So we are back with a vengeance to notions of the undeserving poor. Electronic cards are to ensure that the poor can only spend their benefits on basic necessities like food and clothing, and not on a lifestyle of alcohol and illegal drugs.
Having lived a rather spectacular life encompassing both ends of the social spectrum, I can state with utter conviction that consumption of illegal pleasure-giving stimulants is far higher among the very wealthy than among the very poor. The notion that only the rich should be allowed to have any enjoyment in life is deeply offensive. It is fine for the Bullingdon Club to get plastered on Krug and cocaine and smash up restaurants. That is all jolly japes and high spirits. For a desperate man to seek solace in four cans of Tennant’s strongest or a bottle of Buckfast is however a dreadful sin and sign of social irresponsibility.
The high streets of our poorest towns are strewn with betting shops, bargain booze outlets, pawnbrokers and payday lenders. For anybody to believe that state compulsion of the patrons is the answer to the problem is the ultimate counsel of despair. Forget giving people a better hope, a greater chance, more socially useful pleasures. Just ban the little solace they have now. We have a government which holds a large section of the population in contempt; which cannot imagine that given a different birth, these people might have been sitting next to them in the Bullingdon Club; in short, which has no notion whatsoever of human dignity.
This latest move against benefits claimants is consistent with the entire development of the modern British economy. High wage economies generate a self-sustaining high domestic demand which keeps the economy growing. Our three main political parties postulate a low wage economy, with a minimum wage below the level which can sustain a family. The low wage economy is defended as a guarantee of strong international competitiveness and thus export performance. In fact Britain’s low wage model is entirely different, and the vast majority of those on low wages have no relation to exports. What Britain has developed is a model where a thin layer at the top are on extremely high remuneration. This of course includes bankers and the financial services industry, but also through the cult of managerialism, CEOs and directors have vastly increased their remuneration. For the multiple between the highest and lowest paid in a company to be 70 – the cleaner on 15,000, the core level majority on 20,000 and the CEO on 3,000,000- is now absolutely routine.
Even the public sector is ruled by this pretence that executive work is harder, more stressful, more uniquely difficult than core work. Well, I have been an Ambassador and a barman, and I can tell you which was hardest work. University vice chancellors are on over 300,000. Local councils regularly have a score of people on over 100,000.
We have no media willing to take on the triumph of greed. The most “left wing” of British newspapers, the Guardian, pays its editor total remuneration of over half a million per year and “star” columnists 300,000, while exploiting interns and junior staff, and squandering 35 million pounds a year of C P Scott’s great endowment in losses – straight into its senior staff’s pockets.
Britain has developed a new kind of low wage economy – one where the bulk of those on low wages work to provide services to those on very, very high remuneration. In a sense it is very old. We have become a helot society. It should be stressed that low wage is a deliberate policy. There is absolutely no reason why those in work could not be paid more. The economy would not crash. In Norway the median wage of the lowest 10 percentile is over 20,000 pounds, while the multiple between the lowest ten percentile and the top ten percentile is less than one third what it is in Britain. The UK’s astonishing and accelerating wealth gap is a result of deliberate ideological policy, founded on a notion that those at the top are possessed of rare and extraordinary abilities – whereas in truth, in the UK more than anywhere, their main achievement was usually to be born into the right family.
The concomitant of that worship of the rich is the belief that money measures worth; that if you have a low income then you are scum. That is the attitude that underlies these benefit smart cards. It is truly disgusting.
Ba’al
Thatcher must’ve liked those words – two years later, she re-visited them :
“Two years ago I spoke of a man’s right to work as he will, to spend what he earns, to own property to have the State as servant and not as master. Today the threat to those democratic values has doubled and redoubled”
http://www.totalpolitics.com/speeches/conservative/conservative-party-conference-leaders-speeches/34193/speech-to-the-conservative-party-conference-1977.thtml
Get us some peanuts while you’re up.
“Wasn’t Germany using proportional representation in 1932?”
No not to my knowledge, real proportional elections were introduced after Adenauer and his british allies discussed introducing the Additional members system, rather than STV, to give an extra added regional and national aspect to fair voting.
FPTP is as old as the establishment has lorded it over this country, its inherently unfair and leaves people disillusioned.
2. Cost of Living
Housing is a major factor in the cost of living and housing costs have been driven up by immigration-driven demand. Close the borders and housing costs will fall.
Not here, Canspeccy. Here, it’s been driven up by buy-to-let speculators amassing property portfolios. with the assistance of estate agents /realtors cultivating price inflation for all they’re worth. Not that unregulated immigration’s helping at all. But your average immigrant’s not heading for prime London residences – a good part of those being bought up by Arabs and Russians living elsewhere, as investments. The answer here is probably to build (a lot) more houses and reduce the demand. I doubt closing the borders would impact sale prices at all, though it might go some way to reducing rents.
