Economics of the Real World
At times recitations by politicians of economic statistics to prove their successful management of the economy can come across as complacent and even unreal when matched against the day to day reality of most people’s lives.
Undoubtedly in his Pre-Budget Report the Chancellor will lay claim to a series of data evidencing the robustness of the UK economy and its underlying strength in meeting the economic challenges of the globalised economy. This is the traditional approach to economics.
There is another economics though. It is the economics of the real world, a world the majority of us inhabit. Real world economics tell a different story. Real world economics use alternative measurements to assess the success or failure of our economic policies. This basket of measurements comprises those elements which determine the quality of life families experience in modern day Britain.
In real world economics, budgetary decisions are assessed against a checklist, identifying basic benchmarks of life chances, including:
Child poverty: Currently, infant mortality is twice as high for children born to unskilled manual workers, and these children are five times more likely to die in an accident. Nearly 3.5m children remain in poverty, representing 27% of all children. Half of these children have at least one parent working. Nearly 100,000 families are living in temporary accommodation and one in seven children, about 1.6 million, are growing up homeless or in bad housing.
Unemployment: UK unemployment has risen to 5.6%. Over the past year, there are an extra 263,000 people out of work, and an extra 70,100 claiming Jobseekers’ Allowance. Youth unemployment, whether measured by claimant count or by the ILO standard, is at its highest level since 2000 at 10% for the under-25s.
Income poverty: A full-time job at the minimum wage would mean an annual salary of just £6,435 for a 16-17 year old or £8,677 for an 18-21 year old. Even the minimum wage for those aged 22 and above equates to just £10,432. For working adults, the poverty rate is 19% - the same as in 1997. Women comprise two-thirds of income support claimants. The gender pay gap remains at 20% for full-time work, while women in part-time work receive 40% less. Ethnic minorities earn less than 16% than their white colleagues. Student debt has risen to an average of £13,501 upon graduation, and graduates pay 42% of their salaries in tax, compared with 41% for top rate tax earners. Personal debt is at unprecedented levels and personal bankruptcies and insolvencies are rising at an alarming rate.
Wealth and Tax Inequality: In 2005, FTSE 100 directors have grown by 28%, compared with average earnings increase of 3.7%. Earnings growth in the financial sector is running close to 7.0%, while for non-financial workers, real pay is falling sharply. The Chancellor’s insistence of a public sector pay cap of 2% will result in a real terms pay cut for millions of public sector workers. By adhering to Thatcher’s tax policies, the poorest fifth of the population are taxed more heavily than the richest fifth. The richest 1% own 34% of UK wealth and the poorest 50% own only 1% of UK wealth. The inevitable outcome is that social mobility has declined since 1997.
Health Inequality: Male manual workers are 40% more likely to suffer from chronic sickness than their non-manual counterparts. Life expectancy is 10 years shorter for the poorest.
Pensioner poverty: Nearly 20% of pensioners remain in poverty, and this is disproportionately women and ethnic minorities, whose lower pay throughout their working life results in poverty in their retirement. Due to means-testing many of the poorest pensioners are not receiving their full entitlement.
These are the startling everyday facts demonstrating that while by traditional economic standards the Chancellor will applaud himself for the prudent management of the economy, by real world economic standards the last 9 years have been an opportunity largely missed.
The Chancellor and commentators may claim that the fundamentals of the economy are sound. However, these are the fundamentals which affect the real world economy. They include a decent income, avoiding debt and poverty, having a decent roof over one’s head. On these measurements of the basic fundamentals of life, for many families in Britain the picture is not so rosy.
They pose the question, what has New Labour been doing for all this time – the longest period of Labour Government, and the only post-war Labour Government to have overseen an increase in inequality.
The Left Economics Advisory Panel (LEAP), which I chair, has made a number of proposals in its Alternative Pre- Budget Report, which you can download here.
Undoubtedly in his Pre-Budget Report the Chancellor will lay claim to a series of data evidencing the robustness of the UK economy and its underlying strength in meeting the economic challenges of the globalised economy. This is the traditional approach to economics.
There is another economics though. It is the economics of the real world, a world the majority of us inhabit. Real world economics tell a different story. Real world economics use alternative measurements to assess the success or failure of our economic policies. This basket of measurements comprises those elements which determine the quality of life families experience in modern day Britain.
