There has been a predictable outcry by the likes of the Daily Mail and the Conrad Blackshirts about the proposal to settle claims for compensation out of court with the victims of Guantanamo Bay.
What these people fail to grasp is that if someone is wrongly imprisoned, probably illegally, and tortured to boot, and our government is responsible, then it's only right that the injustice should be compensated. It's what makes us the good guys. Still. just.
If we were really interested in being the good guys of course, instead of sinking to the same level as Al Qaida in the first place, seizing people, sandbagging them, holding them against their will and applying mental and physical pain, we wouldn't have done it, but at that time we were wedged so far up George Bush's chuff we couldn't see daylight.
I wonder if there would be as much fuss if the people illegally detained and tortured were called "George", "Henry" and "Cyril" instead of Mohammed. I suspect not. Brown people getting compensation of any kind, even compensation to which they are legally entitled and which will presumably save the taxpayer money if it is an out-of-court settlement, always gets the bigots frothing.
People who argue against this proposal often link the issue of torturing detainees with the 7/7 bombings. Errr. Am I missing something here? What does 9/11 and 7/7 have to do with Guantanamo Bay, except that we colluded with the US in a like for like response that dragged us down to the same level as the bombers?
Are they claiming that in some way 7/7 was caused by Guantanamo detainees? I thought it was three guys from Leeds and one from Reading. I am not following the process by which they are linking the two. Or are they claiming that, if only someone had turned up the current a bit on someone's ghoulies out in Guantanamo, this would somehow have magically prevented 7/7 taking place?
Sadly, it is excrescences like Guantanamo that CAUSE radical idiots to get more and more radicalised, until they start strapping bombs to themselves, and by following George Bush down the primrose path to dalliance, we played right into their hands. We're lucky that we didn't have more than one 7/7. We may well yet have further cause to regret it.
Orwell, of course, in between wishing he could fly, way up in the sky, once famously said that all that keeps us free is that rough men stand ready in the night to do harm, and this is the crux of the question. There ARE people out to destroy our way of life. I would contend, however, that helping George Bush in his ill-starred "War on Terror", with things such as Guantanamo, has ADDED to their numbers, considerably, rather than deterred them.
Also, I question the worth of any of the intelligence gathered by means of torture. If you turn the current up far enough, your victim will tell you whatever you want to hear. It would be instructive to know really how many threats have been neutralised since 2001 by this method of intelligence alone.
I suspect the answer would be very few, because the agencies concerned probably rely on a patchwork of intelligence from different sources, of which torture is only one, which again leads me to question its worth, compared to the problems it causes us by giving radical idiots something to latch onto and radicalise other idiots.
The intelligence agencies are unlikely to tell us the truth, however, because their interest is in making it seem as if there are hundreds of plots every day, which are only averted by shipping people off to CIA deniable "black" prisons. That's how they keep us cowed, and get us to accept the loss of more and more of our own civil liberties to anti-terror legislation.
By the way, just because I am opposed to us lowering ourselves to the depths of torture, doesn't mean I am automatically against the use of lethal force against (for instance) an invading force in a declared, legal war. If Al Qaida were massing at Dunkerque in their invasion barges, I would be reporting for duty on the White Cliffs of Dover, but the War on Terror is a different matter: an undeclared dirty war on a concept.
People also argue that we are now at war against the whole Third World, and this requires desperate measures.
I think that "the third world" as a whole is much more occupied with scrabbling for food in the dust and trying to prevent their children dying of malaria every 40 seconds than mounting a sustained attack on the west. What you are talking about is one convoluted strain of Islam, espoused by a radical bunch of beardyweirdies originally in Saudi Arabia, latterly living in caves in Tora Bora, that objected to the US bases in their Holy Land, and to US policy in Israel. I agree, though, that since 2001, the west in general and the US in particular, seem hell-bent on increasing the number of people who hate us as quickly as possible
And anyone who thinks torture (or collusion with torture) isn't still going on under a ConLibdimwit government is living in cloud cuckoo land.
Wednesday, 17 November 2010
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!
Sunday, 4 July 2010
Home is where the work is
I have already told the joke on this blog about people who live in a council house in Hampstead having another council house in Wales that they go to at the weekends, but now the Tories and MiniTories seem determined to make that lunacy reality, with their latest wacky wheeze.
According to Iain Duncan Smith (remember him? The Quiet Man? With a lot to be quiet about?) people who are on benefits and living in a council house in, say, Sunderland should be willing to up sticks and move to a council house in Plymouth, in search of a job.
I can only see two problems with this. There are no spare council houses. And there are no jobs. Apart from that, it’s a great idea, a bit like world peace and unlimited funds for Donkey Sanctuaries. In practice though, if you actually believe in this crap, how do you feel about Santa Claus?
The other issue of course, even assuming it worked and there were itinerant troops of welders ranging the countryside, looking for work, moving from town to town, is what happens to their original home areas that they left behind. Even more decay, urban neglect, eventually degenerating into a sort of scrubby badlands as nature takes over again.
Yes, when the nettles grow through the broken windows of the housing estates of South Yorkshire, Iain Duncan Smith can rest easy, knowing that he has finally completed the work begun by Margaret Thatcher in 1979.
According to Iain Duncan Smith (remember him? The Quiet Man? With a lot to be quiet about?) people who are on benefits and living in a council house in, say, Sunderland should be willing to up sticks and move to a council house in Plymouth, in search of a job.
I can only see two problems with this. There are no spare council houses. And there are no jobs. Apart from that, it’s a great idea, a bit like world peace and unlimited funds for Donkey Sanctuaries. In practice though, if you actually believe in this crap, how do you feel about Santa Claus?
The other issue of course, even assuming it worked and there were itinerant troops of welders ranging the countryside, looking for work, moving from town to town, is what happens to their original home areas that they left behind. Even more decay, urban neglect, eventually degenerating into a sort of scrubby badlands as nature takes over again.
Yes, when the nettles grow through the broken windows of the housing estates of South Yorkshire, Iain Duncan Smith can rest easy, knowing that he has finally completed the work begun by Margaret Thatcher in 1979.
Thursday, 24 June 2010
Just Can't Budge It
Sometimes, for about a nano-second, a tiny bit of me feels sorry for the Literal Dimwits. I mean, they sort of go back to Gladstone, they are sort of a part of history. That's also their problem, though, now. Since Clegg bet the house on vingt et un bleu, and it came up, they don't stand for anything any more.
And at the next election, unless they are VERY stupid (always a possibility) Labour are going to be shouting from the rooftops, VOTE CLEGG, GET CAMERON! and even those not taken in my that must, perforce, wonder what exactly they would get if they ever voted Lib Dem again. I'll give you a clue, it's wearing a poke, it's covered in mud, and it likes haycorns. Voting Liberal Democrat is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.
