I was chatting with a friend of mine the other day and he made the comment, "I'm 100% against religion - I think it has done more harm throughout history than just about anything else."
Well - this may or may not be correct, but I think the question is not quite as simple as it at first appears. One of the main problems is that religion, when it does harm, tends to do it in a 'clumped' and thus noticable way, but when it does good it tends to be much less obvious in that it is spread thinly over a much wider area. To see what I an getting at here you only have to consider the millions, perhaps billions of people throughout the course of history who have taken solace in the difficult periods of thier lives from the spiritual beliefs that they hold. If we are to do a 'tally sheet' of good vs evil when it comes to religion then this must be added into the columb on the good side. In addition we must accept in all likelyhood, the general 'goodness' of the society we live in is in the main the product of generation after generation where it was peoples spiritual belief that mediated thier behaviour, and that we are in effect living in the 'afterglow' of that spirituality. How will our society be when generation upon generation of atheism has taken it's toll and people live in the clear understanding that this is it - there will be no bill of reconing to settle at the end and 'looking after number 1 may be the most sensible life strategy to adopt.
Richard Dawkins was on the television last night beating his usual drum (incidentaly - I read 'The God Delusion' and I have never come across a more poorly argued and logically inconsistant piece of work in my life. That an academic could produce such tosh beggars belief. If you are going to challange religion and belief then at least have the taste to do so in an erudite and logically consistant way). Toward the end of the program (very modestly entitled 'Beautiful Minds') he said words to the effect that we should all revel in the privelage of being given the chance to exist as opposed to not, and that in the light of this we should go through life observing and marveling at the wonder of it all. Why did he keep up his proseletysing when he could happily sit back and enjoy the fruits of his sucess away from the spotlight "Well it's like being in love - when you're in love you want to tell the whole world about it. Similarly for me with the marvel of existance - I want to tell the world about it."
This is all very good as far as it goes. but the problem it fails to adress of course is that not all lives are bathed in the warm glow of sucsess that Dawkins experiences; existance is by no means a 'gift' to all on which it is conferred. For many across the aeons of time and indeed into the present day on the contrary it is a curse to be endured. there are many for whom the sun will never rise on a bright new day. For these benighted individuals Dawkins' rose tinted atheism has nothing to offer. For them, the only thing that might make each day tolerable, might just stay thier hand from terminating an existance that has brought them nothing but pain and fear, is the thought that just possibly there is something more. Just possibly there is some purpose, no matter how indecipherable or far away, that gives meaning to thier suffering, that gives cause to thier continuing existence even in the face of the stark horror of their lives. This Dawkins and his ilk would take away. From the complacency of their satisfaction with life they would lecture to those to whom life has not been so kind and take away that small solace that belief even in a fairy tale may give. I believe they would be better to rest quietly in the satisfaction of their own belief rather than foist it on to others for whom it may do a far worse job of 'fitting the bill'.
I'm not much of a religious person myself - I've not been to church in years and i don't kneel at the end of the bed each night; but I do think that religeon seems to be getting a pretty bad press at the present time and not all of it deserved. In the light of our materialistic science and technology driven society it's always going to be hard for religeon to hold it's own - but make no mistake the alternative is not what Dawkins et al would have us believe. Theirs is a doctrine where life is shriven of meaning and justification. In a world of random existance and certain ultimate oblivion any atempt to inject meaning or purpose is to run in fear from the logical end point of your philosophy where in the words of Arthur Balfour "nothing matters very much and most things not at all." The existential nihilism that is the only logical place for the fundamentalist aetheist to reside is perhaps best summed up by Donald A Crosby in the following statement, "There is no justification for life but also no reason not to live. Those who claim to find meaning in their lives are either dishonest or deluded. In either case they fail to face up to the harsh reality of the human situation."
Thursday 26 April 2012
Tuesday 24 April 2012
The grand National has been run once again - and once agaain there is a trail of dead and dying horses littering the track at Aintree, proof positive if ever we needed it that that when it comes to money over welfare, money wins hands down every time.
The problem is though that what we see at Aintree each year is really only the tip of the iceberg. National Hunt racing is notoriously dangerous (for the horses at least) - particularly those tracks that feature the really big jumps over which fields crammed with horses atempt to 'jockey'. While with each year there is always a brief outcry following the National as a few horses deaths make the headlines, what we don't hear about are the shootings day after day that occur on tracks around the country of lesser note.
Anyone who has any experience of horses will know what I mean when I say that horses are so willing, so trusting, that they are prepared to do what is asked of them (mostly) without hesitation and without complaint. So the responsibility is with us and us alone to ensure that these fine animals are not placed into situations where their lives are unduly at risk just to satisfy a 'spoting urge' or 'financial interest' that we may have. The onus must be on us to ensure their safety in situations where they cannot do this for themselves.
If the National is to be allowed to continue something must clearly be done to reduce the danger to the participating horses and two suggestions I read recently would seem to make good sense. Firstly the field size should be reduced from 40 to 30 giving more space for horses to properly prepare and position themselves for the jumps and secondly the 'drop' of 25cm on the far side of the Beechers Brook jump should be levelled out. This drop serves no purpose other than to make the jump more dangerous - increasing the 'thrill' of the spectacle at the expense of horse safety and introduced in a time when views on animal welfare were much less enlightened. Lets lobby for this. Someone start a Facebook page (or whatever it is that is done now) to highlight our - the concerned public's - statement that this cruelty must stop!
The problem is though that what we see at Aintree each year is really only the tip of the iceberg. National Hunt racing is notoriously dangerous (for the horses at least) - particularly those tracks that feature the really big jumps over which fields crammed with horses atempt to 'jockey'. While with each year there is always a brief outcry following the National as a few horses deaths make the headlines, what we don't hear about are the shootings day after day that occur on tracks around the country of lesser note.
Anyone who has any experience of horses will know what I mean when I say that horses are so willing, so trusting, that they are prepared to do what is asked of them (mostly) without hesitation and without complaint. So the responsibility is with us and us alone to ensure that these fine animals are not placed into situations where their lives are unduly at risk just to satisfy a 'spoting urge' or 'financial interest' that we may have. The onus must be on us to ensure their safety in situations where they cannot do this for themselves.
If the National is to be allowed to continue something must clearly be done to reduce the danger to the participating horses and two suggestions I read recently would seem to make good sense. Firstly the field size should be reduced from 40 to 30 giving more space for horses to properly prepare and position themselves for the jumps and secondly the 'drop' of 25cm on the far side of the Beechers Brook jump should be levelled out. This drop serves no purpose other than to make the jump more dangerous - increasing the 'thrill' of the spectacle at the expense of horse safety and introduced in a time when views on animal welfare were much less enlightened. Lets lobby for this. Someone start a Facebook page (or whatever it is that is done now) to highlight our - the concerned public's - statement that this cruelty must stop!
