Taking Advantage

Standby I am angry across several fronts. So UKplc is spending much more than it earns. Right. To bring the economy back towards a better balance the spending has to be cutback, quite hard so it is going to be painful. Right. I get all that. One significant area of spending that has 'got out of control' is welfare support. So the most vulnerable, least able to make any lifestyle changes, the sector totally dependant on the government support to pull themselves out of their problems will become the sector of our society in the frontline to make more savings, to rescue our failing economy.

That is all perfectly alright because as we all well know people who live off benefit are liars, or if not liars, fraudster, or not that then at least workshy or at the best living an extravagant lifestyle beyond their limited means. A lifestyle that any other sane person would immediately recognise as inappropriate. Our government, our high salaried politicians living a comfortable lifestyle look down on these lower income classes, distance themselves and actively promote the demonisation of these awful hopeless people dependant on welfare. They are to blame and therefore have put themselves beyond any compassion. Their own worst enemies. You and I of course realise that, though there are bound to be the odd individual that (is allowed to) get away with abusing the system, the majority are decent people trying very hard in impossible circumstances to give their children a safe and sheltered upbringing, to ensure the best start in life possible for them. Government speak is that they are workshy, afraid to do a decent days work, preferring the easy benefits income. The lack of any work opportunities are a direct result of the double dip recession the governement has been administering these last years. Somehow the victims of their policies are to be blamed for not 'wanting to work'.


It gets worse. Over many past decades the governement has funnelled money into social housing and built predominately three bedroom houses. The 'best' return for effot put in. Suddenly, with the demographic changes and the rise of single parent families, we have all these big houses under-occupied, rooms to spare. Brilliant, we will penalise these the weak and vulnerable for the failings of the governement past choices where they cannot justify the number of rooms occupied. Outside of the cities, there are almost nill alterantive to a three bedroom social house, right payback time, they have no choice, no where else to go so a nice steady cashstream. That will teach them, depending on the fair even handedness of the state benefit system.


Meanwhile of course, our mates, those affluent members of this society that our salaried politicians now aspire to mix amongst, adopting their lifestyle choices, continue to get their winter fuel payment. Unless they have voluntarily opted out. Now is that cynical or what. In a wide variety of ways the income streams of the very rich are explicitly protected by government actions. Afraid that any negative actions will frighten them away to other shores. Forgetting of course that everyone of us in this society has had to give up some, so that they, the wealthy minority, can take ever more of their entitlements.


I urge you to watch this video, Wealth inequalities in USA, because it is relevant to UKplc and a real eye-opener. It compares what people think is a fair distribution, low to high income, then contrast that with what these same people think is the actual gap between the lowest and the highest income and finally to reveals the actual and increasing gap between the highest and lowest. We are talking twenty fold. Eye-watering difference between the majority, including all the comfortable off middle incomes groups and the tiny few percent who are taking, not just a lions share but almost all of the available income. Watch the video, it sets it all out clearly and objectively, no party tub thumping. Relevant because for the last two decades our government has set its objective to increase the income divide. The rationale goes something along the lines of, those with get even more then they will spend more and it will trickle down and we all get to benefit. I have no objection to one favoured person having a gilded lilly, an incentive. When that gilded lilly is re-gilded and then again and again because what else do you do with wealth beyond contemplation. It cross over from being an incentive to being a obscentity. Which is where we are now. There is an ever increasing gap between those that have and those do not. An increasing gap, maybe not yet to USofA proportions but we too are well headed down the same route.


So what? Envy! No, because a society with big income inequality, is a sick society. The Spirit Level has explored exhaustively the relationship beteween all those social maliase we worry about. Binge drinking, under-aged sex, single parents, aggression, crime, you name it and failings within our society are aggravated by the extent of the divide. Does not make sense, yet it does. Low self-esteem, low self value and isolation from the heart of the society does result in self-deprecating behavior. The link is irrefuteable. The breakdown of our society we all sense but cannot quite pin down arises out of this ever increasing gap between the haves and the have nots. Social cohesion is just one aspect. We have to take a new tack and start to reduce the income inequality. We cannot pull all the poor up, the gap is too great, we have to rein in by big steps the wealth of those rich minorities. We must start to medicate our sick society back to health. In doing so we might even resolve some of the governments current problems of spend exceeding income. A spend not from the poorest sector of society I guess.

