Breeding useless
Jan. 23rd, 2012 01:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peterbirksIt's hard to feel sympathy for Iain Duncan-Smith. In fact it's hard to feel anything for Iain Duncan-Smith – even contempt. But his latest argument for a cap on welfare payments at £25,000 a year does have a certain logic on its side. It's hard to justify even the rare high-profile examples of people living in £8,000 a month houses, paid for by the council.
What I find interesting about the whole affair is the line taken by those opposing the changes – particullarly the various funding lobbyists such as the Children's Society, the Bishops in the Lords and The Observer/Guardian in media-land.
That line is "innocent children will suffer". See, for example, http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/jan/22/housing-crisis-benefit-cuts?intcmp=239
Leaving aside the debatability about poverty being a relative concept (under the current definitions you just can't "cure" poverty -- even if everytbody earned exactly the same, because some households would have more working people than others) the logical flaw in this argument stares one in the face, and yet even the Conservatives fail to have the courage to mention it.
If children canot be allowed to suffer, then the best way to ensure a survivable, albeit in no way lavish, lifestyle without having to work is to have children. The rules as they stand encourage adults to use children (innocent bystanders) as an economic weapon. And there are no easy social or political solutions to this. It's not acceptable to say "yes, the innocent will suffer along with the guilty, but that's the parents' fault, not the state's". It's not acceptable to say "we will ensure that the children do not suffer economically by putting them into care". (And neither would it be wise to do it.)
But what puzzles me is, how hard can it be? It's not as if the current situation sees children not suffering. The child benefit money is paid to parents, not to the children, and there are clearly examples of where what little money there is, is spent by the parents on themselves. I've started buying much of my food from Lewisham market. If I spend a tenner I've got more than I can eat in a week, and that includes frying steak and chicken. Or, alternatively, I could buy four pizzas or a single big bucket of KFC.
I don't want to come out with the "they are all scroungers" line beloved by the likes of the Daily Mail, preferably accompanied by a Somalian refugee outside a six-bedroom house in Hampstead. I know that it's more complex than that. But to dismiss Duncan-Smith's arguments with the homily "but what about the children?" does little service to a complex problem. After all, you can ALWAYS use that argument to protest about cuts in expenditure. And if it's an argument that you can always use, then it isn't really an argument. Sadly, in real life, people suffer all the time through events which are no fault of their own. I'm afraid that I can't see what part of our Judeo-Christian heritage dictates that this should only apply to people over the age of 18, or 16, or 10, or whatever age to want to apply.
A stronger argument against such cuts is that it will breed social unrest in the future. But this strikes me as being based on other flawed arguments.
1) The most significant causes of unrest are the lack of a stable family and a feeling of exclusion from society. Paying more benefits won't solve that problem.
2) There are more effective ways of spending money to create a sense of inclusiveness within society than throwing child benefit payments at parents. TBH, give some of the examples that I see in Lewisham, these are teenage girls who do really love their kids (at least to start with) but who are utterly ill-equipped to cope with "real life" as we know it. For them "real life" is benefits. Maybe with a little off-the-books money on the side, and some free babysitting from granny (a slightly misleading term when the chances are that 'granny' is only just 40). All of this is a mess, but it's not a mess because benefits are or are not capped at £25k. It's a mess for a hole range of other reasons that, I suspect, will not be made better or worse by the introduction of a cap.
I've got no real bee in my bonnet about this issue, TBH. What irritates me is the lack of logic from both sides when it comes to approaching the issue. One side cries "but who will think of the children?" as if it were a simpleton Simpsons episode, and the other side has to respond "the children won't suffer".
No-one is allowed to ask the question: "when did being young and innocent start protecting you against bad things in life happening to you?
++++++++++++++++++++
What I find interesting about the whole affair is the line taken by those opposing the changes – particullarly the various funding lobbyists such as the Children's Society, the Bishops in the Lords and The Observer/Guardian in media-land.
That line is "innocent children will suffer". See, for example, http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/jan/22/housing-crisis-benefit-cuts?intcmp=239
However, figures produced for internal use by the Department for Work and Pensions reveal that thousands of children in families on benefits will be pushed into poverty, defined as homes where the income is below 60% of the median household income for families of a similar size.
Leaving aside the debatability about poverty being a relative concept (under the current definitions you just can't "cure" poverty -- even if everytbody earned exactly the same, because some households would have more working people than others) the logical flaw in this argument stares one in the face, and yet even the Conservatives fail to have the courage to mention it.
