Workfare and the Loss of Self

Workfare is a terrible, inhumane policy thought up by a government that specialises in terrible, inhumane policies. As I’ve said before it is a truly awful time to be unfortunate and vulnerable enough to rely on the state. Not only are the benefits that allow you to survive being seriously eroded but you are treated like lying, cheating scum. Workfare is one such manifestation of this. And then there’s the ridiculous (I’d laugh if I could stop gnashing my teeth in anger) situation the government now finds itself in of Workfare having been declared illegal, but they’re going to retro-actively change the law.

Let’s have a quick re-cap of the case against Workfare.

If you are on the dole for nine months they can pack you off to a work programme. This may or may not involve you working for a company for free. They will tell you that you are doing it in exchange for benefits, but the companies are getting free (or slave) labour. Often you will be doing a job for free next to someone who gets paid for it. Imagine how that much feel for both of you. The unemployed person is being told they’re not worth the same as someone else doing exactly the same thing, and the employed person is being told their job is so worthless they can get someone else to do it for free. You may be told its work experience. It won’t be. They won’t listen to you and place you somewhere worthwhile or that may help you with your long time career aspirations and goals. They will place you with someone who has a cosy little partnership with the DWP. It also is taking jobs away from your fellow job seekers. Why would a company hire someone and pay them when the dole bunnies will do it for free? Many promises of permanent, paid employment at the end of the placement are just guff.

So, Workfare is damaging and dehumanising. Companies and the DWP are exploiting vulnerable people. What could make this worse? How about if charities were doing it? Yes, charities are using people on Workfare placements. The very organisations that claim to be helping the vulnerable in society are taking advantage of those same people, and, just because someone is a volunteer, don’t think they can’t be undermined. The message is clear; why would you want to do this because you think it is right? These fools are being forced into it. They could also, once again, be taking away hours that people rely on for social contact or to keep themselves busy in retirement or work towards a career in a specific field. I expect private companies to be prepared to do anything to make a buck, but charities? I honestly expected better.

There’s been calls for boycotts of companies using Workfare, and charities have been no exception. Frankly I think any organisation that takes advantage of people in such a way should be stripped of their charitable status. But much of this I already thought before. Then I came across this piece by Sarah Ditum expressing her regret that the Salvation Army, a charity close to her heart, were using Workfare.

I was disappointed as well. The Salvation Army are a charity that work with the poorest and most desperate people in society. I can imagine few poorer or more desperate than those on the dole, especially those who have been on the dole for so long they’ve been shipped off to a Workfare programme. It sounds like a sick joke. Ditum notes that the YMCA have similarly let the side down.

Then she made a very interesting point, and one I hadn’t considered before. The Salvation Army are an overtly religious charity. What happens when someone who, for example, is a hard line atheist and disagrees with any kind of organised religion, is asked to work for them for free? This could go for a number of charities. Suspicious of Oxfam’s practices in the UK and abroad? Tough. Can’t stand Help for Heroes rhetoric or over-simplification of complex issues? Don’t care. Disagree with the NSPCC’s  emotional blackmail in their adverts? None of our concern.

Of course, this could go for private companies as well. Someone who holds deep anti-capitalist or anti-globalisation beliefs would be loathed to be forced to work for Walmart partner, ASDA. Would an anti-sweathshop campaigner feel comfortable working in Primark? The examples can go into the thousands. No company is perfect and no charity has a cause that everyone can get behind.

Resistance, however, is pointless. Refuse and they will stop your benefits. Not only have they taken your freedom and dignity by forcing you to work for free but they’ve taken away your right as a human being to express your thoughts and views. The DWP is successfully dehumanising the unemployed, and this, although an issue burning for a long time, is just another reason to boycott Workfare.

Ghost Nation

When I was younger I had far better taste in music than I do now. This is because until I was about thirteen I didn’t really buy my own music, I just listened to my Dad’s. The thought has never even crossed his mind, but he is one of the coolest people I know. As he ferried me and my brother around the scabby fringes of West Yorkshire we would listen to his music. I have fond memories of Led Zeppelin, The Jam, The Clash, The Ramones and Steely Dan blaring away on the stereo in his car. One of the songs I remember most clearly (probably because it is objectively brilliant and still gets played at clubs and house parties) is Ghost Town by The Specials.

