So now to immigration ........... again!
We want a big society as long as society doesn't get any bigger?
According to David Cameron people are 'sick of seeing taxpayers' hard earned money 'given to people who refuse to work'.
That apparently was the message on the doorstep during the election campaign.
I fnd this an interesting reading of the current situation because I have known and worked with people who were (just about) surviving on benefits during my time in Newcastle between 1978 and 1987 and during the founding of the campaign Church Action on Poverty.
Most of the people I met desperately wanted to work but the previous Conservative administration had effectively exported most of the jobs traditionally undertaken by working class people.
A soiologist called C Wright Mills described this phenomenon in his book The Sociological Imagination in the following way. When in a City of 50,000 one worker is unemployed then it is right to look for the resolution of his unemployment in his skills or mental attitude but when in that same City 20,000 people are unemployed then says Wright Mills, 'the very structure of opportunities has collapsed'.
That is what happened in the United Kingdom in the Eighties and the legacy of that collapse continues to be felt in inner city and outer estate communities today a generation later..
There is much to be done to ameliorate the effects of this collapse of the structure of opportunities but the current savage cuts to public expenditure will not help.
However what was new in David Camerons speech was linking welfare spending on 'people who refuse to work' directly with immigration.
Again, apparently, it was the talk of the doorsteps of Britain during the election: 'We are concerned about the levels of immigration in our country'!
Really, not on our doorstep it wasn't?
Of course the sub-text of this speech is probably more important than the content.
Two words stuck out for me in the televised speech. they are typical of words used by David Cameron in that they have clear meanings but are used in a context which subtly changes the meaning.
Discomfort for example, is used either as a Noun or a Verb, depending on the context in which it is used. As a Noun it could refer to a pain, a worry or an embarrassment, as a Verb to embarrassing someone, the OED traces the word back to Old French, desconforter, very much an immigrant word then!.
Disjointed is an adjective defined as lacking a coherent sequence or connection which must make us ask, what is the connection between those who refuse to work and those who seek to come to this country in order to work?
I was somewhat discomforted to hear the British Prime Minister setting out his philosophy of 'good immigration' as against 'mass immigration' because the text of the speech which is both long and complex has a strong sense of an argument being marshalled to achieve a conclusion that has already been drawn.
Interesting then that the Lib Dems Vince cable is once again at odds with both the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister.
In the global village dramatic changes are causing wholesale movement of people. Global warming is part of the problem, economic re-alignment as India and China battle for economic supremacy, Western Nations, even America, beginning to sense that their pre-eminence is about to be challenged.
In the future there will be both individuals who for whatever reason cannot find work and will need to be supported if they are to maintain a place within consumer society, housed, fed and entertained and there will continue to be mass movements of people seeking to flee war, pestilence, famine and the grinding poverty of their lives.
If we are to be a big society we need to learn how to be a generous society and we need a vision of that society set out in terms that are both generous and inclusive .........
We want a big society as long as society doesn't get any bigger?
According to David Cameron people are 'sick of seeing taxpayers' hard earned money 'given to people who refuse to work'.
That apparently was the message on the doorstep during the election campaign.
I fnd this an interesting reading of the current situation because I have known and worked with people who were (just about) surviving on benefits during my time in Newcastle between 1978 and 1987 and during the founding of the campaign Church Action on Poverty.
Most of the people I met desperately wanted to work but the previous Conservative administration had effectively exported most of the jobs traditionally undertaken by working class people.
A soiologist called C Wright Mills described this phenomenon in his book The Sociological Imagination in the following way. When in a City of 50,000 one worker is unemployed then it is right to look for the resolution of his unemployment in his skills or mental attitude but when in that same City 20,000 people are unemployed then says Wright Mills, 'the very structure of opportunities has collapsed'.
That is what happened in the United Kingdom in the Eighties and the legacy of that collapse continues to be felt in inner city and outer estate communities today a generation later..
There is much to be done to ameliorate the effects of this collapse of the structure of opportunities but the current savage cuts to public expenditure will not help.
However what was new in David Camerons speech was linking welfare spending on 'people who refuse to work' directly with immigration.
Again, apparently, it was the talk of the doorsteps of Britain during the election: 'We are concerned about the levels of immigration in our country'!
Really, not on our doorstep it wasn't?
Of course the sub-text of this speech is probably more important than the content.
Two words stuck out for me in the televised speech. they are typical of words used by David Cameron in that they have clear meanings but are used in a context which subtly changes the meaning.
Discomfort for example, is used either as a Noun or a Verb, depending on the context in which it is used. As a Noun it could refer to a pain, a worry or an embarrassment, as a Verb to embarrassing someone, the OED traces the word back to Old French, desconforter, very much an immigrant word then!.
Disjointed is an adjective defined as lacking a coherent sequence or connection which must make us ask, what is the connection between those who refuse to work and those who seek to come to this country in order to work?
I was somewhat discomforted to hear the British Prime Minister setting out his philosophy of 'good immigration' as against 'mass immigration' because the text of the speech which is both long and complex has a strong sense of an argument being marshalled to achieve a conclusion that has already been drawn.
Interesting then that the Lib Dems Vince cable is once again at odds with both the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister.
In the global village dramatic changes are causing wholesale movement of people. Global warming is part of the problem, economic re-alignment as India and China battle for economic supremacy, Western Nations, even America, beginning to sense that their pre-eminence is about to be challenged.
In the future there will be both individuals who for whatever reason cannot find work and will need to be supported if they are to maintain a place within consumer society, housed, fed and entertained and there will continue to be mass movements of people seeking to flee war, pestilence, famine and the grinding poverty of their lives.
If we are to be a big society we need to learn how to be a generous society and we need a vision of that society set out in terms that are both generous and inclusive .........
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