Mother’s Day

Mother’s Day is one of those days every year when we think of the role of the women who brought us into the world, and how much they have done and sacrificed for us and our welfare, from when we were a mere collection of cells, to now when we are studying for degrees (some would say our brain cells are perhaps not much more developed than when we were but a collection of cells in some respects). However much progress has been made (albeit painfully slowly) towards equal pay and representation for women in our society, women will always be pressurized to juggle their work and home lives to a greater extent than men.

What worries me is that this noble cause where women rightly have more of a choice in living their lives as they want to live them has created a culture and a mindset where those who choose – actively, rather than subjects of some false consciousness or religious pressure – to stay at home or only work part time to be with the kids as they come home from school, are targeted as a drain on society and the public purse. Housewives (sorry), homemakers, stay-at-home mums: whatever the word we use for them, their work is indeed that – work, which for example produces far more of a social good than the likes of bankers or estate agents or lawyers. Yet it is not categorised as such, and our society does not reward it, it penalizes it.

This is nothing to do with a woman being made to feel guilty for not pursuing her career – of course women should strive for the top echelons of the work pyramid, breaking the glass ceiling and entering the boardrooms; it is nothing to do with sexism – I firmly believe a ‘househusband’ can do the same job, and in our modern age with “all sorts of families” (Mrs. Doubtfire, 1993), including women with higher-paying jobs or same-sex parents, this is increasingly common. However there is a cultural bias against those women who choose to remain at home and work bloody hard to raise a family, often while holding down part-time or volunteering work, and this is reflected in our nation’s appallingly inadequate childcare arrangements.

In other countries – such as Germany with its stronger economy – there are subsidized childcare benefits, or help for mothers. Child tax credits and SureStart centres used to come close to this, but these are being slashed by the Coalition, which prefers to reward bankers, those earning above £150,000 a year, and potentially those who are married as opposed to all parents, co-habiting parents included. Mothers who decide to give up or put their careers on hold are penalised again later as they pick up their state pension, at a time when older people are living in fuel poverty, struggling to finish paying a mortgage and helping their children to get onto the housing ladder or with university tuition. They may even have to bring up another generation, as their children cannot afford childcare for their own sprogs so have to hand them over to the grandparents, who have no recognition or help from the state for helping bring up the politicians, doctors or teachers of tomorrow.

Nowadays, if you’re not contributing to economic growth or paying income tax, you effectively do not exist.  If you are doing your best to balance all of your commitments and bring up well rounded children you are ignored. It is about time mums who choose to stay at home for all or part of the time are recognised and treated with the respect they deserve by our policymakers.

Ageism – The Last Acceptable ‘-ism’?

Ageism is very different to the other ‘-isms’ we try to avoid in today’s supposedly enlightened, tolerant society. Most men will never be female and vice-versa, and we will never truly experience life as another race to the one we were born as. However, barring some sort of untimely death, we will all one day be old. Yet this is the group in society which is perhaps the most vulnerable and ignored.

It may be humorous, but some of the jokes around the notoriously ageist BBC’s choice of old-time crooner Engelbert Humperdinck to represent the UK at Eurovision have masked some alarming underlying currents of ageism and ridicule which are common in today’s media and discourse but usually pass unnoticed. Some of them have been about dementia and Alzheimer’s. There has also been serious criticism that he has been chosen, arguing that he should get out of the way and allow young talent to fluorish. People in the public eye who dare to continue in their career beyond 65 get sniffed at, despite still having the energy and drive to continue working. Why should he crawl into some care home and age quietly, with no fuss?

This brings us onto the more unnerving aspects of ageism in today’s society. The care system in England is a disgrace. Almost on a weekly basis there are reports of neglect and abuse in care homes up and down the country, with some staff accusing patients of “attention seeking” for desperately needing help to relieve themselves, children and grandchildren never visiting them, and pensioners still at home never getting out of bed because if they did they would freeze, as they cannot afford to put the heating on and pay the bills to the six main lecherous price-fixing gas companies (who are the real drain on our society). Meanwhile people are forced to sell their homes or inheritances to pay for their parents’ care because they receive little or no help from the government. Never mind inheritance tax, what about the low and middle income people who receive nothing from their parents because they have to give it to a private organisation which may or may not treat their loved ones with dignity and respect?

The state machine also picks on the elderly because they are vulnerable, in the same way that they pick on the young, the unemployed and the disabled. While the heads of top banks avoid paying tax altogether or manipulate it so they only pay the lower corporation tax, and Osborne no doubt prepares to justify lowering the 50p top rate in the Budget, ordinary retired pensioners are being routinely harassed to pay back money handed to them by mistake, without having it explained to them that it doesn’t have to be in a lump sum. I know a 93-year-old lady who took the trouble to write a letter asking why her winter fuel allowance was being slashed, and all she got back was a letter saying there is no money left and why doesn’t she ‘go online’ to find out more. Now there are many tech-savvy elderly people out there, but I don’t know many nonagenarians who served in the war who have a Gmail account and Facebook profile.

We live in ‘tough times’, as they keep ramming down our throats, and money doesn’t grow on trees. Yet times were harder in the 1940s austerity period and they managed to establish the National Health Service. Instead of spending money on the implementation of the Health and Social Care Bill (a laughable title for the effective privatisation that awaits us), why not set some aside for the eventual creation of a National Care Service for the elderly, or at least a free service for the poorest old people? Andy Burnham called for one in 2010, and now sadly Labour, in its’ attempt to appear economically competent, has gone quiet on the proposal. Yet it can be done.