A few days ago the song came on while my music was on random. I must have been in a pretty reflective mood because suddenly I realised every one of the words being sung to me could describe the UK at this moment. The second verse rang particularly true;

This town’s becoming like a ghost town

Why must the youth fight against themselves?

Government leaving the youth on the shelf

This place is coming like a ghost town

No jobs to be found in this country

Can’t go on no more

The people getting angry

The song was released in 1981 during a time of turbulence and uncertainty in Britain. There were riots, rising unemployment and during the rest of the 1980s things would only get worse as Thatcher dismantled the unions, proved decisively that the Conservatives didn’t care about ordinary British working people and undermined British society so not people and their rights but profits and monetary value were considered the single most important thing of all.

The bleak story told in Ghost Town was of a town fallen prey to urban decay, unemployment and violence. Now, as I face 2013, I see the same problems destroying the lives of people around me. The government says there are jobs, but no one seems able to get them and more people are facing redundancy, pay freezes and cut hours. Inflation is pushing up food prices and yet it is perfectly fine to lecture people on how to eat and feed their kids. Education is considered so unimportant the government lets private companies run ‘academies’ that brainwash our children into a Thatcherite way of thinking. Those who depend on benefits, often the most vulnerable people in our society, are demonised and hounded by a system that it too scared to tax millionaires.

Government leaving the youth on the shelf

This is exactly how I feel. But in a way I’m one of the lucky ones. I got the opportunity to go to university like I wanted to. It left me saddled with a debt of £22,000 which I try not to think about but someone wanting to do the same thing as me now would be facing at least £30,000. I’ve not been able to pay back a penny of the money I borrowed. Neither have any of my closest friends from my undergraduate degree. This is because none of us have yet earned the £15,000 a year that requires you to start paying back. To get into the jobs we wanted when we started university (journalist, geologist, sociology lecturer, EU ambassador, engineer and petrol chemist to name a random sample) would have required us to take post graduate courses which have little or no funding available or work as an unpaid intern to gain experience. Few people can afford this.  

Again I was lucky. I used some family money that was left to me to put a deposit on a house to pay for an MA. I thought I might as well as these days it would have barely got me a cardboard box. But then I was then left unable by the almost entire absence of any money in the arts and humanities to continue to the level I wanted to. This is the doing of the current government. Personal experience suggests this to me because almost every professional at university I spoke to agreed I would have got funding for my MA as well as my PhD five years ago. I have no reason to believe they were just being nice to me.

Now to my friends who didn’t go to uni. Those who went straight to work found themselves constricted in jobs in companies who cannot afford to expand or whose only chance at promotion was to fund the training themselves. Few of them are now on more than £15,000 a year. The ones who went on to training placements, apprenticeships and NVQs found the same as those who’d gone to uni-when they finished there were no jobs for them.

The prevailing narrative is that young people should be thankful for any job that comes their way and forget any ambition they may have had or career they may have worked for. Jobs people enjoy are the preserves of the super rich and with the cutting of EMA, the rise in fees and the cuts to the education budgets this distinction will only increase. I’m pretty sure Mr Cameron has no idea how demoralising it is to find out you can’t do the job you wanted because the government has moved education and training down on the list of priorities.

The way young people are portrayed (explained more eloquently in this excellent blog post by Glosswitch) is also appalling. Apparently we have it better now than we ever have because we have mobile phones and don’t have to do national service. I would have assumed jobs and homes were more fundamental, but I’m clearly of a spoiled generation and should keep my trap shut. After all, we’re all in this together, aren’t we? Young people are feckless hooligans that need to be banned from wearing hoods and being in public spaces. They’re neglected and left with nothing to do then chastised for being angry and doing nothing. They can’t be trusted in their own homes until they are twenty-five (when they may well have kids of their own) and it’s perfectly alright to attack them and how they conduct themselves as ‘bad manners’ more than any other age group.  

The people getting angry

The riots in 2011 were painted as a load of feckless looters who were only after a new pair of trainers. But, as explained fantastically by a very clever lady on my MA who was doing her dissertation on the riots, thanks to Thatcherism materialism and extensive wealth are our modern status symbols. Those young people were trying to get the things they wanted and felt they were entitled to. Those TVs weren't just TVs, they were social standing. I am not defending the rioters and the arsonists and those who attacked the police who were just trying to do their job but the blanket condemnation is troubling and over simplifies the whole thing. Violence is not the answer but people won’t listen to the question.

