I touched on this in an earlier post, but I am definitely seeing signs of a concerted effort to "clean up" London in the run up to the 2012 Olympics. I don't mean sweeping up the rubbish, I mean a concerted effort to crack down on various freedoms and protests, and a further targeting of the disadvantaged, all as part of the process of packaging London for the (increasingly desperate, given Osborne's mishandling of the economy) sales, business, and tourism boom which is what the Olympics is all about these days.
Westminster Council is trying to banish the homeless by banning people from feeding them.
Boris Johnson (aided and abetted again by Westminster Council) is going through the courts to try and get rid of Brian Haw and his anti-war protest in Parliament Square.
There have been various reports on Indymedia about eastern European vagrants in the East End being rounded up and deported back to their country of origin. The UK is allowed to do this to homeless foreign nationals provided they are going back to a hostel or similar in their own country, and apparently the deportation often happens, but the hostel at the other end doesn't.
Finally, of course, following those dickheads from Black Bloc smashing bank windows on Saturday, Theresa May must have been chortling into her Horlicks that night as she seamlessly began the process of tightening up the policing of demos, talking about barring "known troublemakers" (ie anyone who disagrees with Cameron) from the right to protest. Well done, Black Bloc. Home Secretary 1 (black bloc, o.g.) Black Bloc 0. The pretext currently being used for this is the upcoming Royal Wedding, but given that the Olympics is following on in relatively short order behind this, I doubt anything brought in for the Royal Wedding is going to be repealed before the Olympics (or after it, come to that!)
We know already of course, that finding massive numbers of police from the secret deep freeze underneath Scotland Yard where they keep them in cryogenic suspension until there is a foreign tyrant who wants his goon squad to be able to run through London with the Olympic flag, or there's a miners' strike or something, is never a problem for the government. It's only when you are being robbed, mugged or raped that there is rarely a bobby on the beat.
I could be wrong. Maybe it is too early to discern a pattern emerging. But I will be watching this.
Showing posts with label homelessness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label homelessness. Show all posts
Tuesday, 29 March 2011
Emergency, War 10!
The Tories and their stooges in the Mini-Tories have been quick to point out that the cost of the war against Libya will not come out of any existing budgets from Government departments already squeezed by the cuts, cut - in some cases - to the bone, and then beyond.
No, it will, instead, apparently, come out of a "contingency fund" in the Treasury, which is kept for emergencies and dire situations, according to Danny Alexander, on BBC's Question Time.
Now just hang on a cotton-pickin minute, thar, boy! Run that by me one more time, as Captain said to Tenniel or vice versa. The country is allegedly stony broke, on its uppers, so much so that the church mice are having a whip-round for us and yet, all the time, we're all in this together (though clearly some of us are "in it" up to our necks and sinking fast, while others haven't even had their expensive shoes splashed, yet) and all this time, the Treasury has a secret slush fund, a giant piggy bank in the underground car park, a hidden panel that, when pressed reveals a cupboard stuffed with £50 notes or something? What?!?!
Not only a secret slush fund, but one which must be fairly substantial, since it can stand funding the UK bombing the crap out of Benghazi with missiles that cost £800,000 each!
This, for me, raises a very important question. If this money is supposed to be used for emergencies, when is an "emergency" not an "emergency"? If we have got to the stage where we're shutting hospital wards, Sure Start centres and libraries, that is a bloody emergency! If we have got to the stage where we're cutting police because we can no longer afford to keep our streets safe, that is an emegency! If we've got to the stage where thousands of people are being laid off - in the construction industry for example - that is an emergency. If we've got people having their houses repossessed and being turned out onto the streets, that is an emergency.
Forget foreign adventurism and posturing on the world stage. We have little or no idea who these Libyan rebels are, or, in the long run, whether the situation there would be better or worse for our intervention. The examples of Iraq and Afghanistan don't hold out much hope.
Meanwhile, you don't need a flashing blue light and a howling siren to see that there are many more urgent "emergencies" at home, caused by the Con-Dims "bombing" their own economy, to appease the markets and bankers, that deserve much more to benefit from the judicious application of Danny Alexander's secret slush fund.
No, it will, instead, apparently, come out of a "contingency fund" in the Treasury, which is kept for emergencies and dire situations, according to Danny Alexander, on BBC's Question Time.
Now just hang on a cotton-pickin minute, thar, boy! Run that by me one more time, as Captain said to Tenniel or vice versa. The country is allegedly stony broke, on its uppers, so much so that the church mice are having a whip-round for us and yet, all the time, we're all in this together (though clearly some of us are "in it" up to our necks and sinking fast, while others haven't even had their expensive shoes splashed, yet) and all this time, the Treasury has a secret slush fund, a giant piggy bank in the underground car park, a hidden panel that, when pressed reveals a cupboard stuffed with £50 notes or something? What?!?!
Not only a secret slush fund, but one which must be fairly substantial, since it can stand funding the UK bombing the crap out of Benghazi with missiles that cost £800,000 each!
This, for me, raises a very important question. If this money is supposed to be used for emergencies, when is an "emergency" not an "emergency"? If we have got to the stage where we're shutting hospital wards, Sure Start centres and libraries, that is a bloody emergency! If we have got to the stage where we're cutting police because we can no longer afford to keep our streets safe, that is an emegency! If we've got to the stage where thousands of people are being laid off - in the construction industry for example - that is an emergency. If we've got people having their houses repossessed and being turned out onto the streets, that is an emergency.
Forget foreign adventurism and posturing on the world stage. We have little or no idea who these Libyan rebels are, or, in the long run, whether the situation there would be better or worse for our intervention. The examples of Iraq and Afghanistan don't hold out much hope.
Meanwhile, you don't need a flashing blue light and a howling siren to see that there are many more urgent "emergencies" at home, caused by the Con-Dims "bombing" their own economy, to appease the markets and bankers, that deserve much more to benefit from the judicious application of Danny Alexander's secret slush fund.
Sunday, 13 March 2011
A Mess of "Potage"
I stood amazed, during the week, at the proposal by Westminster Council to ban the “soup run” to homeless people in their area. Of course, on one level, we should not be surprised at a bunch of self-serving, fat burghers and Pharisees have concocted such an idea. They have “form” in that respect, after all. Was it not Westminster Council that banned the run in their hallowed precincts at Christmas the other year? Unbelievably, on that occasion, it was supported by the editor of “The Big Issue” and I wrote to him and told him he was an idiot. He never replied. Perhaps he already knew.
To the councillors of Westminster, it would seem that the homeless are a sort of wilful and tiresome irritation, so obsessed with the taste of Campbell’s Condensed Tomato that they are willing to leave their homes and their jobs, hitch-hike to London, and sleep rough in a doorway in Covent Garden just for a sniff of the stuff. It is an indicator of just how far those set in authority over us take us for mugs, that this kind of bollocks is actually served up as some sort of justification for the ban.
The truth, I suspect, lies nearer to the fact that rich people who live in Westminster don’t like seeing poor and homeless people as they go about their daily social round. It grates on the residual node of what used to be their shame gene, before they had it surgically removed. It reminds them of the fundamental injustice of their continued existence, compared to the people in our society who are really struggling. Johann Hari, writing tellingly about this in The Independent, points to the distant view of Canary Wharf and all its glittering towers, from the perspective of the homeless who “live” – or rather, exist – in Covent Garden.
Anyway, I have written to the Worshipful the Lord Mayor of Westminster asking her what she intends to do about the homeless, because you can’t ban them from existing. Now that no one will feed them, will they be left, in some cases no doubt, to starve in the gutter? I await the reply (if any) with interest. Because, as it says in my Bible, if they cared to look, “the poor are always with us”.
And if you could make horrible nasty things vanish just by banning them, someone would have banned Westminster Council a long time ago.
To the councillors of Westminster, it would seem that the homeless are a sort of wilful and tiresome irritation, so obsessed with the taste of Campbell’s Condensed Tomato that they are willing to leave their homes and their jobs, hitch-hike to London, and sleep rough in a doorway in Covent Garden just for a sniff of the stuff. It is an indicator of just how far those set in authority over us take us for mugs, that this kind of bollocks is actually served up as some sort of justification for the ban.
The truth, I suspect, lies nearer to the fact that rich people who live in Westminster don’t like seeing poor and homeless people as they go about their daily social round. It grates on the residual node of what used to be their shame gene, before they had it surgically removed. It reminds them of the fundamental injustice of their continued existence, compared to the people in our society who are really struggling. Johann Hari, writing tellingly about this in The Independent, points to the distant view of Canary Wharf and all its glittering towers, from the perspective of the homeless who “live” – or rather, exist – in Covent Garden.
Anyway, I have written to the Worshipful the Lord Mayor of Westminster asking her what she intends to do about the homeless, because you can’t ban them from existing. Now that no one will feed them, will they be left, in some cases no doubt, to starve in the gutter? I await the reply (if any) with interest. Because, as it says in my Bible, if they cared to look, “the poor are always with us”.
And if you could make horrible nasty things vanish just by banning them, someone would have banned Westminster Council a long time ago.
Friday, 4 February 2011
Pass the Parcel
One thing which was obvious from the start, when the Tories and the Lib Dims agreed their pact made in hell with all the bonhomie of Von Ribbentrop and Stalin breaking out the celebratory vodka, was that the amount of money given to councils by central government was going to be decimated.
The Tories hate the public service ethos, they would much prefer everything to be privatised for the benefit of shareholders and their rich toffee-nosed friends in the City. They hoped of course that “The Big Society” would step in and make good some of the deficit, so that if, for instance, your council couldn’t afford to empty your bin any more, a possee of well-meaning citizens and charities could do it instead. The cuts, however, are damaging the income of charities as well – who has the wherewithal to donate to charity when their own job is under threat?
Now that The Big Society isn’t happening, a reasonable person might expect contrition and a re-think, but the Tories and their catamites are pressing on regardless into the valley of death. Their chief cheerleaders in this divide and rule programme of starving the councils of cash and then blaming them when they are unable to provide essential services are Eric Pickles and Grant Shapps at the Department of Communities. [A misnomer if ever there was one. Department for Dismantling Communities would be a more apposite title, these days]
Pickles operates on precisely the opposite principle to his more famous namesake, Wilfred, who was known for his catchphrase “Give ‘Em the Money, Mabel”. The Tories like to trot him out as their equivalent of John Prescott, but in fact he has fewer appealing attributes and even less charisma and life-experience, having risen in obscurity from the ranks of Bradford Council. Despite the fundamental dishonesty of a policy which denies councils the money to carry out essential services and then blames them for not emptying the bins, Pickles is at least straightforward about what he does.
Grant Shapps was in the news recently for holding up the “fact” that Manchester City Council had a “Twitter Tsar” on their payroll, at vast expense, naturally. When the story was investigated further, however, it was discovered that the “Twitter Tsar” was, in fact, the person who ran the Council’s web sites, and that “tweeting” was merely a small part of what his job entailed.
One of the most damaging aspects of this slash and burn approach to local authority funding by the Department of Communities has of course been its impact on the homeless and other vulnerable people who depend on Council social care.
We’ve seen this happen particularly in Nottingham, recently, where Framework, a local charity working to alleviate the problems of homelessness and deprivation, have been forced to the brink of legal action over budget cuts emanating from central government
Andrew Redfern, Chief Executive of Framework, said:
“We have served ‘letters prior to action’ (the first stage of a judicial review) on the department for Communities and Local Government and Nottingham City Council. There is a deadline for them to respond and we hope this may help them to resolve the issue.
“Framework serves homeless and vulnerable people, including those with mental health, substance and alcohol problems, older and younger people, people with learning disabilities and women fleeing domestic violence. We have a duty to defend the thousands of people who will lose their support and may become homeless because of the cuts. Whatever the outcome of this legal action I hope it will shine a light on the ludicrous nature of the situation.
“In the Comprehensive Spending Review the government announced a reduction in the national SP budget of only 12% in real terms over four years. The actual amount of cash available for the programme next year is barely 1% below the figure for the current year, yet it transpires that Nottingham City Council is proposing a cut of 45% (from £22.37m to £12.93m a reduction of £9.4m) based on its interpretation of the local government settlement. It will ameliorate this with an extra £2m for one year only.
“The department for Communities and Local Government disputes the city council’s figures stating that Nottingham’s SP allocation has been reduced by no more than 11.3%. The department has not yet given a precise figure.
“The argument between central and local government leaves us perplexed. The confusion about the settlement is causing chaos. The city council has issued de-commissioning notices for many of its SP-funded services from the end of March 2011 and reduced contract values on the others to £1 per annum. In view of this we have had no choice but to give notice to over 200 staff working directly with vulnerable people in the city.
“We are receiving more and more enquiries from service-users and concerned members of the public asking what will happen in April.
“The proposed cuts will have a devastating impact on the city. Levels of rough sleeping, crime, anti-social behaviour, ill-health, unemployment and poverty will all increase.
“We have to do whatever we can to stop the cuts. Our decision to seek a judicial review is one of the ways we are trying to do this,” added Mr Redfern.
Councillor John Collins, the leader of Nottingham City Council, has written an open letter to Grant Shapps pointing out the errors in his calculations of the amount by which the Support Grant has been cut. Not that this has made any difference. He may as well have saved his breath to cool his porridge.
The fact is that Grant Shapps doesn’t need the effects of his actions pointing out to him. He knows already what the effects are, and if he doesn’t, then he has (still) plenty of civil servants who can explain it to him. It's not a regrettable mistake, it's a deliberate strategy.
Once again, it is past midnight as I sit here, scribing out these words by the combined light of a low-energy light bulb in the standard lamp and the glow of the remaining coals through the window of the stove.
I can hear the wind buffeting the trees in the garden making them thrash about as if in pain, and I can hear the rain, sounding for all the world like handfuls of gravel being flung against the windows of the conservatory.
In olden days, of course, this sort of weather would be the backdrop for a secret lover arriving at your window in the middle of the night. In a poem by Keats for example, or a novel by Thomas Hardy. These days, we’re not so romantic, and every time I hear the rain driving against the conservatory, I think of those forced to be out there in the night, stuck out in the rain with no choice and nowhere to go.
And I think of those who voted for the Tories and the Liberal Dimwits at the last election, and I wonder if they are happy with this outcome? Happy that people are sleeping out in the perishing cold and the rain?
Is Grant Shapps happy with the results of his actions? Is David Cameron, as he goes back home for the weekend to his second home in his constituency, paid for by us, or to Chequers, with its hundreds of bedrooms, paid for by us?
And again I ask, if you are NOT happy with the outcome, why do you allow it to continue?
For the rest of us, the streets are full of cobbles and there are many, many windows in Whitehall. Given that the official opposition is about as much use as a chocolate teapot, what we need is an opposition to the opposition. What we need is an indefinite general strike against the cuts until the government gives in, and calls a general election!
