All’s Well That Carswell

It’s easy being UKIP; you don’t need policies, you don’t have any real responsibilities.

And that’s the way they like it.

I don’t think they actually want real power: governing a country, or participating in international politics, for example. Why would they? They’d have to deal with all those grotty foreigners for one!

They thrive at the local level. There they get to enjoy the quagmire of parochial NIMBYist politics where nothing changes and they can stand up for ‘community values’. But they don’t have any real responsibility: they get to continue to agitate with respect to the EU (which I don’t think they ever want to leave given it’s their meal ticket) and immigration without having the responsibility of being able to deal with it.

So when Carswell ‘won’ the by-election in Clacton (where there is no issue of immigration), it was a victory for their small minded brand of politics. Ironically though it represented none of the kind of sea change the party claims to represent: they had won an MP because he was already there. The only change that had occurred was the colour of his tie.

A couple of weeks ago I rang their freephone office number (no way would I pay to talk to these reactionary idiots) to ask their policy on both the environment (they hate windfarms) and welfare (they hate benefits). They still don’t have a manifesto and all they could do was point me to the members responsible for those areas – at least in the case of the former since they couldn’t’ find a welfare spokesman. Consequently all I could get from them was the email for massage loving science denying homophobe: Roger Helmer who, dismally, speaks for them on the environment. How ridiculous is that?

They cannot be taken seriously, and yet they have to be thanks to a toxic media that splashed the I word with the subtlety of a nuclear meltdown. People have tied themselves up in knots over the issue of immigration and yet, as James O Brien expertly exposed, cannot articulate why they support UKIP. Meanwhile NigelFarage aligns himself with the most vicious right wing politicians in the EU (of the sort even France’s Marine Le Penn rejects), just so he can keep his snout firmly in the trough. That’s why I say they don’t want out of the EU – it’s their bread and butter (but emphatically not a croissant – and you can keep your margarine too!).

Because You Aren't Worth It

I don’t recognise our society anymore. I don’t recognise a society that is accepting of the idea of bribing employers (yet again) to hire disabled people. I don’t recognise the attitudes that criticise opposition to this; as if the opponents were in favour of denying vital opportunities to those people.

Who decides the worth of people? What gives an unelected banker, who has been handed a glut of unearned privilege, the right to decide whether someone is worth even a sum of money as risible as the NMW?

Who has decided that money is the sum of a person’s worth?

If a disabled person can do the job then a) hire them and b) pay them at least the NMW. Anything else is exploitation. To then patronise a disabled employee by trying to argue he or she is only worth £2 beggars all belief.

Oh, but these are people that are by virtue of their disabilities, aren’t as productive!

Is that the measure of a man these days? Who decides a person’s rate of productivity? How is this measured? We are human beings with thoughts and feelings, hopes and fears, we aren’t fucking robots! By arguing that a person should somehow be paid less than the legal minimum you are reducing the entire worth of a person to a risible pittance. £2 an hour anywhere else would get you laughed out of town, even the Jobcentre couldn’t compel you (though I’m sure they’d try) to work for that amount precisely because it’s below the legal minimum; it’s an employer openly and obviously trying it on.

But if you’re different; if you have a psychology or a physiology that’s different, then it’s acceptable not only to offer such a demeaning sum but to criticise you if you don’t jump at the chance. Look, here’s a pair of shiny round coins for you, don’t you want to have them? Wouldn’t your life, all that encompasses you as a living breathing being, be entirely the richer for it? All you have to do is sweep the floor, lick some envelopes or press some buttons (because fuck me if I’m going to stoop to doing the dirty work my business requires to function when I can pay someone as little as possible to do it for me). Why would you refuse?

How utterly and completely degrading is that? But the propaganda is in full flow: it’s better to have these people doing skivvy work (because that’s all they are good for isn’t it!) than sitting at home ‘festering’. Again it’s the assumption that the only activity of any worth in society, of any worth to the life experience of a human, is in paid servitude to another. But even that isn’t taken seriously by those that propagate the notion otherwise the work available would be worthwhile and properly compensated. When the boss wants you to work for even the NMW, never mind £2 an hour, you know they don’t care about your well being!

But these poor folk can’t match the productivity of their ‘normal’ peers!

Who decides? Who says? If someone can do the job, why are you looking to pay them less for it than at least their colleagues? No one’s productivity will be exactly the same as another’s. If you think a disabled person can do the job then, by definition, you are agreeing they are worth at least the NMW for it. If you don’t think they can do the job (assuming you are being honest and not disablist) then don’t hire them – but don’t moan about people that can’t find work receiving benefits.

The only barrier to work for disabled people in 2014 is the attitude of employers. At the very least are there not grants and funds available to help deal with equipping the workplace to make it accessible, etc? Aren’t such schemes the mark of an evolved civilised society? Or is it too much hassle (even though making those adaptations is giving work to someone) for lazy employers – the kind that can’t be bothered to dot the I’s and cross the T’s and want to pay someone (as little as possible) to do that for them while wiping their arses.