It’s about time the elderly who don’t need patronising were allowed to continue living their lives to the full, and it’s about time those who no longer can do so without help are treated like human beings, and not a burden on the public purse which should die quietly.

The Iron Lady gives history a good handbagging

I could have written a blog post today about the exciting announcement regarding HS2 (in my view a worthy investment), or Ed Miliband’s speech about Labour being the party “for all times, not just bad times”, but instead I thought it would be much more fun to review the Iron Lady, out now in cinemas.

It’s a terrific irony that this film is funded by the UK Arts Council and National Lottery funding, not only because the former is being slashed by the Coalition’s Thatcherite scythe, but also because it would have been a more accurate representation of recent history if they had put 49 potential scenarios in the 1980s down on as many balls, and let Camelot or Guinevere decide the rest.

Seriously – Labour hat off – this was a noble attempt at capturing the spirit of one of Britain’s most prominent prime ministers; Meryl Streep’s impersonation of The Lady Who Was Not For Turning had me once or twice shivering in my seat, with her every mannerism and facial expression noted and re-enacted, along with that deep commanding voice the PR gurus told Mrs. Thatcher to adopt. Right up to the closing scenes, it displayed her dogged determination accurately, and managed to humanize her and generate sympathy towards her when she steadfastly refused to accept that her mind was beginning to unravel. Anyone who knows anything about Alzheimer’s, what it must be like to be elderly and lonely, and the denial of grief would appreciate this side of the film.

However, this was the problem: it could have been about any old lady looking back on her life and missing her husband (although this aspect was slightly unsettling and disturbing at times). The historical dimension to the film went beyond playing with history to deliver a message and artistic licence, almost to the point where you wondered if the film had been written by Tory publicists. The focus was entirely on Thatcher’s ‘Glorious’ moments and ‘triumphs’, mostly over men, for example her selection and early life, the Falklands war and the 1979 election. There was some fleeting real footage of the miner’s strike and the poll tax riots, and the entire period 1982 to 1990 was dealt with in approximately ninety seconds. At one point, I was appalled to see a shot of her dancing with Nelson Mandela. I expected it to focus primarily on her as an individual by the title, however there was not even a passing reference to the unemployment of the period, Thatcher’s response to the emergence of AIDS, the Westland affair, section 28, the clashes with the NUJ, Ken Livingstone and Liverpool Council…

This was not a documentary, and films are supposed to paint splashes of black and white over what was in reality only differing shades of grey. Even her deepest detractors have to admit that she had some leadership qualities (albeit perhaps without much idea of compromise), that she was – is – only human and was doing what she thought was right. However members of BULS who want to see this in the cinemas soon may find themselves wincing and cringing at many stages in this film.  

2012 – Will it be a Good Year for Animal Welfare?

How many of us will be making New Year’s resolutions to pay more attention to the welfare of animals we eat and the wildlife in our countryside? 

On 1st January 2012, the EU-wide ban on selling eggs from battery farms will come into force. Although in other EU nations (including the land of le Coq, France), the ban will hardly be rigorously enforced because they don’t seem to care that much for EU laws and haven’t yet made the necessary alterations to farms and cages, and the new, larger ‘enriched cages’ which will be used to supply our biggest supermarkets with eggs are not exactly a massive liberation for hens, it is nevertheless a step in the right direction, and an expression in law that we should not be tolerating these cruel means of achieving ‘efficiency’ in food production.

Unfortunately, however, this change will come at the same time as renewed calls for a repeal of the Hunting Ban. On Boxing Day, the Agriculture Minister, Jim Paice, suggested as much by arguing that the act is ‘unworkable’ and difficult to enforce. Although sadly this is in many respects the case, and it would be naive to say that the ban ended the inhumane and uncivilised ‘sport’ of fox hunting completely, it is still an expression of disapproval which should remain on the statute books for ever if we are to carry on calling ourselves an ‘animal loving nation’.

The visit by long-term animal rights campaigner and shadow minister Chris Williamson to BULS last term reminded us that the fight for even the most basic animal welfare is far from over, and that 2012 can only be a good year for animal welfare if we go out and fight against the vested interests of the food industry and those who seek a return of legalised fox hunting, in government and elsewhere. Just because a law has pitfalls and loopholes, that does not mean that the fundamentals behind it are not right, and that we cannot aim to tighten it and increase the number of prosecutions in future.

2012 need not be the year that the cause of animal rights takes a giant leap backwards.

An Englishman’s Home is… beyond his wildest dreams

For some reason, going back into the mists of time, the British people have an obsession with private home ownership, even though most of us should technically never be able to afford one without borrowing. In Continental Europe, people are far more satisfied to rent, either from private landlords or more ‘trustworthy’ institutions – maybe there is some correlation between these statistics and the lower levels of stress and dissatisfaction there compared to the UK.

Nevertheless, we are where we are, and there is no going back on the ‘Right to Buy’ scheme introduced by Margaret Thatcher in 1981 however much we might want to reverse it (indeed, many of us may actually agree with it, being as it was extremely popular with the low paid, who for the first time had a stake in their council homes and some sense of freedom, however delusional). What we have now is a housing crisis coming at the worst possible time, during a dire economic climate caused by sub-prime mortgages themselves.

Tensions over housing and its’ availability have an effect on many areas of life, including levels of antagonism towards immigrants, the environment, growth, inequality in our cities, personal debt, and of course the Daily Mail and Daily Express front pages. We need to deal with this timebomb if we are to stem a rise in far-right politics and avoid a lost generation of young people. However, worryingly this government is going about it completely the wrong way.

