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Sunday 27 May 2012

Why the poor loathe the Coalition

Wednesday, 1st December 2010

Conservative readers still don’t understand why the Coalition is hated in the poor areas of Britain. They would grasp the loathing better if they went back through the arguments they made in opposition, and realised that their leaders have failed to follow through the logic of the ideas they once espoused.

The best Tory criticism of Gordon Brown to my mind was that he had stood by while the boom bypassed large parts of Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, the North and South West. He left them with Soviet-style local economies, dominated by the public sector. Their populations’ prosperity depended on state subsidy rather than private endeavour.

True enough, but now Conservatives and Liberals are cutting the public sector, without ensuring that the private sector is ready to plug the gaps.

Conservatives, if not Liberals, used to be tough on crime. Obviously, people of all conditions are the victims of criminals, but crime is still a class issue. Criminals are overwhelming poor young men who rob or abuse their equally poor neighbours. Hence the first ambition of anyone from the working or under-class, who strikes lucky, is to move to a “good” – i.e. safe – neighbourhood. Tories once knew that, yet now they are in power they have decided to cut law and order harder than any other service.

Below is an uncut version of a report from Worksop by Susie Boniface of the Sunday Mirror, which appeared in truncated form here.

It is worth reading in full because journalism about working-class Britain barely features in the mainstream media. Note the fear of people who had once worked in the pits. They lost their jobs, found menial work in the public sector and now believe that they will lose that too.

Note as well their belief that the government will withdraw what protection the police offer them from the violent drunks and addicts, who infest their town.

George Osborne Wreaks Havoc

By Susie Boniface.

IF GEORGE Osborne’s aristocratic ancestors ever visited Worksop in its prime, they would have peered out of their carriage windows to see a small market town thriving on canals, railways and coal.

The town’s working class was exactly that - proud grafters whose efforts lifted them out of the medieval mud which was all the town consisted of when local hero Robin Hood was robbing the passing posh.

They became prosperous and Worksop expanded to include the massive colliery at nearby Manton, while its market provided for dozens of local pit villages.

Then hard times came and in the 1980s the town was crippled by mining strikes as Margaret Thatcher fought an ideological battle with the unions. One after another the collieries closed and by the mid-1990s Worksop was awash with unemployment and heroin addiction.

“It’s taken us a generation but we’ve finally got back on our feet,” said local Labour MP John Mann. “We’ve got thousands of new jobs in, we’ve got on top of the drugs problem. And now we’ve been kicked right back down again.”

When George Osborne announced his drastic spending cuts on Wednesday economists, politicians and pundits were quick to express an opinion about his toughness, the nation’s deficit and the need for drastic measures to cut back the bloated public sector.

What no-one mentioned is what the public sector does in places like Worksop. Here it pays for such frivolous and unnecessary things as the police station, the fire crew, the hospital, the library, the court - around 200 jobs. It provides state-run care homes for the elderly and frail, grants which have attracted new businesses to invest in the area, and support homeless shelters, drug rehab programmes, and domestic violence support.

And despite George’s promise that frontline services would not suffer all of those things - each and every one of them - is going to be cut. The bloodletting has already begun.

Nottinghamshire County Council plans to privatise its care homes and shed 3,000 jobs. Nottinghamshire police force faces a £50m cut from a £200m budget and is likely to close Worksop police station and move its 50 or so officers to brigade headquarters in Arnold, 24 miles away. Nottinghamshire fire brigade faces a 25 per cent cut and there is talk of merging Worksop fire station, with 30 full-time and another dozen retained firefighters, with nearby Retford and losing some of the part-time crews. The same is being considered with the ambulance service.

The trust which runs Bassetlaw Hospital has to make £38m of savings over three years from a budget of £327m - an 11 per cent cut. It has already closed the hospital’s mortuary, is sacking 50 laundry staff and running a public consultation which, if approved, would mean running an A&E department without a consultant, closing the nursery and the paediatric department, ending acute surgery and meaning everyone in Worksop who has a serious and sudden need for medical care will have to travel 18 miles, or 45 minutes if traffic is light, to Doncaster Royal Infirmary.

John Mann said: “They’re turning it into a cottage hospital where you’ll be able to get treated for cuts and bruises or have an uncomplicated pregnancy. Anything else and you’re in trouble. Laundry staff might not be frontline but what happens to hygiene, and infections, and superbugs, without them?”

