Aisha
The Young One — 19→29, Birmingham
19 at the start. 29 at the end. Birmingham.
I was in my first year at Birmingham City University when Anderson got elected. Media Studies — yeah, I know, the degree everyone makes fun of. I was £9,250 in debt for the year and living in a student flat that cost £680 a month for a room so small I could touch both walls if I stretched my arms out. I worked weekends at Nando’s on a zero-hours contract. Some weeks I got 20 hours. Some weeks I got 4. I never knew until Wednesday what I was working on Saturday.
Mum was back in Small Heath, raising my little brother Yusuf on her own. She cleaned offices in the evening and did school dinners at lunchtime. She was caring for my grandmother three mornings a week — Nani had vascular dementia and couldn’t be alone. Mum got nothing for it. Nothing. The carer’s allowance earnings threshold meant she’d lose it if she earned a penny over £151 a week, so she just… didn’t claim. She did two jobs and cared for her mother and got paid for two of those three things.
Year One hit me through the VAT cut first. My weekly shop went from about £35 to £31. Four quid. I cried in Aldi because four pounds meant I could buy the fresh chicken instead of the frozen nuggets. Then the zero-hours thing changed — my manager at Nando’s said they were converting everyone to guaranteed-hours contracts. I got 16 hours guaranteed. I could plan. I could budget. I could breathe.
Mum got the carer’s allowance when the cliff-edge went. £200 a week for looking after Nani. She rang me and she was laughing and crying at the same time — “Aisha, they’re paying me for what I’ve been doing for free for three years.” She dropped one of the cleaning jobs. First time I’d heard her not sound exhausted since Dad left.
Year Two — the dentist. I hadn’t been since sixth form. None of us had. Yusuf was 11 and had never seen one. The dental visa dentist — Dr. Kapoor — set up at the practice on Coventry Road. She saw the whole family in one afternoon. Yusuf needed fillings. I needed a wisdom tooth out. It cost us nothing. Mum hugged Dr. Kapoor on the way out and she looked startled — I don’t think patients usually hug their dentists.
I dropped out of uni after Year One. Not because of the NRSA — because I realised I didn’t want to be in £27,000 of debt for a degree that wouldn’t get me a job I actually wanted. I worked full-time at Nando’s through Year Two while I figured out what I did want. When free colleges launched in Year Five, I knew. I enrolled in health and social care. Free. No debt. No loan. Just learning.
Year Three — the CHRC opened on Stratford Road. My cousin Tariq had been using for two years. Heroin. The family didn’t talk about it — you don’t, in our community, you just don’t. He was stealing from Nani’s purse. Mum caught him once and didn’t speak to his mum for three months. When the clinic opened, his friend went first and told Tariq it was safe, it was clean, nobody asked questions. Tariq went. He’s been clean for four years now. He works at the Transitco depot in Digbeth. He drives a bus. My cousin who stole from our grandmother to fund a heroin habit drives a bus. I still can’t quite believe it.
The education reform hit Yusuf in Year Three — he was in Year 5 at school. No more SATs prep. His teacher, Mr. Osei, sent a letter home saying they were moving to the play-based model and that Year 5 and 6 would be focused on projects, outdoor learning, and creativity instead of test preparation. Yusuf came home covered in mud from a science project about soil composition and talked about it for an hour straight. He’d never talked about school for an hour straight in his life.
Year Four — the heritage day. Mum registered for Eid al-Fitr. Her employer — the school kitchen — gave her the day off. Not from her annual leave. As a recognised day. She made a feast. The whole family came. Nani was there in her wheelchair, not really understanding why everyone was together but smiling. It was the last Eid before Nani died. I’m glad — so glad — that Mum had that day.
When Nani passed, the funeral reforms meant it was dignified and affordable. £1,200 for everything. A proper service. A proper burial. The imam, the washing, the shroud, the plot. Under the old system it would have been £3,500-£4,000 and Mum would have been paying it off for years. She paid it from the carer savings she’d been able to build up. Nani would have approved — she hated waste.
Year Five — free college. I enrolled in health and social care at South Birmingham College. I was 24. The youngest person in my row was 19. The oldest was 57 — a woman called Denise who’d been a dinner lady for thirty years and always wanted to be a carer. We studied together in the canteen. She was better at the anatomy modules than me. I was better at the policy stuff. We graduated together.
Year Six — the Fair Work Act. By now I was working as a care assistant in a residential home while finishing my qualification. The untimed lunch break changed my life more than almost anything else in the NRSA. I work with people with dementia. You can’t time that work. You can’t eat a sandwich in twelve minutes and then go back to someone who’s frightened and confused and give them your full patience. The untimed break meant I could eat properly, decompress, and go back to my residents as a human being, not an exhausted machine.
Year Seven — the care home transparency went live and my employer was terrified. Not because they were bad — they were actually decent. But the dashboard showed everything: staffing ratios, incident reports, complaints. The homes that were bad got exposed immediately. Families moved relatives. Three homes in Birmingham closed within six months because nobody would put their parents there once the data was visible. My home gained residents. Because we were good, and now people could see that we were good. Transparency rewarded the decent and punished the negligent. That’s how it should work.
Year Eight — the vet transparency. My cat, Biscuit, needed dental work. Under the old system, the private-equity-owned practice on the high street quoted me £680. I checked the published price list for the independent practice two miles away: £220 for the same procedure. Same outcome. £460 difference. Visible because the prices were published. I took Biscuit to the independent. She was fine. £460 in my pocket. Multiply that by every pet owner in the country and you see what transparency does.
Year Nine — I’m 28. I’m a qualified senior care assistant. I’m studying for my nursing access course at the free college — evenings, while I work days. I’ll be a registered nurse by 31 if everything goes to plan. I couldn’t have imagined this at 19. At 19, I was counting Nando’s shifts and eating frozen nuggets.
Year Ten — Yusuf is 20. He went through the Army Youth Programme in Year Eight. He’s a surveyor for the HSU4 project — he was on the team that fitted out the Birmingham section. He watched the PM ride the first train through the station he helped build. He called me from the platform: “Aisha, the PM just walked past me. I built this. I actually built this.” He was crying. My little brother who used to come home from school silent and defeated because SATs prep made him feel stupid — he built a tunnel station.
I’m 29. I’m going to be a nurse. My mum is retired on the carer’s pension she built up over nine years of recognised, paid caring. Tariq drives a bus. Yusuf builds tunnels. Biscuit has clean teeth. And the dashboard — I check it every Sunday, like everyone does. It’s just… how you know things are real. The numbers are there. They don’t lie. They never lied.
My heritage day is Eid al-Fitr. This year I made Nani’s biryani recipe. The one she made for the last Eid, when Mum had the day off for the first time. I made it in my own kitchen, in my own flat — a Homes for Life tenancy, five-year security, rent capped. Nani would have approved of all of it. Especially the bit where nobody wastes anything.