The voting age in Britain was last reduced nearly 40 years ago. Since then, there have been major changes in society's expectations of young people, and in young people's contribution to their local communities and wider society.
Currently, 16 and 17 year-olds can work, pay taxes, join the armed forces and get married. They are often invited to set up school councils and youth councils, urged to take part in consultations, sit on local government and Ministerial boards, volunteer in their local community, keep out of trouble and work hard at school. Many will have caring responsibilities, a lot will have a job, some will be parents, and a minority will be leaving care or custody but they cannot elect those who govern them.
A few years ago the Electoral Commission carried out a public consultation on the voting age and found that 72% of respondents favoured a lowering of the voting age to 16. Interestingly the consultation attracted huge participation including 8,000 young people which suggests that when made relevant to them, young people are more likely to vote and engage in issues of public importance.
The next general election will be decided in super-marginals like the my own constituency of The Wrekin. Motivating younger voters is therefore both the right thing to do and it could make the difference between Labour winning and losing the next time round. That is why I strongly believe that as a party we must take young voters much more seriously. Rather than young people being uninterested in politics (as opposed to voting), we seem to have become uninterested in them. We bolt on campaigns for young voters rather than build them into what we do. This needs to change, and we now have a once in a generation chance to make that change and listen to what young people are saying.
Young people’s belief in politics could be helped by them knowing that they had a direct influence in choosing who represents them. In Austria - where they recently lowered the voting age to 16 - in local and regional elections the turnout amongst 16and 17 year olds was close to 75%.
The Labour party was founded on principles of fairness and responsibility and out of a desire to look to the future not live in the past. 16 is a progressive number, young people are our future and we should allow them a greater say in how it is shaped.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Shropshire hospitals pay private firm £10,000 per week to administer car parks
My recent Freedom of Information (FOI) request to the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust has revealed that it collected £1,314,035 in the last financial year from car park charges.
The Royal Shrewsbury Hospital (RSH) collected £751,944 and the Princess Royal £546,776 with £15,315 being collected via fine enforcements. It also reveals that the private company that administers both car parks was paid £526,677 for its services.
I will be writing to the PRH Trust asking for all charges to be capped at £1 per visit until 2013 and for the Trust to bring forward proposals to scrap the charge altogether by 2014.
The founding principle of the NHS was that it would offer free-at-the-point-of-delivery healthcare. Surely this should apply whether you go to hospital as a patient, as a visitor or a member of staff. For patients attending the PRH for out-patient treatment and visitors concerned with the health of their families, worrying about the cost of parking is the last thing they need, and as hospital procedures are notoriously unpredictable, having to rush out after a couple of hours to move their car will in many cases just not be possible.
The present charges constitute a tax on the sick and I seriously question whether paying a private company over £500,000 to administer both car parks constitutes good value for money.
The Royal Shrewsbury Hospital (RSH) collected £751,944 and the Princess Royal £546,776 with £15,315 being collected via fine enforcements. It also reveals that the private company that administers both car parks was paid £526,677 for its services.
I will be writing to the PRH Trust asking for all charges to be capped at £1 per visit until 2013 and for the Trust to bring forward proposals to scrap the charge altogether by 2014.
The founding principle of the NHS was that it would offer free-at-the-point-of-delivery healthcare. Surely this should apply whether you go to hospital as a patient, as a visitor or a member of staff. For patients attending the PRH for out-patient treatment and visitors concerned with the health of their families, worrying about the cost of parking is the last thing they need, and as hospital procedures are notoriously unpredictable, having to rush out after a couple of hours to move their car will in many cases just not be possible.
The present charges constitute a tax on the sick and I seriously question whether paying a private company over £500,000 to administer both car parks constitutes good value for money.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Compulsory voting?
A period of opposition provides Labour members and supporters the time and the space to think through how it can set about renewing its structures, its systems and above all its ideas and policies. One area that will continue to be debated and discussed at local, regional and national levels is the need for electoral reform.
So far we have heard a good deal about PR, AV and House of Lords reform but little about any reforms to the voting process itself. One possibility is to investigate the introduction of compulsory voting. The term 'compulsory voting' is a bit of a misnomer, it really is about compulsory casting of ballots (pedantic I know but important nonetheless).