We have to put UKplc into reverse. Return once more to support the desperately needy in our society, give them the lifeline to help themselves out of their predicament. If for no other reason than that their despair taints and spoils all our enjoyment of the society we live in. Support that can only come from severely reining in the extravagant indecent wealth of the top earners. Do not think for one moment you can safely sit back and your government will blunder into the right lines of thought. They show no signs of understanding or sharing the evils that our poorest are forced by their policies to endure. Their focus appears to be how quickly they can get to lap the cream they are pouring into the coffers of the well off. 

No the reverse gear will only be found through people power. It is well past time for each of us to speak out and make sure your voice is heard loud and clear. Income inequality is immoral, unchecked wealth is a cancer in our society, it is wrong and it is harming us all. A divided society is a spoilt society.

Pulling Together

When a concern hits the Nation I have been surprised how, from across a very wide spectrum, all the people you talk to, from the extremes to rock solid traditionalist, there is a centralised opinion which conforms on the right response. Very pragmatic, largely conservative with a knuckle down and deal with it approach. Across the Nation we are more united in our responses to affairs that trouble us than you would think from the presentations showing our divided Nation. Within that broad spectrum of agreement on the direction needed as a response there are of course huge and passionate differences on how that response might be best implemented. That is were our diversity shows itself but that then is a healthy arena for debate, compromise and reaching consensus.

So long as there is a pause button. In highly charged situations say where a girl has been assaulted we do need a check to the Nations emotive response of tying the culprit to the whipping post. We need time for passions to cool and logic, reason and doubt to surface. Just maybe the culprit was a boy of same age and they had just finished playing a computer game, or the girl was a self harmer and it brought her pleasure, or a parent slapped her shin once for excessive outburst and the girl was given to drama, or a schizophrenic patient missed medication and found themselves in a wrong place and time or just that act of a middle aged immigrant known sexual repeat offender. We need time to pause and review before jumping in with solutions, no matter how overwhelmingly right they seem at the time in the heat of the moment.

So not a fast-response Nation, slow but not therefore ponderous, more measured. Neither uniform across our lands. Let us not reach a one size fits all solution but rather rejoice in all our regional differences, those nuances that lie between city, town and rural communities. Far better for a wide range of permutations on a theme than one lumbering insensitive road-roller of a solution. Variety brings the opportunity for novelty, freshness that new take that might just provide the right approach. Of course it also brings mistakes, erroneous conclusions, inept or inapt, which is where we need to talk. Tell each other what we are doing, compare and contrast with others, learn which ways work best, where and how. Together we can work towards ideal solutions for all of us, modified and adjusted to suit our local needs and limitations. We can work together, not under the weight of top heavy centralised bureau's of control and regulation, but collaboratively and confidently finding our own solutions whilst listening and learning from others in similar circumstance. Now that is what I call Politics.

Not Alone

Just one of those chance things in life, came across The Spirit Level and it has revealed an insight into society that I have been struggling with over all these posts.It has introduced a clarity of view as to where the problems lie. Not for me to paraphrase a carefully constructed argument, see for yourselves, but clearly the message it sets out is that the underlying root of all those problem we sense, fume against, feel impotent to do anything about, is, social inequality.

A couple of key thoughts perhaps to get you thinking along the right lines. We have long ago passed the point where any increase in wealth (you decide how you want to determine it) equates to a commensurate increase in security and health. Think, by way of comparison, of a third world person where a tin of clean water or a bowl of rice has immediate and large impact on their state of well-being. Next, our own personal insecurities are directly related to where we feel we are within the social order. Top dog struts proudly, whipping boy nervously peeks here there to see where the next put down is coming from. This social insecurity has been heightened by the breakdown in communities and knowing where and who you belong to. Then, the wider the gap between the haves and the havenots the more extreme are the symptoms that manifest themselves. It is almost counter intuitive, but low self-esteem, as a result of being low down in the pecking order, directly impacts on your personal well-being, likelihood to abuse, commit crime, the list goes on. Not the sole cause, not the only reason, but social deprivation, real or imagined, is a major driver.

At this point, poised to shout eureka, there are other minds out there all looking in roughly the same direction, I get a reality check. On past performance it takes fifty years from the first wave of enthusiasm for a new political understanding to work through up the layers of conservative rebuttal until it becomes the accepted norm when finally it can enter into the mainstream to become universally accepted and adopted. Fifty years!

What we all have to do is to use our own mastery of this new interconnected world to get the word out there. Spread as widely as possible. Take what you see and like and promulgate, contruct your own vision or borrow another's, it matters not. Just spread the word that we, us as a society, want a better place, a more equal place, a place where we are treated with the same respect we wish to give to others. It is just possible, together, we can foreshorten the fifty wait before something happens.