WE ALL PAY YOUR BENEFITS - NEGATIVE SOLIDARITY

 Well, this is quite sickening. Here's the blurb from the BBC website:

"Four claimants and four taxpayers come face to face to explore each other’s lives, examine their values and speak their minds. Will the taxpayers feel that benefits are too high or not enough? And will the claimants decide that hard work is good for them or will the sacrifice be too much?"

When most "hard work" boils down to slaving your guts out for someone else's profit, why on earth is anyone going to decide that it's good for them? And I do like that term "sacrifice" with its (I think deliberately) sacral overtones. So working is a sacrifice, is it? Taking that seriously. we would have to ask to whom, and for whom? But the point seems to be fostering of negative solidarity, which translates as: "we have it shit, so you should have it shit, too". Like Ian Duncan Smith's constant mantra of "making work pay": you might think that that would mean making sure pay and conditions for most jobs improved; no, it means making sure that benefits are harder to get, worth less, and are easier to lose. The working population are expected to be grateful that someone is getting shafted more brutally than they are. More, they are told that it is claimants that are somehow making them work longer and harder for less money, and obscurely, that the precarity of work (zero hours contracts and the rest) is somehow down to the doleys. But if work is a sacrifice, it's not one that is made to claimants, claimants are not the ones who have kept wages stagnating for years.

"[...]in this second episode the experiment is reversed as the claimants spend time with the taxpayers. Getting up early, working alongside them through long shifts and seeing the effects on family life[...]"

So working "long shifts" (we're talking about most work that is done, the savagely underpaid variety) has effects on family life...But because it's a sacrifice (unclear to, or for, whom) it's worth it? The lack of affordable child care is somehow just a fact of life, like those long shifts.

"[...]the claimants experience the sort of work it takes to pay for their benefits and get a taste of the reality of working life. They must decide if they think that work is worth it. With the battle lines drawn between claimants and taxpayers, this series brings the two sides together to discover if any of them can agree."

At what point will we get to see the salt-of-the-earth-taxpayers get to have a face off with Lord Freud, for example, the charmer who recently said that the increase in food banks was due to the fact that they were giving away free stuff, and not because people might not have the wherewithal to buy food. Maybe he could be put in the position of explaining to them why he has so much and they have so relatively little. But no- that's not the way negative solidarity works. The working population are slaving so hard because of the unemployed, apparently, not because of their bosses.

DUNCAN-SMITH AND POLITICAL AMNESIA

Here we have the centimetres-deep political philosopher Duncan-Smith holding forth on the benefits of (waged) labor in 2010. Unfortunate turn of phrase. To put it further in context, I added bits of a Cameron speech post-riots in september 2011.

duncan smith cameron work from robin bale on Vimeo.

G4S AND "TROUBLED FAMILIES"

Minister Chris Grayling

So by now we all know about G4S's colossal fuck-up with the security for the corporate wank-fest that is the Olympics (although this more serious G4S story has apparently been overlooked during the self-righteous ire poured onto the company by some of the very same politicians who commissioned them for this and many other disasters. Or their involvement with the occupied territories.) Johnny Void has a plausible explanation of what happened there, I think. Also, in another posting he describes succinctly the mechanisms that allow scumbags like G4S (or A4E, or Serco etc etc) to milk the system.

Anyway, yesterday's newspaper headlines presented us with this: the launch of Louise Casey's report, commissioned by Cameron after last year's riots -  "Listening to Troubled Families". There are, apparently 120 000 of them in the country, and they cost the state £9 billion a year. Honest. It's a fact. I thought that it was Blair who first used this   utterly spurious - figure, but actually I haven't been able to track down any reference to that. As a matter of fact, the statistic appears to have been pulled out of the arse of someone in Whitehall, or rather, extrapolated from different studies, as Ruth Levitas points out. What is astounding is that this mathematical conjuring trick has been swallowed, to the extent that critics of the plan are now pointing out that the promised £450 million will not be enough to cover the "120 000" families, as if those families actually exist out there, in those numbers. As the New Statesman blog piece linked above points out, the Casey report is a piece of qualitative research on 16 families with very serious problems indeed. It's only those 16 families that can be said, with any certainty at all, to fit the template.