Glenn_uk
30 Sep, 2014 – 2:03 pm
“Will we have benefits consequences for, say, attending rallies that are not government approved? The police enforcers have long since taken mass surveillance of crowds of protestors. Will this become grounds for threatening the existence of struggling “hard working families” through the benefits system? Are we going to see far more life choices being restricted, not only in the choices of food and entertainment, but the political activity taken – not just for the entirely dependent, but for the working poor too?”
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Thing are going that way now Glenn:
Extremist Disruption Orders
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“Extremists will have to get posts on Facebook and Twitter approved in advance by the police under sweeping rules planned by the Conservatives.”
“They will also be barred from speaking at public events if they represent a threat to “the functioning of democracy…”
“Theresa May, the Home Secretary, will lay out plans to allow judges to ban people from broadcasting or protesting in certain places, as well as associating with specific people.”
The creeping police state.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/11129474/Extremists-to-have-Facebook-and-Twitter-vetted-by-anti-terror-police.html
Only got pork scratchings, Node. Fell off an investment banker, they did…
Ben, Mark, David Kennedy, etc
This could be an interesting thread (inter alia because the phenomena described are happening in the UK…). So for Heaven’s sake, let’s try to keep on topic, shall we? There will be ample opportunity to comment on other matters on future, more appropriate threads.
Craig doesn’t narrowly define his topics, but the narrow-minded….well let’s just leave that unsaid.
“2. Cost of Living
Housing is a major factor in the cost of living and housing costs have been driven up by immigration-driven demand. Close the borders and housing costs will fall.
Not here, Canspeccy. Here, it’s been driven up by buy-to-let speculators amassing property portfolios. with the assistance of estate agents /realtors cultivating price inflation for all they’re worth. Not that unregulated immigration’s helping at all. But your average immigrant’s not heading for prime London residences – a good part of those being bought up by Arabs and Russians living elsewhere, as investments. The answer here is probably to build (a lot) more houses and reduce the demand. I doubt closing the borders would impact sale prices at all, though it might go some way to reducing rents.”
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I would agree fully with this comment of Baal’s : it is more likely that the buy-to-let brigade and not immigrants are driving up rents.
The buy-to-let phenomenon – after all, it’s virtually self-financing, especially when interest rates are low as at present – is starting up in certain Continental countries where it was unknown let us say 10 years ago. The difference is that for the moment it’s usually individuals who buy one property to rent (often as a future pension enhancer, whereas I believe that in the UK it is rather common for there to be “rental portfolios” (which implies the renting out of several or many properties.
There are other countries – eg Germany – where renting has always been a more dominant feature than in the UK. But there we see a system of state-imposed maximum rents per square metre, the amount varying according to munipality and region.
Another continental feature is multi-annual rentals, where the tenant and landlord are offered medium-term security and the rents can only increase every year in parallel with any increase in the official cost-of-living index.
In short, there is no good technical reason why renting should be the inhsecure and costly business it appears to be in the UK; it is all a matter of (lacking) political will.
Ben
“Craig doesn’t narrowly define his topics, but the narrow-minded….well let’s just leave that unsaid.”
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Even if that is so, Ben, I think the theme of Craig’s post is fairly clear. A discussion about rents, for example, would fall well within the remit, whereas how public officials are chosen (you devoted an entire post to that) is, I would submit, falls outside.
Brain-washing and conditioning begat a ‘Helot’ society of slavery as David Kennedy writes. Others here are exploring’ the methodology of ‘worth’ where aid, benefit, cost and price are replaced by dignity, goodness and integrity.
I realise to some that concept is hard to digest.
@BZ
“Not here, Canspeccy. Here, it’s been driven up by buy-to-let speculators amassing property portfolios. ”
Same thing. Who do you think the speculators rent to? !!
It’s just another tactic, Mark. The opposition wants the illusion of a discussion of the facts, as long as it doesn’t really impact the big picture.
‘Politics is the art of controlling the environment’
HST
Jury pool selection was used by ancient Athens to choose the members of the upper house of their legislature (the Council or Boule, whereas the lower house was the Assembly or Ecclesia which all adult citizens could attend, and were paid to attend), all but the very highest executive officials (the ten generals and financial officials were elected), and the juries that made up their courts (no judges, and Athenian courts had considerably more political power in their system than current courts have). The system of selection by lot survived well past the loss of Athenian independence in 322 B.C. (when the historical accounts normally assume selection by lot ended) into Hellenistic and even Roman times, with some exceptions in Athens’s interludes of oligarchic rule, until selection by lot was finally ended by Sulla in 89 B.C.