If children canot be allowed to suffer, then the best way to ensure a survivable, albeit in no way lavish, lifestyle without having to work is to have children. The rules as they stand encourage adults to use children (innocent bystanders) as an economic weapon. And there are no easy social or political solutions to this. It's not acceptable to say "yes, the innocent will suffer along with the guilty, but that's the parents' fault, not the state's". It's not acceptable to say "we will ensure that the children do not suffer economically by putting them into care". (And neither would it be wise to do it.)
But what puzzles me is, how hard can it be? It's not as if the current situation sees children not suffering. The child benefit money is paid to parents, not to the children, and there are clearly examples of where what little money there is, is spent by the parents on themselves. I've started buying much of my food from Lewisham market. If I spend a tenner I've got more than I can eat in a week, and that includes frying steak and chicken. Or, alternatively, I could buy four pizzas or a single big bucket of KFC.
I don't want to come out with the "they are all scroungers" line beloved by the likes of the Daily Mail, preferably accompanied by a Somalian refugee outside a six-bedroom house in Hampstead. I know that it's more complex than that. But to dismiss Duncan-Smith's arguments with the homily "but what about the children?" does little service to a complex problem. After all, you can ALWAYS use that argument to protest about cuts in expenditure. And if it's an argument that you can always use, then it isn't really an argument. Sadly, in real life, people suffer all the time through events which are no fault of their own. I'm afraid that I can't see what part of our Judeo-Christian heritage dictates that this should only apply to people over the age of 18, or 16, or 10, or whatever age to want to apply.
A stronger argument against such cuts is that it will breed social unrest in the future. But this strikes me as being based on other flawed arguments.
1) The most significant causes of unrest are the lack of a stable family and a feeling of exclusion from society. Paying more benefits won't solve that problem.
2) There are more effective ways of spending money to create a sense of inclusiveness within society than throwing child benefit payments at parents. TBH, give some of the examples that I see in Lewisham, these are teenage girls who do really love their kids (at least to start with) but who are utterly ill-equipped to cope with "real life" as we know it. For them "real life" is benefits. Maybe with a little off-the-books money on the side, and some free babysitting from granny (a slightly misleading term when the chances are that 'granny' is only just 40). All of this is a mess, but it's not a mess because benefits are or are not capped at £25k. It's a mess for a hole range of other reasons that, I suspect, will not be made better or worse by the introduction of a cap.
I've got no real bee in my bonnet about this issue, TBH. What irritates me is the lack of logic from both sides when it comes to approaching the issue. One side cries "but who will think of the children?" as if it were a simpleton Simpsons episode, and the other side has to respond "the children won't suffer".
No-one is allowed to ask the question: "when did being young and innocent start protecting you against bad things in life happening to you?
++++++++++++++++++++
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no subject
Date: 2012-01-23 06:11 pm (UTC)But you don't go far enough. Child benefits (paid specifically to the MOTHER, incidentally) are the tip of the iceberg. Unmarried serial mothers in their twenties don't just get their 40-something Granny to do free babysitting. Granny goes to the DWP and states that her unmarried and unemployed daughter is "incapable of caring for her many children", but that - out of the goodness of her own heart - Granny can help by becoming a FOSTER MOTHER to the children.
The Council, of course, laps this up. No colour-matching problem (tick), a family connection (tick), lives in the same area (tick). The application is fast-tracked.
This brings a monthly payment of £700 PER CHILD. Add in free dental treatment, free housing, free council tax, free school dinners, free tuition fees at college or Uni, free eyecare and glasses, free prescriptions and various other benefits and you're soon talking about serious money.
A woman with a convenient mother and eight children pulls in £75,000 a year. And that's in Streatham. No need to move to Hampstead to piss off the Daily Mail readers.
And are the children well-treated, with all this wealth? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. More money no more guarantees better treatment than less money guarantees worse.
And what do the children learn? That there are two routes to wealth. Crime and/or legally gaming the benefits system. We can apparently do nothing about the former. A benefits cap would begin to do something about the latter. But the benefits cap must only be the precursor to proper reform of the whole system. to remove its many perverse incentives.
When Jesus said "the poor are always with us", He was clearly thinking of a RELATIVE measure of poverty.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-24 10:52 pm (UTC)Oh well, you live and learn.
However: you're right: the system is a mess, and it's hardly unreasonable to look for solutions. Here's mine.