Personally I am quite attracted by the idea of making ballot casting compulsory, mainly because:
1. It can help improve turnout
2. It leaves parties free to campaign on policies, rather than focusing huge efforts on 'getting out the vote'. It can also reduce the impact of better finance campaigns and reduce the incidents of negative campaigning.
3. It can help create/enhance a sense of community, as everyone is in it together. It is also a means of reducing social exclusion where those that don't vote end up without any policies geared towards them.
I know that there are many reasons why we shouldn't make voting compulsory but I do think we need to have the debate nationally, indeed can we afford not to?
So far we have heard a good deal about PR, AV and House of Lords reform but little about any reforms to the voting process itself. One possibility is to investigate the introduction of compulsory voting. The term 'compulsory voting' is a bit of a misnomer, it really is about compulsory casting of ballots (pedantic I know but important nonetheless).
Personally I am quite attracted by the idea of making ballot casting compulsory, mainly because:
1. It can help improve turnout
2. It leaves parties free to campaign on policies, rather than focusing huge efforts on 'getting out the vote'. It can also reduce the impact of better finance campaigns and reduce the incidents of negative campaigning.
3. It can help create/enhance a sense of community, as everyone is in it together. It is also a means of reducing social exclusion where those that don't vote end up without any policies geared towards them.
I know that there are many reasons why we shouldn't make voting compulsory but I do think we need to have the debate nationally, indeed can we afford not to?
Monday, November 14, 2011
Faith and politics can mix, indeed they must
A couple of years ago Michael Sandel delivered his excellent second Reith Lecture and looked at the relationship between morality and politics, more specifically the interaction between religiously inspired morality and politics. He argued, correctly in my view, that you cannot remove morality from political discourse and so it is far better to have it out in public.
As the recent protests outside St Paul's have demonstrated, in the UK we tend to discourage our clergymen from talking about politics and our politicians from talking about faith, we famously ‘don’t do God.’ Why?I believe that it has long been the case that too many people – particularly those who take a left of centre approach to politics – make the mistake of failing to acknowledge the power of faith in people’s lives.
With debate raging about the rise of the far-right and the failure of the body politic I wonder if it isn’t time for those who espouse the “progressive” agenda to debate just how to reconcile faith with our modern, pluralistic democracy. Too often politicians try and avoid any discussion about religious values altogether – fearful of offending anyone and claiming that politics and religion should never mix.
In 2007, when addressing the 50th anniversary convention of his own denomination, the United Church of Christ, the then Senator Barack Obama, argued that the religious right had “hijacked” faith and divided his country by exploiting issues like abortion, same-sex marriage and school prayer. More interestingly he then went onto praise the people of faith who were using their influence to try to unite Americans against problems like poverty, AIDS, the lack of universal health care, Darfur and the effects of climate change.
Yet surely the reality of all political engagement is that we have to meet people where they are – even if we do not agree with or even approve of where they are. If so called ‘progressive’ politicians are to communicate their hopes and values in a way that is relevant to the lives of others, then they cannot abandon the field of religious discourse.In my view secularists are wrong when they ask – more often insist – that believers leave their religion at the door before entering into the arena of public debate.
The majority of great reformers in British history – from Wilberforce to Keir Hardie – were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. I recognise that democratic engagement will and should make demands of religious believers. It will demand that those who are religiously motivated act to turn their concerns into universal, rather than faith-specific, values. Democratic engagement will also demand that the values espoused by people of faith be subject to argument and debate.
What is needed is a sense of proportion and a willingness – on the part of both believers and non-believers – to engage in public debate openly and fair-mindedly. Many people in Britain today are looking for a deeper, fuller conversation about religion and politics.
This then is the challenge for those who describe themselves as progressive politicians. They too must become more “fair minded” more willing to engage with people of faith so that they might recognise some overlapping values that both religious and secular people share when it comes to the moral and material direction of modern Britain.
As the recent protests outside St Paul's have demonstrated, in the UK we tend to discourage our clergymen from talking about politics and our politicians from talking about faith, we famously ‘don’t do God.’ Why?I believe that it has long been the case that too many people – particularly those who take a left of centre approach to politics – make the mistake of failing to acknowledge the power of faith in people’s lives.
With debate raging about the rise of the far-right and the failure of the body politic I wonder if it isn’t time for those who espouse the “progressive” agenda to debate just how to reconcile faith with our modern, pluralistic democracy. Too often politicians try and avoid any discussion about religious values altogether – fearful of offending anyone and claiming that politics and religion should never mix.
