Austerity and “The Big Society Freeze”

2nd October - This year so far there has been mild weather and no big flu pandemic, yet still Woman dies in ambulance at Morriston Hospital A&E queue

The main problem last year in the UK was flooding, “austerity” was often cited as a problem - local councils cutting back on dredging rivers, especially. Prime Minister David Cameron used this as a photo opportunity - being seen walking in boots vthrough the water.

The current big international story is the Ebola outbreak in Africa - let's hope for another mild Winter and that Ebola can be controlled here and overseas alike.

“ Every year, mortality rises by 19% in the winter months in England. This amounts to an average of 27,000 “excess” winter deaths (EWDs); 90.8% of which last year were in the over 65 age group.

The majority of these deaths occur among older people, especially women, and those with underlying health problems. However, they are not people who would have otherwise died at that time. Most deaths are due to cardiac disease, strokes and respiratory problems, not hypothermia. The Marmot Review Team also found there was a greater risk of death in colder housing than in the warmest housing, estimating that 21.5% of all excess winter deaths could be attributed to cold homes. ”
Source: Ripped-off Britons

Introduction

I'm afraid this piece is very anglocentric but it is, I believe, a credible piece of moral philosophy. The writing is thoroughly hyperlinked but non-British readers who wish to pursue it may find the following wikipedia entries useful in understanding it:
Universal Credit
Child Benefit
Fuel poverty in the United Kingdom
Eton College

What may happen in this blog is that actual academic philosophy may become somewhat separated from the practical application of it. It is very hard to say at this juncture as no real schema yet exists. Posts are frequently updated and may well become separated from their own content into sub-posts and so forth.

Social Context of “The Big Freeze” - “The Big Society Freeze”

The image above depicts a google search for cold warnings on bbc news .

N.B. In this piece I am not arguing anything at all about Syria just pointing out a contradiction in the Etonion UK government's attitude to it's own subjects and those of Syria. I think the situation in Syria is awful and inhumane but I don't want to get into the politics of that here.

I found that search result quite poignant because at the moment William Hague [wikipedia] is making much fuss about the Situation in Syria, saying that all options are open on Syria , including military assistance. This contradiction had occurred to me before and coincidentally while searching on articles on deaths due to cold in the UK, which I want to discuss the Syrian conflict came up.

I want to discuss this contradiction in the context of current Etonion “austerity”, policy, it's discourse, hypocrisy and moral failings.

The UK has just been hit by widespread floods and is about to be hit by calamitous prolonged cold and snow:

Prepare for impact: Government issues severe weather warning as Big Freeze heads our way [Daily Mirror]
UK facing snow threat amid freeze [BBC News]

All this at a time when Rising energy bills [are] causing fuel poverty deaths [BBC News] and Pensioners have just taken a significant Budget 2011: Winter fuel payment blow for pensioners. [BBC News]

We also have to focus on the relatively dire and chaotic state the National Health Service [NHS] is in due to Etonion austerity and privitisation - I predict that our NHS is going to be stretched to breaking point this Winter and that unfortunately many will die unnecessarily. Many others will suffer unduly in hospital, including overworked staff.

I haven't yet focused an the NHS r“reforms” (sic) in this blog but I have been reading about them for some time.

There is also growing demand for food banks in breadline Britain [BBC NEWS]. When you factor in prolonged cold and the costs of prescriptions for cold related illnesses you have to wonder how food banks and “ordinary working families” (“strivers” in the latest Etonion rhetoric) will cope.

As with the NHS it won't just be the end-users of food banks who suffer - greater demand means smaller portions - but also the volunteers. The once-vaunted Etonion ideology (mythology) of “The Big Society” has been long forgotten and the situation we are in now contradicts that phantom completely.

Of course, some good neighbours will look after each other, when they can afford to, but that has always been the case from time immemorial and austerity does nothing for that - making people poorer actually runs against the idea of “The big Society” because poor people have less power to help one another.