Either Clegg hasn't realised that he's been so comprehensively shafted by Cameron (who is still wandering around with the slightly glazed air of someone who can't quite believe it ISN'T all a dream and he ISN'T going to wake up any moment in the shower with Sue-Ellen) or he has realised and, slut that he is, with his political knickers metaphorically round his ankles, he just doesn't care. Because 20 seconds of power is so worth sacrificing 150 years of principles for.
He's seriously underestimated this Forgemasters thing though. Not only is it a PR disaster akin to crapping on your own doorstep then treading in it, in Sheffield, but people in the Lib Dims at large are starting to ask, "hang on, if our glorious leader couldn't stop the Evil Tories cancelling a LOAN (not even a subsidy or a grant, a LOAN) to innovate manufacturing technology in a city for which he is one of the MPs, what exactly, apart from being the convenient whipping boys and patsies for announcing the Tory cuts, are we GETTING from this coalition?"
The rot, as far as the Tories/Mini-Tories are concerned, starts there. That is the only good news, as I confidently expect that by this time next year, dynamiting hospitals will be on the agenda and we will all be queueing in the street to catch loaves of bread thrown off army lorries. We just have to hope the rubber wheels fall off quickly, before they can do too much damage to the recovery, to British industry, and to jobs.
Seventy years ago, if you had a policy of blowing up Britain's infrastructure and deliberately wrecking its economy, you would have been tried as a traitor, stood up against a wall, and shot. How (sadly) times have changed.
The run-up to this budget has deployed the classic black propaganda technique of making people think it was going to be worse than it actually is. Although it is worse than it seems, when you look at it in more detail, the real damage to the economy will come as some of its key measures start to kick in, in the autumn, and in the new year, assuming the coalition lasts that long.
Before the election, the Liberal Dimwits opposed any increase in VAT, calling it a Tory tax bombshell. Osborne “failed to rule out” a rise in VAT, which told us all we needed to know really. And now the Liberals have helped the Tories achieve it, because of course there are some things which are so much more important than having principles.
So, in the autumn spending review, and in the departmental budget cuts of 25%, there is going to be a steep rise in the unemployment figures. The more so, when you factor in the effect of local government redundancies as well, as councils, unable to raise council tax, shed jobs instead, to cut costs. All of these people thrown out of work in the public sector will end up on the dole, drawing benefits, instead of earning money, paying taxes and putting spending power into the economy to drive the private sector revival. That revival is now in peril, as a result.
This budget is a victory for the small-minded, short-termist bigots who bang on about “non-jobs” in the public sector; arrogant, ignorant people who talk as if mixing cement was in some way more worthwhile than balancing the overtime budget of a busy social work department, or emptying bins, or educating children. People who think the amount of income tax you pay should dictate your say in society. These people still just don’t get it, they think that it’s possible to separate the public and the private sectors, that somehow they aren’t both part of the same economy. That you can somehow decimate one, without damaging the other.
But let’s just assume for a moment that this wacky idea has validity. Are ALL of these suddenly unemployed public sector workers going to get jobs in the private sector then? Where are these jobs? Where ARE they? And by putting VAT up to 20% in the new year, adding to inflation, transport costs, and depressing retail sales, how is any of THAT going to create or sustain a private sector revival?
Housing benefit is to be capped, so anyone who is unfortunate enough to find themselves out of work will now be squeezed in that area as well. The medical test qualifications for disability benefit are going to be extended and accelerated, again as a sop to those in the Tory camp who believe the concepts of “the sturdy beggar” and “the undeserving poor”, the sort of people David Cameron now refers to as benefit scroungers (now that he is showing his true colours). As if rotting on benefits, because of a complete lack of hope, prospects and opportunity, to the point where it becomes inured in your culture, is some kind of career decision! I also find myself wondering, has anyone done a cost-benefit analysis on whether the COST of all this additional medical testing will outweigh any savings to be made? Because this government has a habit of talking tough, but being equally profligate and stupid in its own way as Labour was. After announcing the bonfire of the Quangos, we’ve now got a new Quango for budgetary responsibility, and a couple of Quangos to monitor international aid, and now presumably there’s going to have to be a body of some description to organise this medical testing, unless it’s going to be outsourced, and who knows what expense? And of course we can always find taxpayer money to give to whirly-eyed fundamentalists or yummy mummies who want to set up their own school because they think they can do it better than the teachers.
The DWP’s figure for fraudulent DLA claims is about 0.05%, whereas the government are expecting something like a 20% reduction in claims as a result. That disparity can only mean that a lot of people currently eligible for, and deserving of, DLA, will no longer get it. And the net result might be to make it impossible for them to continue to work, and to pay taxes.
And of course, the Tories and their stooges think that all these people can be got off benefits and into jobs in the private sector. Again, where ARE these jobs going to be created? Where are these jobs? Quite how “bipping” people off benefits and not giving them any alternative employment counts as “protecting the vulnerable” is lost on me.
The Tories seem to think that cutting corporation tax will make rapacious international capitalists and entrepreneurs re-invest the savings, in employing more people in the UK, especially with the prospect of not having to pay NI. They won’t, they will just pocket it with a self-satisfied “kerching”, into a nice little offshore account in Belize. Just like, when the housing boom was in full swing, all those Tory politicians protested so loudly at the time that the housing bubble was unsustainable and all their chums in the city were getting usustainably rich and filling their unsustainable boots.
Fact is, if there was political will, there is the resource and the necessary plan to provide affordable housing for all in this country and to wipe out homelessness and reduce the pressure on the existing social housing stock.
Trouble is, we are NOW stuck with an unelected government which thinks it has a mandate to dynamite disused public buildings instead of converting them into social housing, because George Osborne got the idea from some redneck seal-clubber over a beer and a whaleburger in Tokyo.
It is, of course, the same old same old from the Tories, and no doubt those who have had their compassion bypassed at birth will be chortling about it and engaging in the usual triumphalism. I am surprised, though, that the Liberals haven’t had sleepless nights and considered suicide. Usually people who rat and re-rat that much suffer dreadfully from remorse and guilt. At least if they retain a spark of humanity. They have immense mental problems and guilt, because the gulf between their own innate compassion and the contradiction of their actions drives them over the edge. I can only observe that in the case of Clegg, Alexander and Cable, it couldn’t happen to a nicer, more deserving, bunch of people. The disused lift shaft awaits.
The standard Tory line is that there was no alternative, and that the finances inherited from Labour were a shambles. Labour had many faults, but nevertheless, there was another way. There still is another way. One which continues to attempt to grow the economy, while protecting the services which we all use and the benefits on which so many depend. And if the markets and the ratings agencies don’t like it, well, they can bloody well invade. They weren’t that good at picking winners when the bankers (who have got off far too lightly in this budget, but again that is only what you would expect from the Tories) were buying imaginary derivatives with non-existent money.
But the only way we will get this quickly, is if the coalition implodes. The only glimmer of light at the moment is that there are some Liberal Dimwits who are waking up to exactly how far Clegg has sold them down the river. Let’s hope they start rowing back upstream, and soon. Let’s hope they rediscover that they used to have a conscience, and that when they said they went into politics to make a difference, it wasn’t by dynamiting hospitals.