Not only has it made squatting illegal when there are more empty properties than there are homeless people in this country, but it has appallingly placed a cap on housing benefit, effectively pricing the poor out of our capital city and entire swathes of the country – those parts of the country which have job vacancies. The government is slashing the public sector and saddling young people who go to university with ever higher debt, meaning their chances of even being able to look forward to putting down a deposit are negligible.

What our housing market needs is a Keynesian-style investment in house building and construction; not only would this lower house prices for first-time buyers, but it would also ease tensions in the community and increase demand in the economy generally, leading to growth and the beginning of the end of the deficit that the ConDems love to remind us about so much. As a bonus, it would even lead to a return of Location Location Location to our TV screens. Gordon Brown’s plan before the proverbial shit hit the fan in 2007 was to build 3 million new homes – we need this sort of commitment now, coupled with a healthy proliferation of 1940s-inspired New Towns (hopefully better designed than the likes of Milton Keynes) and more social housing. Today’s announcement from Cameron and Clegg about guaranteeing 95% mortgages may look like a repetition of exactly what went wrong in the first place, but should not be dismissed entirely, as it is the taxpayer, not the banks, helping first-time buyers, and there is real potential for an increase in demand as a result.

However it goes nowhere near far enough. If we can’t get people to fall out of love with the owner-occupier dream, then we need to build, build, build, spending more money in the short term to get us out of the mess in the long term.

A Freezing Future

So much for the government constantly pandering to the grey vote because only the elderly turn out at elections. I made my weekly phone call home earlier today to find a set of anxious parents worried about how they are going to pay the bills this winter. If it turns out to be as icy as last year’s, they are going to be in trouble, they said. The reason? Not an overspend on needless festive gifts, or even the artificial and inflated energy prices, but a Chancellor who said ‘We are all in this together.’

The Winter Fuel Allowance, introduced by Gordon Brown, has been a lifeline to pensioners in fuel poverty up and down the country, and it is now being cut from £250 to £200 for the over 60s, and from £400 to £300 for the over 80s (these are the payments for those claiming pension credit, but the picture is just as severe for the slightly better-off pensioner too). Can you imagine what the reaction would be if this percentage cut was given to MPs? Or grants for new businesses? The only similar stinging cutbacks have been given to students, with tuition fees and EMA. It is indefensible, especially at a time like this, when Britain’s elderly – who have been paying taxes all their lives – are being encouraged to stay at home rather than go into care homes because their children have to re-mortgage their homes to pay for the costs, and are being told they can be treated at home rather than in hospitals thanks to NHS cuts and privatisation, to then simultaneously force them to ration their heating to only a few hours a week.

I have neighbours who are vulnerable and in their nineties, who told me they assumed there had been a mistake in their payment, and phoned up to query this only to be told by an unsympathetic call centre drone that their payments had been slashed, and that they should have noticed this when Osborne made his budget statement back in April. Oh yes, because of course all 90-year-olds are fully aware of the nation’s fiscal and benefits arrangements at every given turn. Why was there not at least a leafleting or information campaign to warn them of this change so they could save up to pay for what should be essential, and, if I had my way, provided by the state, instead of six greedy price-fixing profiteering firms?

When I said that this was a scandal and they should protest to their MP, their attitude was one of resignation and quiet despair. They didn’t feel there was any point, as there was a deficit to be paid off and they would just have to get by.

This Con-Dem coalition never ceases to amaze me, not just at how callous they are towards the most vulnerable in our society, but also because they get away with it.

Luke

That Old Chestnut

David Cameron has a nerve. Not only has he U-turned over his pledge in opposition to hold a referendum over the UK’s terms of membership of the European Union, but today he had the temerity to force Nicolas Sarkozy to back down and accept his presence at key Eurozone talks to try to deal with the Greek debt crisis on Wednesday.

Once again, only one year into the new government, a Conservative prime minister is becoming about as stable on Europe as Edwina Currie is on her feet. We all know deep down he is a staunch Euro-sceptic, so why doesn’t he have the guts to come out and be frank with the British people, and say that he would love us to turn our backs on our continental partners, but that he also loves us to lecture and patronise them on economic policy, despite the fact that UK growth is anaemic at best, and backwards at worst, thanks to his policies.

A referendum on EU membership now would of course be absurd, but having called for one in opposition, the PM should stick to his guns and create a disunited and discredited government, and do us all a favour by breaking up the coalition and triggering a general election. You can’t have your bun and eat it, and you can’t be half in, half out, of the EU – leaving the Eurozone (or more accurately, Germany) to do all the hard work and then turning up to talks this week to act as one of the key players while facing a referendum proposal at home from your own backbenchers is hypocritical and downright embarrassing for Britain.

It was Ed Miliband, incidentally, who called on Cameron to give up his trip Down Under and attend the meeting, therefore whether or not you agree that Cameron has a right to be there, it is clear that the Labour leader is ahead of the curve on this one, as he was on phone hacking and as he was at PMQs this week.

It might sound like a cheap shot from the comforts of opposition – and we all know Blair and Brown disagreed over the Euro – however it is clear that yet again the Tories are divided over Europe. Europhile or Europhobe, this is one of the few reliable constants of the European project.

Clegg is Not For Turning

Yesterday Nick Clegg made a speech to the Liberal Democrat conference which was steadfast and robust in defence of the coalition’s economic policy, despite the depressing evidence this week that the economy isn’t changing course either from its current trajectory of nowhere. He promised there would be no turning back on the cuts and auterity, however many jobs are lost and however many people struggle to make ends meet thanks to the VAT rise and inflation.

