Budget2012 and the Protestant Work Ethic

Every blogger knows that whilst a little bit of emotional involvement in a subject can help when writing, too much can cloud issues and cause logical arguments to tangle around each other. So this is one of the reasons I have held off commenting on the #budget2012 until now, specfically the so called #Grannytax [I am giving the twitter hashtags. There are lots of emotional and logical comments/arguments on there. Some of them mine!]

I have long thought - and said - that this government seems to be employing Weber's Protestant Work Ethic attitudes of 19thC Britain. In a nutshell the idea of the PWE is that as God rewards the morally just and good by ensuring that they have a 'comfortable life', it therefore follows that those who are suffering from poverty and, say, illness and other miseries, must therefore be morally bad and receiving their punishment. A creed well suited to capitalism and entrepeneurialism. And further more, as the rewards of the good life are shown in profits and more wealth, it is dependant on those so rewarded to invest this wealth back into their business affairs and if God is rewarding them further then greater profits will be made. Whoopy do doo for the rich and yah sucks boo to the poor.

So what have our wonderful coalition government done since gaining power [some say stealing power but that is an argument for another blog on constitutional reform] in 2010? Well it would seem like just in this budget the rich have been rewarded with a cut in the tax rate for the very rich of 5%. [Not of course that the very rich often pay as much tax as many of their PAYE lower income fellow citizens. In perfectly legal tax avoidance schems, expensively paid accountants can ensure that] And in this budget the poor in the form of pensioners are being punished #Grannytax furore is still building. I am listening to Ros Altmann on the radio as I type and she is livid!

But look also at the other acts of this government since 2010. NHS reform bill passed this week, NHS reforms obviously more of a worry to those in society who cannot afford to use private health care if their local NHS 'suppliers' are cut. Sue Marsh's heartbreaking blog too often tells us the hardships the cuts in the Disability Living Allowance and support services are causing. Over the past year or so many welfare services across the country have been cut: Sure start centres, childrens' centres, pensioners' luncheon clubs etc etc. Marches have been undertaken to save many libraries, petitions taken to save amongst others coastguard services - the sort of cuts that in the past would only have been envisaged in Sci Fi novels about some sort of totalitarian regime that storms into power and its citizens end up existing cold, starving and ill in caves....

No-one can deny that economically the country is not in a good state. But we can deny that it seems as if the poor and needy are getting hit disproportionally - are we being punished? Answers please.

Yes I am a pensioner - just! And like far too many was part of a company pension scheme which took my money for many years but now is not paying out what it should [although the company still makes a profit. But they must have been good whilst I was bad?] Many others paid into private pension schemes which have got into financial troubles and are not paying anything. We live in houses that are too large and costly to run but we cannot afford to sell because [a] they have lost too much in value and we cannot realise enough capital to make moving worthwhile [b] no-one wants to buy anyway! Heating bills have gone up [I did not want power supplies to be privatised but who listened to me?] Postal services are not what they used to be. Fuel prices are going up which affect the costs of services and food, and yet village shops are closing due to high costs like council tax etc so that we have to get to large out of town supermarkets somehow. I won't go on - its all been said so many times but are the coalition government listening OR do they care?

OK blown it now - over emotionally involved. But it had to be said.


Image of one edition of Weber's theory on sale at amazon.co.uk

The Abyss

To the disgust of many the first thing I do in the mornings when I eventually make it down the stairs [!] is turn on my laptop and log in to facebook to catch up with friends, family and political comrades and opponents! Occasionally something sparks ideas for a blog or other piece of writing.

Today a discussion about the cuts regarding disability living allowance and the proposed cap on total welfare benefits led me into a longer comment than I could fit onto facebook - hence this blog.

I am going to apparently digress a little. Listening to one of those radio 'phone in discussion programmes a couple of days ago. The subject was whether the proposed cap on benefits was a good idea or not, a rather desperate lady [let's call her Mary] had called in and was explaining how although she and her partner had lived and worked in London all their lives, paying their taxes and council taxes, through no fault of their own they had lost their business last year [like so many in this present economic climate] which in turn had led to them losing their house. With three young children settled in schools, they obviously wanted to rent a house in the area in which they had been living but rents were so high that if the proposed cap on benefit went ahead there would not be enough money to pay rent and have money to live, eat, clothe the children and all other bills.