Pauline Hanson of the Worksop and District Stroke Club said: “They say there’s not enough people having strokes to justify an acute unit at the hospital. So if you have a stroke you’ll have to travel further, and wait longer, to get to a doctor who will administer the drugs you need to thin the clot in your brain.

“The chance of permanent brain damage will go up and a patient’s chance of a good recovery will go down. After a stroke they are more likely to need care, and welfare, and hospital than if they are treated early.”

And that is the obvious and saddening logic to what these cuts will mean in the years to come. By slashing our welfare bill today, all George has done is massively increase what it will be tomorrow.

A few months ago the council announced that it had to find £150m of savings from its £484m budget over the next three years. To pay for it, the cost of meals on wheels will go up, streetlights will be turned off after midnight, £5m of children’s services will be axed, and Worksop Library - opened only last month at a cost of £8.4m - is to go self-sevice and have its opening hours slashed. Icy roads will have less grit on them, and bus shelters will go uncleaned, and free day care centres for the elderly - a lifeline to many looking after loved ones for free - will close.

But the bulk of the savings will come from selling the county’s 13 care homes to private firms which, after three years, will be able to shut them down and sell them off for housing.

Douglas and Gladys Hunt are have been at the Westwood care home in Worksop for the past year since their only son John decided, after repeated falls and despite visits from carers, they were too frail to live on their own. Despite a long waiting list, he persuaded staff to accept them.

Douglas, 87, fought his way across Europe in the Second World War all the way to the Baltic as part of the Royal Air Force. Afterwards he returned home to Worksop to work in Manton Colliery and married Gladys, who worked in the pit’s wage office.

He took early retirement with heart trouble and Gladys, who is now 85, lost her job in the strikes. They worked as hard as they could and now, at the end of their lives, they need the support of the state.
John told me: “They sold their home to pay for their care, which is about £1,000 a week for the both of them. If it’s privatised the cost could as much as double, and the care standards will go down. The private homes I’ve visited are not a patch on Westwood. The staff here really care, whereas in private homes it’s all about the profit margins.

“After three years the homes will be sold off or closed down. We’ll all be in the position where we need these homes, but the elderly will have to stay at home, where they’ll need more care visits, or spend more time in hospital. It will cost more to the state in the long run and when they realise that it will be too late to reopen these homes. They’ll be gone.”

George says that this is the point at which the Big Society will step in and charities, staffed by volunteers, will pick up the slack and look after the most vulnerable. Unfortunately he is cutting their budgets too.
Nottinghamshire Women’s Aid runs a refuge, supported housing, counsellors, children’s services, volunteers and community workers. It helps 7,000 women and children a year on a budget of just £900,000 - a cost of £128 a head. It has been warned that its budget, provided from the police, health trusts and county council, will be cut.

General manager Mandy Green said: “Two women have died in Nottinghamshire from domestic violence in the past few weeks. The UK average is only three a week.

“Domestic abuse is about power and control but it is accelerated by drugs, alcohol and unemployment. We are going to see a spike because of the job losses locally.

“If our money is cut we won’t be able to to get to these families early enough. They will be more likely to call the police, have hospital visits, and social services. The cost of that is far, far more than £128 a head. We won’t be able to keep those women safe. We have 10 volunteers and 36 paid staff - we have to be accredited and trained. You can’t do that for free.”

Hope Community Services, which has training courses, a 14-bed hostel and advice for the homeless, helped 940 people last year using a £144,000 county council grant and £70,000 in local fundraising. Its grant has been axed and although it has reserves to survive another year general manager Sandy Smith is worried it will have to close.

She said: “You can’t just take a homeless person on benefits and make them work. If you’ve been a heroin addict, you’ve shoplifted to fund your habit, have a criminal record and have no capacity to hold down a job. Your life has not prepared you for it.

“Even if there were jobs, most businesses won’t employ them. They need training and support. It’s not like waving a magic wand. These new measures will mean the jobless have their benefits cut by 10 per cent after a year. It sounds great but private landlords will just evict them and people will be back sleeping in doorways again. Crime will go up and it will be the nasty crimes - burglaries, robberies, muggings.”

Chris Cattlin, 23, walked out of his stepfather’s house after a row following his mother’s death three months ago. He left school without exams and spent 18 months in prison for GBH. Since his release he has had 20 jobs, none of them for very long. His children Ruby, four, and Coby, two, live with their mum and while he worked he paid what he could. He was hit with a £17,000 claim for child support and lost his last job, at a recycling unit, a month ago. He is now on £82 a fortnight jobseekers’ allowance.

