Here we go, here we go, here we go-oh …………….. the summer of sporting moments is slackening its grip. Players were well and truly trounced by big balls and little balls, and the victors held their trophies and their winnings high above their heads. Only the Tour de France remains as I write, and who can be the winner there in this seemingly never-ending bout of gruelling masochism with inexplicable rules, where grimacing and trying not to lose body weight are as important as the eternal leg-turning?
Attention round the globe can now go back to – let’s see, where were we? Oh yes, the UK had an election and we’ve got this new strange beast of a government which, now it’s settled in, is rearing its once-pretty head and revealing its beastliness. Cuts in public services and tax rises feel like attacks on disabled and poor people. “Any government would have had to do this” say defenders of the approach. That is probably true, but the ferocity of the present onslaught belies an ideological undercurrent that favours individual choice over equality, charity over entitlement, blame over encouragement, and relegates thousands to ‘no-hoper’ status and a life behind the barriers that progressive organisations have been steadily dismantling for a generation.
When I was at university I argued constantly with a co-student in his late twenties who sported a handlebar moustache. His moustache wasn’t the problem, it was his politics. We both called ourselves libertarians, but our pursuit of liberty took us in diametrically opposite directions: mine towards a socialist state which supported and empowered individuals; his towards the brand of conservatism which abandons people to find individual solutions to their circumstances.
This is what we have got in front of us. Up to 40% cuts in public services will leave some people high and dry in their search for jobs, a decent home or advice on healthy living. The cuts might be necessary, but the dumping and blaming of sections of the population is not.
Has anyone logged on to review the 61,888 ideas for the ‘spending challenge’ to the public sector, also known as open season for bigots? http://spendingchallenge.hm-treasury.gov.uk Take a stiff drink, and open up the underbelly of the British psyche. You’ll find a suggestion to merge three quangos (Environment Agency, Natural England and the Marine Management Organisation) with its parent department (DEFRA – Dept of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) has one vote, while 40 people have voted to ‘Kick Scottish MPs out of Westminster’, and beating them both, 48 people have voted to ‘Force cats to spend one hour per day on electrical treadmills’.
The wisdom of the people has got us this set of leaders, but it certainly isn’t going to help them deal intelligently with the task in front of them. We could moan about the amount of time and money it will take to sift all the ‘ideas’, but it’s more sinister than that. Don’t go on the immigration page. And treat with kid gloves suggestions that the CRB (Criminal Records Bureau) checks system is abolished. Are they really saying, allow the return of abuse, exploitation and neglect of children that went ignored in previous decades? Aaaah, but we had community then; people could leave their back doors unlocked.
A note of caution is suggested in www.freshbusinessthinking.com, in the same way that Jim in Hilaire Belloc’s poem was advised:
‘Always keep a-hold of nurse / For fear of finding something worse’.
Not that everything was hunky-dory before. Economic recovery from the collapse of manufacturing in the 1980s, and the transition to a service economy started a ‘race to the bottom’. Yes, it offered more job opportunities for women, but this was achieved at the price of what the Joseph Rowntree Foundation calls a ‘hollowed out’ jobs market, with a distinct lack of opportunity to progress up a career ladder to what some commentators have called the highly-skilled ‘extreme jobs’ that characterise our digital, global economy.
Writing in the Guardian on 8th July 2010, Deborah Orr stated that, despite its intentions to the contrary, the previous government ‘helped to disguise the retrenchment of a class system as rigid and socially immobile as the one Labour was founded to dismantle.’ Not a great legacy. She goes on to warn us: ‘The disguise is being taken off now, and what’s underneath is pretty ugly.’
Moving through the next few years will require resisting the temptation to say “I’m all right Jack,” and finding new ways to try reducing the inequality gap.
13th July 2010
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