Recently I wrote an article about Green ideology, and in particular, I explored the tension between environmentalism, human rights, equality and social justice. This is an important issue, because how ideologies are translated into policy often has profound and far-reaching social consequences.

I discussed the environmentalism and “blood and soil” philosophy underpinning the Volk and Nazi movements, the Nazis being an exemplar of the problematic issues I raised. I also discussed Malthus, and his ideas on population growth and the finite nature of resources. I linked some of the Green philosophy and policies with Malthus’s ideas. My point was that it is not the ideas in themselves that are problematic: it is the context, the application, the way those ideas are translated via policy and the consequences that warrants some discussion.

Malthus’s ideas both informed and were informed by a context of Social Darwinism, eugenics, laissez faire capitalism, competitive individualism, all of which were the basis of a dominant paradigm at that point in history. One consequence of that was the terrible Poor Law Amendment Act in 1834, which saw the introduction of the dreadful, punitive workhouses.

One person – Tanya Jones, a Green Party Parliamentary candidate- engaged very courteously with some of the issues raised, and said thanks for the opportunity to discuss them. That was the kind of response I had hoped for.

However, the overwhelming majority of responses that followed the article being published constituted an organised hate campaign by a group of Green supporters and Party members on Facebook, Twitter and on my blog site. Whilst I appreciate that some Green supporters – those included on my friend list, for example – engage in dialogue that is civil and cooperative, I’m finding that many others don’t.

There’s always the possibility that some of the comments and threats are not from Green supporters at all, of course, but I can say that there has been two years worth of comments on Facebook that constitute quite vicious personal attacks, and these definitely come from a known group of Green Party supporters. 

Here are a few of the comments and threats I have received:

Henry Worthington says:
December 23, 2014 at 11:44 pm 

Originally posted on the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) site

More than 80,000 UK families face a bleak Christmas because their benefits have been stopped, PCS says.

An estimated £20 million – £250 each on average – is being withheld from unemployed and disabled people this month under the government’s punitive and controversial sanctions regime.

Using Department for Work and Pensions data, the union calculates 74,000 people will lose more than £19 million in jobseeker’s allowance – an estimated 2,000% increase since the Christmas before the coalition government took office.

Almost £700,000 in employment and support allowance is being taken away from 6,800 disabled people this month.

The union is opposed to the system, known as the stricter benefits regime, which means jobseekers can have their benefits removed for up to three years and which charities cite as a reason for the rise in the use of food banks.

DWP continues to claim there are no targets for advisers in jobcentres to refer people for sanctions, but the union has provided evidence that the department’s appraisal system, linked to the disciplinary procedure, is used to enforce ‘expectation’ levels.

PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said: “There is no evidence that stopping people’s benefits improves their chances of finding long-term employment.

“Many are being punished for simply turning up late to an interview or refusing to work for free for a profitable company on one of the government’s failing workfare schemes.

“Use of these sanctions has spiralled in recent years, but they do nothing but heap blame and misery on some of the poorest in our society and they should be scrapped.”

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How it is calculated

• DWP’s monthly sanctions figures are available up to June 2014
• We used trends over the latest 12-month period for which figures are available (July 2013-June 2014) to project how many claimants on jobseeker’s allowance and employment and support allowance will be sanctioned this December, estimating 80,800 people having a total of £20,373,000 in benefits stopped

Jobseeker’s allowance

• Worth £72.40 a week or £57.35 for under 25s. A sanction means the claimant’s benefit is stopped for a minimum of four weeks, but can be up to three years
• Monthly trends suggest 54,700 JSA claimants will be sanctioned this month, totalling £14,540,000 – based on 60% being on the adult rate and 40% on the youth rate, consistent with the ratio for JSA claimants being sanctioned since the stricter benefits regime began in October 2012
• We estimate a further 19,300 sanctions lasting 13 weeks will have been issued in October and November 2014 – based on the number of 13-week sanctions issued between October 2012 and June 2014 and the 60/40 adult/youth rate ratio – totalling a further £5,140,000 for December 2014
• Therefore, we estimate a total of 74,000 JSA claimants and a total of £19,680,000 are being sanctioned in December 2014. This excludes an estimated 2,300 claimants who have been sanctioned for three years since October 2012, as it is impossible to estimate how many of these have remained unemployed in that time
• We estimate £916,600 was sanctioned from JSA claimants during December 2009 – calculated as the average monthly amount out of a total of £11 million in JSA sanctions in 2009/2010. This month’s amount represents a 2,000% increase in the cash value of JSA sanctions since December 2009

