Time for a brave, new world?

Work or employment have for centuries been the foundation-stones of society, providing the means for living and the opportunity for advancement. A perfect storm of factors may be about to change this permanently, in Western society at least as the work available to be done may no longer be valued sufficiently to sustain the majority of workers and the dependents.

These factors include neo-liberalism’s stranglehold on power; new technologies and the digitisation of jobs; and mass migration.

Neo-liberalism describes a political mindset particular to the powerful and wealthy who control the levers of power. These, the so-called 1%, have effectively used the media they control to persuade sufficient voters to support their “small State” doctrine, in which the markets which their organisations dominate are given free rein to decide the value and price of everything, with minimal control or regulation from government. Markets like low costs and high profits. Where labour is a significant cost element in the price of goods or services, its costs is reduced wherever possible. Jobs which demand high skills pay most but wherever possible these are kept to a minimum. So whilst in this country political leaders have decreed that more and more young people should go to university, fewer and fewer of the skilled graduates will be needed in work-places. How can this be achieved? Through the application of market forces – competition – and of the digitisation of functions previously thought to depend on human expertise. New technologies have enabled paradigm shifts already in how society goes about its business. Jobs which used to pay good, living wages have disappeared as new ways of doing things have been made possible, often without significant skills or large numbers of workers. Dock work was destroyed by containerisation of shipping decades ago. Coal-mining went in the face of alternative fuels. Secretaries are nowadays mere vanity items for the few instead of essential lubricants of business, as anyone can make arrangements, keep records and manage communications using a tiny hand-held device. Shops have disappeared as consumers buy online, leaving retail staff without jobs or with squeezed wages. Financial and medical advice has migrated from thousands of local experts to websites staffed by tiny numbers. Travel agents cling on to service technophobes whilst the majority can arrange travel, find the best accommodation and arrange currency for themselves, online. True, employment numbers have been upheld as new employments like call-centres and coffee-shops have grown; but these are low-paid, insecure and not career roles.

This trend shows no sign of slowing. What other, even more skilled historic functions may decline or disappear into the Internet? Teaching looks vulnerable to the ideologues of neo-liberalism as they week to remove standards and accreditation and encourage “any willing provider” to try their hand, turning the profession into a low-wage employment at best; or into an online endeavour for self-educating students. And what of drivers? Today there are millions of drivers of cars and trucks, buses and trains. How many of these will be left after the advent of the driverless vehicle? Uber has already demonstrated how the use of new technology can devalue the skills of the black-cab driver. It is not beyond imagination that Uber cars will become driverless, is it? And how many even higher-skilled jobs may be more accurately carried out, without human error, by robots? City trades can be automated and increasingly it is realised that humans are quite poor at betting, so maybe even the bonus-enriched may be replaced. Even film-acting may give way to CGI.

And why does mass migration matter, if the Right can slam the country’s doors shut? First, this is no passing event which will end when/if Syria is emptied. Climate change will perpetuate the drift northward of millions from Africa, the Middle East and subcontinent. Wire fences will not stop this. The influx of more and more workers, many highly skilled, desperate to earn a living and willing to work for lower wages, undoubtedly creates ever greater competition for those jobs which remain.  So there will be more people, fewer jobs and lower wages, for the foreseeable future.

Governments of the Right point to record high employment numbers and to how wrong the Luddites of history were in such warnings in the past, as evidence that these warnings are baseless. This time, though, they cannot point to high wages nor future opportunities beyond for a small minority of highly skilled researchers and developers of the next generations of non-employing enterprises. So how will they continue to persuade young people to indebt themselves to go to universities when at the end of their education there will be a graduate premium for only a few engaged in the most valued and creative fields of science, the Arts and, cherish the thought, good governance; but a lifelong struggle for subsistence for most? The inequalities already bemoaned in US and UK economies can surely only grow in these circumstances unless a new model for life and remuneration is found. Experiments with a Living Income – paid regardless of work status are worthy of attention. Just as Gordon Brown instigated Working Tax Credits to supplement low paid work, perhaps the State should simplify matters and just settle for everyone having leisure for life. No means testing; no transport to work requirement; no benefits system. Utopian – or inevitable?

Tom Serpell

Is less more for education?