In 2007, when addressing the 50th anniversary convention of his own denomination, the United Church of Christ, the then Senator Barack Obama, argued that the religious right had “hijacked” faith and divided his country by exploiting issues like abortion, same-sex marriage and school prayer. More interestingly he then went onto praise the people of faith who were using their influence to try to unite Americans against problems like poverty, AIDS, the lack of universal health care, Darfur and the effects of climate change.
Yet surely the reality of all political engagement is that we have to meet people where they are – even if we do not agree with or even approve of where they are. If so called ‘progressive’ politicians are to communicate their hopes and values in a way that is relevant to the lives of others, then they cannot abandon the field of religious discourse.In my view secularists are wrong when they ask – more often insist – that believers leave their religion at the door before entering into the arena of public debate.
The majority of great reformers in British history – from Wilberforce to Keir Hardie – were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. I recognise that democratic engagement will and should make demands of religious believers. It will demand that those who are religiously motivated act to turn their concerns into universal, rather than faith-specific, values. Democratic engagement will also demand that the values espoused by people of faith be subject to argument and debate.
What is needed is a sense of proportion and a willingness – on the part of both believers and non-believers – to engage in public debate openly and fair-mindedly. Many people in Britain today are looking for a deeper, fuller conversation about religion and politics.
This then is the challenge for those who describe themselves as progressive politicians. They too must become more “fair minded” more willing to engage with people of faith so that they might recognise some overlapping values that both religious and secular people share when it comes to the moral and material direction of modern Britain.
Tuesday, November 01, 2011
Time for a new liberation theology
Watching events unfold around the protests near to St Paul's Cathedral in London one could be forgiven for believing that faith is mainly about escapism and that it can rarely be a force for good in society. I am not so sure. The strap line to my blog reads as follows: "Aspire not to have more but to be more." These were the words of Oscar Romero, the archbishop of San Salvador, who was assassinated in 1980 by the pro-US military junta who then ran El Salvador.
Romero was an advocate of what became known as liberation theology, a movement which took root throughout Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s and focused on helping the poor and oppressed, even if that meant confronting political powers. It was a theology that was later to be severely criticised as a "fundamental threat" to the church by one Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who is now better known as Pope Benedict XVI.
In the past few years I have become something of an "armchair" Catholic. Why? Mainly because when I do attend mass I hear a good deal about the evils of gay adoption or about why I should no longer support Amnesty International but rarely do I hear any talk about the need for "preferential option for the poor." Our present Pope is, in my view, all to keen on encouraging his flock to "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's". So too with some of the clergy associated with St Paul's who appear to openly advocate the view that politics and faith are separate arenas and that the two cannot, indeed should not, mix. This results in the Christian faith becoming increasingly irrelevant to the life of the modern man.
By modern man I, of course, mean the "poor man". It is easy to forget that the vast majority of people who inhabit the planet with us live below the poverty line, in poor housing with no access to proper health care and a life expectancy that is decades shorter than that of the minority who live in the affluent west. In today's economic climate there is an even greater need for the voices of liberation to be heard. The present global distribution of goods and services allows a relatively small minority of wealthy groups and ruling classes to use their power and influence to perpetuate macro-economic and political structures which exploit the labour and lives of the vast majority of the planet's population.
Or take the deep and widespread oppression of women, along with the elderly, and children dependent upon women, in all patriarchal societies around the globe where women and their dependants are dehumanised and depersonalised. Are the Christian churches working to further liberate women in these settings, or do they silently support the structures that keep things as they are?
So we either need a new liberation theology or we need the church to be liberated. We need a church that offers hope – not a jam-tomorrow kind of hope, rather the hope that the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard described as the "passion for the possible". We need a church that can show that it understands that what people need is to believe that things will, and can, be better. In other words, we need the church to renew itself and we need a theology that will actively seek and proclaim the liberation of people from poverty, injustice and persecution – all people, regardless of their faith or their background.
The true message of liberation will always result in some people feeling uneasy. To side, as many liberation theologians in the 1960s and 1970s did, against injustice, to commit one's life to the poor is not a political stance but a moral one.
The true message of hope, of a promise that the world can be fairer, more just and less divided often results in giving comfort to the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. If that was what I could hear and reflect on each week I would have no problem getting up out from my armchair!