“I’ve never been sacked,” he said. “I’m proud of that. There’s just always been redundancies and I’m the first to go because of my record. If it weren’t for the hostel I’d be on the street.”
He shows me the twin room he shares at the hostel with another homeless man, apologising for leaving his duvet untidy. When I ask him where his belongings are he shrugs and glances down at his jacket, jeans and shoes.
“This is all I’ve got,” he says.

“I want to work but no-one will employ me. I’ll do anything, I’d do two weeks unpaid just to prove I could do it but they always want people with experience and how are you going to get it if they don’t give you a chance?”

I ask him what he’ll do if his benefits are cut and the hostel closes. He shrugs and says: “I’ll be on the streets. I’ll have to nick stuff to put food in my belly.”

But it’s not just the public sector feeling the pain. City analysts PriceWaterhouseCoopers estimated that on top of the 500,000 state jobs to be lost, a similar number will go in private firms, pushing the jobless total to 3.4m.

In Worksop the biggest employers are a local food factory, which among other things produces all of the world’s Oxo cubes, and the headquarters for high street retailer Wilkinson’s. Other smaller firms have been enticed, in the past 10 years, with offers of regional development grants - the state providing the seed money for growth.

There are also hundreds of small businesses which service all the staff in both private and public sectors. Angela and Charlie Kaponas opened their cafe in pedestrianised Bridge Street in 1972 after migrating from Cyprus. They raised three children and seven grandchildren in Worksop but say the town has died.
Charlie, 70, said: “We have survived three recessions and this is the worst. The strikes, the 1990s, and now this. This is the worst. This will close us down.”

Angela, 62, added: “We’ve been here 39 years and have four staff. We don’t want to let them go. But rates are £8,600 a year, rent is £20,000, we have to pay separately for water, dustbins, everything. We went to a bank to ask for a loan and they said no. We have to keep prices low but VAT is going up to 20 per cent next year and if local public sector jobs go who will come in to buy a sandwich? How can I sell a cup of tea for £1 and give 20p to the Chancellor before I even meet those costs?

“They should take the cuts from people who can afford it, not people who are just trying to survive.”
The market which Worksop has relied on for 1,000 years is about to be permanently closed so the council can sell its site at the top of the town for a 900-seat cinema. The traders have been offered stalls in Bridge Street, but many say it’s too small and impractical and will take their trade elsewhere.

The Priory shopping centre recently had a spruce up but in the main street a pawnbroker’s is closed and there is little passing trade - certainly none with much money. When the Sunday Mirror photographer popped into the bank to withdraw £100 cash, the clerk immediately asked him: “What’s brought you to Worksop?”
Grandmothers Janet Pollard, 54, and Patty Dinsdale, 59, were in the town centre for an afternoon out with their granddaughter Elisha, three. Her mum Rebecca runs a hairdressers’ while dad Andrew works away six days a week laying gas pipes, and only gets to see his daughter on Sundays.

“We’ve never been on benefits,” said Janet. “My husband, my dad, his dad, they were all down the pit. We’re grafters and always have been but it’s people like us getting it in the neck. Elisha’s dad has to work away because there’s no jobs here, and they’ve lost the child benefit for her because her mum has her own business. I take care of Elisha after nursery so her mum can work, and at the school gates it’s all nans picking the kids up.

“The towns round here have shops all boarded up. There’s no jobs. When Elisha’s older she won’t be able to go to university because it’s too expensive. Her parents wanted another baby but now they’re wondering how they can afford it.”

Patty added: “My husband Brian worked in the pits since he was 15 and when he lost his job at 50 he walked round every industrial estate looking for work. Eventually he got a job cleaning schools. If that’s hit in the cutbacks I don’t know what we’ll do. I was hoping to retire next year but now I have to keep working. We came here on the bus and it cost us £8 - that’s an expensive day out for us, but people like George Osborne don’t understand.”

After the pits closed crime rocketed as it always does in tough times. Today Worksop still has crime figures higher than the national average and although burglaries, vehicle crime and violence are all falling the one growth area is anti-social beaviour which has rocketed by 16 per cent in the past year alone.

The principle reason is that while heroin has been largely stamped out its addicts, although clean, are ruined people. They remain unemployable and as a result have moved onto cheap booze as a replacement addiction.
The Worksop Guardian carries frequent complaints about drinking, vomiting and abuse in the town’s streets and whereas police could arrest and charge a heroin dealer or an addict, or have them referred for treatment, a drunk simply gets moved on.