"Less is more" is a quite useful rule in some fields, avoiding over-complication and delay. The current government, though, seems to believe that such an approach should apply to public services, with less money supposed to achieve wellbeing for a growing population. How may this apply to education under the upcoming Morgan [or is it Osborne] Education Bill?

Is less qualification of teachers likely to lead to more learning by pupils? Is less Local Authority oversight of admissions and provision likely to lead to more parent satisfaction with the places their children access, especially in rural areas with fewer options, far apart and poorly connected?  How will reducing public assets of land and buildings increase State provision? Will lower pay, poorer terms of employment and working conditions for teachers raise recruitment, retention and standards? How will fragmentation of commonalities such as curriculum or teacher training give more families comfort? Will less parent and community governance end up with more village Primary closures at the behest of Trust finance directors? Could it even be that removal of education from the budgets of Local Authorities  actually reduce their very viability?

The one certainty where less will mean more is that the loss of local accountability for education will mean more central bureaucracy, more Civil Servants at the failing DfE and more opportunities for private sector contractors to profit from Academy Trusts. Lack of evidence of competence or capacity to educate in either DfE nor Academy Trusts set up by Big Capital suggests a wholesale, arbitrary abandonment of a generation of children and a denial of the State's duty to educate all. Less indeed. Let us have no more of it.

Tom Serpell

Terrorism works. Lets avoid it.

Let us be in no doubt. For those prepared to practise it, terrorism or politically inspired violence works. Terrorists generate not only death and destruction but uncertainty and fear too. Their efforts affect not only innocent victims immediately in the firing line but even governments, often far away.

Governments have a duty to defend their citizens but in deciding how to do this they are susceptible to doing exactly what terrorists want; as are the civilian populations who perforce become refugees. Kid yourself not: huge increases in defence budgets, surveillance, ethnic cleansing and xenophobia are exactly what perpetrators of terrorism want. These are manifestations of fear.

ISIS may or may not be in retreat, suffering casualties, leaderless or just past its sell-by date but, relatively small in numbers that it is in comparison to its chosen enemies, it punches well above its weight when it comes to impact on governments. When the latter adopt state assassination or remote attacks affecting the innocent, ISIS wins. When every email you or I send is inspected, ISIS wins. How they must smile as those they attack join the game of violence, gainsaying the stated primacy of diplomacy. By killing a few, they invite the reciprocal killing and displacement of many more, perpetuating the cycle. The losers are not just the people fleeing for security only to find that countries they thought would shelter them slam their borders in their faces; but the governments which too readily kneejerk into doing what they criticise their attackers for.

If anyone doubts that this works or that history proves it, look no further than Israel or Ireland for precedent: diplomacy and eventual stability achieved via a violent journey. To say that violence works is not to advocate it. To acknowledge how it works could result that, instead of playing the games of the extremists, governments can redouble their diplomatic, social and intellectual efforts to deal with the issues potentially leading to the violence before they do so. A tenth of the sums spent on defence dedicated to diplomacy would seem a start.

How do you feel about this EU campaign?

Dare one say it? The campaign which started this morning but which is in reality already 2 months old, is both boring and badly managed. Yes, the subject f EU membership is important. Yes, voting about Europe is, for us who live in safe Tory seats, the one occasion when our votes count. But the powers that be could hardly have done worse in terms of enthusing the electorate.

If I were a Brexit-er [which I am most decidedly NOT] I could at least be enthusiastic because this is such a simple, clear message. But the awfulness and chaos of the rival gangs could reduce this clarity to confusion and lose them their chance of prevailing.

Then there are the Remainers. Oh dear! Their case could be so strong but their message and presentation are so poor. As usual with anything run by the Tories, the focus is on money and foreigners, when the visceral, emotional attraction must surely lie in decades past and future of peace and cooperation. Instead, we have Johnny Foreigner against Colonel Blimp; gunboats against the defenceless; and, sadly, old-and-voting versus young-and-disenfranchised. As if it were not already bad enough that Europe as an issue historically attracts low priority in voter concerns and low turnout. Four months of bad-mouthing bigotry is no turn-on, will do nothing to give democracy a good name and may lead to a damaging conclusion when there was no need for the referendum in the first place. What a mess.

