Author Archives: Natalie Bennett

Why does the British government want to follow the failed ‘American model’?

October 17, 2010 – 10:51 am

I’ve been pondering this for a while. The “American model” of politics and society supports a small state and everything possible (and sometimes impossible) being left to the market. And the most minimal of minimalist (ranging to non-existent) social support systems.

This is a society that despite being the richest by per capita income in the world, has nearly 15% of households suffering food insecurity – in simple terms they sometimes don’t know where there next meal is coming from.

About 1 in 50 Americans lives in a household that has no income but food stamps – a hundred to a couple of hundred dollars a month that can only be used for basic purchases.

It is a society that has just about the worst maternal mortality rates in the developed world,

On the side of medicine, run basically for the benefit of the deeply flawed, indeed often deadly, pharmaceutical industry, giant healthcare providers who get away wiith charging crazy prices, and medical insurance companies that make enormous profits.

So what is Britain now doing? Both the former Labour government and the current Tory-Lib Dem coalition is privatising the much-loved and valued NHS at a rate of knots, steaming towards the privatised American system.

They’re slashing away our already (by European standards) inadequate benefits system at a rate of knots, heading towards the American “you probably won’t actually starve, but you’ll sometimes go hungry” model.

I’ve been pondering a figure I came across that the basic Job Seekers’ Allowance of £65.45 is equivalent to just 41 per cent of the Minimum Income Standard for a working-age adult. (I’ve been just about living recently on Night Nurse, an anti-cough medicine that’s the only thing that allows me to sleep at night, and if you’re on job seekers’, that, at around £6 a bottle, is clearly not in the budget, so I’d just have to be coughing all night…)

But my headline question is really rhetorical. Because if you look at some other figures about America, such as the fact that the top 1% of earners get 23.5% of the income – it is clear why America is the way it is: it is run for the benefit of the few.

And now Britain, under two successive government of different hues, is going the same way.

The unanswered question is how democracy has managed to deliver this outcome…

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Future female? A Fawcett discussion

October 9, 2010 – 10:10 pm

To the Fawcett AGM this afternoon – business briskly conducted, we turned to an interesting debate, with the broadranging topic of “what might a female future look like?” Speakers were Mary MacLeod MP (Conservative), Jean Lambert MEP (Green Party), Baroness Kate Parminter (Liberal Democrat) and Rushanara Ali MP (Labour).

I haven’t heard Kate speak before (she said she only uses baroness when she has to) and she was very impressive, as was Jean Lambert, who took the generally appointed Green role of doing the blue sky thinking. Her discusion of how we need to change our whole view of and attitude towards work went down very well, and what a workinglife means, as did her line: “Why does everything that looks interesting have to wait until you retire?”

Kate has an interesting background – RSPCA with the hunting ban, Campaign for Rural England, and she only went to the Lords in July, but is clearly enjoying the experience. She spoke a lot about women “self-selecting out” from running for parliament, as she’d done herself, and was very keen on the idea of job-share MPs as a way of getting around the problem of the role’s pressures. She called on Fawcett to move the agenda forward on the issue, and added: “I know for a fact the No 10 policy unit is thinking about it.”

House of Lords reform was an important opportunity, she said: “let’s set the test for the reform to be that it must end up with a 50/50 gender balance.”

She also referred to the importance of the portrayal of women in media and sport, particularly for girls. “I want girls to feel they can say yes to all life has to offer them.” She called for the 2013 revision of sports broadcasting to ensure that at least one all-female sport is regularly shown. And she noted that in looking at secondary schools for her daughter, she found that one she had otherwise liked offered cheerleading as an after-school club. “I want that to stop.”

Referring to the impact of cuts, clearly the primary concern of the meeting, Jean came up with a powerful line that sums up much of the stupidity of where we find ourselves: “A strong social security system is an essential foundation for a strong economy.” Fawcett has powerfully taken legal action over the government’s apparent failure to fulfil its requirement to do gender audits of its decisions, but Jean added, a useful thought, that campaigners should also think about the obligation there is for this on local government, where many of the final detailed decisions about cuts will be made.

Kate also made an important democratic point (against her own side) about the making of announcements about many important policy decisions at party conferences, where they “can’t be considered in the round”, as in parliament.