Back in the days of Thatcher, I used to have a foam rubber stress "brick" that I could throw at the television (in place of a real one, which would have been rather expensive in televisions)
Watching Osborne on telly just now, I think I may need to go and find it up in the attic.
"You shouldn't have to go off to work in the morning and see your neighbour's blinds drawn down as they spend their life on unemployment benefit"
Apart from the fact that you probably wouldn't have to do it for long, because this budget will soon result in BOTH houses with the blinds drawn down and the occupants on the dole, let's just unpick the thinking behind that statement.
How nasty, small-minded and divisive. Words calculated to appeal like a dog-whistle to those who harbour inbuilt prejudice towards the unemployed. What a gross over-simplification of the many and complex reasons for lack of opportunity, poverty and deprivation.
How *deliberately* calculated to appeal to the "there's too many of them over here with their benefits and their plasma TVs" brigade. People who have never known, or have forgotten, what economic deprivation is and who caused it (in South Yorkshire, it was the Tories)
And without offering any solution, either. So they are going to stop the benefit of the guy with his blinds down all day. What's he going to do? Get a job in the blind factory? I don't think they are hiring, right now.
Anyone who has the sheer gall and effrontery to utter such an evil, twisted, divisive message and then in the next breath to claim that we are all in this together really DOES deserve to be struck by lightning, and soon.
To those who say if we don’t do this, we will be punished by the markets,
I am sorry to say I disagree. Disregarding the fact that I think these people have no moral authority to dictate how we run our country anyway, and very little skill and judgement in financial rating anyway, at least from the evidence of their past performance, would the down-grading of the UK's rating, assuming it happened, lead to an immediate closure of any "money tap" - I don't believe it would. I believe it would make it more difficult, but not impossible, to get out of this mess.
Again, I think this is a matter of perspective. It's not surprising that having weathered the international banking crisis of 2008 when the whole of the financial sector was teetering on the brink of sliding off Canary Wharf and into the river, the nation's finances are in poor shape. But we've always had a National Debt, since the days of Walpole. And look what a mess we were in after the second World War, when basically we were in hock to the US up to our eyeballs. The difference then is that we had politicians of skill courage and vision, who in the teeth of that, established the Welfare State.
I am also becoming very skeptical about this analogy with Greece. It's trotted out regularly to explain the Damascene conversion of Clegg and Cable to the Tory hard line - the story being that, somehow, over the weekend of the coalition cabal, they also carved out the time to receive a detailed briefing on Greek economic matters and realised how bad it was. If you believe that, how do you feel about the tooth fairy? Greece doesn't have control over its own economy, because it made the misguided decision to join the Euro, and now it's in the same position we were in on Black Wednesday, of having to take medicine that is not appropriate for it, because when it comes to the Euro, one size fits all, for good or ill. We are not, thank God, stuck with the Euro and all its problems and we do have control over our own interest rates, should that be necessary.
I have said enough on here before now about how stupid Labour were, wasting money on things like illegal wars and ID cards, and I have seen at first hand on a smaller scale how profligate government was. I also contend that at the end of the day, this lot are probably wasting just as much money in their own way, they are just wasting it on different things (unecessary new Quangos, re branding the DCSF, etc)
I have no objection to the principle of adjustment in the abstract, but I do, strongly and bitterly, resent the idea that the poorest and weakest must adjust the most, that this needs to be done with unseemly haste just to placate "the markets" - which even if this were true, then begs the question "Who Governs Britain" and once again I question this assumption that the recovery will still happen despite mass unemployment approaching three million, job losses, bankruptcies, reposessions, people being forced off benefits on the premise of non existent private sector jobs, VAT increases and the risk of high inflation.
If there were five jobs for every applicant, instead of the other way round, then George Osborne might have a point. He would still be a smarmy little squit whose face I would never tire of punching, but he might have a point. But it IS five applicants to every job, and it's going to get worse.
WHERE ARE THE JOBS?????
I often hear the phrase, when benefits are being discussed
“Those who choose not to work”
It’s an interesting concept. We're back to sturdy beggars and the undeserving poor here again. I contend that, given the chance and the opportunity, anyone and everyone wants to work, but that generations of people have been beaten down by lack of motivation, lack of opportunity, and lack of any idea how to go about it. Usually in areas of former heavy industry, where there is very little "choice" involved because there ARE NO JOBS.
I take issue with the word "choosing". But I do agree that those unfortunate enough not to be able to find work should be financially supported by a state benefit system, yes: I believe it's what sets us apart as a civilised society. Or one of the things anyway. Housing Benefit has been fuelled by the housing boom which was created by unsustainable offers of credit from irresponsible banks to people who didn't know what they were getting into, encouraged by lax regulation all around and - let us not forget - not one Tory voice was ever raised to object to this because their pals in the City were all busy filling their boots, thank you very much.
I am a little bit unclear about what people are supposed to do though, if there's no point in them applying for jobs and they "choose" not to work, and they don't get any benefits, I guess it comes down to .... oooh, a couple of days on their grouse moor for those with private incomes, and the rest ... er ... begging, I guess.
People who advocate this sort of thing do, however, make a point about the Labour market which is generally overlooked, which is the need to re-think what we have got along the lines of socially useful companies run at a profit by and for the public good. It is called Social Enterprise. This is a viable "third way" that would solve many of the problems and get people away from this "public versus private sector" class war which Osborne seems hell-bent on encouraging. I doubt, however, that he has ever heard of it.
And finally, today, we have had the most breathtaking example of doublespeak of this whole government so far, when they talk of "Revitalising Retirement"* by making old people work even longer! I feel really revitalised!
*In the same way as you could revitalise child care by sending them up chimneys (Oh, hang on, that's in NEXT year's budget)
How long, I ask, can these charlatans, this unelected government with no mandate to wreck our economy, be allowed to continue causing this damage without being challenged?
The only sane response to this budget, I think, is that of Quellcrist Falconer in the Harlan’s World novels by Richard. K. Morgan. I couldn’t put it any better. George Orwell couldn’t put it any better.
J B Priestley and S P B Mais couldn’t put it any better. So here it is.
So if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, TAKE IT PERSONALLY. Get angry. The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here – it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft-. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide from under it with a wink and a grin. If you want justice, you will have to claw it from them. Make it PERSONAL. Do as much damage as you can. GET YOUR MESSAGE ACROSS. That way, you stand a better chance of being taken seriously next time. Of being considered dangerous. And make no mistake about this: being taken seriously, being considered dangerous makes the difference, the ONLY difference in their eyes, between players and little people. Players they will make deals with. Little people they liquidate. And time and again they cream your liquidation, your displacement, your torture and brutal execution with the ultimate insult that it's just business, it's politics, it's the way of the world, it's a tough life and that IT'S NOTHING PERSONAL. Well, fuck them. Make it personal
And at the next election, unless they are VERY stupid (always a possibility) Labour are going to be shouting from the rooftops, VOTE CLEGG, GET CAMERON! and even those not taken in my that must, perforce, wonder what exactly they would get if they ever voted Lib Dem again. I'll give you a clue, it's wearing a poke, it's covered in mud, and it likes haycorns. Voting Liberal Democrat is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.