As Levitas and the New Statesman piece both point out, the original figures that have since been  warped and extrapolated from were an estimate of families in poverty. It's hard to imagine (though it is possible, when one considers the towering intellectual capacities of this government) that this was simply bad accounting. There are happy results of conflating poor people -who are increasingly numerous, for obvious reasons- with people who are -supposedly- a danger to their neighbours, an unwarranted drain on the public purse, and have a prediliction for child abuse. The plain-speaking man-of-the-people fat-Tory-Twat (and minister in charge of this) Eric Pickles put this view succinctly

"[...]these folks are troubled: they're troubling themselves, they're troubling their neighbourhood. We need to do something about it."

Casey is obviously singing from the same hymn sheet: "If they are causing so many problems to their neighbours … the families that have to live next door to them, to the teachers that have to teach their kids in schools, to the people on the receiving end as victims of crimes – it is wrong that we allow them to carry on living this way."

So there we have it - a bit of statistical mumbo-jumbo, and there's the proof: poor people are dangerous. And it's their own fault that they're poor because we give them so much money.


It has, of course, private provision as an essential component, or private companies who will cream off their chunk of the funding and then subcontract the work to the voluntary sector. So guess who's got some of the contracts? Yes indeed - G4S. An article in the Salford Star points out some difficulties (to put it mildly) with this model of provision:  

"It's a bit of Catch 22" a Salford City UNISON member told the Salford Star "Either we don't refer to these agencies and there's sanctions imposed on the local authority, or we do and they take our work from us. 

"We're struggling to find work for them" he added "We've been given instructions to refer to these companies who haven't got any accountability and their results are not judged on outcomes but on how many families they get coming through their service. How are they proving their worth by numbers?"

Casey and Cameron claim that it is a "black box" operation, as with the Work Program - providers only get paid by results and their methods are up to them. But as the intended result is to save public money that would be spent on courts, or time in school exclusion units, or benefits - how does one prove a negative? Payment will be on the basis of crimes not committed or school days not skived off, or benefits not collected. Even if the model is plausible, and it isn't, I can't see how this could be assessed. But councils having their budgets viciously slashed have every incentive to provide fodder for this process, where successful referrals will be bring money from central government. Now, having the figure of 120 000, councils will be expected to find those people. Or face Tory reprisals for not co-operating with this innovative, shiny piece of coercive privatisation.

The void article linked above, concerning the practices of welfare to work providers also applies here, where forcing people into work is only one strand of a  complex series of processes. On "Creaming and Parking": "Under the ‘black box’ style of provision on the Work Programme, welfare to work companies are able to almost anything they like to ‘help’ someone back into work. This can include doing nothing at all and in fact that makes good business sense. It’s a numbers game. Some of even the hardest to help will find work on their own [or decide to go to school or get off drugs etc.], meaning yet more money for providers. As to the rest, well the company already have the attachment fee in the bank.

The most lucrative way to manage the hardest to help is to not spend a penny on them. This is far more profitable than throwing endless resources at people who the welfare to work companies know are unlikely to find work. [or decide to go to school or get off drugs etc.] "

What is deeply disturbing in this, amongst all the other disturbing things, is that data protection is waived for the targets of this scheme:
[...]ministers have agreed to suspend the privacy of poor households. For the first time, local councils will be allowed "without informed consent" to access benefit records. The idea is to build up a map of troubled families – which will be shared with other agencies such as the police, GPs and housing associations[...Casey says...] "I don't think that is about someone's civil rights. I think it's about their right to get help and the system's right to challenge them to take it."  Her statement sums up the coercive nature of the interventions, and the customary couching of them in therapy-speak: the "challenge" to "get help".

There is undoubtedly a reality tv show in the making here - maybe there already has been something like it? Cameras follow Casey around as she kicks in the front doors of those prole-porn staples, the lardy, feckless, overly-fecund, drunk and workshy. She gives them some tough love, they resist. She's warm, empathetic, but takes no bullshit; she's on a mission here, and it's for their own good. Then, roughly at the three quarter mark of the episode, we get the money shot, On being "challenged" the family, as a whole, collapse into lachrymose prostration, burbling through wads of snotty bog-roll clutched convulsively in porcine hands. "You're right Louise! We thought our situation was a result of the vicissitudes of late capital, or perhaps a reasonable reluctance to engage in the pointless grind of wage-slavery or the indoctrination of school - we were wrong! It's all because we've got low self esteem!" She then gets them to "work on their issues" and... well, you've seen the show before. You know how it goes.  At the end, they talk about their "journey".