In real world economics, budgetary decisions are assessed against a checklist, identifying basic benchmarks of life chances, including:
Child poverty: Currently, infant mortality is twice as high for children born to unskilled manual workers, and these children are five times more likely to die in an accident. Nearly 3.5m children remain in poverty, representing 27% of all children. Half of these children have at least one parent working. Nearly 100,000 families are living in temporary accommodation and one in seven children, about 1.6 million, are growing up homeless or in bad housing.
Unemployment: UK unemployment has risen to 5.6%. Over the past year, there are an extra 263,000 people out of work, and an extra 70,100 claiming Jobseekers’ Allowance. Youth unemployment, whether measured by claimant count or by the ILO standard, is at its highest level since 2000 at 10% for the under-25s.
Income poverty: A full-time job at the minimum wage would mean an annual salary of just £6,435 for a 16-17 year old or £8,677 for an 18-21 year old. Even the minimum wage for those aged 22 and above equates to just £10,432. For working adults, the poverty rate is 19% - the same as in 1997. Women comprise two-thirds of income support claimants. The gender pay gap remains at 20% for full-time work, while women in part-time work receive 40% less. Ethnic minorities earn less than 16% than their white colleagues. Student debt has risen to an average of £13,501 upon graduation, and graduates pay 42% of their salaries in tax, compared with 41% for top rate tax earners. Personal debt is at unprecedented levels and personal bankruptcies and insolvencies are rising at an alarming rate.
Wealth and Tax Inequality: In 2005, FTSE 100 directors have grown by 28%, compared with average earnings increase of 3.7%. Earnings growth in the financial sector is running close to 7.0%, while for non-financial workers, real pay is falling sharply. The Chancellor’s insistence of a public sector pay cap of 2% will result in a real terms pay cut for millions of public sector workers. By adhering to Thatcher’s tax policies, the poorest fifth of the population are taxed more heavily than the richest fifth. The richest 1% own 34% of UK wealth and the poorest 50% own only 1% of UK wealth. The inevitable outcome is that social mobility has declined since 1997.
Health Inequality: Male manual workers are 40% more likely to suffer from chronic sickness than their non-manual counterparts. Life expectancy is 10 years shorter for the poorest.
Pensioner poverty: Nearly 20% of pensioners remain in poverty, and this is disproportionately women and ethnic minorities, whose lower pay throughout their working life results in poverty in their retirement. Due to means-testing many of the poorest pensioners are not receiving their full entitlement.
These are the startling everyday facts demonstrating that while by traditional economic standards the Chancellor will applaud himself for the prudent management of the economy, by real world economic standards the last 9 years have been an opportunity largely missed.
The Chancellor and commentators may claim that the fundamentals of the economy are sound. However, these are the fundamentals which affect the real world economy. They include a decent income, avoiding debt and poverty, having a decent roof over one’s head. On these measurements of the basic fundamentals of life, for many families in Britain the picture is not so rosy.
They pose the question, what has New Labour been doing for all this time – the longest period of Labour Government, and the only post-war Labour Government to have overseen an increase in inequality.
The Left Economics Advisory Panel (LEAP), which I chair, has made a number of proposals in its Alternative Pre- Budget Report, which you can download here.
posted by John at 1:00 AM
16 Comments:
The LEAP Report is important. But is it to be seen as an alternative
pre-budget statement or as a menu which we can eventually consume? If the former, where is the costing and (what could not be in a statement)the back-up analysis on how Capital is likely to respond and what will then need to be done to cap this? Although the bulk of LEAP's proposals were covered in John's Alternative Queen's Speech, extras are added. It seems that John's Manifesto for the Leadership already contains over 125 hard proposals.
It was Marx, and Groucho at that who said that "everyone has their price and I will undercut the lot of them". No-one will ever be able to accuse John of being a Groucho Marxist; but are there not also problems at the other end of the scale?
The LEAP report has some stuff buried in it and not much explained. There's a line which reads much like "renationalise the railways".
It picks out education and transport, exactly the areas Brown seems to have decided need focus.
