|
Opportunities
for Slaves
When a person first wakes up to
the fact that most jobs offer no more
than cripplingly boring, soul-destroying drudgery,
two “respectable” options present
themselves:
1.
“Positive Attitude” –
A change in attitude to “help” the
person cope with the drudgery. Anything from
“positive” corporate slogans to genuine
attempts of the individual to reduce her/his
misery (eg self-help books, religious faiths
etc).
2. “Conventional
Belief” – Belief that the
market will make things better. Just have patience.
“The system is benign, so don’t complain”.
Think of all those market-created “trickle-down”
improvements to your life – digital TV, electric
toothbrushes, etc. Ignore the fact that,
over the last 25 years, working-hours have risen
and true wage-levels/benefits fallen.
These two options were available
to slaves (ie “real” slaves
as well as wage slaves). Option 1 obviously.
Option 2 – slavery was embraced by the
early market, slavery being a highly profitable
mainstay of the “agricultural factory”
economy. The conditions under which slaves lived
did improve, due to a kind of “trickle-down”
market prosperity.
Slaves and employees – both
free to adopt any attitude they want (even a
positive attitude). Both benefiting from “opportunities”
created by an increasingly prosperous society.
Slaves didn’t complain. Modern bosses seem
to believe that, for similar reasons, employees
also shouldn’t complain.
"Hey
Jones, stop whining – at least in this
system you have opportunities to improve your
situation..."
"Hey
Smith, stop complaining – you’re better
off now than you were twenty years ago..."
(Two pro-slavery arguments often
heard in America and Britain in the early 19th
and early 21st centuries).
Back to top
Government
Advertising (aka propaganda)
The UK government is now the UK’s
biggest spender on advertising, spending more
each year than corporate giants like Renault
and British Telecom.
In February alone, the government
spent £16,383,600 of taxpayers’ money on
advertising. While some of this advertising
includes useful information about public services
etc, much of it appears to promote a political
agenda (even though UK regulations strictly
forbid political advertising).
A case in point is the recent TV
campaign encouraging people to snitch on “welfare
fraudsters”. This campaign presents not
a single shred of helpful information or sociological
fact – it looks more like a dubious, politically-loaded
perspective on an emotive social issue. Where,
we ask, are the government advertisements asking
us to snitch on corporate fraud or bank
fraud? (Corporate tax evasion costs the UK far
more than welfare fraud).
PUBLIC INFORMATION
ANNOUNCEMENT
Be suspicious of people,
but always trust institutions
Government information campaigns always scapegoat
lone individuals – eg unemployed people,
TV licence dodgers, drug users etc – and
never institutions or corporations. Are they
trying to tell us the greatest threat to civilisation
comes from individuals who don’t fit into
respectable society?
It’s like the “lone nut” theory
(the official explanation for political assassinations).
Are we to believe that “lone misbehaved
persons” are responsible for everything
bad that happens?
Like institutions are never the cause of anything
bad.
Like: if misbehaved persons had some respect,
the economic system would suddenly work great,
and we’d all see how peachy it is.
Back to top
The
Right to Refuse Wage Slavery
Two disturbing trends in the world
of work:
1.
The loss of “decent” jobs and the
rise of pointless, low-paid, demeaning slave-jobs
(eg telesales and call centres – the fastest
growing UK sector).
2. The
move away from an unconditional right to welfare
benefits.
If you lose your job, or if you’ve
never had a job, you may find that your life
is not your own. Your access to income will
be conditional upon your doing exactly what
the government tells you – you’ll
have to take the job given you. You won’t
have the option to say no. You will not be able
to say: “can’t I wait until something
more suitable appears.” You will be obliged
to take something immediately. It won’t
make any difference if you’ve paid tax
and NI all your life.
So, does an economically marginalised
person have any rights at all? Maybe. I was
recently sent a newspaper article which contains
the following:
The European Convention on Human
Rights says everyone is entitled to a fair hearing
by an “independent and impartial tribunal”
when decisions are being made about their civil
rights (including rights to benefits).
Currently the UK welfare appeals
system breaches human rights legislation, as
appeals are decided by the same organisation
that makes the decisions being appealed against.