Before doleys can be conscripted onto the Work Programme they have to sign a consent form, or be bullied and threatened into signing one by JobCentre staff, that gives their consent for their private data to be shared with the provider - A4E, G4S or whoever. The provider gets no money unless they have that person on their books, until they have their data. With the waiving of reasonably informed consent, cabinet ministers in effect giving consent on these "troubled families" behalf, there is no limit to how many people could find themselves signed up to the tender mercies of the providers -that is, as profit-making units to a private company - and it is of no concern to the providers how "troubled" they are.

From the Salford Star article:  "[A]t a Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion conference in May, titled Families, Communities, Places: A New Way Forward for Delivery. Hot topics included `public sector and welfare reform', while a presentation was entitled `Cost benefit modelling for working with troubled families'...

On the day, George Selmer, North West contracts director with G4S, gave a presentation [...] He revealed that, six months into the Government contract, G4S had achieved only 15% of its target… "This represents at best a delay, at worst a loss of around £2million of revenue for our supply chain."

Admitting a lack of referrals and `questions over where the programme fits', Selmer urged conference attendees to provide more referrals and to `trust' the ESF  programme [the European Social Fund, who have been providing money for the initiative so far]… "Providers only get paid if they deliver…But if they don't have enough customers to enable them to hit their targets they can't afford to maintain the service to the necessary levels…" The article points out then that Salford council social workers already do the work that G4S wants referred on to them, so it seems a bit redundant and G4S's duplication could well lead to job losses amongst council staff. It's worth remembering here that G4S will use the voluntary sector for delivery, in true workfare style.



the idea of some sort of multi-agency action to "help"  "problem families" was first floated by the last government. It was Blair who revived what is arguably simply another version of that old chestnut, the dichotomy between the supposedly worthy and unworthy poor, but with the family as the basic unit; something that the present government obviously believe still has some mileage.

I thought that Blair was the one who first came up with the precise - and

Blair blithely posited a continuum from what he and his government called "Anti-Social Behaviour" (which, by definition, is not actually criminal) with actual crimes and, at the top end of the scale, international terrorism. Quite how there is a spectrum with, at one end, drinking in public, or dropping litter, and at the other, bombing a tube train or flying a plane into a skyscraper, is beyond me. Nevertheless, the phrases "crime and anti-social behaviour" and "crime and disorder" have become part of common parlance.

There is more than a little continuity here. Louise Casey, a civil servant who became the Blair governnent's "Respect Tzar" (why tzar? Who knows.) and then Commissioner for Victims and Witnesses.



What might have helped with getting the contract would be this sort of thing, or this.

SOCIAL JUSTICE

TUITION FEES ETC.

It seems typical of the instrumental thinking on both sides of the divide, this. That students are getting their future stolen; that increasing of tuition fees and the cutting of teaching budgets will consign a huge number of young people to impoverishment. The logic is that increased tuition fees and cuts in money for teaching of the humanities will prevent a whole generation (or more) of graduates from getting the well paid jobs that will enable their children to go to university to get qualified for the the well paid jobs, so that their children will not go to university and get the well paid jobs etc. 

It seems to me that the problem is "well paid jobs". It is not outrageous that not everyone goes to university - it is outrageous that not all jobs pay a living wage. For all the talk of the older generation, who benefited from a free higher education pulling the ladder up after them (which is true), we are missing the  point that there should not be a "ladder" in the first fucking place. It's like talk of the "housing ladder", or "starter homes", implying that it is just a beginning and that one will move onwards and upwards. A human right (shelter) is not a stepping stone. A system that treats it as such will need fodder for the increasingly finely shod foot to step on, to keep it clear of the mire; the grateful backs of those who are touchingly grateful even to be allowed to breathe.

If we accept that the best (the best paying) jobs are only accessible via a degree (and, who knows, an MA or PhD next), then we are accepting that university is simply a training ground for young professionals who, in addition to their qualification, build up an address book of contacts to help them on their way. That is the way that the bourgeoisie have always worked. Then, of course, the university is seen as a panacea for social ills, lack of mobility etc. If, on the other hand, we maintain that all jobs should be decently paid and that decent public housing is a universal right,  then it might be reasonable to frame the debate in terms of education as a good in itself, which I believe it is.

JUST FOR THE RECORD...

This site has graphs showing the UK national debt, both in £s and as a percentage of GDP. Note the extremely high levels as % of GDP in the '40's/'50's. Obviously, the result of the war. But what is worth noting that this was the period that the welfare state was being constructed. The governments of that period did not seem to feel that universal benefits, free education or building council housing was an expensive luxury. 

