Laugh or Cry?
Vega
Hugh and Annie
Sat 2 Apr 2016 15:52
Our source of current affairs is either the Now Show or The News Quiz. This is mainly because Annie’s iPod is set to download the podcast of whichever ever show is on at the time and does so whenever a wifi connection coincides with a new edition. From these shows we have been able to amuse ourselves listening about the EU referendum and the budget. I think the humour in these latest series is more cutting and near the knuckle - the shows are wittier and more pithy as a result. Maybe that is a reflection of the times and for us it is certainly a more palatable way of gleaning what is going on than the dry facts of the BBC on line news.
Either way we love and rely upon the BBC. Despite its foibles and misgivings, the BBC is a national treasure and current moves to neuter it or make it commercial are a real worry. Governments have always been wary of the BBC but this one in particular seems to have the knives out. Politically appointed governors or trustees? An equal commercial basis with Rupert Murdoch? Yes the BBC should stick to core founding principles and maybe its wings have needed to be clipped but please, lets keep politics out of running the BBC.
In the UK politics tends to concentrate upon the individual although Margaret Thatcher’s comment that “there is no such thing as society” was widely quoted out of context. There is a society but in her view society is the sum total of all the individuals within it. She set the tone for individualism that was taken on by Tony Blair and is with us to this day. We live in an “aspirational” society where we are encouraged to believe that with hard work and diligence we can achieve whatever goals we set ourselves. Hence our obsession with celebrity. To a point this may be true but the reality is that in the UK social mobility is poor and has gone backwards markedly. Unless you have been to public school and Oxbridge you can forget about leading our institutions and professions or following daddy into the City. I remember a BBC journalist reminiscing that during an interview with the High Court judge Lady Butler-Sloss, as an aside she asked him what school he went to (as such people invariably do). When the journalist replied with the name of his state comprehensive she replied “oh, some of those are quite good aren’t they?” State school and Oxbridge will open more doors than for the rest of us but for doors to be open you need to be in the club. Most of us have to bang away and it’s the very few exceptions who do manage to open doors that prove the rule.
What is meant by “aspiration” is really economic aspiration and self employment. That is what the budget with its reductions to corporation tax and capital gains tax was all about. The very wealthy don’t pay income tax like the rest of us. Their declared income is though dividends, capital assets and so on subject to corporation and capital gains tax. Those of us with second homes will benefit but those who nurse us, empty our dustbins, teach our children, care for the weakest sections of society, man our call centres and eke out a living on the minimum wage can aspire all they like - we’ll keep cutting back their benefits and freeze their wages to get us out of the mess caused by Gordon Brown. And sadly a significant proportion of the electorate has fallen for the still pedalled myth that it was Gordon Brown that caused the recession. It wasn't. Gordon Brown’s failing was to fail to regulate the city adequately.
My hope was that as a member of the EU we would integrate with our European neighbours to a greater extent and begin to adopt some of their social beliefs. Unfortunately we have continued to be a pain in Europe’s side and tried at every turn to undermine any move towards social and political integration. The British, or rather the English, have a particular aversion to Johnny Foreigner telling us what to do. We resent restrictions on our working hours or conditions for example. The English would rather die in abject servitude and poverty (which is how most people have died throughout our history) than have some foreign institution tell our government that its people might be better off with some social protection.
In Bristol right up until the second half of the nineteenth century thousands were dying of cholera every year. We think of huge social inequalities in the Victorian era and yet within the space of 50 years between 1850 and 1900 we had developed a system of public education, healthcare, sanitation, local government and so-on that transformed life for most people. Much of this was charitable and philanthropic and it is still debatable whether there was a genuine pang of social conscience at the time or simply a need to keep a reasonably stable - and therefore healthy - workforce for the factories. Social unrest was certainly a big concern after events like the Bristol riots at the time of the Great Reform Bill. Probably both but it does seem at times as if we would like to turn the clock back to an age of charity and philanthropy. And this is where my concerns about the EU referendum start.