Reading between the lines, it seems that Human
Rights legislation might be the last line of
defence against the tough approach taken by
government towards “economically inactive”
people.
Crime
– is it rising or falling?
[For an update on crime statistics,
see Media scaremongering
on crime]
“Violent crime is soaring”
seems to be the news headline at the moment,
yet only a few months ago the British Crime
Survey (BCS) showed violent crime to be falling.
People are confused. What is going on?
Let’s go back a few years.
Police figures showed a fall in overall recorded
crime. Many newspapers said these figures were
unsatisfactory as they didn’t take account
of unreported or unrecorded crime. The media,
in fact, said the BCS was more accurate and
authoritative than the police figures, as the
BCS measures unreported crime as well as recorded
and reported crime.
The latest BCS shows a 10% overall
fall in crime over two years, including a 4%
fall in violent crime, whereas the most recent
police figures show an 8% increase in violent
crime in the last year. So, which figures do
you think the media is focusing on: the “authoritative”
BCS, or the “unsatisfactory” police
figures? Yes, you guessed it – they report
whichever figures show the biggest crime increases.
Let’s take a closer look at
the figures behind the news headline hysteria.
The recent police figures show increases in
street crime (eg robbery and assault), domestic
violence and racial attacks. Of the 589,000
cases of assault, 557,000 were “less serious
attacks such as harassment and common assault”,
largely due to drunken youths outside clubs
and pubs. The 21% increase in robberies was,
to a large extent, due to theft of mobile phones
from teenagers by other teenagers. The recorded
increases in domestic and racial violence were
partly due to “changes in police recording
practices and the increased willingness of victims
of domestic violence and racial attacks to report
the offences” (quotes taken from The
Guardian 17/1/2001).
Newspapers continue to sensationalise
every crime story, and they continue to focus
on isolated crime statistics (which they never
fully explain) while ignoring the larger statistical
picture. Whether they do this to sell more newspapers
or to further a political agenda, the sad result
is that fear of crime is out of all proportion
to the risk of crime for most people.
Charity or Dark Propaganda?
The NSPCC (National Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Children –
a UK charity) spends more on propaganda
(£38m last year) than on children’s
services (£28m) – according to a
BBC report. In contrast, other charities, eg
the Children’s Society and Barnado’s,
spend nearly 80% of their budgets on children’s
services.
The NSPCC claimed the £38
million was spent on “raising public awareness
of child cruelty”. Many media commentators,
however, argue that TV and newspapers are already
saturated with coverage of child-abuse. (One
recent paedophile case attracted media attention
for weeks, leading to angry mobs attacking the
homes of suspected paedophiles).
UK government figures show very
low rates of child murder by strangers –
averaging only seven per year –
yet the NSPCC has been busy raising fear and
paranoia with its aggressive propaganda blitz
on the media, including expensive TV and newspaper
ads.
The NSPCC undoubtedly does good
work for children. But maybe it should leave
fear-inducing, rabble-rousing “black propaganda”
to the likes of MI5 and the CIA.
Back to top
Work, Lies
& Politicians
One thing seems certain about the
forthcoming UK election campaigns: no politicians
will talk of how we can all work less.
Despite media reports on the unhealthy
effects of increasing working hours and the
extreme work ethic, politicians will be talking
about creating more work, putting more
people into work and getting people to work
harder.
They will also talk about “getting
tough on the workshy” and “abolishing
dependency culture”. And they will
justify their ‘tough’ approach, as
they always do, by claiming welfare costs are
“spiralling through the roof.”
Are they misinformed or just
lying? Judge for yourself – the official
figures are clear enough:-
UK Welfare
Costs
|
1998
|
1999
|
| Unemployment
|
£6.2
billion |
£5.3
billion |
| Elderly
people (eg pensions) |
£42.8
billion |
£44.5
billion |
| Other
welfare (for the sick and disabled,
low-paid families, widows – plus administration
costs) |
£48.9
billion |
£49.5
billion |
| Total
|
£97.9
billion |
£99.3
billion |
These figures show that unemployment
accounts for only a small part of total welfare,
and that unemployment costs are falling rather
than “going through the roof.”