Yet the police station could be closed, and the magistrates’ court - which deals with 50 cases a day, as well as civil hearings and a family court - has been earmarked as one of 100 around the country to be shut by the Ministry of Justice in a £2bn drive which will see shorter sentences, fewer prison places, and less judges.
One court worker, who asked not to be named, said: “A few years ago they got rid of a load of jobs and got a private firm to provide security. We pay the same to the security guard as we did then, but another £11,000 on top to the firm that provides him. Where’s the money saved in that?

“When they close the court people won’t travel to Mansfield for hearings. The police will have to arrest them under warrant, and then drive them back. They’ll be a glorified taxi service and it’ll come to the point soon where you’ll have to murder someone before you go to prison.

“It’ll be anarchy here in a couple of years, you mark my words. The cost of sorting it doesn’t bear thinking about.”

When George got to his feet on Wednesday to announce these cuts he proudly said: “Today is the day when Britain steps back from the brink.” As far as the 39,000 people who live in Worksop are concerned, it was the day they were pushed over it.

George is never going to ask their opinion, he’s never going to visit, and judging from the measures he introduced he is never going to care much for the elderly, the young, or the vulnerable - all the ‘economically inactive’ bits of society which cost us money rather than make it.

He has, nevertheless, decided that we can simply do without them. We can cut them, and what they cost us, by £81bn a year and the George’s world will be a nicer place.

But what remains is this: the banks will still owe us £850bn. And every penny we save with these cuts will have to be repaid, with interest, when the elderly have to stay in hospital because there are no care home places, when stroke victims need more care because they didn’t get help in time, when women are beaten by their husbands because there’s no charity to help them, when the homeless are on the street and shoplifting to stay alive.

This is not just the economics of the madhouse, because lunatics in straitjackets would at least be random. George has deliberately targeted areas like Worksop - and towns just like it in Wales, the north east, the north west, all over the Labour heartland where the working-middle class has spent a generation recovering from the attack by Margaret Thatcher - and thrown them right back into the mud. His measures, ideological rather than practical, are a time machine that will take towns and villages all over the country right back to the 1820s, with peasants scrabbling in the mud as the rich trundle by.

The difference is that this time we will know it could be different.

When George travels around the country in helicopters and private jets donated for his personal use by wealthy businessmen, perhaps he looks out of the window and wonders how the people below live their lives.
Then again, perhaps he doesn’t.

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Sir Graphus

December 1st, 2010 10:26am Report this comment

Without wishing to trivialise this issue, you left wing chappies never quite mastered that art of brevity, did you?

Roughyed 2010

December 1st, 2010 11:10am Report this comment

So they loath the coalition because they believe the BS left wing propaganda in the Sunday Mirror ?

Commentator

December 1st, 2010 11:29am Report this comment

Nick, you are right to highlight this and I am a vigorous critic of the very well-heeled well-connected chancers at the top of the Coalition, but the fact remains that the UK is bust. What is your solution? Default on our public debt, reimpose exchange controls and punitive tax rates and return to a 1970's-style siege economy?

MattT

December 1st, 2010 11:57am Report this comment

The coalition government makes me feel angry all the time. And I'm usually a very calm individual who can put things into perspective.

Britain is a very wealthy country. We just need to consider where the bulk of that wealth is and extract it to pay off the deficit (and pay it off no faster than is absolutely necessary). The richest fifth control 62% of the UK's wealth so lets go and get 'em! Wealth tax, property tax and whatever else the Treasury can think of.

MattT

December 1st, 2010 12:00pm Report this comment

Damn sent too early. I was going to say that instead of hitting those who can most afford it, the coalition is hitting welfare and essential services, making it certain that the poor will suffer the most. They are cowards.

normanc

December 1st, 2010 12:01pm Report this comment

The Sunday Mirror article tl;dr

We conservatives don't like the coalition for the same reaso n as the poor you mention (thank God you didn't use the term 'working class'). They are cutting the public sector (or not, a better way to put it would be that they are reducing the rate of growth of the public sector) while at the same time not providing the conditions for the private sector to thrive in it's place.

What we need are targetted tax cuts, and massive ones for the areas you mention. Tax holidays for new businesses set-up in those areas, for employees too lower taxes to encourage skilled workers to move there, drastically cut regulation, get all levels of government out of the way, we don't want or need 'enterprise' this or that, just get out of the way, stop stealing our money, and let us get on with it.

Poor and rich will prosper. We conservatives want the rising tide to lift all ships, unfortunately there are very few conservatives in the current government.