The Tories hate the public service ethos, they would much prefer everything to be privatised for the benefit of shareholders and their rich toffee-nosed friends in the City. They hoped of course that “The Big Society” would step in and make good some of the deficit, so that if, for instance, your council couldn’t afford to empty your bin any more, a possee of well-meaning citizens and charities could do it instead. The cuts, however, are damaging the income of charities as well – who has the wherewithal to donate to charity when their own job is under threat?
Now that The Big Society isn’t happening, a reasonable person might expect contrition and a re-think, but the Tories and their catamites are pressing on regardless into the valley of death. Their chief cheerleaders in this divide and rule programme of starving the councils of cash and then blaming them when they are unable to provide essential services are Eric Pickles and Grant Shapps at the Department of Communities. [A misnomer if ever there was one. Department for Dismantling Communities would be a more apposite title, these days]
Pickles operates on precisely the opposite principle to his more famous namesake, Wilfred, who was known for his catchphrase “Give ‘Em the Money, Mabel”. The Tories like to trot him out as their equivalent of John Prescott, but in fact he has fewer appealing attributes and even less charisma and life-experience, having risen in obscurity from the ranks of Bradford Council. Despite the fundamental dishonesty of a policy which denies councils the money to carry out essential services and then blames them for not emptying the bins, Pickles is at least straightforward about what he does.
Grant Shapps was in the news recently for holding up the “fact” that Manchester City Council had a “Twitter Tsar” on their payroll, at vast expense, naturally. When the story was investigated further, however, it was discovered that the “Twitter Tsar” was, in fact, the person who ran the Council’s web sites, and that “tweeting” was merely a small part of what his job entailed.
One of the most damaging aspects of this slash and burn approach to local authority funding by the Department of Communities has of course been its impact on the homeless and other vulnerable people who depend on Council social care.
We’ve seen this happen particularly in Nottingham, recently, where Framework, a local charity working to alleviate the problems of homelessness and deprivation, have been forced to the brink of legal action over budget cuts emanating from central government
Andrew Redfern, Chief Executive of Framework, said:
“We have served ‘letters prior to action’ (the first stage of a judicial review) on the department for Communities and Local Government and Nottingham City Council. There is a deadline for them to respond and we hope this may help them to resolve the issue.
“Framework serves homeless and vulnerable people, including those with mental health, substance and alcohol problems, older and younger people, people with learning disabilities and women fleeing domestic violence. We have a duty to defend the thousands of people who will lose their support and may become homeless because of the cuts. Whatever the outcome of this legal action I hope it will shine a light on the ludicrous nature of the situation.
“In the Comprehensive Spending Review the government announced a reduction in the national SP budget of only 12% in real terms over four years. The actual amount of cash available for the programme next year is barely 1% below the figure for the current year, yet it transpires that Nottingham City Council is proposing a cut of 45% (from £22.37m to £12.93m a reduction of £9.4m) based on its interpretation of the local government settlement. It will ameliorate this with an extra £2m for one year only.
“The department for Communities and Local Government disputes the city council’s figures stating that Nottingham’s SP allocation has been reduced by no more than 11.3%. The department has not yet given a precise figure.
“The argument between central and local government leaves us perplexed. The confusion about the settlement is causing chaos. The city council has issued de-commissioning notices for many of its SP-funded services from the end of March 2011 and reduced contract values on the others to £1 per annum. In view of this we have had no choice but to give notice to over 200 staff working directly with vulnerable people in the city.
“We are receiving more and more enquiries from service-users and concerned members of the public asking what will happen in April.
“The proposed cuts will have a devastating impact on the city. Levels of rough sleeping, crime, anti-social behaviour, ill-health, unemployment and poverty will all increase.
“We have to do whatever we can to stop the cuts. Our decision to seek a judicial review is one of the ways we are trying to do this,” added Mr Redfern.
Councillor John Collins, the leader of Nottingham City Council, has written an open letter to Grant Shapps pointing out the errors in his calculations of the amount by which the Support Grant has been cut. Not that this has made any difference. He may as well have saved his breath to cool his porridge.
The fact is that Grant Shapps doesn’t need the effects of his actions pointing out to him. He knows already what the effects are, and if he doesn’t, then he has (still) plenty of civil servants who can explain it to him. It's not a regrettable mistake, it's a deliberate strategy.
Once again, it is past midnight as I sit here, scribing out these words by the combined light of a low-energy light bulb in the standard lamp and the glow of the remaining coals through the window of the stove.
I can hear the wind buffeting the trees in the garden making them thrash about as if in pain, and I can hear the rain, sounding for all the world like handfuls of gravel being flung against the windows of the conservatory.
In olden days, of course, this sort of weather would be the backdrop for a secret lover arriving at your window in the middle of the night. In a poem by Keats for example, or a novel by Thomas Hardy. These days, we’re not so romantic, and every time I hear the rain driving against the conservatory, I think of those forced to be out there in the night, stuck out in the rain with no choice and nowhere to go.
And I think of those who voted for the Tories and the Liberal Dimwits at the last election, and I wonder if they are happy with this outcome? Happy that people are sleeping out in the perishing cold and the rain?
Is Grant Shapps happy with the results of his actions? Is David Cameron, as he goes back home for the weekend to his second home in his constituency, paid for by us, or to Chequers, with its hundreds of bedrooms, paid for by us?
And again I ask, if you are NOT happy with the outcome, why do you allow it to continue?
For the rest of us, the streets are full of cobbles and there are many, many windows in Whitehall. Given that the official opposition is about as much use as a chocolate teapot, what we need is an opposition to the opposition. What we need is an indefinite general strike against the cuts until the government gives in, and calls a general election!
Monday, 22 November 2010
Get Down, Shapp!
The Tories didn't really wait so long before showing their true colours.
Since the flawed election, which saw them seize power without a mandate, with the aid of their lackeys and lickspittles in the Liberal Democrats, a slew of hateful policies, proposals and suggestions, mainly aimed at targeting the poor, and demonising the disabled and those on benefits, has poured forth like a sewer from Central Office, or wherever their septic think tank is located these days.
As I have said elsewhere, I suspect that some of these proposals may be not entirely serious, kite-flying by some chosen mouthpiece (other orifices are available, some of them Lord Young) to test public reaction.
Their latest idea is about Social Housing, floated by Grant Shapps, and must surely fall into that category. It achieves the unique distinction of being not only gaga and unworkable, but also running counter to Tory policy as established by their patron saint, the blessed Margaret Thatcher, and her ideology.
In Mrs Thatcher's era, if you lived in a council house and you did well for yourself, and prospered materially, you might get to buy your house, thus denuding the UK's social housing stock, which many thousands did in the 1980s. Nowadays, if you live in a council house, and your material circumstances improve, under this pispotical proposal, you are likely to find yourself being evicted!
The stated aim is to end the concept of council house tenancies for life. Why? What possible good can it do, and where are the people supposed to move to? Grant Shapps is part of the Department of Communities. What has this proposal got to do with communities?
What it is about is, because the government doesn't want to build more social housing, it is making the existing stock "go further" by moving on the people who live there into the private sector, and bringing in people who are on the waiting list!
Compared, of course, to the obvious policy, of just building more social housing to start with.
Since the flawed election, which saw them seize power without a mandate, with the aid of their lackeys and lickspittles in the Liberal Democrats, a slew of hateful policies, proposals and suggestions, mainly aimed at targeting the poor, and demonising the disabled and those on benefits, has poured forth like a sewer from Central Office, or wherever their septic think tank is located these days.
As I have said elsewhere, I suspect that some of these proposals may be not entirely serious, kite-flying by some chosen mouthpiece (other orifices are available, some of them Lord Young) to test public reaction.
Their latest idea is about Social Housing, floated by Grant Shapps, and must surely fall into that category. It achieves the unique distinction of being not only gaga and unworkable, but also running counter to Tory policy as established by their patron saint, the blessed Margaret Thatcher, and her ideology.
In Mrs Thatcher's era, if you lived in a council house and you did well for yourself, and prospered materially, you might get to buy your house, thus denuding the UK's social housing stock, which many thousands did in the 1980s. Nowadays, if you live in a council house, and your material circumstances improve, under this pispotical proposal, you are likely to find yourself being evicted!
The stated aim is to end the concept of council house tenancies for life. Why? What possible good can it do, and where are the people supposed to move to? Grant Shapps is part of the Department of Communities. What has this proposal got to do with communities?
What it is about is, because the government doesn't want to build more social housing, it is making the existing stock "go further" by moving on the people who live there into the private sector, and bringing in people who are on the waiting list!
Compared, of course, to the obvious policy, of just building more social housing to start with.
Tuesday, 16 November 2010
The Road To Weakened Fear
While I have been stuck in hospital over the summer, I have been struck by a new phenomenon, deliberately engineered by the government, to keep us all cowed and apprehensive. Austerity anxiety.
I feel many people are cowed and anxious over what the future will bring, because the government has been deliberately pumping up the volume over the cuts, precisely in order to keep people in a subdued mood and stop them asking awkward questions like "why should poor people pay for the mistakes of rich people?”
Their other trick is to practice "doublespeak" by insisting that "we are all in this together" while simultaneously spreading scare stories about so--called "benefit scroungers" to divide and rule the opposition and promote disharmony in society.
It is a fundamentally dishonest and evil policy, and it is quite deliberate, as you would expect from a fundamentally dishonest and evil government. I would echo Bevan's comment about "lower than vermin", pace Harriet Harman, but I don't want to insult the vermin.
I see that the Daily Mail is reporting Rowan Williams' attack on this idea as "Archbishop attacks proposals to make the workshy pick litter" or some such headline.
The workshy? Excuse me?? The WORKSHY?????
Who the HELL are Daily Mail journalists, with their louche lifestyle, their excesses of alcohol and drugs, their credit card bills, which they happily write about in their columns, who the HELL gave these LEECHES the right to call the long term unemployed the "workshy".
I'd like to see them do a ten hour shift in a call centre for nothing, as an "interview" for a job, only to be told the week after that "you haven't been selected for the next round", as scandalously happened recently to my friend Phil, unemployed now for getting on two years and desperate for anything in a South Yorkshire economy that is collapsing round everyones' ears because of CleggTory cuts. It’s a great way to get workers for free without any tiresome H&S, tax, PAYE or wages. I wouldn't be surprised if the bastards aren't holding "interviews" every day!
How DARE the Daily Mail? Whilever Phil is reduced to digging up his garden and growing his own winter veg to survive on the dole, there should be public burnings of the Daily Mail outside every labour exchange.
Here's my question to anyone who thinks the long term unemployed are "workshy" :-
*W H E R E * A R E * T H E * J O B S ?
Where are the jobs in
Rochdale (84% unemployment)
Middlesbrough (67% unemployment)
Sparkbrook, Birmingham (63% unemployment)
Birkenhead (62% unemployment)
Where are the jobs in Grimethorpe? Where are the jobs in Rusty Lane, West Bromwich?
I have recently been re-reading The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell, and SOS: Talks on Unemployment by S. P. B. Mais, two books which in their own way bookend the unemployment crisis of the 1930s, appearing in 1937 and 1933 respectively. One of the most telling passages is where Orwell discusses the unemployment figures. It is worth quoting at length:
When you see the unemployment figures quoted at two millions, it is fatally easy to take this as meaning that two million people are out of work and the rest of the population is comparatively comfortable. I admit that till recently I was in the habit of doing so myself. I used to calculate that if you put the registered unemployed at round about two millions and threw in the destitute and those who for one reason and another were not registered, you might take the number of underfed people in England (for everyone on the dole or thereabouts is underfed) as being, at the very most, five millions.
This is an enormous under-estimate, because, in the first place, the only people shown on unemployment figures are those actually drawing the dole — that is, in general, heads of families. An unemployed man's dependants do not figure on the list unless they too are drawing a separate allowance. A Labour Exchange officer told me that to get at the real number of people living on (not drawing) the dole, you have got to multiply the official figures by something over three. This alone brings the number of unemployed to round about six millions. But in addition there are great numbers of people who are in work but who, from a financial point of view, might equally well be unemployed, because they are not drawing anything that can be described as a living wage. Allow for these and their dependants, throw in as before the old-age pensioners, the destitute, and other nondescripts, and you get an underfed population of well over ten millions.
Some things have changed since 1937, such as the ratio of family heads to dependents, but a similar calculation could still be done to show that the “real” consequences of unemployment are far higher than shown by the official figures.
"Underfed" might nowadays be substituted with “badly fed” though Orwell also drew attention to how easy it was, even in 1937, to buy cheap, bad food to cheer yourself up while unemployed. In that respect, Phil is doing himself a favour by growing his own veg rather than buying Micro-Chips from Iceland.
And though things have may changed in some respects since it was written, what is really chilling about going back to The Road to Wigan Pier after a period of time, as I have done, is how much of it is startlingly prescient of 2010. To look for the philosophical antecedents of David Cameron, George Osborne, and Nicholas Clegg, you have to go back not only to Thatcher, the obvious model for driving a chariot with knives on the wheels through the ranks of public service, but also to the 1930s.
I shouldn’t be at all surprised, when you add the 600,000 redundancies which may result from the cuts to whatever the current announced “public” unemployment figure is, to see hunger marches again. In fact, before they become necessary, I think we ought to re-enact them, to remind this government, which has no legitimacy, and which was cobbled together over a weekend on the back of some spurious rumour about Greece and the Euro and the markets which everyone has now conveniently forgotten, of the consequences of its actions.
Since unemployment is likely to assume huge proportions in the lives of many of us over the next year or so, as the cuts begin to bite, it is worth devoting some time to an attempt at analysing some of the common causes and solutions, if any, and also what resonances there are between today’s causes and remedies and those of the 1930s.
Unemployment and the Impact of Mechanisation
This is chiefly only felt on manufacturing industry. There are plenty of “jobs” needing doing that are not affected by increased mechanisation, and never will be. What we are really arguing about here is the nature of work itself, and the value of different types of work. Of course, it is futile trying to rank different types of work by value. One might as well try and rank potatoes and apricots. But it doesn’t stop the boors, bores and bigots who bang on about “non-jobs” and “real jobs”, as if digging a hole in the road is somehow to be ranked higher than, say, cleaning a ward in a hospital, when in fact they are just different.
Globalisation, localism, and niche marketing
The question of how far it is reasonable to expect someone to travel a) in pursuit of a job and b) to commute to work once they have got a job, is critical to the argument of “on your bike” as a means of solving unemployment. Much as the Tories and their Liberal stooges would like to see the sort of “flexible” jobs market I described earlier, where people do a little bit here, a little bit there, and travel for hours in between, there are limits of practicality. There are some jobs where catching a bus for two hours, doing and eight hour day, and then catching a bus home for two more hours, is going to be a borderline decision. True, it is (for some strange reason) always easier to get a job when you have already got a job, than to get one when you are unemployed, but that in itself is not a reason for taking a borderline job.
