Erm, sorry about this, but as the facts emerge the BBC One O’Clock News has already changed the steward story from “forced to spend the night under London Bridge” to “had to shelter for two hours under a bridge”.

I’m afraid to say, inequality of outcomes is an intrinsic byproduct of a free society.

@ Tyler

“I’m afraid to say, inequality of outcomes is an intrinsic byproduct of a free society.”

I don’t think anyone’s saying we should chase perfectly equal outcomes at all costs, though. More like a decent minimum standard of living, responsible rates of wealth distribution, and a system not inherently designed to help the rich exploit the poor. YMMV on “decent”, “responsible” and “exploit”, of course.

2

Inequality also appears to be an intrinsic outcome of ‘not so free societies’ as all those serfs, peasants and slaves from history will attest. Maybe it’s something to do with class systems!

I just got chastised by Sunny on twitter for blurting out a whole mess of things. It’s like old times for me again (I guess.)

Anyway, this is a brilliant question. One which I have been thinking about long and hard for a long time. I have a few ideas floating about that could at least be tested to SHOW we are, as a nation trying to get out of this hole – which frankly has been caused by too many people eager to get their fingers in financial pies and live off the fat of the land for longer than I have been alive (28 years if you must know.)

So, here we go:
1) Stop being a service nation – Let’s face it that’s all we’re good at as a nation at the moment. We don’t make things (that work well.) Therefore we can’t build things. All we can do is buy things other nations build and stick a service charge on it. It’s not good enough. We need to create a job market that not only builds things, but builds things OTHER nations need.

2) Stop being a financial hub – This is an extension of point 1. We’ve moved from being a nation that could build things of relative worth to being a nation that gambles on the stock markets and as such are at it’s mercy when things go tits up. We’ve stopped being dictators in that regard, and started being dictated to.

3) Regulating banks – I’m sorry, deregulation is the WORST thing to have happen. It didn’t work once (great depression), It hasn’t worked a second time (2008 crash) – for me as a PLANET we cannot allow this to happen again. Banks need to be regulated and the w***s that work in them cannot be allowed to mix commercial money with domestic money and gamble the lot away! They’re run by these obnoxious adrenaline fuelled coke-head junkies – WHAT DO YOU EXPECT TO HAPPEN?! They’re habitual risk takers.

4) Taxing international corps on their UK profits – ONE Double Barrell name sums this up at the moment. Glaxo-Smithkline. If you haven’t watch the panorama doc from a few weeks ago which explained the situation properly, basically, companies set up offshore companies which “loan” money to their UK counterparts – in turn their profits don’t count as profit because they pay the “debt” of the offshore company. This turns potential tax profits of millions into hundred-thousands.

5) Taxing the highest earners – Unfortunately I can’t find the article I read about the highest earners and their tax breaks. The jist of it was that if they were taxed what they SHOULD be taxed it could have wiped the majority of the deficit of the country. Sorry, but IF you want to live in the UK and you earn high amounts, you should be taxed more. It’s part of LIVING IN THE UK DEMOCRACY. Essentially, if you don’t want to share your profit – move. Leave. Go away. And don’t come back. Go and live in Dubai! Your earnings are tax-free there.
We’re talking about multi-multi-millionaires here. You, as people will not miss the money! What are you doing with it all anyway? You do realise that if you die tomorrow, your money is worthless right? Instead of buying that 10th Bentley/building that extension on your 300m yacht, give some money to the govt – feed 10000 people for a year.

6) Tax breaks for the poor – Right, Cameron – the joke is over. People are starving, people are being kicked out of their homes, people are dying from the stress. The evidence is clearly showing the many cannot hold the weight of the few. Change this. Change it now. IT DOES NOT WORK. It never will work. People are being squeezed. Parents are going without meals to feed their children.

7) Stripping back the NHS – It needs to be done. Doctors need to be Doctors, Nurses need to be Nurses – Managers need to p*** off. NHS buildings need to belong to the NHS as opposed to being rented from private companies. The money is being syphoned off. (i.e. Darrent Valley). In short term, yes it saves money, but in the long term – it never saves money. Owning something outright > renting. It’s so, so simple.