Monday 16 April 2012
Last year I had the temerity to ask for a wage rise. Well, lets face it - I hadn't had one for three years and what with inflation going rampant and price rises across the board I was starting to find things a bit difficult. A month or two earlier one of the bosses had said to me how our sales figures were sky rocketing and so I figured that maybe some of our hard work could be rewarded with a little bit of the famous 'trickle down' we keep hearing about.
Come the next staff meeting as subtley as I could I tentativly made the suggestion that perhaps a raise might be in order. My boss was also subtle; there had been problems in other ares of the company, the economy was tight etc, etc (and then) and I'm already paying the supervisors in the other shop 35p an hour less than you.
In other words 'why would I pay you x amount per hour when I could employ someone else to do your job cheaper than I currently pay you.' Now what he failed to mention was that the other shop looses money hand over fist where we make it and that the losses incured elsewhere in the business are of no fault of ours - rather they must be placed fairly and squarely on his shoulders. Had I been fast enough I would have replied that the extra 35p might be seen as good value, particularly in my case who in six years of employment have never been late or swopped a shift and have been sick only once when I was hosptalised, and was back in work 6 days later. (This does not of course include my demonstrated honesty or diligence to my duties over the years of my employment).
But fair do's - I accept that doing your job properly and being honest are things that an employer has a right to expect anyway and there is no reason why they should buy an employee extra favour in the eyes of his boss. Alaso if labour is seen as a commodity like any other, then fair enough - if there is loads of it about then it's going to be cheaper to buy, and who said bosses had also to be philanthropists. Anyway the upshot was that two months later my boss aproached me and drew me to one side. "We hadn't intended to give any wage rise this year he said but we have reconsidered in the light of your request and have decided to increase your hourly rate by 15p to £7 per hour." (Thats 0.7% per annum in the face of an inflation rate of 5% - a real term salary drop of 15ish % in terms of the 'purchasing power' of the money in my wage packet).Well ok - it was a result of sorts. I'm now the proud recipient of £240ish per week (after tax) for which I work 43 hours of mixed early (6 am) and late (11pm) shifts, no weekends, no sick pay, no bank-holidays and now it seems no wage rises. (I was tempted to say 'and diet unparalelled' there for the literary minded among you but thought this might be taking it a bit too far!). Luckily for my employers the rough patch 'in other parts of the business doesn't seem to have stopped them from allowing themselves a few little extra luxuries like new £40,000 cars, new houses (2nd of course) and refurbished offices (complete with remote controll heating/air conditioning in each office I'm told). Still - one must maintain one's face to the world even in hard times.
Now the hard headed amongst you will say "But hang on - these guys run the risks. They start the businesses that give you work. They deserve to reap the rewards." Well yes, ok. I'd buy that apart from the fact that my bosses are third generation employers - with exeptions they have never done a hard days work in thier lives. Trust me, all the meetings in the world do not stack up against one day of shifting 10 tons of stock by hand. Irrespective of all the talking at some point some clown has to do the actual work. One of thier wives was bleating to me about how over-worked her husband was, "He was still texting at 10 o'clock last night!" she cried. "Oh dear - how awful for him" was my response which may have sounded a bit wooden - at that time I was still shifting stock at the rate of 2 tons an hour from the store to the shop.
So Easter came and went. On 'Good Friday' as I served the continous stream of benefits scroungers and single teenage mothers (with thier scratch cards, phone top-ups, rolling tobacco and cheap vodka), enjoying the festivities with thier families, and paid homage to my bosses who also enjoying the day off, stuck thier heads around the door just to make sure the money was still rolling in,I had an epiphany. Beneath us is a sea of parasites who feed on the fruits of our labour via the welfare system that allows them to live life at the level of thier choice without the real need to work; above us is a sky of predators who also enjoy the fruits of our labour in the form of the profits that they cream of and distribute amongst themselves while always keeping to an absolute minimum that which they allow to 'trickle down' to those who's labour produces the wealth. And in the middle is me - and a million others like me - whose minimally rewarded labour it is that keeps the whole beastly thing going.
Come the next staff meeting as subtley as I could I tentativly made the suggestion that perhaps a raise might be in order. My boss was also subtle; there had been problems in other ares of the company, the economy was tight etc, etc (and then) and I'm already paying the supervisors in the other shop 35p an hour less than you.
In other words 'why would I pay you x amount per hour when I could employ someone else to do your job cheaper than I currently pay you.' Now what he failed to mention was that the other shop looses money hand over fist where we make it and that the losses incured elsewhere in the business are of no fault of ours - rather they must be placed fairly and squarely on his shoulders. Had I been fast enough I would have replied that the extra 35p might be seen as good value, particularly in my case who in six years of employment have never been late or swopped a shift and have been sick only once when I was hosptalised, and was back in work 6 days later. (This does not of course include my demonstrated honesty or diligence to my duties over the years of my employment).
But fair do's - I accept that doing your job properly and being honest are things that an employer has a right to expect anyway and there is no reason why they should buy an employee extra favour in the eyes of his boss. Alaso if labour is seen as a commodity like any other, then fair enough - if there is loads of it about then it's going to be cheaper to buy, and who said bosses had also to be philanthropists. Anyway the upshot was that two months later my boss aproached me and drew me to one side. "We hadn't intended to give any wage rise this year he said but we have reconsidered in the light of your request and have decided to increase your hourly rate by 15p to £7 per hour." (Thats 0.7% per annum in the face of an inflation rate of 5% - a real term salary drop of 15ish % in terms of the 'purchasing power' of the money in my wage packet).Well ok - it was a result of sorts. I'm now the proud recipient of £240ish per week (after tax) for which I work 43 hours of mixed early (6 am) and late (11pm) shifts, no weekends, no sick pay, no bank-holidays and now it seems no wage rises. (I was tempted to say 'and diet unparalelled' there for the literary minded among you but thought this might be taking it a bit too far!). Luckily for my employers the rough patch 'in other parts of the business doesn't seem to have stopped them from allowing themselves a few little extra luxuries like new £40,000 cars, new houses (2nd of course) and refurbished offices (complete with remote controll heating/air conditioning in each office I'm told). Still - one must maintain one's face to the world even in hard times.
Now the hard headed amongst you will say "But hang on - these guys run the risks. They start the businesses that give you work. They deserve to reap the rewards." Well yes, ok. I'd buy that apart from the fact that my bosses are third generation employers - with exeptions they have never done a hard days work in thier lives. Trust me, all the meetings in the world do not stack up against one day of shifting 10 tons of stock by hand. Irrespective of all the talking at some point some clown has to do the actual work. One of thier wives was bleating to me about how over-worked her husband was, "He was still texting at 10 o'clock last night!" she cried. "Oh dear - how awful for him" was my response which may have sounded a bit wooden - at that time I was still shifting stock at the rate of 2 tons an hour from the store to the shop.
