"Write what you know" they say.

Even of what you know is benefits advice work and writing stories about it only pays enough to keep your colleagues in biscuits!



Sunday 14 May 2017

Daphne's General Election Dilemma (or "It's Déjà Vu All Over Again")

Another 'which way to vote?' conversation between two old friends, Daphne Randall from the 4mph Thrillers and Welfare Rights Lit's Hilary Carrington.  In case you're new to this blog, their previous discussion is here.


    'Hi Hils!'
    'Daphne!  How lovely to hear you!  Are you well?'
    'Never better, pet.'
    'And Harry?'
    'No worse than usual.  We're out at the Brit for the match tomorrow, then off to Coventry and the Ashby Canal for a week.'
    'I'm really rather envious.  I could do with a break myself.  It's all go at the Project.  We're still, trying to get to grips with this new fully digital Universal Credit system.  Our work is more IT helpdesk than welfare rights at the moment and, as you might imagine, the Community Café - especially the foodbank - is dreadfully busy.'
    'We're spared that until next spring, thankfully - and maybe longer, if the bookies have called it wrong with the Election!'
    'Wouldn't that be a relief!  I have to say, I'm surprised Harry's able to take a holiday just now - I would have thought he'd be hard at it, with an election to cover.'
    'He's hard at it, alright - his garden hasn't looked so tidy in years and, with it wet today, he's even started decorating his spare room.'
    'However does he have the time for that?'
    'He's resigned, pet.'
    'Resigned!'
    'Aye.  On local election day, the Gazette carried a Tory election flyer as a four-page wrap.  Our Harry's not always on our wavelength, Hils, but he prides himself of taking an even-handed and independent line, so he told his editor this tacky ad had cheapened the paper and undermined his neutrality and integrity.  He came home in a blaze of righteous indignation, had a whisky, took his shears to the brambles out the back, went through them like napalm then borrowed a rotavator of the old lad next door and churned up the lawn.  It scared the daylights out of the dog!  He's got it all laid out as flower beds and a kitchen garden now and, when it gets dark, he's either catching up on Gardener's World on the iPlayer or Googling "Constructive Dismissal", unless I take him round to the pub.'
    'He must almost be old enough to retire, though?'
    'Only a couple of years off, pet.  He hoped to keep working a while yet.  He's not got much saved up, after his divorces and such like and I cannot keep him on my wage.  He'll have to get a job of some sort.  He was joking about putting up for Council last night.'
    'That's ironic, considering how you two met!  He's certainly got the political knowledge but which party would he support?  You're always pulling his leg about him being a Tory - he isn't really, is he?'
    'After this business, I'd say not.  He was even cheering Jeremy Corbyn on Channel 4 last night, though that was when he said he'd keep his allotment if he became PM, rather than for anything he said on defence.  I cannot see him joining the local Labour team, mind.'
    'Out of loyalty to you?'
    'Partly that.  Partly because he cannot forgive them wasting so much money on those new offices.'
    'I rather liked the multi-coloured one!'
    'That's easy to say, Hils, when it's not your public services being cut to pay for it!'
    'Fair point, Daph.  Poor old Harry, though!  He must be missing the buzz around the General Election.  I see a couple of your local seats are officially marginal and at risk of going Conservative this time around, if UKIP votes go their way.  I always assumed yours were all safe Labour.'
    'Far from it, pet.  There's a rogue right wing up here that does all kinds of strange stuff and the left is no more predictable.  I'm not even sure how I'm voting myself.'
    'Really?  I would have thought that, nationally anyway, Labour had done quite a lot to win you back.  If the leaked manifesto is anything to go by, they'll pick up any of my colleagues' votes not better used tactically.  Finally, some proper pledges on reversing more of the benefit cuts than just the Bedroom Tax!  Whatever is stopping you this time?'
    'Well, you know how the BBC cannot seem to hit town anywhere without finding some old lad or lass to say they've always voted Labour before but cannot vote for Corbyn?'
    'Indeed!'
    'I'm the equal and opposite reaction to that.  I've been reluctant to vote Labour - except as a lesser evil - but now, under Corbyn, it's finally looking like a genuine force for good again.'
    'I do agreed, Daphne.  And I am starting to get really rather suspicious of those interviews.  I wonder whether they show people saying that more to encourage others to think it than because it's so prevalent.  They never ask what exactly these people don't like, or which actually policies they disapprove of.  And they interviewed a couple in York who carried on about working during power cuts in the nineteen-seventies but looked younger than us - and we were still at school then!'
    'Plenty of voluntary sector organisations are afraid to speak out and tell the truth for fear of losing funding.  Is it any wonder if the BBC is the same?'
    'If you feel that way, Daph, what's the problem with voting Labour?  Is it Brexit?  We were both awfully upset with the Referendum result and I would love to be able to vote again, when people can see what a mess it really all is and that they haven't got extra money for the NHS, just fewer doctors and nurses - but at least Labour seem keen to keep us in the Single Market, like Norway.'
    'It should be an easier call this year but my worry is that I'll vote for the local Labour lad, he'll get in - but nationally, Labour won't - then he and the other so-called "moderates" will go off to form a new version of the old SDP, blaming Corbs for the collapse of the party and taking no responsibility for creating the split narrative the media have been running throughout the campaign.  It won't be the 1970s all over again, it'll be the 1980s!  I'm not even sure they'll stand by their leader if, by a miracle, Labour wins.  What if they still form their own party, or vote with the Tories to keep benefits low or the railways in private hands, or for a "no deal" Brexit because it's the will of the people?  I'm not sure I can trust them not to.  I'm still feeling the only way I can demonstrate what I really believe is to vote Green.'
    'Which is fair enough, unless your Labour-lite candidate's position is so precarious he gets defeated by a Tory.  You fear your Labour candidate might renege on these promises or even quit the party, but you know a that Conservative MP would oppose everything you hold dear.  I think you have to chance it.  Blairite or Thatcherite isn't a happy choice but it looks like the only safe one.  Mind you, I'll probably be holding my nose and voting LibDem.'
    'Just as long as we get a second Referendum and not a second coalition, Hils.'
    'They did promise not to.'
    'They're politicians, pet.'

