If I had been taken ill in the middle ages I would have rather have faced death than the 'cures' that were available and, as for giving birth, forget it, I would have taken a vow of Chastity and happily have stayed a virgin until my dying day which, in all likelihood, would have been at the grand old age of 17 and a half.
Much struck me as similar to what happens in our world nowadays. Take fashion for instance. Women went to extraordinary lengths to have the smallest waist and the fairest skin. Swap 'fairest' for 'brownest' and you could be talking about an anorexic, tanorexic of modern times. Men also, have had an obsession about their hair and the quantity of it for generations although, whoever feels the urge to run their fingers through it, thankfully are no longer risking death. Talking of which (not death but hair) I was chatting to a black female friend of mine this week and she told me that 'Hair Touting' has become common place. If you are black and minus a weave or plaits and wander down certain markets you will find yourself accosted every few steps by hairdressers offering to put the matter right. Just like on holiday where touts try to get you to eat in certain restaurants, hairdressers, who now commonly rent chairs in salons, are driven to touting for business. Now this differs from the restaurant touters in as much as to assume you might be hungry is different from approaching someone in the street and telling them they need to do something with their hair. I always feel slightly insulted when I drive into the supermarket car park and a car washer asks if I need my gleaming car washed. If anyone suggested such a thing about my crowning glory I'd be inclined to punch them on the nose. As my friend, who has a beautiful Afro that is all her own says, 'I always point to their own ridiculous weave and tell em to go look in the mirror, I'm very happy with my own 'unadorned' hair thanks very much.' What next? Weight Watchers targeting the obese? 'Excuse me madam, but have you considered that you look like a greedy cow? Anne Summers hostesses stopping you in the street and saying 'You look like you need a good fuck. Have you tried the Rampant Rabbit'? I suppose it is the same as the 'God Sellers'. I am always getting asked if I want 'Saving'.
Anyway back to 'At Home'. I love Bill. He manages to make the even composition of cement riveting reading and I was disappointed to reach the end of this excellent book. But I was constantly struck by other similarities to modern day life, in particular to the poor. Take the poor relief laws of 1834 -
The Act stated that no able-bodied person was to receive money or other help from the Poor Law authorities except in a workhouse. Conditions were to be made harsh to discourage people from claiming. Workhouses were to be built in every parish and, if parishes were too small, parishes to group together to form Workhouse Unions.
Some of my ancestors ended up in workhouses. Had I had the misfortune to be born in that time then so might have I. Or if not yer actual workhouse I would have ended up 'in sevice' me Lady.
Give it time and there are certain fractions of today's Government and a worryingly high number of the public who would welcome a return to the good old days. It won't be long before we hear the cry to bring back the workhouse. And not just from the likes of Daily Mail readers if MAM, a frequently recommended commenter on The Guardians 'Comment is Free' website is anything to go by.
'Coalition must face unpalatable truths of welfare reform Welfare reform isn't just about incentives and jobs – it's tackling an education system that marks thousands out for failure' Yvonne Roberts guardian.co.uk,
The budget may result in the loss of 1.3m jobs but in one area of the economy a boom is about to begin. Ironically, it's in what one speaker at the right-of-centre thinktank, Reform's Reforming Welfare conference called "the welfare to work industry". Getting the long-term unemployed back into work for at least six months will be farmed out even more aggressively to the third sector and commercial companies in Iain Duncan Smith's gluing back together of Broken Britain by a revolution in the welfare state.
However, that policy (which has already had some success) is not without its problems since the dosh only follows outcomes. Company X coaxes Johnny into work and he stays in his job for several months, Company X gets its money – but what does the company or voluntary organisation or charity do for cash flow in the months while Johnny obediently clocks into work but the test of success has yet to be achieved? And what if Johnny is fully reprogrammed and ready to toil but the economy means there are no jobs to be had – and the promise of the creation of over 2m jobs in the private sector proves to be a mirage?
Tackling unemployment is a complicated business and not just for the newly flourishing delivers of Duncan Smith's work programme. Of course, the welfare state has to change but so far there's a faint whiff of hypocrisy or, perhaps, more charitably, an unwillingness to face up to unpalatable truths by the coalition government.
For instance, the size of the benefits and tax credits bill has mushroomed in part because employers pay such low wages. According to Tim Breedon of Legal & General, this year, the UK has a welfare bill of around £87bn including tax credits. Taxpayers supplement employers via tax credits and housing benefit. Duncan Smith in his speech at Reform's conference, said the cost of working age housing benefit (HB) has jumped by £5bn in five years and is projected to reach £21bn by 2014. The increase has spawned the inevitable urban tales of Romanian families of seven living in the lap of luxury in a prince's mansion.