Total welfare is rising (slowly)
– mainly due to an increase in the cost
of retirement pensions caused by an ageing population.
Yet politicians portray welfare in the usual
scaremongering way, as an “out-of-control
culture of dependency.”
Another misleading statement we
often hear from UK politicians is: “welfare
costs more than all other government expenditure
combined”. They usually say this when
discussing unemployment, as if to imply that
the unemployed are bringing the country to its
knees financially. (They never mention that
only 5% of the total welfare budget goes to
the unemployed).
Compare the yearly cost of unemployment
welfare, £5.3bn, to some other large expenses:
| •
Development of new British-US fighter plane
(as quoted by UK newspapers) |
£250
billion |
| •
Total of individual consumer debt in Britain |
£115
billion |
| •
Money wasted by UK consumers on defective
goods purchased each year |
£8
billion |
| •
New Deal welfare-to-work scheme (UK) |
£5.2
billion |
| •
Estimated cost to UK of depression-related
illness (through lost working days) |
£5
billion |
| •
Overspend on Eurofighter 2000 fighter plane
|
£4
billion |
| •
UK revenue lost, per year, due to cigarette
smuggling |
£3.5
billion |
| •
Small, botched upgrade to Tornado fighter
jet |
£1
billion |
| •
Scrapped UK “fraud prevention”
welfare claimant ID card |
£1
billion |
•
Construction work on MI5 and MI6 HQ buildings
|
£0.5
billion
|
The list doesn’t end there. There are
countless examples of huge government expenditures
which aren’t widely publicised. The military,
in particular, has a long history of extremely
costly projects which are often botched or mismanaged.
The US dissident writer, Gore Vidal, once wrote
an essay illustrating how the US establishment
plays up the cost of welfare, but plays
down the cost of the military –
in order to make it seem that economic problems
are caused by the “lazy” unemployed
rather than by Pentagon overspending. It appears
that a similar political scam operates in the
UK.
Meanwhile, the World
Game Institute has shown how most of the
world’s social, environmental and economic problems
can be solved using 30% of the money currently
spent on the military.
Back to top
OH NO!
Crime is Falling!
[For an update on crime statistics,
see Media scaremongering
on crime]
The latest crime figures (from the
authoritative British Crime Survey) show
falling crime across the board. So why is the
conservative press so dismayed? From their reactions,
you’d think they actually want crime to
soar.
For example, the Daily Telegraph
(a right-leaning UK newspaper) covered the recent
crime figures (which showed falls in burglary,
violent crime and total crime) by focusing
on a few minor areas where crime actually rose,
as if to console themselves: “hey, it’s
all right, crime is still rising in some areas.”
The few areas where crime increased
– eg 16 yr-olds snatching mobile phones
off each other in school playgrounds –
hardly seem too significant, but another
conservative newspaper, the Daily Mail,
decided that the phone-snatching “playground
plague” (their phrase) warranted more attention
than the large overall decreases in crime.
Meanwhile, the BBC (which normally
wallows unhealthily in crime sensationalism
with shows like Crimewatch UK) decided
that the falling crime statistics required only
a brief two-line mention, way down the list
of its news coverage.
So why is falling crime not celebrated
by conservative types? Well, it’s fairly
obvious when you think about it. Conservatives
believe tradition is threatened by: “moral
decay”, “lack of respect for authority”,
“declining family values”, etc. All
these threats are subjective – as is their
claim that the threats are increasing.
In fact the only objective measure of increasing
threat is rising crime rate.
Falling crime therefore undermines
their whole game. It makes their claims of “moral
decline”, etc, seem paranoid; it makes
their plans to “get tough” and “clamp
down” look like silly overreactions.
Back to top
The Confused
Cult of Normality
There’s a commercial on TV which
shows a woman shouting, with great relief, “I’m
normal!” The ad’s catchline is “if you’re not
average, you’re normal”.
It’s one of advertising’s greatest
coups to disguise the fact that they’re selling
us two opposing qualities at the same time:
“individuality” and “conformity”, or in other
terms: “specialness” and “normality”. It’s not
surprising that consumers feel confused and
eternally unsatisfied.