Employment and Support Allowance

• The main benefit for disabled people of working age. Those assessed as being in the work-related activity group receive £101.15 a week (during the assessment phase, £72.40 a week or £57.35 for under 25s) and are subject to conditions so could face a sanction of a minimum of one week, and two or four weeks for further sanctions within a 12-month period
• Monthly trends suggest 6,800 ESA claimants will be sanctioned this December, totalling £693,000
• The DWP does not publish data for ESA claimants receiving a second or third sanction – only the total number issued. Our calculations are therefore based on a one-week sanction at the WRAG rate

How does cutting lifeline benefits “make work pay”? The claim made by the Conservatives is completely incoherent. The only way to make work pay would be to raise wages, not lower benefits. Furthermore, wages are now at an all time low.

Sanctions have pushed public boundaries and redefined what is acceptable, as they have introduced the previously unthinkable (well, since the 1940s)  – the idea that people’s lifeline to support for meeting their basic survival needs is optional. The role of the State and how are our taxes are spent is being redefined. The media have also played a role in conveying the message that it’s acceptable to leave people without money for food and fuel, in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. We know from research (as well as common sense) that leaving people struggling to meet their basic needs will not help them into work.

As well as the draconian nature of sanctions, this is also about the Tories’ ideological drive to reverse the gains we made from the post-war settlement. They have always resented our NHS, public services, legal aid and welfare state. Now they are destroying them steadily, deliberately and surely.

 

Related

Punishing Poverty: A review of benefits sanctions and their impacts on clients and claimants

Pregnant and sanctioned just in time for christmas… Sanctioned and frozen to death….The latest news from Ashton Under Lyne Jobcentre.

Benefit sanctions are not fair and are not helping people into work

Rachel Reeves promises to remove benefit sanction targets with a Labour Government

Editorship of The Spectator has often been a step on the ladder to high office in the Conservative Party – past editors include Iain Macleod, Ian Gilmour and Nigel Lawson, all of whom became cabinet members – or a springboard for a greater role in public affairs, as with Boris Johnson (1999 to 2005), the Conservative Mayor of London. The Spectator is a weekly British and staunchly Conservative magazine.

So when we see articles from right-wing commentators that are extensively critical of a Conservative-led government, indicating deceit and lying to the public and highlighting the sheer hypocrisy of Cameron’s ideologically-driven policies, it’s worth paying some attention to it. Especially when those articles echo some of our own criticisms.

This week, Fraser Nelson wrote  “the Prime Minster and his Chancellor are scurrying around the country misleading people. Never mind the national debt, the deficit has not been cut in half over the course of this parliament.”

We also know that the national debt has increased so much in just four years, that not only does it surpass that of the last government of thirteen years, it surpasses the debt of EVERY Labour government combined, since 1900. That’s no mean feat for the Conservatives, given their self-declared raison d’être is “paying down Britain’s debts.” Cameron has been officially rebuked twice by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) for his grandiose, deceitful claims of doing that.

Let’s not forget Osborne’s promise of preserving Britain’s AAA credit rating, Fitch and Moody’s agencies stripped the UK of its triple A credit rating in a withering assessment of its economic outlook last year

Despite Cameron’s persistent claims that the Tory “long term economic plan” is working and that there has been the “largest fall in unemployment since records began,”  the Treasury is surprisingly at an all time low on income tax revenues. It was 25 billion short of the predicted amount. If it wasn’t for the money collected through the recent bank fines (£1.1 billion) because of the rigging of foreign exchange markets and through the Tory hike on VAT (which affects those out of work proportionally the most), Osborne would have been well and truly left without any room for manoeuvre whatsoever in the package of lies that was his recent autumn budget statement.

This is a government that treats the public with contempt and delivers nothing but lies. Any party that can claim with a straight face that: “As part of our long-term economic plan, we’ve capped benefits to reward work” whilst presiding over the biggest drop in wages of all the  G20 countries and a cost of living crisis that is leaving many people unable to meet even their most basic survival needs doesn’t care about democratic dialogue with the electorate.

And of course there is the basic absurdity of the claim – that cutting benefits for those out of work will somehow raise wages for those in work.  The truth is that Conservatives like to keep people in a state of desperation so that they may be forced to take any work, no matter how unfair and low the pay is and no matter how poor the working conditions. Tories serve only the interests of the majority of their donors – private companies – who want to simply profit from cheap labour.