There is also the issue of quality of life. Otherwise, if quality of life did not matter, it would be easy for an unemployed man to go and get a job at the other end of the country, live in a hostel, and just send money home. But what sort of a life is that, when he is reduced purely to a unit of economic production and never sees his family from one month end to the next.
Globalisation merely extends this principle. If the work is in China, then get on your rickshaw, and go and get a job in China, and Fedex the money home to Bolton every week, taking the “on your bike” scenario to its nth degree. Where is the quality of life in that? I would love to see some of these fat, sleek, Tory and Liberal MPs whose life is organised for them to the last minute, put up with such disruption and inconvenience! What – no way of getting back to the constituency second home at the weekends? Why, that would never do!
The other side of the globalisation coin, of course, is that there are more than enough Chinese people in China wanting jobs already, all of whom are happy to work (probably) for far less than the incomer would require.
And that is reflected in the end cost of their products, as well. So our poor old unemployed British worker is hammered from two directions. Maybe the only job he can get involves massive sacrifices of quality of life in return for not-massive amounts of money, and moving far away from home and all that it entails, all his ties, friends, neighbours, and familiar haunts. And in the end, if he does go down the sacrificial route, he may find that he is only earning slightly more than he would have got on benefits anyway. (The Tory answer to that dichotomy is of course to seek to cut the benefit, rather than raise the wages!) He is unlikely to get a job in “mainstream” manufacturing now, because so many of our household items, goods and chattels are manufactured much more cheaply in China, or somewhere similar.
So what can we do to overcome these particularly thorny issues of globalisation and unemployment? Under the old Domestic System of Industry, of course, in England before the Industrial Revolution, most people found work in the immediate locality. The weavers, in my own West Riding of Yorkshire, found their work waiting for them downstairs! It would be good in many ways to get back to a situation where goods were made in the locality where they were needed. It would also be more sustainable. It would save us having to ship goods half way round the world in container ships and airliners. So, one solution would be if we all made what we needed, but this is hardly practicable in that it doesn’t allow for the unemployed worker to make a second bowl and sell it. Nor does it compete with the fact that it is cheaper, quicker, and more efficient, assuming you have the money, to just go and buy a plastic bowl made in China, in the local hardware shop, than to carve yourself one out of a large lump of teak, rosewood or mahogany, however satisfying the latter might be as a craft exercise.
Clearly, what is needed is for people to be able to manufacture something which is desired, useful, economic to produce in these Islands with our western overheads, and unobtainable elsewhere. This is where niche marketing, and the role of the internet, can come in. And maybe the products could be something to combat climate change?
This solution could perhaps be used to solve, or partially solve, another situation which S. P. B. Mais was criticised for, another by-product of unemployment, which is that if the unemployed take up manufacturing something at a lower rate than the existing manufacturer, or providing a service, for that matter, at a lower rate, they are undercutting commercial enterprises and potentially spreading unemployment there as well. The trick again is to manufacture something novel – more so now than in the 1930s, because now, the unemployed are unlikely to be able to undercut the wholesale prices of Chinese manufacturers anyway, and the competition is no longer between the unemployed miners’ workshop making cut price toys for the kiddies and the local high street toy shop, but rather between the miners and a factory in Shanghai. A unique product, however, sets its own price.
At he end of the day, however, perhaps we shouldn’t be over-concerned about protecting the interests of industry from the efforts of the unemployed to become entrepreneurs. We should remember what Michael Foot said, on the campaign trail in 1983.
We are not here in this world to find elegant solutions, pregnant with initiative, or to serve the ways and modes of profitable progress. No, we are here to provide for all those who are weaker and hungrier, more battered and crippled than ourselves. That is our only certain good and great purpose on earth, and if you ask me about those insoluble economic problems that may arise if the top is deprived of their initiative, I would answer 'To hell with them.' The top is greedy and mean and will always find a way to take care of themselves. They always do
Women in the Workplace
This was a big issue in the 1930’s. S. P. B. Mais devotes a whole programme to it in the scripts of his talks. Even though the effect of WWI had been to emancipate women in the workplace, there were still some antedeluvian voices in 1933 arguing that women should stay home and raise children (not that there is anything wrong per se with mothers who choose to do this). In fact, there are still some antedeluvian voices who say this today, but I don’t think that the genie of Mrs Pankhurst is ever going to go back in the bottle.
Today, though, what may be called the “women” argument about unemployment has been largely replaced by the “immigrant” argument. This is often simplistically represented as “there are three million unemployed and there are three million “guest” workers here (or whatever the figure currently is) – immigrants from the EU and elsewhere – send them all home, and we could have full employment!” This ignores two things: - one, that whilever we are signed up to the EU and its political projects, we have absolutely no control over our own borders. Secondly, that the jobs thus vacated would need to be in the same areas where there are native British citizens unemployed, and that the native workforce would have the equivalent portable skills to be able to step in and fill their shoes.
Neither of these is evident, or automatically true, but again, this doesn’t stop those who, from either ignorance or design, seek to conflate migrant workers, asylum seekers, and non-white British citizens, and who propagate the view that unemployment is somehow exclusively a racial issue. There is currently common ground between race and unemployment, in that certain ethnic groups are disproportionately more highly represented in the unenplyment figures: young black males for instance. But this is due to social and economic factors. They live in areas of high social and educational deprivation, lacking opportunity, many of which are the result of Margaret Thatcher’s policies in the 1980’s, and they suffer also the peer pressure of the American “gangsta rap” culture, which makes it “uncool” to have a “job” that doesn’t involve drugs, fast cars, or pimping. They are not unemployed inherently because they are black.
I have long argued that the only immigration policy which makes sense is to look at the range of skills and talents we need here in the UK, particularly those we are short of, and to adjust our own UK immigration policy accordingly. So much so that, as far as I am concerned, if asylum seekers have the skills we need, it would be far more sensible to let them work and pay tax and make a contribution to the UK while they wait for their cases to be decided, rather than spend public money locking them up, policing them, and deporting them. If they renege on the deal, of course, that’s it – they go back, without the option. Anyway, I digress. One important point to stress, though, is that when I say “British Jobs for British Workers”, I mean “British Workers, whatever the colour of their skin”, whereas of course the likes of the BNP mean “British Jobs for White British Workers”.
Waged versus Unwaged
The recent Tory proposal to compel the long-term unemployed to pick litter in return for their benefits, or lose the benefits, once again provides another correspondence between the modern situation and S. P. B. Mais’s 1933 SOS Talks on Unemployment. This is basically the issue of whether or not the unemployed should have to work for their benefits, and off the back of that, whether the unemployed should do things voluntarily in return for training and experience, either on a compulsory or a voluntary basis. Back in 1933, the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement opposed the many philantrhopic and well-meaning schemes which SPB documents (toy making, furniture making, allotments) on the grounds that these voluntary clubs were merely a sop to the idea of keeping the unemployed occupied, at any cost. They also opposed the larger schemes, where unemployed men did heavy work such as marsh draining or tree felling, in return for a free meal or a new pair of boots.
Even though, in many cases, the 1930s schemes were not compulsory, and were mainly paternalistically aimed at improving the skills and employability of the attenders. George Orwell, in The Road to Wigan Pier, also documents the opposition of the NUWM to these schemes, on similar grounds.
Although the NUWM ceased to exist in 1946, if it objected to the 1930s clubs run by well-meaning colonels and local busybodies, it would be apopleptic about the modern-day proposal by the Tories. Indeed, it is difficult to defend it in any rational way, but then it isn’t a rational policy. A rational policy would be that if you have to do the work, in order to receive the corresponding remuneration, it should be paid at the legal, minimum wage. Plus, of course, those officious prodnoses at the Labour Exchange whose job it is to harrass the unemployed by ensuring that they have been seeking work, shouuld be forced to acknowledge that, lacking gift of bilocation, the unemployed can’t be picking litter and actively seeking employment at one and the same time.
One area of S. P. B. Mais’s work, however, which perhaps does bear reconsideration for the 2010 unemployment crisis, is that of allotments. There is a great deal of wasted land in the UK, which could be turned over to the cultivation of healthy, organic vegetables and fruit. All that is lacking is the organisation and the political will. If someone on unemployment benefits wants an allotment, they could be given one in some sort of bargain over their arrangements which would allow them the leeway to devote some time to growing their own and their family’s food while still seeking work. It would, today, as in the 1930s, get people out into the open air, teach them new skills, and save them money on food.
Of course, this Tory proposal isn’t serious – at least I hope it isn’t. The answer to long term unemployment in areas of chronic economic crisis and disadvantage (again, much of which was caused by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s) is not picking up litter. Or at least, not on those terms. If the government wants to create proper social enterprise companies to pay people a living wage to do socially useful work that benefits the whole community, that is, of course, a different matter. That is one of the fundamental tenets behind Rooftree. Indeed, social enterprise is one major way in which the government could start to get us out of this mess, by creating a whole new sector in the economy. But, in reality, I view this proposalas nothing more than another strand in the government’s “divide and rule” policy of simultaneously insisting that “we are all in this together” while sowing discord and disharmony and rumour, with deliberate but baseless stories of “benefit scroungers”, straight out of the “man in the pub” manual of journalism, and lapped up and reprinted almost verbatim, of course, by the likes of the Daily Mail.
On Your Bike – or way off the Bus Route?
The litter picking proposal is not the only wacky Tory solution to unemployment being bruited abroad at the moment. Tory bastard Iain Duncan Irritable-Bowel Smith seems to think that full employment is only a bus-ride away. When he was in charge of the whole shambles, a few years ago, he styled himself “The Quiet Man” and, to be fair to him, he has a lot to be quiet about. I sometimes think the Tories won’t be happy until the entire jobseeking workforce is lined up by the side of the road, with their possessions on their back, their children and their livestock, ready to ride off into the sunset on the first bus that comes along, in the hope of a few hours; fruit picking on the Gower Peninsula, then maybe over to Kent for some hopping, up to Skelmersdale for some PCB assembly, and so on. The fact that this would all be piece work, un-unionised, with minimal health and safety, and gangmaster wages, is not lost on me, either. It would be the Tory bosses’ vision of hog-heaven, freed from the schackles (as they see them) of the only progressive achivements of Blair and Brown’s era.
Again, like the litter-picking idea, I hope this is just specious nonsense and kite-flying to appeal to Middle-England bigots, but I suspect, in this case, that they may actually be serious. I think old “Irritable Bowel” really means it. So, let’s take him at his word, just assuming for the moment that this “Son of Tebbit” policy has some practical merit. Let us assume that (if you live in a rural area) there even is a bus to take you where you want to go. Where are the jobs? We come back again and again to this central mantra. Where are the jobs? Where are they?
Osborne is going to add something like 600,000 people to the dole queue as his planned cuts bite and take hold: how is the removal of so many previously economically active people from the daily round of commerce, the weekly supermarket shop, the knock on effect of their spending power – how is that going to stimulate the economy? How is it going to create any more jobs? In the same way as Orwell quite rightly noted the “hidden” numbers of unemployed behind the official figures, so there are hidden figures of “employed” whose jobs depend on other people coming into their shops and spending money.
It is all too easy, as I sit here writing these words, safe in my warm bed (yes, I am sitting writing this in bed!) listening to the wild winds of winter howling and wailing outside, and hearing the rain flung like handfuls of gravel at the window – it is all too easy for me to deride and poke fun at these stupid Tory proposals. In fact, it is all too easy to deride and poke fun at them whether you are in bed or not!
In the 1930s, S. P. B. Mais reported on rough sleepers in the iron working areas sleeping out on the slapgheaps at night, for warmth, after the furnaces had been emptied. But, out there, in the night, even now, are people who are the victims of these Tory policies. They are bedded down in doorways or under bridges, desperately trying to keep warm so that they will see another dawn. Let us be perfectly clear about this, make no mistake, as a result of these laughable yet evil policies, targeting the poor and vulnerable while safeguarding the rich, powerful and influential, people will be driven to despair, to anxiety, to homelessness, and people will die. This winter, out in the cold, in once-Great Britain, in the year of our Lord two thousand and ten, people will die, as a result of Tory cuts, propped up by the Liberal Dimwits. And I, for one, would like to hear the government justify to us how they manage to sleep at night, when they know this is the case, or indeed, why they should be allowed to, until something is done about it.
In case we are in any doubt about unemployment, these chilling words are from a letter sent to S. P. B. Mais after his book was published in 1933. Seventy-seven years later, it goes a long way to explain those “houses where the curtains stay closed all day” which George Osborne was keen to tell us about in his first broadcast as Chancellor [the one where he claimed we were all in it together.]
Glad of a rest, the unemployed man does not yet begin the frantic hunt for a job – a week’s rest will do me good, he thinks, and after that, I will have a look around. I shall soon get fixed up somewhere. But even while he thinks this, the chill of doubt strokes at his heart. A week or so later, he is saying to himself that he never dreamed times were so bad. The fruitless, despairing search for work which simply cannot be found has begun … See him now that some months have passed, with hope gone. He lies in bed longer each morning, keeps to the house more, is less tidy in his appearance, though unaware of the change, the chin is sunk lower, the face is half ashamed, the glance has become wavering and irresolute. He is losing his morale … like some wounded animal, creeping to a hole to die.
This is a very accurate assessment of the life of what Osborne calls “benefit scroungers”. I know which rings truer for me. I doubt that even the most ardent long-term adherents of benefits celebrate the lifestyle. All you can possibly hope for is to reach an accommodation with each grim grey day of disappointment and low horizons that comes around.
We cannot allow the government to go on sabotaging the economy. The only remedy for this parlous state of affairs, to stop these fools in their tracks before they inflict such damage on the economy that it takes a generation to recover, is a General Strike against the cuts, starting now. Yes, in fact, let us have a GENERAL STRIKE to protest against the cuts. And if a few stray cobbles end up being thrown through the windows of 10 Downing Street, so much the better! You have nothing to lose but your P45s!
I feel many people are cowed and anxious over what the future will bring, because the government has been deliberately pumping up the volume over the cuts, precisely in order to keep people in a subdued mood and stop them asking awkward questions like "why should poor people pay for the mistakes of rich people?”
Their other trick is to practice "doublespeak" by insisting that "we are all in this together" while simultaneously spreading scare stories about so--called "benefit scroungers" to divide and rule the opposition and promote disharmony in society.
It is a fundamentally dishonest and evil policy, and it is quite deliberate, as you would expect from a fundamentally dishonest and evil government. I would echo Bevan's comment about "lower than vermin", pace Harriet Harman, but I don't want to insult the vermin.
I see that the Daily Mail is reporting Rowan Williams' attack on this idea as "Archbishop attacks proposals to make the workshy pick litter" or some such headline.
The workshy? Excuse me?? The WORKSHY?????
