26th April 2013

Growth appears to be the only economic tool that is understood by politicians, whether it is the milli-balls or the con-dems, they all want growth.

But what the growth lobbyists do not take into account is that we live in a finite globe, with finite resources and the possibility that we are approaching the end of history.

Our energy supplies are diminishing rapidly. But the pro growth lobbyists point to fracking as a way of releasing gas from the earths crust in order to convince us, as they have already convinced themselves that we can go on burning our future.

Last night I went to a book group which was looking at the Book: Prosperity Without Growth by Professor Tim Jackson.

It is a challenging thesis which was first aired in a report, also by Professor Jackson and produced by the Sustainable Development Commission, a body which was swept away in the bonfire of the Quango's in the early days of the coalition.

The idea of prosperity without growth is a spiritual idea.

Individuals settling for less as a way of increasing personal well being.

Sharing out work and rewards for work in an attempt to get work and life into some kind of balance.

Investing in technologies that will make for a greener world.

In my own journey from a workaholic to retiree, I can look back and recognise how much better it would have been to spend time with my family as they grew up, how the stuff we acquired has been given away or sold off as we have downsized and how much richer and more fulfilling my life is now.

I am uneasy that my state pension is so generous.

I am uneasy that not all pensioners are as well off as I am, with too many people dependant on pension credit.

I am uneasy that my post retirement income means that I have more than some folk have to raise a family.

And I try to address that in various ways.

I am angry that some 350,000 people are now relying on foodbanks to feed their families.

I am angry that the Government rehearses a narrative which bears no relationship to the lives that people are actually living.

I am angry that the world cannot discover more peaceful ways to settle its differences.

Watching Question Time last night I was surprised at how the Leader of the Green Party seemed to be so angry and how the Leader of UKIP seemed so relaxed and at ease with himself.

Righteous indignation confronted by irenic wrongheadedness.

Global warming is wrong we heard.

Europe is wrong also, of course.

Apparently all the crime in London (or at least most of it) can be laid at the door of immigrants from Europe.

The panel was at odds with itself, angry words were exchanged and voices raised.

Now The Fabian Society has entered the debate by asking whether pensioners should be challenged to bear a greater share of the deficit, embrace austerity and surrender their heating allowances and start paying their National Insurance Contributions.

Some folk are affronted by this. How dare they?

But in reality the public discourse needs to be engaged with by all parts and all parties. It is time for us to hold a calm and measured debate about what kind of society we want to be in the finite world we inhabit. Finite resources are being pillaged with abandon.

We are in Crisis.

But the Chinese word for crisis means both threat and opportunity.

We need to face the threats honestly and grasp the opportunities we have to shape a kinder, gentler more humane society in which human beings can flourish and in which we can share the resources more equitably for our common well-being and the future security of our planet home.

17th April 2013

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone.

W H Auden's poem was made famous by the film Four Weddings and a Funeral.

Today in our house we are avoiding the News in order to allow the event's of the day to pass us by.

There will be no party unless Manchester United win this evening, but equally we have no interest in seeing a former Prime Minister laid to rest with full military honours.

We do wish that her policies, currently being pursued enthusiastically by her successors, could also be laid to rest, but we are aware that is unlikely.

What kind of society do we wish to create?

How do we see the future opening up for our children and grandchildren?

The founder of the charity that I spent the last seven years of my working life trying to move into the 20th Century used to say, 'Do something useful everyday, and don't get found it'.

Simple acts of kindness was the way in which I tried to modernise that sentiment.

Simple acts of kindness serve to make the world a better, fairer more humane place.

It would be excellent if the current members of the coalition in Cabinet could find it in themselves to think more honestly and openly about the nature and impact of their policies on individuals and communities.

There are issues about the use of statistics.

There are issues about claims made and the language in which and with which policies are introduced.

The narrative in which the coalition tells its story is the narrative of workers and shirkers, strivers and skivers.

But when I look around my community I don't see that distinction having any validity.

I see human compassion being celebrated and exercised by the folk who run the local Foodbank, I see the level of sharing and caring in the local poetry group and when I attend my Co-op Area Meeting I see the exercise of values and principles that serve to make the world a better place.

We do this by helping, as far as we are able, people to help themselves, taking responsibility for and answering to our actions.

In the Co-op, our members, those who shop with us, have a say in the way our business us run, one member, one vote is a key democratic principle, and our democratic structure is there to ensure that we carry out our business in a way that is fair and unbiased.