What the future holds

The worst of the Etonion reforms have yet to bite. Benefits will only be increasing by 1% not at the rate of inflation. Winter fuel payments will not increase at all. This 1% increase is also true of public sector pay: Poorest households will be hit hardest by benefit changes, Whitehall admits [Guardian] . This article is one of the best I have read on this topic. It's so easy to forget that “austerity” is not just all about the sick, disabled and unemployed but “we're all in this together” unless we're very rich. In my other, more (too?) academic piece on this topic The Discourse of austerity I've argued that even if you think tax breaks and austerity work in your favour you may be deceiving yourself.

Working people will be paying enhanced state pension credits but will not see the dividends until they retire. Under the Energy Bill we will all be paying for nuclear and wind power but will not see the (hypothetical) dividends until these resources are completed. Elderly people will be paying for resources they may never live to see. Does it really make sense to charge a shivering ninety nine year old for an nuclear power station? You might as well tax them for the afterlife.

If you are a “striver” you can “strive” less effectively if your parent, child or partner is sick.

As well as representing a real cut in living standards for millions of people universal credit may well bring additional problems. Do you prioritise heating and food over rent when you're penniless? Who can be so hardhearted as not to turn the heating up for their freezing children?

Austerity will drive people into the hands of high interest lenders who will use universal credit as security on their loans. I can image a cycle where the desperate borrow from their housing benefit (universal credit) then borrow from high rate lenders, then borrow from universal credit to repay the loans and gradually get into an enormous debt cycle that can lead to them becoming homeless.

There are many vulnerable people in society being exploited by false friends or outright criminals. Even though they will receive less money, they will have more money in their hands that can be taken off them once universal credit is introduced. This will also cause more homelessness and more problems for landlords, councils and housing associations. Homelessness itself makes suicide more likely, and significantly lowers life expectancy in general.

Lack of financial education costs UK £3.4 billion a year
Direct payment could undermine universal credit

In addition the are doubts that the IT systems are properly in place for for universal credit - Universal credit plan 'is a disaster in the making', says minister just months ahead of launch [Ripped-off Britons]

According to Iain Duncan Smith    Child-related benefits may be 'capped' at two children [BBC News] - given the foregoing I hope that all reasonable people can see the cruelty of this, some workers will have planned their families during better times, to punish their children with poverty during recession is nothing less than child abuse , as defined as willful neglect. This will, in some cases have a knock-on effect for social services and law enforcement. Some children may end up in care. all this costs society as well as those involved.

Not only the parent of a child is responsible for a child's well-being but the responsibility falls on the whole of society. Those that make policies in which it is impossible for the vulnerable to live are responsible for the harm that those policies inflict upon them.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Children And Families (DCF) define child maltreatment as any act or series of acts of commission or omission by a parent or other caregiver that results in harm, potential for harm, or threat of harm to a child.[2] Child abuse can occur in a child's home, or in the organizations, schools or communities the child interacts with. There are four major categories of child abuse: neglect, physical abuse, psychological or emotional abuse, and sexual abuse. Source, wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_abuse

Here I am using the term "child abuse in the same way you might use the term “institutionally racist”

Taken as a whole I think austerity abuses many of those it comes into contact with - I understand austerity as making vast sections of society suffer disproportionately so that the rich and powerful can get richer and more powerful. There may be some ideology that it's for the good of the nation “trickle down economics” but I think it's mostly driven by greed and a blind belief in superiority and entitlement.

Doctors dismayed as public health committee is scrapped [Guardian] - can this be the type of sequence of events that caused the Etonions to scrap this body they promised before the election? That their austerity project and its inevitable consequences are not compatible with public health?

Conclusion

It doesn't matter if you drop scud missiles upon your people, like Assad of Syria, does his own people but to make policies that rob them of their dignity and lead directly to death, displacement or harm is no different. An act is the same as an omission to act in terms of moral philosophy.

I contend that there is a blatant contradiction between the Etonions “concern” for the Syrian people when they don't even know how to treat their own people properly. I believe their disastrous policies will be laid bare by this oncoming weather and that many people are going to suffer horribly.
17 hospitals with unsafe staffing, says Care Quality Commission

I hope I am wrong about the consequences of the weather that is coming but I am pointing here to the adversity that confronts society as it braces itself for the oncoming storm. Whatever happens others may be feeling anxious about the weather and austerity, either in isolation or taken as a whole.