If people can't afford to live in London, ship them out elsewhere. Stuff benefit caps. The big problem here is that you have totally unproductive members of society in places where they are, by definition, going to be costing the welfare state twice as much as they would be in a less obnoxiously expensive part of the country.
Stuff this "right to buy" nonsense. If you have enough money to buy your Pimlico council flat (to use an example near to hand where I work), then that's fine. Otherwise, here's £5000 for relocation, and there are some pretty fine places in Wales and Northamptonshire and dare I say it the West Midlands that are far more affordable on a cap of £26,000 a year.
OTOH I think Birks is going overboard with the anti-child-campaigners thing. As he well knows, there is a long tail involved here. It isn't typical of benefit claimers in general (although it does, as you say, make a luvverly headline in the Daily Beast), and in all honesty I think the absolute, aggregated, sums are not that damaging.
I find myself in the unusual position of both agreeing with Duncan Smith in general, and with the Lords (Statutes, Amendments thereof) in particular.
I'm quite queasy about this.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-24 11:59 pm (UTC)Do you mean one of the synoptics?
Matthew 26:11
"The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me."
Mark 14:7
"The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me."
Luke misses it out altogether, which has been described as "cynical." Well, whatever. It's always fun to attribute meaningless discrimatory sentiments to a bunch of people dead these two thousand years. Some people claim it's because Luke was a Greek bastard, but not me. I think he had other means of expressing the thought.
Interestingly:
John 12:8
"You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me."
Are you beginning to get the drift?
It's no such thing as a commentary on the deserving/undeserving poor. It has nothing to do with the lumpen proletariat. It most certainly, and I am going to absolutely insist on this, has nothing to do with the concept of "a relative measure of poverty."
It's entirely focused on the anointment at Bethany. Unless you assume it's a profession of Jesus' megalomania (or alternative psychological weakness), it's a simple response to the question of whether to spend money on expensive oils right now, or else to save the money and give it to the poor.
There are, of course, two different ways to take this. You can pick what I assume is the Richard Dawkins position, which is "I am Jesus! I am morally bankrupt! Smear me with expensive unguents and let me wrestle a gigantic Judaean boar at 25/4 against!"
Or, alternatively, you could take the rather more sane view that it is an exhortation not to forget the present whilst you are promising to piss endless amounts of money down the drain on a cause that will never go away.
Sometimes, simple Christian doctrine can surprise you with its relevance.
---------
Sent from my Autotochthonous Throne as leader of the Pre-Trullan Greek Orthodox.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-26 09:19 am (UTC)I was, of course, working from a Dead Sea scroll, not the corrupt and selective post-Council of Trent versions that you cite.
But the point was that - with a relative definition of poverty - the poor must be always with us, however rich they become. One does not need to be the Son of God to spot that.
I was being ironic, not literal. You're not Amercian behind that pseudonym, are you?
no subject
Date: 2012-01-28 01:27 am (UTC)Yeah, that ex cathedra stuff: I knew what you meant. (Not post-Council of Trent stuff, btw: I thought about including the original Greek, plus relevant links to concordances, and then decided that even I will never veer quite so far off-topic.)
I think your point was:
'When Jesus said "the poor are always with us", He was clearly thinking of a RELATIVE measure of poverty.'
But maybe I'm taking your point too literally. Possibly it has nothing at all to do with what Jesus said. Arguably, this semi-mythical and ill-documented figure wasn't even thinking very clearly when he came up with his version of your point.
I therefore defer to your definition of your point.
Can't quite see what possible extra weight it gains by an ill-judged and entirely incorrect scriptural reference, though.
But then, I am, of course, American.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-28 01:37 am (UTC)Tricky thing, irony.
Doing my best to be conciliatory, I will point out that the following was aimed at your post, not Birks' (not always obvious on a blog):
"However: you're right: the system is a mess, and it's hardly unreasonable to look for solutions. Here's mine."
The other bit was just κατά τη γνώμη του παιχνιδιού.
(And no, I don't know what that means either. It just feels right.)
no subject
Date: 2012-01-24 12:06 pm (UTC)Wat? As someone who spends the best part of a tenner on lunch (nothing extravagant, just an Eat sandwich + soup for example) how do you live for a week on a tenner?
matt
no subject
Date: 2012-01-24 04:16 pm (UTC)Chickens - 2 for £3.99
Frying Steak, £5 for 6 portions of 6oz each
Scoop of Broccoli - £1
Scoop of leeks - £1
Scoop of mushrooms - £1
Lettuce and other salad leaves - £2
Sweet peppers £1
Tomatoes £1
Cucumbers (3) £1
Celery sticks (3) £1
Yoghurt (supermarket) £2
Eggs (12 medium), £2
Oats (organic, supermarket) £1
Cheap fish (6 portions) £3
Flour for bread £1.50 (wholemeal, white would be cheaper, supermarket)
Milk £2
Margarine, say £1
So that's £30 for a fortnight and there would be quite enough to survive breakfast, salad made for lunch and a light meal in the evening.