8) Rent caps for landlords – Landlords should not be allowed to charge what they wish for the homes they rent out. It shouldn’t be allowed. It creates ghettos of wealth/poverty. Rents and rates are becoming astronomical due to the greed of landlords. I’m not stating a profit can’t be made – at the end of the day they’re providing a service for people by taking away the headaches of maintenance and the such – it is a business. It should not however, be possible for renters to be completely priced out of areas they wish to live in. Some rents are akin to paying mortgage, but due to the indiscretions of the banks, they’re not willing to lend to these people that could become first time buyers…

9) Tax landlords with more properties more – Stagger taxes on profits according to the amount of homes a landlord has.
a) Make it LESS profitable for landlords who buy and dominate areas. When I was at Uni, the majority of rental homes in the local area were owned by ONE landlord (i’d say a good 60%) – This landlord charged HUGE fees to live anywhere near the university. This landlord had a monopoly of the area and exploited it – which inflated the rates everywhere. Now imagine this happening everywhere else.
b) Houses get priced out for first time buyers and as such, the only people that can afford to buy them are landlords. It creates a cycle where the rich enough get richer and exploit the poorer or those unable to gain the cash injection to put money down on a deposit for a mortgage. If you stagger and raise the tax on profits made by landlords as well as putting on a rent cap – you will see a substantial amount of homes move back on the market because landlords will find it’s simply not worth it to buy up areas of homes, charge what they wish and reap the benefits.

10) Tax breaks for companies that create jobs – simple premise – create jobs, create wealth, get a suitable tax break. It follows along the lines of a train of thought here, so bear with me. Stop this workfare shenanigan. People who hold jobs are being exploited by this farce of an idea. Paid workers are being sent home so unpaid workers pick up the slack. It was foretold and forewarned – and lo and behold – it happened. On top of that people are fearful for their jobs now! Hard working people are now afraid that if they don’t put the extra hours in (unpaid) they will be fired for someone that is willing to put in the extra hours for the same wage. I’m sorry, but as a company, if you’re expecting someone to work 16 hours to deliver your results, you should pay them for 16 hours. You shouldn’t be paying for 8 hours and expecting the person to work the other 8 hours for free. Those people are not machines, they’re people. They have homes to go to, kids to raise, food to buy etc etc – if you squeeze them more, they become drones – and there is no one there to raise their children, which has a knock-on effect of a generation of kids that don’t know their boundaries – do the riots last summer not ring bells?

11) Lower the duty on Petrol/Diesel/Train fares – We are a nation built on road and rail networks. We cannot function without them. Constant hikes in these areas create stagnation. Why bother trading in £5-8k of your wages yearly for a train ticket to get to work? Why bother being self-employed? Why bother being a delivery company? Sit at home on the dole without the stress of commuting to and from work and making ends meet and running a car/van/lorry. Or go and work in a local shops /businesses. They’re your options. Most people will go with opition “F**k it,” seriously. People are waking up the fact that they’re losing a huge sum of their wages on simply getting to and from work. ONE of the many services I can immediately think of hit by this is Driving tuition – It’s practically an essential service in this nation – everyone needs to drive. But Instructors are losing their livelihoods because people cannot afford to pay for training – as rates of petrol go up, rates of lessons go up because corresponding costs inflate (it’s not cheap to run a motor service – think of things like Road tax, maintenance etc etc.) The end-user has to suffer the brunt of this and what has been happening is – people have just been giving up. What we will end up with in 40 years is a country that has ground to a halt due to the shortsightedness of the Govts. involved. Think of the UK as a body – You’re cutting the blood supply across it.

12) Create more housing – Create homes, deflate the bubble. People need homes. It’s a basic human right (as well as a massive Psychological one). You’re denying them that opportunity to OWN something. To fight for something. To earn for something. See point 9) for the major reason as to why this is happening. People with money are buying houses that would otherwise cost less, inflating the market more than is needed and putting homes out of reach of those that may be able to afford it. If you have nothing to live for, you have nothing to fight for. May as well stay on the Dole.

13) Regulate Charities – On the basis of what happened and the discussion that has been caused by the event I am commenting on – it’s now apparent that Charities need to be regulated. The legitimate ones will always stay legitimate. Schools, Colleges, Universities, Hospitals, Support charities etc etc – basically, ones that actually do what they set out to do. They will ALWAYS cut the mustard. The ones that won’t are the fake and phony ones that apply for charitable status and syphon off Govt. funding for their own diabolical ends.

