McGarvey has profound observations on the role of the library in the community. He notes that the community centre is being imposed on the library to streamline the service in order to justify keeping the library open. This practice undermines the integrity of both the library and the community centre. It undermines the principle that communities should be entitled to these vital amenities independent of one another. (p. 153).
His aim in the book was to explain the emotional pain of poverty and the stress induced by the multiple addictions allied to it. “The experiential reality of poverty is underemphasised and misunderstood,” he says, “and what we have currently is a society with rules and laws, social cues and incentives, that work for emotionally regulated people. But if you grew up in adversity, your whole sense of emotion and risk perception is completely different. The welfare system is based on an assumption that the threat of social humiliation is going to incentivise people, but that’s a complete misunderstanding of what the stress of poverty does to people. They just recoil; they’re frightened of everything, even if that fear sometimes expresses itself as aggression.”
