Why don’t pension critics attack the fat-cats?
contribution by Nigel Stanley
The attack on public sector pensions by the TaxPayers Alliance, right-wing newspapers and the more excitable employer organisations is the kind of campaign used by the shrink-the-state US right.
There’s a very clear narrative – public sector pensions are unaffordable, unreformed, out-of-control and provide fat cat pensions. Its aim is to divide less well off people and make them vote for the interests of the rich.
Yet its evidence base continually shifts, with outrageous misrepresentation of statistics and deliberate bending of the truth in an admittedly complex area that very few people understand. The result is that even progressive people accept there is some big problem with public sector pensions that needs resolving.
Today the TUC publishes the first comprehensive rebuttal of the arguments used against public sector pensions and instead shows that for every pound that taxpayers spend on public sector pensions this year, they are giving £2:50 to subsidise the pensions of the richest one per cent who earn more than £150,000.
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Migration is not a crime, but the discussion is criminal
contribution by Left Outside
Carl Packman recently wrote of the left’s problem on immigration. However, it is not the just the left which has difficulty discussing immigration. The right does too, because they just can’t help themselves distorting the truth or outright lying.
As I began to discuss here, talk about immigration in this country is tainted by decades, indeed centuries, of prejudiced stereotypes that are difficult to escape. Unfortunately some papers extend so little effort to escape this regrettable history that numerous blogs have been created to monitor them.
A lack of originality, a surplus of bile
What I want to create is a crib sheet for any article you see on immigration, migrants, refugees or asylum by looking at the history of that discussion. Our modern debate on migration has not developed out of a vacuum.
In fact, we are forced to watch tedious reruns of discussions concerning Huguenots in the 1680s, Irish migrants in the early 19th Century and Eastern Europeans in the late, Jews in the 1930s and West Indians and South Asians in the 1960 and 70s.
As Paul Gilroy describes in There Ain’t no Black in the Union Jack “the wearisome task of dissecting the rhetoric is not helped by its lack of originality: ‘they’ are taking our jobs and houses, using up local resources and undermining ‘our’ culture and, in return, offering ‘us’ disease and terrorism.” However, dissect it we will, again and again, until they fucking learn.
Any immigration story you read in the above papers will be shaped by the groundless assumptions under which the anti-immigrant polemicist operates. These do not pop out of thin air, they are drawn from the past. Pick an article; I will guarantee that it will contain a combination of the below:
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Welfare handouts, idle people and Michael Portillo
On August 30, former Tory MP Michael Portillo penned a Sunday Times article carrying the headline ‘Idle young should be entitled to nothing‘, a celebration of the ideology and beliefs of controversial American libertarian Charles Murray, a bloke who gained fame in the 1980s and 1990s for his statements about “the underclass” and the alleged link between ethnicity and intelligence (see here for an overview).
Particularly surprising is the fact that the champion of such ideas is Michael Portillo, the man who, a few years ahead of David Cameron, called for a Tory makeover that would disentangle the party from the deepest right-wing morass it was stuck in. Compare in fact Portillo’s mid-90s ‘SAS speech’ with the cuddly toy TV personality currently hopping from one settee to another on Andrew Neil’s This Week.
In any case, Portillo is guilty of superficially rehashing ideas that don’t have a leg to stand on now any more than they did back in the Eighties. Notions that go back and forth like a tennis ball between Daily Mail columnists and neo-Conservative politicians to the point that they’ve grown into their default ideological background.
One phrase in particular struck me for its staggering degree of superficiality.
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Leave me and my potential babies alone
Shock, horror, disaster: the population is exploding! Yes, the recently-over-reported demographic expansion of 1%, incidentally mitigating the encroaching pensions crisis, has kicked off a chain of explosions – explosions of racial paranoia, class hatred and misogyny.