Who the HELL are Daily Mail journalists, with their louche lifestyle, their excesses of alcohol and drugs, their credit card bills, which they happily write about in their columns, who the HELL gave these LEECHES the right to call the long term unemployed the "workshy".
I'd like to see them do a ten hour shift in a call centre for nothing, as an "interview" for a job, only to be told the week after that "you haven't been selected for the next round", as scandalously happened recently to my friend Phil, unemployed now for getting on two years and desperate for anything in a South Yorkshire economy that is collapsing round everyones' ears because of CleggTory cuts. It’s a great way to get workers for free without any tiresome H&S, tax, PAYE or wages. I wouldn't be surprised if the bastards aren't holding "interviews" every day!
How DARE the Daily Mail? Whilever Phil is reduced to digging up his garden and growing his own winter veg to survive on the dole, there should be public burnings of the Daily Mail outside every labour exchange.
Here's my question to anyone who thinks the long term unemployed are "workshy" :-
*W H E R E * A R E * T H E * J O B S ?
Where are the jobs in
Rochdale (84% unemployment)
Middlesbrough (67% unemployment)
Sparkbrook, Birmingham (63% unemployment)
Birkenhead (62% unemployment)
Where are the jobs in Grimethorpe? Where are the jobs in Rusty Lane, West Bromwich?
I have recently been re-reading The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell, and SOS: Talks on Unemployment by S. P. B. Mais, two books which in their own way bookend the unemployment crisis of the 1930s, appearing in 1937 and 1933 respectively. One of the most telling passages is where Orwell discusses the unemployment figures. It is worth quoting at length:
When you see the unemployment figures quoted at two millions, it is fatally easy to take this as meaning that two million people are out of work and the rest of the population is comparatively comfortable. I admit that till recently I was in the habit of doing so myself. I used to calculate that if you put the registered unemployed at round about two millions and threw in the destitute and those who for one reason and another were not registered, you might take the number of underfed people in England (for everyone on the dole or thereabouts is underfed) as being, at the very most, five millions.
This is an enormous under-estimate, because, in the first place, the only people shown on unemployment figures are those actually drawing the dole — that is, in general, heads of families. An unemployed man's dependants do not figure on the list unless they too are drawing a separate allowance. A Labour Exchange officer told me that to get at the real number of people living on (not drawing) the dole, you have got to multiply the official figures by something over three. This alone brings the number of unemployed to round about six millions. But in addition there are great numbers of people who are in work but who, from a financial point of view, might equally well be unemployed, because they are not drawing anything that can be described as a living wage. Allow for these and their dependants, throw in as before the old-age pensioners, the destitute, and other nondescripts, and you get an underfed population of well over ten millions.
Some things have changed since 1937, such as the ratio of family heads to dependents, but a similar calculation could still be done to show that the “real” consequences of unemployment are far higher than shown by the official figures.
"Underfed" might nowadays be substituted with “badly fed” though Orwell also drew attention to how easy it was, even in 1937, to buy cheap, bad food to cheer yourself up while unemployed. In that respect, Phil is doing himself a favour by growing his own veg rather than buying Micro-Chips from Iceland.
And though things have may changed in some respects since it was written, what is really chilling about going back to The Road to Wigan Pier after a period of time, as I have done, is how much of it is startlingly prescient of 2010. To look for the philosophical antecedents of David Cameron, George Osborne, and Nicholas Clegg, you have to go back not only to Thatcher, the obvious model for driving a chariot with knives on the wheels through the ranks of public service, but also to the 1930s.
I shouldn’t be at all surprised, when you add the 600,000 redundancies which may result from the cuts to whatever the current announced “public” unemployment figure is, to see hunger marches again. In fact, before they become necessary, I think we ought to re-enact them, to remind this government, which has no legitimacy, and which was cobbled together over a weekend on the back of some spurious rumour about Greece and the Euro and the markets which everyone has now conveniently forgotten, of the consequences of its actions.
Since unemployment is likely to assume huge proportions in the lives of many of us over the next year or so, as the cuts begin to bite, it is worth devoting some time to an attempt at analysing some of the common causes and solutions, if any, and also what resonances there are between today’s causes and remedies and those of the 1930s.
Unemployment and the Impact of Mechanisation
This is chiefly only felt on manufacturing industry. There are plenty of “jobs” needing doing that are not affected by increased mechanisation, and never will be. What we are really arguing about here is the nature of work itself, and the value of different types of work. Of course, it is futile trying to rank different types of work by value. One might as well try and rank potatoes and apricots. But it doesn’t stop the boors, bores and bigots who bang on about “non-jobs” and “real jobs”, as if digging a hole in the road is somehow to be ranked higher than, say, cleaning a ward in a hospital, when in fact they are just different.
Globalisation, localism, and niche marketing
The question of how far it is reasonable to expect someone to travel a) in pursuit of a job and b) to commute to work once they have got a job, is critical to the argument of “on your bike” as a means of solving unemployment. Much as the Tories and their Liberal stooges would like to see the sort of “flexible” jobs market I described earlier, where people do a little bit here, a little bit there, and travel for hours in between, there are limits of practicality. There are some jobs where catching a bus for two hours, doing and eight hour day, and then catching a bus home for two more hours, is going to be a borderline decision. True, it is (for some strange reason) always easier to get a job when you have already got a job, than to get one when you are unemployed, but that in itself is not a reason for taking a borderline job.
There is also the issue of quality of life. Otherwise, if quality of life did not matter, it would be easy for an unemployed man to go and get a job at the other end of the country, live in a hostel, and just send money home. But what sort of a life is that, when he is reduced purely to a unit of economic production and never sees his family from one month end to the next.
Globalisation merely extends this principle. If the work is in China, then get on your rickshaw, and go and get a job in China, and Fedex the money home to Bolton every week, taking the “on your bike” scenario to its nth degree. Where is the quality of life in that? I would love to see some of these fat, sleek, Tory and Liberal MPs whose life is organised for them to the last minute, put up with such disruption and inconvenience! What – no way of getting back to the constituency second home at the weekends? Why, that would never do!
The other side of the globalisation coin, of course, is that there are more than enough Chinese people in China wanting jobs already, all of whom are happy to work (probably) for far less than the incomer would require.
And that is reflected in the end cost of their products, as well. So our poor old unemployed British worker is hammered from two directions. Maybe the only job he can get involves massive sacrifices of quality of life in return for not-massive amounts of money, and moving far away from home and all that it entails, all his ties, friends, neighbours, and familiar haunts. And in the end, if he does go down the sacrificial route, he may find that he is only earning slightly more than he would have got on benefits anyway. (The Tory answer to that dichotomy is of course to seek to cut the benefit, rather than raise the wages!) He is unlikely to get a job in “mainstream” manufacturing now, because so many of our household items, goods and chattels are manufactured much more cheaply in China, or somewhere similar.
So what can we do to overcome these particularly thorny issues of globalisation and unemployment? Under the old Domestic System of Industry, of course, in England before the Industrial Revolution, most people found work in the immediate locality. The weavers, in my own West Riding of Yorkshire, found their work waiting for them downstairs! It would be good in many ways to get back to a situation where goods were made in the locality where they were needed. It would also be more sustainable. It would save us having to ship goods half way round the world in container ships and airliners. So, one solution would be if we all made what we needed, but this is hardly practicable in that it doesn’t allow for the unemployed worker to make a second bowl and sell it. Nor does it compete with the fact that it is cheaper, quicker, and more efficient, assuming you have the money, to just go and buy a plastic bowl made in China, in the local hardware shop, than to carve yourself one out of a large lump of teak, rosewood or mahogany, however satisfying the latter might be as a craft exercise.
Clearly, what is needed is for people to be able to manufacture something which is desired, useful, economic to produce in these Islands with our western overheads, and unobtainable elsewhere. This is where niche marketing, and the role of the internet, can come in. And maybe the products could be something to combat climate change?
This solution could perhaps be used to solve, or partially solve, another situation which S. P. B. Mais was criticised for, another by-product of unemployment, which is that if the unemployed take up manufacturing something at a lower rate than the existing manufacturer, or providing a service, for that matter, at a lower rate, they are undercutting commercial enterprises and potentially spreading unemployment there as well. The trick again is to manufacture something novel – more so now than in the 1930s, because now, the unemployed are unlikely to be able to undercut the wholesale prices of Chinese manufacturers anyway, and the competition is no longer between the unemployed miners’ workshop making cut price toys for the kiddies and the local high street toy shop, but rather between the miners and a factory in Shanghai. A unique product, however, sets its own price.
At he end of the day, however, perhaps we shouldn’t be over-concerned about protecting the interests of industry from the efforts of the unemployed to become entrepreneurs. We should remember what Michael Foot said, on the campaign trail in 1983.
We are not here in this world to find elegant solutions, pregnant with initiative, or to serve the ways and modes of profitable progress. No, we are here to provide for all those who are weaker and hungrier, more battered and crippled than ourselves. That is our only certain good and great purpose on earth, and if you ask me about those insoluble economic problems that may arise if the top is deprived of their initiative, I would answer 'To hell with them.' The top is greedy and mean and will always find a way to take care of themselves. They always do
Women in the Workplace
This was a big issue in the 1930’s. S. P. B. Mais devotes a whole programme to it in the scripts of his talks. Even though the effect of WWI had been to emancipate women in the workplace, there were still some antedeluvian voices in 1933 arguing that women should stay home and raise children (not that there is anything wrong per se with mothers who choose to do this). In fact, there are still some antedeluvian voices who say this today, but I don’t think that the genie of Mrs Pankhurst is ever going to go back in the bottle.
Today, though, what may be called the “women” argument about unemployment has been largely replaced by the “immigrant” argument. This is often simplistically represented as “there are three million unemployed and there are three million “guest” workers here (or whatever the figure currently is) – immigrants from the EU and elsewhere – send them all home, and we could have full employment!” This ignores two things: - one, that whilever we are signed up to the EU and its political projects, we have absolutely no control over our own borders. Secondly, that the jobs thus vacated would need to be in the same areas where there are native British citizens unemployed, and that the native workforce would have the equivalent portable skills to be able to step in and fill their shoes.
Neither of these is evident, or automatically true, but again, this doesn’t stop those who, from either ignorance or design, seek to conflate migrant workers, asylum seekers, and non-white British citizens, and who propagate the view that unemployment is somehow exclusively a racial issue. There is currently common ground between race and unemployment, in that certain ethnic groups are disproportionately more highly represented in the unenplyment figures: young black males for instance. But this is due to social and economic factors. They live in areas of high social and educational deprivation, lacking opportunity, many of which are the result of Margaret Thatcher’s policies in the 1980’s, and they suffer also the peer pressure of the American “gangsta rap” culture, which makes it “uncool” to have a “job” that doesn’t involve drugs, fast cars, or pimping. They are not unemployed inherently because they are black.
I have long argued that the only immigration policy which makes sense is to look at the range of skills and talents we need here in the UK, particularly those we are short of, and to adjust our own UK immigration policy accordingly. So much so that, as far as I am concerned, if asylum seekers have the skills we need, it would be far more sensible to let them work and pay tax and make a contribution to the UK while they wait for their cases to be decided, rather than spend public money locking them up, policing them, and deporting them. If they renege on the deal, of course, that’s it – they go back, without the option. Anyway, I digress. One important point to stress, though, is that when I say “British Jobs for British Workers”, I mean “British Workers, whatever the colour of their skin”, whereas of course the likes of the BNP mean “British Jobs for White British Workers”.
Waged versus Unwaged
The recent Tory proposal to compel the long-term unemployed to pick litter in return for their benefits, or lose the benefits, once again provides another correspondence between the modern situation and S. P. B. Mais’s 1933 SOS Talks on Unemployment. This is basically the issue of whether or not the unemployed should have to work for their benefits, and off the back of that, whether the unemployed should do things voluntarily in return for training and experience, either on a compulsory or a voluntary basis. Back in 1933, the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement opposed the many philantrhopic and well-meaning schemes which SPB documents (toy making, furniture making, allotments) on the grounds that these voluntary clubs were merely a sop to the idea of keeping the unemployed occupied, at any cost. They also opposed the larger schemes, where unemployed men did heavy work such as marsh draining or tree felling, in return for a free meal or a new pair of boots.
Even though, in many cases, the 1930s schemes were not compulsory, and were mainly paternalistically aimed at improving the skills and employability of the attenders. George Orwell, in The Road to Wigan Pier, also documents the opposition of the NUWM to these schemes, on similar grounds.
Although the NUWM ceased to exist in 1946, if it objected to the 1930s clubs run by well-meaning colonels and local busybodies, it would be apopleptic about the modern-day proposal by the Tories. Indeed, it is difficult to defend it in any rational way, but then it isn’t a rational policy. A rational policy would be that if you have to do the work, in order to receive the corresponding remuneration, it should be paid at the legal, minimum wage. Plus, of course, those officious prodnoses at the Labour Exchange whose job it is to harrass the unemployed by ensuring that they have been seeking work, shouuld be forced to acknowledge that, lacking gift of bilocation, the unemployed can’t be picking litter and actively seeking employment at one and the same time.
One area of S. P. B. Mais’s work, however, which perhaps does bear reconsideration for the 2010 unemployment crisis, is that of allotments. There is a great deal of wasted land in the UK, which could be turned over to the cultivation of healthy, organic vegetables and fruit. All that is lacking is the organisation and the political will. If someone on unemployment benefits wants an allotment, they could be given one in some sort of bargain over their arrangements which would allow them the leeway to devote some time to growing their own and their family’s food while still seeking work. It would, today, as in the 1930s, get people out into the open air, teach them new skills, and save them money on food.
Of course, this Tory proposal isn’t serious – at least I hope it isn’t. The answer to long term unemployment in areas of chronic economic crisis and disadvantage (again, much of which was caused by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s) is not picking up litter. Or at least, not on those terms. If the government wants to create proper social enterprise companies to pay people a living wage to do socially useful work that benefits the whole community, that is, of course, a different matter. That is one of the fundamental tenets behind Rooftree. Indeed, social enterprise is one major way in which the government could start to get us out of this mess, by creating a whole new sector in the economy. But, in reality, I view this proposalas nothing more than another strand in the government’s “divide and rule” policy of simultaneously insisting that “we are all in this together” while sowing discord and disharmony and rumour, with deliberate but baseless stories of “benefit scroungers”, straight out of the “man in the pub” manual of journalism, and lapped up and reprinted almost verbatim, of course, by the likes of the Daily Mail.
On Your Bike – or way off the Bus Route?
