THE latest unemployment figures stand at 1.8 million, according to ONS figures revealed on March 18. The naive and privileged may think this is a reason to be cheerful, but the truth is very different. Unemployment figures have been manipulated for years to show what the government of the day wants the people to believe.

While the Tories and their supporters shout loudly about how the economy is in recovery and we are all doing very nicely, thank you, there is a bigger, generally silent and silenced voice that tells the painful truth of Britain in 2015.

The government would have us believe that the British economy is back on its feet and that we are all enjoying regular shopping sprees, second homes and new cars on the drives of our nice suburban mortgaged homes — well, apart from those few idle layabouts who live on the dole and don’t want to work.

Because we’re all better off under the Tories and we’ve all got a great standard of living with salaries that allow us to save, build up our retirement pensions and enjoy those essential luxury goods that are constantly thrust at us through advertising. We’re all earning enough to live comfortably and even luxuriously, right?

Wrong.

Not those who are forced off jobseeker’s allowance (JSA) after six months to fend for themselves or be held up by a partner’s income if they are fortunate enough to have one.

Not those on zero-hours contracts who wait, like men of old at the hiring markets, to see if they will be picked today to earn a few coppers.

Not those on so-called full-time employment of 16 to 24 hours, who don’t earn enough to live on and are therefore dependent on the state top-up benefits.

Not those young people on the despicable new “apprenticeships” earning around £2,000 a year, which is less than JSA and means they are still dependent on their families to survive. And probably jettisoned by the state-subsidised employer after 12 months, so they can bring another victim on board for a pittance. Such a situation is little more than state-sanctioned slavery.

My background was a not a privileged one. My father worked in low-paid unskilled jobs and earned very little — but he was still miraculously able to keep a family of four afloat with very careful budgeting and without claiming any benefits except child benefit for myself and younger brother.

This is certainly not a model to aspire to, but it does show that in the past — we’re talking the 1960s here — it was possible for a person to bring up a family on one wage, albeit without luxuries.

Today’s Tory Britain is a state where the rich care little, if at all, for the suffering of a significant proportion of the population. These ivory-tower types have never undergone the demeaning processes of visiting a jobcentre, of being refused benefits while struggling to pay necessary bills and having to choose between heating their home or putting food on the table.

They have never known the humiliation and despair of older working-age people — sometimes as young as their 40s but mostly in their 50s or early 60s — being considered “past it” and overlooked time and again for work by employers who go for the cheapest option (the more skills and experience you have, the more they’d have to pay you — and the shareholders wouldn’t like that). The elites will never suffer ill health, depression and anxiety through despair that their lives will never change for the better.

I know I speak the truth because I am in that mire of destructive poverty that affects increasing numbers in Tory Britain. Here’s my (recent) story.

My 57-year-old partner was made redundant three years ago from a job he loved. Almost the first thing this toxic government did when it got into office was to hobble the voluntary and community (or “third”) sector so that many lost their jobs. These jobs vanished from the employment market, possibly forever.

My partner was one of the victims. A working-class man from a poor single-parent background, he began an apprenticeship at the age of 15, left the industrial sector around 16 years ago and started from the bottom as a volunteer, putting himself through various training courses to gain the qualifications he was unable to take advantage of years earlier, before entering the third sector and working where he felt it mattered — helping others.

In 2009 we (perhaps foolishly) bought our first home, which we then lost in 2012 within six months of my partner’s redundancy, due to our inability to keep up the payments. In direct contrast to the belief that there would be help for people in our situation, we found that neither the building society nor the government were willing to assist — those schemes advertised on TV to help people in our situation were so tied up with rules and difficult-to-fulfil criteria that virtually nobody would qualify, so for us it was a case of “tough luck.”

We were also penalised for ending our mortgage ‘deal’ 18 months early (this was a forced sale, not through choice) so the small profit we made on the house was largely eaten up by extortionate admin charges — as if it was not punishment enough to lose our home.

Without children or any acknowledged health problem (despite my poor mental health and my partner’s degenerative congenital medical condition) we had little hope of securing public housing and had to settle for a private rent that was nearly as costly as our mortgage had been. We have been comparatively fortunate in that respect. Our rented home is in good repair and our landlord is not a profiteering portfolio holder, but we still struggled to find a home at all due to having two dogs — so many rental properties in the private sector now refuse anyone with a pet.

We have been struggling to survive on a daily basis for the past three years, and it’s taken its toll. My partner — a conscientious, reliable worker, with personal qualities and work-related skills that would be a credit to any employer — has applied for over 1,000 jobs since before the unemployment axe fell. He believed that he would not be without work for more than a couple of months.

He has been offered perhaps six interviews in three years. His current job as a school crossing patrol person — a lollipop man — brings in £208 a month for seven hours a week worked in all weathers. A hundred pounds goes straight into the car as fuel because living where we do there is no public transport to the school. He has to make four journeys a day, in contrast to most workers’ two, all to earn less than JSA.

I won’t even go into the situation regarding benefits except to say that we qualify for none as I work full time — on less than I did 20 years ago in a similar job in my native London. We have health needs and regular prescriptions, but get no help there either.

Only people on certain benefits get free prescriptions, and we apparently have more than enough to live on according to the government. It’s hardly our fault if market rents are way higher than the local housing allowance, but we are the ones punished for the extortionate cost of private rentals.

Yesterday my GP told me that I have diabetes and a probable heart condition, which she said would certainly not have been helped by the stress I have been under for the past few years. She’s putting me on beta blockers so I can try to continue to cope with an untenable work and home (neighbours from hell living next door) situation.

Last year I was diagnosed as suffering from complex post-traumatic stress disorder, which has its roots back to childhood and two major traumatic experiences suffered in my 20s. This resulted in me losing a much-loved job with a well-known London council in the mid-1990s. At the time I was deemed “permanently unfit to work” aged just 34.

I’m awaiting therapy from an NHS mental health service so stretched that patients wait months for an initial appointment. Meantime, I struggle to cope mentally and now physically with the burden of keeping myself, husband and dogs housed and fed. Without help from our local foodbank and my wonderful, caring union we would not have survived last year. I’m 55 but on some days feel more like 85.

This country needs a serous political shake-up. Capitalism has robbed people of compassion as everyone is pitted against their neighbour for jobs and status; the trickle-down effect is a myth. We have lost our world-class manufacturing industries without any replacement jobs for the jettisoned workers.

We the people have been so brainwashed by decades of profit worship that the concept of socialism is seen as dangerous and destructive when in fact it is the very opposite and the only way to redress the inequalities we see throughout our modern society.

With the Labour Party showing no sign of bringing back the socialist Clause 4 of its constitution, which was so shamefully axed by new Labour, it is up to us to hold the torch for fairness and hope for the future. Who will be willing to make that stand?