As I said in my last post on the discourse of austerity , austerity sets up a monte carlo situation - repeat (reiterate) this big freeze scenario enough times and sooner or later a situation will arise where you or your loved ones will come to harm the Etonions are gambling with the lives of others recklessly.

Of course, Assad is far worse a beast than the Etonions, I'm not asserting that they are morally equivalent, this is just a philosophical “attack” upon them. I am pointing out that their policies do harm to their people - will displace and kill them unnecessarily, that is all.

Additional links:
Fuel poverty 'spiraling', warns lobby group [BBC News]
Benefit cuts condemned by head of Church of England charity [Guardian]
Cold homes cost NHS more than a billion, Age UK study says [BBC News]
Poll Tax II: the coalition plans even bigger cuts to Council Tax Benefit
Former Bank of England rate setter blasts "nasty" Government for targeting ordinary working people

14/1/13 - more links

A lot of scandalous reports today (relevant to this topic) but Cameron is pulling another kansas city shuffle and making sure it's Europe that's in the news. Here are the relevant stories that didn't make the national news:

UK Government's benefit changes are a 'social atrocity'
Welfare reform hitting lone parents says Poverty Alliance [BBC News]
How should we measure fuel poverty?
Patients waiting up to two hours as ambulances queue outside hospitals

Monte Carlo Austerity - 16/01/13

The Monte Carlo nature of austerity is perfectly illustrated by the fact that 37% pf UK households have insufficient funds to cope with an emergency:
Hard times for more UK households, ONS report shows [BBC News] . Also the fact that the NHS is in deep trouble and that redundancies are coming thick and fast.

Table showing publicly announced redundancies in the past few days
Thanks to Dr Éoin Clarke for collating the numbers (he's not affiliated with this blog)

Yet more new reports of problems in the NHS found today:
Anger over queues of ambulances outside hospitals
Surge in A&E delays at "understaffed" Croydon University Hospital

The discourse of austerity

Disclaimers (Introduction)

I haven't really much of a background in semantics and linguistic philosophy and haven't really started my planned reading on the topic so this post is “premature” but these are notes and are frequently updated so I hope you will forgive or attempt to correct, via contact, any errors I make.

My knowledge of games theory is likewise limited. The search term yields all sorts of possibilities but I'm not even going to pretend to read or to be able to understand them. I picked the prisoner's dilemma partly as a starting point because it's all I've read about games theory in the past (until recently) and it seemed to fit.

The question I am asking is: even if you profit from the policies of the Etonions, do you not choose to put the interests of your “exceptional state”, the UK, before your own short-term selfish interests. Mathematics might indicate that you are acting counter to your own long-term interests and those of your loved ones if you choose the Etonions over “the exceptional state”, the UK.

Also, please note I am employing the Frankfurt School Odysseus and the Sirens metaphor, not out of any classical Marxist sentiment but using it as a critical attack upon our current political zeitgeist, which I refer to as “Etonionism” - because that's where a lot of them, and David Cameron in particular, went to school.

The Odyssey and Etonionism

Recall the story of the Odyssey, which, in brief, is as follows. After ten years of warfare the Greeks defeat the Trojans and return home. Odysseus and his men set sail for Ithaca, where Odysseus rules as king. They encounter various perils on the return voyage, many of them in mythological form. For example, the Cyclops Polyphemus traps and eats several of Odysseus's men. Employing the cunning for which he is renowned, Odysseus, the man of many devices, manages to blind Polyphemus and escape with most of his crew. Polyphemus prays to his father, the god Poseidon, asking that Odysseus return home alone, only after a long delay and many troubles, to find sorrows in his home. Poseidon grants his prayer, thereby becoming Odysseus's enemy and the cause of his long journey home. After further adventures, including the passage by the Sirens and sailing between Scylla and Charybdis, adventures in which his entire crew is killed, Odysseus is shipwrecked on the island of the goddess Calypso, who keeps him as her lover for eight years. All the while his wife Penelope, who is under intense romantic siege from the suitors who have taken over her home, faithfully waits for Odysseus to return. Eventually, Calypso releases Odysseus, who sets sail for Ithaca. Six weeks later he returns in disguise, reunites with his son Telemachus, and the two of them slaughter the suitors. So, after going off to war twenty years earlier, Odysseus has finally returned home to resume his rightful role as king of Ithaca.