The litter picking proposal is not the only wacky Tory solution to unemployment being bruited abroad at the moment. Tory bastard Iain Duncan Irritable-Bowel Smith seems to think that full employment is only a bus-ride away. When he was in charge of the whole shambles, a few years ago, he styled himself “The Quiet Man” and, to be fair to him, he has a lot to be quiet about. I sometimes think the Tories won’t be happy until the entire jobseeking workforce is lined up by the side of the road, with their possessions on their back, their children and their livestock, ready to ride off into the sunset on the first bus that comes along, in the hope of a few hours; fruit picking on the Gower Peninsula, then maybe over to Kent for some hopping, up to Skelmersdale for some PCB assembly, and so on. The fact that this would all be piece work, un-unionised, with minimal health and safety, and gangmaster wages, is not lost on me, either. It would be the Tory bosses’ vision of hog-heaven, freed from the schackles (as they see them) of the only progressive achivements of Blair and Brown’s era.
Again, like the litter-picking idea, I hope this is just specious nonsense and kite-flying to appeal to Middle-England bigots, but I suspect, in this case, that they may actually be serious. I think old “Irritable Bowel” really means it. So, let’s take him at his word, just assuming for the moment that this “Son of Tebbit” policy has some practical merit. Let us assume that (if you live in a rural area) there even is a bus to take you where you want to go. Where are the jobs? We come back again and again to this central mantra. Where are the jobs? Where are they?
Osborne is going to add something like 600,000 people to the dole queue as his planned cuts bite and take hold: how is the removal of so many previously economically active people from the daily round of commerce, the weekly supermarket shop, the knock on effect of their spending power – how is that going to stimulate the economy? How is it going to create any more jobs? In the same way as Orwell quite rightly noted the “hidden” numbers of unemployed behind the official figures, so there are hidden figures of “employed” whose jobs depend on other people coming into their shops and spending money.
It is all too easy, as I sit here writing these words, safe in my warm bed (yes, I am sitting writing this in bed!) listening to the wild winds of winter howling and wailing outside, and hearing the rain flung like handfuls of gravel at the window – it is all too easy for me to deride and poke fun at these stupid Tory proposals. In fact, it is all too easy to deride and poke fun at them whether you are in bed or not!
In the 1930s, S. P. B. Mais reported on rough sleepers in the iron working areas sleeping out on the slapgheaps at night, for warmth, after the furnaces had been emptied. But, out there, in the night, even now, are people who are the victims of these Tory policies. They are bedded down in doorways or under bridges, desperately trying to keep warm so that they will see another dawn. Let us be perfectly clear about this, make no mistake, as a result of these laughable yet evil policies, targeting the poor and vulnerable while safeguarding the rich, powerful and influential, people will be driven to despair, to anxiety, to homelessness, and people will die. This winter, out in the cold, in once-Great Britain, in the year of our Lord two thousand and ten, people will die, as a result of Tory cuts, propped up by the Liberal Dimwits. And I, for one, would like to hear the government justify to us how they manage to sleep at night, when they know this is the case, or indeed, why they should be allowed to, until something is done about it.
In case we are in any doubt about unemployment, these chilling words are from a letter sent to S. P. B. Mais after his book was published in 1933. Seventy-seven years later, it goes a long way to explain those “houses where the curtains stay closed all day” which George Osborne was keen to tell us about in his first broadcast as Chancellor [the one where he claimed we were all in it together.]
Glad of a rest, the unemployed man does not yet begin the frantic hunt for a job – a week’s rest will do me good, he thinks, and after that, I will have a look around. I shall soon get fixed up somewhere. But even while he thinks this, the chill of doubt strokes at his heart. A week or so later, he is saying to himself that he never dreamed times were so bad. The fruitless, despairing search for work which simply cannot be found has begun … See him now that some months have passed, with hope gone. He lies in bed longer each morning, keeps to the house more, is less tidy in his appearance, though unaware of the change, the chin is sunk lower, the face is half ashamed, the glance has become wavering and irresolute. He is losing his morale … like some wounded animal, creeping to a hole to die.
This is a very accurate assessment of the life of what Osborne calls “benefit scroungers”. I know which rings truer for me. I doubt that even the most ardent long-term adherents of benefits celebrate the lifestyle. All you can possibly hope for is to reach an accommodation with each grim grey day of disappointment and low horizons that comes around.
We cannot allow the government to go on sabotaging the economy. The only remedy for this parlous state of affairs, to stop these fools in their tracks before they inflict such damage on the economy that it takes a generation to recover, is a General Strike against the cuts, starting now. Yes, in fact, let us have a GENERAL STRIKE to protest against the cuts. And if a few stray cobbles end up being thrown through the windows of 10 Downing Street, so much the better! You have nothing to lose but your P45s!
Saturday, 5 June 2010
One Laws For Them
The State Opening of Parliament is one of those traditional events, full of pomp and ceremony, flummery, ancient language, Heralds in tabards walking backwards, and men in tights, that we British do oh, so well. The majesty of the Lords and Commons, all gathered together, under the Lion and the Unicorn. It is all too easy to poke fun at it, as many have done in the past, and will no doubt continue to do so.
But behind all the pomp and circumstance, behind the processing and Black Rod banging on doors, we shouldn’t forget that Parliament does stand for something. It stands for the Law of the Land, it stands, ultimately, for Freedom. It stands for the unwritten, fudged, but nevertheless durable covenant of compromise between the Sovereign and the State, the people, and those whom we elect to govern us. So much so, that these days, of course, Mr Speaker is only ceremonially dragged to his throne, a distant reminder of those far-off days when his reluctance to end up potentially in either the Tower of London, and/or with his head and his body in two different geographic locations, was all too genuine!
It stands, in short, for Liberty. And this year, this first Queen’s Speech of the new Parliament, was, for once, strong on libertarian ideals. Presumably this is as a result of the brave new world of Liberalism, a package of concessions wrung out of David Cameron by the Literal Dimwits in their gaderene rush for power, which he was quite happy to grant them as part of the greater process, which they don’t seem to have realised yet, towards becoming a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Cameron-Ashcroft empire.
We were promised a veritable Great Reform Bill, no less. Sweeping away many of the anti-libertarian measures, post-9/11. ID cards would go (well, actually, to their miserable credit, even Labour had eventually got it through their ignorant skulls that ID cards were a bad idea, and had already decided to rein them in, but hey, who’s counting) less CCTV coverage, - again a good idea in principle. Though it is sometimes a provider of useful evidence after the fact, CCTV does not prevent crime, it just exports it to other, usually less fortunate, areas, where there is no CCTV.
Things such as control orders and the “thought crime” offences of “acts preparatory to terrorism” still remain, of course. But one of the measures proposed was a restoration of the right to protest, which can only be good news. All good stuff, and surely even a curmudgeonly old commie like me should welcome it?
Except that nobody seems to have told Boris Johnson about the last bit. With masterful comic timing, coinciding with the Queen’s Speech and the announcement of all these measures, Boris Johnson and Westminster Council sent in the plod to arrest Brian Haw for obstruction, and disband the democracy peace camp which has sprung up alongside his one man anti Iraq war protest in Parliament Square. Haw, who has maintained a lone, and famous, vigil in the square in protest about the Iraq war, was charged with obstruction. Quite what, or whom, he is supposed to have obstructed is unclear, especially as you have to take your life in your hands and cross four lanes of traffic to even get near him.
The latest I hear is that he may be charged with trespass. I thought that Parliament Square was a public place, so presumably if Mr Haw is guilty of trespassing on it, we all are. Similarly, they can’t – as I understand it – just do one person for trespass. Anyway, other, finer legal brains than mine will no doubt look into it.
Westminster Council are also complaining about Mr Haw’s rag tag followers, who had put up some tents, brought in a chemical toilet, protested against homelessness, amongst other things, and planted an oak sapling. (How very dare they, how dare they plant our national tree on an otherwise neglected and unused patch of grass in the middle of a roundabout a stone’s throw away from our national Parliament. The cads and bounders!)
This is the same Westminster Council, lest we forget, that demonstrated its own concern for the homeless one recent Christmas, by cancelling the Christmas soup run, so that rich bastards living in Westminster wouldn’t have to look at homeless people on Christmas day. So kind.
So there you have it. It remains to be seen how many of those lofty ideals actually make it into law. I get the impression that Cameron may already be regretting letting Nick Clegg stay up beyond his normal bedtime and have one too many hobnobs and a glass of tartrazine. We shall see. But hey, they are going to restore the right to protest, and if you believe that, how do you feel about the tooth fairy?
At more or less the same time, Laws of a different sort have been dominating the news. David Laws, to be precise, who stands accused of taking 41 large ones out of the public purse and giving them to his partner in the form of rent, from 2001 to 2009. Leaving aside the obvious comment about “rent boys” - I do have some standards, you know – I have to say there is something distinctly homo-erotic about the cast of this coalition overall. Watching the Knave and Dick show, when they did their joint love-in in the rose garden at Number 10, I found myself thinking that all over the country, owners of Christian B & Bs would be pursing their lips, narrowing their eyes, and slowly shaking their heads as they watched it on TV.
Personally, I don’t care if David Laws’ partner is gay, straight, or a one legged Hottentot transsexual on a unicycle. What I do care about is “what part of don’t rip us off” are these muppets struggling with, precisely? In this case, as well, it’s not as if Mr Laws couldn’t have funded his own place in London from his not inconsiderable personal wealth. Maybe even build a hotel on Mayfair.
The schadenfreude, the glorious irony of it all, is not lost on me. Far from it. Resisting the temptation to punch the air and shout “Yes!” I refrained from such vulgar triumphalism and just contented myself with humming “Oh Happy Day” under my breath as I went about my daily round. The Tory lickspittle, the cats-paw, the patsy who they had got lined up to deliver the death of 1000 cuts, policies that mean already that people on marginal incomes are worrying about whether or not they can afford to keep a cat, for God’s sake, has, himself, allegedly, had a hand in the till. Even if it turns out that his “interpretation” of the rules about partners is right, did it never occur to him to check it out at any time? What a staggering combination of hubris and stupidity.
Further proof, if proof were needed, that this sort of thing, which all the main party leaders threatened to stamp out, is still rampant. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
As with the right to protest, so with the issue of expenses. One “Laws” for them, and one law for the rest of us.
But behind all the pomp and circumstance, behind the processing and Black Rod banging on doors, we shouldn’t forget that Parliament does stand for something. It stands for the Law of the Land, it stands, ultimately, for Freedom. It stands for the unwritten, fudged, but nevertheless durable covenant of compromise between the Sovereign and the State, the people, and those whom we elect to govern us. So much so, that these days, of course, Mr Speaker is only ceremonially dragged to his throne, a distant reminder of those far-off days when his reluctance to end up potentially in either the Tower of London, and/or with his head and his body in two different geographic locations, was all too genuine!
It stands, in short, for Liberty. And this year, this first Queen’s Speech of the new Parliament, was, for once, strong on libertarian ideals. Presumably this is as a result of the brave new world of Liberalism, a package of concessions wrung out of David Cameron by the Literal Dimwits in their gaderene rush for power, which he was quite happy to grant them as part of the greater process, which they don’t seem to have realised yet, towards becoming a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Cameron-Ashcroft empire.
We were promised a veritable Great Reform Bill, no less. Sweeping away many of the anti-libertarian measures, post-9/11. ID cards would go (well, actually, to their miserable credit, even Labour had eventually got it through their ignorant skulls that ID cards were a bad idea, and had already decided to rein them in, but hey, who’s counting) less CCTV coverage, - again a good idea in principle. Though it is sometimes a provider of useful evidence after the fact, CCTV does not prevent crime, it just exports it to other, usually less fortunate, areas, where there is no CCTV.
Things such as control orders and the “thought crime” offences of “acts preparatory to terrorism” still remain, of course. But one of the measures proposed was a restoration of the right to protest, which can only be good news. All good stuff, and surely even a curmudgeonly old commie like me should welcome it?
Except that nobody seems to have told Boris Johnson about the last bit. With masterful comic timing, coinciding with the Queen’s Speech and the announcement of all these measures, Boris Johnson and Westminster Council sent in the plod to arrest Brian Haw for obstruction, and disband the democracy peace camp which has sprung up alongside his one man anti Iraq war protest in Parliament Square. Haw, who has maintained a lone, and famous, vigil in the square in protest about the Iraq war, was charged with obstruction. Quite what, or whom, he is supposed to have obstructed is unclear, especially as you have to take your life in your hands and cross four lanes of traffic to even get near him.
The latest I hear is that he may be charged with trespass. I thought that Parliament Square was a public place, so presumably if Mr Haw is guilty of trespassing on it, we all are. Similarly, they can’t – as I understand it – just do one person for trespass. Anyway, other, finer legal brains than mine will no doubt look into it.
Westminster Council are also complaining about Mr Haw’s rag tag followers, who had put up some tents, brought in a chemical toilet, protested against homelessness, amongst other things, and planted an oak sapling. (How very dare they, how dare they plant our national tree on an otherwise neglected and unused patch of grass in the middle of a roundabout a stone’s throw away from our national Parliament. The cads and bounders!)
This is the same Westminster Council, lest we forget, that demonstrated its own concern for the homeless one recent Christmas, by cancelling the Christmas soup run, so that rich bastards living in Westminster wouldn’t have to look at homeless people on Christmas day. So kind.
So there you have it. It remains to be seen how many of those lofty ideals actually make it into law. I get the impression that Cameron may already be regretting letting Nick Clegg stay up beyond his normal bedtime and have one too many hobnobs and a glass of tartrazine. We shall see. But hey, they are going to restore the right to protest, and if you believe that, how do you feel about the tooth fairy?
At more or less the same time, Laws of a different sort have been dominating the news. David Laws, to be precise, who stands accused of taking 41 large ones out of the public purse and giving them to his partner in the form of rent, from 2001 to 2009. Leaving aside the obvious comment about “rent boys” - I do have some standards, you know – I have to say there is something distinctly homo-erotic about the cast of this coalition overall. Watching the Knave and Dick show, when they did their joint love-in in the rose garden at Number 10, I found myself thinking that all over the country, owners of Christian B & Bs would be pursing their lips, narrowing their eyes, and slowly shaking their heads as they watched it on TV.
Personally, I don’t care if David Laws’ partner is gay, straight, or a one legged Hottentot transsexual on a unicycle. What I do care about is “what part of don’t rip us off” are these muppets struggling with, precisely? In this case, as well, it’s not as if Mr Laws couldn’t have funded his own place in London from his not inconsiderable personal wealth. Maybe even build a hotel on Mayfair.
The schadenfreude, the glorious irony of it all, is not lost on me. Far from it. Resisting the temptation to punch the air and shout “Yes!” I refrained from such vulgar triumphalism and just contented myself with humming “Oh Happy Day” under my breath as I went about my daily round. The Tory lickspittle, the cats-paw, the patsy who they had got lined up to deliver the death of 1000 cuts, policies that mean already that people on marginal incomes are worrying about whether or not they can afford to keep a cat, for God’s sake, has, himself, allegedly, had a hand in the till. Even if it turns out that his “interpretation” of the rules about partners is right, did it never occur to him to check it out at any time? What a staggering combination of hubris and stupidity.
