I’m back. Regular readers know very well where I’ve been so I won’t go on about how lovely it was and I have to say it’s very hard to come back to the grey skies of Norfolk and today’s torrential rain. We needed it for the garden but why couldn’t it have fallen out of the skies when I was elsewhere?
I’ve been beefing up on the Welfare Reform Bill (second reading in the Lords coming up 13 September) and getting up to speed again on the Health Bill and how it’s shaping up behind the scenes. I was stimulated to write this blog by Lord Knight’s plea (blog 11.08) that the Government should ditch its current legislative programme and concentrate on economic and social crises and leave the Police, the NHS and Lords Reform to another day. On the face of it that seems attractive but both the Welfare Reform Bill and NHS bills are in the Government’s first term because they are an attempt to address the future economic affordability of social welfare and healthcare, leaving aside for the moment whether these bills will do what the Government hopes. We can only address the deficit by a cultural shift in our expectations of what the State will do for us and by a radical shift in attitudes to State intervention in lifestyle choices that are enabled by the State but which generate an unintentional moral hazard.
Debates in the media about welfare reform are often polarised between the doves, that is those who see only the ‘deserving poor and disabled’ that are to be disadvantaged by tightening up the system of support and the hawks who see benefit scroungers and cheats round every corner. The truth is that the levels of dependency in society are fluid. The vast majority of people in receipt of benefits of course fall into neither category but are merely making ends meet in a way that makes legitimate sense to them and have no alternative but depend on them. But there are also huge numbers of people who do not consciously think about the alternatives because they don’t have to and there is no support to help them. I have personally witnessed in my professional life many people with mental health problems who had to give up work during a bad period but who should have been assisted, insisted, coerced back into the workplace for the sake of their future health but whose life was the blighted for many years after by a system which encouraged them to remain unwell and indeed insisted that they should. I have seen in my own family what happens when an apparently minor injury turns into a chronic disability and quite unconsciously perpetuates dependence. Of course the vast majority of people who are in receipt of benefits do not consciously make these choices but some unconsciously do make choices that are in no-one’s best interests in the long term. Putting in a universal system that is implemented fairly will be a challenge. A Bill is one thing, how it is enacted in Job Centres around the country is another.
A breath of fresh air from,and clear thinking by the noble Baroness. Point by point clarity!Grazie!
Your “beefing up”, on Welfare and “Health” respectively, I strongly move that every one involved read the following before further opening their mouth, putting pen, raising a hand to vote, or in any other way participating in either of these two imminently white-hot Issues:
1. “Living In The End Times” by Slavoj Zizek
especially the Afterword at the close of which we read that Governance “is today not the name of a solution but the name of a (big) problem: the problem of the “Commons” in all its dimensions… Whatever the Solution might be”
(including new sub-legislations such as UK Welfare and “Health”)
“it will have to solve this (biggest) Problem”.
2. “The Chaos Point” by Ervin Laszlo as both author and compiling-editor, the closing two pages 207 -208 “As yet, the sum total of our current efforts does not match the depth and urgency of the necessary transformation. But if we act together with vision, foresight, and commitment, we can lay the foundations of a global community that is both peaceful and sustainable…As global citizens, our top planetary priority is now to create a worldwide transformation…We accordingly issue this urgent call to all the peoples of the world to deepen our awareness of both the dangers and the opportunities of the global crisis…for the survival and wellbeing of all the peoples of the human community and flowering of all life on Earth”.
3. The seven pages Preface to “Awareness Through Movement”; one notes that ‘awareness’ is useless unless it links-forward with better-self-use and thereby better mutual-respect and sober respect for our Lifesupports:
“It should be further realised that as changes take place in the self, new and hitherto unrecognised difficulties will be discovered. The consciousness previously rejected them either from fear or because of pain, and it is only as self-confidence increases that it becomes possible to identify them”.