They rioted in Manchester, a city I used to live in and have many friends in. Why did they riot in Manchester and not, say, Leeds or Newcastle (the other two cities I’ve lived in and know best)? Central Manchester is the preserve of the rich and ridiculous property prices are pushing ordinary people further and further out. It really is the London of the North. Disillusionment and wanting to claim back their city may have played some part in it. Again someone is probably going to accuse me of defending the actions of people who smashed up shops and set fire to buildings, but I’m not. I’m just trying to understand.

People are angry because the current government have demonstrated time and time again just how little they think of us and how little they think we are worth. People have a right to be angry and I think we need to get angrier. Our towns are left to decay, our young people are abandoned to a life of violence and unemployment and in desperation we turn on each other (immigrants and benefit cheats aren’t the problem here. Tory policy is).

The Specials were right in 1981 and they're right again in 2013, only I think, rather than Ghost Town, we’ve been left with the undermined, empty husk of a burnt out Ghost Nation.

The Charming Face of Homophobia and Heteronormativity

David Davies has said some pretty eyebrow raising things recently. He claimed that ‘most parents would prefer their children to be not be gay’ (which was then replied to by several witty individuals that the truth was most people would rather their children were gay than a Tory MP. I know my parents certainly would). Following this he decided to do an interview with the Guardian, presumable to set the record straight. Said article was published yesterday and, as I sat with my Bailey’s coffee preparing for a good old knees up with the in laws, I read it. I was left almost speechless at how someone can seem to be completely unaware of how offensive they were being.

Davies spent the majority of the interview (as was described by Decca Aitkenhead) squirming, looking flustered and apologetic and muttering that it really wasn’t his intention to cause offensive. He bleated that he didn’t understand this world, it was different and confusing to the one he’d grown up in and, really, he was just an endearingly bumbling fool who meant no harm. Kind of like a Welsh Boris Johnson, and, just like the original BoJo, despite his attempts at a cuddly image, so much of what he said wound me up.

I’m left with two possibilities. Either Davies is genuinely that clueless, in which case I will be kindly pointing out to him that the flimsy excuses he’s been hiding behind do not stop his views being extremely troubling and damaging for many people, or he is using it to try and dig himself out of the hole those comments dropped him in.

So, please allow me to take a systematic look at the things Davies got wrong.

"But I suppose, at a certain level, I see heterosexual sex as being – and it's probably the wrong word to use – but the norm. I think it's reasonable to say that the vast majority of people are not gay[….]I just worry if children are going to be taught that [heterosexuality] isn't necessarily the norm, and that you can carry on doing all sorts of other things, are we going to have a situation where the teacher's saying, 'Right, this is straight sex, this is gay sex, feel free to choose, it's perfectly normal to want to do both. And you know, why not try both out?' I mean, are we going to have that?”

This is the attitude that makes young non-heterosexual people feel scared, lonely and ostracized; the idea, still rampant in our society, that heterosexual sex is ‘the norm’. Also, I have never understood why there is any cause for concern over discussing homosexual sex. If a young person is not attracted to the same sex no amount of discussion of homosexual sex will alter that. There’s also an argument to be made that young people should be encouraged to explore their sexuality safely and in an informed way.

The sentence ‘right, this is straight sex, this is gay sex, feel free to choose, it’s perfectly normal to do both’ sounds like a fantastic way to approach sex education. If sex education covers pleasure and intimacy as part of sex it can quite easily then go on to discuss lesbian and gay sexual acts and relationships. For young gay and bisexual kids struggling with their sexuality such frank discussions could be a tremendous comfort.

Davies, however, doesn’t think that changing sex education like this would necessarily be a good idea. He cites the example of a friend he knew at school who came out as gay at 16 but, when Davies met up with him aged 20, he had settled down with a woman. Based on this one anecdote Davies seems to have been put off the idea that young people should be able to experiment and try things to see what works for them. Aitkenhead points out, as noted above, that if young people have no same sex desire sex education is unlikely to change that. Davies mumbles about worries concerning how much detail will be gone into, and when Aitkenhead explains that no amount of discussion of lesbian sex would have turned her younger self into a lesbian he decides ‘it’s different for girls’. On to the next bit of problematic drivel;

"But you're a lady, you're a woman, so you wouldn't have felt quite the same way. I mean, at school the girls all went out and bought Erasure without any issue." He's being perfectly serious. But what about the lesbians in my class – what would have helped them? "Oh, I don't know what they went out and bought." No, I mean what about them feeling confused and excluded? "I wish there was some way round this that meant they didn't feel excluded, I really do."

