Week 19 2013

Tendring Topics……on line

The Global Market

 I am mildly claustrophobic. I am never very happy in an enclosed space and the thought of being buried alive in the ruins of a collapsed building is the stuff of my very worst nightmares!  That’s just one of the reasons why news of the collapse of an eight storey building in Bangladesh in which some two thousand people, mostly women, were employed in the manufacture of cheap clothing for the European and American Markets, filled me with horror.  More than 600 of those employed in the building have died, many after having been trapped for several days.  Over 1,000 have been injured, some seriously.  All are human sacrifices to Mammon – the god of greed and selfishness or, if you prefer, of the entrepreneur and the ‘free market’.

            It seems that the building should have been limited to five storeys and that three were added illegally (no doubt to ‘maximise profits’).   Furthermore when warning cracks appeared in the walls of the building the workers were told to ignore them and carry on with their work, instead of being urged to get out while there was time to do so.

          The manufacture of cheap ready-made garments for export is a principal industry of Bangladesh, employing some 3 million people on an average monthly salary of £40. (Try living on that for a day or two!)  Industrial accidents are a frequent and regular occurrence and not a single manufacturer has been prosecuted in connection with them. Similar incidents would occur in this country had it not been for the activities of the Trade Unions and the Parliamentary Reformers of the 19^th and 20^th Centuries whose Public Health Acts and Factories Acts (fiercely contested by the political friends of the Factory Owners) created the relatively tolerable and safe working environments that most of us enjoy in this country today*. We joke about ‘health and safety’ but the Bangladeshi experience could be repeated here if there were no health and safety regulations and no ‘snooping bureaucrats’ enforcing them.

            But, of course, the safe environment and tolerable working conditions that are enjoyed in the UK and in most of Europe render us ‘uncompetitive in the Global Market’ that politicians of all parties seem to find so attractive. So retailers get the supplies of the cheap clothing that their customers demand from such places as Bangladesh where few safety regulations exist. Those that do are ignored by officials so poorly paid that they are easy targets for those who wish to corrupt them. I suspect that at least some of the powers that our Prime Minister and UKIP are  determined to ‘repatriate’ from ‘Brussels’ are the regulations that protect the health, safety and well-being of workers throughout Europe.

            We can only become truly competitive in a market that includes countries like Bangladesh by replicating their slums, their public services, their working conditions, their health services, their education, their low wages.  Is that really what we want? A much better alternative would be for the people of Bangladesh to raise the level of their environment and public services to that of Europe. While I am sure we should help and support them in such efforts it is something that we can’t do for them.  

*The Song of a Shirt

An example of the way in which workers in clothing manufacture in the UK did suffer working conditions comparable with those in Bangladesh today is found in Thomas Hood’s poem, The Song of the Shirt’ published in 1843. Below is the first verse and one of the subsequent verses:

WITH fingers weary and worn,

With eyelids heavy and red,

A woman sat, in unwomanly rags,

Plying her needle and thread--

Stitch! stitch! stitch!

In poverty, hunger, and dirt,

And still with a voice of dolorous pitch

She sang the "Song of the Shirt”

Work—work—work!

My labour never flags:

And what are its wages? A bed of straw,

A crust of bread--and rags.

That shatter'd roof--and this naked floor--

A table--a broken chair--

And a wall so blank, my shadow I thank

For sometimes falling there

 Its origins, according to Wikipedia, are as below:

'It was written in honour of a Mrs. Biddell, a Lambeth widow and seamstress living in wretched conditions. In what was, at that time, common practice, Mrs. Biddell sewed trousers and shirts in her home using materials given to her by her employer for which she was forced to give a £2 deposit. In a desperate attempt to feed her starving infants, Mrs. Biddell pawned the clothing she had made, thus accruing a debt she could not pay. Mrs. Biddell, whose first name has not been recorded, was sent to a workhouse, and her ultimate fate is unknown; however, her story became a catalyst for those who actively opposed the wretched conditions of England’s working poor, who often spent seven days a week labouring under inhuman conditions, barely managing to survive and with no prospect for relief.

The poem was published anonymously in the Christmas edition of Punch in 1843 and quickly became a phenomenon, centering people’s attention not only on Mrs. Biddell's case, but on the conditions of workers in general. Though Hood was not politically radical, his work, like that of Charles Dickens, contributed to the general awareness of the condition of the working class which fed the popularity of trade unionism and the push for stricter labour laws'.

Universal Benefits

            It seems that the government’s Work and Pensions Secretary Mr Ian Duncan-Smith has noticed that there is something a little incongruous about elderly millionaires being able to take advantage of the concessions intended to make the lives of us less affluent oldies a little more comfortable.  It is surely surprising that a septuagenarian with an ocean-going yacht, a second home in the Caribbean, and a chauffeur-driven Rolls, can claim the winter fuel allowance, free tv licence, free NHS prescriptions and free bus pass, just like you (if you’re a pensioner)  and me.

            Mr Duncan-Smith appeared to suggest that it might be a good idea if such people handed benefits that they didn’t need back to the government, but he now stresses that he didn’t mean that at all.   Like all members of this government of the wealthy for the wealthy he seems desperately eager not to cause the very least offence to anyone even richer than himself, and he has made it clear that millionaires are at liberty to keep their benefit, hand it back, or give it to charity, just as they please.   He would express no preference on the matter at all.

