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

“The Government believes that there are many barriers to social mobility and equal opportunities in Britain today, with too many children held back because of their social background, and too many people of all ages held back because of their gender, race, religion or sexuality. We need concerted government action to tear down these barriers and help to build a fairer society.”

Yes, it’s in the famous con-dem coalition’s programme for government. I wonder how many times we’ll be able to quote it at them?

“It’s ok”, we said to each other as we chained up our bikes outside Manchester Central. “No-one will take us seriously anyway.”

Point proved. Unless you present yourself in a particular way, it’s unlikely that women at that type of business event will be approached. We listened to speakers, collected brochures, read posters and leaflets. In our casual clothes and everyday demeanour, nobody suspected we were company directors. We didn’t enlighten them.

One solution is the cold turkey approach. But the lack of parking in a prospective office move turns a responsible workforce into a blubbering mass of demotivation. Furthermore, this blanket approach ignores the real needs of parents, disabled people and rural residents.

Congestion charging in the cities is a good idea but unacceptable to residents outside London.

Remote working is a partial solution, but still tinkering around the edges – it doesn’t deal with the addiction, just the behaviour.

Carbon rationing seems to be the only prospect for breaking the back of this curse on our society. Hopefully this would lead to more rational planning decisions about out-of-town leisure and shopping, and assumptions about transport behaviour.

I’ll support anything that will lead to people using their lower limbs and a decline in slob-dom, with a dose of increased neighbourliness thrown in for free. Go on, tell me to dream on ……………..

In that mood, I approached a new report from IPPR entitled You Can’t Put Me In A Box: Super-diversity and the end of identity politics in Britain.

Institute for Public Policy Research, January 2010

‘We owe people the duty of accuracy in solving social problems and not the default of assumption.’

What?

Reading on, I found out that the authors argue that the ‘strand-based’ case for equality and diversity is outmoded. Life is more complex than can be expressed by using categories of disabled, female, gay, Asian, older/younger, Jewish etc as we have done for the last 40 years. Creating pressure for change along those lines was useful, but the world has now changed and to a certain extent accommodated – albeit imperfectly – many of our demands. There is still a lot to do, but continuing along this well-worn groove raises the risks of:

• Focusing on barriers and low achievement, thereby unwittingly limiting aspirations and expectations of people because of their race, gender by implying: “Things will never change”
• Providing ammunition for those who advocate the opposite of equality “They will always be bottom of the pile – that’s just how it is”
• Ignoring the reality of achievement amongst British Muslims, women in certain sectors, disabled professionals and so on.
• Misunderstanding the causes of ongoing discrimination and poor prospects. For example, gang culture may be more about location (particular estates) than race; educational under-achievement may have more to do with single-parenthood than being white working class or African-Caribbean.

Using messages from young people as the basis for their research, the authors state

‘An emphasis on identity has … got us a long way in creating visibility and respect of groups of people who have previously experienced wholesale prejudice. It has considerably transformed the ways that they are seen by the rest of society. It has created change. But we are now under an obligation to take that very change into account.’

Social networking and technological change have enabled ‘identity’ to become increasingly fragmented, individualised and fluid. Today I’m a professional lesbian, tomorrow I’m a mother of teenagers, at the weekend I’m a middle-aged sportswoman, next week I’ll be an employed Manchester resident. They’re all relevant in context. Each of us could probably rattle off another twenty self-definitions in the blink of an eye. And for each ‘identity’ I want something different as a consumer, neighbour and public service user.

The last government tried to capture this increased fragmentation by talking (often blandly) about ‘choice’ of school or hospital. The Con-Dem Coalition has committed to continuing ‘personalisation’ of services – technically possible in our technological age, but possibly not in an era of financial squeeze. It will be interesting to see how Oona King and other public leaders take these messages on board.

Read the report. Talk about it. Make the conceptual leap into the Facebook age.

Reference: “You Can’t Put Me In A Box: Super-diversity and the end of identity politics in Britain” by Simon Fanshawe and Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah

Professor Kate Pickett, author of The Spirit Level: Why equality is better for everyone had alerted me to the existence of these bingo cards.  She gave the WEA Northwest Spring Lecture the night before.  As the book is lying on my bedside table, one-third read, I succumbed to the temptation of listening to somebody talking about the central analysis of the book:

Rich countries do not benefit from economic growth.