Rushanara went on a specific attack – no doubt justified – about the government’s recent dropping of “go orders”, under which domestic violence perpetrators can be forced to leave the home for two weeks while the victim decides what to do, in part on grounds of cost. Jean added that this should be considered on human rights grounds – the right to safety – but that even if you chose to look at it only on financial grounds it made no sense, since the cost of dealing with the damage done to victimns and their children could be far greater than that of earlier intervention.

There was a very interesting intervention from the floor from one of the half a dozen males in the packed Toynbee Hall – he came up with the memorable line that what we’re now “living in a man’s museum”. (I think lots of people wrote that down.)

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The tragedy and pain of benefit cuts

September 19, 2010 – 6:35 pm

A final belated report from Green Party conference last week. I chaired the session on “Benefit cuts: how the poorest and most vulnerable will suffer the most”, organised by Green Party national disability spokesperson Alan Wheatley, with speakers Claire Glasman, from Winvisible, Kim Sparrow from Single Mothers’ Self-Defence and Sarah Bukasa from the All-Africa Women’s Group, so I didn’t get time to write a lot of notes, but a few points that were particularly striking…

* We were told that Job Centres have been given strict rules on sanctioning – each week they have to sanction 6% of recipients of jobseekers’ allowance, and with 50 completely cut their benefit.

* One third of all adults who are on the autistic spectrum are living without income, from employment or benefits, of any kind.

* Private, for-profit providers are being paid £62,000 for each long-term unemployed person they are able to get into work, irrespective of how long-term or appropriate that work is.

* People fleeing domestic violence have just one month to try to get their life back on track, then they are on job seekers’ allowance, and expected to meet all of its rules about applications etc, on £62 a week, when they may have been left with no household goods, furniture, housing etc…

* The worst (legally) paid people in the country are carers, who must be looking after people who need at least 35 hours of care a week (and it is often much, much more) for the princely sum of £53.90 a week.

* 37% of people applying for employment support allowance, the replacement for incapacity benefit, drop out before their assessment before the private supplier ATOS is completed. No research has been conducted on what happens to them. Undoubtedly some have recovered, but anecdotal evidence suggests many have been so horrified/damaged/frightened by the experience that they are simply not getting benefits to which they should be entitled, but instead are, in the words of campaigners “begging, shoplifting, or living with their families with no income”.

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Britblog Roundup No 282

September 19, 2010 – 4:52 pm

Yes, it is the political conference season, but before I get into all of that, something different – an interview by Cath Redfern on The F Word with blogger/writer Zoe Margolis, on her new book about her experience of being a reluctant celebrity.

But back to those politics – for the Green Party conference I’ve only got to point to one post, Jim’s pretty well comprehensive blog roundup. Although he did write it before I’d had the chance to record our excellent fringe with a speaker from the English Collective of Prostitutes and a Manchester street worker, so I’m going to take the host’s privilege to point to that post now.

Ongoing now is of course what an independent observer would consider a fascinating if uncomfortable conference, that of the Lib Dems. Jonathan on Liberal England, sometime host of this roundup, is, I’m surprised to find, in New York, but he’s got some thoughts on Labour’s claim to be scooping up Lib Dem members. (And before conference blogging MP Lynne Featherstone followed through the unlamented end of ID cards.)

There’s a promise you might want to note about the universal postal service, on Caron’s Musings, and David blogging at Disgruntled Radical has thoughts on the emergency motion process, and a plea for the Trident motion.

More no doubt on next week’s roundup…

Looking back, Brian Barder has been reading the chapter on Kosovo in Tony Blair’s autobiography. He says “not to allow the perversely distorted and self-serving account offered by Mr Blair to become the accepted wisdom.” There are lessons for the future. And looking forward Jeff on Better Nation wonders what “Labour leader Ed Milliband” would mean for Scotland.

You might have also noted that a religious leader, and head of a minor little statelet, has been visiting Britain this week. Onionbagblog has an eyewitness account, with copious pics, of a little covered part of the visit. Stroppyblog has been “taking a pop at the Pope” (and those who can’t understand why he’s an issue). While Cruella is questioning the BBC’s news priorities.

Back to women’s issues, fairy godfather of the roundup, Tim Worstall, offers his views on maternity pay mandated by the European Union. Regular readers of this blog are likely to be well aware of my likely reaction – but that’s one of the pleasures of this roundup – everyone’s welcome (and if you want to nominate something you read this week the email address is britblog AT gmail DOT com.)