Tron

December 1st, 2010 1:14pm Report this comment

The Left's answer to everything is tax more, borrow more and spend more. We had 13 years of that, supported by you, and we went bust !
Don't blame Dave and Nick they only got in 6 months ago and they have got to clear up the mess you Lefties always leave behind.

Fergus Pickering

December 1st, 2010 1:53pm Report this comment

I like the coalition.I think they are going the right way about things. I don't care whether George Osborne has ever mat anyone in Worksop. I've never met anyone in Worksop either. I don't even know where it is except up North somewhere.
Our last two leaders were Blair and Brown. Did they know a lot abut Worksop? Tony isn't interested in ANYONE who earns less than a million a year and Gordo isn't interested in anyone. As for the present Labour incumbent, is he a Worksop expert? People are going to be poorer because there isn't any money. Remembert what Mr Byrne said. As for the idea you can just hunt down rich men and rob them at gunpoint, surely the rest of us grew out of that sort of thing about the time we stopped reading comics. I would rob rich men if I thought I could get away with it, but I wouldn't pretend I had the answer to recession. As the Iraqis found, yoiu can hang Saddam, but after his corpse is dangling in the breeze you find your problems are exactly the same as they were before. America voted for Batman but it didn't solve anything, now did it?

Rhoda Klapp

December 1st, 2010 1:55pm Report this comment

I am not a fan of the coalition, but thirteen years is thirteen years, with no progress. Six months, on the other hand, is only six months.

Oh, and those cuts? They aren't really cuts at all, as everyone knows.

Ian Stewart

December 1st, 2010 2:13pm Report this comment

Well said Nick! as someone on less than £30k a year, I suppose I would count as "working class" Normanc, and although not poor, I have only my Labour to trade - what on earth would you define me as? Enough of this "all middle class now"BS!
Frankly, we hate the coalition with an honesty that they lack. We all know that neither they nor their rich pals in The City are going to pay for our economic problems. we all know how well they did under New labour, so why trust a bunch of hypocrites who made hay while the Sun shone?

Old Slaughter

December 1st, 2010 2:27pm Report this comment

What a croc of the proverbial.

Nick, you make it sound as if the Tories were well in there before but the latest treacheries have blown it all for them. That area has been Labour for as long as Labour has been winning seats.

They hated the Tories before the election and the cuts were announced. If they had the sense they would hate Labour for getting them into this situation, but the rank dishonesty of Brown's government ably assisted by nonsensical economic analysis like your own meant that they are able to run with this 'Evil Tories hate the poor' balls.

"but now Conservatives and Liberals are cutting the public sector, without ensuring that the private sector is ready to plug the gaps."

How would you 'ensure' the private sector is ready with plugs? In these conditions? Leftie lar lar land.
We need cuts because we are broke and markets are concerned about lending us any more money.

That is thanks to your lot. If you don't want to live by the whims of bond markets don't vote for parties that feed the poor by borrowing on the future.

Thatcher's government were never accused by Labour of being soft on law and order. How popular is Thatcher in Worksop?

A ridiculous article, it may well be five-star gold at the Indy but what the hell it is doing here? At least with Rod we get some gratuitous offence.

Victor Southern

December 1st, 2010 2:48pm Report this comment

Rubbishy arithmetic as always from the Left. the article gives cause to believe that Nottinghamshire is facing a 25% cut in its police budget. It is actually 7.5% and I quote "The following is a statement from Mr Chris Eyre, Deputy Chief Constable, released on 3 August 2010:-

The cuts to the public sector, and in particular to policing, will be severe and have long-lasting consequences.

I am under no illusion about the enormity of the challenge that lies ahead for Nottinghamshire Police.

Quite simply, the job of the Chief Police Officers is to do everything we possibly can to protect frontline policing services on one hand, while overseeing a major cut in our budget on the other.

The annual budget for policing Nottinghamshire is around £200m and although it will be some months yet before exact details are published by the Government, conservative estimates suggest that we may have to save 25% of this over the next three years.

In real terms, that means cutting £45m from our overall budget in 36 months, starting April 1st next year".

Of course, even his maths is lousy.

In the same way we hear almost daily about university tuition payments from central goverment being cut by 80% - an absolute nonsense which has no relationship at all to the facts.

