When bullying is OK

We all agree it is clear cut, if you are told do what I say, do it now or else. If that else is a clear an unambiguous something far worse that is going make you endure emotional stress and or financial hard ship, you have unequivocally been subjected to bullying. Right? Wrong, not if it is carried out by the State. Now the State has to pursue ten of thousands of miscreants who are trying to evade the law of the land. It is only right and proper that they can stop these miscreant in their unlawful tracks swiftly and efficiently. We don't want to be wasting our time and resources on these repeat offenders. Swift efficient restitution and compliance with the law of the land is what we all want. Particularly if those miscreants are the unemployed. It has entered into our unquestioning social psyche, as our political leaders have told us often enough, all unemployed are shirkers, time waster only in it for easy money living off the State. It is therefore entirely reasonable that they should be subjected to coercion, real and implied threats and official harassment. Got to make them work irrespective. Entirely reasonable that they should be made to forego searching for a real job and be made, under duress, to commit to a job that offers nothing other than promises. Harassment from over-stretched officials, who have heard it all before so many, many times and in anycase have their own performance targets to meet else they too might receive an unfavourable report. Apply the department instructions to the letter, no deviation, no pause for thought, no scope for discretion, just the tick box, onto the next. Yours is not to reason why or to feel any compassion.

Not just the unemployed, naturally, anyone who has the misfortune to depend on the State can be a prime target for State bullying. These are the unwashed masses beneath contempt so it is perfectly alright. Brought up a family now living in a home too big for you, out on the streets or pay a rent increase way beyond your already stretched finances. Do not bleed broken here to us, the smug comfortable, about lack of alternate choice, having to move away from a work/family support network to a distant strange town or your pathetic special caring needs. Get over it. Greater needs must. The greater need is that untouchable Ministry, the Treasury, beyond any reason or argument. When they say 20% budget reduction. Jump to it, comply. When they say reduce welfare costs, cut, slash, importune what the hell it is only the unwashed masses that no one cares a fig about. When they say increase income, turf out lifelong sitting tenants so the now vacant property can be sold at a premium prices to ex-yuppies. Never mind that these same properties were bequeathed to the Nation for the Nation's custodianship of its cultural heritage. Nope, Treasury says raise money, compliance is the only acceptable response.

Just keep in mind that the Government's tactic for the past decade or more is it to defuse blame to some lower level quango's, pseudo government offices or other administrative functions whilst retaining the moral high ground of making decision for the good of the people. Look at us see what we have decided, then failing to make money available to properly implement that decision. Then they can look down at those diffused lower administrations, tut, and say what failure, how under resourced, making such bad judgements calls, a disgrace. It is called a Government WinWin. What ever results comes out of their short sighted policies, they are Teflon coated, nothing sticks on them!

Of course if manner by the Government conducts its affairs is right and proper for them, so it is also for those large conglomerates set up to provide us with essential services. They too have huge numbers of users all out to defraud them, they too need to use fast effective methods to maintain their income stream, irrespective of consequence. Good enough for the Government, good enough for them to. No doubt you will have received those peremptory notices warning you have breached some terms of supply, that requires immediate compliance  within some short timescale else some variant threat of bailiffs to seize goods, your life essentials, or of a court appearance where there will be a fine added to any amount owing together with their court costs estimated at some ridiculous eye watering number. It is just state endorsed bullying, no matter what way you look at it. The usual expectations of fairness and justice are unilaterally set aside by a superior organisation who consider that they are above such niceties. The simple niceties such as no prior presumption of guilt, of a right to offer a defence against an alleged offence and an impartial body, representing those twelve decent men on Clapham Bus, to adjudicate an outcome when disputed and on the appropriate retribution, cash or kind. That is our birth right.

Next time a political leader stands before you pontificating on the horrors of child bullying demand they ensure that all legislation they endorse enshrines the principle of fairness to all with no bullying no matter what age, creed, race or social status.