It casts an interesting light on this (watch the video), as well as other pronouncements coming from the government. Clegg claims that the state of the public finances has forced his hand on recanting his stance on tuition fees. We are constantly being told that things are so bad that vicious cuts in public services need to be made. What is not fully explained is why post-war UK governments did not feel that way.

From an interview with Danny Alexander in The Independent:

"...he is strident in defending the Tories from the claim that they see cuts as a route to a smaller state. "I genuinely have not had a sense from anybody that this is an ideological thing. We didn't come into politics to do this but we have an unavoidable problem that we are stepping up to the plate and dealing with.""

Amazing. It looks very much to me like Tories doing what Tories love to do; what they wanted to do in the '80's, but just got as far as laying the groundwork. New Labour continued it. Now they are ready to finsh the job.

I don't know how he, or any of them, can sleep at night. But especially the Lib-Dems.

IT'S NOT CALLED "WELFARE".

Quite apart from how despicable Duncan-Smith's proposed "reforms" are, the thing that is sticking in my throat most, and has been for a while, is when did the dole start to be called "welfare"? That's what they call it in the U.S.

Over here it was always called Social Security, which is what it is meant to be. As a claimant over many years, i can remember the names for the actual benefit changing - being variously Supplementary Benefit, Unemployment Benefit (maybe these names containing the word "benefit" were considered to sound to positive) Income Support, then Jobseekers' Allowance...The shift from "Benefit" - a right- to "Support" - assistance- to "Allowance" - something grudgingly given; speaks volumes. 

This present government has gone out of its way to demonise claimants  (contrary to the writer of the linked piece, I would support the workshy and fraudsters myself). They make a conveniently soft target for the ideologically driven cuts. They were never going to get much sympathy from sanctimonious middle-Englanders who seem to see wage slavery as a badge of honor.

But anyway, my issue is also with the word: "Welfare". I do not know when the term became detached from the noun it qualified - "state", in order to denote benefits specifically. The welfare state is (or maybe, more accurately, was) a good thing. I owe my education, my still functioning teeth, my late mother's successful treatment for breast cancer, and other things too numerous to mention, to it. And so do most of those, Lib-Dems, Tories and Labour too, who are now attacking it with such ghoulish relish - but they seem to have forgotten that. An attack on the benefits system is an attack on the welfare state. An attack on universal benefits is an attack on the universalism that was part of the founding of the welfare state. To make benefits that were initially conceived as a right belonging to citizens conditional, is to make citizenship conditional. 

This is typical of the drivel we are subjected to. The approach adopted in Wisconsin that the article lauds sounds repulsive. One has to prove one's bona fides before receiving any assistance. One has to prove oneself worthy. This utterly inverts the idea behind benefits that we had in the UK; a right conferred by citizenship. Citizenship being a universal value and, most importantly, content-neutral. You did not have to prove that you were the right kind of person in order to enjoy your rights.

"One of Wisconsin's biggest successes was diverting people from claiming benefits in the first place. If you try to claim benefits, the first thing they do is offer you a job – rather than start filling in forms to process your application. In fact, you have to demonstrate that you are searching hard for a job for several weeks before you can even start to make a benefits claim. In contrast, our depressing "Job Centres" are really more like benefits offices." (that's because they are benefits offices, you prick.)

The most telling part of the article, which I quote because it illuminates the kind of thinking behind this proposed butchery - it's not just an isolated right wing rant, someone who fancies themselves as a Jeremiah or Ezekiel, howling the unpalatable truth at the desert- are these sentences:

"Perhaps we have come to think that it is normal to have a large part of our population without work, and cut adrift from the rest of society."

People who are in receipt of benefits are somehow not part of society. So membership of society, enjoyment of its benefits, is dependent upon work, and, apparently, work alone.

It is not "Welfare" - they might have that in America (or, rather, they don't), but here it is the benefits system, or the welfare state, and it does what it is meant to do. It seems to me that the use of that word, by politicians and journalists, has imported with it some really unpleasant ideological baggage. It is also sad and pathetic to base a political program and it's rhetoric on the sense of sanctimonious alertness to the idea that someone, somewhere, is having a better time than you, and that you're paying for them to have it!

If this image of the polity as a load of paranoid, grudging curtain-twitchers is the best that we can do, we may as well give up now.