According to Amanda Platell of the Mail and Melanie McDonagh of The Telegraph, what this means is that middle class, “Anglo-Saxon” women now have a duty to have more babies in their twenties. I have a spare set of sewing scissors around if anyone cares to unpick the various strands of racism, misogyny and class prejudice going on in those assumptions – let’s just say that it’s all intersectionally fucked.
I’m going to work on the assumption that by “Anglo-Saxon…women”, McDonagh means to say is that ‘white women should be having more babies.’ And despite my Mediterranean-Slavic heritage, I’m fairly sure I’m one of the nice young lilywhite gels McDonagh wants to see breeding like paranoid supremacist bunnies.
To which my response is: fuck. Right. Off. I’m not going to be told when and how and with whom I may breed, by anyone, thanks.
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Feminists aren’t letting down Muslim women
For some reason, these past few weeks have seen a great deal of attention paid to the relationship between Islam and western feminism. The latest issue of Standpoint features lengthy essays by Clive James & Nick Cohen who both argue that feminists have let down their Muslim sisters by failing to protest with sufficient vigour at the atrocities carried-out in the name of Islam.
Meanwhile, The Guardian’s CiF ran a series which asked “can western feminism save Muslim women?” To this, The Heresiarch acidly replies:
No. Western feminism is too bogged down in its own limitless self-regard, arguing ad nauseam about the evils of sexually stereotyping adverts, or why female bankers don’t get quite such enormous bonuses as their male equivalents, to care about anyone else. Least of all the millions of subjected women living in conditions they cannot begin to understand.
Now, I have a huge amount of respect for Heresiarch (as well some for Clive James, and a little for Cohen), but this kind of statement reminds me of the folks who run around lazily claiming that hip hop’s only about violence and misogyny. Sure, there’s plenty of hip hop which is violent & misogynistic, but if you think that’s all there is, then you’re clearly not listening to enough of it.
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EasyJet Councils – pushing inequality
The Guardian newspaper yesterday carried a story of the Tory borough Barnet pushing the EasyJet business model
As such, the council will provide a basic no-frills service, a reduced-sized bin or for those who require adult social care in Barnet “budget on whether to have a cleaner or a respite carer”. EasyCouncil it shall be called.
Seems modest enough, but to me there remains a major alternative to the revolutionary approach by Barnet. Namely, the idea of sensible public service spending can be achieved by a reallocation of funding rather than the EasyCouncil way.
Reallocation for the local government allows for a renegotiation of necessities; say if it is vital to employ 24 hour wardens in care homes this should be prioritised over building a new welcome centre in the local natural park.
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Fay Weldon, the only real feminist?
Fay Weldon is plugging her latest book. Shock horror in the Mail and Telegraph, this ‘feminist ‘ is saying women should just accept men need looking after and don’t challenge them too much.
Well its not really a shock, she has been coming out with this crap for a while now. As the interview in The Guardian points out:
She was vilified for her assertion in an interview in 1998 that being raped wasn’t the worst thing that could happen to a woman, and a few years ago she complained that feminism had undermined men too much. In her book What Makes Women Happy she advised faking orgasms. Did she feel part of the feminist movement?
“Inevitably, but I never wrote propaganda because it all seemed so evident. It became obvious that you had to be a feminist because it was such a ridiculous state of affairs.” Her contemporaries, she says, “usually come round to my way of thinking in the end. I’m probably the one, the only feminist there is and the others are all out of step.”
Well arrogance aside that she is the only real feminist, it seems that by most criteria she seems pretty out of step.
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Why Tories should actually watch The Wire
I want to focus on something specific about what The Wire achieves amidst those more general assesments. Namely, a sublime exposition of the importance of uncontrolled arbitrariness in life. The Tories would do well to pay attention.
The Wire is unambiguously engaged in the same exploration of issues of arbitrariness and luck in determining socioeconomic distributions, and the attitudes we attach to them. In particular, it brings out beautifully the way in which one’s birth – over which one has no control – determines so much.
