.

              So, the squeeze is on. As Tommo is a creature of credit, he needs to service that debt. Rising unemployment matters to Tommo as it does to the rest of us, except Tommo is more highly geared than you are. His past contentment comes not only from the security of ‘owning’ (he believes) his home, but also from the fact his material well-being has increased throughout his life (yes, even during austerity). We’re potentially going to see ten percent inflation this year, and his 24 month iPhone 13 Pro Max contract is RPI linked. The heating costs of his Tommo McMansion are about to double. Its furnishing and home cinema TV is largely tied to a DFS contract and some of it is showing signs of early wear. The joy of his life, his metallic Audi RS3 Sportsback, is safe for the time being as he bought it on what’s called a ‘balloon’ contract – but that assumes a high payout at near exit time, and it looks unlikely he could afford anything similar the way things are going. Our pair have never seen inflation before. The highest CPI has been since the year 2000 is 3.8%, and was less than 2% for 11 of the years between 2000 and 2020. I’d take a wild guess and say Tommo’s basket of goods, based on possible inside sources of knowledge of credit finance, may have even have fallen in real terms over that period

              Apolitical?

              But now, for the first time in their lives the cost of living for Tommo and Janice is about to outstrip any increase in wages.  How will this affect Tommo’s politics? That’s an interesting question. For both Tommo and Janice are effectively apolitical. Janice doesn’t vote, although over the last six or seven years Tommo has been putting his cross by a Tory name (although he might be perplexed if asked to name the political colour of his MP Peter Gibson).  If he has a reason for voting Tory it is mainly through a vague feeling that Boris Johnson is in some way ‘one of the lads down the pub’ when pushed. However, his political identity is thinly spread as is Janice’s. Reality, however, has now come crashing through their UPVC front door, something that has never happened before.  But, they are in their mid 30s and would love to have a family – But (again) they have never known a real economic crisis based on inflation, price hikes and a real impact on their quality of life. Today’s bundle of help with NIC thresholds and fuel duty will not go far, with the knowledge that the real big hike at the pumps is yet to come. And talk of tax cuts ‘in the future’ is, well, in Tommo’s eyes just that – talk.   

              So how will they react?  An important question for Tory MPs everywhere, but nowhere more than in the ‘Red Wall’ where for every job lost in traditional industries, jobs for the Tommo’s of this world have grown unobtrusively.  As the author of the original blog post I filched this idea from said:

               “His man (his ‘Deano’) is interesting precisely because there are millions of him yet he is under discussed. He has no champions in the mainstream media, his lifestyle has no visibility.”

              If there was a genuinely representative soap opera in Britain, it wouldn’t be the laughably anachronistic Eastenders or the strange world of Emmerdale, it would be set on a Taylor Wimpey ‘hammerhead’ estate just on the edge of Darlington.

              Tags: PoliticsTeesside
              ADVERTISEMENT
              Previous Post

              Poem

              Next Post

              Beyond 2022: exciting new launch from Young European Movement

              David Walsh

              David Walsh

              Related Posts

              Three boys stand in front of a man. All three of them are stood in front of a fire engine.
              North East

              Firefighting Uncle helping to raise £260,000 for nephew with rare cancer

              byNorth East Bylines
              June 21, 2022
              Kennedy and Rhind
              Food & Drink

              Kennedy and Rhind: more time to enjoy a North East favourite

              byNorth East Bylines
              June 20, 2022
              young people talking
              North East

              Counselling support for young refugees in the North East

              byNorth East Bylines
              June 16, 2022
              Anna Turley Photo by Simon Veit-Wilson
              North East

              New food strategy a “monumental letdown” says Anna Turley

              byNorth East Bylines
              June 13, 2022
              rescued dog
              North East

              Firefighters rescued trapped dog as it barked up wrong tree

              byNorth East Bylines
              June 12, 2022
              Next Post
              Young European Movement

              Beyond 2022: exciting new launch from Young European Movement

              Want to support us?

              Can you help North East Bylines to grow and become more sustainable with a regular donation, no matter how small?  

              DONATE

              Sign up to our newsletter

              If you would like to receive the North East Bylines regular newsletter, straight talking direct to your inbox, click the button below.

              NEWSLETTER

              LATEST

              Arial performer

              South Tyneside’s parade set to be the most colourful yet

              June 29, 2022
              Set her free placards

              “There is still time to stop this flight”: protest against forced deportations of women at 10.30pm tonight

              June 29, 2022
              Steve Bray and police officer

              “They might as well have called it the Steve Bray law”: huge support for Mr Stop Brexit

              June 28, 2022
              Police speak to Steve Bray

              Noisy protest warning and now a court summons for Mr Stop Brexit

              June 28, 2022
              maths mind

              The mathematics of human behaviour: how my new model can spot liars and counter disinformation

              June 27, 2022
              Rich and poor

              They want this

              June 27, 2022

              MOST READ

              Arial performer

              South Tyneside’s parade set to be the most colourful yet

              June 29, 2022
              Set her free placards

              “There is still time to stop this flight”: protest against forced deportations of women at 10.30pm tonight

              June 29, 2022
              Steve Bray and police officer

              “They might as well have called it the Steve Bray law”: huge support for Mr Stop Brexit

              June 28, 2022
              Police speak to Steve Bray

              Noisy protest warning and now a court summons for Mr Stop Brexit

              June 28, 2022

              BROWSE BY TAGS

              Audio Beach Brexit Business castle leazes climate activism Co. Durham cost of living crisis Culture defra democracy ducklings Economy Education Environment fire and rescue firefighter Food & Drink food poverty Health Health & Care Home Affairs just stop oil Lifestyle Local Lockdown Northumberland Peace Performance Politics rescue Science Social Media Teesside TV & Radio Tynemouth Tyneside Ukraine volunteer Wearside

              North East Bylines is a regional online newspaper that supports citizen journalism. Our aim is to publish well-written, fact-based articles and opinion pieces on subjects that are of interest to people in the North East and beyond.

              Learn more about us

              No Result
              View All Result
              • Contact
              • About
              • Letters
              • Donate
              • Privacy
              • Bylines network
              • Shop

              © 2022 North East Bylines. Citizen Journalism | Local & Internationalist

              No Result
              View All Result
              • Home
              • News
                • Brexit
                • Education
                • Environment
                • UK News
                • Transport
                • World News
              • Politics
              • Opinion
              • Lifestyle
                • Culture
                • Music
                • Poetry
              • Business
                • Economy
                • Technology
                • Trade
              • Donate
              • Newsletter sign up
              • Boriiis Cartoons
              • Authors

              © 2022 North East Bylines. Citizen Journalism | Local & Internationalist

              Welcome Back!

              Login to your account below

              Forgotten Password?

              Retrieve your password

              Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

              Log In