Either Clegg hasn't realised that he's been so comprehensively shafted by Cameron (who is still wandering around with the slightly glazed air of someone who can't quite believe it ISN'T all a dream and he ISN'T going to wake up any moment in the shower with Sue-Ellen) or he has realised and, slut that he is, with his political knickers metaphorically round his ankles, he just doesn't care. Because 20 seconds of power is so worth sacrificing 150 years of principles for.
He's seriously underestimated this Forgemasters thing though. Not only is it a PR disaster akin to crapping on your own doorstep then treading in it, in Sheffield, but people in the Lib Dims at large are starting to ask, "hang on, if our glorious leader couldn't stop the Evil Tories cancelling a LOAN (not even a subsidy or a grant, a LOAN) to innovate manufacturing technology in a city for which he is one of the MPs, what exactly, apart from being the convenient whipping boys and patsies for announcing the Tory cuts, are we GETTING from this coalition?"
The rot, as far as the Tories/Mini-Tories are concerned, starts there. That is the only good news, as I confidently expect that by this time next year, dynamiting hospitals will be on the agenda and we will all be queueing in the street to catch loaves of bread thrown off army lorries. We just have to hope the rubber wheels fall off quickly, before they can do too much damage to the recovery, to British industry, and to jobs.
Seventy years ago, if you had a policy of blowing up Britain's infrastructure and deliberately wrecking its economy, you would have been tried as a traitor, stood up against a wall, and shot. How (sadly) times have changed.
The run-up to this budget has deployed the classic black propaganda technique of making people think it was going to be worse than it actually is. Although it is worse than it seems, when you look at it in more detail, the real damage to the economy will come as some of its key measures start to kick in, in the autumn, and in the new year, assuming the coalition lasts that long.
Before the election, the Liberal Dimwits opposed any increase in VAT, calling it a Tory tax bombshell. Osborne “failed to rule out” a rise in VAT, which told us all we needed to know really. And now the Liberals have helped the Tories achieve it, because of course there are some things which are so much more important than having principles.
So, in the autumn spending review, and in the departmental budget cuts of 25%, there is going to be a steep rise in the unemployment figures. The more so, when you factor in the effect of local government redundancies as well, as councils, unable to raise council tax, shed jobs instead, to cut costs. All of these people thrown out of work in the public sector will end up on the dole, drawing benefits, instead of earning money, paying taxes and putting spending power into the economy to drive the private sector revival. That revival is now in peril, as a result.
This budget is a victory for the small-minded, short-termist bigots who bang on about “non-jobs” in the public sector; arrogant, ignorant people who talk as if mixing cement was in some way more worthwhile than balancing the overtime budget of a busy social work department, or emptying bins, or educating children. People who think the amount of income tax you pay should dictate your say in society. These people still just don’t get it, they think that it’s possible to separate the public and the private sectors, that somehow they aren’t both part of the same economy. That you can somehow decimate one, without damaging the other.
But let’s just assume for a moment that this wacky idea has validity. Are ALL of these suddenly unemployed public sector workers going to get jobs in the private sector then? Where are these jobs? Where ARE they? And by putting VAT up to 20% in the new year, adding to inflation, transport costs, and depressing retail sales, how is any of THAT going to create or sustain a private sector revival?
Housing benefit is to be capped, so anyone who is unfortunate enough to find themselves out of work will now be squeezed in that area as well. The medical test qualifications for disability benefit are going to be extended and accelerated, again as a sop to those in the Tory camp who believe the concepts of “the sturdy beggar” and “the undeserving poor”, the sort of people David Cameron now refers to as benefit scroungers (now that he is showing his true colours). As if rotting on benefits, because of a complete lack of hope, prospects and opportunity, to the point where it becomes inured in your culture, is some kind of career decision! I also find myself wondering, has anyone done a cost-benefit analysis on whether the COST of all this additional medical testing will outweigh any savings to be made? Because this government has a habit of talking tough, but being equally profligate and stupid in its own way as Labour was. After announcing the bonfire of the Quangos, we’ve now got a new Quango for budgetary responsibility, and a couple of Quangos to monitor international aid, and now presumably there’s going to have to be a body of some description to organise this medical testing, unless it’s going to be outsourced, and who knows what expense? And of course we can always find taxpayer money to give to whirly-eyed fundamentalists or yummy mummies who want to set up their own school because they think they can do it better than the teachers.
The DWP’s figure for fraudulent DLA claims is about 0.05%, whereas the government are expecting something like a 20% reduction in claims as a result. That disparity can only mean that a lot of people currently eligible for, and deserving of, DLA, will no longer get it. And the net result might be to make it impossible for them to continue to work, and to pay taxes.
And of course, the Tories and their stooges think that all these people can be got off benefits and into jobs in the private sector. Again, where ARE these jobs going to be created? Where are these jobs? Quite how “bipping” people off benefits and not giving them any alternative employment counts as “protecting the vulnerable” is lost on me.
The Tories seem to think that cutting corporation tax will make rapacious international capitalists and entrepreneurs re-invest the savings, in employing more people in the UK, especially with the prospect of not having to pay NI. They won’t, they will just pocket it with a self-satisfied “kerching”, into a nice little offshore account in Belize. Just like, when the housing boom was in full swing, all those Tory politicians protested so loudly at the time that the housing bubble was unsustainable and all their chums in the city were getting usustainably rich and filling their unsustainable boots.
Fact is, if there was political will, there is the resource and the necessary plan to provide affordable housing for all in this country and to wipe out homelessness and reduce the pressure on the existing social housing stock.
Trouble is, we are NOW stuck with an unelected government which thinks it has a mandate to dynamite disused public buildings instead of converting them into social housing, because George Osborne got the idea from some redneck seal-clubber over a beer and a whaleburger in Tokyo.
It is, of course, the same old same old from the Tories, and no doubt those who have had their compassion bypassed at birth will be chortling about it and engaging in the usual triumphalism. I am surprised, though, that the Liberals haven’t had sleepless nights and considered suicide. Usually people who rat and re-rat that much suffer dreadfully from remorse and guilt. At least if they retain a spark of humanity. They have immense mental problems and guilt, because the gulf between their own innate compassion and the contradiction of their actions drives them over the edge. I can only observe that in the case of Clegg, Alexander and Cable, it couldn’t happen to a nicer, more deserving, bunch of people. The disused lift shaft awaits.