So Easter came and went. On 'Good Friday' as I served the continous stream of benefits scroungers and single teenage mothers (with thier scratch cards, phone top-ups, rolling tobacco and cheap vodka), enjoying the festivities with thier families, and paid homage to my bosses who also enjoying the day off, stuck thier heads around the door just to make sure the money was still rolling in,I had an epiphany. Beneath us is a sea of parasites who feed on the fruits of our labour via the welfare system that allows them to live life at the level of thier choice without the real need to work; above us is a sky of predators who also enjoy the fruits of our labour in the form of the profits that they cream of and distribute amongst themselves while always keeping to an absolute minimum that which they allow to 'trickle down' to those who's labour produces the wealth. And in the middle is me - and a million others like me - whose minimally rewarded labour it is that keeps the whole beastly thing going.
Monday 9 April 2012
So whats it all about (returning to the earlier stuff about the 'work-experience' rip-off); why would a govornment (or indeed sucessive govornments irrespective of thier 'flavour') introduce a scheme that was so flawed in it's desighn, so (apparently) ill thought out in it's method of implementation that it could not but do fundamental damage to the very ideal of 'a fair days wage for a fair days work' that underpins our entire society.
Well the answer is that it wasn't always that way and there are some who would that it were not that way now.
Lets look at what this 'scheme' (and scheme is the right word here!) will do. As a quick aside can I just say that my employers have decided to employ as a work experience employee an 18yo lad who has worked for them on a casual basis for the past three years. He currently recieves £5.25 per hour (minimum wage for an 18yo) and does on average 30 hours a week. He is to be 'laid off'and then re-employed for 40 hours per week at £3 per hour having sighned on for 'job-seekers allowance'. He will recieve less money for more hours of work, the Job Centre, local college (who will 'asses' him as he performs the menial task he has been doing since he was fifteen) and my employers have all been complicit in 'aranging' this for him, and after a year of this indentured servitude he may be kept on in a full time roll. When I asked what he thought about the fact that he was being payed less money for more work his face looked troubled for a moment, but then brightened, "But I've got guarenteed hours each week" he beamed at me. I didn't have the heart to explain it to him.
Anyway - so we have a situation where any employer can replace existing workers as they leave, with work-experience workers at one third of the rate of the national minimum wage. They do not have to employ those workers at full wages at the end of thier work expperience term, nor is their any limit to the number they may employ. They can't sack existing workers - but neither do they have to make their remuneration or conditions any more comfortable to encourage them to stay. This of course places big downward pressure on wages both as the employer sees that he can get the same labour for a fraction of the price and the worker starts to fear for his position due to the ease and cheapness with which he can be replaced. Now what about working rotas. Well, the work-experience worker has to be given the 32 or 40 hours that his/her agreement stipulates and the boss is also going to be keen that this is the case since every hour of labour done by a work-experience worker only costs one third that of one hour done by a full time worker. So employees currently on a non contracted number of hours can expect to see their number of hours per week fall dramatically as those hours are given to the work experience worker. The boss of course will not expect to pay full rate for any hour that could be filled at work-experience rate.
Thus over time a 'rolling-out' will occor as more and more fully paid jobs are lost to the work-experience market - and ultimately the concept of a 'minimum wage' becomes meaningless. The Job Centres are happy - the work experience sheme is working and really helping to get people back to work, the colleges are happy - they get big bucks going around visiting the 'employees' in their work places to 'asses their progress'. The employer is very happy. He gets to employ labour at £2 per hour - next to nothing in real terms - and gets paid for the privelage of doing so! (did I forget to mention - he gets £1500 grant for every work-experience employee he employs). And the worker; well the worker gets to be employed in a menial job for six months or a year being paid next to nothing with no meaningfull qualification or prospect of a real job materealising at the end of it. Most likely he or she will go back onto benefits untill the next 'work-experience' position is forced upon them on the threat of loss of benefits if they fail to accept it.
This of course is not the only threat that low-end workers in the British economy face - and the next issue is a thorny old nut if ever there was one so lets ease into it with a bit of a history lesson. Believe it or not there was a time when people like you and me didn't used to get paid at all for our labour. We used to live as agricultual workers on the huge land holdings of the aristocracy and in return for working the land he would bung us a bit of the produce of our labours and allow us to live in a hut (that we built ourselves) on his land. The bulk of what we grew, he took for himself and sold for gold which he then kept. If we were lucky our particular lord was a good one and perhaps helped us if times were rough, or if we were unlucky he was a bastard. Then along came the plague and gave things a good old shake up. the main result was that so many labourers died that there wasn't enough left to work the land of all of the various Lords etc - and so they had to start competeing with each other to attract labour to their estates. They did this by offering gold in return for work - in other words wages! If Lord Buckingham was offering more than Lord Devonshire - then it was 'up sticks and I'm off'. All of a sudden the working man was in demand - he was needed for the first time in existence. Now take a good note of this - it's important. It was the level of available labour that determined the wage level that was paid for that labour. If labour was plentiful - then it was cheap! And vice versa, if it was in short supply then it was expensive.
Now to come up to date. We continually read in the papers about how much of a problem immigration is and see hand wringing politicians at there wits end trying to hold down the number of economic migrants entering the country. We get the old story on the one hand that 'we need the skills these people bring to our country' and on the other we hear that it's almost impossible to stem the tide of entrants (legal or otherwise) into the country. Rubbish, I say, on both counts. Since when was stacking shelves overnight in Tesco or cleaning in the local hospital a 'skill' that we couldn't grow at home. In respect of limiting the numbers of entrants into the country, if the will was there to do it, it could be done tomorrow. The truth of the matter is that there are vested interests in this country who do very well out of having a huge pool of available labour with it's attendant effects of downward pressure on wages and relaxation of employment conditions. Foriegn labour is both cheap and less strictly governed about how it must be treated (witness the fields of flower pickers and cockle harvesters that are bussed to and from their dingy digs to their unpleasant ond sometimes dangerous places of work and you will see what I mean). The higher unemployment is and the more at risk jobs appear, the less inclined people are to press for wage rises, to complain about terms and conditions and to refuse changes to their working practices that under normal circumstances they would never tolerate.