Romero was an advocate of what became known as liberation theology, a movement which took root throughout Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s and focused on helping the poor and oppressed, even if that meant confronting political powers. It was a theology that was later to be severely criticised as a "fundamental threat" to the church by one Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who is now better known as Pope Benedict XVI.
In the past few years I have become something of an "armchair" Catholic. Why? Mainly because when I do attend mass I hear a good deal about the evils of gay adoption or about why I should no longer support Amnesty International but rarely do I hear any talk about the need for "preferential option for the poor." Our present Pope is, in my view, all to keen on encouraging his flock to "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's". So too with some of the clergy associated with St Paul's who appear to openly advocate the view that politics and faith are separate arenas and that the two cannot, indeed should not, mix. This results in the Christian faith becoming increasingly irrelevant to the life of the modern man.
By modern man I, of course, mean the "poor man". It is easy to forget that the vast majority of people who inhabit the planet with us live below the poverty line, in poor housing with no access to proper health care and a life expectancy that is decades shorter than that of the minority who live in the affluent west. In today's economic climate there is an even greater need for the voices of liberation to be heard. The present global distribution of goods and services allows a relatively small minority of wealthy groups and ruling classes to use their power and influence to perpetuate macro-economic and political structures which exploit the labour and lives of the vast majority of the planet's population.
Or take the deep and widespread oppression of women, along with the elderly, and children dependent upon women, in all patriarchal societies around the globe where women and their dependants are dehumanised and depersonalised. Are the Christian churches working to further liberate women in these settings, or do they silently support the structures that keep things as they are?
So we either need a new liberation theology or we need the church to be liberated. We need a church that offers hope – not a jam-tomorrow kind of hope, rather the hope that the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard described as the "passion for the possible". We need a church that can show that it understands that what people need is to believe that things will, and can, be better. In other words, we need the church to renew itself and we need a theology that will actively seek and proclaim the liberation of people from poverty, injustice and persecution – all people, regardless of their faith or their background.
The true message of liberation will always result in some people feeling uneasy. To side, as many liberation theologians in the 1960s and 1970s did, against injustice, to commit one's life to the poor is not a political stance but a moral one.
The true message of hope, of a promise that the world can be fairer, more just and less divided often results in giving comfort to the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. If that was what I could hear and reflect on each week I would have no problem getting up out from my armchair!
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Poppy pride or Poppy fascism?
In recent years Jon Snow, the excellent Channel 4 News presenter, has created a huge stir regarding his decision not to wear a red poppy on TV during the weeks leading up to Remembrance Day. A couple of years ago Snow stated:
"I am begged to wear an Aids ribbon, a breast cancer ribbon, a Marie Curie flower ... You name it, from the Red Cross to the RNIB, they send me stuff to wear to raise awareness, and I don't. And in those terms, and those terms alone, I do not and will not wear a poppy. Additionally there is a rather unpleasant breed of poppy fascism out there - 'he damned well must wear a poppy!' Well I do, in my private life, but I am not going to wear it or any other symbol on air."
Personally I like and admire Jon Snow. Indeed I think he is one of the nation's best - if not the best - broadcast journalists and rightly commands huge respect from both his peers and the public at large. But on this issue I am not sure that I totally agree with him. What is wrong with wearing the odd "symbol" on air and surely we can all make exceptions? Jon's logic appears to be that because he is unable to publicly promote all of the causes that he is asked to support he simply won't support any of them. This is a bit like arguing that because I can't give to all of the charities that ask for my help I won't give to any charity.
The poppy is 'The' symbol of remembrance. We do not diminish anyone by wearing it, least of all the veterans. Diminishing the debt we owe our predecessors would be accomplished by resigning ourselves to the notion that we cannot comprehend what happened. We undermine the notion of Remembrance Day by lack of reflection, not flippantly wearing, or not wearing, a poppy.
I strongly believe that focusing on the future is done by reflecting on the past. Wearing the poppy symbolises that an individual, at the very least, acknowledges the past. A poppy has never been a substitute for action - no symbol ever is - but we must be sure that what the poppy symbolises is not lost on those who seek to build upon our freedoms.
So I will be wearing my poppy this November. Out of some misguided sense of jingoistic pride? No. Out of respect and gratitude? Yes. Why? Because the act of remembrance and the wearing of a poppy is a very small price to pay.