The standard Tory line is that there was no alternative, and that the finances inherited from Labour were a shambles. Labour had many faults, but nevertheless, there was another way. There still is another way. One which continues to attempt to grow the economy, while protecting the services which we all use and the benefits on which so many depend. And if the markets and the ratings agencies don’t like it, well, they can bloody well invade. They weren’t that good at picking winners when the bankers (who have got off far too lightly in this budget, but again that is only what you would expect from the Tories) were buying imaginary derivatives with non-existent money.
But the only way we will get this quickly, is if the coalition implodes. The only glimmer of light at the moment is that there are some Liberal Dimwits who are waking up to exactly how far Clegg has sold them down the river. Let’s hope they start rowing back upstream, and soon. Let’s hope they rediscover that they used to have a conscience, and that when they said they went into politics to make a difference, it wasn’t by dynamiting hospitals.
Back in the days of Thatcher, I used to have a foam rubber stress "brick" that I could throw at the television (in place of a real one, which would have been rather expensive in televisions)
Watching Osborne on telly just now, I think I may need to go and find it up in the attic.
"You shouldn't have to go off to work in the morning and see your neighbour's blinds drawn down as they spend their life on unemployment benefit"
Apart from the fact that you probably wouldn't have to do it for long, because this budget will soon result in BOTH houses with the blinds drawn down and the occupants on the dole, let's just unpick the thinking behind that statement.
How nasty, small-minded and divisive. Words calculated to appeal like a dog-whistle to those who harbour inbuilt prejudice towards the unemployed. What a gross over-simplification of the many and complex reasons for lack of opportunity, poverty and deprivation.
How *deliberately* calculated to appeal to the "there's too many of them over here with their benefits and their plasma TVs" brigade. People who have never known, or have forgotten, what economic deprivation is and who caused it (in South Yorkshire, it was the Tories)
And without offering any solution, either. So they are going to stop the benefit of the guy with his blinds down all day. What's he going to do? Get a job in the blind factory? I don't think they are hiring, right now.
Anyone who has the sheer gall and effrontery to utter such an evil, twisted, divisive message and then in the next breath to claim that we are all in this together really DOES deserve to be struck by lightning, and soon.
To those who say if we don’t do this, we will be punished by the markets,
I am sorry to say I disagree. Disregarding the fact that I think these people have no moral authority to dictate how we run our country anyway, and very little skill and judgement in financial rating anyway, at least from the evidence of their past performance, would the down-grading of the UK's rating, assuming it happened, lead to an immediate closure of any "money tap" - I don't believe it would. I believe it would make it more difficult, but not impossible, to get out of this mess.
Again, I think this is a matter of perspective. It's not surprising that having weathered the international banking crisis of 2008 when the whole of the financial sector was teetering on the brink of sliding off Canary Wharf and into the river, the nation's finances are in poor shape. But we've always had a National Debt, since the days of Walpole. And look what a mess we were in after the second World War, when basically we were in hock to the US up to our eyeballs. The difference then is that we had politicians of skill courage and vision, who in the teeth of that, established the Welfare State.
I am also becoming very skeptical about this analogy with Greece. It's trotted out regularly to explain the Damascene conversion of Clegg and Cable to the Tory hard line - the story being that, somehow, over the weekend of the coalition cabal, they also carved out the time to receive a detailed briefing on Greek economic matters and realised how bad it was. If you believe that, how do you feel about the tooth fairy? Greece doesn't have control over its own economy, because it made the misguided decision to join the Euro, and now it's in the same position we were in on Black Wednesday, of having to take medicine that is not appropriate for it, because when it comes to the Euro, one size fits all, for good or ill. We are not, thank God, stuck with the Euro and all its problems and we do have control over our own interest rates, should that be necessary.
I have said enough on here before now about how stupid Labour were, wasting money on things like illegal wars and ID cards, and I have seen at first hand on a smaller scale how profligate government was. I also contend that at the end of the day, this lot are probably wasting just as much money in their own way, they are just wasting it on different things (unecessary new Quangos, re branding the DCSF, etc)
I have no objection to the principle of adjustment in the abstract, but I do, strongly and bitterly, resent the idea that the poorest and weakest must adjust the most, that this needs to be done with unseemly haste just to placate "the markets" - which even if this were true, then begs the question "Who Governs Britain" and once again I question this assumption that the recovery will still happen despite mass unemployment approaching three million, job losses, bankruptcies, reposessions, people being forced off benefits on the premise of non existent private sector jobs, VAT increases and the risk of high inflation.
If there were five jobs for every applicant, instead of the other way round, then George Osborne might have a point. He would still be a smarmy little squit whose face I would never tire of punching, but he might have a point. But it IS five applicants to every job, and it's going to get worse.
WHERE ARE THE JOBS?????
I often hear the phrase, when benefits are being discussed
“Those who choose not to work”
It’s an interesting concept. We're back to sturdy beggars and the undeserving poor here again. I contend that, given the chance and the opportunity, anyone and everyone wants to work, but that generations of people have been beaten down by lack of motivation, lack of opportunity, and lack of any idea how to go about it. Usually in areas of former heavy industry, where there is very little "choice" involved because there ARE NO JOBS.
I take issue with the word "choosing". But I do agree that those unfortunate enough not to be able to find work should be financially supported by a state benefit system, yes: I believe it's what sets us apart as a civilised society. Or one of the things anyway. Housing Benefit has been fuelled by the housing boom which was created by unsustainable offers of credit from irresponsible banks to people who didn't know what they were getting into, encouraged by lax regulation all around and - let us not forget - not one Tory voice was ever raised to object to this because their pals in the City were all busy filling their boots, thank you very much.
I am a little bit unclear about what people are supposed to do though, if there's no point in them applying for jobs and they "choose" not to work, and they don't get any benefits, I guess it comes down to .... oooh, a couple of days on their grouse moor for those with private incomes, and the rest ... er ... begging, I guess.
People who advocate this sort of thing do, however, make a point about the Labour market which is generally overlooked, which is the need to re-think what we have got along the lines of socially useful companies run at a profit by and for the public good. It is called Social Enterprise. This is a viable "third way" that would solve many of the problems and get people away from this "public versus private sector" class war which Osborne seems hell-bent on encouraging. I doubt, however, that he has ever heard of it.
And finally, today, we have had the most breathtaking example of doublespeak of this whole government so far, when they talk of "Revitalising Retirement"* by making old people work even longer! I feel really revitalised!
*In the same way as you could revitalise child care by sending them up chimneys (Oh, hang on, that's in NEXT year's budget)
How long, I ask, can these charlatans, this unelected government with no mandate to wreck our economy, be allowed to continue causing this damage without being challenged?
The only sane response to this budget, I think, is that of Quellcrist Falconer in the Harlan’s World novels by Richard. K. Morgan. I couldn’t put it any better. George Orwell couldn’t put it any better.
J B Priestley and S P B Mais couldn’t put it any better. So here it is.