My wifes father was a clever man. A lifelong trade unionist and worker for the rights of his collegues at work, he once said to me "Don't ever believe that the improvement of conditions and pay seen for workers after the war were the result of Trade Union activity alone." The monied classes at the top end of society at the time were,he said, terrified that the country would go the same way as that of much of the rest of Europe and move toward Communism. It was deliberate policy by the controlling powers of the day to 'cut the workers some slack' in terms of improving pay and conditions in order to 'let off some steam' as it were and reduce the likelyhood of an all out 'revolution' in which they would loose everything they had taken generations to amass. So when McMillan said "You've never had it so good" it was to this he was refering - and he was telling the truth; but it was never meant to last.
There has been, and probably always will be a section of society for whom the level at which the mass of the populace is able to currently live is way too high. That working men and women should be able to own their own homes, drive arround in cars and fly around the world visiting parts that were once the exclusive domain of the rich, is to them anathema. We hear more and more in the press and on TV the patronising voices of politician's saying (like teachers to naughty scool children) "We're all living above our means and sooner or later it's got to stop". What they of course mean is 'You', not 'We' at all. What we are witnessing is the readjustment of society back to it's old level of a smaller number of top enders who capitalise on the work of the masses who, in return for their efforts recieve the bare minimum needed for survival and no more. This, for many of our societies elite, is where the status quo should lie, and the pressures at work as outlined above are but means toward that end. This work will be slow and will not be achieved overnight, but vested interest is nothing if not patient. They measure their plans over generations not years. When Owen jones said in the Independant newspaper last week that "We are governed by the political wing of the wealthy" he was telling the truth indeed. And what's more - we always have been!
Well the answer is that it wasn't always that way and there are some who would that it were not that way now.
Lets look at what this 'scheme' (and scheme is the right word here!) will do. As a quick aside can I just say that my employers have decided to employ as a work experience employee an 18yo lad who has worked for them on a casual basis for the past three years. He currently recieves £5.25 per hour (minimum wage for an 18yo) and does on average 30 hours a week. He is to be 'laid off'and then re-employed for 40 hours per week at £3 per hour having sighned on for 'job-seekers allowance'. He will recieve less money for more hours of work, the Job Centre, local college (who will 'asses' him as he performs the menial task he has been doing since he was fifteen) and my employers have all been complicit in 'aranging' this for him, and after a year of this indentured servitude he may be kept on in a full time roll. When I asked what he thought about the fact that he was being payed less money for more work his face looked troubled for a moment, but then brightened, "But I've got guarenteed hours each week" he beamed at me. I didn't have the heart to explain it to him.
Anyway - so we have a situation where any employer can replace existing workers as they leave, with work-experience workers at one third of the rate of the national minimum wage. They do not have to employ those workers at full wages at the end of thier work expperience term, nor is their any limit to the number they may employ. They can't sack existing workers - but neither do they have to make their remuneration or conditions any more comfortable to encourage them to stay. This of course places big downward pressure on wages both as the employer sees that he can get the same labour for a fraction of the price and the worker starts to fear for his position due to the ease and cheapness with which he can be replaced. Now what about working rotas. Well, the work-experience worker has to be given the 32 or 40 hours that his/her agreement stipulates and the boss is also going to be keen that this is the case since every hour of labour done by a work-experience worker only costs one third that of one hour done by a full time worker. So employees currently on a non contracted number of hours can expect to see their number of hours per week fall dramatically as those hours are given to the work experience worker. The boss of course will not expect to pay full rate for any hour that could be filled at work-experience rate.
Thus over time a 'rolling-out' will occor as more and more fully paid jobs are lost to the work-experience market - and ultimately the concept of a 'minimum wage' becomes meaningless. The Job Centres are happy - the work experience sheme is working and really helping to get people back to work, the colleges are happy - they get big bucks going around visiting the 'employees' in their work places to 'asses their progress'. The employer is very happy. He gets to employ labour at £2 per hour - next to nothing in real terms - and gets paid for the privelage of doing so! (did I forget to mention - he gets £1500 grant for every work-experience employee he employs). And the worker; well the worker gets to be employed in a menial job for six months or a year being paid next to nothing with no meaningfull qualification or prospect of a real job materealising at the end of it. Most likely he or she will go back onto benefits untill the next 'work-experience' position is forced upon them on the threat of loss of benefits if they fail to accept it.
This of course is not the only threat that low-end workers in the British economy face - and the next issue is a thorny old nut if ever there was one so lets ease into it with a bit of a history lesson. Believe it or not there was a time when people like you and me didn't used to get paid at all for our labour. We used to live as agricultual workers on the huge land holdings of the aristocracy and in return for working the land he would bung us a bit of the produce of our labours and allow us to live in a hut (that we built ourselves) on his land. The bulk of what we grew, he took for himself and sold for gold which he then kept. If we were lucky our particular lord was a good one and perhaps helped us if times were rough, or if we were unlucky he was a bastard. Then along came the plague and gave things a good old shake up. the main result was that so many labourers died that there wasn't enough left to work the land of all of the various Lords etc - and so they had to start competeing with each other to attract labour to their estates. They did this by offering gold in return for work - in other words wages! If Lord Buckingham was offering more than Lord Devonshire - then it was 'up sticks and I'm off'. All of a sudden the working man was in demand - he was needed for the first time in existence. Now take a good note of this - it's important. It was the level of available labour that determined the wage level that was paid for that labour. If labour was plentiful - then it was cheap! And vice versa, if it was in short supply then it was expensive.
Now to come up to date. We continually read in the papers about how much of a problem immigration is and see hand wringing politicians at there wits end trying to hold down the number of economic migrants entering the country. We get the old story on the one hand that 'we need the skills these people bring to our country' and on the other we hear that it's almost impossible to stem the tide of entrants (legal or otherwise) into the country. Rubbish, I say, on both counts. Since when was stacking shelves overnight in Tesco or cleaning in the local hospital a 'skill' that we couldn't grow at home. In respect of limiting the numbers of entrants into the country, if the will was there to do it, it could be done tomorrow. The truth of the matter is that there are vested interests in this country who do very well out of having a huge pool of available labour with it's attendant effects of downward pressure on wages and relaxation of employment conditions. Foriegn labour is both cheap and less strictly governed about how it must be treated (witness the fields of flower pickers and cockle harvesters that are bussed to and from their dingy digs to their unpleasant ond sometimes dangerous places of work and you will see what I mean). The higher unemployment is and the more at risk jobs appear, the less inclined people are to press for wage rises, to complain about terms and conditions and to refuse changes to their working practices that under normal circumstances they would never tolerate.