"I am begged to wear an Aids ribbon, a breast cancer ribbon, a Marie Curie flower ... You name it, from the Red Cross to the RNIB, they send me stuff to wear to raise awareness, and I don't. And in those terms, and those terms alone, I do not and will not wear a poppy. Additionally there is a rather unpleasant breed of poppy fascism out there - 'he damned well must wear a poppy!' Well I do, in my private life, but I am not going to wear it or any other symbol on air."
Personally I like and admire Jon Snow. Indeed I think he is one of the nation's best - if not the best - broadcast journalists and rightly commands huge respect from both his peers and the public at large. But on this issue I am not sure that I totally agree with him. What is wrong with wearing the odd "symbol" on air and surely we can all make exceptions? Jon's logic appears to be that because he is unable to publicly promote all of the causes that he is asked to support he simply won't support any of them. This is a bit like arguing that because I can't give to all of the charities that ask for my help I won't give to any charity.
The poppy is 'The' symbol of remembrance. We do not diminish anyone by wearing it, least of all the veterans. Diminishing the debt we owe our predecessors would be accomplished by resigning ourselves to the notion that we cannot comprehend what happened. We undermine the notion of Remembrance Day by lack of reflection, not flippantly wearing, or not wearing, a poppy.
I strongly believe that focusing on the future is done by reflecting on the past. Wearing the poppy symbolises that an individual, at the very least, acknowledges the past. A poppy has never been a substitute for action - no symbol ever is - but we must be sure that what the poppy symbolises is not lost on those who seek to build upon our freedoms.
So I will be wearing my poppy this November. Out of some misguided sense of jingoistic pride? No. Out of respect and gratitude? Yes. Why? Because the act of remembrance and the wearing of a poppy is a very small price to pay.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Ed Miliband needs show that politics is about more than the desire to wrong foot your opponent
The sad truth is that (despite a few notable exceptions) the last government did not make it easy for the electorate to vote Labour with any enthusiasm. On the doorstep the divide between the concerns of core Labour voters and those of a PR-fixated cabinet never seemed wider. In fairness though; the history of Labour governments was ever thus. Since the 1920s the story goes something like this: Labour supporters are near euphoric when victory is achieved there is then a period of hard slog as the party faces up to the harsh responsibilities of being in government. The party then accuses the leadership of betrayal and the leadership accuses the party of ingratitude. Supporters then become disillusioned which leads to defeat at the polls. We then experience a long period of Tory government before the next outbreak of euphoria and so on and so forth.
After an unprecedented 13 straight years in power many of Labour's own members are not certain what they want. Many want the party to be both passionately principled and sensibly pragmatic; to be a party that proudly honours its past while not neglecting to shape both its and the nation's future; to champion the state while being part of the market; to tackle poverty but also support aspiration. Ed Miliband stood for the leadership of the Labour party on a platform that argued that the renewal that was undertaken in order to gain power in 1997 needs to be repeated if Labour is win at the next election. In the mid-1990s Labour successfully occupied the centre ground, it modernised and reached out beyond its own activists and turned the Tories into a replica of what it itself used to be – a party with a narrow base, a party obsessed about the wrong things and a party seen as old fashioned and out of touch.
Can Labour win under Ed Miliband? Of course it can but I strongly believe that the best prospects of future success for our party lie not in the puerile tactics of the spin doctor; politics has to be about more that the desire to wrong foot your opponent. The prospects for future success for Labour lies not in defending the status quo of what is still a highly unequal Britain, rather it is in working with the British people to help rid our nation of some ugly realities such as child poverty and the still endemic inequalities in both health and education, inequalities that could well be even further entrenched once some of the savage and unnecessary cuts begin to fully impact.
The politics of ambition and optimism must also be the politics of principle - we should attack our opponents for what they espouse, for their policies and not for their personal shortcomings. So in his speech next week I hope that Ed will put the case that for a politics that seeks the liberation of people from poverty, injustice and persecution. He needs to show that a renewed Labour party will seek to better reflect the aspirations of ordinary people whilst being realistic about the challenges that lie ahead. Ambition, hope and aspiration are far more appealing than a constant reciting of the achievements of the past.