*BREATHE*

“I believe that the best solutions are implemented politically through elected representatives as I believe they have the best chance at long term legitimacy.”

So that’ll be the Labour Party, then? The party of Mandelson, the party of Purnell and Byrne, the party of being intensely relaxed about the filthy rich getting filthier and richer, the party of ESA and ATOS, the party of Murdoch crevice-crawlers.

Even before I followed the link to your blog, I could tell from that one sentence alone that you were a Fabian.

So a fat lot of good you’re going to be.

“I don’t know these answers”

I do, they’re found in the Labour manifestos of the past. 1983 would be ideal, but you could go for 1945 if you like.

Thatcherites and their Blairite collaborators have spent years telling us that their way is the only one and that socialist policies don’t work, but it’s a lie.

We need to go back to go forwards.

I’m not a supporter of UK Uncut. I find their tactics off-putting and their aims vague.

I’ve been waiting for someone else say that on this website.
As for fretting over the Jubilee …. I wouldn’t bother. If you can’t beat them, join them I’d say. I think you can’t really be so black and white about the support for the royal family.
It’s not all about fawning over them, but us too. About community. And it was an inclusive party. Anyone could join in if they wanted to. It was exceedingly naff and rubbish in parts. The Thames flotilla turned into a fiasco, and the BBC coverage of it was embarrassing.
But I find people turning up in the Mall in their thousands to cheer the Queen quite touching, People get off on it. Having a hereditary head of state isn’t so bad. Look at the Republic of Ireland for an example of doing it different. Some are good and some are quite forgettable.

As for the exploitation of the unemployed people bussed in. Yes it was a bit out of order and they should have been better looked after. But what they were doing wasn’t much worse than what a million other people were volunteering to do of their own free will.
They got a free trip to London out of it – and a few more memories than they would have got if they’d stayed at home. Not good, but not so terrible.

When complaints about the treatment of those people is shrugged off as lefty-whining, there’s something seriously wrong.

There is something seriously wrong, and it’s called meritocracy. In theory meritocracy rewards merit, however since finding merit and rewarding it appropriately is hard, what’s instead happened is that those who are or have been ‘rewarded’ are granted meritorious status. It’s why hard work has less to do with how much pay you’ll get as opposed to having a job that pays more, a slacker in a well paid job will have more ‘merit’ and be better regarded by society than a hard worker in a low paid job. Just ask Shanene Thorpe. Known ‘benefits cheat’ David Laws got softer, respectful treatment from Allegra Stratton in his interview with her.

So, what does this mean for the jobless, unpaid workers, and those with little in the bank? Well, clearly they have little merit, and as such are parasites on society, deserving of contempt and the worst treatment ‘the worthy’ can dish out. However there’s these nasty little laws called ‘human rights’ that try to make out that they’re somehow equal to those with merit, so it’s rather fortunate there’s been a decade long crusade against such perverse laws by the political right then isn’t it?

At this point I think you could introduce work camps for ‘the feckless’ and garner cheers from the Tory benches. Probably call it chav boot camp or something to get it under the radar…

Aw fuck I just gave em ideas didn’t I?

9

Send all the poor and jobless a copy of Smiles’ ‘Self-Help;’ is what I say.

As for the exploitation of the unemployed people bussed in. Yes it was a bit out of order and they should have been better looked after. But what they were doing wasn’t much worse than what a million other people were volunteering to do of their own free will.

You toss the words ‘volunteering’ and ‘free will’ away like they represent a trivial difference between the situations of these people.

What the hell happened to all the comments that were here a couple of hours ago?

Odd – they weren’t there one minute ago – honest!

Sadly, I don’t think anything will change. The present narrative presented by the media and the government is that all the woes of the economy are the fault of the unemployed and treating the unemployed like dirt appeals to the “I’m alright Jack” types, who believe that they are masters of their own destiny and not susceptible to the same free market as those less fortunate. As for the London Bridge shenanigens, anyone with half a brain could see that coming. It’s not work experience at all, but an opportunity for chancers to not be able to pay even minimum wage, let alone a living wage, and the practice will continue, stretching into the healthcare and police sectors.