The EU (as it is now referred to) was set up on three foundations - economic, political and military integration. After centuries of conflict and war in Europe, culminating in the Second World War, the founding member states - supported by the UK and USA - came up with the European Economic Community. The UK wanted to be a kind of associate member but De Gaulle resisted, knowing the UK would wreck any further integration before it ever got off the ground. We had, after all, saved Europe from itself in the the Second World War (and despite my cynicism I am very proud of this part of our history) and had never of course been almost continually at war with one or more European countries throughout our history. Nevertheless we did eventually join, after a referendum in the 1970s, but still we will not accept anything other than a general free trade arrangement.
One of the ways that the EU works is by distributing money from the stronger economies to the weaker. Support to strengthen weaker economies is one way to ensure political stability. Obviously the EU has got into difficulty over this as in the case of Greece. But the lengths the Union has gone to to keep the Greeks on board is impressive. The alternative could be political instability and conflict right on the boundary between Europe and the Middle East. We of course, having refused to have anything to do with the Euro, have washed our hands of an issue of someone else's making. Which is one reason we find it so difficult to grasp the concept of the strongest economies within the EU being net financial contributors. We brag about our economy being the "strongest growing in Europe” (despite its deep structural problems such as reliance upon consumer spending and incredibly low productivity) but resent the fact we are a net contributor. I was reminded of this when we berthed alongside an English boat in one marina. After the crew had helped us with our lines one guy pointed out what “our” money was paying for. I was puzzled and it was only after he repeated this on a second occasion that I realised that what he meant was EU funding for the marina - there were signs acknowledging this.This sent a chill down my spine because it is this kind of insular thinking that is going to be a big factor in the referendum in June.
Another favourite resentment of the English is of individuals coming from other EU states and claiming benefit as if this was a particular fault of the EU. It isn’t of course, its just a reflection that the UK has a low wage, unproductive economy. By far the greatest proportion of benefit money goes to working families, not the feckless unemployed. The very “hard working people” that Tory ministers keep banging on about. Now, I am very critical of benefit dependency because I think it bad for those who are dependent and bad for tax payers. The problem is the minimum wage which even this government agrees is not sufficient to support a working family. So, what is the response? Raise the minimum wage? Oh no, it is to raise the income threshold at which people begin to pay income tax!! The Government is trying to cut benefits at the same time but I don’t need to rehearse all the argument that this is raising. If as a society we believe in hard work and personal responsibility (and for the avoidance of doubt I very much do) then everyone in work should be paid a living wage from which they can afford to pay tax. That way they have a stake in what their taxes are spent on and can express their view as responsible and contributing members of society. Raising the tax threshold is another way to enshrine social inequality. If a job is worth doing then it is worth paying for.
We have a lot to learn from Europe but we just don’t get the importance of social, economic and political integration even at a time when many parts of the world are riven by political instability and division. We are still running a Victorian railway system while in Europe and Scandinavia they have integrated public transport systems, extensive high speed rail links, autobahns, trams and a far higher level of renewable energy use than in the UK. Why? Because we don’t have the same social ethos to agree that it is worth paying taxes for government to spend on such infrastructure for the benefit of society as a whole. Even if we were prepared to spend the money the planning system and our NIMBYism would frustrate its implementation - on which I have more to write. London and the South East is an exception of which more next time.
The English also think that the EU is unnecessarily beaurocratic. I have personal experience from my working life to show how inappropriate this criticism is and will write about it next time (OK, I hear the groans but I promise not to rant inordinately). Anyone who has come across the UK money laundering regulations in their financial dealings will have a clue of what I will be writing about.
Those pulling David Cameron’s strings want little to do with the EU. They want an independent island of great social and economic inequality, of bogus “aspiration”, of entrenched institutional unfairness. The people I have in mind operate in a very international way, doing business and making lots of money in world markets (parts of the world have been booming while the UK languished in recession). They nearly broke the union with those scrounging left wing Scots and now they want to break the union with Europe (that, as a double bonus, is almost certain to bring about Scottish independence if we vote to leave the EU). And yet the rest of us are so conservative (small “c”). We have so much to learn but also so much to offer - at the very least our self deprecating humour. Why can’t we be less insular, learn to love and live with our neighbours, strive to make Europe and the world a better place? We can’t keep dropping bombs on people we don’t agree with. We had a brief genuine flowering of togetherness at the 1946 general election but it took a world war to achieve it. It seems the young have borne the brunt of the recent recession - they will never forgive us if we don’t come together again in 2016 and vote to stay in the EU and build upon what was achieved in 1946.