Further proof, if proof were needed, that this sort of thing, which all the main party leaders threatened to stamp out, is still rampant. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
As with the right to protest, so with the issue of expenses. One “Laws” for them, and one law for the rest of us.
Thursday, 24 December 2009
Rooftree
This blog has been rather neglected of late because I have been working on trying to start a movement called ROOFTREE. I have hinted at something similar in this blog before but I was galvanised into more direct action by a strange course of events.
I was doing some research on the history of the old Hull and Barnsley Railway and in particular Drewton Tunnels, a rather spectacular set of Victorian tunnels under the Yorkshire Wolds near Riplingham, in the East Riding. My research led me to a site called 28dayslater.co.uk, which is dedicated to the pastime of Urban Exploration. Urban Exploration is apparently the practice of exploring derelict buildings and associated sites.
I was staggered, literally staggered, to see how many of these derelict sites there are in the UK. Often large, publicly owned buildings, sometimes hospitals, with (presumably expensive) medical equipment still inside them. This set me thinking, and the result was what I call the Rooftree Letter, the text of which is below:
We have a country where some people are homeless. This is unacceptable. We have a country where some people who need it, cannot access affordable housing. This is unacceptable. We have a country where hundreds, maybe thousands, of sites are derelict, many of which feature large, substantial. public buildings which we, the taxpayers, own, in effect, and which are being allowed to deteriorate to the point of no return. Finally, we have a country where many bricklayers, carpenters, plumbers and electricians, roofers and tilers are either now unemployed or on short time, as the credit crunch bites.
I would like to propose a solution to deal with all of the above. The Government, and/or the relevant local authorities, should compulsorily purchase these sites. They should then use any existing structures on the site to provide either accommodation and or core services to support a “settlement” in the grounds, based on the existing modular timber-framed prefabricated structures of the technology favoured by Walter Segal, to provide a source of low cost, affordable housing. The central core building could provide a local source of combined heat and power technology based on a combination of waste incineration and anaerobic digestion.
People have told me this is impossible. Too expensive, compared to building new houses on greenfield sites. That is as maybe, but “expensive” is a relative term. Does it take into account, for instance, the cost of having all of those unemployed builders, bricklayers, architects, draughtsmen, carpenters, roofers, plasterers, tilers, electricians, and plumbers? No, it does not.
Basically, my idea is this: you take the central building on the site and turn it into tenements to house people along the lines of those produced by the Victorian Architect HENRY ROBERTS and also the central building houses the communal waste incineration leading to CHP unit, the anerobic digester, the other communal facilities, and then around it you scatter these individual bungalows, modular timber framed buildings built by the Walter Segal method, which draw their heating and other services from the central building, enhanced by solar panels on the individual houses themselves. Each house gets a stake in the communal allotments which are laid out over any spare land left over which is too small to build on.
It seems to me that most of what Henry Roberts did would be consistent with building regs anyway, I would have thought that the major stumbling block would be cost in his using (for eg) slate for the floors etc. My idea is to start a *campaign* (doing what I do best, allegedly, pontificating and badgering people) to pressure the authorities into changing the building regulations on socially useful housing to make it easier to do this sort of development; to pressure the government to acquire these sites, many of which, I repeat, belong to us, the taxpayers and are currently standing empty, decaying, and prone to vandalism, some of them (the ex-NHS ones) still containing presumably valuable equipment, and many of them having extensive grounds, which could also be utilised; and to pressure the government and the authorities to provide the wherewithal, the seed capital, to allow these communities to come into being, on the grounds that they will eventually recoup the cost in rent and show a profit, and of course they will have the site on their books as an asset, owned for and on behalf of all of us; it would reduce pressures on social housing elsewhere in the system, and building on brownfield sites that would otherwise be derelict is much better than tearing up green fields and trees; and finally that it is socially useful to have all of the construction workers, brickies, electricians and joiners who would otherwise be drawing the dole, actually working.
We just need 1000 sites housing 63 people each, or 500 sites housing 126 people each, or 63 sites housing 1000 people each, and suddenly that figure of 63,000 homeless people in the UK last Christmas becomes much less daunting.
Now is the time, with the property market still depressed, for the government to step in and compulsorily purchase these sites. Say at £2M a site on average, that is £1BN. Small change, compared to what we have been chucking at the banking system.Rooftree is not a charity, not a company, it’s not an anything really. It’s a movement, in the same way that Solidarnocz was a movement. We don’t even have a web site unless someone wants to donate one to us. But what we do have, is a desire to build the new Jerusalem, one brick at a time, one site at a time, until there is no one left sleeping out in the cold.
Please join us. Go to the ROOFTREE Facebook Page or ROOFTREE Facebook Group, (enter “Rooftree in the search box) or sign our petition on the Number 10 web site (search under “Housing” or "Rooftree")
Anyway, that is what I've been doing. Just in case you thought I had been slacking or anything.
I was doing some research on the history of the old Hull and Barnsley Railway and in particular Drewton Tunnels, a rather spectacular set of Victorian tunnels under the Yorkshire Wolds near Riplingham, in the East Riding. My research led me to a site called 28dayslater.co.uk, which is dedicated to the pastime of Urban Exploration. Urban Exploration is apparently the practice of exploring derelict buildings and associated sites.
I was staggered, literally staggered, to see how many of these derelict sites there are in the UK. Often large, publicly owned buildings, sometimes hospitals, with (presumably expensive) medical equipment still inside them. This set me thinking, and the result was what I call the Rooftree Letter, the text of which is below:
We have a country where some people are homeless. This is unacceptable. We have a country where some people who need it, cannot access affordable housing. This is unacceptable. We have a country where hundreds, maybe thousands, of sites are derelict, many of which feature large, substantial. public buildings which we, the taxpayers, own, in effect, and which are being allowed to deteriorate to the point of no return. Finally, we have a country where many bricklayers, carpenters, plumbers and electricians, roofers and tilers are either now unemployed or on short time, as the credit crunch bites.
I would like to propose a solution to deal with all of the above. The Government, and/or the relevant local authorities, should compulsorily purchase these sites. They should then use any existing structures on the site to provide either accommodation and or core services to support a “settlement” in the grounds, based on the existing modular timber-framed prefabricated structures of the technology favoured by Walter Segal, to provide a source of low cost, affordable housing. The central core building could provide a local source of combined heat and power technology based on a combination of waste incineration and anaerobic digestion.
People have told me this is impossible. Too expensive, compared to building new houses on greenfield sites. That is as maybe, but “expensive” is a relative term. Does it take into account, for instance, the cost of having all of those unemployed builders, bricklayers, architects, draughtsmen, carpenters, roofers, plasterers, tilers, electricians, and plumbers? No, it does not.
Basically, my idea is this: you take the central building on the site and turn it into tenements to house people along the lines of those produced by the Victorian Architect HENRY ROBERTS and also the central building houses the communal waste incineration leading to CHP unit, the anerobic digester, the other communal facilities, and then around it you scatter these individual bungalows, modular timber framed buildings built by the Walter Segal method, which draw their heating and other services from the central building, enhanced by solar panels on the individual houses themselves. Each house gets a stake in the communal allotments which are laid out over any spare land left over which is too small to build on.
It seems to me that most of what Henry Roberts did would be consistent with building regs anyway, I would have thought that the major stumbling block would be cost in his using (for eg) slate for the floors etc. My idea is to start a *campaign* (doing what I do best, allegedly, pontificating and badgering people) to pressure the authorities into changing the building regulations on socially useful housing to make it easier to do this sort of development; to pressure the government to acquire these sites, many of which, I repeat, belong to us, the taxpayers and are currently standing empty, decaying, and prone to vandalism, some of them (the ex-NHS ones) still containing presumably valuable equipment, and many of them having extensive grounds, which could also be utilised; and to pressure the government and the authorities to provide the wherewithal, the seed capital, to allow these communities to come into being, on the grounds that they will eventually recoup the cost in rent and show a profit, and of course they will have the site on their books as an asset, owned for and on behalf of all of us; it would reduce pressures on social housing elsewhere in the system, and building on brownfield sites that would otherwise be derelict is much better than tearing up green fields and trees; and finally that it is socially useful to have all of the construction workers, brickies, electricians and joiners who would otherwise be drawing the dole, actually working.
We just need 1000 sites housing 63 people each, or 500 sites housing 126 people each, or 63 sites housing 1000 people each, and suddenly that figure of 63,000 homeless people in the UK last Christmas becomes much less daunting.
Now is the time, with the property market still depressed, for the government to step in and compulsorily purchase these sites. Say at £2M a site on average, that is £1BN. Small change, compared to what we have been chucking at the banking system.Rooftree is not a charity, not a company, it’s not an anything really. It’s a movement, in the same way that Solidarnocz was a movement. We don’t even have a web site unless someone wants to donate one to us. But what we do have, is a desire to build the new Jerusalem, one brick at a time, one site at a time, until there is no one left sleeping out in the cold.
Please join us. Go to the ROOFTREE Facebook Page or ROOFTREE Facebook Group, (enter “Rooftree in the search box) or sign our petition on the Number 10 web site (search under “Housing” or "Rooftree")
Anyway, that is what I've been doing. Just in case you thought I had been slacking or anything.
80 MPs are appealing (not from where I’m sitting)
My flabber has been gasted once again by the news that 80 MPs may be considering appealing against the assessment of their expenses by Legg.
How many times do I have to say this?
Welcome to the REAL world, MPs. The world where the REST of us live, where things get changed arbitrarily and retrospectively, and we just have to put up with it and lump it. Welcome to the real world, members of parliament, for a much-needed dose of reality up the jacksy. Welcome to the world where, if you are late with your CT600 Corporation Tax return, the HMRCE fines you £500, and you can't get away with writing a letter saying "accountancy isn't my strong suit". Welcome to the real world. wake up and smell the coffee, shut up, stop whining, and get on with running the country.
If they have the brass nuts to try and claim for moat cleaning, duck houses, and bell tower repair on the public purse, they deserve EVERYTHING coming their way. If they want respect, they should shut up and earn respect, instead of whinging about "having to live on rations". As to their pay, a) most of them have several other jobs and b) if they don't like it, they can shove off and join the poor unloved bankers who are going to throw their teddy out the pram and all move to New York or Geneva. I'll do their job. I'll be an MP, for that money. Three times what I earned last year, before tax. Yes please.While there is still ONE homeless person in Britain these cold nights, I would REQUISITION MPs' second homes for emergency accommodation, and make them sleep on cardboard boxes in a sleeping bag under Westminster Bridge, until they do something to end it.
And as for the bankers, I've already said what I would do with those ######s. Tax their bonuses at 150%. Their bonus is that they still have a job, and we allow them to continue breathing until such time as they have paid us back.
How many times do I have to say this?
Welcome to the REAL world, MPs. The world where the REST of us live, where things get changed arbitrarily and retrospectively, and we just have to put up with it and lump it. Welcome to the real world, members of parliament, for a much-needed dose of reality up the jacksy. Welcome to the world where, if you are late with your CT600 Corporation Tax return, the HMRCE fines you £500, and you can't get away with writing a letter saying "accountancy isn't my strong suit". Welcome to the real world. wake up and smell the coffee, shut up, stop whining, and get on with running the country.
If they have the brass nuts to try and claim for moat cleaning, duck houses, and bell tower repair on the public purse, they deserve EVERYTHING coming their way. If they want respect, they should shut up and earn respect, instead of whinging about "having to live on rations". As to their pay, a) most of them have several other jobs and b) if they don't like it, they can shove off and join the poor unloved bankers who are going to throw their teddy out the pram and all move to New York or Geneva. I'll do their job. I'll be an MP, for that money. Three times what I earned last year, before tax. Yes please.While there is still ONE homeless person in Britain these cold nights, I would REQUISITION MPs' second homes for emergency accommodation, and make them sleep on cardboard boxes in a sleeping bag under Westminster Bridge, until they do something to end it.
And as for the bankers, I've already said what I would do with those ######s. Tax their bonuses at 150%. Their bonus is that they still have a job, and we allow them to continue breathing until such time as they have paid us back.
Friday, 22 May 2009
Duck and Cover
There comes a point in every news story where it crosses over into the surreal. A point where no matter what you could dream up, reality becomes both funnier and more bizarre than any satire you could invent. Strangely enough, and I have never worked out why - it must be some immutable law of the universe known only unto Stephen Hawking - this apogee in the news trajectory usually involves ducks.
Why ducks? I must confess, I have absolutely no idea. I just know that, for every slam-dunk, knock em dead press release I have ever written over the last twenty years, there have only been two things we have feared, two things that would sink the little barque of our press release in the deep stormy news seas, lost with all hands: the death of a member of the Royal Family, and/or a skateboarding duck.
A skateboarding duck is such a slam-dunk for the "and finally" spot, that you can bet your sweet palookah that if you come up against one, your press release is bound for the cutting room floor. The death of a senior Royal speaks for itself. And of course, if by any chance the skateboarding duck actually contributes to the death of the senior Royal (eg by frightening the Queen's horse at the Trooping of the Colour) well, that's it, you might as well give up and open a whelk stall.
Similar thoughts must have been crossing the mind of the competitors to the Daily Telegraph this week when the MPs' expenses story finally crossed the duck event horizon, with the news that an MP paid £1645 for a "floating duck house".
Judging from the picture, I couldn't actually see £1645 worth of work in it, but in any case, as a duck-related story of public expenditure excess, it pales into insignificance alongside the news that Defra has spent nearly £300,000 on a study that shows that ducks prefer standing out in the rain to floating on ponds. If they'd asked me, I could have told them that for as little as , oooh, £150,000.
It's not been the only duck-related story in the news this week: a banker in Spokane, WA, USA, got up at the crack of dawn to stand underneath a ducklings' nest on some inacessible ledge (maybe he was planning to jump off it later) and catch the ducklings as, one by one, they fell out of it and headed to what would otherwise be a swift demise as duck and pavement met at terminal velocity. He caught and saved every one of them, then shepherded them across a busy road to a nearby lake. Shame there wasn't a shower handy, but at least it proves that not all bankers are bastards. There is one, in Spokane WA, who isn't.
Anyway, once it crosses the duck threshold, even more surreal things start to happen to the story: a Tory MP claims they are all on the verge of suicide (tough shit, you should have thought of that before bleeding the system white) and someone called Anthony Steen says that all this is motivated by envy of him and his big house!
Just for the record, Mr Steen, I don't covet your lifestyle, or your house. I thnk it would be a lot better for you and for us if you were forced to do a fortnight in a tower block in Walsall. I certainly don't want to be you - who would? I envy you the fact that you can use your position to screen you from the realities of life and to be honest I wish I was able to.
But I can't understand why you just don't admit that it's a fair cop.