When the radio presenter suggested Mary was, well almost selfish for wanting to stay in a high rent part of London, Mary pointed out that if she stayed there she would be near family who could help out with child care IF she was working. The presenter seemed then to change tack and refused to believe that rents were actually so high.

And this seems to be part of the problem - the refusal of so many to accept the problems that the vulnerable have to face to get out of what E.M.Forster described as 'the abyss' in Howards End:

The boy, Leonard Bast, stood at the extreme verge of gentility. He was not in the abyss, but he could see it, and at times people whom he knew had dropped in, and counted no more

Forster was writing in 1910 and just over 100 years later we are returning to a society that has citizens like Leonard Bast teetering on the edge of falling into the Abyss. Unless we act quickly we could even end up with an underclass of our people living as the communities described in George Gissing's The Nether World in 1889:

But that those who sit here through the livelong day, through every season, through all the years of the life that is granted them, who strain their eyesight, who overtax their muscles, who nurse disease in their frames, who put resolutely from them the thought of what existence might be--that these do it all without prospect or hope of reward save the permission to eat and sleep and bring into the world other creatures to strive with them for bread, surely that thought is yet more marvellous.

I also notice not many seem to be making a call for the restituion of social housing with fairer rents or suggesting that private landlords who are often making large profits renting out properties, some of which may have been built as social housing and previously bought at a reduced price by long term tenants but have since passed into the housing stock, may be 'capped'. After all this is a free market [sometimes difficult to type with my tongue in my cheek]

So Facebook and my friends there, you've done it again, got me so exercised first thing in the morning that I felt a blog coming on.... And Clarice may have to take off her housework rubber gloves and write about The Nether World and Howards End sometime this week.

The photograph shows the splendiferous Samuel West who play Leonard Bass in the film of Howards End.

#TheGoveBoat

There is a new hashtag #TheGoveBoat on twitter and it also a new subject trending. So I have taken the hashtag as my title for this blog, my alter ego has already fired off several angry tweets on the subject this morning!

I wake up to the news on the radio and often am motivated by items thereon. This is a handy method of getting me out of bed and into the 'working' day. Thus I often find myself mentally composing emails and other great works of literature whilst also doing the mundane jobs of finding matching shoes and tracking down a clean mug with which to start the day. But today the news that Michael Gove has suggested - in a letter leaked by the Guardian started with me in a furious mood.

I like to be calm first thing in the morning. Calm I am not. To quote a couple of Gove's 'ideas' [and so far this is only an idea, which is the only thing which is keeping me this side of laying on the floor and having a full blown tantrum. And I am a pacifist....]:

In spite, and perhaps because of the austere times, the celebration should go beyond those of previous jubilees and mark the greater achievement that the diamond anniversary represents.

Actually, not a bad idea of a way to mark the diamond anniversary, if thought necessary, would be to endow a new hospital, say, or build/repair some schools? And:

I feel strongly that the diamond jubilee gives us a tremendous opportunity to recognise in a very fitting way the Queen's highly significant contribution to the life of the nation and the Commonwealth.

Aren't the proposals for street parties and banquets and Royal tours and all the other things that are already in place enough?

The Guardian goes on to add [not a direct quote from Gove's letter]:

Gove ends his letter by suggesting that if insufficient taxpayer funds are available a private donation could be sought

I believe that the Queen is one of the richest women in the country. So does she really need a present of £60million from all its citizens, many of whom are struggling to survive?

BTW it has been suggested that a new Royal Yacht could be a bit of a poisoned chalice with all the Coastguard cuts...

I really cannot understand Gove's reasoning. We have pensioners in this country at the moment who have had their extra winter fuel allowance cut. We have disabled people who are fighting for [and too often losing] the continuation of disability living allowance. We have young people not able to attend universities due to fears of debts that could be incurred through the student grant system. A great lack of social housing. Libraries closing. Schools that need repairs having leaking roofs, inadequate heating and more. Hospitals existing by luck more than judgement due to inadequate staffing and buildings also needing attention. And so much more. But oh yes, let's build a Royal yacht. Of course it might give British manufacturing a boost. If it hasn't already been destroyed and broken up and much engineering knowledge lost due to the processes Maggie Thatcher started.

Maybe my prejudices are showing. Maybe I am ranting. Maybe others agree.


The picture is Vincent van Gogh's Fishing Boat's on the beach at Saint Maries de la Mer. I couldn't think of anything more beautiful to use than this today. Bringing me back to the calmer waters and mood that I prefer.