Take, for example, the character of D’Angelo in Series 1 and 2. Most viewers probably start out disliking D’Angelo: he is a murder, a drug dealer, and a man who conducts a long-running affair behind the back of the mother of his child. As clear a cut case of a conventional “bad guy” as you could ask for? Not at all. For one of the best aspects of the first two series of The Wire is the manner in which the D’Angelo is gradually humanised to the audience: he turns out to be a man of great integrity, loyalty, intelligence and honour.
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We know Grayling’s Wire argument is ‘piffle’
Since Chris Grayling’s agenda is to get the Tory ‘broken society’ argument back up, somebody might tell David Simon (who wrote The Wire) that the correct British expression for Grayling’s speech is the rather politer piffle, as Boris Johnson previously said of his party’s broken society argument.
So it is certainly to be hoped that the Mayor of London will be pointing out why Grayling’s inaccurate stigmatising of “many parts of Britain’s cities’ is dangerous too.
Grayling’s pose is progressive – “when the Wire comes to Britain, it is the poor who suffer” – but the analysis is not: he has little to say about the causes of social breakdown.
Why are these problems greater in the United States of America? Why, in his view, are we witnesssing “cultural changes going back a generation or more”? David Willetts tells us the Conservatives are now convinced by Richard Wilkinson’s evidence about the importance of inequality in explaining the scale of social problems. There is no sense that Grayling has read it: there is not even a nod in the direction.
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The BNP vs Human Rights Commission
Notwithstanding stupidity, or that their full-timers are embroiled in power struggles when not suffering ‘depressive illness’, the BNP are still a threat.
This will not be helped by the announcement that the BNP are to face court over their non-compliance with the 1976 Race Relations Act.
I have no doubt that the EHRC doesn’t see it like this: they have a duty under the law etc etc, it’s not a choice, it’s built into their mandate etc etc. But I suspect that go-to excuse of the BNP is at least partially correct – that the Labour government have a hand in this somewhere. At the very least, it is endorsed by the upper echelons of Labour, as Harriet Harman made clear today.
A great number of people in this country feel alienated from the institutions of power and the ‘respectable’ faces of democracy and civil society. Pitting these ‘respectable’ faces against the BNP will not warn people off the BNP, it will solidify their reputation as anti-establishment.
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65% of public support a High Pay Commission
Luke Akehurst:
Ordinary hard-working people want a better life for their families and not to be exploited. My guess is very few of them subscribe to limiting the wages of the people at the opposite end of the spectrum.
Tom Harris:
Sunny Hundal at Liberal Conspiracy, in particular, accuses me of seeking rightwing adulation by seeking to protect the rich. He’s not entirely wrong. I want the Labour party to continue to win the support, not just of our core vote, but of those Thatcher and Major supporters who switched to us in 1997 and who stuck with us for another one-and-a-half elections.
ComRes opinion polling this Sunday:
A High Pay Commission should be set up to curb excessive pay and bonuses:
Agree 65%
Disagree 31%
- Surprisingly there is little variance among different social groups
- Even 63% of Tories agree compared with 66% of Labour voters and 75% of Lib Dems
—–
So it seems that Tom and Luke’s ideas of what “ordinary hard-working people” and “Thatcher and Major supporters who switched to us in 1997 and who stuck with us for another one-and-a-half elections” might favour isn’t supported by the polling evidence.
That’s not to say that there aren’t good arguments against a High Pay Commission. But the argument that it isn’t popular is not one of them.
Semenya and paranoia about being a woman
This is painful for me. I was scribbling notes in ‘The Female Eunuch’ and ‘The Whole Woman’ before I lost all my milkteeth; I worship her irreverent, punchy prose; but there’s no escaping it. These days, Germaine Greer is a prejudiced, ignorant dickwad.