Community bonds - does anyone know *why* these became less common after 1981? Is it meant to be at all similair to this sort of thing:
http://www.natwest.com/personal02.asp?id=PERSONAL/SAVE_AND_INVEST/SAVINGS_ACCOUNTS/LONGER_TERM/COMMUNITY_BOND
The £7 minimum wage thing is a big leap, and I really think the first step is to make sure the current minimum wage is actually applied - it is very openly flaunted by many employers.
The LEAP wants legislation to stop senior executives getting bigger pay rises than their employees - won't they just get round that by awarding themselves very large bonuses?
What is a "mandatory equality pay audit"?
There's a proposal to reduce VAT on "green products"...I am not sure what a "green product" is in this context...Green products like, electric cars, tend to be expensive enough that even with a hefty VAT reduction, they will remain a lifestyle rather than an economic choice, and the reduction would act only as a gift to the trendy and well-off.
I'd like to see tables and figures and examples for this Land Value Tax thing. Sounds interesting.
Pointing out the need to appoint more officials at HMRC to cut tax avoidance levels, they don't draw attention to the fact that Gordon Brown has sacked a large number of such workers, who made a net profit for Inland Revenue. I entirely support their restitution.
Wouldn't a 50% tax reduction in the lowest tax band reduce the incentive to work up to the earnings of the next band? I just think 50% is a bit too large - a 30% reduction there and a 10% reduction on the band above seems better to me.
The document reccomends not raising the state retirement age. That's all very well for manual workers, but people in offices can certainly work til they're 68.
The document doesn't explain how abolishing tuition fees could be made affordable.
It doesn't really talk about PFI anywhere.
Some of it is interesting. It's sketchy, but hey, put it next to "Built too Fast" and it's encylopaedicly detailed.
It's refreshing to read a response to todays PBR that is from a "real world" perspective, as John has coined it.
I also loved the "broad" cross section of panelists on the BBC discussing the PBR: two economists and a businesswoman! She even wanted corporation tax brought down so we can compete with Bulgaria. Real world i don't think.
I myself have often been bemused when i'm repearedly told by this government that life is getting better for me and my family, as i've noticed bugger all difference in our income, mobility, health service, housing etc..,.
For my own part, i left school with few quals and spent the best part of ten years at the mercy of low paid jobs and brief periods of unemployment. After losing my job last year i decided to take the plunge and go to university. Despite being exempt from fees and living a painfully modest life, i'm already owing a large sum to the loans company.
My dad on the other hand has worked at the same factory for over 10 years and received no real increase in his wage or fringe benefits.
The council in which my Grandparents live have recently signed over the housing stock, with an uncertain future ahead of them if other examples of stock transfer come to pass. They both just get by on the pension. My Grandad worked at Longbridge for 33 years and has just witnessed its closure.
The reality is that the majority of working class, and an increasing amount of middle class, people have seen little if no benefit from this "unprecedented period of economic growth". It has been perversely disproportinate as John showed with the figure of 34% of the wealth being owned by 1% of the population with 50% owning 1%.
At last though i see a glimmer of hope - a reason that justifies me voting labour - with John's programme the beginning of genuine step towards socialism.
Mark, Worcester.
if you get to age 50 without paying off your student loans they are written off I believe!
my two loans have apparently also been sold to another bank I received a letter to tell me
is this some sort of super privatisation of a debt I haven't even paid??!!
the mind boggles
I've always thought that the loans are bad enough to have hanging over you whatever your circs but when you have children you don't want debts from the past hanging over you which if you are at home caring for children you won't be able to pay and they do accrrue interest of about thirty pounds a year, when I was in full time work for eighteen months I did earn enough to start paying them but it's hardly dented the debt of my two, maybe I can keep deferring them till I'm fifty or maybe a lot of forty seven year olds will take up three year courses...!
surely it's prob cost the govt more than the £1800 odd I owe to adminster my loans seeing as I've had them since 1993!
case rested
universal free higher education please
nb some of the Latin Americans at a Hands Off Venezuela meeting I attended were shocked to find that out higher education is no longer free -yet we are the fourth richest country in the world....
I think John is doing excellent stuff. So far the other leadership and deputy leadership candidates have said nothing. Brown just keeps desperately trying to appear human (and failing) and trying to outflank a potential Blairite candidate by emphasising his own Blairite/Thatcherite credentials (obvious and unwanted to most of us).