@Ben
A tas-payer funded system giving funds to candidates would ease that effect, if not eliminate entirely.
How to choose candidates who qualify for funds?
The globalist elite will not tolerate any such a democratic solution. Candidates are to be sold to the highest bidder. How else is the money power supposed to run the world.
We had taxpayer funding of elections in Canada, a scheme introduced by liberal PM Jean Chretien, who was, in fact, the best conservative prime minister Canada ever had. The funding formula was based on votes gained in the last election. It gave an advantage to the incumbent but it was an advantaged based on an actual democratic vote.
Needless to say, Stephen Harper the AngloZionist globalist for world empire (i.e., a liberal masquerading as a conservative) and the worst prime minister Canada has ever had, abolished public funding of election campaigns and restored the system of plutocratic control.
I wasn’t aware they already demonstrated that, Lysias.
It’s true that Greek culture said everything that could be said about philosophy, politics and human nature.
Demonstrated what, that selection by lot survived into Hellenistic times? Oh, yes. There’s proof. Some Hellenistic Athenian inscriptions show the system still in operation. And the only surviving kleroteria (the devices used to make the random selections) happen to be of Hellenistic date.
For a detailed description of how the Athenian political system worked in the age of Demosthenes in the 4th century B.C. (the period for which we have the fullest evidence), read Mogens Hansen’s The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes.
“No not to my knowledge, real proportional elections were introduced after Adenauer and his british allies discussed introducing the Additional members system, rather than STV, to give an extra added regional and national aspect to fair voting.”
But wasn’t the system even more proportional than others in that the transfer of votes was done at national not regional level?
If you look at the results the percentage of votes is almost identical to the percentage of seats. You can’t get much more proportional than that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_federal_election,_July_1932#Results
“Demonstrated what?”
Your point. That they used jury selection as the process. Thanks for that.
Ben, Mark, David Kennedy, etc
This could be an interesting thread (inter alia because the phenomena described are happening in the UK…). So for Heaven’s sake, let’s try to keep on topic, shall we? There will be ample opportunity to comment on other matters on future, more appropriate threads.
_________________________________
Far be it for me to question your wisdom on the content of this thread “per se” of other comments, with regards to staying on topic, but I suppose there’s only so much you can say about said topic without diversifying ever so slightly.
Lighten up a wee bit “headmaster”or you may chase new commenters away, just a suggestion, that’s all.
From the Wikipedia entry on the Weimar-era Reichstag:
(Emphasis added.)
Some suggest Greek democracy was not a failure, but rather their fall was due to the Macedonians. All empires fail, but for different reasons.
Greek independence was extinguished by the Macedonians, but Greek democracy survived through Hellenistic into Roman times.
Ste. Croix argues persuasively that Greek democracy was extinguished by the Romans, working hand in hand with the rich in Greece. It was a gradual process, operating from the second century B.C. until finally being fully accomplished in the second and third centuries A.D.
The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes.
Will be on my reading list. Thanks
Alexander was able to overrun easily…sitting ducks.
“Searching for models for the new government they were creating, America’s Founding Fathers studied both the democracy of Athens and the republic of Rome, but they favored the latter. In The Federalist essays, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay argued that Athenian democracy was unstable. They thought Athens was too easily ruled by group passion, rather than reason:
Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob. (The Federalist, No. LIV; by Alexander Hamilton or James Madison)
To justify the size of the House of Representatives, the author argued against a larger assembly by claiming that in large groups, like the Athenian assembly, “passion never fails to wrest the sceptre from reason.”
http://www.agathe.gr/democracy/democracy_from_the_past_to_the_future.html
That we chose the Roman model is a major reason we are more Empire than democracy.
Today’s Washington Post has on its op ed page an interview with the Prime Minister of Italy, Matteo Renzi, in which he basically argues for the whole neoliberal program and dismantling the whole Italian welfare state. Italy’s prime minister: ‘Everything must change in Italy’.
You could still have a large assembly (House of Representatives) in a democratic republic and still be effective. But you need that jury selection component to overcome the consolidation of power. The House is a bunch of hotheads anyway, and they saw this so they formed the ‘cooling saucer’ of the Senate. But that’s like building an auto with remote control steering without proper vetting of candidates.
Same thing. Who do you think the speculators rent to? !!
Really doesn’t matter. Prices are ratcheted up as much by restricting supply as increasing demand. With or without immigration (which I guess, as usual, is your answer to the question) The Market requires a sink for its inflationary funny money. Housing is ideal for blowing bubbles which stay up for long enough for the punters to forget the last crash. This ain’t immigrants. This is policy.
another bizarre idea to bash the poor
sadly British people are fighting amongst themselves about all kinds of trivial issues (immigration, Islam) when the govt is tooling them like royal clowns