So if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, TAKE IT PERSONALLY. Get angry. The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here – it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft-. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide from under it with a wink and a grin. If you want justice, you will have to claw it from them. Make it PERSONAL. Do as much damage as you can. GET YOUR MESSAGE ACROSS. That way, you stand a better chance of being taken seriously next time. Of being considered dangerous. And make no mistake about this: being taken seriously, being considered dangerous makes the difference, the ONLY difference in their eyes, between players and little people. Players they will make deals with. Little people they liquidate. And time and again they cream your liquidation, your displacement, your torture and brutal execution with the ultimate insult that it's just business, it's politics, it's the way of the world, it's a tough life and that IT'S NOTHING PERSONAL. Well, fuck them. Make it personal
Sunday, 6 June 2010
Don't badger the badger
From an animal welfare perspective, one of the most depressing things about the Tory/Torylite Junta is its insistence on restoring fox hunting, and on carrying out a badger cull in England under the pretext of dealing with Bovine TB.
The arguments over fox hunting have been well-rehearsed, of course. Anyone who wants a summary of the case against, just send me a stamped addressed envelope. It is to be expected of the Tories, of course, as the party which is propped up by the landed gentry, that they would try and reverse the hunting ban. Not that the hunting ban was ever properly enforced in the first place, anyway. It’s amazing, isn’t it? We always seem to be able to magic lots of extra policemen out of thin air when there is a miners’ strike, or when a fascist dictator wants his goon squad to be able to run through central London alongside the olympic flag, but when it comes to the law of the land, we are seemingly more selective. Anyway, I digress. If fox hunting had been a working-class sport, it would have been abolished 150 years ago.
Bovine TB has, it is true, been a proverbial thorn in the side of British dairy farmers, who have, it is equally true, been quick to blame the badgers. And yes, badgers do have a reservoir of bovine TB in the wild. So far, so true. But badgers are not unique in this. Other wild animals, including deer, also incubate the m. bovis strain. This is my first problem with just culling the badger, as a strategy. It ignores the existence of other potential sources of the disease in the wild. Quite deliberately, else otherwise the proponents of culling would have to admit that the only effective cull strategy would be to cull everything. Turn the countryside into a nuclear wasteland, and concrete over the green fields of England, right up to the farm gate. Farmers don’t like admitting that this is the logical conclusion of that line of logic, because it clashes with their self-assumed mantle as guardians of the countryside. Yet it is true, nevertheless.
Even assuming culling badgers alone was the answer, that in itself is still fraught with illogicalities and inconsistencies. Badgers have no idea of human boundaries. So supposing you decide to set your cull area to a particular boundary – parish, area, council, it doesn’t matter – two things will happen: surviving badgers in the area will decide to move on to safer climes and wander off elsewhere, taking any infection which may be present with them, while new badgers from outside the area will move in, when they realise there is less competition for food in an area of fewer competitors.
So, in fact, far from making the bovine TB situation better, a cull may actually make it worse. Don’t take my word for it, though.
A report in Nature (Donnelly et al, Nature 439, 843, Feb 2006) based on a large scale and randomised field experiment recently provided strong and significant evidence that culling badgers actually exacerbated the problem by raising the incidence of TB in cattle living nearby.
The Independent Scientific Group (ISG) on Cattle TB concluded (16/6/2007) that culling the wild animals would not halt the spread of the disease by any meaningful extent and "may make matters worse." This report is the summation of 10 years of scientific research, costing 50 million pounds, which saw the killing of 11,000 badgers in the Randomised Badger Culling Trial.
Instead, the ISG advised that substantial reductions in TB can be achieved by improving cattle-based control methods, including electric fencing around farm buildings, better controls on cattle movement through zoning or herd attestation, strategic use of gamma-interferon blood tests in both routine and pre-movement testing, quarantine of purchased cattle, and shorter testing intervals, to name but a few.
The problem is that the NFU didn't like the conclusion, because country folk always know better than they there townie scientists. It came as no surprise that this independent scientists' report was immediately and forcefully attacked by the farmers and NFU which claimed, with no basis, that the ISG's suggestions would be worthless if the cycle of re-infection from badgers was not broken.
Given the Tories' penchant for jumping on bandwagons, and given their disregard for animal welfare generally (see also under Fox Hunting above) they obviously saw this issue as an easy way to hoover up votes in rural constituencies, which is how we come to be here today. It's nothing to do with a burning desire to eradicate bovine TB or make intensive farming more humane on the part of David Cameron.
What a shame badgers don’t get to vote
The arguments over fox hunting have been well-rehearsed, of course. Anyone who wants a summary of the case against, just send me a stamped addressed envelope. It is to be expected of the Tories, of course, as the party which is propped up by the landed gentry, that they would try and reverse the hunting ban. Not that the hunting ban was ever properly enforced in the first place, anyway. It’s amazing, isn’t it? We always seem to be able to magic lots of extra policemen out of thin air when there is a miners’ strike, or when a fascist dictator wants his goon squad to be able to run through central London alongside the olympic flag, but when it comes to the law of the land, we are seemingly more selective. Anyway, I digress. If fox hunting had been a working-class sport, it would have been abolished 150 years ago.
Bovine TB has, it is true, been a proverbial thorn in the side of British dairy farmers, who have, it is equally true, been quick to blame the badgers. And yes, badgers do have a reservoir of bovine TB in the wild. So far, so true. But badgers are not unique in this. Other wild animals, including deer, also incubate the m. bovis strain. This is my first problem with just culling the badger, as a strategy. It ignores the existence of other potential sources of the disease in the wild. Quite deliberately, else otherwise the proponents of culling would have to admit that the only effective cull strategy would be to cull everything. Turn the countryside into a nuclear wasteland, and concrete over the green fields of England, right up to the farm gate. Farmers don’t like admitting that this is the logical conclusion of that line of logic, because it clashes with their self-assumed mantle as guardians of the countryside. Yet it is true, nevertheless.
Even assuming culling badgers alone was the answer, that in itself is still fraught with illogicalities and inconsistencies. Badgers have no idea of human boundaries. So supposing you decide to set your cull area to a particular boundary – parish, area, council, it doesn’t matter – two things will happen: surviving badgers in the area will decide to move on to safer climes and wander off elsewhere, taking any infection which may be present with them, while new badgers from outside the area will move in, when they realise there is less competition for food in an area of fewer competitors.
So, in fact, far from making the bovine TB situation better, a cull may actually make it worse. Don’t take my word for it, though.
A report in Nature (Donnelly et al, Nature 439, 843, Feb 2006) based on a large scale and randomised field experiment recently provided strong and significant evidence that culling badgers actually exacerbated the problem by raising the incidence of TB in cattle living nearby.
The Independent Scientific Group (ISG) on Cattle TB concluded (16/6/2007) that culling the wild animals would not halt the spread of the disease by any meaningful extent and "may make matters worse." This report is the summation of 10 years of scientific research, costing 50 million pounds, which saw the killing of 11,000 badgers in the Randomised Badger Culling Trial.