Meanwhile, I hope that the ducks are OK
Why ducks? I must confess, I have absolutely no idea. I just know that, for every slam-dunk, knock em dead press release I have ever written over the last twenty years, there have only been two things we have feared, two things that would sink the little barque of our press release in the deep stormy news seas, lost with all hands: the death of a member of the Royal Family, and/or a skateboarding duck.
A skateboarding duck is such a slam-dunk for the "and finally" spot, that you can bet your sweet palookah that if you come up against one, your press release is bound for the cutting room floor. The death of a senior Royal speaks for itself. And of course, if by any chance the skateboarding duck actually contributes to the death of the senior Royal (eg by frightening the Queen's horse at the Trooping of the Colour) well, that's it, you might as well give up and open a whelk stall.
Similar thoughts must have been crossing the mind of the competitors to the Daily Telegraph this week when the MPs' expenses story finally crossed the duck event horizon, with the news that an MP paid £1645 for a "floating duck house".
Judging from the picture, I couldn't actually see £1645 worth of work in it, but in any case, as a duck-related story of public expenditure excess, it pales into insignificance alongside the news that Defra has spent nearly £300,000 on a study that shows that ducks prefer standing out in the rain to floating on ponds. If they'd asked me, I could have told them that for as little as , oooh, £150,000.
It's not been the only duck-related story in the news this week: a banker in Spokane, WA, USA, got up at the crack of dawn to stand underneath a ducklings' nest on some inacessible ledge (maybe he was planning to jump off it later) and catch the ducklings as, one by one, they fell out of it and headed to what would otherwise be a swift demise as duck and pavement met at terminal velocity. He caught and saved every one of them, then shepherded them across a busy road to a nearby lake. Shame there wasn't a shower handy, but at least it proves that not all bankers are bastards. There is one, in Spokane WA, who isn't.
Anyway, once it crosses the duck threshold, even more surreal things start to happen to the story: a Tory MP claims they are all on the verge of suicide (tough shit, you should have thought of that before bleeding the system white) and someone called Anthony Steen says that all this is motivated by envy of him and his big house!
Just for the record, Mr Steen, I don't covet your lifestyle, or your house. I thnk it would be a lot better for you and for us if you were forced to do a fortnight in a tower block in Walsall. I certainly don't want to be you - who would? I envy you the fact that you can use your position to screen you from the realities of life and to be honest I wish I was able to.
But I can't understand why you just don't admit that it's a fair cop.
Meanwhile, I hope that the ducks are OK
Sunday, 10 May 2009
Absolutely Fabulous!
Oh deary me, it looks like the Court of Public Opinion is in session once again, and this time it was invoked by the lawyer for the continuing campaign for the right of former members of the Royal Regiment of Gurkhas and their dependents to reside in the UK.
Whatever you think of the rights and wrongs of their case, and personally I have a great deal of sympathy for it (though this is rapidly being eroded by the increasingly manic and shrill ravings of Joanna Lumley) there is no doubt that once again, the Government has handled this appallingly badly and now has a PR disaster on its hands.
I’m not sure whether it’s the Prime Minister’s advisers being just not up to the job (spending too much time composing schoolboy emails about George Osborne and his wife?) or whether it’s Broon himself, the clunking fist, blundering on with his usual world-war-one style detrermination, on, into the valley of death. Or maybe it’s a heady mxture of both. But oh, deary, deary me.
The resistance of the Government is fundamentally cost-based at the end of the day. They are wary of opening up yet another door to let yet another class of people and writing a potentially open cheque to them and their dependents, for ever and ever, amen. They are caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place.
Our mistaken adherence to the one sided terms of the European Political Union project, which, in immigration as in so many other areas, hands the UK the shitty end of the stick, means that we are forced to take in every Eastern European Mafioso and Romanian rapist, while the Gurkhas, who – after all is said and done – have demonstrated a willingness to fight, if not actually die for the UK, have at best an indeterminate status and an uncertain future, notwithstanding Joanna Lumley’s efforts.
This situation presents people like Ms Lumley with an open goal. One which they have never tired of netting over and over again in recent days.
What I find surprising, is that no one from the Government has made any effort to respond by pointing out to people that this dilemma exists. The British people aren’t completely unreasonable or stupid. True, potentially rubbishing the EU three weeks before a Euro-election isn’t that good a move, but the Government is going to get decimated by UKIP anyway, even before all this blew up.
If the Government turned round and said “Look, we feel your pain, we share your frustration, we’d like to help the Gurkhas but we’re strapped for cash right now, and we can’t do anything about this Eastern Europe situation because – however much we might agree on principle – we are part of Europe and all that that implies, in terms of jobs, investment and trade” – Well, that at least would be a start.
The only person I have seen even groping towards this type of empathy has been the unfortunate Phil Woolas, who was being sandbagged by Joanna Lumley at the time. He’s not had a good week, what with the duffing up she gave him. I’m not surprised if it turns out to be true that, at least on the alleged evidence of the reporting of his expenses in The Daily Telegraph, he seeks consolation in nappies, tampons, and items of women’s clothing.
Which brings me neatly back to MP’s expenses. Generally, I am not an advocate of “chequebook journalism”, preferring to believe that the truth should emerge in the end simply because it is the truth. But in this case, the Government has been stonewalling over this for six months, spending yet more taxpayers’ money on a rearguard action through the courts to stop us knowing the details of how public money has been spent, and to be honest it serves them right that this has now blown up in their faces, for trying to delay publication until after July, when the house would have risen for the summer, and even if the media had picked up on it rather than the usual fare of Loch Ness Monster stories at that time of year, anyone who might have been held to account would have been on holiday in Tuscany.
Predictably, MPs have reacted to the revelations that we have paid – for instance – to have John Prescott’s loo seat fixed twice (one of the more understandable claims, in my view) with howls of anguish that their data has been infringed and their human rights traduced. Mixed with pious observations that “we did nothing wrong” and “the system is a bad system and must be changed” (to the latter of which statements I always feel the need to add the unspoken words “now that we have been found out”.)
Well, tough.
You are lucky even to have a second home, in a country where people are homeless, let alone one which is paid for and maintained by the taxpayer. If I had my way, I would give you a sleeping bag and a sheet of cardboard and tell you to doss in Parliament Square, until there was not one homeless person left in the UK.
Now stop whining and lining your own pockets, and get on with running the country, which is what we pay you handsomely for.
Whatever you think of the rights and wrongs of their case, and personally I have a great deal of sympathy for it (though this is rapidly being eroded by the increasingly manic and shrill ravings of Joanna Lumley) there is no doubt that once again, the Government has handled this appallingly badly and now has a PR disaster on its hands.
I’m not sure whether it’s the Prime Minister’s advisers being just not up to the job (spending too much time composing schoolboy emails about George Osborne and his wife?) or whether it’s Broon himself, the clunking fist, blundering on with his usual world-war-one style detrermination, on, into the valley of death. Or maybe it’s a heady mxture of both. But oh, deary, deary me.
The resistance of the Government is fundamentally cost-based at the end of the day. They are wary of opening up yet another door to let yet another class of people and writing a potentially open cheque to them and their dependents, for ever and ever, amen. They are caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place.
Our mistaken adherence to the one sided terms of the European Political Union project, which, in immigration as in so many other areas, hands the UK the shitty end of the stick, means that we are forced to take in every Eastern European Mafioso and Romanian rapist, while the Gurkhas, who – after all is said and done – have demonstrated a willingness to fight, if not actually die for the UK, have at best an indeterminate status and an uncertain future, notwithstanding Joanna Lumley’s efforts.
This situation presents people like Ms Lumley with an open goal. One which they have never tired of netting over and over again in recent days.
What I find surprising, is that no one from the Government has made any effort to respond by pointing out to people that this dilemma exists. The British people aren’t completely unreasonable or stupid. True, potentially rubbishing the EU three weeks before a Euro-election isn’t that good a move, but the Government is going to get decimated by UKIP anyway, even before all this blew up.
If the Government turned round and said “Look, we feel your pain, we share your frustration, we’d like to help the Gurkhas but we’re strapped for cash right now, and we can’t do anything about this Eastern Europe situation because – however much we might agree on principle – we are part of Europe and all that that implies, in terms of jobs, investment and trade” – Well, that at least would be a start.
The only person I have seen even groping towards this type of empathy has been the unfortunate Phil Woolas, who was being sandbagged by Joanna Lumley at the time. He’s not had a good week, what with the duffing up she gave him. I’m not surprised if it turns out to be true that, at least on the alleged evidence of the reporting of his expenses in The Daily Telegraph, he seeks consolation in nappies, tampons, and items of women’s clothing.
Which brings me neatly back to MP’s expenses. Generally, I am not an advocate of “chequebook journalism”, preferring to believe that the truth should emerge in the end simply because it is the truth. But in this case, the Government has been stonewalling over this for six months, spending yet more taxpayers’ money on a rearguard action through the courts to stop us knowing the details of how public money has been spent, and to be honest it serves them right that this has now blown up in their faces, for trying to delay publication until after July, when the house would have risen for the summer, and even if the media had picked up on it rather than the usual fare of Loch Ness Monster stories at that time of year, anyone who might have been held to account would have been on holiday in Tuscany.
Predictably, MPs have reacted to the revelations that we have paid – for instance – to have John Prescott’s loo seat fixed twice (one of the more understandable claims, in my view) with howls of anguish that their data has been infringed and their human rights traduced. Mixed with pious observations that “we did nothing wrong” and “the system is a bad system and must be changed” (to the latter of which statements I always feel the need to add the unspoken words “now that we have been found out”.)
Well, tough.
You are lucky even to have a second home, in a country where people are homeless, let alone one which is paid for and maintained by the taxpayer. If I had my way, I would give you a sleeping bag and a sheet of cardboard and tell you to doss in Parliament Square, until there was not one homeless person left in the UK.
Now stop whining and lining your own pockets, and get on with running the country, which is what we pay you handsomely for.
Monday, 13 April 2009
The Right to Roam
I think it was Bill Connolly who originally made the quip that people who livein council houses in Hampstead have another council house in Wales, that they go to at the weekends. But under the latest Tory housing proposal, what started out as being pretty funny, could end up being completely ludicrous!
They are proposing a "Right to Move", similar to the original Thatcherite policy of "The Right to Buy". This, of course, being the cause of the decimation of social housing stocks in England for over a decade, as people bought their own homes and removed them from the available pool, while preventing Local Authorities from using the resulting revenue to plough back into building more houses.
Anyway, the Tory idea works like this [as far as I can work out: they freely admit that they haven't thought it through, and you can say that again!] You are unemployed and living in social/council/whatever housing in, say, Greater Manchester. You know there are jobs to be had for the taking in, ooh, let's say, Stevenage [leaving aside for the moment that the biggest depression since the 1930s seems to be clobbering all of the UK]. You can ask the local authority in Stevenage to provide you with social housing of equivalent stature and nature to allow you to uproot your family and wobble off on your bike, in the best traditions of Normo Tebbs, to start anew in Hertfordshire.
Fine, you say. And of course, there will be some spare social housing in Stevenage, right? No? OK, - er, will your new employer hang about while they build you some? And of course, there will be an equal and matching traffic of people wanting to move from Stevenage to take up social housing in Manchester, won't there? Er, no. Again, no.
If politicians are really that concerned about improving social mobility in the war against unemployment, as we are forced to tramp around the country looking for ever-scarcer jobs, perhaps they should start letting out their second and third homes rent-free, as hostels for those travelling on job-seekers' allowance.
If you had asked someone to come up with an unworkable policy that was obviously knocked up on the back of a fag packet in order to catch a passing bandwagon and provide a few soundbites, you could not have done better. All it lacks is that final touch which marks out any truly ingenious Tory policy de nos jours, rubber wheels.
They are proposing a "Right to Move", similar to the original Thatcherite policy of "The Right to Buy". This, of course, being the cause of the decimation of social housing stocks in England for over a decade, as people bought their own homes and removed them from the available pool, while preventing Local Authorities from using the resulting revenue to plough back into building more houses.
Anyway, the Tory idea works like this [as far as I can work out: they freely admit that they haven't thought it through, and you can say that again!] You are unemployed and living in social/council/whatever housing in, say, Greater Manchester. You know there are jobs to be had for the taking in, ooh, let's say, Stevenage [leaving aside for the moment that the biggest depression since the 1930s seems to be clobbering all of the UK]. You can ask the local authority in Stevenage to provide you with social housing of equivalent stature and nature to allow you to uproot your family and wobble off on your bike, in the best traditions of Normo Tebbs, to start anew in Hertfordshire.
Fine, you say. And of course, there will be some spare social housing in Stevenage, right? No? OK, - er, will your new employer hang about while they build you some? And of course, there will be an equal and matching traffic of people wanting to move from Stevenage to take up social housing in Manchester, won't there? Er, no. Again, no.
If politicians are really that concerned about improving social mobility in the war against unemployment, as we are forced to tramp around the country looking for ever-scarcer jobs, perhaps they should start letting out their second and third homes rent-free, as hostels for those travelling on job-seekers' allowance.
If you had asked someone to come up with an unworkable policy that was obviously knocked up on the back of a fag packet in order to catch a passing bandwagon and provide a few soundbites, you could not have done better. All it lacks is that final touch which marks out any truly ingenious Tory policy de nos jours, rubber wheels.
Saturday, 28 March 2009
Ferals in Peril
I’ve posted a lot about homeless people in the past, but we shouldn’t forget that there are a lot of homeless animals out there as well.
Basia Zamorska is a stylist, who, in her day job, rubs shoulders with the rich and famous, at photo-shoots and on movie sets. But by night she changes into bag lady clothes and prowls the unforgiving and sometimes dangerous streets of New York City, tending to various colonies of feral cats, feeding them and using the approved and tried and tested method of trap-neuter-return. This is generally acknowledged by cat charities to be a good method of managing feral cat colonies.
She’s also managed, against all the odds, to find homes for some of the feral cats she’s come across, and got them adopted. So far so good.
Now, however, one of the colonies she supports with her tireless efforts is under threat. The neighbourhood is being gentrified, and as a result, the owner of the site has come under pressure from some of the residents to stop Basia from feeding the ferals, on the grounds that the food she puts down “encourages rats”.
Now you would have to be one pretty brave (or desperate) rat to venture into the midst of a colony of feral cats and try and steal the food out of their mouths. It would make the charge of the Light Brigade look like a stroll in the park. Plus, these dumbasses don’t realise that, as this is a waterfront area, there are going to be rats there anyway, and without cats to keep them in check, there’ll be a damn sight more!
If I was feeling uncharitable today, I would be tempted to say that these people should be forced to spend a few nights on the street themselves, especially in a bitter New York winter. Then they might realise the valuable work that is being done here.
But for now I will confine myself to a few words from Gandhi:
I hold that the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man.