My wifes father was a clever man. A lifelong trade unionist and worker for the rights of his collegues at work, he once said to me "Don't ever believe that the improvement of conditions and pay seen for workers after the war were the result of Trade Union activity alone." The monied classes at the top end of society at the time were,he said, terrified that the country would go the same way as that of much of the rest of Europe and move toward Communism. It was deliberate policy by the controlling powers of the day to 'cut the workers some slack' in terms of improving pay and conditions in order to 'let off some steam' as it were and reduce the likelyhood of an all out 'revolution' in which they would loose everything they had taken generations to amass. So when McMillan said "You've never had it so good" it was to this he was refering - and he was telling the truth; but it was never meant to last.
There has been, and probably always will be a section of society for whom the level at which the mass of the populace is able to currently live is way too high. That working men and women should be able to own their own homes, drive arround in cars and fly around the world visiting parts that were once the exclusive domain of the rich, is to them anathema. We hear more and more in the press and on TV the patronising voices of politician's saying (like teachers to naughty scool children) "We're all living above our means and sooner or later it's got to stop". What they of course mean is 'You', not 'We' at all. What we are witnessing is the readjustment of society back to it's old level of a smaller number of top enders who capitalise on the work of the masses who, in return for their efforts recieve the bare minimum needed for survival and no more. This, for many of our societies elite, is where the status quo should lie, and the pressures at work as outlined above are but means toward that end. This work will be slow and will not be achieved overnight, but vested interest is nothing if not patient. They measure their plans over generations not years. When Owen jones said in the Independant newspaper last week that "We are governed by the political wing of the wealthy" he was telling the truth indeed. And what's more - we always have been!
Friday 6 April 2012
The celebrated childrens author and Oxford don C S Lewis was not a great fan of sport. He felt it brought out the worst in people, encouraging an ethos of agressive competition where a spirit of communal co-operation would serve us better.
Difficult perhaps to share his views entierly on this, but you have to admit - he may have had a point. Take for example the relationship between the game of football and the far right political parties. Why is it that the extreme right parties like the National Defense Legue, The National Front and the British Nationalist Party find such rich pickings in terms of recruitment in the devoted atendee's seen every Saturday afternoon crowding the stadiums of our national sport. I think the chief reason is that the football crowd provides just the right potent mix of nationalism, hyperexitability and (I hate to say it) low mentallity that is ready and primed to be worked on by the often very clever manipulators behind these organisations.
A week or two ago I wathched on Chanel 4 the interview given by BNP chairman Nick Griffen to presenter Kieth Allan (ex Comedy Store and father of the eponymous Lilly) at the EU headquaters in Brussels where Griffen serves as a MEP. This was not a repeat of the reprehensible 'Question Time' hatchet job performed on Griffen by the BBC, but still it was pretty clear that Allen did not attend the interview without some pretty stong preconceptions of what he was going to find (no wonder the man is leary of giving interviews). They started off pretty warily, trying to be nice but circling round each other like dogs ready for the attack and Allen, in the spirit of trying to make an easy intro into the thing, asked Griffen about his musical tastes. We learned that as a youngster he had embraced the punk movement but that now his music of choice was folk music of which he was an ardent fan. Allen was suprised - the term 'folk music' itself seems to conjer up images of bearded liberals sitting around in smokey real ale pubs and tapping their feet to the sound of Ralph McTell strumming at his accoustic guitar, not exactly your raging skinhead NF's choice you might think. Wrong! What Allen failed to get, as would most of us, was that Gfriffens referal to 'folk' was a direct link for those who could see it, with the origins of the very Nazi Party itself.
In between the two World Wars, during the time of economic colapse and near chaos caused by it's loss of WW1, there arose in Germany what were known as the 'Volkisch' movements, whose ideals were the re-establishment of national pride by reference to teutonic folk-lore and the romantic presentation of germanys great past in terms of the ethnic purity and quasi-mystical superiority. The term 'Volk' itself has it's translation in 'people' but more specifically in terms of racialy pure people of white and pure blooded nordic origins. It was from one of these 'folk' societies, namely the Thule Gesselschaft, that came the founder of the DAP, Anton Drexler, which later went on to evolve into the NSDAP - or to you and me the Nazi Party. The populist movements of the Volksch societies proliferated and central to their core values was this extreme nationalism that ultimately found it's expression in the horrors of the Holocaust. No great similarity there you may say with our own benighn british folk movement - but you may be missing the point. The close connection in the lyrics of our own folk ballads with tales of gallant knights, the Authurian legends and of a time when the english were english is not a million miles removed from the connections between the Teutonic knightly past of Germany and the Volkisch societys of the inter-war years. This was a point certainly not missed by Nick Griffen.
So her we are on the eve of the 2012 Olympic Games. We will see and no doubt be part of a huge outpouring of nationalisic fervour as we will our athletes on to win gold after gold and take thier deserved place on the top of the podium. But let us not forget one other person who understood the significance of triumph in this our most spectacular (and politicised) of sporting tournaments. The nationalism of the sports field is not a million miles away from the nationalism of the battle field and Hitler knew it. So as I unpack the goods in my shop, the bars of chocolate, the cans of drink and the boxes of cerial all bedecked with Union Jack's in preparation for capialising on this fervor generated by the great contest to come, forgive me if you will, a little shudder.
Difficult perhaps to share his views entierly on this, but you have to admit - he may have had a point. Take for example the relationship between the game of football and the far right political parties. Why is it that the extreme right parties like the National Defense Legue, The National Front and the British Nationalist Party find such rich pickings in terms of recruitment in the devoted atendee's seen every Saturday afternoon crowding the stadiums of our national sport. I think the chief reason is that the football crowd provides just the right potent mix of nationalism, hyperexitability and (I hate to say it) low mentallity that is ready and primed to be worked on by the often very clever manipulators behind these organisations.
A week or two ago I wathched on Chanel 4 the interview given by BNP chairman Nick Griffen to presenter Kieth Allan (ex Comedy Store and father of the eponymous Lilly) at the EU headquaters in Brussels where Griffen serves as a MEP. This was not a repeat of the reprehensible 'Question Time' hatchet job performed on Griffen by the BBC, but still it was pretty clear that Allen did not attend the interview without some pretty stong preconceptions of what he was going to find (no wonder the man is leary of giving interviews). They started off pretty warily, trying to be nice but circling round each other like dogs ready for the attack and Allen, in the spirit of trying to make an easy intro into the thing, asked Griffen about his musical tastes. We learned that as a youngster he had embraced the punk movement but that now his music of choice was folk music of which he was an ardent fan. Allen was suprised - the term 'folk music' itself seems to conjer up images of bearded liberals sitting around in smokey real ale pubs and tapping their feet to the sound of Ralph McTell strumming at his accoustic guitar, not exactly your raging skinhead NF's choice you might think. Wrong! What Allen failed to get, as would most of us, was that Gfriffens referal to 'folk' was a direct link for those who could see it, with the origins of the very Nazi Party itself.