As for the deputy leadership, we have Jon 'I don't like the BNP or Trident' Cruddas, Peter 'the future's bright, I'm orange' Hain, Harriet 'we need a woman and that's me' Harman, Hilary 'not like my Dad (sadly), but it's hereditary to stand' Benn, and Alan 'I smile, bit I'm stupid' Johnson.
Well done John for actually talking about policy and generating a serious debate. The rest of this shower are truly appalling.
To be fair, Hilary Benn wanted to ban cluster bombs, which would be a Good Thing, though it's an easy thing for him to say and he didn't say it at the time the Israelis were using them in Lebanon.
Brown is trying to appear human in preparation for his war with Cameron. He's pretty much assuming he'll become leader.
Higher Education - we don't have the money. It's that simple. Even if they raised taxes, there's loads of other things needing money spent on them.
"is this some sort of super privatisation of a debt I haven't even paid??!!"
hehehe.
On John talking about policy - I'm surprised so few people comment on this site. Loads of policies backed by a large chunk of the current lead UK political party, unmoderated commenting allowed - and a tenth of the comments received by Guido Fawkes and others.
John once again demonstrates the stark inequality we see not just in the world, but the UK as well.
I know John has a dislike for the EU, and in some respects I can well understand why. However, does John not think it important to work with our EU friends in tackling inequality issues. We need to be working hard in the EU to preserve the European social model and protect European workers.
It's time a British Prime Minister started to reform Europe to work for its citizens and not big business.
Anonymous - many other "left" blogs are basically about bitching and having a laugh. This is a serious campaign - and blog - and if youlook back there have been issues which have received a fair fewposts. More needed,though, I agree.
Well, that's true of Tory blogs too (see Guido). But their more serious ones get attention too - see 100 Policies. "Another London" and the Trident stuff are the only posts with more than 10 comments here. It just seems very strange to me, as the left is certainly present on the web.
Higher Education - we don't have the money? (anonymous post above)Are you out of your tiny mind!?
I remember that golden age in 1996 when there were no fees, no loans and a student grant - and we've had consistent economic growth since then. We've also afforded wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that have cost over £10bn between them.
I see there's £25bn available for Trident though.
Blimey some people are dense - though probably can't afford a university education anymore!
"We've also afforded wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that have cost over £10bn between them."
Y'know, that's part of why they don't have the money. And is it only £10bn? I actually thought it was more.
We have lots of PFI schemes (more than £50bn for hospital schemes worth £8bn if done in public sector) and they're closing hospitals for and hospital departments for lack of cash - they wouldn't do that if they didn't have a cash problem because it plays so badly electorally.
talk about golden age when there were student grants in 1996 - there were loans then though as I started at Uni of London in 1991 and managed to do without one that year but had to get two after that. I applied for free prescriptions as I was a student and presumed I had a low income but was told I didn't qualify as they had taken into account the student loan as money available to me even though I hadn't taken one out as I didn't want to get into debt which was then a much greater stigma than it is now.
my husband started four years before me and didn't qualify for a grant as his Dad was a lecturer but in those days you could covenant money to your child so he has never been a debt and even ran a second hand car without working through college (except in the holidays); he then also got a £7000 grant to do an MSc conversion course in 91 which is more than I live on now. At that tiem after so many years of Tory policy people tended to go for businessy jobs and courses and we were all brainwashed into thinking we wouldn't get jobs after graduating so I think there was quite a bit of a brain drain from things like the Arts, if you were more public service orientated you went on to teaching or the civil service, anything to get a secure job but it left people lacking in confidence to do what they wanted to do and were really good at and we were all having to pay off debts straightaway.