Duncan Smith reasons that living above your station makes you disinclined to work in Primark – and 75,000 people get more than £10,000 a year in HB. So HB will be capped. He is also going to drastically reduce the 2.5 million people claiming "inactive benefits" – costing the taxpayer £7.2bn, given often without any medical assessment. "Intensive personalised support", according to Duncan Smith, will help those who can back into work. (It galls slightly that such issues are so often discussed and decided by those whom, arguably, have never experienced either prolonged unemployment or a long-term job that saps the will to live. Or, for that matter, sponged off the state as feckless full-time stereotypes. You don't hear these voices very often at conferences on welfare reform.)
As the recent piece by Lisa Ansell shows so clearly, unemployment is a complicated issue. For some, it frustrates high ambition; for others, it infantalises and encourages dependency. Strong, customised support for individuals, plentiful vacancies that offer work for the low-skilled to the highly skilled, penalties if job refusal persists, good-quality affordable childcare; a simplified benefits system; training to allow a person to step up from the bottom rung and some cash incentives to move from benefits to work (an impressively crisp Yvette Cooper, Duncan Smith's predecessor, said at the conference that the Labour government had been looking at a £40 to £50 "better off in work" weekly guarantee – again subsidising employers?), all may help. But a bigger challenge remains that is not part of the remit of the Department of Work and Pensions.
We know that long-term unemployment and generations of worklessness may trigger depression, social exclusion, loss of hope and undermine social capital – defined by some as strong networks and a sense of belonging. However, in parts of the country worklessness is a result of deep-rooted systemic problems including an education system that has failed and the demise on an industrial scale of the unskilled blue-collar worker.
Vocational education, learning on the job, being "good with your hands", once used to lead to apprenticeships and skilled and semi-skilled employment. As manufacturing has plummeted, so those opportunities have vanished. As a result, in areas such as Knowsley, marked by deprivation, for instance, while there is employment for white-collar professionals – what is to be done with the unskilled and alienated from education? A revolution in education to match Duncan Smith's shakeup of the welfare state may help.
Once, a young person might have joined an uncle or a dad or a brother who is a tradesperson in a one-man-band – a decorator, or plumber, or carpenter. But those openings, too, are finite – and, for very good reasons, often filled by eastern Europeans. Once, a young person might have earned a trade in a factory – or even, remarkably, moved up the ladder and acquired a degree. Except that social mobility has stalled, at least for now.
So, welfare reform is about more than conditionality and incentives and customised support and real jobs – it's also about tackling an education system that too often fails to inspire and on the contrary, marks thousands out for failure – and finding solutions to a challenge no government wants to face. Namely, for a whole swathe of the population, graduates of inadequate schooling, there may be no prospect of work . The coalition government is banking on civic revival, social enterprise and the flowering of the era of the entrepreneur – that will be hard to achieve for many if the focus in the "free" classrooms is learning by rote and admiration of the classics. Genuine diversity in education is what we need. Even in mended Britain, without such change, for some, there may be no jobs to be had. At least, not of the kind of job you'd want your son or daughter to have.
And MAMs response?
MoveAnyMountain
Once, a young person might have joined an uncle or a dad or a brother who is a tradesperson in a one-man-band – a decorator, or plumber, or carpenter. But those openings, too, are finite – and, for very good reasons, often filled by eastern Europeans.
Is it because young British workers are lazy, unmotivated and shiftless while the Eastern Europeans are not? Do tell us the good reasons why these jobs go to Eastern Europeans?
it's also about tackling an education system that too often fails to inspire and on the contrary, marks thousands out for failure
You mean it fails to prevent thousands eagerly embracing failure? As they don't want to study, they don't want to learn and they don't want to be in school.
Namely, for a whole swathe of the population, graduates of inadequate schooling, there may be no prospect of work .
Problems that don't seem to stop Eastern Europeans getting jobs.
The coalition government is banking on civic revival, social enterprise and the flowering of the era of the entrepreneur – that will be hard to achieve for many if the focus in the "free" classrooms is learning by rote and admiration of the classics. Genuine diversity in education is what we need.
We have had genuine diversity in education. It has not worked. Learning by rote did. So did an admiration of the Classics. Bring them back.
But what we really need is to make the price of failure clear - the penalties for not getting an education must be higher. Cut their benefits unless they work.
Isn't MAM a tosser of the highest order?
Welfare reform is on the agenda and as usual it is the poorest members of society who will suffer the most. No change there then.
'At Home' is well worth a read. And well worth the few pounds it cost on Amazon, a website I have grown to love. The excitement of receiving parcels and packages, even when I know what they contain, is immense! I really should get out more.
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