Interesting piece from the curmudgeon on welfare reform.
http://www.thecurmudgeonly.blogspot.com/
We should not forget the extent to which every possible step was taken to discourage benefit claimants already under New Labour.
A friend of mine who works in what used to be called a Jobs Centre says it is heartbreaking to see the unemployed who have worked all their lives, sometimes in quite senior positions, now being put through the deliberately humiliating and onerous process of claiming benefit. They have to show they have applied every week for numerous often inappropriate jobs and continually provide evidence of their rejection.
She says that there really does exist a class of benefit scrounger who have no intention of working. They are precisely the ones who are not discouraged. They know how to fill the forms, happily send off a quota of hopeless online job applications every week, and don’t mind explaining themselves to a gormless eighteen year old clerk who has the power to send them and their family to starvation. It is the honest people humiliated at having to claim benefits who can’t cope and fall through the net.
That is the problem with making benefits harder to claim – you discourage the wrong people.
The interesting thing is that the staff do know broadly who are real and who are the scroungers – but they are not allowed to use discretion, but have to make decisions according to set procedures and criteria based on form filling and production of meaningless rejection letter paperwork.. Absolutely symptomatic of New Labour’s Britain.
Suhayl: “Solidarity, and a mass uprising is the only way.” Sounds like you are recommending a Communist revolution. To which I can suggest a number of responses:
1. The joke a Soviet emigre told me. Question: Can we bring socialism to Armenia? Answer: Yes, but why? Another joke from the USSR: A woman walks into a butcher. “I want some sausage, but it must be finely sliced.” “Certainly, bring me the sausage and I will slice it as finely as you want.”
2. Read in “This godless Communism” what happens when people actually implement such a thing:
http://www.archive.org/details/ThisGodlessCommunism
(I have also seen Sergei Eisenstein’s film “October” and “Battleship Potemkin”, BTW).
3. Last but not least, “KGB: The sercret work of Soviet secret agents” by John Barron.
Ha!! Good one, Abe. Sounds like Borat! “You like Pamela…? Is this cheese? You like picture?”
But seriously, it doesn’t have to be a dualistic choice b/w totalitarianism and plutarchy. All I’m saying is, maybe it’s time for ordinary people to call the shots, instead of the big-shots. To reclaim, or build, real democracy – Tom Paine and all that.
@anon [at at July 4, 2010 9:05 PM] – like eddie’s post, accusing someone of ignorance without any indication of why you feel this way is not helpful – it generates heat but no light. In what way does the issue (making life difficult for claimants) go deeper?
Really, readers here are generally open to other views on this blog, but a civil tone and a willingness to supply reasoning or evidence do go a long way.
Jon
These days I really can’t be bothered with people like you and Murray. But I will answer your question. By the way, I do have every right to call people like you ignorant. For you not to know what I am going to tell you, goes to show that ignorance.
A lot of these people have had barbarism practised upon them, poor housing, poor education, brought up by parents who have had the same done to them, as did their parents. A never ending cycle of despair for so many. I could say so much more, but I just can’t be bothered with the likes of you Jon.
“They are precisely the ones who are not discouraged. They know how to fill the forms, happily send off a quota of hopeless online job applications every week,”
It’s a job, see ? A fairly skilled one. You spend your time filling in pointless forms, you take it seriously and do it well, and you get paid for it. Why is it _not_ a job in its own right ? It certainly takes skill.
I don’t say it’s worth anything, produces anything, does anyone else any good; but if people can get paid for it, there’ll be people doing it. Of course there will, they need to be paid for doing something. And it’s not everyone who could do it …
What I’d like to know is exactly how many billions the parsites have fleeced from our taxes in their covert operations under the guise of excise and carousel fraud? How many poor buggers have they locked up so as to pretend that it’s not them stealing our money?
I’ve been out of work for just over a year. Jobseeker’s Allowance runs out after six months and after that there are no benefits – none whatever, not even concessions on health expenses. I’m now no longer counted as unemployed as I am not ‘in receipt of benefits’.
I would not like decisions about whether or not someone is ‘deserving’ or ‘job-shy’ to be made on a whim by someone working at a Job Centre. Sorry, but I think the system has to assume everyone is playing by the rules. And as has already been pointed out, if someone is clever enough to game the system, how is that any worse than a ‘gainfully employed’ worker in the ‘financial services industry’ who earns a huge salary?
We’ve all seen – and/or experienced – the direct consequences on communities of corporatist capitalism over the past 35 or so years.
Generational despair, right enough. But one can see, when enough of the people who are not completely lost within those communities are given some power in their communities, that they can turn matters around.
But it needs changes in the macro-economics.
Btw, I do agree that cheap, imported labour is used by the lords of corporatism as a means of keeping people divided, manintaining a permanent pool of unemployed and of maximising profits for themselves.