Tom Serpell

Migration is part of English life

Communities large and small require a constant supply of labour if they are to be sustainable. Even ever-growing London needs not only the much-vaunted higher skilled workers who may grudgingly be allowed in from overseas to refresh the talent pool but also its hidden army of low-paid, less-qualified workers who oil the wheels of service, healthcare, cleaning and transport. As people migrate into the capital in search of economic betterment, the demand they create for accommodation drives up property prices, out of the reach of these workers who lived there before and need to live there still, creating a sort of ethnic cleansing of the unqualified. What is not so evident is the parallel to this picture being experienced in thousands of rural and coastal communities.

At the start of the 20^th century, there were some 1m agricultural workers populating the towns and villages of rural England. As these were deprived of their living by automation and changes in farming and fishing practices, many left the country for industrial employment, denuding their former communities. Smaller, less influential populations were further deprived of transport links, and public services.  In recent decades, city-wards migration has been replaced to some extent by a reverse flow, as members of the new, affluent, urban middle class themselves experience the effects of property inflation. These have been two-fold: they too have been squeezed to pay for their homes; but they have been able to take profits by relocating and sometimes starting businesses in more attractive, often rural or seaside, environments, with lower costs and better quality of life. For such incomers, lack of public services may be of less importance than to long-term residents, being typically more mobile and able to pay for services privately. But life-style businesses in rural towns have limited growth, employment and wages. As more of the static number of available houses are acquired by the wealthy incomers, fewer are available or affordable to the less skilled, lower paid inhabitants of these communities. The younger generation is forced away from the countryside to find employment, leaving villages as micro versions of London: communities of the affluent with no local supply of unskilled labour, to lift the seasonal crops, to care for the ageing, to drive the non-existent buses. Is it any wonder that there is demand for workers from overseas who are prepared to tolerate multi-occupation housing and unsocial hours?

Ministers make the assumption that the public will accept skilled foreign workers into the country, because they are presumably nice middle-class people and relatively few in number. The reality is that in London and in leafy and seaside towns, there is still a need for lower-paid, less qualified workers to keep services going; but they are unable to live there , thanks to the inflationary effect of ignoring house-building for so long. In a market economy, only higher supply will mollify price inflation. If villages are to remain multi-generational or evolve into retirement communities, they will need not only a supply of labour but a supply of housing which can be afforded by first-time buyers, young families and lower-paid workers; and effective transport services to connect them to the services they need for health, education and employment. Until then, we need to think carefully about our  attitudes towards migrants and which ones we really need in our communities. Too may affluent house-buyers is no solution.

Accentuate the positive

Back from sunny Cadiz, where we happily marched alongside the Podemos banner in support of safe passage for refugees.

Is it any wonder that engagement in politics in this country is so low? The messages put out to inspire the public are about reducing services on which we all rely, mean-spirited attitudes towards both citizens and needy foreigners, blame for everything and personalised attacks. Anger at "what the hell is going on" is a strong motivator but hardly affirmative. Fear of change seems to have become a mainstream tactic which works.

Yet so much of what makes communities work is so much more positive. Mutual help is everywhere. Volunteers help to welcome refugees; refugees in turn come out to help flood victims.  Communities provide allotments; allotment holders offer produce to the needy. This sort of behaviour shames our political class, with its eye so permanently on the balance sheet rather than on human needs and kindness.

In this country we are so fortunate in our climate and our history. Most people can work now in decent conditions, with good health and relative comfort at home. Life expectancy is growing and mental ill-health and discrimination are increasingly addressed, albeit from unacceptable levels. At grass roots, society works fairly, belying the inequalities accepted and even perpetuated by the Establishment oligarchy. People of all persuasions, ethnicities and gender are accepted within society and the law.

True, none of this happened overnight nor without leadership and often legislation. Governments and Oppositions have played an important part in directing societal changes. If the needs of the people and of communities are to drive legislation in future, we need to have politicians and electoral processes which pay heed to these needs and make positive changes more likely, rather than more fear, blame and focus on mere money. This is why it was a pleasure to march with Podemos, which links intellectual head with community heart in its very structure.

Tom Serpell

Awol

Your correspondent will be uncharacteristically silent for a while. Off to the land of Podemus. All in the name of research, of course.