Going even further back to when my cousin graduated about ten years before me he was able to claim housing/unemployment benefit in his holidays as well as disability benefit as he has a disability; he was hte first of that sid of the family to go to uni; my other cousin who finished the most recently had to pay tuition fees etc so it's completely diffent now. I worked out back in 95 while standing in the college bank queue preparing to plead for that term's overdraft (while fuming as I knew I should have been working not wasting all my time in the bank) that if the banks were to pull the plug on teh whole thing the government wouldn't be able to go like this as basiacally people on full grants as I was by then paid in their cheques then nearly all of it out again to pay theri termly accomodation bills so they were never going to be in any kind of credit for the whole year. Even when I lived in a self catering college flat in the final year I worked out that this was costing me 68% of my income (i.e grant)exclusive of food etc per term yet I believe you are supposed to pay about a third of your income to housing and a third food and a third everything else e.g. travel, clothes/shoes etc etc etc!
can't remember where I read it but I believe the government made some moves towards possibly getting rid of health visitors - if this Thatcherite sounding policy was to go through obvious there would be a corresponding decline in the health of children and parents not to mention the cost to the health service. It's yet another e.g of policy being made by people who don't use the services I'd say, yes I'd like to think I don't need a health visitor in that if my child is ill for example yes I can investigate what it might be by researching the internet etc. but I need a health visitor to recognise minor ailments in my child by actually examining them at clinic e.g. nappy rash, thrush etc unless I want to make a GP appointment just for that which I would see as a drain on the NHS resources. And there are many other things HVs can help with such as weaning etc etc. I just can't remember where I read that they were under threat so maybe I'm wrong or the policy's been dropped but nothing would surprise me any more from New Labour; they'll probably sell off health visitor's clinic rooms to be twenty four hour casinos or something!
I just feel that apart from not listening to the people that provise and use public services in this country they are talking down to us and it's not as if they have got any more education or experience of the issues in question than us or any reason to do so apart from their own elitism and snobbery quite frankly. However of course the Tories are still the same old Tories in case anyone is suffering any delusions that they are better on things like the NHS; they do things like include cigarettes in their so-called average family budgets as if these things weren't bad for healthwise for everyone to smoke which everyone knows it's not but some people are sadly hopelessly addicted - more likely they want the tax revenue!
I do think Blair has lost it as a leader - it was Muslim bashing again on the news tonight....but we musn't let him drag the Labour party down with him
I thought there are still some level of grants to poor students?
Also - what's wrong with shoving off towards teaching? Good job, teaching, apart from the paperwork.
"can't remember where I read it but I believe the government made some moves towards possibly getting rid of health visitors"
Yes, I believe that's a plan.
"However of course the Tories are still the same old Tories in case anyone is suffering any delusions that they are better on things like the NHS"
As reported in the Eye, Lansley (Tory health shadow) criticised PFI, but a spokesman retracted the criticism and said he was merely "raising a concern" - ie, he was just scoring some political points. However, the current absence of a Tory NHS policy is better than the previous situation at Conservative policy HQ - remember the half-baked opt-out thing last election?
The NHS is probably the single issue the Tories are least convincing on. I actually think the colour change of blue has been chosen to reflect the NHS colour scheme, and Cameron has appeared in support of demos at hospitals. But they have no new ideas on the NHS and would behave exactly the same as Labour has done. The only reason they mutter sometimes about "power to doctors" and similair is to allow them in future to pass the buck to someone else.
"they do things like include cigarettes in their so-called average family budgets as if these things weren't bad for healthwise for everyone to smoke which everyone knows it's not but some people are sadly hopelessly addicted - more likely they want the tax revenue!"
They may want the tax revenue, but still, smoking is pretty common and breaking addiction is not easy. Smoking is certainly part of an average budget if you're on the poor side. I don't think this is a particularly fair criticism of them. These smoke free pubs and so on are nicer for the middle classes than for people in inner Glasgow and such.
"it was Muslim bashing again on the news tonight"
The criticism of extremism etc is fine and reasonable but, being a Tory myself (if not evident from my other posts) I still don't understand what has got into the government to obsess over veils and niqabs and this sort of thing - it's an issue they've created themselves and it is not important; I personally do not find some woman with a veil threatening, and don't desire to force her or press her to integrate by means of removing said veil. I have no idea what good they actually think they're doing by perpetuating this debate, which has succeeded only in creating a problem where there wasn't one before.
Jack Straw was entitled enough to his little comment about asking women to remove veils when he speaks to them; I filed it under, minor personal oddity, when I first read it. But it turns out that the government really wants to drive out veils and such. Quite mad and utterly pointless.