If you want to show your support for Basia Zamorska’s work, you can sign a petition online to do so here:
http://savedumbo.com/
Basia Zamorska is a stylist, who, in her day job, rubs shoulders with the rich and famous, at photo-shoots and on movie sets. But by night she changes into bag lady clothes and prowls the unforgiving and sometimes dangerous streets of New York City, tending to various colonies of feral cats, feeding them and using the approved and tried and tested method of trap-neuter-return. This is generally acknowledged by cat charities to be a good method of managing feral cat colonies.
She’s also managed, against all the odds, to find homes for some of the feral cats she’s come across, and got them adopted. So far so good.
Now, however, one of the colonies she supports with her tireless efforts is under threat. The neighbourhood is being gentrified, and as a result, the owner of the site has come under pressure from some of the residents to stop Basia from feeding the ferals, on the grounds that the food she puts down “encourages rats”.
Now you would have to be one pretty brave (or desperate) rat to venture into the midst of a colony of feral cats and try and steal the food out of their mouths. It would make the charge of the Light Brigade look like a stroll in the park. Plus, these dumbasses don’t realise that, as this is a waterfront area, there are going to be rats there anyway, and without cats to keep them in check, there’ll be a damn sight more!
If I was feeling uncharitable today, I would be tempted to say that these people should be forced to spend a few nights on the street themselves, especially in a bitter New York winter. Then they might realise the valuable work that is being done here.
But for now I will confine myself to a few words from Gandhi:
I hold that the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man.
If you want to show your support for Basia Zamorska’s work, you can sign a petition online to do so here:
http://savedumbo.com/
Housey Housey
When I was young (yes, I was once young) we used to go on seaside holidays to Withernsea or Kilnsea, in a succession of bleak rented caravans. Or to Butlin’s at Skegness, in good years. The highlight of these holidays, for my parents, was always playing bingo. Personally, I never saw the appeal, but then, as I say, I was young. I guess now, looking back on it, that it was the cheap visceral thrill of unexpectedly supplementing the drudgery of your daily economic grind with some unearned, untaxed income, in a setting outside of the four walls of your own home.
So I can, to a certain extent, understand the antics of Tony McNulty and Jacquie Smith in claiming thousands of pounds in second home allowances, in circumstances that someone less charitable than myself might have described as “questionable”.
The sheer brass face with which these allegations have been “rebutted”, and the fact that it was felt acceptable to claim these allowances in the first place, though, speaks volumes on the contempt with which politicians currently view the electorate who put them there. They obviously think we are blind, or stupid, or both.
The justification for this behaviour is apparently that “they broke no rules”. If this is indeed true, then the rules need changing. It’s as simple as that. There is no way on God’s green earth that we should be paying for MPs’ second homes anyway. I have long argued that there should be a residence qualification for an MP before they can stand for a certain constituency. If you want to be the MP for Lower Snodbury, you should move there, buy or rent a house there, and live there for at least a couple of years before you are allowed to have a go. That way, we would only get people who were either committed to that area or indeed, actually from that area, standing. And the money saved from the payment of second home allowances to already well-off MPs could be put into something socially useful such as feeding, clothing and housing the homeless.
So I can, to a certain extent, understand the antics of Tony McNulty and Jacquie Smith in claiming thousands of pounds in second home allowances, in circumstances that someone less charitable than myself might have described as “questionable”.
The sheer brass face with which these allegations have been “rebutted”, and the fact that it was felt acceptable to claim these allowances in the first place, though, speaks volumes on the contempt with which politicians currently view the electorate who put them there. They obviously think we are blind, or stupid, or both.
The justification for this behaviour is apparently that “they broke no rules”. If this is indeed true, then the rules need changing. It’s as simple as that. There is no way on God’s green earth that we should be paying for MPs’ second homes anyway. I have long argued that there should be a residence qualification for an MP before they can stand for a certain constituency. If you want to be the MP for Lower Snodbury, you should move there, buy or rent a house there, and live there for at least a couple of years before you are allowed to have a go. That way, we would only get people who were either committed to that area or indeed, actually from that area, standing. And the money saved from the payment of second home allowances to already well-off MPs could be put into something socially useful such as feeding, clothing and housing the homeless.
Sunday, 8 February 2009
Salt of the Earth
There's been a lot of blether, woffle and guff in the media last week about Local Authorities running out of salt. One bit of snow and the country grinds to a halt, it wasn't like this in the old days when we had to pay the mill owner for permission to go to work, etc etc children today they don't know they're born, schools closing because of Health and Safety gorn mad, bimey guv'nor and so on...and so on.
I've waited in vain for anyone to mention how difficult this snowy and icy weather must be for homeless people. And waited. And waited, so it looks like I'll have to do it.
One of the problems of course is the differing definitions of "homeless". The Department of Communities, under the control of feisty Krankie-lookalike Hazel Blears, claims that there were only 483 people "sleeping rough" in the UK in June 2008.
Even if that were true, it is still 483 too many, and you can bet your sweet palookah that the figure will have gone up dramatically since that time, with jobs being axed left right and centre because of the credit crunch.
Shelter, the homeless charity, has a multiple definition of homelessness that also includes people living in overcrowded accommodation, people at risk of domestic violence etc., as you would expect.
Crisis, the charity that tries to help London's homeless, has a report which examines these issues as well, and comes to the conclusion that:
We suggest a range for the overall number of single homeless people of between 310,000 and 380,000.
This is a big jump from 483 rough sleepers, even allowing for the fact that one would expect this Government routinely to massage downwards any statistics that are likely to a) embarrass them and b) lead to them actually having to do something.
Maybe the true figure is somewhere in between.
I know I bang on a lot about treating the disease and not the symptoms - over a wide range of issues - because I see it everywhere I look. But in this case, if there is anyone sleeping rough these cold winter nights, we really do need to do both.
It is a scandal even if there are only 483 people sleeping rough this winter and we must do something to rescue them.
The long term issues of homelessness have their roots deep in the very fabric of how society is organised, in the loss of community responsibility, the break up of the family, and the failure of the authorities to ensure a continued and commensurate supply of affordable housing to cope with the demand.
I would like to see more use made of the large amounts of derelict land in the UK. If necessary, central government should “nationalise” or requisition brown field sites that meet certain criteria. They could acquire the land for a fair price to both sides.
They could then parcel it out into “settlements”. Each settlement is a cluster of a set number of eco-friendly, prefabricated, timber-framed kit buildings set around a central source of services, e.g. a small CHP plant, green space, etc, planned along the lines of those designed by the Walter Segal Trust.
The inhabitants of each settlement would then sign a covenant to stay for five years. The government provides the infrastructure and then the settlers provide the labour, as a co-operative, to build their own houses on the site. The houses are identikit, prefabricated. We built lots of "prefabs" after World War Two to repair the housing stock which had been destroyed by Nazi bombing raids, we need a similar effort now. There's nothing wrong with prefabs. I was born in one, but these would be eco-friendly "Uberprefabs" fit for the 21st century.
They then have a choice.
§ If they stay five years paying rent, they have the option to buy (?) but first the cost of the house itself gets charged to their account. But the rent they have paid to date counts as back-dated mortgage.
§ Or they can continue to rent until they decide to buy – at any time after five years.
If they buy, and later decide to sell, there are restrictive covenants on the kinds of people they can sell to, e.g. locals, young families, starters on the housing ladder, key workers, etc.
OK - even though it's now official Bolshy Party Policy (because I say so!) it's still a sketchy plan, and easy to pick holes in. It needs a lot of work. But I haven't seen anything better coming from the people whose job it actually is to sort this stuff out, and who seem to be claiming a lot of salary and expenses for so doing.
With the construction industry in the doldrums, and the government looking around for something to throw money at, now is the time to galvanise the affordable housing situation by starting on schemes such as this. OK, it's not perfect. But which would you rather have? - a patch of derelict land with a ragged collection of homeless rough sleepers huddled round a makeshift fire, desperately trying to keep warm, or the same patch of derelict ground with a small number of eco-friendly social housing units on it, adding to the general stock of affordable housing and providing worthwhile jobs in their construction.
In the meantime, get writing to anyone who you think will listen to ask them what they are doing about giving homeless people shelter during this vile weather.
And keep the salt, and the newspapers that bang on about it, for your fish and chips.
I've waited in vain for anyone to mention how difficult this snowy and icy weather must be for homeless people. And waited. And waited, so it looks like I'll have to do it.
One of the problems of course is the differing definitions of "homeless". The Department of Communities, under the control of feisty Krankie-lookalike Hazel Blears, claims that there were only 483 people "sleeping rough" in the UK in June 2008.
Even if that were true, it is still 483 too many, and you can bet your sweet palookah that the figure will have gone up dramatically since that time, with jobs being axed left right and centre because of the credit crunch.
Shelter, the homeless charity, has a multiple definition of homelessness that also includes people living in overcrowded accommodation, people at risk of domestic violence etc., as you would expect.
Crisis, the charity that tries to help London's homeless, has a report which examines these issues as well, and comes to the conclusion that:
We suggest a range for the overall number of single homeless people of between 310,000 and 380,000.
This is a big jump from 483 rough sleepers, even allowing for the fact that one would expect this Government routinely to massage downwards any statistics that are likely to a) embarrass them and b) lead to them actually having to do something.
Maybe the true figure is somewhere in between.
I know I bang on a lot about treating the disease and not the symptoms - over a wide range of issues - because I see it everywhere I look. But in this case, if there is anyone sleeping rough these cold winter nights, we really do need to do both.
It is a scandal even if there are only 483 people sleeping rough this winter and we must do something to rescue them.
The long term issues of homelessness have their roots deep in the very fabric of how society is organised, in the loss of community responsibility, the break up of the family, and the failure of the authorities to ensure a continued and commensurate supply of affordable housing to cope with the demand.
I would like to see more use made of the large amounts of derelict land in the UK. If necessary, central government should “nationalise” or requisition brown field sites that meet certain criteria. They could acquire the land for a fair price to both sides.
They could then parcel it out into “settlements”. Each settlement is a cluster of a set number of eco-friendly, prefabricated, timber-framed kit buildings set around a central source of services, e.g. a small CHP plant, green space, etc, planned along the lines of those designed by the Walter Segal Trust.
The inhabitants of each settlement would then sign a covenant to stay for five years. The government provides the infrastructure and then the settlers provide the labour, as a co-operative, to build their own houses on the site. The houses are identikit, prefabricated. We built lots of "prefabs" after World War Two to repair the housing stock which had been destroyed by Nazi bombing raids, we need a similar effort now. There's nothing wrong with prefabs. I was born in one, but these would be eco-friendly "Uberprefabs" fit for the 21st century.
They then have a choice.
§ If they stay five years paying rent, they have the option to buy (?) but first the cost of the house itself gets charged to their account. But the rent they have paid to date counts as back-dated mortgage.
§ Or they can continue to rent until they decide to buy – at any time after five years.
If they buy, and later decide to sell, there are restrictive covenants on the kinds of people they can sell to, e.g. locals, young families, starters on the housing ladder, key workers, etc.
OK - even though it's now official Bolshy Party Policy (because I say so!) it's still a sketchy plan, and easy to pick holes in. It needs a lot of work. But I haven't seen anything better coming from the people whose job it actually is to sort this stuff out, and who seem to be claiming a lot of salary and expenses for so doing.
With the construction industry in the doldrums, and the government looking around for something to throw money at, now is the time to galvanise the affordable housing situation by starting on schemes such as this. OK, it's not perfect. But which would you rather have? - a patch of derelict land with a ragged collection of homeless rough sleepers huddled round a makeshift fire, desperately trying to keep warm, or the same patch of derelict ground with a small number of eco-friendly social housing units on it, adding to the general stock of affordable housing and providing worthwhile jobs in their construction.
In the meantime, get writing to anyone who you think will listen to ask them what they are doing about giving homeless people shelter during this vile weather.
And keep the salt, and the newspapers that bang on about it, for your fish and chips.
Wednesday, 24 December 2008
63,000 reasons to be ashamed to be British
According to figures I have seen on the news this morning there are 63,000 families homeless in Britain, this Christmas.
There should be no more rejoicing until this figure is zero, and instead of giving the banks another bucketload of money to waste on junketing, the Government should give local authorities the money to build low rise, low density, eco-friendly housing at socially affordable rates, and renovate existing brownfield sites, until the evil of homelessness is banished from our streets.
Plus, building a new generation of social housing will provide a much-needed stimulus to the construction industry.
Oh, and could somebody hand the Pope and Branson a trowel each. It'll keep them out of mischief too.
There should be no more rejoicing until this figure is zero, and instead of giving the banks another bucketload of money to waste on junketing, the Government should give local authorities the money to build low rise, low density, eco-friendly housing at socially affordable rates, and renovate existing brownfield sites, until the evil of homelessness is banished from our streets.
Plus, building a new generation of social housing will provide a much-needed stimulus to the construction industry.
Oh, and could somebody hand the Pope and Branson a trowel each. It'll keep them out of mischief too.
Sunday, 7 December 2008
Mean Streets
Following on from Rusty Lane, West Bromwich, and while I have still got a bee in my bonnet about things which should not be allowed to exist in Great Britain in the 21st century, here is another one - homelessness.
Last Christmas, Westminster Council stopped the soup run to homeless people in Westminster on Christmas day. Ostensibly, this was because they wanted to encourage people to seek professional help and also because they said that some people from hostels had been turning up and claiming soup to which they were not entitled.
Of all the miserable parsimonious penny-pinching bastard scrooges.
The real reason of course is that rich people in Westminster don't like to be reminded that there are poor and homeless people, often on their very doorstep.
I feel really, truly, sorry for anyone sleeping rough these bitter nights, in the frost and snow we're having at the moment. I've spent some pretty cold and uncomfortable nights in our oldcamper van, when we've been out and about, but even that is luxury compared to sleeping on cold concrete in a cheap nylon sleeping-bag with only a cardboard box between you and the damp. Or sometimes, just the cardboard.
Anyway, Westminster Council, I am watching you, this year. More on this will follow. In the meantime, how do we get to the point where no-one is homeless in Great Britain in the 21st Century?
Last Christmas, Westminster Council stopped the soup run to homeless people in Westminster on Christmas day. Ostensibly, this was because they wanted to encourage people to seek professional help and also because they said that some people from hostels had been turning up and claiming soup to which they were not entitled.
Of all the miserable parsimonious penny-pinching bastard scrooges.
The real reason of course is that rich people in Westminster don't like to be reminded that there are poor and homeless people, often on their very doorstep.
I feel really, truly, sorry for anyone sleeping rough these bitter nights, in the frost and snow we're having at the moment. I've spent some pretty cold and uncomfortable nights in our oldcamper van, when we've been out and about, but even that is luxury compared to sleeping on cold concrete in a cheap nylon sleeping-bag with only a cardboard box between you and the damp. Or sometimes, just the cardboard.
Anyway, Westminster Council, I am watching you, this year. More on this will follow. In the meantime, how do we get to the point where no-one is homeless in Great Britain in the 21st Century?
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