The fact that they have achieved the former of these aims is illustrated, Jimmy Giro (@10:48pm), in your comments wrt “women and minorities”. Instead of constantly railing against “women and minorities”, as though you can play only one note, would it not be more accurate to direct your symphonic – or even three-chord, punk-rock – fire at those really responsible, at those who play one off against the other and then laugh all the way to their offshore tax havens?
Fascinating discussion. I quite agree with pretty well everything said about the banks and parasitic financial services industry and their huge rewards.
But I am fascinated that my mates on the left apparently believe that the greed of bankers in some way disproves the existence of a group of people who would rather avoid work and claim benefit.
I think, as I used to be a diplomat, people make entirely false presumptions about my background and life experiences. I grew up poor. In my teens I almost never had any clothes, bar underwear, which were not second hand. I even had second hand shoes. I arrived at university with everything I owned in the world in one small cardboard box. I still have my friends from my original milieu. It is the Polly Toynbee type rich socialists who are unrealistic in their views about the mores of poor people, not me.
To be plain, those who don’t want to work are a small but significant minority – probably around 10% – of the unemployed. That percentage goes down as the nmber of unemployed goes up.
Torture under another name – forced repatriation. The comments below this distressing account, especially the methods of restraint, could easily have come from readers of the Sun.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/abused-humiliated-and-abandoned-what-really-happens-when-the-uk-deports-failed-asylumseekers-2018387.html
“I would not like decisions about whether or not someone is ‘deserving’ or ‘job-shy’ to be made on a whim by someone working at a Job Centre. Sorry, but I think the system has to assume everyone is playing by the rules.”
Why? What if it’s clear that they’re not?
It’s a fact that some people ARE more deserving than others. If someone has a genuine disability and can’t work would you think they are just as deserving as me if I were to were to lie through my teeth saying I can’t work because I’ve got some disability or something and want some money.
You’d be quite happy paying for my disability benefit even though nothing is wrong with me as with someone who is genuinely unable to work?
“And as has already been pointed out, if someone is clever enough to game the system, how is that any worse than a ‘gainfully employed’ worker in the ‘financial services industry’ who earns a huge salary?”
So what? If they’re ostensibly employed by a financial company then who cares if it isn’t tax-payer funded.
RR:”It’s a job, see ? A fairly skilled one. You spend your time filling in pointless forms, you take it seriously and do it well, and you get paid for it. Why is it _not_ a job in its own right ? It certainly takes skill.”
You’ve only underlined that it IS done. Not that it should be done or should be rewarded if it is.
“-RR:”It’s a job, see ? …”
“-You’ve only underlined that it IS done. Not that it should be done or should be rewarded if it is.”
True. I wasn’t arguing “should”, I was saying “is”. That is what the current system does, that is the activity that the setup actually does reward.
(This is all anecdotal, derived from second-hand reports; I am lucky enough to have no immediate knowledge of the subject since the days when the DHSS paid Supplementary Benefit (Eee, £11.90 a week and change for t’busfare home …). I’m drawing conclusions from other peoples’ descriptions).
If you want “should”s …
* From any perspective wider than the individual filling in the forms, it’s all wasted work. Unproductive of anything of any use.
* the implication seems to be, some sort of dishonesty ? “Gaming the system” tends to be said. They’re not playing the game the way they were supposed to, naughty them ? So it’s a badly designed system that has such exploits built into it. It’s like blaming sparrows for discovering they can get a drink of milk by pecking holes in milkbottle tops on the doorstep (I’m showing my age, eh ?)
@anon at [July 5, 2010 12:35 AM]. It would really help if you could use a pseudonym.
Your response to me is a most conflicted one. My views in this thread are defences of the poor, and I am in complete agreement with your perspective about the cycle of damage.
Your accusation of ignorance is baseless, therefore, and is strange considering that we appear to (mostly) agree with each other, as far as I can tell. I should think Craig agrees broadly with this too, which leaves me wondering why you are insisting on being incivil towards me.
I wonder whether the thing that most irritates you is criticism of New Labour; like Eddie, you appear afraid of discovering that what you thought was a genuine social-democratic party was in fact a scam, a right-wing coup perpetrated by Blair and his ilk. Perhaps the devastation of Iraq should have made that clear?
Given that you “can’t be bothered with the likes of [me]”, I will open out the good point you made with everyone else. On the topic of the welfare cycle, there is a very good and sympathetic British paperback out at the moment, called “The Spirit Level”, which looks at this phenomenon in depth. It argues using research that the wealthy classes benefit across a range of health and happiness indicators when social disparity is reduced – something the Labour party would do well to learn from. I recommend the book wholeheartedly.
Some people seem to think that certain unemployed people should not be given benefits. What are the alternatives? I can think of begging, stealing and other crimes, suicide, starvation, and extermination by the state.
Maybe someone has a better suggestion. Preempting the suggestion that “they should be made to work”, I argue that those who *want* to work should be offered work ahead of those who don’t.