And All that Chas, who I suspect might have a good debate with Tim, has been watching The Wright Stuff (which I gather from Google is a TV show, although curiously the website doesn’t seem to say which channel) and getting (I’d judge rightly) very, very annoyed.

For more great blogging like that, Cath Elliott has compiled The Missing List, a great collection of feminist bloggers who somehow always seem to get left of lists of political blogs.

Away from the political world, Sharon on Early Modern Notes has been revelling in the pleasures of Twitter, not just for historians, and Earthwitch has been ruminating on the trouble with perfectionism.

And on the science side, John Hawks isn’t writing from the UK, but I’m going to use this post on the UK debate over cousin marriage as an excuse to point to his excellent blog, a must-read if you’re at all interested in human evolution, and lots of other genetics issues.

For an entirely defensible form of vigilantism, I rather think the Stroud “catch a plonker” campaign, as documented by Ruscombe Green, might catch on.

But we might worry about how the probation service might treat offenders, after reading the excellent newish On Probation blog, by a self-billed “ordinary probation officer”. Also from inside the justice system, The Magistrate explains George Michael’s sentence.

And finally on the lighter side, as the news bulletins say, Richard Osley has an account of north London’s most important sporting encounter last week, the Camden New Journal versus Camden Labour – Alastair Campbell looms large in more ways than one…

If that sounds too hard to stomach, you might enjoy a short visit to Jubilee Market Hall in Covent Garden with Ornamental Passions instead.

That’s all for this week – don’t forget those nominations (britblog AT gmail DOT com) for Matt Wardman next week.

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Can we remove the lingering legal stigma of sex work?

September 16, 2010 – 10:48 pm

A further belated report from Green Party conference from the fringe on the need to decriminalise all aspects of sex work, which I organised. I was really pleased that in addition to a high numerical turnout, around 50 at the peak, it attracted a number of our elected reps from England and Scotland, and had a very high quality of questions and debate.

Since I was chairing, I didn’t have time to take many notes, but the one issue that I want to highlight was one on which it might be possible to take immediate, achievable action.

It arose from the testimony of “Jenny”, a streetworker from Manchester who is caring for her disabled daughter. She explained how because prostitution offences (prostitution itself is legal in the UK, but many of the essential actions around it are not) show up on the “enhanced” criminal checks, such as those conducted for people wanting to work with children and vulnerable adults, for their entire lives, not lapsing as other offences do.

Given that many of the people being convicted for these offences are women, a significant number would be likely, were the option available to them, to be seeking this career option.

And if this were to be changed, even for women and men who aren’t seeking such a job, it would, in Jenny’s own words “take the stigma away”.

This is something that I hope many people could agree would be a good idea, and which I hope to work on further.
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One good side of cuts – they could lead to a fall in prisoner numbers

September 15, 2010 – 9:04 pm

A belated collection of notes of the excellent Women in Prison panel on Friday night of Green Party conference.

The first speaker was the hugely impressive and powerful Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison Reform Trust.

She explained the rising numbers of women in prison from the fact that sentences have become longer, and more women are going in on remand even though they won’t subsequently be jailed. The rising sentences “seem to be particularly acute with women”.

“What is particularly frustrating everyone knows (it was New Labour policy) that the way solve women’s offending is through education, employment, safer housing, better housing. Yet having said that they cheerily went on and built more capacity for women to go into the prison.”

She identified a “handwringing element” to discussion of prison reform: “we don’t want to keep going over the problems – let’s move on to solutions.”

It doesn’t excuse fact they have hurt or harmed someone else, but helps to understand why they do offend – half of women prisoners have been victims of domestic violence, a third of sexual abuse. “I do feel that at the worst we are punishing women for the experience they are having for being victims.”

Then she came to one of the extremely painful facts of the evening – only 5% of 18,000 children whose mothers are jailed every year end up staying in their own homes.

But she did have a rare piece of good news – government cutbacks will almost certainly reduce the number of prisoners – because keeping people in prison is very expensive.

But the problem is, and this isn’t something you’d want to use to argue for prison, it is also the only place where for many women services they need are available. Women prisoners say: this is the first time I’ve had help with my drug problem, my mental health problems.
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