            I am a long, long way from being a millionaire but, unlike many pensioners, I am not entirely dependent upon the state pension and any benefits that I can squeeze out of the government.  I have a modest public service pension for which I paid six percent of my salary throughout the many years that I was working.

            I cannot take advantage of a bus pass or concessions on rail travel, because physically I am no longer able to walk to the railway station or even to the nearest bus stop.   The winter fuel allowance though has meant that I had no qualms about keeping my central heating on continuously during the icy weather of February and March this year! I am glad too that my NHS prescriptions are free as it seems to take an increasing amount of medication to keep me going. 

I also very much appreciate my free tv licence, and the lower rate of ‘Attendance Allowance’ that I receive because of my steadily diminishing mobility. This frees me from being housebound and has made it possible for me to buy and maintain the electric mobility scooter that I use to go to Church and the Quaker Meeting, as well as for shopping and visiting friends.  The blue disabled parking badge that I use when, very occasionally, I am driven in a friend or relative’s car has been free too. It is due for renewal in a month or two and I understand that it will now cost me £10.   As far as I am concerned that won’t break the bank.  For some disabled people though it could prove to be the final straw that breaks the camel's back..

            I am certainly not proposing to give any of my benefits back to the government – they’d probably fritter them away on nuclear deterrents that don't deter anybody, expensive funerals for former politicians, or arming ‘freedom fighters opposed to tyranny’ who, before you can say jihad, are liable to become ‘dastardly terrorists trying to murder us!’

           
           Nor would I welcome the idea of any of those benefits being means-tested. It would be expensive and time-wasting to administer.  Many needy but proud pensioners would feel that submitting details of their income and expenditure to a faceless official was intrusive, demeaning, and a form of ‘begging’ in which they were not prepared to engage.  Others would seek means of ‘fiddling the system!'

           

There is just one way, that would I believe be acceptable to most pensioners, in which the government could make the ‘old age benefit system' fairer than it is at present  That is, to make all those currently tax-free benefits subject to income tax. All old people would continue to get their age-related benefits in full as at present.  Pensioners who have no source of income other than the state pension would be completely unaffected by the change. Those, like me, who have another modest source of income and are currently paying income tax would have the appropriate proportion added to their income tax demand, and really wealthy pensioners, with incomes in excess of £150,000 a year, would have an increase in their income tax equivalent to 45 percent of the value of the benefits to which they were entitled.  It would, of course, have been 50 percent had it not been for the Chancellor’s recent generous hand-out to the very wealthy!

            This system would work very well so far as winter fuel allowance, free tv licence and attendance allowance are concerned but would present difficulties with bus passes and prescriptions as the financial benefit from these varies from person to person and from time to time.   It should though be possible to work out an average benefit, a notional sum that could be added to the taxable income of every income-tax paying pensioner.  Thus, I would be helping to pay for bus passes that I can’t use but others can, while those who don’t need as much medication as I do, would be helping to pay for mine.

            Many of us would pay rather more income tax than we do at the moment but we would all receive our full benefits and, unlike any other kind of taxation, it is the nature of income tax that no-one is ever asked for more than they can afford to pay. The system would, of course, be much simpler and fairer if the whole income tax system were to be overhauled and restructured so that all adults paid an equal proportion of their gross income as their annual ‘membership fee’ for British citizenship.  The annual income tax assessment would then be a ‘means test’ to which everyone would have to submit – but it would be the only means test ever needed.

             But there – regular readers of this blog will know that that is a hobby horse of mine.

I told you so……..

          …….but very much wish I had been wrong.   Below is an extract from a blog that I published in March, forecasting UKIP’s likely performance in last week’s county council elections.

 Nigel Farage seems also to have acquired the knack of attracting the serial non-voter, the kind of man or woman who dislikes politics and will never trust politicians.  He gives the impression that he feels just the same as they do; that he is an anti-politics politician. Such people comprise a considerable slice of the electorate.   If he can persuade them to vote, his Party will do very well in the forthcoming County Council elections and, even more importantly, in the European Parliament Elections next year.

  My forecast proved all too accurate.  Although UKIP does not have any county councils under its control it has massively increased its representation on these councils throughout the country – mainly at the expense of the Conservatives but both Labour and the Liberals have also suffered.   In my own North Clacton electoral division Conservative Andy Wood was elected with a total vote of 929 thanks to our ‘first past the post’ method of election. He was the choice of less than one third of those who voted.  Second came Samatha Atkinson, the Labour candidate, for whom I voted, with 790 votes, followed by UKIP Anne Poonian with just one vote less. Mark Stephenson of ‘Tendring First’ had 396 votes, Lib Dem. Harry Shearing 191 and James Horsler Green Party 75.  Anne Poonian's relative success is all the more remarkable in that she doesn't live in Clacton and that she was the only candidate from whom I - and presumably others - received no election literature.

            I view the future with foreboding – not least because Nigel Farage’s Party’s success will mean a swerve to the political right in Conservative policies in an attempt, that will probably prove to be fruitless,  to avoid being outflanked  by the UKIP.