Most who read my posts would probably agree that Tory ideology is all about handouts to the wealthy that are funded by the poor. It’s the very wealthy that exemplify the something for nothing culture, whilst the poorest, who have paid for the rapidly diminishing public services and welfare through taxes have been transformed into a nothing for something culture by a government that truly believes there is merit to be found in a State that extends Social Darwinist principles, generates massive inequality, whilst retracting the gains of our post-war settlement. The Tories have pulled the safety net, leaving the poorest tight-roping over a chasmic income gap, and ultimately, they have been hung out to dry up there.

Furthermore, most would understand that critically, this fundamental Tory belief that the wealthy deserve rewarding with more money via tax “breaks” whilst the poorest deserve punishment by having their money taken away via cuts not only leads to an extremely unequal and unfair society, it is ultimately very damaging for the economy, a fact most recently confirmed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). 

Yesterday in the Spectator, Alex Massie pointed to this fundamental ideologically-scripted Tory policy of economical discrimination and said it was the fatal contradiction at the heart of the Tory message. The message is: there is no money, except for people we like.

He goes on to say:

“The Tories are entering the campaign with a message that contradicts itself. Not at the margin or in some trivial sense but at the heart of the matter and on the stuff that really matters.

Because, you see, the Conservatives are running a campaign that says there is no money for public spending but there is money for tax cuts. One of these things can be true; they cannot both be.

The income tax cut for millionaires was a terrible idea when it was first announced and remains, politically-speaking, a terrible idea now. If anything, in fact, it looks worse now than it did at the time. Tax cuts for our chums; welfare cuts for you. That’s not a good look.

Now, however, Osborne promises huge public spending cuts of a depth and severity unseen in this parliament.”

When the right-wing press are cataloging Conservative failures and lies, too, you know that’s the sound of a turning tide.

Related: “We are raising more money for the rich.” 

 

 Thanks to @LivingstonePics

Here in the UK, we are fortunate that our government is very supportive of poverty, they have even put together a package of generous policies that incentivise ordinary tax payers: it’s a scheme where you pay in installments with a built-in guarantee of getting absolutely nothing back. A welcome move that ensures almost anyone can now become poor with hardly any effort at all. There’s never been a better time to be poor.

Iain Duncan Smith has put together a generous and useful additional package of support that will successfully remove that stubborn remaining income in the form of ghastly lifeline benefits, so you needn’t put up with being unfortunately able to make those ends meet a moment longer, thanks to the genius of Mr Duncan Smith’s fair and much needed cuts and sanctions. Politics with principles. Good old-fashioned Tory principles.

And what better way to guarantee your highly privileged status of vagabondage and not having a job than to make sure you are so busy being engaged in a fight for basic survival that you can’t be bothered with being incentivised to look for work. We all know that deep joy which utter exhaustion, sinking despair, deprivation and absolute demotivation brings. Yes, it’s a nice rest, for an increasing elite of paupers and vagabonds. That earns you another sanction – it’s the perfect poverty cycle of choice for those of us with such high aspirations to have low aspirations.

Some have criticised this indulgent nothing for something culture, but a government spokesperson, Mr Dickensian, said that poor people deserve the chance to further themselves into a dead end. Mr Cameron said this week that Labour were to blame for cutting poverty, but under the Conservatives, thanks to their special austerity measures for the poor, the economy is working like it should and poverty is now higher than it’s been since records began.

The good news is that being poor costs absolutely nothing. All it takes is a little know-how.

Once people see the benefits of malnutrition, rickets and scurvy, and many other low budget, value Victorian age diseases, I’m sure they will be inspired by their simple chic appeal. The growing popularity of being very hungry has enticed many these past four years. The ease by which malnutrition can be acquired under this generous government, who are making poverty a truly thrilling once in a lifetime opportunity, a must-have, has been welcomed and hailed as the new poor law come-back, the return of a Golden Age for the Conservatives. It’s a very welcomed return of nostalgic, ever so quaint Social Darwinist Tory principles.

However, critics have said that being poor is not the cause of poverty, and claim that poverty specialists have manufactured the statistical evidence. Genuinely poor people have to have significant character flaws, really rubbish lives, personal weaknesses, ineptitudes – no skills at all – to qualify for being in poverty.

A report from ThanAtos, the private company hired by the government to assess people to see if they are genuinely on the point of death from starvation in order to be eligible for poverty, says that many are just feigning starvation and despair and some are even faking thinness. ThanAtos’s research shows that many expect to be provided with food bank vouchers so they can continue to be parked on luxury standards of suffering indefinitely. The report said:

Far too many of those who claim they are poor don’t even have a plasma screen and a sky dish, and we know for a fact that they don’t eat takeaways, take drugs, smoke or drink cheap cider, they lack personal ineptitudes, and many don’t even have loads of unkempt children, so they are just frauds. The problem is that once people see the privilege and benefits of gnawing hunger and destitution, they all want some. It’s all supply-led, people just want poorness as a freebie.