Somehow women are not just different to men but they don’t need to be shown the same level of concern. The flippancy of how he discusses these young women in comparison to the young men mentioned above is very telling. If I was being paranoid it would say this might be because gay men are far more visible than bisexual people and lesbians and so a clueless twit like Davies will not have given them much thought. If I was being more generous I would probably suggest that Davies simply hasn’t given it much thought because he rarely seems to give any thought to anything. In all honesty I’m inclined to believe option one, but that is an issue to be addressed in another post.

The other problem with the above quote, which was touched upon earlier in the interview when Davies discussed the school friend, is that it seems to equate a non-heterosexual identity with liking Erasure (I know. What. The. Actual. Fuck). Not only is this a bit of a tired reliance on stereotypes it is massively reductive and extremely insulting. Who does this man think he is to reduce people he has already demonstrated he knows fuck all about to taste in music?

Then he wishes there was some way to avoid such young people feeling excluded. There is. It might even be something to do with the broader sex education he had just expressed his mistrust for.

Aitkenhead then asks him a hypothetical question. What if his worst fears materialized and a change in sex education led to more openly gay people? What would be the problem? The best Davies can offer is a vague sense of ‘unease’. He can’t really put it into words, he just doesn’t really like the idea of it. Basically he doesn’t know why, he just doesn’t really like gay people. That, my friends, can also be said as disliking gay people for no good reason and/or because they are gay. Otherwise known as homophobia. It doesn’t matter how much he whines that it is just ‘instinct’ it’s still homophobic. Maybe if we lived in a society that didn’t treat heterosexuality as the ‘norm’ and therefore everything else as ‘abnormal’ snivellingly thoughtless little shitbags like Davies would be made quite so nervous by those big bad gays.

Then he drops another clanger;

"I make no bones about it, I'm a product of my upbringing and of the time I was brought up, so I'm not going to pretend not to be. It's not like I was brought up in San Francisco or somewhere like that.”

Ah, that old chestnut. The ‘it’s all down to the place I’m from/the time I grew up’ argument. This is, quite frankly, the biggest, most irritating pile of apologist wank I’ve ever heard. Whenever someone blames their upbringing for their intolerant views it’s either laziness or looking for excuses. The same goes for the ‘generational’ argument. I cannot believe no one else is insulted at the suggestion that, because a person is raised in a strictly religious household, or South Wales, or the 1940s that they cannot listen to or critically assess new ideas and arguments. I would rather someone brought out the arguments against something that they had come to a considered conclusion over rather than just blaming their parents like sulky teenagers. It’s crap and generally offensive all round.

Do I think David Davies is a hate filled, miss informed, ranting homophobe? No, actually I don’t. I believe him when he says he doesn’t really know much about the debates surrounding gay marriage (although one then wonders why he spoke about it on BBC Wales). I think, sadly, that he is blinded by our heteronormative society and so bound by the ideas we are spoon fed that he really doesn’t have a fucking clue. But he needs to get one. Everyone does. No one, lesbian, gay, straight, bi, queer, asexual, pansexual, poly or other is benefitting from a situation where the rights of millions of people can be questioned due to a sense of unease.

But I also think he’s avoiding the issue by hiding behind a wall of (probably at least partially) fabricated confusion. This isn’t sweet. It’s worry for a politicians to be so utterly uninformed about something he pipes off opinions about. He needs to educate himself and anyone else who wants to weigh in on the debate needs to as well. There is no received wisdom here. Although it pains me to say it even Tories have braincells. They should learn how to use them.

Alec Shelbrooke; Remove Head From Sphincter, Then Suggest Policy

If you’ve been paying attention to our almighty Tory led government over the last couple of years you will no doubt have become aware that everyone on benefits is a lazy, cheating lay about who deserves nothing. As soon as they can find a way to placate those miss-guided liberals who maintain that people who rely on the welfare state have rights like anyone else, these spongers will be taken behind the chemical sheds and shot.

Well, it’s OK if that had slipped your notice because Alec Shelbrooke, MP for Elmet and Rothwell (depressingly near to me) has given us a reminder with a suggestion for a flagship policy in this hateful agenda. According to Shelbrooke people on certain benefits will be given their money on credit cards that prevent them from buying anything the government doesn’t think they should.

