Keep Calm and Carry On?

Channel Four yesterday ran with the perennial story about how doughty Brits are defying their personal debt crises, record unemployment figures, low pay, persistent inflation, and generally low living standards (relative to the size of the economy) to declare that they’re “happy with their lot”.

‎’Happiness delusions’ are perfectly functional for people living in highly economically and socially stratified societies. Throw in a bit of ruling class ideology – feckless Tory Kirsty Allsopp pretending to do some sewing to keep the ‘blitz spirit’ alive, for example - and you’ve got the populace just where you want it.

I wonder why, however, if we’re all so happy, antidepressants are the most commonly prescribed drugs in the UK; why we incarcerate more people (as a percentage of the population) than anywhere else in Western Europe; or why we have the highest rates of almost every negative social phenomena of any other European nation?

Still, we’ve got all that credit (and the highest personal debt levels in Europe – higher than all other European nations combined, in fact) to keep us well stocked in the crap we don’t need…

Frankly, if you want to understand the mania that leads to such contradictory perceptions and realities of the kind of society in which we live, the best thing you could do is buy your loved ones copies of The Spirit Level for Christmas.

The curious case of Progress’ missing patrons…

Shortly after last year’s General Election defeat, I wrote a blog piece entitled Byrne(t) Out. Essentially, though not exclusively,the piece was a response to Liam Byrne’s quite terrible ‘Why did Labour lose – and how do we win again?’ post-mortem written for ‘Progress’, Lord’s Sainbury’s well-funded, entryist ”New Labour pressure group” .

In order to provide readers with a sense of the kind of support that Progress command within the PLP and amongst senior figures within the Labour Movement, I copied and pasted the following list directly from the ‘Chair & Patrons’ section of its website:

Rt Hon Alan Milburn MP, Stephen Twigg MP, Rt Hon Andy Burnham MP, Chris Leslie MP, Rt Hon Ed Miliband MP, Baroness Morgan of Drefelin, Meg Munn MP Rt Hon Douglas Alexander MP, Wendy Alexander MSP, Ian Austin MP, Rt Hon Hazel Blears MP, Rt Hon Yvette Cooper MP, Rt Hon John Denham MP, Parmjit Dhanda, Natascha Engel MP, Lorna Fitzsimons, Rt Hon Peter Hain MP, Rt Hon John Healey MP, Rt Hon Margaret Hodge MP, Rt Hon Beverley Hughes, Rt Hon John Hutton, Rt Hon Baroness Jay, Baroness Jones, Rt Hon Sadiq Khan MP, Oona King, Rt Hon Baroness Kinnock, Rt Hon David Lammy MP, Cllr Richard Leese, Rt Hon Lord Mandelson, Rt Hon Pat McFadden MP, Rt Hon David Miliband MP, Trevor Phillips, Baroness Prosser, Rt Hon James Purnell, Jane Roberts, Lord Triesman, Kitty Ussher

However, when I recently checked on the progress of…err…Progress, via an article on Maurice Glasman, its considerable number of standard bearers appeared to have dwindled somewhat to include the following:

‘Progress is chaired by Stephen Twigg MP. Our vice-chairs are Tristram Hunt MP, Liz Kendall MP, Bridget Phillipson MP, Rachel Reeves MP, Jonathan Reynolds MP, Anas Sarwar MP and John Woodcock MP. Progress’s honorary president is Alan Milburn, the former secretary of state for health. Patrick Diamond is our secretary’.

Dull stuff, indeed; except, perhaps not. Up until the 2010 General Election, Progress enjoyed the support of many senior figures within the Labour Party; many of whom are still in powerful positions within the shadow cabinet, including the Party’s leader, Ed Miliband. While it would be reasonable to argue that a few its acolytes might have jumped ship the moment Sainsbury stopped funding the Labour Party (no bad thing), opting instead finance a kind of ‘Continuity New Labour’, I find it unlikely that so many would have deserted it in such a rapid fashion.

The question is, then, have the CNL set gone in to – visible - exile of their own volition, or is it Sainsbury who’s hiding Progress’ ‘light under a bushel’ until the time, and Party, is ripe? Needless to say, I’ll be keeping a close eye on who turns up to see Ed Miliband’s keynote speech at the Progress ‘Winning Back Britain: New Ideas for New Labour’ Annual Conference 2011.

Short reflection on Osama Bin Laden’s demise

So, Osama Bin Laden is dead. However, despite the jubilation of the Americans who “gathered outside the White House in Washington DC, chanting ‘USA, USA’ after the news emerged“, this one operation will barely disrupt, and may very well inflame, the Islamic fundamentalist movement. Moreover, it is certainly no compensation for the 100,000+ civilian and 6,500 military lives that have been lost in since September 11th, 2001. 

Osama Bin Laden - Will his death damage the morale of Al Qaeda? Unlikely.