Ed has been consistent about the need for the Labour party to be clearer about what we stand for as a movement and for the need for the party to reach out to the communities that it seeks to represent and support. He now needs to show how, under his leadership, our party can set about winning back the trust and confidence of the British people.
After an unprecedented 13 straight years in power many of Labour's own members are not certain what they want. Many want the party to be both passionately principled and sensibly pragmatic; to be a party that proudly honours its past while not neglecting to shape both its and the nation's future; to champion the state while being part of the market; to tackle poverty but also support aspiration. Ed Miliband stood for the leadership of the Labour party on a platform that argued that the renewal that was undertaken in order to gain power in 1997 needs to be repeated if Labour is win at the next election. In the mid-1990s Labour successfully occupied the centre ground, it modernised and reached out beyond its own activists and turned the Tories into a replica of what it itself used to be – a party with a narrow base, a party obsessed about the wrong things and a party seen as old fashioned and out of touch.
Can Labour win under Ed Miliband? Of course it can but I strongly believe that the best prospects of future success for our party lie not in the puerile tactics of the spin doctor; politics has to be about more that the desire to wrong foot your opponent. The prospects for future success for Labour lies not in defending the status quo of what is still a highly unequal Britain, rather it is in working with the British people to help rid our nation of some ugly realities such as child poverty and the still endemic inequalities in both health and education, inequalities that could well be even further entrenched once some of the savage and unnecessary cuts begin to fully impact.
The politics of ambition and optimism must also be the politics of principle - we should attack our opponents for what they espouse, for their policies and not for their personal shortcomings. So in his speech next week I hope that Ed will put the case that for a politics that seeks the liberation of people from poverty, injustice and persecution. He needs to show that a renewed Labour party will seek to better reflect the aspirations of ordinary people whilst being realistic about the challenges that lie ahead. Ambition, hope and aspiration are far more appealing than a constant reciting of the achievements of the past.
Ed has been consistent about the need for the Labour party to be clearer about what we stand for as a movement and for the need for the party to reach out to the communities that it seeks to represent and support. He now needs to show how, under his leadership, our party can set about winning back the trust and confidence of the British people.
You have to grow not cut your way out of a recession
This was first broadcast in 2009 - given today's uncertainty in the markets it is worth looking at again.
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Labour must reaffirm its preferential option for the poor
To be honest with you many people like myself - in full-time employment, with mortgage rates at an all time low etc - have been relatively unaffected by the cuts imposed by the Tory-led coalition government. However as the IFS reported earlier in the year, George Osborne's spending cuts are - and will continue to - hitting the poorest far harder than the better off.
Over 100 years ago Seebohm Rowntree carried out some preliminary research into the amounts and types of foods, the levels of rents, cost of heating and lighting, etc. deemed necessary to maintain 'physical efficiency'. Rowntree’s estimates of the income needed to avoid poverty were set deliberately low in order to test whether there was any level of income at which people could not maintain a non-poor lifestyle no matter how hard they tried. In his report Rowntree distinguished between:
a. ‘primary’ poverty – families whose income was insufficient for the maintenance even of ‘physical efficiency’, and
b. ‘secondary’ poverty – families whose income would have been sufficient for the maintenance of 'physical efficiency' were it not that some portion of it was absorbed by other expenditure.
When you read Rowntree’s report today, especially in light of the savage cuts to welfare, housing and adult social care, one is left contemplating exactly how we might today define what physical efficiency means. For Rowntree it meant the following:
'A family living upon the scale allowed for must never spend a penny on railway fare or omnibus. They must never go into the country unless they walk. They must never purchase a half penny newspaper or spend a penny to buy a ticket for a popular concert. They must write no letters to absent children, for they cannot afford to pay the postage. They must never contribute anything to their church or chapel, or give any help to a neighbour which costs them money. They cannot save nor can they join a sick club or trade union, because they cannot pay the necessary subscriptions. The children must have no pocket money for dolls, marbles or sweets. The father must smoke no tobacco and drink no beer. The mother must never buy any pretty clothes for herself or her children, the character of the family wardrobe as for the family diet being governed by the regulation nothing must be bought but that which is absolutely necessary for the maintenance of physical health and what is bought must be of the plainest and most economical description'.