In between the two World Wars, during the time of economic colapse and near chaos caused by it's loss of WW1, there arose in Germany what were known as the 'Volkisch' movements, whose ideals were the re-establishment of national pride by reference to teutonic folk-lore and the romantic presentation of germanys great past in terms of the ethnic purity and quasi-mystical superiority. The term 'Volk' itself has it's translation in 'people' but more specifically in terms of racialy pure people of white and pure blooded nordic origins. It was from one of these 'folk' societies, namely the Thule Gesselschaft, that came the founder of the DAP, Anton Drexler, which later went on to evolve into the NSDAP - or to you and me the Nazi Party. The populist movements of the Volksch societies proliferated and central to their core values was this extreme nationalism that ultimately found it's expression in the horrors of the Holocaust. No great similarity there you may say with our own benighn british folk movement - but you may be missing the point. The close connection in the lyrics of our own folk ballads with tales of gallant knights, the Authurian legends and of a time when the english were english is not a million miles removed from the connections between the Teutonic knightly past of Germany and the Volkisch societys of the inter-war years. This was a point certainly not missed by Nick Griffen.
So her we are on the eve of the 2012 Olympic Games. We will see and no doubt be part of a huge outpouring of nationalisic fervour as we will our athletes on to win gold after gold and take thier deserved place on the top of the podium. But let us not forget one other person who understood the significance of triumph in this our most spectacular (and politicised) of sporting tournaments. The nationalism of the sports field is not a million miles away from the nationalism of the battle field and Hitler knew it. So as I unpack the goods in my shop, the bars of chocolate, the cans of drink and the boxes of cerial all bedecked with Union Jack's in preparation for capialising on this fervor generated by the great contest to come, forgive me if you will, a little shudder.
Wednesday 4 April 2012
On the same theme as the last post on Sunday we have the notorious anatomist Gunther Von Hagens once again atempting to shake a few dollars out of being controversial by recreating 'The Crucifixion (on Easter Sunday no less) out od the plasticised remains of dead people. As one woild expect the program atempts to cover it's prurient expliotation of the morbid and grisly with a smokescreen of intelectual pontificating on the theme of the cross and it's iconic place in our history through the years. For me this alone would have been enough; there is such a huge array of great art out there that could be put on display without recall to the antics of this cadaverous clown - but of course that would be to slash viewing figures to one tenth of what a few dead bodies can pull in so hey, whats not to like.
Perhaps in the future Von Hagens work will be seen as great art - hell, perhaps it is now - but for me the reliance on the sensational to get the footfall in is always a suspect pointer toward bad art. Take for example Damien Hurst's retrospective that we were given an advance viewing of on Chanel 4 on Monday night. In amongst all the dead animals chopped in half in formalin baths and skulls encrusted with diamonds, we were treated to the picture of Hurst taken at (he said) 16yo with his head next to the severed head of a dead man in an anatomy lab where he was atending a drawing class. Well will someone bring me the teacher/organiser of that little jolly so I can kick his arse for letting a pubescent schoolboy tamper round with the remains of people who once lived and walked as he does. Ok - you don't want to get too hung up on it, but surely a little respect is due even in a dissection lab. Surely the departed occupants deserve better than this. And what bugs me here is that it's not even great art. Why is it in the show at all - in fact why is any of it in the show, why is there a show. This is 'art' with no other purpose than to elicit a shock response - a cheap caricature of art if you like, and it is a testemont to the stupid gillibility of the art world that they have fallen for it. Hurst, who put a lot of his early works up for sale in Sotheby's on one occasion and earned himself over a hundred million pounds in one night is philosophical about the whole thing, "Whatever anybody says they can see in my work I just agree with them" he says. Well I see a pile of talentless crap - agree with that!
Perhaps in the future Von Hagens work will be seen as great art - hell, perhaps it is now - but for me the reliance on the sensational to get the footfall in is always a suspect pointer toward bad art. Take for example Damien Hurst's retrospective that we were given an advance viewing of on Chanel 4 on Monday night. In amongst all the dead animals chopped in half in formalin baths and skulls encrusted with diamonds, we were treated to the picture of Hurst taken at (he said) 16yo with his head next to the severed head of a dead man in an anatomy lab where he was atending a drawing class. Well will someone bring me the teacher/organiser of that little jolly so I can kick his arse for letting a pubescent schoolboy tamper round with the remains of people who once lived and walked as he does. Ok - you don't want to get too hung up on it, but surely a little respect is due even in a dissection lab. Surely the departed occupants deserve better than this. And what bugs me here is that it's not even great art. Why is it in the show at all - in fact why is any of it in the show, why is there a show. This is 'art' with no other purpose than to elicit a shock response - a cheap caricature of art if you like, and it is a testemont to the stupid gillibility of the art world that they have fallen for it. Hurst, who put a lot of his early works up for sale in Sotheby's on one occasion and earned himself over a hundred million pounds in one night is philosophical about the whole thing, "Whatever anybody says they can see in my work I just agree with them" he says. Well I see a pile of talentless crap - agree with that!
Amazing as it is in these politically correct times, but tomorrow night on Chanel 4 you will be able to tune in to watch a freak show. It will be dressed up as a sympathetic fly on the wall documentary of people with gross deformities struggling to lead normal lives and form normal relationships, but make no mistake, The Undatables will be as much a freak show as anything Barnum & Bailey were able to present in the 1900's.
If the people on the program were not deformed or otherwise grossly different the program would not have been made, the people not appearing on it and the public not viewing it. This makes it's only 'draw' the shocking abnormalities of the 'cast' and thier stuggles to overcome them. Joseph Merric, the famed Elephant Man had the same kind of 'sympathetic' viewing from the droves of visitors who qued to see him in the rooms at The London Hospital who's only real reason for coming, as in the case of viewers to this program, was to see his hideous deformity. Still - I suppose in fairness this interest in the bizzare is inherent in us and is not necessarily separate from a degree of conjoined sympathy. But lets not pretend we don't know whats going on, for this is to let the program makers believe they have hoodwinked us with thier 'we're the kind sympathetic ones here' approach, when in reality there in it for the big bucks that rubbernecking can bring.
If the people on the program were not deformed or otherwise grossly different the program would not have been made, the people not appearing on it and the public not viewing it. This makes it's only 'draw' the shocking abnormalities of the 'cast' and thier stuggles to overcome them. Joseph Merric, the famed Elephant Man had the same kind of 'sympathetic' viewing from the droves of visitors who qued to see him in the rooms at The London Hospital who's only real reason for coming, as in the case of viewers to this program, was to see his hideous deformity. Still - I suppose in fairness this interest in the bizzare is inherent in us and is not necessarily separate from a degree of conjoined sympathy. But lets not pretend we don't know whats going on, for this is to let the program makers believe they have hoodwinked us with thier 'we're the kind sympathetic ones here' approach, when in reality there in it for the big bucks that rubbernecking can bring.