Wednesday 10 May 2017

Schrödinger's Fox and Other Animals

I was stopped on my way into the office this morning by a pleasant, studious-looking chap with a microphone, who introduced himself as being from Radio Stoke, before asking courteously if I had heard about Theresa May's plan to give MPs a 'free vote' on fox hunting and what I thought about that. 

Unfortunately, in addition to making me sound like Darth Vader's long-lost sister (I'm sure he has one, with Star Wars having almost as complicated a series of misplaced relatives as Classical Greek tragedy), the cold I am currently fighting off has dulled my wits slightly, so I did my best to actually answer his question. 

With hindsight, that was a mistake.  Not because I don't have an opinion - I do.  It's further down and will explain the title of this post.  My mistake was not responding by questioning why he hadn't been loitering about outside the CAB in December last year, when the local rate for the Benefit Cap was slashed by £6000 (Child Tax Credit/ Child Benefit for two kids), or whether he had taken his trusty vox pop microphone out on the streets to find out if people approved of the cuts to benefits for widows and orphans last month? 

My point, in short, should have been that I find it bizarre that it's so much easier engender debate and elicit sympathy when the issue is cruelty to animals.  Cruelty to humans - whether that's through sanctions, the Bedroom Tax, cuts to disability and sickness benefits or the new 'two child limit' and 'rape clause' for CTC and Universal Credit - raises barely a shrug of the shoulders.  Moreover, we're told it's generally popular with voters, who approve of cutting benefits to encourage the workshy to take jobs and the feckless to stop having kids.  Animals are defenceless, they would argue, so we have to protect them. I get that: I don't disagree.  But human children are also pretty defenceless and last century we started taking serious measures to protect them too, by making sure their parents had enough money to keep them in the necessities of life and to put a roof over their heads.  Now, we often don't - indeed, if we cap a family's benefits, the first thing stopped by the state is a slice of the rent money. 

How are people content to let that happen?  I will take a great deal of convincing that the fault doesn't lay at the door of media representation of people on benefits.  Imagine if instead of the usual seasonal celebration of British Wildlife we had Bad Springwatch, where we saw foxes going berserk in chicken coops and ripping up new-born lambs - but not hunting wild prey and absolutely never their pretty, joyful, gambolling cubs.  Birdlife would be represented by chip-thieving seagulls hanging about seaside resorts and feral pigeons crapping on statues of national heroes, not chirpy blue-tits or majestic kestrels, while the evil alter ego of Chris Packham (a Richard Bilton for animals) would exhort people not to put seed and scraps out for the birds, or snacks for hedgehogs, on the grounds that it encourages dependency. 

That, folks, is the equivalent - in animal terms - of the TV output about claimants. 

What about the foxes, though?  Well, I'm not in favour of fox-hunting.  To me, not only does it seem barbaric to the wild animal to chase it for fun, it's surely cruel to both dogs and horses to ride them at speed across a route that hasn't first been checked for hazards, such as barbed wire fences, slurry pits and broken glass, and dangerous for them and their riders.  A planned drag hunt, following a scent trail, mitigates these risks and prevents the risk of trespass onto land where a troop of horses and hounds aren't welcome.

What never fails to amuse me is that if the subject arises amongst people with divergent views (I sometimes go horse-riding, so do encounter people strongly in favour), two completely contradictory defences of the practice are offered.  I'm either told 'the fox usually got away' or, alternatively, I'm assured that fox-hunting is the most effective way of controlling the rural fox population. Hence, 'Schrödinger's Fox' - simultaneously alive and well, having cunningly outwitted the pursuit, and dead.