In her rather confused verdict on the Caster Semenya controversy, Greer comes up with the following gem today:
Nowadays we are all likely to meet people who think they are women, have women’s names, and feminine clothes and lots of eyeshadow, who seem to us to be some kind of ghastly parody, though it isn’t polite to say so. We pretend that all the people passing for female really are. Other delusions may be challenged, but not a man’s delusion that he is female.
Greer hardly does any better in the grand game of unthinking prejudice bingo than the disgusting commentators who have decided that just because Semenya, a phenomenally high-achieving athlete, is big, butch and brilliant at sports, she can’t be a girl.
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Tom Harris: Sucking up to the rich
Tom Harris MP has re-posted his article to Guardian CIF and responds to my criticisms of his opposition to the idea of a High Pay Commission:
Sunny Hundal at Liberal Conspiracy, in particular, accuses me of seeking rightwing adulation by seeking to protect the rich. He’s not entirely wrong. I want the Labour party to continue to win the support, not just of our core vote, but of those Thatcher and Major supporters who switched to us in 1997 and who stuck with us for another one-and-a-half elections.
But if supporters of a high pay commission are concerned about inequality, why are they focusing so much on those who are furthest away from poverty? Where are the measures for taking the lowest paid workers out of tax altogether? And how do they expect the poorest in the land to react when told that, although their own circumstances are to be entirely unaffected by the advent of the commission, at least a few people they’ve never met or heard of are worse off as a result? Gosh, I can feel the gratitude already …
Put aside whether you like the idea of a HPC or not, it’s more amazing to consider this is coming from a Labour MP.
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What we accept when we accept individual freedom
There is a natural tension between social conservatism and social liberalism, and not one that can be broken down on the usual left-right or Labour-Conservative axis.
Thus there are many socialists opposed to supercasinos, lap dancing clubs and 24 hour drinking, on the grounds that such activities are both detrimental to working class communities and carried on for private profit.
I happen think that attitude is wrong, and that the left should back the right of adults of all classes to engage in gambling, voyeurism and prodigious alcohol consumption if they elect so to do, irrespective of whether we approve personally.
At the same time, I acknowledge that the red puritan stance is a legitimate opinion with a traditional base in Britain’s ‘more Methodist than Marxist’ labour movement.
There is a similar cleavage on the political right. From the outside, it looks mostly an age thing. Thatcher’s children tend to be of the ‘let it rock’ school, extending the logic of the free market into the personal sphere. Yet at the same time, the Cameroons see no contradiction in harping on about ‘Broken Britain’.
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What difference a bit of research can make
One of the following articles was based on a couple of anecdotes, copying down some government spin and personal prejudice on the part of the author.
The other was written after doing some proper research and reporting the opinions of people who work day-to-day to help unemployed people. Can you guess which is which?
Jenni Russell, Nov 2008 – “We must dare to rethink the welfare that benefits no one:
The left has long been blind to the dependency culture that deters adults from flexible work and damages their chlidren”
Jenni Russell, August 2009 – “Some talk about welfare to work. The poor know it as welfare to destitution: The unemployed are being forced to take huge risks with their security when they move into the world of low-paid labour”
A better response to the financial crisis
contribution by Duncan Weldon
The current economic downturn is a crisis of finance. Over the last twenty years alone the world has witnessed a half dozen crises: the bursting of the Japanese ’bubble economy’ in 1989, the Nordic banking problems of the early ‘90s, the Mexican ‘Tequila Crisis’ of 1994, the 1997 Asian Crisis, the Russian Crisis of 1998 and the bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2000.
What all of these various episodes have in common is that a problem that began in the financial markets was allowed to spill out into the real economy, often with severe consequences.
So far the left, whilst rightly calling for further regulation is not really advancing a specific argument beyond vague talk of bonus caps and clawing back previous pay.
Neither of these are a bad idea, but any attempt to reform the financial system needs to be based on firmer grounds.