I consider an Eat sandwich the height of extravagance! And as for buying soup in a store -- their profit margin is about 2,000%. I always prepare my breakfast and salad lunch the night before.
Now, there are obviously some extras that I haven't included that are hard to allocate (salt, yeast, mustard, honey, marmite, sugar, sweeteners light coleslaw for the salad, other general stuff that goes to fill up the cupboard (tinned tomatoes for curries and stews, oxo cubes, rice, and so on) and, of course, coffee. Many of these I could buy cheaper if I made the effort, I admit. But adding all of these things in, I doubt that my food expenditure is much more than £25 a week, and, I am afraid, I throw stuff away!
So, not quite a tenner a week, but still remarkably cheap compared to the money wasted by buying foods ready-prepared by chains such as Eat, Pret a Manger or Simply M&S.
Pete
no subject
Date: 2012-01-24 10:56 pm (UTC)Mind you, this is Lewisham Market. The vile end location justifies the mean streets of battery hen-dom, as it were. If they had any sense, they'd rather be seen dead than alive.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-27 07:51 pm (UTC)I sort of feel that one should either be a vegetarian or accept that eating animals is what I do and all of this "nice treatment before the die" is a bit of a way to salve our conscience.
I know that it's more complicated than that and that there are shades of grey -- not least the relative taste of the chicken.
PJ
no subject
Date: 2012-01-28 01:51 am (UTC)(Not such a terrible bit of the world as I had always assumed, btw. London should promote the joys of Clerkenwell at one end and Archway at the other ... obviously most of the place sucks, for the standard reasons.)
Never tasted "grey," but then I have a relevant chicken-related anecdote featuring a condemned street in Oxford and a curry, so I may be more with you on this one than it seems.
I also agree with the conscience-salving thing. My conclusion is that I should strangle a fowl, gut a deer, bonk a fish on the head and shoot a stun-bolt through the brain of a cow, a goat and a sheep before I die. Possibly sooner than that. I remember school biology: the main thing about the rats were (a) the smell of fomaldehyde and (b) the fact that I wouldn't want to eat one.
But I'm basically with Hugh F-W on this.
The Islingtonian thing? Well, I'm forced to live in your rotten City. It's all very well to say "I will only consume the most cosseted fowl available," but unfortunately Sainsbury's supplies me with godawful tasteless battery chicken sandwiches (typically I have no cooking facilities for five days of the week) and that's what I get. Sometimes at 50% off. In passing, and in comparison, I should point out that vegetarians get ripped off. Given the 10/1 ratio, and even given the cost of production and distribution etc, one would assume that a decent vegetarian sandwich would be about half the price.
I blame supply and demand, but it would take too long to go into either...
... anyhoo, I don't see the problem.
Find the best possible meat at the best possible price. Naturally, these two things fight against eachother. That's what ethical judgement is all about.
I only eat savagely tortured cross-bred mutant miserable chicken grown with intentionally broken legs and a clipped beak inside a monstrous cage when I can't find the proper stuff for 50p more.
Happy?
no subject
Date: 2012-01-24 11:39 pm (UTC)"... buying foods ready-prepared by chains such as Eat, Pret a Manger or Simply M&S."
There's very little evidence that the dregs of society do this (although I'm sure they give in to the kids and buy a Big Mac or a kebab every now and again).
The problem, as I see it, is that they are fucking useless at living in their own environment. Boiling a bloody egg is probably beyond 20% of them. And as for planning a week's meals, well, they have plenty of time, little inclination, and no damn ability. That's where the 40 year old grannies (it's a technical term, by the way, and refers to the number of generations rather than how many rings you can count when you slice them in two) fall down.
I don't particularly wish to fall into the slough of despond over this, but there's no evidence that the underlying issues are being addressed by anybody more exalted that Jamie Oliver.
OK, did I just say that? I'll book into the Hotel Despond in Slough this weekend.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-27 07:47 pm (UTC)However, I have to agree that the simplest of real-life coping strategies appears to be beyond a significant minority here.