This confusion extends to TV shows.
For example, in Sex and the City and
Ally McBeal, the main characters superficially
strive to be individualistic, but the dialogue
is entirely about their obsessive fears that
their relationships are not normal enough.
Everyone wants to be normal – even
film stars, who are always insisting: “hey,
I’m just a normal guy”. But nobody wants to
be “just average”. Are we completely
hypnotised by the language we use?
From the Concise
Oxford Dictionary:
Normal a. – conforming to
standard
Average a. – of the ordinary
standard.
Back to top
Rags to Riches
– The “Opportunity” Myth
The media is currently full of stories
about “opportunities” for making “dotcom”
fortunes on the Internet. It’s the old
“rags-to-riches” myth wheeled out
again.
A recent survey revealed that nearly
all this year’s top start-up companies
were created by wealthy people. This
doesn’t surprise us. Setting up in business
– and surviving for the first few years,
while you slowly build up a customer base –
is usually very costly. And it’s no different
for Internet businesses: Amazon had to
bear initial losses of millions before
it became profitable.
It’s all about Big Advertising.
It doesn’t matter how talented or hard-working
you are, nor how competitive the pricing of
your product/service. What matters is how much
you spend on advertising. If you don’t
have a few million to spare, forget it.
“Rags-to-riches” is Hollywood
wish-fulfilment mythology, as is the idea that
we’re living in a “meritocracy”.
For the well-off, “enterprise culture”
may be affordable, but the rest of us are stuck
with the “opportunity” of choosing
between a job or welfare.
Back to top
Licensed
to Watch TV
In the UK it’s a criminal offence
to watch TV without a licence. Many poor people
are sent to prison because they can’t afford
the yearly £104 cost of the licence.
TV Detector Vans patrol our
streets seeking illicit TV viewers to prosecute.
According to the small print on the back of
TV licences:
• The licence holder
may watch a TV outside the licensed premises,
provided it is powered only by internal
batteries.
• The licence does
not allow use of a TV in a caravan at
the same time as at the licensed premises.
• The licence does
not guarantee a good picture.
We didn’t make that up.
UK Politicians who support the “free
market” never say a word against TV licensing,
yet it would be difficult to imagine a practice
more against free market principles.
Back to top
Dynamic
Management Phrases
No. 2: “You Should be Grateful”
Eg: “You’re
always complaining... you should be grateful
you have a job.”
This is the medieval logic of “lower
expectations”: no complaint is valid, since
things can always be worse than they are, and
we should always be grateful.
In other words, you should be grateful
for being burnt at the stake, because the alternative
– the Devil gets your soul – is worse.
You should be grateful for being tortured only
eight hours a day, rather than twenty-four.
Such are the nonsensical conclusions of “lower
expectations” logic.
Anyone who says “you should
be grateful” is using psychological coercion,
in an attempt to gain power over you by making
you feel guilty. Don’t let them put
you under.
Back to top
“Achievements”
of New Labour (UK)
Perhaps the most significant achievement
of the New Labour government is their admission
that poverty and homelessness are major problems
in the UK.
This honest admission of societal
failure is a remarkable feat for an established
government (considering the otherwise endless
self-congratulation over the “success”
of Capitalism).
Ironically, the “achievement”
which Labour touts most is not this frankness,
but rather their dubious New Deal –
an expensively hyped welfare-to-work scheme
(advertising budget: £18 million of
taxpayers’ money), which we
regard as the most pointless, stupid scheme
of the decade.
Research by the Employment Policy
Institute, Prince’s Trust and
the Institute for Personnel & Development,
shows widespread abuse of the New Deal
by employers. Under the scheme, companies receive
wage subsidies from the government and then
renege on their obligation to provide training.
In other words, the New Deal
can be seen as an expensive (total cost:
£5.2 billion) way to create pointless,
subsidised slave-jobs which are of no benefit
to anyone. The government believes that creating
more jobs is the answer to all social problems.