Instead, the ISG advised that substantial reductions in TB can be achieved by improving cattle-based control methods, including electric fencing around farm buildings, better controls on cattle movement through zoning or herd attestation, strategic use of gamma-interferon blood tests in both routine and pre-movement testing, quarantine of purchased cattle, and shorter testing intervals, to name but a few.
The problem is that the NFU didn't like the conclusion, because country folk always know better than they there townie scientists. It came as no surprise that this independent scientists' report was immediately and forcefully attacked by the farmers and NFU which claimed, with no basis, that the ISG's suggestions would be worthless if the cycle of re-infection from badgers was not broken.
Given the Tories' penchant for jumping on bandwagons, and given their disregard for animal welfare generally (see also under Fox Hunting above) they obviously saw this issue as an easy way to hoover up votes in rural constituencies, which is how we come to be here today. It's nothing to do with a burning desire to eradicate bovine TB or make intensive farming more humane on the part of David Cameron.
What a shame badgers don’t get to vote
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, 3 June 2010
There is Nothing Like A Dame (School)
Amongst the many preposterous things about this misbegotten coalition (if you can call the Literal Dimwits becoming a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Tory Party a “coalition” in any meaningful sense of the word) surely the most preposterous is that Michael Gove is now the Secretary of State for Education. Almost his first act was to ordain a (presumably expensive and completely unnecessary) re-branding of the DCSF back to the Department for Education.
At a time when the rest of us are being asked to tighten our belts, and given that it would have been perfectly feasible to have had a different policy, but kept the name the same, this is a waste of public money. How much public money, remains to be seen. I have written to my MP to ask, and if I get a reply, I will post it on this blog.
His capacity to cause havoc to the educational system, however, extends far beyond his choice of logo, colour swatches, web site and stationery. Because the Queen’s speech has shown us that the Tories are determined to press ahead with their policy of “Free Schools” and also they have demonstrated their intention to increase the number of Academies.
The “Free School” idea is the misbegotten spawn of that most nebulous and amorphous of Tory policies, “The Big Society”. What it means is that the government, in effect, is abdicating responsibility for large swathes of what it used to do, ie “governing”. And abdicating funding, as well.
So, from now on, if your local park is full of dog poo, instead of the government funding your local authority to clean it up, you are expected to round up a like minded citizen possee of pooper scoopers, to clean up this durn town! If Granny Smith can’t get out to do her shopping, you’re supposed to alert the social services or the WVS. The Social Workers can’t do it, because, fed up with cuts; low pay and hiring freezes, they are all now stacking shelves at Tescos for more money and less chance of getting crucified by the Daily Mail and the Conrad Blackshirts if they make a mistake.
So much for the Big Society. In education terms, specifically, what it means is, if you don’t like the school your state provides for your kids, then go and start your own school, and stop bothering us, we’re too busy filling in our expenses to run the country as well, you know!
There are, of course, already lots of schools that already are schools that were started in this manner. They are private schools, misleadingly called “public” schools, although Joe Public has about as much chance of going to one as I do of flying to the moon. But these public schools are not publicly funded. They are education’s private sector. What Gove proposes, however, is not only to allow people to form their own schools, for whatever reason, but to be allowed to use public money doing it.
In practice, I can think of only three categories of people who are going to be even faintly interested in the idea. The vast proportion of parents, it has been demonstrated time and time again, just want a good local school to teach their kids. Some of them, of course, also extend their definition of “teaching” to include parenting, baby sitting, moral guidance and discipline as well, because they are too lazy or inept to do it themselves.
But the categories of people who are going to be most interested in this proposal are Religious Nutters, Big Business, and Yummy Mummies in West London, who don’t want Tarquin and Jocasta mixing with the common children at a comprehensive. The Religious Nutters element worries me the most, to be honest, since it will inevitably mean schools run as Madrassars, and schools run by whirly-eyed fundamentalists who think that Darwin faked the fossil record. Using public money, let us not forget.
There is already too much interference in schools from Religion. Faith schools get a massively disproportionate amount of resource pumped into them (see also under Academies) and, to be honest, prolong the existence of religious differences and divides. I would much rather see all faith schools, and all schools for that matter, forced to abandon their faith status and instead to teach comparative religion as a compulsory subject. That would do much to dispel fear, distrust, and xenophobia in society at large.
Big Business, of course, is only interested in producing cannon-fodder for the factories, the fast food outlets, and call centres. When questioned, in a radio interview on the Today programme about what he would do to ensure that the Free Schools idea was not hijacked by those with their own agenda, Gove replied that they would have to demonstrate they had a “robust business plan” and that anyone who had what he called a “dark agenda”, would be prevented from going ahead. Leaving aside the fact that this answer showed that he is more interested, seemingly, in their business plan than in their proposed curriculum, I am intrigued by the idea of a “dark agenda”.
Who decides what is a “dark agenda”? How dark is dark? Obviously, anyone wanting to set up a “Free School Taleban Training Camp and Islamic College” is going to be seen to have a “dark agenda”. But supposing I decided to set up a school to teach children a curriculum based on, oooh, let’s say Socialist principles, relative morality, ethics and animal welfare. Given its pro-hunting stance, I would imagine the government would regard that as a dark agenda. But if McDonalds, whose slash and burn antics have been widely discussed in ecological circles, wanted to set up the Ronald McDonald Free School and Burger Flipping Academy, would that be dark? Because it bloody well should be! And how would the darkness vary if they promised to employ all of the alumni of such an establishment?
None of this would matter, of course, or it wouldn’t matter so much, if it wasn’t public money. People have a right to their own opinions, however dopey or bizarre, and they are perfectly at liberty to start schools, using their OWN money, which would then stand or fall by their own merits, ability and reputation, depending how many gullible parents they can find to pay the fees. But this Quixotic enterprise, where every whirly-eyed demagogue can cause further fragmentation and unnecessary waste and duplication in public education, is going to be funded by us. At a time when, if money is that tight, economies of scale should be the way to go, surely.
Which brings me to Academies. There seems to be an ongoing recent idea in education, which survives with a dogged and insidious persistence, akin to that of Japanese knotweed, that elitism in education for its own sake is a good thing. Inequality of opportunity is something to be striven for, apparently. Every time this idea is shown up to be bogus rubbish, it springs up again in another form, like the many-headed Hydra.
Its latest manifestation is the philosophy behind Academies. I would still mind, though I wouldn’t mind so much, if they just admitted that the prime driver behind Academies is once more to shift some cost off the public sector and on to the private sector’s balance sheet. But it’s always dressed up in the claptrap of Academies good, failing Comps bad. The latest philosophy is that each Academy, as it speeds unerringly upwards in its ceaseless progress through the concentric spheres of academic excellence, should “take a failing school with it”. I suspect that this , in practice, will devolve down to letting the oiks use the Academy’s playing fields once a week.