Similarly we see here the claim that unemployment will rise by 500,000 as a result of job cuts in the public service. The aim is to cut 490,000 posts over 5 years. Since the annual attrition in public service jobs is 400,000 by normal causes it can be seen that no increase in unemployment whatsoever is generated. The real effect is to fail to fill just under 25% of the vacancies.

normanc

December 1st, 2010 3:38pm Report this comment

Ian Stewart, I would describe you as a British citizen, forget all the left wing class nonsense, every citizen should be equal and treated equally.

I made that remark because the intellectual elite love to make condescending remarks about the 'working class' and it really gets under my skin. A British citizen is a British citizen, no one is more or less deserving than his neighbour.

zikomo

December 1st, 2010 3:43pm Report this comment

I would be most interested to see an accounting which DETAILS the number of"CEO's","Manager's"and "Non-Job"incumbents who have been removed from the pay-role of Local Councils across the land.
There are HUGE savings to be made before needing to turn to the destruction of services such as Care Homes.Nothing will be done of course and when it is all over the grey suited battalions of "peculators of the public gold"will still be there rummaging among the ruins.

normanc

December 1st, 2010 3:48pm Report this comment

Sorry for double post, but this is too good to pass up.

After I made my comment I thought 'I wonder if the Daily Mirror article mentions the 'working class' ' and lo, and behold, the second paragraph unearthed this gem:

'The town’s working class was exactly that - proud grafters whose efforts lifted them out of the medieval mud'

Could you be more condescending to generations of these villagers? That people swallow this claptrap is unbelievable.

Simon Stephenson

December 1st, 2010 3:59pm Report this comment

What I'd like to ask Nick Cohen and Susie Boniface, and those with similar opinions, is how much of the £600 billion odd annual public expenditure is essential, efficient, irreducible spending that goes into providing the service that it does? And how much is the sort of Parkinsonian cost-creep that bedevils organisations where there is little or no moral hazard to inefficiency?

Maybe what Osborne is trying to say is that for a cost of £600 billion, we're getting no more than £300 billion of value, and that the focus of public-sector managers must change from forever seeking additional funding, to forever seeking to provide more valuable services from the same funding.

This is what successful societies are doing all the time - working out how to do things better, not just working out how to get paid more for doing the same thing, or to get paid the same for doing less.

There's no way forward for this country until this become generally understood.

Jez

December 1st, 2010 6:02pm Report this comment

Nick C,

You're a troll.

People like you are far too intilect... intelict... entill..... er, brainy for me pal.

Tarra.

JohnBUK

December 1st, 2010 6:05pm Report this comment

Simon Stephenson and others, you are right of course. The trouble is arguments and "ideas" are "sold" by emotions not logic. So the Daily Mirror column will resonate with people more than sums. The good news is that those who read the DM are already Liebore and are unlikely to change anyway.

cg

December 1st, 2010 8:16pm Report this comment

There are a lot of people posting on here who have no idea what conditions are like outside their own little bubble. They talk about cutting everything without considering the human cost. They don't have to think about it because where they live it is something that they have never had to confront, something which is made clear by the callousness of their comments and their own air of certanty and superiority.
I support the coalition in as much as there does not seem to be a better alternative but they should be careful about hurting people who have been hurt too much already. Thatcher might have been amiracle for the likes of Rhoda and others on here but was a disaster for millions who have never recovered from her recession. I think Cameron is broadly right and is going in the right direction but he's still got a long way to go before the memory of the awful Thatcher is eradicated.
I can already imagine the replies that some of the bubble living posters on here will make to these comments - they are that predictable, but before you do I should tell you that I am not a leftie, as I know that you immediately disqualify anyone who might have the heretical views of the left.

Yam Yam

December 2nd, 2010 9:30am Report this comment

Commentator has hit the nail on the head: what exactly is the Left's alternative?

However, acknowledging that it was Brown's policy of turning much of provincial Britain into sovietised state sector ghettoes instead of cutting taxes to encourage private sector growth would be a useful start.

Rhoda Klapp

December 2nd, 2010 9:41am Report this comment

cg, what the hell has Thatcher got to do with it? The fact is that the Labour party had power for thirteen years, and what is left at the end of it is down to them. Their priorities, their choices produced the UK we have now. If they wanted to fix the problems of poverty and deprivation they could have at least ied to do so. But all they did was spend money in ways that were not likely to affect the problem. In fact, to make people as comfortable as possible in their poverty and deprivation. One day someone with some guts will have to make structural changes in the way this country works if they want to fix it. I don't know how to do it. No politician seems to know either, and what the coalition propose is surely not brave enough. But what I do know is, what we have done so far does not work. Doing more of it isn't going to work either.