Does this sound familar? It should. For although it is right that things never completely run in parallel, it is indeed the case that history may never repeat itself, but it rhymes. It was around this stage in the political and economic cycle – at a party conference – that Margaret Thatcher made the infamous ‘Lady’s not for turning’ speech. Then the UK witnessed riots on the streets, rampant unemployment, a royal wedding, a foreign intervention and a belligerent government hell-bent on destroying the fabric of our society. I barely exaggerate. Even shoulder pads are making something of a comeback in 2011.

However, maybe now is more like 1931, with a prolonged slump looming, a currency mechanism collapsing at the same time as the US economy, a rise in far right extremism and little help for the poor and jobless.We seem to be heading for continued gloom because of the Con Dems’ obsession with cutting the deficit too far and too fast, stifling growth and productivity and making the situation worse for all of us. Although they have won welcome concessions from the Tories on some issues, on the fundamentals Nick Clegg needs to wake up and pull out of this marriage of convenience for the sake of his party in future but also for the country. Just as in 1981 and 1931, ordinary people feel that overall Britain is going in the wrong direction or is in the doldrums – the only thing that would change that elusive yet crucial feeling of a lack of confidence is investment on Keynesian terms to jump-start the economy, a fall in VAT and a slower trimming of the excess we built up saving the banks from collapse. Unfortunately though it seems the Cleggy’s not for turning.

9/11 Ten Years On, Coalition Politics and Blood Donation

9/11 – A Warning from Recent History

For someone of the age of the current crop of Labour Students, it is particularly difficult to believe that it is ten years tomorrow since the lives of millions were changed forever on September 11th, 2001. Most of us were still in primary school at the time, and it is perhaps apt that our generation – one that was constantly told we were growing up too fast – had our innocence of the world around us robbed so suddenly on that bright Tuesday morning. Hearing and seeing the images of the planes hitting the World Trade Center still transfixes all of us, and as much as we might want to look away having seen enough, we can’t quite bring ourselves to stop watching.

However it is our generation – the 9/11 generation – who will be the politicians and headline-makers of the coming years, and if anything good can come of the last decade, it is surely the lesson  that those in power have a responsibility not to overreact when faced with such onslaughts. Our party’s most successful leader (in electoral terms) no doubt had good intentions, but made the grave error of marching the troops gung-ho into an unplanned and illegal war, probably creating a whole new generation of terrorists in the process, while at home him and those around him were complicit in eroding many of the freedoms we were meant to be protecting, including detention without charge and freedom from torture. If the horror of terrorism reaches us again, we must pause and assess the causes before acting. The same rule should apply for other crises, like the riots this summer.

Backbench Tories Have Nothing To Worry About

Today is the final day of the Plaid Cymru autumn conference in Llandudno, north Wales. The outgoing leader, Ieuan Wyn Jones, made his final conference speech yesterday after an electoral drubbing for the nationalist party in the Welsh Assembly elections in May. Unlike in Scotland, where the SNP have been successful, he argued that coalition government in Cardiff Bay (of which Plaid was the junior party) meant Plaid’s achievements in government were smothered by Labour, and that the party was punished by voters for not claiming credit for them.

Aside from the fact that Plaid achieved very little in government in a time of economic turmoil other than a referendum with poor turnout which managed to bore even political anoraks, their experience in coalition should serve as a lesson to Westminster politics. This week Tory backbenchers, angry over law and order, Europe and abortion, moaned that the Lib Dem ‘tail’ was wagging the Tory ‘dog’ and that Nick Clegg was being given too many concessions by the Prime Minister. However come the election in 2015, the Tories will have nothing to worry about, as the voters are likely to give them sole credit for any successes – particularly if the economy picks up (not a given considering Osborne’s slash-and-burn approach) – and they will certainly not be looking to make some sort of permanent alliance with the Lib Dems, contrary to what some commentators are predicting. The coalition dog will probably have his tail docked when the voters are next given a choice.

About Bloody Time

This week the ban on gay and bisexual men giving blood for life in Britain was finally overturned (although you’d be forgiven for not noticing the leap forward because the BBC thought Strictly Come Dancing was more important on the news bulletins that night). This is a triumph that equality campaigners have been working tirelessly for for years, and at last gay men will be able to save lives and help tackle the urgent need for more donors. No more will the official policy imply that gay men cannot be trusted to practice safe sex and ‘probably have HIV’.

Although the ban was only replaced with a one-year time lag since a donor’s last encounter, it is still progress, and puts us more in line with the situation in similar countries.

Danger, Danger – High Voltage

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-14553613 

Yesterday a young man in his prime died needlessly following an incident with the police where a Taser gun was allegedly used by officers. The case has been referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission. It would be premature for me to claim that police had been unreasonable in this case or to cast aspersions on Dale Burns, however the case has led to calls for a rethink over the use of Tasers by Amnesty International, and I echo their sentiments.

This is not the first time someone has died suspiciously not long after being subject to a Taser ‘shock’, yet still this and the previous government have both ordered their wider usage to please the ‘hang-em-and-flog-em’ brigade – no doubt they will be used more extensively as a method of crowd control following the riots. If police leaders can question politicians’ orders to use water cannon and rubber bullets where needed, citing Britain’s century-and-a-half long tradition of unarmed community policing, then why have they not criticised the authorisation of these brutal weapons? Anyone who has seen a video clip on Youtube where someone has volunteered to receive the shock treatment will tell you that it does not look pleasant.