To those who believe that Academies have some sort of intrinsic superiority over all other forms of school, I lay down this simple challenge. Take the average, bog standard, failing inner city comp, and lavish upon that school for three years all of the advantages and the resources of an Academy. Then, at the end of that process, we will be able to see, once and for all, whether it is the format, or the funding, that makes the difference.
In the nineteenth century, well-meaning old women started schools to keep the children of those who could afford it, occupied, while the parents earned a living, combining in effect babysitting with a rudimentary study of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Every time I think of Mr Gove, which is as infrequently as possible, and his proposals, I am inextricably drawn back to this: Mr Gove may not himself be a dame, but his educational policies are almost certainly a pantomime, and a pretty Widow Twanky one at that, as the late, great, Dr Spooner might have observed, had he been there to observe it.
At a time when the rest of us are being asked to tighten our belts, and given that it would have been perfectly feasible to have had a different policy, but kept the name the same, this is a waste of public money. How much public money, remains to be seen. I have written to my MP to ask, and if I get a reply, I will post it on this blog.
His capacity to cause havoc to the educational system, however, extends far beyond his choice of logo, colour swatches, web site and stationery. Because the Queen’s speech has shown us that the Tories are determined to press ahead with their policy of “Free Schools” and also they have demonstrated their intention to increase the number of Academies.
The “Free School” idea is the misbegotten spawn of that most nebulous and amorphous of Tory policies, “The Big Society”. What it means is that the government, in effect, is abdicating responsibility for large swathes of what it used to do, ie “governing”. And abdicating funding, as well.
So, from now on, if your local park is full of dog poo, instead of the government funding your local authority to clean it up, you are expected to round up a like minded citizen possee of pooper scoopers, to clean up this durn town! If Granny Smith can’t get out to do her shopping, you’re supposed to alert the social services or the WVS. The Social Workers can’t do it, because, fed up with cuts; low pay and hiring freezes, they are all now stacking shelves at Tescos for more money and less chance of getting crucified by the Daily Mail and the Conrad Blackshirts if they make a mistake.
So much for the Big Society. In education terms, specifically, what it means is, if you don’t like the school your state provides for your kids, then go and start your own school, and stop bothering us, we’re too busy filling in our expenses to run the country as well, you know!
There are, of course, already lots of schools that already are schools that were started in this manner. They are private schools, misleadingly called “public” schools, although Joe Public has about as much chance of going to one as I do of flying to the moon. But these public schools are not publicly funded. They are education’s private sector. What Gove proposes, however, is not only to allow people to form their own schools, for whatever reason, but to be allowed to use public money doing it.
In practice, I can think of only three categories of people who are going to be even faintly interested in the idea. The vast proportion of parents, it has been demonstrated time and time again, just want a good local school to teach their kids. Some of them, of course, also extend their definition of “teaching” to include parenting, baby sitting, moral guidance and discipline as well, because they are too lazy or inept to do it themselves.
But the categories of people who are going to be most interested in this proposal are Religious Nutters, Big Business, and Yummy Mummies in West London, who don’t want Tarquin and Jocasta mixing with the common children at a comprehensive. The Religious Nutters element worries me the most, to be honest, since it will inevitably mean schools run as Madrassars, and schools run by whirly-eyed fundamentalists who think that Darwin faked the fossil record. Using public money, let us not forget.
There is already too much interference in schools from Religion. Faith schools get a massively disproportionate amount of resource pumped into them (see also under Academies) and, to be honest, prolong the existence of religious differences and divides. I would much rather see all faith schools, and all schools for that matter, forced to abandon their faith status and instead to teach comparative religion as a compulsory subject. That would do much to dispel fear, distrust, and xenophobia in society at large.
Big Business, of course, is only interested in producing cannon-fodder for the factories, the fast food outlets, and call centres. When questioned, in a radio interview on the Today programme about what he would do to ensure that the Free Schools idea was not hijacked by those with their own agenda, Gove replied that they would have to demonstrate they had a “robust business plan” and that anyone who had what he called a “dark agenda”, would be prevented from going ahead. Leaving aside the fact that this answer showed that he is more interested, seemingly, in their business plan than in their proposed curriculum, I am intrigued by the idea of a “dark agenda”.
Who decides what is a “dark agenda”? How dark is dark? Obviously, anyone wanting to set up a “Free School Taleban Training Camp and Islamic College” is going to be seen to have a “dark agenda”. But supposing I decided to set up a school to teach children a curriculum based on, oooh, let’s say Socialist principles, relative morality, ethics and animal welfare. Given its pro-hunting stance, I would imagine the government would regard that as a dark agenda. But if McDonalds, whose slash and burn antics have been widely discussed in ecological circles, wanted to set up the Ronald McDonald Free School and Burger Flipping Academy, would that be dark? Because it bloody well should be! And how would the darkness vary if they promised to employ all of the alumni of such an establishment?
None of this would matter, of course, or it wouldn’t matter so much, if it wasn’t public money. People have a right to their own opinions, however dopey or bizarre, and they are perfectly at liberty to start schools, using their OWN money, which would then stand or fall by their own merits, ability and reputation, depending how many gullible parents they can find to pay the fees. But this Quixotic enterprise, where every whirly-eyed demagogue can cause further fragmentation and unnecessary waste and duplication in public education, is going to be funded by us. At a time when, if money is that tight, economies of scale should be the way to go, surely.
Which brings me to Academies. There seems to be an ongoing recent idea in education, which survives with a dogged and insidious persistence, akin to that of Japanese knotweed, that elitism in education for its own sake is a good thing. Inequality of opportunity is something to be striven for, apparently. Every time this idea is shown up to be bogus rubbish, it springs up again in another form, like the many-headed Hydra.
Its latest manifestation is the philosophy behind Academies. I would still mind, though I wouldn’t mind so much, if they just admitted that the prime driver behind Academies is once more to shift some cost off the public sector and on to the private sector’s balance sheet. But it’s always dressed up in the claptrap of Academies good, failing Comps bad. The latest philosophy is that each Academy, as it speeds unerringly upwards in its ceaseless progress through the concentric spheres of academic excellence, should “take a failing school with it”. I suspect that this , in practice, will devolve down to letting the oiks use the Academy’s playing fields once a week.
To those who believe that Academies have some sort of intrinsic superiority over all other forms of school, I lay down this simple challenge. Take the average, bog standard, failing inner city comp, and lavish upon that school for three years all of the advantages and the resources of an Academy. Then, at the end of that process, we will be able to see, once and for all, whether it is the format, or the funding, that makes the difference.
In the nineteenth century, well-meaning old women started schools to keep the children of those who could afford it, occupied, while the parents earned a living, combining in effect babysitting with a rudimentary study of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Every time I think of Mr Gove, which is as infrequently as possible, and his proposals, I am inextricably drawn back to this: Mr Gove may not himself be a dame, but his educational policies are almost certainly a pantomime, and a pretty Widow Twanky one at that, as the late, great, Dr Spooner might have observed, had he been there to observe it.
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