Simon Stephenson

December 2nd, 2010 10:44am Report this comment

Rhoda Klapp : 9.41am

"One day someone with some guts will have to make structural changes in the way this country works if they want to fix it. I don't know how to do it."

I'd like to suggest that we can get nowhere any good as long as we perpetuate the idea that the way to build a solid society is to de-individualise the people living within it. The belief that if we allow and encourage people to become autonomous individuals, we are setting in stone a self-centredness that precludes the formation of co-operative society.

My opinion is that the only chance we have of building a solid society is if individuals are allowed and encouraged to develop autonomy, from which state they will realise that it is in their own interests to behave co-operatively.

Bringing up people in the belief that they are not entitled to their own autonomy is to deny them the personal growth that comes from being exposed to hazards, and having to use their brains to avoid them. It's only by going through this process that people develop the sense that the counter-intuitive is sometimes best. State nannying and molly-coddling, and the emotional suppression of unorthodoxy, halts mental development short of this stage.

Mark2

December 2nd, 2010 3:50pm Report this comment

"...forget all the left wing class nonsense, every citizen should be equal and treated equally."

Excuse me while I laugh at this entirely novel characterisation (as I presume it to be) of conservatism.

malty

December 2nd, 2010 4:07pm Report this comment

First came across you thro' Bryan Appleyards site, became interested, bought your books. Read your articles.
Firstly, this publication, irrelevant, thinking otherwise would be hubristic.
Who, among the genuine poor, actually asked you and your comfortably off colleagues for assistance? and incidentally, the devil is in the detail, what is your definition of the poor, I would suggest that, as it would appear that you have never been poor yourself, before you publicly opinionate upon the subject again you first thoroughly research it, otherwise the accusation of time wasting may be levelled
You have become so disappointing, such a waste of talent.

Holly ......

December 2nd, 2010 9:42pm Report this comment

Dunt i go on.
ar i expecs us poor folks ta read all at?
Poor dunt 'ate coalition,wi 'ate altfear dished up be Labour party.
A nu when a first googled im e'd be trouble.
Int i clogging site up wi writin' all that?
Nar am off ta walk me whippet
sithy soon

R

December 3rd, 2010 2:32pm Report this comment

I don’t make any pretence of being working class, and I in no way belittle the human suffering described here, but the problem is pretty simple:

1. The economy of places like Worksop was completely dominated by the coal industry.
2. The coal industry no longer exists in this country.
3. Successive governments, Labour and Conservative, have failed to find any solution to fill the economic gap left behind other than by employing people directly in public sector jobs, or paying them benefits.
4. Accordingly, these places are highly vulnerable to cuts in public spending.

This isn’t, pace the Mirror (a loathsome muck-rag), anything to do with the class background of the people at the top of the Conservative party – Labour did no better. The time to fix these serious structural economic problems was while the economy was doing well. For now we need to try, palliatively, to minimise the negative effects of these cuts on poor communities, but there’s no use pretending they aren’t going to hurt.

seb

December 3rd, 2010 6:29pm Report this comment

The poor may very well hate the coalition. Many of the United Kingdom's poor have been brought up to believe that the government is the only agent in the universe capable of remedying their poverty.

Thrift. Self-reliance. The private rather than the public sector. In a nation having to deal with stupendous and still growing amounts of public and private debt, these latter engines of self-improvement are all we have. Brown's Potemkin Economy was hastening towards collapse. To continue to believe that, if the state hangs in there a little bit longer, funding stay-at-home lifestyles for millions, borrowing hundreds of billions more at higher and higher rates of interest, its economy will turn some corner and revive is lunacy. There is of course a risk that thrift, self-reliance and a growing real economy may not deliver enough and deliver it quickly. This, though, contrasts with the absolute certainty that the options proposed by the left - doing absolutely nothing, doing next to nothing, continuing as before, cunningly 'delaying' swallowing the bitter medicine etc. etc. - will lead sooner or later to complete disaster. Governments can re-distribute but are not in themselves providers of anything. Would that the arrogant believers in this untruth might come up with alternatives to saner government that were not specious and purely self-serving propaganda for the next general election campaign.

Richard

December 4th, 2010 12:15pm Report this comment

Da poor, who dey, then, mate?