Police officers are only human beings who can overreact like ordinary citizens, and in many public order situations can fear for their lives. However these weapons have not only been used against armed assailants but also when carrying out routine arrests on the most unthreatening of suspects, and in the US it has even been reported that sick and bored police have been ‘testing out’ their device on farm animals to pass the time. These weapons are lethal and do not discriminate between those bent on harming others and innocent bystanders caught in the wrong place at the wrong time; they do not ask questions. There are millions of people walking along Britain’s streets with heart problems – what if one of these went on a legitimate peaceful protest which turned violent and were Tasered trying to restore calm or quickly leave the scene?

Since the tragic cases of John Charles de Menezes and Ian Tomlinson, the tuition fees protests and following the riots of this month, police are in an unenviable position where they don’t know whether they are being too harsh or too soft in the heat of the moment. Despite this, however, the monstrous Taser should have no place on our streets.

Ignorance Is Not Bliss

There’s been a tsunami wave of comment and opinion about ignorance and what to do about the riots in the last week, most of which has been speculative and, in some cases, downright prejudiced (I am of course referring to David Starkey). However what I want to shed some light on is the ignorance that I see every day surrounding disability and conditions that inflict millions of people.

I was on a bus this week where an elderly lady got on with a walking stick and was clearly unsteady on her feet. When she struggled to find her bus pass and got into bother, the bus driver continued to harass her, demanding that she either produce her card, pay or get off the bus. There was tutting and sighing from other passengers, and I even heard the word ‘drunk’ whispered by several people. It was 10.30 in the morning, and although regrettably some people do start drinking early in the day in areas like mine when they’d be better off doing something constructive, I think this woman would have had a tough job getting plastered this quickly.

The lady was not drunk as it turned out, but she had Huntington’s Disease, as another lady pointed out to me as she helped her with her heavy bags. Huntington’s Disease is an hereditary neurodegenerative disorder affecting muscle control which only begins to take effect in middle age, and leads eventually to dementia and in many cases untimely death. The bus driver in question was not a bad man, and was only in his twenties; he was probably concerned about losing his job if someone got away with not having their pass. However it struck me that this lady, who had a perfectly intelligent and coherent conversation with another passenger before she struggled off the bus, undoubtedly has to put up with this ordeal every time she leaves the house, with people commenting and assuming and speculating whenever she goes shopping or to visit relatives.

Why are we not educated about conditions such as this? Why do people with diseases or conditions that are not self-inflicted have to put up with social stigma and embarrassment every day by people who are not discriminatory, but are completely oblivious to the existence of the disease they cannot escape? It’ll never happen in the current climate of cuts, but I believe we should make our children attend compulsory awareness classes, not in school as the curriculum is already stretched, but outside, perhaps in the summer holidays, alongside first aid and financial management tutorials. Ideally it would inform people of ‘invisible’ conditions such as autism and tackle the taboos surrounding common illnesses like cancer. Perhaps then people’s lives would be less of a struggle and allowances would be made for the disabled by other members of the public. If the classes were to take place at 16 it would probably be more of a benefit for society as a whole than national service or leaving young people on the street; it may also encourage more volunteering, which will go some way towards creating a big society and boost young people’s employability at the same time.

Why Turn Blue When Just ‘Labour’ Will Do?

As Ed Miliband gathers opinions and considers the future policy direction of the Labour party as part of the Policy Review, there has been much debate recently about whether or not to pursue ‘Blue Labour’, as proposed by the academic and Labour peer Maurice Glasman. Blue Labour, a response to ‘Red Toryism’, aims to put co-operatives and the community at the heart of the lives of ordinary British people, and is a rebuttal of New Labour’s strangling embrace of neo-liberalism, which left swathes of grassroots Labour supporters feeling alienated and ignored by the party leadership.

Glasman has a point, for throughout the history of the ‘people’s party’ there has been a split between liberals, state socialists and those who favour co-operatives and more local organisation – many Labour MPs today are also members of the Co-operative Party, and since its inception at the turn of the twentieth century the Labour movement has been associated with local organisation and mobilisation.

Martin Pugh in his 2009 book “Speak for Britain: A New History of the Labour Party” argues persuasively that the real dilemma for Labour through its history has not been attracting liberal support, but attracting hard-working but low-paid voters from the temptations of the Conservatives: many ordinary working class communities share the Tories’ patriotism; love of the armed forces (many of them have close relatives or friends serving in Afghanistan); desire for home ownership and a tough stance on law and order – why did so many vote for Margaret Thatcher in 1979, read the Daily Mail, and in a few cases drift to more extreme parties through fear of their jobs because of immigration and globalisation? Pugh stresses that when Labour came into being many voters were torn between it and the Tories because of these economic concerns, plus social beliefs like temperance or the role of the Church in schools.

Where Glasman takes the wrong path, in my view, is in his attempt to respond to Cameron’s Big Society by mimicking it and advocating a further retrenchment of the state, along with a return to a 1950s-style focus on the family, the flag, and feminism being almost unheard-of. That’s not ‘Blue Labour’, that’s just conservatism. If we as social democrats want to see equality of provision across the board, we need to expose the Big Society for what it is: a cover for cuts dreamt up by Steve Hilton when the Tories needed to be seen to be shedding the aura of Thatcherism.