A cartoon depicted a banker saying to his son on his knee “Sometimes the rich get richer and the poor get poorer; other times the rich get richer and the poor stay the same”.  As this describes 21st century Britain, the authors have set out a challenge to the three parties to sign the Equality Pledge; see www.equalitytrust.org.uk, for a list of MPs and candidates who have actually signed the Equality Pledge.

According to Pickett and co-author Richard Wilkinson, halving income inequality (the difference between the richest and poorest 20% of the population) would decimate the extent of our social problems.  Mental illness would be reduced by two-thirds, 80% fewer people would be imprisoned and the numbers of teenage women becoming pregnant cut by four-fifths.

Has anyone visualised the impact of releasing people who are traditionally at the bottom of the ladder due to these practical barriers?  What would the non-pregnant teenagers be doing?  How would communities change, with the benefit of black people not restricted by imprisonment or mental health disorders?

Women’s position is worse in unequal societies and the same is true for disabled people, older and other disadvantaged people, who all together form the majority of the population. If the focus on income inequality is key to dealing with all of the other inequalities, why are we bothering with the seven strands of equality?  We know that prejudice such as sexism is worse in hierarchical societies (except Japan which is an outlier in this respect).  Status hierarchies encourage looking down on others, deepening the wounds caused by stigma and stereotype.  Deal with the cause, affect the effect.

Kate described an experiment on monkeys. Their brains were measured for their happiness when they were living alone.  When put into a social context, they developed a hierarchical society.  They were then given free access to cocaine.  Surprise, surprise, the monkeys in the subservient positions helped themselves to far more cocaine than the dominant monkeys – the dominant ones were quite happy, while the subservient monkeys wanted things to make them happy.  Whilst monkeys aren’t human beings, the message about how social problems arise is clear.

In addition, the mistake is often made to prioritise the worst off.  Income inequality cannot be dealt with only by focusing on those who are deprived – some attention must also be paid to reducing the runaway high incomes that are enjoyed by some members of society.

Back to the election debate.  The three of us, with our red, blue and orange pens, crossed off ‘promise’, ‘choice’, ‘deficit’, ‘fairness’, ‘pensions’, ‘ordinary’, ‘Sweden’.   As time went on, the conversations took more and more of a reactionary turn: all three leaders promised to keep virtually all incomers out of the UK, and to discipline school students mercilessly.  We (two voters and one future voter) heckled the television  with words still on our cards. ‘Crime levels!’ ‘Challenges ahead!’ ‘Gap between rich and poor!’ ‘Divided!’ ‘Inequality!’ ‘Living wage!’ ‘Postcode lottery!’ ‘Tolerance!’ ‘Dysfunctional society!’ ‘Sustainable!’ ‘Caring!’ ‘Climate!’ and so on.  (Admittedly, I fell asleep, but I still count this as a success in engaging young people in politics).

The range of issues which are directly affected by changes in income inequality goes beyond ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’:  excessive consumerism is a harmful bi-product of the quest for status in unequal societies, damaging the environment.  So too is the ‘long hours’ working culture, with its negative effect on families and individual well-being.

Kate left us with a final thought: One way that inequality – income differentials – are flattened has been through national crisis.  Unfortunately this has often been a war.  The big question now is: will global warming be recognised as enough of a crisis to provide the same sense of urgency for change?

Comments?

Trevor Phillips, Chair of the EHRC, claimed at the Manchester launch of the managers’ guide that flexible working would ‘help us out of recession and into prosperity’.  These grand words set the tone for a gung-ho event extolling the value of variety in working patterns based on choice, consultation and trust.  Case studies from hi-tech, manufacturing, food and creative (what I call PR) industries were impressive both in the detail and the large scale.  Clock Creative’s remote workers stayed in touch with a company-wide conference call meeting every Monday, and a similar 15-minute ‘close the week’ call-in on Fridays.  BT’s 20 years of flexible working have driven productivity up by 30% amongst home workers, and absenteeism down 20%, as well as saving £400m in premises costs.

This gives us an inkling of how women’s contribution to the economy, if fully utilised, could amount to £15bn – the figure quoted by the government’s national Women and Work commission.  Back to Trevor, reminding us of the fact that this is no longer a minority issue; if we make it difficult for the majority of the workforce to work to their optimum potential, it will ‘sap the UK’s potential to compete in a global market.’  You could tell he was addressing an event hosted by the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce.

Infrastruct’s question was aimed at getting down to the nuts and bolts of the thing: what about people who have to be at work at set times because they have people to serve, machines to run or criminals to apprehend?  There is a danger of restricting flexible working to the professional elite who can dial in or spend their working day glued to their Blackberry.  The administrator of my workplace in the 1990s put it succinctly: “We’d all like to swan around at home in us tracksuits, but some of us have got to come to work.”