Perhaps the pro-hunt lobby should pause to consider the effect of their preferred method of control.  Those foxes that do get away are the swiftest, the sharpest, the 'fittest' in the most Darwinian sense.  Those killed by the hunt are the slowest and the least fit.  You are, therefore, breeding a cleverer, faster rural fox, a wiser and wilier foe, generation by generation.

You should be worried.

Friday 5 May 2017

Politics and Principles

I'm not always kind to the political figures who have walk-on appearances in my novels.  If you've read either the welfare rights lit stories or the 4mph thrillers (or even both - hello, greatest fan!) you'll know what a venal, conniving, disloyal and unscrupulous bunch of villains scuttle through the corridors of power in my fictional councils.  There are a few valiant exceptions - after all, did not the redoubtable Daphne Randall hold a seat on Stoke City Council in the parallel universe of Grand Union?  However, in the aftermath of the Local Government elections - and some very local in particular - perhaps the grounds for my cynicism have become more apparent.

In the village where I grew up, the first borough councillor I recall seeing elected was a LibDem, right up to the point where the Tories seemed to be in the ascendancy, when he swapped his gold rosette for a blue one and retained his seat.  A few years later, as the tables turned, he threw the blue rosette away, blew the dust off of the old gold one and regained his seat in the council chamber.  If you were being charitable, you might argue that he found common ground with the Tories in the John Major years only to return to the liberal fold when the likes of Michael Howard and IDS were Conservative leaders.  Alternatively, you might think he was merely an unprincipled opportunist. 


I find myself uncharitably disposed towards those who jump straight from holding elected office with one party to campaigning to be elected for another without a decent period of transition and reflection in between.  Perhaps that's because my own political journey moved at positively narrowboat pace, from leaning towards Labour before I could vote (late 1970s), becoming interested in the case for nuclear disarmament (early 1980s), voting Labour the first time I could vote (1983), joining the Labour Party and meeting my husband at a Labour Party event (1987), campaigning for the Labour Party (late 1980s to mid 1990s) and being a local candidate for an unwinnable borough council seat (1988), giving up my party membership (mid 1990s), voting Labour in a General Election for the last time (2010), voting Green for the first time (2015), joining the Green Party (2015). 


With a lot of overlap between the values of Jeremy Corbyn's Labour and the policies that have drawn me to the Green Party, I find myself with a foot in both camps, hoping that the Greens will prevail where Labour are historically unlikely to do well (and against avowed Blairites), while hoping Labour will hold firm and make gains too.  In the short-to-medium-term, the only vaguely realistic hope of preventing further NHS privatisation, further social security cuts and the immoral waste of precious resources on Trident is a left-leaning Labour Government requiring SNP, Plaid and Green votes for a Commons majority.  To me, being triumphalist about Labour's poor showing this week would be like engaging in an exuberant goal celebration after scoring against your old side in front of their fans, even if their losses had come at the expense of progressive - rather than regressive - opposition. 


So I really don't get how any politician of integrity can, overnight, defect straight from holding office for Labour to doing the same for the Conservatives (or, for that matter, vice versa).  I find it extraordinary that anyone can switch right to the Tories in the light of their assault on the NHS, public services generally and the most disadvantaged citizens of this country - including children.  If you are desperately unhappy with Jeremy Corbyn as your party leader, maybe you might step aside and consider whether to change your voting allegiance.  But surely, if you are so much more comfortable with Theresa More-UKIP-Than-UKIP May as your party leader that you're now willing to represent her party, you should never have claimed to be a Labour councillor - unless, of course, Labour and the Tories really got so close in outlook and policies in the Blair years that their policies and candidates were interchangeable and natural Tories were comfortable flashing red rosettes to steal working-class communities. 

What the big picture hides are all the small local disputes that muddy the waters of local politics.  Apparently, Labour losses in the Welsh valleys are attributed locally to issues with bin collection, a strictly local issue of the 'tough on dog poo, tough on the causes of dog poo,' variety favoured by that chameleon former councillor from my youth.  The Tories may crow about winning one local seat around here and Labour right-wingers mutter darkly about their national Party leadership, but there isn't a great deal poor old JC can do if two former Labour councillors - now running as a Tory and an Independent respectively - face off against the new official Labour councillor on the basis of local, not national, feuding.  When drawing conclusions from Local Government results, absurd situations like this get lost in the bigger narrative although, where they arise from personal rather than policy differences, they bring politics as a whole into disrepute and stoke the general mood of cynicism. 

The fictional Gerry Matthews would fit in nicely; he'd just have to swap the purple rosette on his shiny suit for a blue one.  I'm sure plenty of real Kipper councillors will be quick to do just that.