It’s certainly set a trend.

Being poor is so popular that the marginalised wealthy have launched a backlash because languishing in poverty is such a self-indulgent lifestyle choice, especially when the economy is growing. We all know that poor people cost the economy lots of money, as Mr Cameron says. Somehow. And we know that the struggling millionaires are very low-maintenance, economically, requiring only a few meagre tax breaks, like the one of £107,000 each per annum, just to keep them going. A millionaire spokesperson, Samuel Smiles, said:

“These poor people have taken the easy, stress-free option of not sending their children up chimneys and into t’mills any more and won’t even try their hand at pick-pocketing and prostitution. Those were once respected pauper activities, but now these poor people are jumping on the band-waggon and tarnishing the good name of thrift, self-help and state-inflicted misery.”

Another spokeperson for wealthy people, Thomas Malthus, said that being rich is fraught with potentially embarrassing socialising difficulties as other people’s exclusive and privileged poverty inspires much outrage, envy, sanctimonious and unfortunate, pretentious one -downmanship from wealthy people, especially at dinner parties. Many have resorted to hiding their posh Le Creuset sets and Agas in the garage, and using a camping stove for all three courses. Growing numbers of the traumatised wealthy have tragically ended up in retail therapy.

Yes, we know we have to help the disadvantaged and hard-done-by wealthy, they need our support and of course, every penny counts. If only they could see that they need us and as much as we need them. We paupers wouldn’t be where we are today if it wasn’t for the wealthy. But we do deserve our special social status.

The fact remains that they bring it all on themselves. I’m not without sympathy  but these wealthy people don’t try hard enough to make do, go without and downsize. I do agree that the government needs to support them with some educational classes to help them achieve the skills required to become poorer. Since poor people need to learn both self-denial and total selfishness, it requires a special talent, and is admittedly difficult to emulate. But many think the wealthy deserve all they get, because they are lazy and just give up, parked on their wealth for life. Poverty is not luck, it’s something you really have to work at. And the new nothing for something culture helps almost everyone into poverty, so there are no excuses for the feckless rich, it’s never been easier to be poor.

But having been denied access to poverty all of their lives, many of the wealthy have decided to become experts on it instead. It’s fueled by the politics of envy, but at least it allows rich people to feel a little included on the periphery of covetable poverty experiences. Many have suggested we don’t have any cookery skills, so it’s not a lack of money but the inability to cook imaginary rice puddings from scratch that creates the privilege of poverty. But that’s untrue, as many paupers endeavor to create all of their fabulous meals every day from nothing at all.

The choice between relative deprivation and downsizing to absolute poverty presents us with a particularly tricky dilemma. It is only the very truly brave and liberated that opt to take the plunge. Unless of course you are one of those lucky people that have inherited your poverty from your parents. Some people are blessed with good genes and don’t have to work at it. But they are the lucky few.

Then there’s the culture of entitlement, it’s the same thing as Margaret Thatcher’s culture of deprivation, only it’s been amended so that we don’t make wealthy folk feel inadequate and alone in their tragic lives of undeserved, much-needed handouts and empty lifestyles – getting something for nothing. It must be so unfulfiling to have all of your needs met and still have a big surplus of money. What a nightmare. No wonder the rich are so envious of our nothing for something culture. So much so that denial is their defence mechanism of choice. And who can blame them.

Poor people everywhere welcome the government’s move to cut the numbers of the moderately wealthy and lift them into poverty, and many have praised David Cameron for ensuring that ordinary people now have equal opportunities when it comes to accessing poverty.

Record numbers of poor people are achieving being very poor, according to Mr Osborne, though he said we’ve a way to go before we hit the targets set by the Office for Victorian Era Fiscal Parsimony, but by the end of this parliament, we should be on track. The Institute of Misery confirmed these findings. However, the Institute of Economic Farce have said that their predicted targets were far exceeded.

It’s so fashionable, being poor. I watched a fashion programme on the TV, in-between all the soaps and Oprah, called “On the catwalk this week.” We saw a new range of designs called “Pauper”, emulating the fabulously poor Gutterati, which is similar to the grunge of the early Tory 90’s, but with more on-trend rags, holes and longer-term wearability. Accessories included funky cardboard boxes, park benches with stylish newspaper edging and a shop doorway with punky spikes. It’s in vogue  to wear your suffering on your tattered sleeves, with minimalist foot wear.