Hi anonomous
nothing wrong with teaching; my point is you won't be a good teacher or a good anything if your heart's not in but it's obviously easier to get into professions like say accountancy than becoming an artist financially, but if we cut off grants for things like dance say and make everyone be in city type jobs our society will be the poorer for it. Most people can't afford to be entirely self funding so if grants are bigger for the non arts/social science subjects some people will end up doing subjects and entering careers they aren't really suited to which will have a knock on effect further down the line and does tend to perpetuate the mistaken belief that businessy jobs are somehow a cut above other jobs....
there's still some grant but not enough to stop you having to borrow most of your funding,and if your parents or you yourself if you are a mature student is on an income low enough to get it then you won't have any money behind you to bail you out when things get tight and also as I've found eventually your grants/loans/free graduate overdrafts et al run out and then the bank charges kick in. (I pay approx fifty pounds a month in them yet my only income is child benefit so you could say part of my my child benefit is going straight into bank coffers. Did I mention that I recieved a letter sayiing that my student loan has been "sold" by the student loans company to Natwest bank I think it was!! Extreme privatisation me thinks! can't pay my two loans now anyway so didn't look at the details! As I studied when the loan systemn was just beginning and worked all my holidays in Burger King and the like I managed not to have to get a graduate loan but my sister had to and then you are tied in to a hefty whack of interest going to those lucky banks who are propping up(and cleaning up I'd say) profiting form this whole systemn and that's why she's ten thousand pounds in debt despite having worked as a vet since graduating eight years ago.
one third of people smoke I think the statistic is and most of them want to give up especially people with kids like some mates of mine; it's difficult as it's as addictive as heroin. I've heard the NHS Stop Smoking service is good and is getting results; let's hope it dosen't get cut by New Labour and suffer the scandalous fate of birth centres etc up and down the country; so much for prevention is better than cure. I think the main thing we need to do with smoking is stop treating with such respect in that I used to put up with people smoking over me as I didn't want to offend them, (I'd feel the effects immediately as I have allergies but would just put tp with it) but now I would speak up and say they can smoke if they want but not round me, no need for it to be an issue of politeness or rudeness it's just a fact. When I was young I learnt how bad smoking was for you at school so I don't smoke (and there's also been illnesses in the lives of family and friends of mine attributed to it, I've even visited a lung cancer hospital in Poland, full of poor old people struggling for breath in not very modern conditions) and I have a cousin who offered to take me to the cinema etc when I was about seven and I desparately wanted to go as she was very glamourous to me being ten years older but I was worried she would smoke over me but at age only seven was too shy to tell her and I missed a lot of her company, that's the thing I don't like about smoking in that it divides people as well as the health risks. Self same\cousin gave up once she had\her own kids and saw them in pain with terrible\ear infections due to passive smoking and now they don't get them anymore and are healthy. I've worked in a hospital and seen plenty of notes of children with asthma etc whose parents and friends smoke over them but most people are aware now and at least try to smoke outside but apparently the particles of tobaccco are still on your clothes and if you test the urine of the kids of smokers you will find nicotine just because they live in the same house. Did you see the Newsnight report where they explained how smoking had been glamourised for women (before that it was mostly a male habit after the war and it had been effectively sold to them as a habit to make them feel more glanourous etc and brought home the fact that it was all basically a big marketing ploy and of course when we finally cottoned on to how bad it was and the tobacco companies finally admitted this the companies had to find new markets hence your unethical friend Ken Clarke and his interests in third world tobacco countries. Also smoking is big in Eastern Europe, Spain etc and in intitions like prisons and the army to "pass the time" which is an argument I can understand but it's just so sad when you read about amputtions and other horrible effects of it further down the line, such as the "Lucky Strike" girl who didn't even smoke when she first advertised them way back in the fifties but who was told she ought to try it as she was advetising them and ended up with horrendous medical ecomplications in this vein as she became elderly. I think you have fallen for the usual Tory argument that it's a class thing when it clearly isn't as all classes smoke; it's like the Sun journalist who was on telly recently saying he had "gone a bit middle class" by buying an organic mattress for his child's cot as he was worried about the possible link between cot death and mattresses; it's not "middle class" to want to save your health and the environment, it's just plain boring sensible I'm afraid!! And these unpalaltable thinhs I've had to write above are just facts, not suppositions or exaggerations, just facts and there's no way to dress them up or sweep them under the carpet any longer. Did you know that the reaon that VAT was out on sanitary towels etc in the first place was that the mostly male MPs at the time refused to discuss it and so women ended up being thus discriminated against financially? we have to stop these sort of outdated attitudes. Stepehn Fry has written that he was told to smoke while visiting an elderly aunt because "All men smoke"!Politeness can be taken too far!