Al Qaeda is an extremely de-centralised organisation that, frankly, does not rely on a command and control structure in the same way as conventional terrorist group. In short, this small success does not reduce the likelihood of another attack, which cannot be eradicated through assassinations or military operations (on flimsy pretexts) of the kind we are engaged in on the Arabian Peninsula and in Afghanistan. The only way of achieving such ends is by delivering a two-state solution for Palestine and Israel and employing economic diplomacy approaches that reduce poverty as a counter-radicalisation strategy.

Everything else is just ‘pissing in the wind’.

The Socialist Ten Commandments (to mark May Day 2011)

1. Love your school companions, who will be your co-workers in life.
2. Love learning which is the food of the mind; be as grateful to your teachers as to your parents.
3. Make every day holy by good and useful deeds and kindly actions.
4. Honour good men and women; be courteous to all; bow down to none.
5. Do not hate or speak evil of any one; do not be revengeful, but stand up for your rights and resist oppression.
6. Do not be cowardly. Be a good friend to the weak, and love justice.
7. Remember that all good things of the earth are produced by labour. Whoever enjoys them without working for them is stealing the bread of the workers.
8. Observe and think in order to discover the truth. Do not believe what is contrary to reason, and never deceive yourself or others.
9. Do not think that they who love their own country must hate and despise other nations, or wish for war, which is a remnant of barbarism.
10. Look forward to the day when all men and women will be free citizens of one community, and live together as equals in peace and righteousness.

Stop Press – Pippa Middleton manages to turn up to wedding AND wear clothes!

STOP PRESS! Yahoo News has just announced that “Kate’s sister Pippa has gained a legion of fans after performing her duties in a fabulous white dress“.

Well done, Pippa – on turning up to a wedding and wearing some clothes! That private education at Marlborough College was worth every penny; perhaps you’ll learn to write your name next? Only if you fancy becoming a Nobel Laureate, though.

'Pips' - A credit us all...

Now get back to your important ‘job ‘as a socialite/party planner, you cheeky scamp. If only there were more ‘productive’ people like you and fewer doctors, nurses, porters etc the world would be just wonderful. It’s a good job we have the kind of government that recognises this obvious problem and is doing everything it can to eradicate those public-sector ‘non-jobs’ by announcing (during your sister’s nuptials) that the National Health Service is actually facing cuts 50% greater than were originally proposed. Still, at least the Tories aren’t effectively abolishing a beloved ‘national institution’ like the monarchy…

All things being equal…

Now, this is a very rare moment indeed but, perhaps for the first time, I actually agree with a Conservative Minister about something – and David Willets, no less.

Willets was quoted in a 1 April story in the Daily Mail entitled ‘ Tory minister: Feminism widened poverty gap and set social mobility back decades’ as saying:

“One of the things that happened over that period was that the entirely admirable transformation of opportunities for women meant that with a lot of the expansion of education in the 60s, 70s and 80s, the first beneficiaries were the daughters of middle-class families who had previously been excluded from educational opportunities.

“And if you put that with what is called assortative mating – that well-educated women marry well-educated men – this transformation of opportunities for women ended up magnifying social divides rather than narrowing them…

“I think it certainly widened the gap in household incomes because you suddenly had two-earner couples, both of whom were well educated, compared with often workless households where nobody was educated.

“So I do personally think that the feminist revolution in its first-round effects, was probably the key factor. Feminism trumped egalitarianism.”

There were, predictably, howls of derision from Yvette Cooper of my very own Labour Party, who claimed that “the idea that working women are responsible for persistent child poverty or youth unemployment in disadvantaged areas is just shocking”. Sadly, however, this is merely a fig leaf to hide Labour’s embarrassing record on social mobility and its deliberate strategy in power of making social and economic egalitarianism subordinate to the liberal inteligenisia’s obsession with an approach to ‘equalities’ that gave no thought to class inequality.
 

I know it's hard to believe, but this Tory Minister is actually right about something!

 

Willetts’ assertion that “feminism trumped egalitarianism” highlights perfectly the fact that, without polices designed to improve social mobility, workplace equality between the sexes has merely led to a tier of high earners drawn entirely from the middle class, with working class women continuing to enjoy negligible benefits of the equality legislation. This is, undeniably, an accurate picture of how the workplace has evolved over the past 40 years; though it is more accurate to say that what actually happened was that ‘bourgeois feminism trumped egalitarianism’.

 

If you create the circumstances in which highly-educated middle class women are encouraged to enter the labour market, without implementing policies to improve social mobility, the working class men that used to progress in the workplace in spite of their lack of education will be squeezed out, which is what’s happened. This is not a normative statement but one rooted in the economics of the labour market.

The situation is analogous to ‘all women shortlists’ in the Labour Party. While these lists have, quite rightly, increased the number of female Labour MPs, their lack of mechanisms to ensure that the lists are socially and economically representative of the party’s base has resulted in well-connected, expensively educated, middle class women dominating the selection process. The consequence of this is, of course, that the ideological difference between a PLP dominated by middle class men and a PLP dominated by middle class men and women is imperceptible – the same is true for broader society.