Seeking to be open and honest is central to the ethical principles on which co-operation is founded.Some of what we do is to monitor and question the way in which the businesses are manged and run, managers have to attend our committees and demonstrate how the the values and principles of the movement are reflected and honoured in the work we do.

At the next meeting we will be distributing funds to charities and local community groups, sharing our profits not only with members but the wider community in order to encourage people to take responsibility for their communities and work to improve them.

Whatever goes on today, and we have stopped the clock and cut off the telephone, so hopefully we won't know.

But what will be celebrated and protested appeared as a divisive philosophy which appeared to argue that there was no such thing as community.

I published this poem in Marxism Today, it's not quite W H Auden, but it reflects a point of view.

Mrs Thatcher’s Fair Isle Knitting Pattern

Knit me a coat

With barbed wire and wool

A coat that will survive

And protect me

A barbed wire wool coat

That won’t rust in the rain

A coat that won’t stretch twist

Or strain

The old ladies needles

Danced in their hands

As they knitted the coat

She desired

They used plain knit and purl

Cable stitch and stocking

Arran and Fair Isle

and Rib

As with barbed wire

And pain they cast

Stitches in time to complete

Her perfect design

4th April 2013

Is George Osborne right? Is welfare being reformed or junked?

Are the condems overhauling a broken system or simply shutting it down?

Not so much making it fit for purpose as re-purposing it?

Justice and fairness is a key concept in the development of a social ethic and the reforms are seen as being neither just nor fair which is why questions are being asked and why the Chancellor sees fit to dismiss the poverty lobby as a 'vested interest' along with the Churches and the Labour Party?

The phrase 'make work pay' is, of course, open to interpretation. You can make work pay by reducing the level of benefit payments to the point where only the most desperate will see them as an alternative to seeking a job.

But you can also 'make work pay' by simply making it a more attractive option than not working.

The problem that faces people today is that they are working but still having to claim benefit, in many cases hard working people are simply earning their poverty.

I rather suspect that the unpalatable truth is that welfare should be reformed, it has strayed a long way from the original vision of its architect William Beveridge, and anticipated a flat rate benefit paid when employment was interrupted by unemployment, ill health or retirement, paid against a flat rate contribution made whilst working. Part of the social contract it implied was that 'full employment' was guaranteed by the then Labour/Conservative Coalition led by Winston Churchill.

The plan was for a contributory benefit to be paid for a period of time if people were moving between jobs or experiencing ill health.

Supplementary was the benefit of last resort if a persons unemployment lasting longer than a year or they had an insufficient contribution record.

But any system that is consistently tweeked and amended, from budget to budget, year after year ends up becoming a hard to describe, somewhat messy, affair that bears little relationship to its original design.

In fact the welfare, benefit, taxation nexus is now impossibly complex and recent administrations have preferred to fudge its reform rather than tackling it head on.

What makes this coalitions reform so unpalatable to so  many people is that it has chosen language as the main weapon in its arsenal.

So 'shirkers' are set against 'strivers' and people on benefits, apart from the elderly, become 'scroungers'.

This constant refrain of negative images leads people to the view that there is something shameful about benefit dependency.

Ian Duncan Smith is currently being challenged to prove that he can live on £53 a week, as he has claimed, but that is in my view avoiding the issue; no-one should have to live on £53 a week, the vast bulk of those of working age should be in employment, paying their rent, buying their food and clothes, holidays and leisure activities through earning a living wage.

That they are not, is a function of a failed/failing economy, as we head into a triple dip recession with a full blown depression ahead of us, it is simply not good enough, for the Chancellor to be making speeches pouring scorn on those who oppose him.

The coalition in which he is a senior member is a failure.

Its rhetoric is threadbare, by all means reform welfare, by all means claim, increasingly hollowly, that we are all in this together, but people are not daft.

If you take from the poor with one hand they will see what you are doing with your other.

Too many expert voices have been raised to demonstrate beyond any doubt that the wealthy are benefitting from the policies pursued by the coalition which are working against the interests of the poorer in society

The real tragedy is that the story of the fish head soup is still relevant..

During the depression of the 1930's a WEA Class was offered, it's purpose was to help people provide healthy, nutritional meals on a budget.

One class was advertised with the Title: Fish Head Soup.

As people arrived for the class, keen to extend their budget and with their fish heads wrapped in paper, they were greeted by a member of the Independent Labour Party holding a placard on which was written:

                                        Who Got The Rest of the Fish???