Monday 2 April 2012
Ok - so this is how it should have been done. There should have been no question that these schemes were not to be used to fill existing jobs, but were to achieve the dual aims of i) getting long term unemployed people back into the 'swing' of working for a living and ii) facilitating the creation of 'new' jobs within the employment pool.
The prospective candidate should have been set to work for the number of hours that equated to thier benefit payment payed at the rate of minimum wage. ie if the benefit payment was say £59 per week then they would work 59 divided by 6.1 (£6.10 per hour being the minimum wage) hours. ie About 9 and a half hours. The £59 would be payable by the benefits office to the employer to cover these hours. If the employer required more hours (up to the normal maximum limit) from the work-experiencee, then these would be payable by the employer also at the rate of minimum wage. The same tax and working conditions etc that apply to regular workers would apply to the experiencee, thus making the work as nere normal as that experienced by ordinary workers as possible. The employee would not be obligated to retain a work-experience worker on a fully employed basis after the six month period of the scheme, but would not be able to obtain a further experiencee for two years after the date of leaving of the first unless able to give good and sufficient reasons as to why the experiencee was not retained. In the event of the experiencee being retained as a fully paid staff member (the ideal situation) the employer would immediately if he or she chose, be able to retain the services of the next experiencee.
This is how it should have been done. Fair to the worker. More than fair to the employee. And good for the country to boot!
The prospective candidate should have been set to work for the number of hours that equated to thier benefit payment payed at the rate of minimum wage. ie if the benefit payment was say £59 per week then they would work 59 divided by 6.1 (£6.10 per hour being the minimum wage) hours. ie About 9 and a half hours. The £59 would be payable by the benefits office to the employer to cover these hours. If the employer required more hours (up to the normal maximum limit) from the work-experiencee, then these would be payable by the employer also at the rate of minimum wage. The same tax and working conditions etc that apply to regular workers would apply to the experiencee, thus making the work as nere normal as that experienced by ordinary workers as possible. The employee would not be obligated to retain a work-experience worker on a fully employed basis after the six month period of the scheme, but would not be able to obtain a further experiencee for two years after the date of leaving of the first unless able to give good and sufficient reasons as to why the experiencee was not retained. In the event of the experiencee being retained as a fully paid staff member (the ideal situation) the employer would immediately if he or she chose, be able to retain the services of the next experiencee.
This is how it should have been done. Fair to the worker. More than fair to the employee. And good for the country to boot!
Sunday 1 April 2012
Ok - It's not 24 hours but I got bored and decided to carry on from where I left off (Hey - whose writting this blog anyway! ;) )
Ok so here we are. We can take on anybody to replace a full wage earner when they leave - and pay them sh*t. We can work them for 32 hours a week, pay them £64 for thier trouble and dump them after 6 months to replace them with new ones. We can hold down wages and bugger around with working conditions until the people we currently employ at £6.10 per hour (minimum wage) get pissed and leave - and then replace them with cheap labour in the form of people who, if they have the balls to kick up, stand the very real chance of loosing all thier income via loss of benefits. We can enrich ourselves via this form of wage-slave labour and simultaneously benefit from the downward pressure it exerts on wages and the fear it engenders about thier futures in the ones we already employ. Woah.... this is getting good!
Now lets see what this does to society as a whole. Well for starters we all live (or have done to date at least) with the fundamental assumption that if we work, we will get paid fairly and at the going rate for the work which we do. There have been systems in the past where people have been put to work under threat of punitive reprisals if they complain, for way less than the going (or indeed livable) rate of the day - but these systems normally come under the term of slavery and we don't want to use that word here! The first and painfully obvious result of this misconcieved, ill-executed scheme (four related ones in fact) is that it undermines a 'real' job (ie one that pays at least minimum wage) every time an employer does what mine are considering. For every clown forced into work at £2 per hour a fully paying job goes to the wall - but hey, perhaps this is what 'they' want. There have always been elements of society for whom minimum wage is anathema, and it seems now they may at last have found the way to circumvent it legally. Why was the person at the job centre unable to tell me anything about the criterea an employer had to satisfy - maybe because their aren't any? Why could I find no information 'online' - maybe because their isn't any. Perhaps if you are going to undermine one of the fundamental rights of our society - a fair days work for a fair days pay - you might not want to shout to loudly about it.
The second thing that this does - and some people might not like this point of view - is it allows all of the dead -beat parasites who are prepared to sit on their backsides and do sh*t while the rest of us support them to justifiably do so! This is a 'Get Out Of Jail Free' card for them which they will use mercilessly to continue to avoid doing any work - and the rest of us will not be able to say anything about it because they will be right!
For us who work at the bottom end of the 'status pyramid' it means don't expect a wage rise anytime soon - you just became an expensive luxury to your boss and he may well decide he don't need expensive luxuries some time in the pretty damn near future!
Now all this stuff may seem pretty deep (and to be frank a bit boring guys), but do me a favour - stay with me. Never forget that when we work for wages we sell our labour, not our souls. The minute you walk out of that place you are the equal of anybody in it including your top, top, top boss. He want's a bar of chocolate - he pays. He want's to go to the cinema - he pays. He want's your labour to make him richer - HE PAYS! This is such a fundamental right that to interfer with it in the way the 'work-experience' scheme does, is to cut to the very heart of what we in the UK know as our society. It's never been massively fair - but hell, it's never been that unfair. You've never been able to force someone to work for next to nothing and then discard them like a used cigarette butt when you have finished with them - at least not in the recent past you haven't, but it seems that this is about to change.
Interestingly the Americans have long had the 'free-intern' system in place which restricts the acess of those from lower social backgrounds into certain areas. In this system you get your degree in some area - say Law - and then in order to get work you have to give your services free to the proffession for a year or so before anyone will give you a paid job. As your own financial rescources will be the only thing to support you over this period, chances are that if you aint rich or your parents aint, then you can't afford this period of unpaid work. Hence your CV will not show the requsite year of internship - and no-one will employ you. The Qeen herself recently showed her own distaste for this system of holding back people from 'the wrong backgrounds' by advertising for 'a paid internship' at Buck House! Good on her - that's a start at least. Perhaps now she'll take a look at the other end of the scale and show a similar dissaproval of making the low end workers perform thier 'menial' duties for less and less of a living wage!