They would be wise to consider the words of
Buckminster Fuller in his book Critical Path:
“About 90 percent of all USA
employment is engaged in tasks producing no
life-support wealth. These non-life-support-producing
employees are spending three, four, and more
gallons of gasoline daily to go to their non-wealth-producing
jobs – ergo, we are completely wasting
$3 trillion of cosmic wealth per day in the
USA.”
Back to top
Jobs aren’t
the Cure
The UK government has pledged to
end poverty by creating jobs. However, we’ve
now had 20 years of increased job creation,
and poverty has tripled – it’s time to
challenge the idea that jobs are a cure-all
remedy.
The number of UK citizens living
in poverty has trebled since 1979. During this
period a record number of people found jobs.
The official unemployment count is now at a
19-year low.
Let’s take this slow, as we don’t
often hear it:-
a) The number of
people in work has risen.
b) Poverty has risen.
Creating jobs won’t cure poverty
if 90% of the new jobs have hopelessly inadequate
pay. Contrary to popular belief, more welfare
is spent on people with jobs than on the jobless.
Only 5% of welfare spending goes on the unemployed.
Back to top
Gordon Brown
Declares War on the Unemployed
The Times,17/9/99 reported
the UK government’s plans to toughen up on welfare.
Unemployed people refusing to accept a “job
opportunity” face a six month stoppage of welfare
payments.
In other words, if you lose your
job you may be forced to sweep roads (the only
alternative being escalating debt/poverty).
“I will
not relax the toughness of our approach”
(Gordon Brown)
“Penalties for the
persistent unemployed will be harsher”
(gov. advisers, quoted in the Times, 17/9/99).
(strange language, that –
almost as if the government regards the unemployed
as... criminals.)
ODD
These press releases came just after news of
the unemployment count falling to a 19-year
low (1,212,000). Clearly, then, there’s no pressing
economic reason for crucifying the jobless.
Contrary to popular belief, the welfare expenditure
on unemployment is relatively low – only
5% of the total welfare budget (see our earlier
rant, The “Workshy” &
the Myth of Spiralling Welfare Costs, below).
No, this “war” on the jobless has
more to do with ideology than economics. The
politicians behind Labour’s forced-work policy
come from strongly Protestant families. Gordon
Brown’s father was a minister in the Calvinist-influenced
Church of Scotland. Calvinism was an extremist
anti-pleasure doctrine. Tony Blair and others
also have backgrounds in stoic work-obsessed
Protestantism (for more details see Toil
and Trouble – New Labour’s Puritan Agenda).
The sad irony is that we could
all work much, much less – due to the
advances in technology. Consider, as one small
example, the number of telephone operators freed
from drudgery by speech recognition systems
(OK, the machines are irritating, but would
you really wish that job on a human being?
Only Gordon Brown is that sadistic.)
Back to top
Work &
Original Sin
Whenever I mention “Original
Sin” in connection with work, the usual reaction
is “Huh?..” So here’s a “Christian parable”
to illustrate what I mean:-
Imagine you’re nearly 2000 years
old. For most of your life you’ve been in a
semi-conscious state, with a hypnotist sitting
close to your left ear. Every day for the first
1800 years or so, the hypnotist gave you the
following hypnotic suggestions, over and over
and over:
“You are a son/daughter
of Adam who betrayed God”
“You betrayed God by being born”
“You are evil in essence”
“You are no good”
“You are lower than low”
“You are totally depraved”
“You are damned”
These are followed by a series
of instructions: “If you cleanse yourself with
a life of suffering (denying pleasure) and obedience
to the priests, you may, with God’s grace, receive
redemption. However, there is no guarantee of
this.”
This goes on every day, for centuries.
Then, when you were about 1700 years old, the
instructions changed a little, according to
Protestantism:
“You may earn redemption if you
work hard. There’s still no guarantee
of redemption, but an outward sign of your virtue
and redemption would be possession of CAPITAL.
Laziness and a lack of property are sure signs
that you are damned eternally to hell.” (See
Max Weber for the link between Protestantism
and Capitalism).
Now you’re 1999 years old and have
woken up a bit. There’s no sign of the hypnotist
anymore. It’s 8.15am, and you’re driving to
work. Despite a weekend of buying nice new furniture,
you still feel vaguely depressed and unsatisfied.