What Willetts has highlighted – somewhat uncomfortably for the unreconstructed New Labour sect – is that there are limits to the level of ‘fairness’ that sex equality, race equality, and disability equality legislation can deliver. Yes, it can make the workplace appear superficially ‘representative’ but if, because of a failure to eradicate class inequality, it merely opens up opportunities for middle class women, middle class BME people, and middle class people with disabilities, social mobility will remain low.

The answer, of course, isn’t to abolish workplace equality legislation, which has sent out a very strong message to employers that their workforce should reflect the society around them, but to implement the kind of supply-side policies that improve social mobility; that way you can ensure that the workplace is both representative and fair.

The first step towards achieving this – but by no means the only, since social mobility does not guarantee greater income equality – is the abolition of private education, which ensures that just 6% of any educational cohort goes on to occupy between 60%-80% of the top jobs in any given industry (with a couple of notable exceptions, such as professional sport). Somehow, I don’t think David Willetts will be calling for such radical measures any time soon.

‘Go-Ahead’, make my pay…

The London Evening Standard yesterday reported that David Brown, the current Surface Transport Director at Transport for London has been appointed  Chief Executive of ‘Go-Ahead’, the national bus and train operator with a significant stake in London’s bus provision.

Not content with the £278,000 salary he currently receives, Brown is expected to collect around £1.4million in salary and shares in his first year alone. Notwithstanding the compelling argument that such levels of remuneration are obscene in a society with such high levels of existing income inequality at the best of times, ‘Go-Ahead’ and David Brown are yet another example of – despite Tory talk of ‘necessary austerity’ – of executive remuneration boards continuing to award huge packages whilst attempting to slash jobs and drive down pay and conditions.

Nice work if you can get it: David Brown can expect to 'earn' £1.4million in his first year alone

Go-Ahead’s bloated executive pay culture is even more of a concern when you consider that it is being fueled by Mayor of London Boris Johnson who, as of January 2011, will have increased a single bus fare by a whopping 44%, from 90p to £1.30, in a mere two and a half years since taking office.

Unlike the rest of us, however, Go-Ahead’s current boss Keith Ludeman isn’t worried about the current economic climate; he told the Standard that Go-Ahead “can manage any impact on our results in following years through a combination of further cost savings (he means driving down wages and conditions) and recovery through fares.” – so that’s more fare hikes, then.

Still, it’s nice to know we’re ‘all in this together’.

London’s other election…

There’s going to be a by-election on 16 September in New River ward,  in the beautiful borough of Hackney.

I’d give you a quick rundown of each of the candidates if, that is, the Hackney Citizen hadn’t already done so.

Hackney Unites have put together what is  likely to be an interesting hustings event on 7 September at Stamford Hill library in anticipation of the election, which they hope will be a good opportunity for local voters to grill the candidates on the issues that matter.

O.K, so it’s hardly the Labour Mayoral candidate selection process but it might prove an interesting indicator of the impact that the ConDem government is beginning to have on the lives of inner Londoners.

The Daily Telegraph – In the business of ‘social immobility’ for 145 years

The Telegraph has written a hilariously ‘critical’ editorial on the Tory ConDem Government’s first 100 days in power.

Not content with a government that is in the process manufacturing the largest contraction of the welfare state since David Lloyd-George tentatively dipped a toe in the water of social provision, the Telegraph warns that the ConDems ”must not surrender to a failed Left-wing philosophy on social mobility” -  despite, of course, evidence the world over clearly demonstrating that profoundly left-wing approaches, such as universal comprehensive education and lower wealth and income inequality, do indeed bring about major improvements to levels of social mobility.

Now, although the Telegraph is not renowned for allowing facts to get in the way of its elite-defending, right-wing invective, even I was surprised to find that the editorial makes only one further reference to social mobility – and only then in the context Alan Milburn’s appointment as “mobility tsar” to the government (akin to Joseph Stalin becoming head of the Countryside Alliance).

However, undeterred by lack of knowledge or insight on the matter, the editorial sees fit to imply that social mobility will be improved by “welfare payments are going to be made simpler (they mean cut), more efficient (they mean cut), and less liable to generate the incentive to stay on benefits rather than work (they mean cut)” – in essence, to draw the conclusion that poor people are not consigned to the social circumstances in to which they were born in to by, say, Telegraph readers consolidating their children’s position within the class structure by using their social and economic capital to purchase advantage through the education system but, instead, by an overly generous welfare state, which saps the great unwashed’s innate desire to work for a pittance.

Perhaps somebody should remind our dear friends at the Telegraph that social mobility can only work if the ruling class allow for upward AND downward movement within the class structure. Still, a cursory glance at the educational backgrounds of many of its editors, which include The King’s School, Rochester, The High School of Dundee, Rugby, Harrow, Charterhouse, and the old favourite of Eton, tell me that the Telegraph won’t be addressing that issue anytime soon.

The piece that sums up the intellectual poverty of both Oona King and her entourage…

Good piece by ‘Bad Conscience’ blogger, Paul Sagar, on his recent experience of King and her campaign team.