Horkheimer and Adorno claim that Odysseus is "a prototype of the bourgeois individual" (43). Ancient Greek kings are certainly not members of the bourgeoisie as Marx conceived of them, so how can Odysseus be a prototype for them? What does he have in common with them? What unites the two is Odysseus's cunning, his most famous trait. Like the bourgeoisie of the capitalist world, Odysseus employs instrumental reason to advance his self-interest. This enables him to survive the mythological terrors of the ancient world. He sacrifices all else that he might desire and value, even his crew, all of whom die on the way back to Ithaca. And so he escapes the mythological world of his voyage. Yet what does he return to? An enlightened world of freedom and autonomy? No, he returns to his kingdom, resuming his place as ruler of his people. His odyssey is thus a voyage in which — to express a complicated matter in a simple formula — Odysseus oppressed resumes his place as Odysseus the oppressor.
Source: Odysseus and the Siren Call of Reason: The Frankfurt School Critique of Enlightenment

Adorno and Horkheimer choose to focus on Odysseus' encounter with the Sirens, mythical evil creatures whose songs lure unwary sailors to their deaths.

Odysseus' employs his reason to deal with the problem - he has his crew's ears stopped up so they are deaf to the calls. He himself is tethered to the mast so he can enjoy their song passively without acting upon it.

Although we all experience the economy in various direct ways on a daily basis - our diets for example, it is something of a phantom in that few of us understand it. It is another phantom which resides somewhere beside or within the wider phantom of the exceptional state. Like the Sirens of myth, or nature, it is something that must be mastered by reason. Luckily for us we have those Etonions Osborne and Cameron at the helm of our ship.

I think the message from our great leaders (sic) is that we are the oarsmen, we must have our ears stopped, by austerity, so that they can employ their reason to overcome the deficit, while they suffer nothing, get richer and continue to enjoy the Siren's call - the Siren here being luxuries like holidays, nice cars, nice clothes, multiple expensive homes. It's as if Eton itself has become “the exceptional state” and the rest of us are dragging them down somehow.

It's my view that “the austerity project” and power in general offer us continual choices - to collaborate or defect - do we accept hostile (working) conditions and arbitrary decisions from “up top” at the risk of sanction (unemployment, poverty and its natural consequences) or “defect”. How I employ my ego depends partly upon my power and self-knowledge - a person in a ghostly nexus of power relations, I should know my limits, or at least not wail at adverse consequences I inflict upon myself. However, to question the adversity inflicted in general is legitimate, especially as I believe it goes against the interests of us all.

The austerity project sets up a kind of semi-random but adversely skewed Monte Carlo version of the Prisoners' Dilemma , i.e. some of those “ordinary working families” who “collaborate” will become unemployed pariahs anyway.

The advert - scroungers versus “ordinary working families”

This image was recently used by the Etonions to justify social security cuts - let's “decontruct” it a little, thanks to Dr Éoin Clarke and others we know it's a composite of cheap clip art. We don't know if that's even a real family, if they're British - we know nothing of the guy on the sofa either. Does this mean the Tories collectively do not know an “ordinary working family” that votes Conservative or are they too lazy to find one, or are they afraid of becoming hostage to the Monte Carlo fate that austerity brings? Might any Conservative voting family fall victim to their own Monte Carlo austerity? i.e., that their “ordinary working family” might fall into disrepair.

1,470 more job losses brings a the total workers axed in 2 days to over 5,970

Also, the image tells us that desperate Etonions are resorting to “divide and conquer” tactics. They want to set communities against each other - those paying taxes resenting those who don't and find themselves sick or unemployed.

With Etonions it's always a case of Kansas city shuffle - “you can't have a 'Kansas City Shuffle' without a body” and in this case it's some guy on a sofa, living on £50 a week and laughing all the way to the food bank.

In reality such sofa dwelling individuals do exist, though it's doubtful they exist in great numbers, and you have to wonder what underlying mental health or social conditions would make a person choose this awful lifestyle - of no aspirations, no love and no self-esteem. Perhaps they are entitled to other benefits ATOS has denied them or they themselves are evading, because they lack even the will to get themselves diagnosed.

