Seriously though, how do we change that perception?
Ban the Daily Heil/Express/Torygraph/rag for a fucking start, spreading their hate and racist bullshit.
Seriously, these people saying this in Barnsley or wherever feel failed by 'the system'. They see the consumerist nirvana portrayed by brainwashing adverts and 'celebridees' with their ostentatious lifestyles, and contrast it to their own existences. The modern consumerists society dismisses you as a failure if you can't afford that nice house with shiny new kitchen, that cool car, those idyllic holidays, that expensive perfume for your immaculate missus and the jewellery.
They're told by the papers they buy/read and the social media they follow that it's the fault of immigrants and the EU and benefit scroungers and lefty-wokeists and unions. And they can see there are people who dont look and sound like them, living all around them And they'll build up in their heads that these furriners seem like they're doing ok, better than themselves (mostly the opposite is true). They conclude that, as they themselves are struggling, there's just not enough to go round with all these extra people.
Yet there is more than enough wealth to go round. The problem is that too much of it is hoarded by a tiny financial elite.
Richest 1% have almost a quarter of UK wealth, study claims
Official figures have missed £800bn of private assets, says thinktank, amid calls for wealth tax to fund Covid recovery
https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2021/jan/03/richest-1-have-almost-a-quarter-of-uk-wealth-study-claimsOf course, the [tax-dodging, billionaire] owners of those newspapers I listed (Rothermere, Barclay, Murdoch) want to divert the attention of the disaffected away from billionaires and tax-dodging shitbags. So they manufacture demons for the oiks to hate.