"Grandmother" is a technical term. "Granny" isn't. Obv I take your point, but you also have to allow for cultural association. And "granny" has a "grey" association.
PJ
no subject
Date: 2012-01-28 02:08 am (UTC)(Pauses to admire the complicated chain of first-order predicate logic involved there.
(Admits that it probably isn't quite right.)
On the other hand, it's a blog.
We've had Homer, and commentaries on Homer, for nigh on 3,000 years.
Let's dispense with the controversies surrounding religions of one (fanatical) persuasion or another. Perhaps this hints at something? Maybe blogs work the same way that pubs do?
However, I am fairly sure that the following quote:
"... buying foods ready-prepared by chains such as Eat, Pret a Manger or Simply M&S."
... was yours.
Actually, it wouldn't surprise me if these people do. God knows, I've met enough scroungers down my local in a perfectly respectable suburb of Birmingham with a 90% employment rate.
It just sounded "off" by your standards. That's all.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-28 02:17 am (UTC)It was, of course, to do with Matt, and specifically with your comment:
"Matt is of the very reasonable school of only responding when he thinks I am talking bollocks."
I brought Homer in (could have been Hesiod, I suppose, or if we want to talk about foundational myths, even Gilgamesh) for one reason and one reason only, and I'm beginning to suspect that it makes no sense whatsoever.
People have been interpreting, and reinterpreting, and rere and rerere and this obviously is where the word "reiterating" comes from, except that interestingly it doesn't for two entirely opposite reasons ...
I'll start again.
I don't doubt, for a moment, that Matt is being entirely reasonable. (I do suspect that both of you are far more "right wing," for what that is worth, than you were when you were at college.)
It isn't so much the quality of Matt's response (which was unimpeachable).
It was about the stupid and thoughtless reference, and the obvious fact that the reference in question did not match up to the documentation.
Incidentally, are you ever going to complete your PhD, or at least publish an abridged version of it?
no subject
Date: 2012-01-28 02:28 am (UTC)Jesu Christos
I really shouldn't have to point this out, but I have learned the hard way that My Master the Internet insists upon it.
When I said "stupid and thoughtless," I couldn't find a better way to express it. Thoughtless is about right, but not quite. "Without bothering to look it up and think about it" is closer to the point (well, it's "ironic, isn't it? That explains everything).
Plainly, it was a ridiculous quote.
As for "stupid," and here we go again on the Internet thing, I am by no means implying that Matt is permanently stupid. Or even more stupid than me.
But in that particular case, and on that particular point, I, as a potentially stupid and ignorant person who is willing to accept further discussion that indicates one of the following four non-exclusive possibilities:
(1) I am stupid
(2) I am ignorant
(3) The comment was stupid (within the terms defined above)
(4) The comment was ignorant (within the terms defined above)
I, yes, I, am prepared to submit that the reference in question was stupid and thoughtless.
And most definitely not ironic. Socratean irony or otherwise.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-28 02:44 am (UTC)"My response related to where Matt was likely to eat, rather than the subjects of my original post."
De ma faute.
I get a little too much worked up about this stuff. You were right and I was wrong.
In re, the wonderful comment from Tidjane Thiam, chief executive of Prudential, who has branded minimum wage legislation across Europe as an "enemy" of young people...
Isn't it time to rediscover your inner revolutionary?
This tit, in a mature business if you like, is being paid -- I don't have the figures, but you probably do -- somewhere north of £2 million a year to oil the cogs. Which is fine. Somebody has to oil the cogs.
Beats me where he comes off with the noxious suggestion that we should push the poor into the quicksands, however. I look forward to an explanation of how the demand/supply curve for unskilled labour is perfectly elastic between, say, £5.80 per hour and fuck all.
no subject
Date: 2012-02-01 04:07 pm (UTC)1 Duck Wrap £3.15
1 Big Fruit Salad £2.99
1 Simple Soup Big £3.25
Total £9.39 :(
I was just genuinely enquiring about how to live on a tenner a week. Of course I'm aware I could reduce my expenditure but I have a job and little time. The 'duck wrap' wasnt very good.
matt
no subject
Date: 2012-02-03 10:36 pm (UTC)When I add everything up, it does indeed come to considerably more than a tenner, and my penchant for coffee adds to my expense at home and out and about.
Our office has a reasonable café where you can eat a decent meal and have a coffee for just over a fiver, which I think isn't too bad. But the main chains seem ridiculously expensive to me, especially since most of the food is (cheap) carbohydrate-loaded.
PJ