Compare and Contrast

First off a story I have just heard, a man arranged a German car-sharing trip with a stranger, as is common-place over there, to a ferry port. This stranger calls off the trip, car is not ready. So our man takes the train to the ferry, missing the last ferry, to catch the ferry the next day. Arrives in England and is hauled off and subjected to a strip search, a thorough search of his luggage and some five hours of interrogation, where his denials were dismissed with disbelief and hostility. What is even worse, a female passenger, he just happened to exchange a couple of polite pleasantries with, sharing the hazards of travel sort of stuff, was also given the same treatment. His crime? He had by mischance managed to exchange a couple of EMails with a suspected drug dealer! What do we have, the planned car journey manifestly did not take place, the two individuals never met and we are left with secret snooping on private EMails giving rise to a suspicion, just a possibility with no tangible supporting actual physical evidence. Just a person somewhere being suspicious.

That evening I watched a documentary about benefit fraud (Britain on the Fiddle). Of the three cases offered up for our entertainment was the case of a man with two identities, one of which was also receiving disabled benefit, all fraudulently claim benefits. The hard physical evidence was there, double passports in two names, video recording of man working easily and physically with no sign of impairment, photo records of living at different addresses to that claimed, variety of cars all in use by him yet the investigation drags on because there is not yet enough evidence to ensure a conviction and the Police are too busy to bother with such a minor contraventions! So plenty of hard evidence but whether by incompetence, sloppy documentation leading it open to challenge or just too overwhelmed with work to fit in bringing the cast to court, a man manifestly living out a fraud, is allowed to continue. Eventually yes the wheels are in motion, months down the line and he does go to jail. But just compare and contrast. The overt working of the legal systems and the covert unaccountable systems.

If you have emotional hype on your side, think drugs, terrorism or even pedophilia, then  anything can be justified, perpetrators are beyond any compassion, beyond any hope of even the most radical do gooder defending some basic civil right. No, for fear of condoning, we willingly acquiesce  to secrecy, to abandonment of all rules of proof and justice being seen to be done. In our name we will allow unknown, unaccountable individuals to trash the rules that have been crafted over centuries to give everyone a chance to protest their innocence. Not to be subjected to the whim and fancy of a Another's suspicion.

In this oh so PC world we are tripping over our feet of zealous correctness and have lost our confidence to know right from wrong. So the burden of proof has to be able to withstand so many minor technicality challenges. For fear of giving offense we lean over backwards to allow the legal counter-challenges that then grind our system down so that fraudsters can wriggle this way and that way. 

To interpose authority into someones life, to prohibit their freedom to carry on seeing a dying mother, or making that interview, or declaring their love or just travel for the joy of it, there has to be significant cause, not just an idle suspicion.

An aside

I am seething underneath over two issues.
The amount of adulatory comments about that woman who destroyed so much of the fabric of our society.
The bland dismissive contempt of the government minister telling benefit claimants they should seek work.
Arhh!
 
So she died and so has to be buried. Please spare us all the pomp and circumstance of a feted funeral parade. I really feel like finding a large source of rotten eggs to throw at her coffin I am that incensed. She had her way not from ignorance, nor arrogance but just by contempt and manipulation of all those surrounding her, getting to do her thing, no matter how wrong, misguided and so lacking in a longer term view. Amongst her many crimes, she destroyed the unions, she politicised the, up until then, democratic quasi objective planning system, she gave full reign and encouragement to self seeking gratification, she gave away our social inheritance to profit makers and did everything to encourage greed and nothing to promote compassionate support. The limp wristed that lapped up the cream washing over her rights of passage are the self same trundled out to glorify her 'achievements'. History will condemn them and her in due course.


How dare anyone stand up in public and without a twinge of conscious say to the nation that those on benefits should seek work, That they, the government want to work with them, the benefit applicants, to seek employment. What utter sanctimonious bilge. Does the Minister have any sense of shame? Are their lives so far out of touch with real life exigencies that they actually believe all benefits supplicants have to do is get off their couch and just look for work? That then they will find ample work opportunities and 'it' the benefit problem will magically go away. Are these, the imbeciles we get to vote for and put in power, to make such crass, insensitive and so very out of touch pig ignorant statements to the nations media? Rise up and shout back. Tell it as it is. 


Once the gilded lillies have taken off their rich cream bonuses, what we are left with is a bankrupt nation, in a double dip recession, ruled by a government that sees no merit in stimulating employment and where we scrabble and fight over the few menial jobs left. Ever fearful of being undercut and replaced by the next even more desperate person underneath us. Deal with the rampant excesses and compassionately support the underdog is not a bad replacement policy.

Taking Advantage

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

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


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


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


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


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

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

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