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The focal recommendation I would make, for both Welfare and “Health”
(very many Thinkers and GPs agree that the NHS has never been a successful Health-building service, simply because it has been so focused on, and successful against, Illnesses)
is to
(1)(a) clearly separate “supporting and improving the health and longterm wellbeing of the person” from
(b) the excellent, but still confusedly-constituted NHS, for diagnosing, treating and ‘caring for’ Illnesses, through Medications, Clinics, Hospitals, Patients-Groups, and overly-dominant Robust and Mechanistic models that wastefully inhibit both Holistic and Alternative therapies and educational-avenues.
(2) Educational reform for the 75% Lifeplace, as distinct from Training improvements for the 25% multifold-range of Workplaces.
“Life” requires us to be fully self-movable self-respecting, and mutually others-respecting;
whereas “Work” only requires us to be job-skill-focused.
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It is difficult and impossible to find a democratic-discussion going forward, about these urgent essentials;
so I personally very much doubt whether they have even been included, let alone been core- embedded, in the legislations that have already been written and are set inaccessibly under the various and esotericly-powered ‘closed-democratic-processes’ of Britain’s governance-hierarchy and of the two legislative Houses.
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It’s about time those who write consistently about the European or Western tax payer being ready to fund the ‘global population’ was outed for the dupe it is.
We are funding governments who believe they are going to play ‘philanthropist’ with our money, whilst they conceal the reality. And that is, if we gave all we earn every penny, all of us, collectively, it would not be enough to do what they are trying to sell us on.
For God’s sake, they cannot even run this tiny country as should be for a truly open cradle to grave caring society.
Have you not seen with your own eyes we have people starving. The government is already calling for food boxes from the public to feed those in our country who are victims in this mess. Hospitals are being run akin to a third world regime, and ours are sometimes performing far worse than theirs. Our elderly are bumped off rather than feed them when they are sick through withdrawal of food.
We have thousands of homeless families and they are going to create more with Duncan Smith and his maniac policies. Throwing those already in social housing on to the street if they don’t dance to the tune of the State. And they are doing it under the guise of ‘we want to give you a life by forcing you to work on slave wages.’ It’s called, ‘pay back time for benefits.’ Benefits we have already paid for don’t forget. Tax payers were promised from birth to grave care if you give us your money now.
Don’t be foolish enough to get out the lets beat the poor and disabled stick, for it is they who are to blame for this predicament we are in. What they are feeding is total crap. The banks stole our money and these people are using this inhuman line to save face, whilst they line their pockets even further. Look at what those in government and the Lords are doing. This, after they ran the country to its knees as the regulators kept quiet whilst the theft took place.
Globalisation is simply another way to rob us all, and it’s sold on the line of charity.
The charity they send world wide is not used to save the people they tell us it is. It is put into the pockets of corporations. To make more money for them and give them more power to play social games with our lives.
Broaden your horizons. Do your research and learn what is really going on, not what they are trying to sell you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bymJC2mxd_w
Now this starts off slow, but if you stay with it, it opens the mind somewhat.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NO24XmP1c5E&feature=fvwrel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-rPsDfgq7w&feature=related
Some philosophical questions need asking.
Lets take the Royals. They receive a subsidy from the taxpayer; they operate a family firm that turns a profit. This profit goes entirely to the Treasury and the royals get a percentage back. In effect the royals are being means tested and what must be applauded is they work hard toward self reliance to offset their subsidy.
Now lets take those on welfare that receive a subsidy from the taxpayer. The aim is to reduce their dependency on subsidy and to encourage them to keep a reducing amount as they work hard to move toward self reliance. Families not individuals are means tested during this process.
Now lets take the Commons. Each MP receives a subsidy from the taxpayer as MPs are not in a master servant employment relationship. Their subsidy is on the same basis as the royals. Why then is this ‘royal family’ not working to reduce their subsidy and why are MPs not means tested as families to limit their subsidy?
When MPs have to join the economic slavery of our prosperity then perhaps we might see progress and some understanding of what self reliance is all about and how very difficult it is to achieve on an ongoing basis.
Senex asks exactly the question which has been exercising my own thoughts in the last few days, and further consideration of it would be valuable.