So how, exactly, will today's poor be affected by these draconian, brutal and according to many commentators, unnecessary cuts? The coalition cabinet is drawn almost exclusively from the financial elite, people who simply have no concept of what 'physical efficiency' means for the millions of their fellow citizens who exist on modest incomes but who will bear the brunt of this ideologically driven spending round. Too many of Mr Cameron’s Conservatives are made up of the “right kind of people” – his people: privately educated and from a background of immense wealth and privilege. Under Cameron, the Tories still believe the role of government is to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of those who embrace their own particular political, economic and social outlook.
If Labour is to expose the ideological recklessness of these cuts then it must continue to put the case for an alternative approach whilst at the same time highlighting what these cuts will do to further entrench the ugly realities of health, education and housing inequality in Britain.
Rowntree's 1901 report exposed the senseless, soul destroying and economically dire implications of a laissez faire, non-interventionist state - we owe it to today's poor to ensure that his sound advice and analysis are not dismissed on the grounds of of the inevitable consequences of deficit reduction. If we really are 'all in this together' then we cannot allow millions of people to be condemned to live lives that result in physical insufficiency.
Politics that seeks the liberation of people from poverty, injustice and persecution can be a powerful force for change. At home and abroad perhaps it is time for Labour to make a preferential option for the poor. It is time to take sides and end the political cross-dressing of the 1990s. As a political party it is time to be clear about who we are, who we were and what we want to become.
Over 100 years ago Seebohm Rowntree carried out some preliminary research into the amounts and types of foods, the levels of rents, cost of heating and lighting, etc. deemed necessary to maintain 'physical efficiency'. Rowntree’s estimates of the income needed to avoid poverty were set deliberately low in order to test whether there was any level of income at which people could not maintain a non-poor lifestyle no matter how hard they tried. In his report Rowntree distinguished between:
a. ‘primary’ poverty – families whose income was insufficient for the maintenance even of ‘physical efficiency’, and
b. ‘secondary’ poverty – families whose income would have been sufficient for the maintenance of 'physical efficiency' were it not that some portion of it was absorbed by other expenditure.
When you read Rowntree’s report today, especially in light of the savage cuts to welfare, housing and adult social care, one is left contemplating exactly how we might today define what physical efficiency means. For Rowntree it meant the following:
'A family living upon the scale allowed for must never spend a penny on railway fare or omnibus. They must never go into the country unless they walk. They must never purchase a half penny newspaper or spend a penny to buy a ticket for a popular concert. They must write no letters to absent children, for they cannot afford to pay the postage. They must never contribute anything to their church or chapel, or give any help to a neighbour which costs them money. They cannot save nor can they join a sick club or trade union, because they cannot pay the necessary subscriptions. The children must have no pocket money for dolls, marbles or sweets. The father must smoke no tobacco and drink no beer. The mother must never buy any pretty clothes for herself or her children, the character of the family wardrobe as for the family diet being governed by the regulation nothing must be bought but that which is absolutely necessary for the maintenance of physical health and what is bought must be of the plainest and most economical description'.
So how, exactly, will today's poor be affected by these draconian, brutal and according to many commentators, unnecessary cuts? The coalition cabinet is drawn almost exclusively from the financial elite, people who simply have no concept of what 'physical efficiency' means for the millions of their fellow citizens who exist on modest incomes but who will bear the brunt of this ideologically driven spending round. Too many of Mr Cameron’s Conservatives are made up of the “right kind of people” – his people: privately educated and from a background of immense wealth and privilege. Under Cameron, the Tories still believe the role of government is to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of those who embrace their own particular political, economic and social outlook.
If Labour is to expose the ideological recklessness of these cuts then it must continue to put the case for an alternative approach whilst at the same time highlighting what these cuts will do to further entrench the ugly realities of health, education and housing inequality in Britain.
Rowntree's 1901 report exposed the senseless, soul destroying and economically dire implications of a laissez faire, non-interventionist state - we owe it to today's poor to ensure that his sound advice and analysis are not dismissed on the grounds of of the inevitable consequences of deficit reduction. If we really are 'all in this together' then we cannot allow millions of people to be condemned to live lives that result in physical insufficiency.
Politics that seeks the liberation of people from poverty, injustice and persecution can be a powerful force for change. At home and abroad perhaps it is time for Labour to make a preferential option for the poor. It is time to take sides and end the political cross-dressing of the 1990s. As a political party it is time to be clear about who we are, who we were and what we want to become.
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