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Baby P coverage was both sexist and misandrist
contribution by Lara Williams
Now identified – the woman who stood aside as her partner and his brother subjected her son, Peter, to an unparalleled and disturbing, sustained abuse and torture – Tracy Connelly is woman who’s face will be burned into the public conscious for years to come. And it seems – so will the outrage, anger and hatred of the abuse suffered by ‘Baby P’ – which has fallen almost exclusively on her shoulders.
Described as everything from a ‘sex obsessed slob’ and ‘evil mother’ to a ‘woman defined by abuse’ – Tracey Connelly has been the chief focus of the story – whilst her partner Steven Barker and his brother (and their lodger) Jason Owen have bafflingly played second fiddle in the ongoing media saga.
The lack of equality attributed to all involved in this case is both sexist and misandristic.
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4 million unemployed if Tories win
The Sunday Times reported that one consequence of the Tory welfare plans is that if they win power, unemployment will rise to over 4 million.
Peter Hoskin at the Spectator welcomes this, because it will be achieved (at vast expense to the taxpayer) by moving people from sickness benefits to unemployment benefits which pay them less, and therefore requiring claimants to look for work.
He says, quite rightly, that this is “an ambitious plan, and far outstrips what has so far been achieved with ESA (which has seen IB claimant numbers drop by roughly 150,000 in about 10 months). Whether they’ll be able to achieve it is a different matter, of course.”
Hoskins concludes, “But, when it comes to Tory welfare policy, two words give me some hope: David Freud.”
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Why we should take Hannan-ism seriously
Here are three reasons why Hannanism matters rather more than some of its slightly more moderate supporters will want to admit last weekend.
1. The big idea:
Hannan is both the most strident and the most feted contemporary British advocate of what has been the dominant idea in the Anglo-American right for the last thirty years. The idea is: “less state equals more freedom”.
There is still every reason to think that this remains the dominant ideological belief in the Conservative Party.
Listen carefully to debates on the right and objections to Hannanism are often matters of strategy and tactics. Many Conservatives disagree with the vehemence with which Hannan expresses his views. But these are usually differences of degree, rather than differences of directionality. Few want to go as far as Hannan in taking arguments to their logical conclusion.
So the content of Hannanism – less state, less tax, less regulation, less Europe – remains the content of most Conservative public advocacy.
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Tory MP caught ignoring Minimum Wage laws?
I’ve just been alerted to a blog post on Interns Anonymous posted today.
Phillip Hammond MP is the Conservative MP for Runnymede and Weybridge and shadow chief secretary to the Treasury. He is advertising an unpaid job on the W4MP website. According to the blog:
National Minimum Wage Law states that if you work set hours, doing set tasks that other members of staff rely on and expect you to do then you should be paid basic minimum wage. Except if you are a full time student. As the role advertises for a “recent graduate” then this exception need not apply.
They contacted Hammond to ask about this. According to them, the response was:
I would regard it as an abuse of taxpayer funding to pay for something that is available for nothing and which other Members are obtaining for nothing. I therefore have no intention of changing my present arrangements.
Only two weeks ago a major report slammed social immobility and warned that increasingly only upper middle class and above children were able to enter certain professions due to the unpaid intern system. If true, then Hammond would not only be feeding into this system but actually flouting Minimum Wage Laws.
A Guardian report a few weeks old said this practice by MPs may be breaking the rules. Looks like Hammond has been caught out (if the email is true).
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» Why don’t MPs pay back tuition fees instead of increasing ours?
» Obama is right to slam BP – and why capitalists should too
» Why does Phillip Blond see civil cohesion as a security issue?
» So what if the Labour candidates went to Oxbridge?
» Last night’s Labour hustings: will it get interesting or turn to torture?
» It’s now down to Ken to win London for Labour
» The Labour people need
» Blog Nation: what would you like to see discussed?
» The Labour leadership’s token contender.. and it’s not Diane Abbott
» In defence of these fraternal nominations
» Is this the end for the socialist left?
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