If Labour is to win elections again without ditching our principles – to do so would be an insult to people like the families of those killed in Norway – we need to ‘re-connect with the grassroots,’ to use the spin-doctors jargon, by addressing, or at the very least appreciating, the legitimate concerns of the hard-working folk who keep the economy growing and keep money coming into the Exchequer. Instead of Big Society initiatives, we need to take the lead on key issues like housing, providing ample employment for deprived communities and young people generally, and not simply dismissing people’s concerns about migration and welfare dependency. That does not mean leaving the EU, saying we should only have British jobs for British workers, or undertaking humiliating fit-for-work tests like those currently going on under Iain Duncan Smith. It just means listening to those too well-off to be on benefits but on low wages, as well as staying true to  proud values like tolerance. If we go some way to pointing out these worries in opposition, whilst criticising the Con-Dems’ unfair cuts, the sought-after swing voters will follow, and we may just wake up to find ourselves in government again.

Gove Could Learn A Lesson or Two

The papers today report that Education Secretary Michael Gove is asking school leaders to recruit members of the “wider school community” to take over the job of teachers striking on Thursday, the implication being that it is better for parents and governors to take classes for one day then see the school close. Aside from the bad logic that if the main aim is keeping the school open so as not to incovenience working parents, then there won’t be any parents available to teach Henry VIII’s six wives, this policy demonstrates the Big Society is a means of undermining unionised labour as well as a cover for cuts. The only positive thing that could come of this ludicrous suggestion is that parents who do act as supply teacher on 30th June may get some idea of just how difficult a profession teaching really is.

Further to my blog a few weeks back, “Unite Behind the Unions”, Ed Miliband and Ed Balls are still pandering to the right-wing media by warning the unions that striking would be unwise and counter-productive, while Tony Blair on the BBC’s Politics Show today refused to be drawn on any domestic policy issues, except to say that the unions are small ‘c’ conservatives who should learn to ‘modernise’, whatever that means. But then Blair never pretended to be on their side.

I do not dispute the fact that pensions need to be reformed in line with the ageing population and gender equality, while many in the private sector would be dancing all the way to the bank if they had pension schemes like those of some public servants; nevertheless what is going on at present smacks of the 1980s, and the threats of changes to union legislation mooted by Gove are deeply worrying.

The Euro Takes A Pounding

The single currency was once such a contentious issue; only a decade ago it seemed likely that the UK would be joining the Eurozone. What happened? Today, Jack Straw predicted that the Euro will indeed fail following the inevitable defaulting by Greece of its sovereign debt, leading to a return to those old holiday favourites like the Drachma. As the media keeps reminding us ominously, despite our not being part of the monetary union, a collapse of the Euro would have a devastating effect on our economy, because of the global nature of our trade regime and our over-reliance on our closest neighbours for exports. This begs the question that if we cannot escape the effects of these sorts of economic crises in a globalised world, is it not time to become more unified to prevent the two-track system we have at the moment, where richer nations are being forced to bail out those in trouble?

I am no economist, yet if I learned anything from my second-year Interwar Economy course (between lapses into and out of a coma), it is that the attempt to ‘force’ currencies of varying strengths to use the same interest rates as part of the Gold Standard was in hindsight a fairly disastrous decision, without some sort of accompanying political union where individual nations have the same tax-and-spending and trade regimes – like BULS members’ attitudes to musical theatre, it seems we can only be either completely pro or completely anti EU. Given that Labour is a progressive party, and that in today’s global economy an insular economic nationalism is unthinkable (we have no industry for that), is it not the time to at least ‘float’ the idea of some sort of European federal state, if we are to keep the post-war dream alive?

This idea may be too much for many people to swallow, and the media will never accept it, but do we really have any realistic alternative when we are competing with economies like China and India? We cannot afford to let the European ideal crumble on the back of this financial crisis.

Luke

Unite Behind The Unions

This week, the ominously-titled Business Secretary, Vince Cable, quickstepped down to Brighton to address the conference of the GMB Union, and calmly warned delegates, in no uncertain terms, that they can either lay back and take the savage cuts from the coalition government or face the consequences, which will take the form of more draconian anti-union legislation than even Maggie could dream of.

The coalition’s plans to pre-empt any upcoming Seasons of Discontent include only allowing official strike action to be valid where over 50 percent of members vote to withdraw their labour. This despite the fact that turnout in May’s AV referendum was only 42 percent; if the rules being drawn up for the unions were applied to that particular plebiscite we would now be going through that shambles of a campaign all over again. Perish the thought.

However over the last twelve months we have come to expect this sort of hypocritical posturing from the government, aimed at punishing the ordinary working man and woman for the 30-year poker game that took place in the City of London. We have even got used to the fact the the Liberal Democrats are happy to do all the dirty work while the Tories get on with the more important matters of screwing up the NHS, the Royal Mail, higher education and so on.

What is most worrying is the deafening silence coming from the Labour party over the last week.

It seems Ed Miliband, frightened by the response of the reactionary media after his speech at the March for the Alternative in Hyde Park earlier this year, has taken cover in the vain hope that all will blow over and the coalition will make itself so unpopular by 2015 that he will be swept to number 10 to save the day. It is not going to blow over. The Con-Dems will continue on their crusade against the public sector in the coming years, and can be forgiven for believing they have no effective opposition – when the only public figure speaking up for public sector workers is the Archbishop of Canterbury, you know Labour is in a bit of a pickle.

It’s time we got over the 1983, defeatist attitude and spoke up for ordinary working people who face falling wages, living standards and an uncertain future. This does not mean retreating into an unelectable, hard-left cocoon; it means not forgetting those who founded the Labour party in the first place over a century ago.

Elections – A Glass Half Empty View

First of all, congratulations to Brigid Jones, the new Councillor for Selly Oak.

It’s been a fascinating night (if a bit slow), and there is still the jaw-dropping news that Britain has rejected the Alternative Vote system amongst an abysmal turnout yet to come, however what is really intriguing is where Labour did not do so well, rather than where it made gains.

