Polly Gillespie: Could I be a lady in a van?

There but for the grace of God go any of us without a trust fund or some fountain of money. Photo / Supplied

Oh God, I don't want to live in a car. I've worked out if I put the back seats down (after removing a large cricket bag, baskets of clothes, my sister's ashes, and eight umbrellas) we could put a blow-up bed in the back and sleep. Uncomfortably. And we could sit two more people in the front seats. Not ideal, but doable.

What about cooking and showering and toilet activity? Where do I park? Do I have to keep moving? If so, how do I pay for gas? Am I going to start smelling bad? I don't want to smell bad. Holy crap, I don't want to live in a car. There but for the grace of God go any of us without a trust fund or some fountain of money. Sadly, they're not selling money fountains on Trade Me.

It was 1991 and we were so excited to be getting Sky TV. It wasn't for the movies or sport. We were news junkies. We were hanging out for CNN. Back then CNN was almost exclusively live from America. Not being a business person, the Asian markets were of no interest to me. American CNN was my news drug of choice.

We watched history unfold like never before. We were transfixed by the David Koresh saga, the Oklahoma bombing, and the Russian White House siege. We were addicted to watching events unravel on this new 24-hour news format. At the time there were filler trailers that played while Americans got their American commercials. I well remember a correspondent in one of those programme trailers quoting what's believed to be a Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times."

I rather fear those interesting times have arrived.

My politics have been mercurial. Initially I swung to the left, hard and fast. Then when I started making good money I climbed to my lofty tower and sat counting my cash and chopping off heads a little to the right - although I've always been liberal around gay marriage and equal rights.

I qualified my bourgeois appetites by parroting everyone else with a bit of money who squawked: "I work hard for my money!" It's a silly thing to say. Everyone works hard for their money. Guys who lay bricks in the rain work hard for their money.

Now my political pendulum has swung back and stopped in the middle. Not unlike Miley Cyrus I've come in like a wrecking ball, swinging left and right and a little to the left again.

Not an overly enviable place to be. It would be far easier to have cognitive dissonance and either sit in my tower spouting "I work hard for my money! Private education! Private health care! Leave me alone", or "The rich are wankers. Yeah. The rich are getting richer. And the poor get the picture! You pack of greedy, heartless tossers!"

Instead I'm a bit bloody terrified, as I should be. The world's sitting very precariously on the brink of something that could be a revolution. The fact that the two parties duelling to the end for Austrian power were the lefty Greens, and the far, far right is a wee bit startling.

It's a worrying time. The Philippines are now ruled by a far right party that appears to want to bring down the Catholic Church. Well, that sounds like an epic religious crusade waiting to happen.

So here I am in an odd spot. I have a friend living in a car, and another buying an Aston Martin Vanquish, which I can assure you they will not be living in. I'm in political no-man's land with a bloody annoying conscience. My conscience is loud and sometimes when I open my mouth just to breathe I find myself quoting Bernie Sanders and Michael Joseph Savage.

We believed the American Dream. We were sold it: the idea that everyone can be anything. That the poor can become rich and the meek become mighty, but that's not always true. Life is not fair and not everyone has the faith, hope, upbringing and sometimes even the intelligence to become rich.

It's not an even playing field and telling people it's their fault they're poor isn't always accurate. I used to believe it, but I don't anymore. I'm not angry that life's not fair, I just accept it. And in accepting it I understand that not everyone will escape from living in a car, on the street, or without the money to pay a ludicrous motel bill.

It's not an even playing field. Some people are born into money. Some are born into families that are talented but lack ambition (like me) and some of us can't see past the next rock on the path of hopelessness.

Not everyone can make it. Not everyone can be a president. Not everyone can recover from addiction. So we have a dilemma. We were fed a line. Clearly we need to stop and come up with a better plan than sending people away from the city, putting them up in motels they could never dream of affording, or expecting them to live in cars.

"May you live in interesting times." Interesting times all right.

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