As ever this attitude isn’t challenged: the Tories pander to big business and the boss class in society while condemning anyone else when they perceive similar demands are being made. It’s ok to subsidise the wage bill of employers, but not to pay people enough to live on when they can’t find work (keeping them desperate enough to accept the shrinking standard of pay and conditions on offer, of course).

So the attitude seems to be that disabled people will find it hard to get work – unless we offer it to them, but we aren’t prepared to do that unless we are allowed to pay them £2/hour and everyone else, including our rivals in business, make up the rest. If this isn’t the sort of attitude that the Tories abhor, when they perceive it (i.e. create straw men) in the unemployed, then I don’t know what is.

Work is not the be all and end all of human existence. If you want people to make a positive contribution in their lives then give them the means to do so. People that can’t work or can’t find work should be given a decent standard of living, no question asked. They should not be punished by a system frightened that, if they give ‘free money’ they will turn into fat skivers addicted to beer and TV; they should not be victimised by the prejudice of those that have the power to change things. Who knows, with the right support such people might be able to make their own way forward and become self sufficient.

But that’s not what capitalism wants: it wants a compliant, fearful, labour force, willing to believe they are the authors of their own misfortune. This pool is then ready and willing to fight each other for the scraps the masters throw from their banquet table of plenty, like starving dogs. They don’t want people with knowledge and power because then who would choose to work for £2/hour in the gulags of tax dodgers.

Finally, there are obviously limits on what some people can do. However that is true of anyone; people are different whether they are traditionally disabled or not. It has been suggested that Freud’s odious comments were aimed more at those with limited mental capacity: severe learning difficulties or high levels of autism, etc. Not, for example, blind people, or someone whose legs no longer function. I don’t think that makes it any less patronising because the bottom line is the same: if someone is doing a job pay them a decent wage for it. That is surely the best way to creating equality. Ok they might be sweeping the floor or collecting trolleys – and they may even enjoy it (which is entirely their right to do so) – but at least pay them properly, show them they are worth their weight as a human being, not a means of production.

What is our society worth if employers can avoid their responsibilities? Employers should be proud to pay someone a good wage, not look at that as an inconvenience. They should be proud their staff can then contribute economically and not be dependent on foodbanks. They should be proud to pay taxes so their staff can be educated to do the job and cared for if they fall ill.

Why are disabled people exempt from this? Even if their opportunities are in some way limited, that should not mean they aren’t at the very least paid properly. You cannot have it both ways: to both hire someone you don’t think is up to the job and then pay them a risible pittance. If they can do the job, able bodied or not, then pay them properly. That we are having to have this discussion is an utter disgrace. The Tories have long hated the NMW, they argue it inhibits profit. Sometimes that's a price worth paying.

The System Needs A Fundamental Change

This system needs a fundamental change and I don't think Labour will provide it since they are wedded to the same capitalist ethics as the Tories. Their silence and indeed capitulation since 2010 speaks volumes: it was they, for example that facilitated IDS' 'emergency' legislation re: workfare. Preserving his image was the height of this emergency. Labour sat there and voted in support of denying £130mn worth of money wrongly withdrawn from jobseekers incorrectly sanctioned - never mind the legitimacy of forced labour and penury.

That said Labour is the only game in town for 2015. The whole rotten system needs changing, but that's not on offer next year. The priority must be: ousting this vicious lying incompetent government - both the aristocratic murderers led by Cameron, and their supposedly liberal quislings. 

Vicious: they have ushered in cuts and 'reforms' the like of which we have never seen, all designed to erode the safety net and the meeting of social necessities. The bedroom tax was facilitated by a man later put into the Lords who has no experience of benefit, welfare or government, nor was he even elected to any position, let alone the House of Lords. Yet the BT doesn't even account for people who have no alternative place to move into.

Lying: IDS and McVey have made a career out of spin and outright deceit. IDS was interviewed by Andrew Neil in front of a graphic regarding child poverty that plainly said the opposite of what he claimed. Evidence means nothing to him, what he believes is what is. McVey is a grotesque 'yes' woman, a harridan whose ego thrives on the nastiness of her words who shrieks even louder while egged on by her masters. She so desperately wants their respect it's almost misogynistic.

Incompetent: IDS couldn't and cannot even make his own schemes become reality. The aforementioned Mandatory Work Activity scheme was implemented incorrectly, yet he thought nothing of wasting thousands on endless rounds of lawyers to prove his case in courtroom after courtroom. Anyone that challenges his assumed authority is immediately denounced and scorned. He will not listen and he will not learn. UC was 'on time and on budget' for 2013 - or so he promised. It still hasn't been signed off on while its directors (such as the odious Howard Shiplee) have made hundreds of thousands.

Meanwhile the DWP has turned into something straight out of Kafka. Targets for sanctions are an open secret and, when the spotlight shined on the evidence, the managers pretended it never happened and, ironically, wouldn't happen again. However there is report after report, anecdote after anecdote, from individuals and organisations all confirming the awfulness of the current regime. People are treated like scum, sneered at, judged, and then automatically found wanting. People are living in fear of the sanction that will take them below the breadline and into abject poverty, with no guarantee of any support at all. The Tories refuse to explain what help is offered to people that have been sanctioned - and people are subject to these penalties at a frightening rate.