Once North Wales has decided it can be bothered to start counting, Labour looks set to make gains in Wales, possibly securing a working majority, while in the local elections in England the Lib Dems have suffered their worst result since the party’s formation – all of these could have been easily predicted 24 hours ago. However, in Scotland, you could be forgiven for thinking Labour is in government and has just announced swingeing cuts or banned tartan by the disappointing result and the triumph of Alex Salmond’s SNP, who have capitalised on their narrow success in 2007. Scotland has traditionally been a Labour country, however this result demonstrates a new confidence and is evidence of maturity among the Scottish electorate – they clearly differentiate between Westminster polls and those to Hollyrood. Although it is premature to say Scotland is on the road to fully endorsing indepedence – as Labour leader Ian Gray learned, Scottish voters have more pressing issues on their minds – it does demonstrate a worrying trend towards ever-further detachment from the rest of the UK, with a completely different political culture with different trends. That  pizza-slice analogy Andrew Marr spoke of is becoming more realistic every year.

Meanwhile, what is also worrying is how the Conservatives are getting away with blue murder in the local elections. Their vote has held up, possibly because Tory voters tend to turnout in higher numbers in local polls, possibly because of local issues, but almost certainly because Cameron has cleverly allowed Nick Clegg to become a scapegoat for the Con-Dems’ worst policies. Labour needs to wake up from this, admit we are only at the very start of a long long road to Downing Street, and attack the Tories, instead of reminding everyone about Clegg’s betrayal of the left – the voters don’t need to be reminded of this.

It’s been a good night on balance, but there are some worrying signs in these results (never mind the depressing conservatism and apathy over AV), and there now needs to be a change of strategy at Labour HQ.

Luke

They Just Don’t Get It

I’ve now returned to Birmingham after a week in which the Coalition managed to look incompetent and shambolic as well as cruel. We’ve had Willetts admitting he is content to see poorer students having to settle for a degree at their local sixth form, rather than enjoying the full university experience; Norman Tebbit joining the near-univeral coalition against the NHS transformation; U-turns on defence spending and health to add to the growing list which includes school sports and buildings, forests, and even the Downing Street cat; and of course Nick Clegg. When he hasn’t been complaining that he is the nation’s ‘punchbag’ or facing criticism from his own son, he has been making some interesting comments about social mobility.

I am not going to slam the Deputy Prime Minister for having had a leg-up from his neighbour (a peer of the realm) in order to get an internship at a bank (it had to be a bank), because I challenge anyone reading this – assuming I have a readership – not to have seized the opportunity in the same way if they were in Nick’s position. A Labour party which wants social justice and equality of opportunity from birth should not be blaming someone for a background thay had no control over, and that even includes Cameron who had someone put a word in from Buck House. However, Clegg’s attempts at addressing the age-old problem of the ‘It’s who you know’ culture were embarrassing, coming at the same time this government is slashing Sure Start centres, EMA, univeristy budgets and allowing socially divisive ‘free’ schools to blossom up and down the country.

I spoke to people this week in the valleys who have Masters’ degrees who have spent over a year unemployed – young people with ambition, drive and what should be a promising career ahead of them. I overheard sixth form students on the bus complaining that they had not been accepted for any of their UCAS choices, despite the prediction of 4 As at A-level. I have personally had difficulty finding summer placements when I am not lucky enough to be able to work unpaid for six months in central London. Nick Clegg’s diagnosis was correct, but there is far more to it than setting an example to almost-bankrupt businesses by paying interns at Lib Dem HQ.

We need a new cultural shift in this country, brought about by government, where the disadvantaged are caught as soon as possible and at every stage of their lives are helped to gain the same opportunities as the better off. This should not involve positive discrimination or handouts, but should involve investment in our young people which other European countries manage while they bail out their neighbours, but we seem to think is unaffordable. A national internship scheme or national bursary programme, complementing investment in careers education (which at the moment is dire) to inform young people that they are just as talented and ambitious as the more privileged, and what opportunities are out there for the taking, is desperately needed. The underlying factors, such as affordable transport, need to be subsidised so someone who lives in the middle of nowhere with no ‘contacts’ can get work experience in a city near them.

There are important elections coming up in the devolved nations and local councils in England. Young people should be demanding better from the government and their local councils at the ballot box, and should express their dissatisfaction with the Coalition, which just doesn’t get it.

To AV or not to AV? That’s not the Question…

 

So the eagerly awaited and oh-so exciting AV referendum is now in sight, with Ed Miliband today setting out the Labour leadership’s opinion on one side, and many other Labour MPs and party members saying why they will be rejecting the proposal on the other. It does seem that the party is split down the middle – not a great position for an opposition party reassembling itself after electoral defeat. Incidentally, it is perhaps not the most shining example of ‘new politics’ or maturity when our leader refuses to unite with Nick Clegg because of his new status as Public Enemy Number One – surely there would be less cynicism in the electorate if we as an opposition party took each issue exclusively, instead of pointing the finger at the Tuition Fees Bogeyman.

The arguments for or against the Alternative Vote aside (I’m personally in the ‘Yes’ camp for want of something marginally further down the road to Proportional Representation), what strikes me the most after the disheartening advertising tactics of the ‘No’ camp (I’m sure you’ve seen the baby-in-incubator and soldier billboards) is the lack of interest amongst the wider electorate. Today I asked a friend of mine whether he had yet considered which way he would vote, and the reply was that it would make no difference to the political scene, so why should he bother? I wanted to answer his rebuttal, but found to my horror that I couldn’t. Whether or not we stick with First Past the Post or adopt AV will have little bearing on electoral outcomes on a national scale, only at constituency level (where AV would make elections far more interesting, as those who witnessed the Guild election results will testify), therefore the best we can hope for is the lesser of two evils, while those running for office continue to make vacuous or downright deceptive pledges in their election manifestos e.g. the marketisation of the NHS and tuition fees.