You don’t understand why – after all, you’re
everything you’re supposed to be: a hard worker,
a loyal, obedient corporate teamplayer. And
you’ve got a lot of nice, expensive consumer
products.
On your way to work, you pass a
vagrant, and you feel a sudden, intense anger
towards this lazy “good-for-nothing.” Then a
little later you have a vague feeling of guilt.
But once you get to your desk and have a few
cups of CAFFEINE, these vague uneasy feelings
disappear, so you can do your job.
Later, after work, the vague feelings
of depression and futility return – but
happily, a few glasses of ALCOHOL numb those
troubling feelings, so that when you go to bed
you can sink into oblivion, ready for another
early morning start. “Original sin” means absolutely
nothing to you.
Back to top
UK Government
Declares War
on “Sick-Note Culture”
The UK government has once again
shown how out of touch it is. In early November
1998, they declared war on absenteeism, or the
“sick-note culture”, as the Daily Mail called
it. Measures to be introduced in the public
sector include visits to the homes of sick staff
(to check up on them) and interviews (ie interrogations)
with those who are off sick a lot.
A few points come to mind –
• If there is so much absenteeism,
what does it signify? To us it signifies that
a large portion of the public are fed up with
long working hours and little in the way of
rests or holidays.
• Absentees are accused of effectively
“cheating” or “stealing” from their employers.
We think the main point here is that they have
NO CHOICE, since most companies don’t let staff
take unpaid leave. This leaves paid holiday
allowance of 20-25 days – enough only for
a few short breaks and a few days off at Xmas.
• In our experience, a far greater
problem is the number of people who go into
work when they are ill (spreading the
illness to the whole office). One survey, quoted
in The Independent, revealed that 75%
of managers feel obliged to go into work when
they’re ill. Meanwhile stress-related illness
(caused mainly by work) is reaching epidemic
proportions.
• Taking a day off sick when you’re
not sick may actually have a preventative effect.
Take one day’s (much needed) rest and you’re
less likely to come down with an illness that
might put you out for weeks.
• Absenteeism is estimated to cost
the taxpayers £600 million a year. This
is a dubious statistic, because it assumes that
if the person actually went into work rather
than go AWOL, she/he’d put in a productive day’s
work. More likely, the person is so tired /
fed up / cheesed off / unmotivated / resistant
to drudgery (why else take a day off) that their
productivity would be zero – making the
above figure completely bogus.
• One of the remedies proposed
(in the newspaper report we read) was to “encourage”
people into feeling more positive about their
work. What this fails to take into account is
that we are humans with shifting moods, not
units of productivity. Even the most loyal,
brainwashed employee will get tired or fed up
with work once in a while.
• Another proposed “cure” for absenteeism
was a kind of emotional blackmail – employees
would be made to feel GUILTY for letting their
colleagues down if they took sick leave. This
says a lot (it says that people who dream up
such “cures” are complete assholes. The one
thing we don’t need more of is guilt).
• The possibility, in one’s mind,
of taking a sick day off when things get too
horrible at work (even if you don’t actually
end up taking the day off) is an important safety
valve. If it didn’t exist, we’d probably see
more stress-related illness, and more bad feeling
and sabotage in the workplace.
Employers should probably feel
grateful that their staff are taking sick days,
because it’s actually benefiting the company,
both in terms of morale and productivity. If
they can’t go as far as feeling grateful, they
could at least savour the irony.
(For a slightly different perspective on sick
days, see the Decadent
Action website, for their “World Phone in
sick Day”).
Back to top
The “Workshy”
& the Myth of Spiralling Welfare Costs
The front page newspaper headlines
on March 27th, 1998 (following the UK government’s
announcement of its welfare reforms) were as
follows:
“WELFARE
WAR ON WORKSHY” (Daily Mail)
“THOU SHALT NOT SHIRK”
(The Express)
“BLAIR IN WELFARE WAR
ON THE IDLE” (Daily Telegraph)
“SHAKE-UP IN WELFARE HITS
THE WORKSHY” (The Times)
Did anyone notice the weird contradiction
between the media coverage blaming “spiralling”
welfare costs on the “workshy”, and the official
unemployed count showing the lowest figure
for 18 years? (given as 1,383,800 in The
Daily Telegraph, 19/3/98).