What I heard was disappointing and somewhat wishy-washy.  The step-change will not be achieved by good intentions and a few examplars.  Some hard graft is needed to embed what the HR profession has started, on shift patterns, personalised hours, ‘slivers of time’, enabling technology like PDAs for front-line workers, and the myriad of other initiatives that will make this work.  But above all, it’s about a shift of attitudes, turning on their heads assumptions amongst us business owners – because these changes will help us run better businesses.  Hard-nosed?  Dickensian?  Small business, in particular, simply does not have the slack to do things just to be nicer to staff.  Equality is a business strategy, not a charitable goal.

My final point.  It is reported that around three-quarters of dads want to spend more time with their children. [See article] Infrastruct’s cynic asks: is that just about going to the park and on trips?  Or does it include cleaning the toilet while the baby’s asleep, and taking three under-5s on the weekly supermarket shop?

Any comments?

Frank Skinner, one of my favourite entertainers (not to be confused with Dennis Skinner despite superficial left-leaning similarities) writes in self-critical mode in today’s Times. Having made unpopular jibes at an Edinburgh festival gig about the intellectual prowess of A level students these days, he’s forced to conclude:

I’d accidentally been guilty of inverted ageism – that anti-youth attitude which seems to be becoming the country’s favourite brand of bigotry.

Hang on, I had to put up with plenty of comments from my Dad about ‘yobs’ during my teenage years if he caught sight of any young strangers in his radar, especially those whom I found interesting and alluring. But Frank thinks it’s more than just name-calling. Anyone who’s absorbed my explanations about Gordon Allport’s scale of prejudice won’t be surprised at this, as Allport’s premise was that extreme prejudicial acts are founded on widespread bad-mouthing. Frank reckons:

The anti-youth lobby’s sniping sounds unnervingly similar to racism – they’re lazy, they rut like wild animals, they don’t try to mix with us, they don’t dress like us, they speak a different language and, most popular of all, they’re so thick they can barely read and write.

Which gives everyone else the right to differentiate themselves as a superior class of human being who, by definition, is hard-working, virtuous, politely gregarious, don’t say “safe” instead of “hello” on the phone, clever and just generally better.

As the parent / step-parent of several of this allegedly lower end of the species, it’s in my interests to a) support them to achieve their potential and b) understand our differences so that I can value how they are better than we were, as well as seek to influence them (with teenagers, that sometimes means suggesting they do the opposite of what I want). They are, after all, our future not only in a personal sense, but also in terms of the planet’s survival or demise.

Elsewhere in the Times, Oliver Kamm argues that economic growth is essential to deal with climate change. I disagree with his reasoning, but have to agree that ‘there is one resource that is almost infinitely renewable:…..human inventiveness’.

So as I wave various teenagers off to mud- and beer-soaked music festivals, hear progress reports from the Edinburgh fringe and arrange Manchester Pride tickets for the others, I’m placing faith, hope, bets and general optimism for the future alongside Frank in ‘……..modern youth – wild, uncoordinated, scary but ever-so-slightly awe-inspiring.’ I’m sure I’ll complain about the cyber-world they are creating; I’m bound to be ungrateful for advances in medical technology, and uninterested in new forms of artistic expression. But I hope they’ll be clever enough to at least keep the planet alive, and I’ll be smart enough to put my tuppence-worth in.

21st August 2009

Members of the audience fill in an old-fashioned slip of paper and submit it before the gig or during the interval, and much of Mark’s routine (if you can call it that) is taken up with reading out and responding. We heard policies from Huddersfield (Margaret Thatcher should pay for her own funeral), Bath (maximum wage), Milton Keynes, Oxford (‘more lesbians’). Whatever policy is voted for, Mark promises to campaign around it, as well as his pet issues which currently were: to play croquet on the lawn of an expenses-disgraced MP (photographic evidence provided); and Invade Jersey to catch all the tax-dodgers.

At the end of the evening, the 100-or so proposals that he has read out are whittled down to a hopeful handful and the audience dutifully votes for the policy of their choice. In our case it was: all clothes for sale in shops must have a label with the age of the producer and a photo of the working or living conditions where it was produced. Watch this space.

Light hearted does not mean faint hearted, and it was great to see some fun injected into the dreary culture that democracy usually inhabits.