I'm glad the government as was announced today is moving to raise the age you can buy cigarettes to eighteen as it does legitimise them as a more hazardous substance; I've actually sold the things (cancer sticks as Paxo makes a point of calling them, clever man) in supermarket kiosks so I'm well aware of the dodges kids will use to try and buy them anyway but it's a step in the right direction. Particularly when you hear things like the pregnant sixteen year old my friend overheard who said to her mate "Well as I'm sixteen I'm old enough to decide whether I smoke so it's up to me to decide whether I should smoke when I'm pregnant" or the recent newspaper report about the young pregnant girls who are apparently smoking on purpose to have low birthweight babies...the NHS bumpf does tell mothers to quit smoking while pregnant and details the help available and it does mention fathers too but not in enough detail, I have a friend who makes her boyfriend smoke outside but can't bring herself to tell him to give up for the sake of the kids who breathe it in anyway when they're out with the pushchair and this is often the way as a lot of people tend to smoke at work which does tend to be more males if we are talking about parents so if anything it's a male/female thing rather than a class issue. It's just the taboos still surrounding it that get me' it's pretty sad when partners/families can't even tell each other they want them to give up, dosen't mean they have to or even want to but it shouldn't be taboo to mention it, after all if they had another habit that was either dangerous such as drink driving or they picked their nose in public or something people would find ways of telling them!!
My Mum learnt to drive in 1973 and her 73 edition of the Driving Manual tells you not to smoke while driving "even if you feel you need to to concentrate"! How quaint that sounds now and it demonstrates that things can and do change otherwise we's all still be cock fighting and bear baiting! Mum also recently told me that the Mum's that smoked in her maternity ward used to light up and smoke over us all at 6am when they were awoken to feed the babies until she got together with tne non-smoking Mum's to complain. (She had also smoked herself but stopped some years before I was born). That's what I just don't get about New Labour or conservatism for that matter, the insistence that things can't change, until eventually they do such as the recent example of the environment and issues of ethical manusfacture of clothihg etc - the information's been out there for a good five years and prior to that but only now is it finally being acted on (Bill Clinton and Blairites seem to be telling us there's money to be made from goign green as well, (remember the reconstruction of Iraq was going to be carved up by foreign companies privatising it all though there is a slight snag now as the security situation is so bad, Fallujah for example was actaully a war crime committed by us anad the US as they cut off all the electricity and water well beforehand as well as massacaring innocent people so the suffereing was immense, but this info has been sweptunder the carpet, you can find lots of info on the Labour Against the War website) as it has finally reached the mainstream media which is why John's campaign needs to be in it and explains why it has been blocked though it's starting to break through now. (Place your bets now while the odds are still in your favour....)
This seems to have been far too long, think it's the effect of a soul searching mood brought on by watching the This Life special (Miles was derided by his mates for turning into a Telegraph reading Conservative voter so there's hope for the world, I feel a brat pack movie revival coming on, St.Elmo's Fire et al....at least among the greed is good theme of the eighties there was always in evidence a credible opposition to it all by people such as comitted socialists, pacifists and people of conscience generally and that was accepted; we seem to have lost that now and that is what I find most frightening about today's situation only that I don't as this campaign is here and it IS challenging the status quo!!
About time
If you are a Tory I respect that of course but I'm dying to know how come you are on this website??!! Are you disillusioned with Cameron maybe!!! Good PR man though isn't he! Wish we could hire one!! (Joke, joke...)
also re: Tory NHS policy: no they haven't got one but I saw the front of Cam's website on his pp broadcast and "What would you like us to do about the NHS?" is all over it and they know a lot of peole are falling for it, in Wycombe it's as hypocritical as the Hazel Blears situation as the Tory cllrs voted for the cuts anyway despite pointing out quite correctly that it was New Labour policy while the MP stood by and later pretended to head up the local pressure group against them! It's also working for the Tories as it's a simple message going out loud and clear that the Tories will "Save the NHS" (never mind the breathtaking irony) while the Blarites are drowing in detail and initiative/staistic fatigue that the average person really dosen't have time to listen to anyway.