Hi, I usually don’t comment on blogs/comment sites – I prefer to just read comments as they tend to be of a good quality and the debate on this blog is usually of a high standard. However I felt so strongly about this issue in particular that I couldn’t help myself.

What we are seeing here is a fundamental shift in Britain’s political culture with a corresponding shift in attitudes to the poor and unemployed. The juxtaposition of the grandeur of the jubilee on the one hand and the sheer inhumanity of the conditions that these unemployed persons were put through only further highlights the dire situation that these unfortunate people are in – and the crushing injustice of it all.

The fundamental problem however is that ideas concerning the poor and unemployed during times of a boom while present are in a state of ‘quiescence’ I would argue. In such times people feel relatively prosperous and the resentment felt towards the unemployed is not openly expressed to such a degree. In times of recession attitudes that had been simmering during the boom times become the ‘new normal’ as it were, leading to a higher tolerance of schemes such as this one.

The justification for all of this is that such schemes provide valuable ‘work experience’ and may lead to employment in the future. While I don’t doubt this necessarily, the somewhat dire nature of the job market for those partaking in low skilled/semi-skilled work makes me sceptical about the utility of these schemes (since competition for most jobs is so fierce that employers can afford to choose the cream of the crop), especially if they lead to people being treated so poorly. The benefits of cheap labour to employers is more obvious however and it only seems that because attitudes to the poor/unemployed have coarsened to such a degree, that we tolerate so called ‘workfare’ schemes which are not only a perverse subsidy of private business but also makes it harder for people to find gainful employment.

It’s bad economics and such schemes are increasingly adopting an inhuman face.

Tyler: “I’m afraid to say, inequality of outcomes is an intrinsic byproduct of a free society.”

I don’t think you’re afraid to say that at all. Indeed, I think it’s probably among the biggest attractions of libertarianism for a lot of people. Less cake for the “undeserving” means more cake for the “deserving”, does it not? As long as you maintain your belief that the free market is doing well at identifying whether people deserve to be rich or poor, you sleep easy, I suppose. It’s justice!

I don’t really need to point out the main problem with that since Cylux (#9 above) has pretty ably done that already.

There’s no real argument for ‘workfare’ as it stands. Any real support for it boils down to ‘I have to work and so should they’. It’s politics of spite from those who make accusations of the politics of envy.

As a ‘CV enhancer’ it cancels itself out: the more people who do it – and it looks like the majority of benefit claimants are going to be pushed into it – the more it loses any ‘competitive edge’. It’s simple maths: common denominators cancel themselves out. As experience, it’s pretty meaningless when 10,000s (and eventually 100,000s and millions) will have done exactly the same kind of jobs in exactly the same kind of retail environments. An analogue is NHS applicants doing voluntary work on wards etc. At one time, it demonstrated you were pro-active and gave you an edge over other applicants. Now it’s expected and doesn’t really mean much in of itself anymore.

As for the skills it’s supposed to develop, whilst shelf-stacking isn’t to be sniffed at (it has to be done and most of the people forced into do it will know of someone in their demographic/peer group who’s done it as a paid job, so it’s not about job snobbery), it’s not something that has to be learned over weeks. Pretty much what you learn in that first afternoon is all you need to know: where stuff is brought in and where it has to go. Alternatively, how you work the till. None of faux-jobs are like a Bauhaus education where you sample various parts of the wider job – no matter what was claimed at the start. For the overwhelming majority, what you see on that first day is all you’ll ever see.

Soft skills arguments don’t really stand-up as the majority of the unemployed will be used to jumping through various hoops with appointments, proof of looking for work etc. The idea of ‘structure’ and the need for ‘getting out of bed’ is a bit sketchy to say the least. Also, there’s not much chance to develop ‘communication skills’, ‘customer skills’ etc. when you’re shelf stacking or on a fast lane check-out.

Even government research has shown that it’s neither use nor ornament. You’re more likely to get something in the way of a real job through the job centre or off your own back.

Which leads on to the ‘habit’ of many of the deliverers of these workfare schemes hounding people for details of jobs they’ve not been involved in getting. Then there’s the evidence of fraud, and lots of it, in these providers. Not to mention the amount of money that’s being paid to these firms.