Nicholas

December 4th, 2010 1:57pm Report this comment

This is just the usual left wing demonisation of the Tories we have seen with the way Thatcher is treated. The policies and the truth don't matter to these people. They just want a demon to blame. They can't blame their precious Labour party for 13 years (and the rest since 1945) of incrementally ruining this country, so they blame the Tories (and the LibDems for "betraying" their socialist values) barely six months into office and faced with tackling Labour's monumental debt. This outcome was predicted and you don't even have the journalistic integrity not to go along with that prediction. Instead you are racing along with your socialist media friends to make that prediction come true, to discredit the new government before it has even been given a chance and to overlook the consequences of Labour's totally unrealistic largesse (the money has run out!).

This anecdotal cherry-picking is no better than Soviet propaganda. Are Labour activists and supporters going to provide balanced, objective views? Until you can tackle and handle the truth objectively instead of withdrawing to the tribal battle lines of the last century this country will continue to wallow in its own miseries.

No party has ever been so serially misrepresented and demonised than the Tories. Yes, they are not faultless but Labour never get a tenth of their due for their own malevolence, incompetence, corruption and lies.

The right wing press really has a problem with these cod-right, basically left wing journalists like you. I presume you exist here because there are either insufficient quality writers from the genuine right or because they are discriminated against in what passes for the "free" media these days. As long as you and your chums continue to subjectively focus on and demonise the Tories, instead of taking a good, hard, unfiltered look at what Labour and its brand of socialism really, really means for this country, your work will continue to be merely trivial, superficial and prejudiced propaganda.

I never cease to be amazed that the Speccie continues to give webspace to leftist trojan horses repeating the same old mantras and cant that failed Eastern Europe for 40 years. I thought you, at least, might be able to discern between propaganda myths and 21st Century realities. It appears not.

Edward McLaughlin

December 4th, 2010 7:01pm Report this comment

Nick, I'm poor beyond your tamest dreams, and I don't hate the coalition.

I'm no great fan of the coalition and I didn't vote for any of its constituent parts. I don't hold out any hopes of their changing this country for the better, but at least they have taken out the people who we really hate and that for now will have to do.

The people we really hate are the leftist tribe who, to feed their vanity, wrecked the nation over 13 years of mal-rule. Alongside these, we hate the media tools who ensured and maintained their tenure, and who now attempt to make the case that in losing our last government, we said goodbye to anything worth keeping.

Old Slaughter

December 4th, 2010 11:40pm Report this comment

If this is the form: Nick translating the left for the Speccie readership. I cannot see this lasting long. Especially as there is no engagement with the readers. This is an article with comments rather than a blog and a poor article at that.

A dramatic change in form and format or this will last two months at best.

Simon Stephenson

December 5th, 2010 10:59am Report this comment

Edward McLaughlin : 7.01pm

"Mal-rule" is right. It's as though during the 1990s, Labour succumbed entirely to the intellectual radicals, and adopted the position that:-

Student union ideology was to be the overwhelming force in the "new" British politics.

and

That the forces of reaction were to be sidelined through the process of no longer seeking their advice, nor involving them in policy formulation.

So we ended up with a group of leaders who did not believe that the successful governance of a nation of 60 million people required both vision and competent practical reality. And we have ended up with a dramatically changed nation, with plenty of social experiments in place, but which is a picture of incompetence and inefficiency from top to bottom.

There's a growing minority who no longer care about political affiliation - all we want is for a restoration of the idea of administrative and practical competence being pretty fundamental to the successful government of the country.

JC

January 26th, 2011 11:10am Report this comment

I love the way all the pro-coalition people keep harking on about how Labour was all about taxing more - well what have the Tories just done with VAT? You guys are mugs.

derek bowskill

February 9th, 2011 1:34am Report this comment

these right wing condems when they talk about labour should look at some of the things which brought the working people out of low wages by labour while in power.the minimum wage which every tory mp said would kill jobs. it as not but took workers out of the slave market which the tories created under thatcher .the deficit when this goverment took over had fell by 20 billion for what alistair darling had done prior to osborne even getting behind is desk as chancellor they seem to forget that.a lot should rememberif labour at not bailed out the banks a lot of ordinary people would be penniless now because osborne stated he would would have done nothing. But the fact is he will try and take all the credit in 2014,2015 when the banks are sold back to the private sector at a profit . people have not yet woke up to the far right wing policies this goverment persuing because after all the cuts and job losses over the next parliment the deficit will still be only 1 billion below what he started with this is what is forcast what a achievement .so when they tell you we are reducing the deficit it is another lie same as everything that comes out of there gobs.thatcher wanted to do what cameron is doing to the country now but she was sussed out and kicked out but he as took up the reins to finish the job off which she could not do so i am a leftie and proud to be

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