The real question on the ballot paper should not be ‘AV vs FPTP’, nor even the far more deomcratic ‘AV vs FPTP vs AV+ vs STV vs AMS…’, but something which reads less like a mathematical formula and more like a choice between two fundamental democratic frameworks that disillusioned voters can really get their teeth into. We need a choice over whether or not we want to overhaul the House of Lords (a process which has thus far taken a century); whether or not we want to de-throne and de-robe the monarchy; whether or not we want to reduce the stranglehold of the elites over our economy; in short, whether or not we want a new constitution. That is not to say the previous government had a gleaming record on constitutional affairs, although devolution and removal of hereditary peers were a good start. But by throwing a bone for the Lib Dem poodle in the form of a paltry referendum on AV, the Tories have got away with it again, whichever way we vote on May 5th.

The Last Chapter for Libraries?

It was reported this week that our dear PM performed yet another U-turn (to add to the ever-growing list, which includes forests, school sports and even getting Larry the Cat) on the proposal to close a local library in his Witney constituency by Oxfordshire County Council, as reported in this week’s Independent on Sunday.

Not only is this flagrant hypocrisy given the closure of libraries on which local communities depend up and down the country, it is also ‘pork-barrelling’ of the lowest kind and an example that we are not in fact “all in this together”. The prospect of libraries being closed by local authorities who are facing savage cuts is deeply depressing – I, like so many other young people, relied on my local library for computer access growing up, but more importantly I was regularly able to borrow up to ten books at a time (some regrettably I forgot to return), discovering chuldren’s favourites like Jacqueline Wilson, Roald Dahl and Mark Twain in the process, alongside history books and encyclopaedias.

Not only is it divisive and running directly against the government’s intentions to mend our apparently ‘broken’ society, it is morally wrong to target the cuts on the poorest, the elderly and most importantly children, who have no vote and no say in how resources are allocated. Priorities have to be made, but library closures cannot even be justified on crude market terms, because they are still being used widely and are a lifeline for so many. It seems that the local lending library could be nearing its epilogue if we do nothing about it, with disastrous consequences for childhood literacy and social mobility.

Luke

There’s No Such Thing As (the Big) Society

In an echo of the early years of the Thatcher government, where Michael Hestletine tried out some of his ‘experiments’ on the good people of Merseyside – culminating in the Toxteth riots and three million unemployed nationally – Liverpool has been at the centre of Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ pilot scheme. Until today that is.

The leader of (admittedly Labour led) Liverpool City Council today wrote to the Prime Minister explaining that it could not continue with the pilot as planned, because the money simply wasn’t there and key volunteering schemes are likely to be axed as a result. This is about as surprising a development as a premiership footballer being transferred to another club for an astronomical sum; it also demonstrates that, as predicted by many (including the general public, according to opinion polls) the Big Society will be stillborn.

How can the government expect people who work fulltime with children and cannot afford childcare (or even the bus fare) to run their own local services and volunteering projects, when there are no funds to back them up? This is set against the backdrop that the biggest cuts to local authorities are coming in places like Liverpool and Tower Hamlets rather than Witney and Cheshire. There are many people who are already overstretched from all ends of the income scale who give up their time to do good deeds in their local community, and these people should be praised. However if a youth drug rehabilitation centre is being run by people from the local community, who fills in and delivers this vital service when those who run it are either starved of funds or leave the area? The Big Society will lead to patchy and intermittent provision and disparities across local areas.

Less than a year since the election, and already the Big Society is being exposed for what it really is: at best, an ill-thought through policy written on the back of an envelope by someone who’s never been to areas of deprivation; or at worst, a cynical cover for an ideological slashing of spending on local authorities.

Luke

Uni’s Not For Me

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-12324225

It took me a long time to decide which issue to discuss on my first blog for Birmingham University Labour Students, as there are a myriad of things to be angry and anxious about at the moment thanks to the Con-Dem coalition. I pondered the dismantling of the NHS; the upcoming AV referendum and the scrapping of EMA, however an article which popped up on the BBC News website meant it had to be the tuition fees rise and its ramifications – BULS is, after all, a university society.

The latest development in this sorry saga is today’s latest UCAS admissions figures for 2011 entry, the last year before the trebling of fees in many instances alongside the ten per cent rise in salary of our Vice Chancellor. They reveal the stark reality that – despite what the government assures us – people are being turned off the idea of higher education in large numbers, most of whom will undoubtedly be from less privileged backgrounds. In the year that was supposed to be the ‘boom’ year of applications to beat the raising of the threshold in 2012, the number of applications only rose by five per cent, which in comparison with recent years and predicted trends is a sharp decrease in interest in degree courses.

Most disturbing of all was the plummeting of applications to -2 per cent in December, as the protests raged in central London and the heir to the throne’s wife was nudged with a stick. A brief fillip this may have been, but it demonstrates clearly that sixth-formers and school-leavers are seriously reconsidering their futures, weighing up whether it is really worth that much in debt only to come out jobless at the end of it. Just like the growth statistics, the figures are shocking, but not surprising considering the coalition’s arrogance and dogged determination to see through their most regressive and unpopular policies – which affect the poorest hardest – before the public realise what has hit them.

By Luke Jones, Communications Officer-elect