Clearly there have been orders given, by the likes of IDS and the Tories, to facilitate this new brutality, yet what sense does any of it make? The Tories would like you to believe that sanctions are corrective, even character building; they are on record as saying that they have been, in some unbelievable cases, even welcomed. The way an abuse victim, I imagine, welcomes the fist of his abuser.

Sanctions are there to drive people out of society; out of sight out of mind. That no support is systemically offered to people in that position - who still somehow have to sign on if they have any hope of claiming afterward or appealing - is telling in the extreme. They do not want these people to have support; they want them to quietly fade into the night, to turn to dust like hollow souls lost to society.

They will hold these people responsible for their fate because welfare is weakness; money is not a mere energy of transaction, abundant in a society such as ours (while not governed by plutocrats and mandarins), it is the emblem of good character. It is the reward for following the Christianity of capitalism, the supposed work ethic of the entrepreneur. The hypocrisy of it all is breathtaking as these people lap up every benefit they can, arguing they have earned it. IDS deserves his million pound land subsidy, his expensive breakfasts, his underpants, etc; the mundane nature of such expense claims masking the venal nature of the man.

The poor are to know their place; to fight for scraps from the masters table. For the very chance to work for nothing - just to show, skinny and callow, their willingness to say 'how deep' when the rich man with the golden shovel says dig. If you're lucky you might even get the chance to earn a pittance.

Card Shark

The worst thing about this idea, apart from all of it, is that it controls people. By giving them one option you can manipulate people will have no choice but to shop where the government likes. If that isn’t the nanny state – or even communist Russia – I don’t know what is. But it’s ok when it comes to social security because the recipients are not people. So not only do we have the worst kind of state intervention, but we have the government categorising people as less than people.

Surely this is in breach of competition laws – probably those pesky EU laws the Tories conveniently want us emancipated from. Laws that tell us we can’t eat prawn cocktail crisps or dictate the curvature of our vegetables – or so the gutter press claims. Of course that’s nonsense. But telling people where they can shop is ok? Giving a massive boost to particular businesses is unfair surely – especially when the government claims to be a proponent of the free market.

The idea of ‘welfare cards’ cannot be workable, even though similar schemes exist in other western countries, like America and Australia. So much for the First World!

Locally it would require that public transport providers fundamentally adapt their onboard ticketing systems. I have yet to travel on a bus or any mode of public transport (including taxis and trains) that has the facility to accept payment in anything but cash. How then will people even get to the supermarkets they will be forced to patronise? Do the Tories plan to subsidise the technology? Only recently did First Bus abandon their card system (you brought a ticket in the form of a card – you still had to pay in cash) because it continually broke down. They have never had the means to allow card transactions to buy tickets and I’m not sure this would work. Requiring people to input pin numbers, wait for however long for the payment to go through (requiring a connection of some sort to the server), is ludicrous.

There is no way this can work and I would assume that a welfare card would have to function like a debit card; that is, requiring money be topped up somehow from the DWP – though how that works is another matter entirely. The alterative would be a card with a fixed amount that is then disposed of and a new one issued each time the benefit is due. I can’t fathom how much that would cost – at the very least there’d be a market for cards with value remaining. Somewhere the law of unintended consequences is going into overload.

What do they plan on allowing people to buy? Will it be only food and clothing? Where will clothing be allowed to be procured? Will it all be Tesco? What if Tesco don’t have what you need in your size while someone else does? Will it be Primark and their – let’s be honest – sweat shop supply chain?

None of this even touches the moral aspect; the infantilising of a whole section of society. All so another group of benefit recipients can scare the middle classes into voting for them on the issue of ‘controlling’ welfare spending.

What about the account system required? Will every single claimant required to use a card have to have an individual DWP bank account set up to store the money in order to access it and put it on the card/or make payments? How else can it work: if the money is preloaded (presumably like the prepaid iTunes cards and the like) what happens if the card is lost? You’ve just lost your week’s money!

What are the costs of processing card payments? I can’t use my debit card to buy things from the local convenience store because shops like that have a minimum spend that’s required to avoid bank charges. Big supermarkets can ignore these costs (or likely don’t even get charged given how much business goes through their tills). Is it reasonable to assume there would be a charge? Someone’s going to be making money out of this scheme, it won’t be the taxpayer! They won’t be printing cards and operating payments gratis.

What happens if the PIN number used is forgotten? If you’re an addict I would imagine forgetting things, however important, is probably not uncommon. Why should you be punished for it? If PIN’s aren’t used then where’s the security? How would you know if I’m using my card and not one I’ve stolen – and you don’t think people will get stolen, or robbed or burgled? Get real! I would think these cards make you more of a target and are themselves hardly secure: all your resources are on one card. If it’s lost or stolen you are screwed; can you expect that to be resolved quickly?