If royalty have their hands in the till, and members of both chambers of parliament do too, and neither in a master servant relationship,where are the differences?
Let us leave Duchy property developments out of it and concentrate on the Civil list.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_list
an extract:
The cost of transport and security for the Royal Family, together with property maintenance and other sundry expenses, are covered by separate grants from individual Government Departments.
Is this the same arrangement for Members, “covered by the separate government departments” … or do they get their expenses from the Expenses office pure and simple?
If Members expenses are scrutinized as never before how is it that royalty expenses have not been similarly scrutinized?!
@Senex:
Give me a break???? The Royals do what for the benefit of being untaxed?
Can you please put it up front fully and in detail. And of course add to the story the standard of living they have, the minions they use, the way they don’t have to squeeze their toothpaste of a morning. And on and on.
They live in a manner that never reduces with inflation. In property that is up-kept by the tax payer. On top of that, the people are forced to accept whatever idiot they breed, even when they are totally unfit for the job or position they are taking on as their birthright.
Also, they can opt out at will and play at being a jockey or an Olympic contender. LOL. Some prefer the ‘look at me, I’m thin enough to wear designer clothes for free’ dress me public, I’m such a great advertisement for you servants. You owe it to me for the sacrifice I am making here.’ Then we are asked to pretend they are beauties, when anyone in their right mind can see, homely is being too kind. Kings new clothes comes to mind with a bang.
And lets open up the fact that whilst the rest of us are facing devastating cuts, the Royals have been at the privileged end of receiving a higher than ever increase in their ‘benefits’ paid by the hard work of the nations poverty stricken people.
The land you claim as theirs, called Crown estates, was stolen from individuals over the centuries and should be reclaimed without paying any annual ransom whatsoever. Now is a good time to end this fraud we have stood for, through ignorance, for so long.
Those coming up are barely able to claim kinship to a Royal line. An omen if ever there was one.
Senex,
I would support almost all of your general tone in this case. I would add that I believe that short of a revolution and constitutional change that otherwise some would see as beyond the power of the current regime, the civil list monies are quittance on royal lands which the UK constituted as general polity still derive benefit from currently. The whole issue of legitimacy of changes that go down to the very base of things is a separate issue but while acknowledging the Crown, private property and a number of other principles it would seem possible to argue that the CL is not a subsidy but a permanent rental which the crown cannot retract…
Spending Review statement to the House of Commons on 20 October 2010, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, announced that from 2013 the Civil List would be abolished. In its place, “the Royal Household will receive a new Sovereign Support Grant linked to a portion of the revenue of the Crown Estate.” The precise details have yet to be finalised by the Government, but it is expected that the Sovereign Support Grant will fund all of the official expenditure of the Monarchy, not just the expenditure currently borne by the Civil List.
Tripling their income on the nod perhaps?
Who said “Expenses”?!
(So many Italics in a Baroness Murphy blog – that’s rich !)
Point:
The neighbouring blogs by Lord Tyler (Hidden Wiring), Baroness Deech ( The right to decide), and Lord Norton (Is election the democratic option ? )
have the same hiddenly- paralysing, internally-lodged. foreign-body :
“How to Live Within Our Means and Within the Means of the Earth’s Lifesupports ?”
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Unfortunately reforming welfare is the most minor half of the equation in supporting disabled people like myself back into work. We also need tax reform in order to make it worthwhile. The very simple step of raising the personal tax threshold to a survivable £10,000 a year (as is currently a government ‘aspiration’) would make the £23.7 billion tax credit infrastructure redundant and the only ‘reform’ needed to the welfare system is to tweak the means-testing rules to disregard annual income beneath this level instead of the derisory £20 a week currently allowed.
http://falseeconomy.org.uk/campaigns/report/im-from-the-right-and-i-think-cuts-are-wrong
The current Welfare Reform Bill (don’t ask the details, we’ll decide on those later) seems to be financed by the equivalent of betting on a horse race using the winnings you expect to collect from it. Please send it back and point out to the commons that cheaper options you can actually pay for are not necessarily inferior to expensive options which can only be financed by debt.