Oh. I forgot. There’s also the alternative of fundamentally restructuring the economy and the labour market to offer employment for all. And pigs might fly.
Jon,
the hostility directed towards you and Craig in the anonymous comment, and Eddie’s uninformative remark, both mystified me, too.
Me too! I liked your ranting, Clark btw. And The Spirit Level sounds good, thanks Jon.
‘Your accusation of ignorance is baseless’
Hmm, why then did you ask in the first place…..”accusing someone of ignorance without any indication of why you feel this way is not helpful”
and then say…..
“that we appear to (mostly) agree with each other”
What you are now saying is you already knew the answer. Read my post above again.
You also assume that I support New Labour. I have never in my life voted Labour or New Labour, or given any support to them.
Anon: you might have gathered from my post that I didn’t understand your point. What is it that I have said that means that you “cannot be bothered with the likes of [me]”? That is a genuine question, to which I seek a genuine answer.
I am not saying that I know the answer to the above question at all. But I felt that your point about the terrible spiral of welfare was correct, and that was what we agree on.
I would love to have a proper conversation with you, but as you can see I am not sure what you are saying. If you genuinely want a conversation with me, then please elucidate. I am, incidentally, happy to be corrected on your voting preferences, but then if you are not irked by my criticism of New Labour, what is it that has irritated you so much?
“There’s also the alternative of fundamentally restructuring the economy and the labour market to offer employment for all. And pigs might fly”.
Clark, I’m not sure why you’re so dismissive of this idea because, when you think about it, we’re almost there as it is.
The great majority of people not in work are entitled to benefits; we are therefore paying people a ‘wage’ not to work. I can’t see how anyone truly benefits from this system, particularly when, as always, there is so much work that needs doing.
I think a case could made for replacing unemployment benefit with a job guarantee scheme, paying the minimum wage. Unemployment would be virtually abolished overnight; everyone would be guaranteed an income; much-needed public work would be done. I don’t think the restructuring of the economy to which you refer would be that fundamental.
Ah, MJ,
you must know what is wrong with your suggestion. The wages are but a small proportion of the cost of employing someone. You need managers to manage them, consultants to work out what they should do, training, uniforms, tools, premises, vehicles, insurance, inspectors, and if you employ them, they get employment rights.
But my real reason I’m dismissive is that the present (im)balance of the labour market is to the benefit of the employers. It won’t be changed because the Powers That Be don’t want to change it.
‘what is it that has irritated you so much?’
Your humanity or lack off. You knew what I was meaning, yet still made out you didn’t. I should not have to explain. Most know of (as you put it) the “cycle of damage”. You then went on to the record of New Labour and eddie, why?, what reason?, because I think eddie (at last) put one good post on. You seem to make a lot of unfounded assumptions. I would not spit on New Labour if it were on fire.
“…the present (im)balance of the labour market is to the benefit of the employers”.
Indeed. The real objection is a political one.
All the objections in your first para are easily surmountable details. Organisation and administration? Sure, but we already have a vast bureaucracy administering unemployment benefit claims. Tools, premises, vehicles etc? Investment capital. Employment rights? What’s the problem?
‘Sure, but we already have a vast bureaucracy administering unemployment benefit claims. Tools, premises, vehicles etc? Investment capital. Employment rights? What’s the problem?’
They are mostly just a front.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/10159717.stm
@Anon – Despite my patience with you, you still insist on being rude to me. I am entirely unclear how I have demonstrated a lack of humanity. I have already explained why I thought the original post was a typical New Labour issue, and that target-led systems with no local discretion or flexibility have, in my view, failed in the NHS too.
I insist that I didn’t know what you were meaning – an incorrect assumption that you’ve made now – but we’re just going around the roundabout in circles. I think I will exit!
Jon,
don’t worry about “”; you seem human enough to me. “” seems to have a bee in the bonnet, though I can’t work out why.
In other countries with no welfare system people are hired by private companies to do menial tasks for a subsistence wage. Lots of ’em sit around doing nothing all day, but they have to turn up or they get nowt. The ones who with a good work ethic are trusted for higher paid jobs. Those who show initiative and drive get promoted to higher responsibilities. Wage slavery, maybe, but it’s an effective way of sifting through the labour pool, giving keen workers a fair chance, and stopping lazy arses from lying around entertaining themselves on benefits all day.
‘Despite my patience with you’
Say’s it all about you Jon.
@Royston – it sounds like an effective incentive, doesn’t it – work or starve? But statistically, the countries with the worst welfare systems have a strong correlation with high crime and high levels of mental and physical ill-health. The US is a prime example, and is exacerbated by a privatised healthcare system (which goes hand-in-hand with low levels of welfare provision). The system keeps the poor destitute and the rest of society fearful of crime.
The book I mentioned earlier in the thread is really quite relevant to precisely this topic – do grab a copy if you can 🙂