You’ve probably guessed where this is going. The two ‘big baddies’ of wasted welfare are mentioned. No fags and no booze for you naughty dole bunnies. You’re not allowed to gamble either. Or use ‘paid for TV channels’ (so…as I can’t find anything telling me specifically what that means, I’m assuming it’s anything that isn’t Freeview. I'm confidant that, if you're that way inclined, you will still manage to waste your life watching Freeview and fulfill another benefit recepient stereotype). As an aside I’m pretty sure if you’re locked into a contract with a company like Sky or Virgin they won’t look kindly on you cancelling it mid contract and will wallop you with fines, which you then won’t be able to pay because your only access to currency is a flimsy little plastic card that bars you from buying anything but pre-approved items.

One also can’t help but wonder how far they’d go with this. Will it be extended to banning you from buying anything but economy brand food? How about if you insist on shopping at Sainsburys? Will it frog march you down to Lidl to save the Treasury pennies? There’s also the assumption that the government (and Alec Shelbrooke in particular) know exactly what ‘essentials’ are. You might not starve to death if you don’t buy your child a birthday cake or present, but it seems unnecessarily cunty to deny them these little things because their parents had the audacity to lose their jobs.

Right, now I’ve done my nit picking we can move onto the moral objections. Chiefly among the moral objections is HOW FUCKING DARE HE?! What gives this trumped up Tory fuckwit the right to tell people how to live their lives? Treating people on benefits like idiots who don’t know what’s good for them is far more damaging than the odd snifter of booze or puff on a cigarette. It infantilises people and will only build up resentment for the government and the agencies that are trying to support them.

There is also the pretty insulting implication that people who are on benefits are utterly feckless and can’t handle being trusted with money. How would Alec Shelbrooke like it if they lost their job and, rather than being treated like a human being, they were treated like an incompetent fool that can’t be trusted not to drink themselves to death as soon as their given a lump sum in cash? Because that’s what this outrageous proposal will mean. This is the further dehumanisation and vilification of people on benefits. People who have done nothing wrong and need support. People who may be going through a very rough patch in their lives. Ideas like this, although not law, feed into misconceptions that blight the lives of millions of people. This will do no good at all.

Also has that arrogant thundercock ever considered that, when you’re at your lowest, you might need a few comforts to make you feel better? As us dole bunnies look like we’re about to lost the right to a pint down the pub with mates I suggest we be allowed to lynch clueless Tory MPs.

Tories Savage Worker's Rights

Well, April 2012 is looking like a right old corker of a month. Assuming the world doesn’t end on Friday and we all live to see it we can look forward to a complete arse up of the benefits system and now the possibility of eroding the rights of those who have been made redundant.

In a particularly stellar display of not-giving-a-fuck-about-95%-of-the-population the government has announced plans to halve the notice period of redundancy from 90 days to 45 days. It is hoped this will make it easier for businesses and workers, although how it’s meant to make it easier for workers is left unclear. As far as I can see this will allow businesses (or their administrators if things have got that bad) to cut workers adrift sooner. If the business in question is in administration then I can see the attraction of wanting to shift the responsibility for those pesky workers and their inconvenient wages off themselves as soon as possible. It is however a completely twattish thing to do.

The current ninety days gives people more time to sort things out. It may also give them more money and more time to figure out what to do with that money. The suggestion made that it would help people get into another job faster is laughable. If someone is being made redundant and a new job comes along they will still be able to leave after the agreed notice period regardless of whether that is ninety days or not. Although it does seem to have escaped the government’s notice that this country is not exactly brimming with jobs at the moment.

Another silly suggestion was that fixed term contracts will just be left to run their course. That's just daft. What happens if the company has gone under and will cease trading long before the decided end date? As well as being ridiculous thse plans also don't appear to be particuarly well thought through.

A cursory glance at the reporting seems to suggest that this is part of a drive to ‘cut red tape’. I’m starting to become extremely wary of this phrase. It seems to stand for ‘removing people and positions to save money’ and ‘stack things even more against working people by removing layers of access.’

The TUC have said this is part of an extended attack on worker’s rights. I’m inclined to agree with them. This is a clear example of the needs of business and money makers being put before those of ordinary working people. This is a symptom of capitalism at its absolute worst. The only people who will benefit from this are those overseeing companies in administration as they will be able to wash their hands of people caught up in the trauma of redundancy quicker.

Out of touch or simply don’t care? Arguments can be made for both.