Workfare is a scam and a half. All it’s there for is to sate the bloodthirst of Mail and Sun readers alike and to line the pockets of chums. It’s of little real use to the ‘service user’ and it’s conning the taxpayer out of some serious money.

Still, what price scapegoating, eh?

It is interesting that this is advertised as a training run as part of the Olympic Games 1000 yard chav free ring of steel. However, you don’t need security when nothing is wrong, but you really need calm assured expertise when something does. Yet it seems that the much trumpeted “security” preparations for the O event rely on a bunch of unpaid untrained people being treated as vermin. Gives you that warm feeling of confidence.

Still, we can sleep safely knowing there will be enough military hardware to ensure that, , should they feel theurge, the ptb can completely destroy the East End in order to protect it

Well said

In the near future they will time limit JSA just like they do in the United States, so that when the “client” has reached their time limit, their jobseekers allowance will be stopped and they will be left destitute.

What these sick maniacs have planned is so terrible that a time will come when people will wish they had workfare.

Every time I come to this page, there are no comments shown. When I post a comment saying that there are no comments shown, suddenly the comments all appear. Weird

“When complaints about the treatment of those people is shrugged off as lefty-whining, there’s something seriously wrong”

This is what’s been bothering me lately. It either happened or it didn’t, if it didn’t fair enough – if it did then something has gone very wrong.

Wheeling out people who didn’t have the same problem and who are linked to the company in question doesn’t prove anything either. Nobody is saying that everybody who has ever worked for the company has been treated this way, we’re saying that the people who were have been treated very badly, and that they shouldn’t have been.

If we can’t even agree on that we have a serious moral deficit in this country that I previously thought only existed in the USA.

Interesting, candid article. I agree with what you say although I’m not sure we should be unreservedly placing yet more faith in economists to get us out of this mess.

‘How have we got into a situation where it is essential to have experience to stack shelves? How have we moved in two generations from jobs for life to insecurity for most?’

Do you want the simple answer? Globalisation. Because labour as a commodity has to now compete not only on a national level, but on a international level, and there will always be overseas a never ending supply of cheap labour.

Globally, this isn’t a bad thing, untold millions are now getting a standard of living far exceeding their previous generations across China, India and the like. Yes, it’s not a huge great deal their earning (especially compared with this country), but it’s a huge step from the agriculture base in the past.

If you are a true socialist, a ‘international socialist’, then you should be cheering these things, becuase overall it’s a balance of labour across the whole world. It just means a rebalance in this country downwards.

The only ‘solution’ is protectionism, but then thats not very good for the developing world.

25

What do you mean by a ‘real socialist’, because I know of no socialist who supports the exploitation of labour anywhere, never mind in undeveloped countries.

@ 26 steveb

From context, I’d say he means a socialist whose socialism doesn’t stop at the borders of his own country. Which seems fair enough.

@27 What AD @26 is arguing for does not resemble socialism in the least, pro-globalisation liberalism on the other hand, very much so. Labour is still very much being exploited by the capitalist classes, in fact the ability to expliot labour to a greater degree in undeveloped countries is being put forward as the reason to further undermine and exploit labour in developed countries. All the while being dressed up as being ‘good’.
Such applause for and lauding of inequality is the very antithesis of socialism.

@25 even…

@ 28 Cylux

From what I can see, he’s arguing that internationalism makes the poor in third-world countries better off at the expense of people in first-world countries, and hence is socialist.

Whether he’s right hinges on whether that claim about people becoming better or worse off is true. It’s a factual dispute, albeit one badly in need of clearly defined terms. But, if I accept the premise for sake of argument, then he’s right to call it socialist. As a hypothetical, rebalancing wealth from the rich first-world to the poor third-world is socialist.

30

Socialism is socialism, it is not a redistribution of wealth carried-out by some ‘benevolent’ capitalist, if this was the case, giving to beggars on the street would be classed as ‘socialism’.

In reality, corporations go into undeveloped countries to exploit cheap labour and/or materials, what @25 is describing is ‘trickle-down’, classic economic liberalism. You may believe that this is a good thing but ‘socialism’ is not a relative term nor is it dependant on subjective perspectives. Redistribution of wealth would not be needed in a socialist system.