This is where John is much better than the alternatives as he sees the bigger picture and gives you the facts straight without posturing or blustering if he can get the air space. He's very good at having to condense his message into sometimes impossibly short excerpts but he needs more of these and hopefully will get them once the election is announced.
As for veils I'm used to them from living in London and working at Heathrow and have a very good friend who is veiled. (She was frightened to wear hers after 9/11 as she thought she might be discriminated against but decided that it or other people generally was not going to let her change her identity or beliefs). I also know that there aren't many veils still in some areas of the country just as my English/Irish grandparents hadn't come across that much of an ethnic mix as there just wasn't much of one locally where they happen to live (and they hadn't travelled abroad very much though of course black people to take just one ethnic group as am example have been in Britain since the Middle Ages and if you come across something new to you in general you might regard the new thing with some suspicion at first but that's not a given but people as clever as Jack Straw must be perfectly well aware that there will be people in this situation whose main experience of said veil wearing is gleaned from the tv and he should be careful here but then again they know this is also the case re: asylum seekers yet they are letting predjudices against them soemtime by people who haven't even met one let alone a " mass" of them grow and grow so they know perfectly well the cans of worms they can open up by even mentioning these sorts of issues and it makes you wonder with your political conspiracy/media hat on as to whether they are letting this one run and run to draw attention away fromn even less palatable srories such as the Iraq situation??
Ok we're not born wearing veils (or smoking for that matter, see above!) but surely being able to see someone's face though it makes us feel better about them at an instinctive level does not actually mean they are any less likely to be homest with us or untruthful for that matter unless we are telepathic! For example I had to try and work out whether people were lying while interviewing at work and facial expression is only one of the clues you would use in order to get a sense of this. I did have to occasionally look under women's veils to identify them for immigration purposes but once I was satisfied they were who their documents said they were they were entitled to wear whatever they wanted. Apart from perhaps for medical examination I can't think why else they would need to remove a veil and I would have thought most women wouldn't wear one while teaching small children as they wouldn't count as men; there is I believe some discretion to take it off with close male relatives if the family agrees. My friend used to keep a veil by the window so she could look out and put it on if necessary depending on who knocked on the door! If the woman had an appontment booked where she knew she was going to be face to face with Jack Straw who was presumablyt not well known to her or related and had decided to wear her veil within it then I think he should have respected that and he must have severally embarrassed her by asking her to take it off if it was just for his own personal comfort and not a question of identity in any way. If he had phrase it in such a way as to say she could take her veil off is she wished that might have been a bit better but the point of veils is that men don't see the woman's whole face so as far as I know Muslims who do wear routinely don't take them off unless there are only females present so it probably would have been a misnomer and he must know this in his line of work though not every man in Britain would necessarily know this. Anyway surely the government has learnt by now that telling anybody to do or not to do anything (which is not a legislative matter) such as to not wear a veil/hoodie or ordering us to have "respect" for each other while telling us what to wear in the next breath is a total recipe for disaster like the Tories' ill-fated "Back to Basics" campaign!
In North Korea women are only allowed to have a choice of I think it is five hairstyles I once read in Marie-Claire magazine;(watch the re-runs of the Axis of Evil documentaries closely and this would appear to be the case), let's hope we don't quite get to this stage. I think it's the Blair/Bushites extremely misguided attempt to get Middle Eastern countries to believe we are trying to help them despite the Iraq war etc by encouraging them to drop what they see as outdated and discriminatory practices such as veil wearing but although they are right that we need to have a greater understanding between the West and the East if we want world peace they are trying to use a sledgehammer to crack a nut; who are we to impose our ideas, Western imperialism and even right down to their dress sense with or without it's cultural significances on them?? We need a dialogue of real mutual understanding not these heavy handed and sometimes ignorant approaches; as I've said above I'm not an advocate of needless taboos on things like asking people not to smoke inside which is just a health issue but this is a different situation
Bring back Spitting Image!
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