Most job-seekers are very active - I've seen people dressed for interviews just to sign on for their benefits - after a while perhaps some individuals treat successive failures to acquire a decent job as “their choice” rather than admit that society has no productive use for them?

It's a given sociological fact that repeated rejection and long-term unemployment cause depression and the attempts of repeated governments to create work schemes have been largely inept and self-defeating.

These schemes are all devised by for-profit rationalists who want to bludgeon circles into the square holes allotted to them in order to make money - if you imagine the Little Big Man scene where an utterly blind-to-himself General Custer insists, despite all protestations, that someone is a “mule skinner” then you're in the right kind of ball-park - “This man has spent years with mules, isn't that correct?”

At this point it's relevant to dwell much further on some of the issues as to who the Etonions benefit reforms target: it turns out it's “ordinary working families”. Others have done a much better job than I in contradicting this blatant scam. These include but are not limited to:

The Tories' shameful new ad campaign against “the scroungers”

Polly Toynbee has also done a fine job Tax credit cut will hit hardest those the Tories love to praise – working families

10/01/13 In the interests of diversity I'm offering a link opposing view to my own also: The Tories have a moral mission – and David Cameron should say so

In Don't call folk scroungers Conservative MP Douglas Carswell explains why he's voting to cut benefits - he argues that unemployment is a choice bought about by flaws in the system, basically denies there aren't enough jobs and that almost all unemployment is involuntary. towing the party line while trying to appear reasonable, it's just more propaganda. His avatar reminds me of a young Heinrich Himmler, which isn't really relevant, I'm just saying.

The austerity project is touted as rational but for the average person to collaborate with it is utterly irrational based on a principle of endless reiteration of the Monte Carlo austerity scenario - the chances that they or their loved ones become sick, bankrupt, unemployed or consider entering higher education increase with each repetition of the austerity model.

These redundancies in recent days make a mockery of the divisive Etonion “shirkers” versus “strivers” juxtaposition.

Let's say an “ordinary working family” manage to escape the everyday pitfalls of falling into unemployment, bankruptcy, injury or education that can afflict us all at any time. What of the lucky ones?

The Great Leader speaks

His address isn't too easy to embed but the link is here: David Cameron's New Year Message

In this address Cameron makes the basic claim that cutting welfare is good for the country and harkens to the spook of the economy to justify his hatchet job.

So, we owe it to the younger generation to pull the rug from beneath their feet? Read this sobering report Child poverty facts and figures and it seems that child poverty costs the UK an estimates £25 billion a year.

Even a psychopath accountant might shiver at the child costs, not to mention the human suffering, but the Etonions plan to scrap Winter fuel payments for old age pensioners entirely too, despite the obvious costs - Cold homes cost NHS more than a billion, Age UK study says - if you're a Grandparent looking after a sick or absent child's children imagine the tornado this represents.

Further, these costs will have to be borne by a National Health Service which also finds itself under concerted attack from the Etonions and is increasingly become two-tier. The people who can't afford to heat their homes won't be able to afford private health care so their care will have a disproportion effect on the lower tier which will affect all members of that group.

If I said that whistling on a Tuesday was illegal and that fines would be levied retrospectively you'd say I was crazy, not just the crime itself but you can't fine people retrospectively for performing legal acts. According to Ian Duncan Smith you can.

Child-related benefits may be 'capped' at two children - so, tough luck for you if you planned your family carefully, paid your taxes and some unforeseen disaster wipes you out, your children only get a third their proper share.

This is really just a preliminary draft and despite the date stamp was written in haste over eight or so hours. I wanted to get this finished before New Year. Any corrections would be gratefully received. Happy New Year.

Conclusion

This country is being run by mathematically illiterate psychopaths who know the price of everything but the value of nothing. They believe that Eton specifically and the private schools in general constitute “the exceptional state” - Eton is a state within a state and unfortunately they seem to have landed on the UK at random.

Or, is that Etonionism is particularly English disease?

Come to think of it, don't the sirens represent ordinary emotions like care? Our great leaders being impervious to the call of love and community?

Addendum: It was mostly state school pupils who trounced the world in the Paralympics and Olympics. So how did the Etonions inherit a failing school system?

This blog Mind In Flux has an excellent comparison of Nazi and Etonion attempts to set communities against each other.