Ok so here we are. We can take on anybody to replace a full wage earner when they leave - and pay them sh*t. We can work them for 32 hours a week, pay them £64 for thier trouble and dump them after 6 months to replace them with new ones. We can hold down wages and bugger around with working conditions until the people we currently employ at £6.10 per hour (minimum wage) get pissed and leave - and then replace them with cheap labour in the form of people who, if they have the balls to kick up, stand the very real chance of loosing all thier income via loss of benefits. We can enrich ourselves via this form of wage-slave labour and simultaneously benefit from the downward pressure it exerts on wages and the fear it engenders about thier futures in the ones we already employ. Woah.... this is getting good!
Now lets see what this does to society as a whole. Well for starters we all live (or have done to date at least) with the fundamental assumption that if we work, we will get paid fairly and at the going rate for the work which we do. There have been systems in the past where people have been put to work under threat of punitive reprisals if they complain, for way less than the going (or indeed livable) rate of the day - but these systems normally come under the term of slavery and we don't want to use that word here! The first and painfully obvious result of this misconcieved, ill-executed scheme (four related ones in fact) is that it undermines a 'real' job (ie one that pays at least minimum wage) every time an employer does what mine are considering. For every clown forced into work at £2 per hour a fully paying job goes to the wall - but hey, perhaps this is what 'they' want. There have always been elements of society for whom minimum wage is anathema, and it seems now they may at last have found the way to circumvent it legally. Why was the person at the job centre unable to tell me anything about the criterea an employer had to satisfy - maybe because their aren't any? Why could I find no information 'online' - maybe because their isn't any. Perhaps if you are going to undermine one of the fundamental rights of our society - a fair days work for a fair days pay - you might not want to shout to loudly about it.
The second thing that this does - and some people might not like this point of view - is it allows all of the dead -beat parasites who are prepared to sit on their backsides and do sh*t while the rest of us support them to justifiably do so! This is a 'Get Out Of Jail Free' card for them which they will use mercilessly to continue to avoid doing any work - and the rest of us will not be able to say anything about it because they will be right!
For us who work at the bottom end of the 'status pyramid' it means don't expect a wage rise anytime soon - you just became an expensive luxury to your boss and he may well decide he don't need expensive luxuries some time in the pretty damn near future!
Now all this stuff may seem pretty deep (and to be frank a bit boring guys), but do me a favour - stay with me. Never forget that when we work for wages we sell our labour, not our souls. The minute you walk out of that place you are the equal of anybody in it including your top, top, top boss. He want's a bar of chocolate - he pays. He want's to go to the cinema - he pays. He want's your labour to make him richer - HE PAYS! This is such a fundamental right that to interfer with it in the way the 'work-experience' scheme does, is to cut to the very heart of what we in the UK know as our society. It's never been massively fair - but hell, it's never been that unfair. You've never been able to force someone to work for next to nothing and then discard them like a used cigarette butt when you have finished with them - at least not in the recent past you haven't, but it seems that this is about to change.
Interestingly the Americans have long had the 'free-intern' system in place which restricts the acess of those from lower social backgrounds into certain areas. In this system you get your degree in some area - say Law - and then in order to get work you have to give your services free to the proffession for a year or so before anyone will give you a paid job. As your own financial rescources will be the only thing to support you over this period, chances are that if you aint rich or your parents aint, then you can't afford this period of unpaid work. Hence your CV will not show the requsite year of internship - and no-one will employ you. The Qeen herself recently showed her own distaste for this system of holding back people from 'the wrong backgrounds' by advertising for 'a paid internship' at Buck House! Good on her - that's a start at least. Perhaps now she'll take a look at the other end of the scale and show a similar dissaproval of making the low end workers perform thier 'menial' duties for less and less of a living wage!
Just a quick aside. Last night three goons from the big city thought it would be fun to come to the provinces and roll a few stores to see what the pickings were - and mine was one of them! No fun. Police poking around all night and the horrible feeling that somehow the bosses were going to blame me for not having every single door in the building secured like Fort Knox. Jesus - don't these clowns realise we have to move around in this place. Imagine trying to live in your house if you had to push a code into a pad every time you went from room to room.
Anyway, where was I. Yes - So I phoned up ACAS to find out what the deal about giving 'real' jobs to work-experience people at £2 per hour and the woman told me "This is not something we can comment on. We only deal in disputes. You need to speak to the Job Centre." OK - easily done. So I phoned the local centre and made the enquiery. "Why do you want to know." she said. WTF! Is this some kind of police state! "Because I want to know I said - why is it a secret." I told her I had been online looking for the criteria an emplyer had to satisfy to be able to employ a work-experience person and could find no information at all. What was going on? "I can't answer this question she said - you need to speak to ACAS."
"But they say I need to speak to you!" I cried. In the end she grudgingly volunteered that the Job Centre make no enquiery as to how the job in question has come about and that there is no obligation on the part of the employer to follow up the period of 'experience' with the offer of a full time job. "But doesn't it occur to you that an unscrupulous employer could just wait for his staff to go by natural wastage (which he could speed up in any number of ways, not least by holding wages down) and then re-fill the jobs (particularly if they are so-called 'unskilled'), with £2 per hour work-experience people, thereby effectively just side-stepping the minimum wage legislation. I almost heard the woman shrug over the phone. "Perhaps thats why people like Tesco's and all have pulled out of the scheme" she said disinterestedly. "Thankyou." I said. End of story.
Think about this for 24 hours and Tomorrow I'll go into what it means for schmucks like you and me. The great unwashed masses who actually do the work that makes this place go round.
Anyway, where was I. Yes - So I phoned up ACAS to find out what the deal about giving 'real' jobs to work-experience people at £2 per hour and the woman told me "This is not something we can comment on. We only deal in disputes. You need to speak to the Job Centre." OK - easily done. So I phoned the local centre and made the enquiery. "Why do you want to know." she said. WTF! Is this some kind of police state! "Because I want to know I said - why is it a secret." I told her I had been online looking for the criteria an emplyer had to satisfy to be able to employ a work-experience person and could find no information at all. What was going on? "I can't answer this question she said - you need to speak to ACAS."
"But they say I need to speak to you!" I cried. In the end she grudgingly volunteered that the Job Centre make no enquiery as to how the job in question has come about and that there is no obligation on the part of the employer to follow up the period of 'experience' with the offer of a full time job. "But doesn't it occur to you that an unscrupulous employer could just wait for his staff to go by natural wastage (which he could speed up in any number of ways, not least by holding wages down) and then re-fill the jobs (particularly if they are so-called 'unskilled'), with £2 per hour work-experience people, thereby effectively just side-stepping the minimum wage legislation. I almost heard the woman shrug over the phone. "Perhaps thats why people like Tesco's and all have pulled out of the scheme" she said disinterestedly. "Thankyou." I said. End of story.
Think about this for 24 hours and Tomorrow I'll go into what it means for schmucks like you and me. The great unwashed masses who actually do the work that makes this place go round.
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