One model was heard screaming obscenities at a journalist, after being accused, insultingly, of having anorexia. She said proudly that she was authentically poor and starving because she chose to do workfare at a Gentlemen’s club, when the Department of Work and Pensions offered her a fashionable, must-have benefit sanction. She was then sent on workfare to the modelling agency, and is very grateful for the opportunity to have nothing at all.

But columnist Hate E Bopkins said: “That’s a big fat lie, she’s a fraud, we all know that poor people get fat because they eat nothing but takeaways, black puddings, pie and chips and they can skillfully mismanage their meagre money to good effect, they’re pros, damn the cunning blighters.

  We all know it’s only the scrounging and disadvantaged wealthy that have that tiresome,  excessive energy and unfortunate and unfashionable money to eat that dreadful fresh fruit and veg, healthy rubbish and be seen slim at the gym. The culturally shameful and depraved creatures. How I wish I could be really poor. I’d love to have nothing at all, ideally.”

Ms Bopkins recommends we buy takeaways and eat really great unwholesome foods like pie and chips, whilst watching soaps and Jeremy Kyle on the telly. Oh, and avoid porridge like the plague. (Although plague, pneumonia, bad teeth and TB may well be set to become the new luxe accessories for poor people this season, according to top fashionistas such as Oxfam and the Joseph Rountree Foundation).

Jamie Oliver, amongst others, says that poor people always have a very large plasma TV. Thanks for that great tip, Jamie. If you bought one whilst in work, you should get rid of it immediately and buy an even larger one from your benefit. You must also subscribe to Sky and get a big dish put on your house. Trade in your furniture and household items the very moment you stop working, and buy them all again so you don’t have to live with the guilt and shame of having anything you may have (inadvertently, I’m sure) bought from what you once disgracefully earned.

Another top tip is have lots of children that you can’t afford. Poor people need to get pregnant only once they are absolutely broke. Never plan your children when you are  in work, or down and out in prosperity, that’s a big no-no. Make sure you lose the job, house and everything else first. Wealthy people will feel included in this lifestyle choice and you can provide opportunity for a suffering wealthy person to share their outrage. It’s therapeutic for them, helping to alleviate their sense of shame and inadequacy.

One of the greatest joys of being poor is that everyone else has got generous and seemingly endless advice for you. There are lots of sound tips around on how to get on with being poor quietly. And the media are interested in sharing all the details of your private life with the public, so they can tut, have some outrage, grumble, seethe and foam a lot, and then give you their advice. It’s because they are so envious of your lucky life experiences that many are thinking of becoming disabled, just so they can share our exclusive pauper status for themselves. They want to own your poverty and I suspect they’d like to commercialise it. But we know that the poor invented poverty, and it’s ours.

Another poverty tip is take expensive holidays abroad, walk your dog if you have one and go to the pub. You must make sure you get someone to take photos of you looking busy and happy and post on facebook, or better still, send them to the Department of Work and Pensions.

Many Sun and Daily Mail readers erroneously think that disabled poor people aren’t allowed to do anything at all that looks normal, they get very distressed and outraged that you aren’t suffering enough, so they will kindly report you. Strictly in your best interests of course, because to these kind, unprejudiced, well-meaning souls, there’s nothing more important than ensuring your complete sacrifice and suffering, and it’s the surest way of getting your benefit stopped, then you can get on with wallowing in your hard-won destitution, suffering and absolute poverty. Because as this thrifty government of self-helping, help themselves specialists has demonstrated, you’re  absolutely worth it.

Thanks to Robert @LivingstonePics

 

 

 

Although this article from THE SKWAWKBOX BLOG is from last year, the issues raised here are even more relevant now, as the Government’s pet project, the Behavioural Insights Team (also known as the “Nudge” Unit) has extended it’s reach much further, including into the far Right’s political domain that entails the micro-management of the media.

We can see that the welfare “reforms” were founded on basic ideas from the discredited pseudo-psychology called Behaviourism and the principles of operant conditioning. “Incentivise”, a word the Conservatives use a lot, is one that they claim is simply imported from the language of paternalistic libertarianism. We are reassured that the government are encouraging people to make “the right choices” for their own long-term benefit, by using “choice architecture” to change the decision-making context that is presented to the public.

However,  a government that punishes the poorest citizens with sanctions that entail the withdrawal of lifeline benefits can only at best be described as authoritarian and coercive. 

I’m currently working on an article about “Nudge” and the bogus psychology  employed to manipulate the public by a psychocratic government.

 

DWP fake psych ‘test’ order illegal – according to DWP.

 

Thanks to Robert @LivingstonePics