According to the DSS’s own figures,
only 5% of welfare expenditure goes on the unemployed,
and that apparently includes benefit fraud.
“..ministers should stop conniving
in the fallacy that the welfare state is in
a terminal crisis when it palpably is not...What
is not legitimate is to pretend that
welfare is a luxury Britain cannot afford”.
(Larry Elliot, in The Guardian, 19/1/98)
In fact, welfare spending isn’t
spiralling out of control. During the four terms
of Tory government, welfare spending rose, relative
to GDP, by only 2.5% – a small amount,
given an ageing population, two recessions and
the increased demands for healthcare of the
chronically stressed and overworked. Britain
is near the bottom of the league table of developed
nations in terms of welfare spending. In the
European Union, only Portugal, Ireland and Greece
spend less on welfare.
So why this frenzied media attack
on people without jobs? To us, it sounds like
the imposition of an outdated and unhealthy
Puritan morality. But maybe it also serves to
distract us from the real “scandals” such as
the billions lost through the gaping loopholes
in the tax system which make tax virtually optional
for the super-rich.
Why the hell is the government
spending £5.2 billion on a Welfare to Work
scheme that will do nothing but artificially
create low-paid jobs that nobody really wants?
(According to the Idler magazine, signing
up to the armed forces will be one of the ‘options’
that people will be forced to ‘choose’ from,
under Welfare to Work).
Why don’t they do something sensible
– like the French, for instance, who have
considered encouraging companies (via tax incentives)
to offer employees an optional four day week.
More staff are then hired (to fill the gap left
by employees opting for a shorter week), thereby
reducing unemployment, and repaying (in saved
social security) the amount initially spent
on the tax incentives (see Jeremy Rifkin’s article,
Vanishing
Jobs for further details).
Everyone could benefit under such
a scheme and nobody is forced to do anything
(unlike the Welfare to Work scheme, where people
are threatened with loss of benefits if they
don’t do as told). Studies have shown that approximately
60 % of British workers feel they work too many
hours (sources: NOP poll and BSA national
survey), and a significant proportion of
these would choose to work less hours (even
with a cut in pay).
Let’s stop deluding ourselves with
the childish slogan of the politicians: “getting
people back into work”, and let’s think instead
of how we can get people OUT of work (where
they want out).
The
Political Drama Triangle
A branch of psychology called Transactional
Analysis (TA) has a diagram called The
Drama Triangle which is used for analysing
psychological games.
 Interestingly,
this triangle seems equally applicable to political
games. The Persecutor/Rescuer
polarity appears to reflect the conservative/liberal
dichotomy in politics. In the TA psychological
model, both persecutors and rescuers need victims
in order to play their psychological power games.
The same seems true in traditional politics:
the conservative game requires victims to criticise,
castigate, scapegoat and punish; the liberal
game requires victims to “help”, patronise,
pity and redeem. The liberal game appears more
altruistic, but, like the conservative game,
it’s about power – it’s about the
monkey urge to be higher up in the tree. This
can be seen from the fact that many liberal
schemes for “helping” people are compulsory,
ie “you must accept our help” (meaning:
“you must play the role of victim”).
The survival of traditional politics
depends on the existence of a large pool of
“victims” – ie poor people – to rescue
or persecute. Hence the continuing (in fact
increasing) gap between rich and poor, even
under relatively liberal governments (latest
government reports show that a third
of UK children live in poverty).
A fairer distribution of wealth
would drastically shrink the pool of “victims”,
thereby threatening the survival of traditional
politics. When people say “with
the political will, poverty could easily be
abolished” they perhaps don’t
appreciate the irony. The will to abolish a
power game never arises from within the power
game itself.
When individuals – eg a wife
and husband – get stuck in dysfunctional
power games, a therapist can help them “evolve”
out of their destructive game-playing. But who
is going to help politics evolve?
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