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WE HATE - Page 3
(Nov 2011 to present date - Nos. 47 - onwards)
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A series of recent articles by Derek Kinrade originally republished from the National Information Forum's magazine Innovations in Information between 2004 and 2007, but now continuing in Not the National Information Forum's regular, electronic - "Information Sheets".
Idleness • Divorce • HIV/AIDS • Redundancy
There are, of course, many other subjects that are politically ‘off-limits’. But there may, from time to time, be new thoughts that ought to be expressed here towards a healthy debate on social issues.
WE HATE NO. 50: REDUNDANCY
I find it iniquitous that people’s lives can be devastated by the whim of some boss or other - the whole system of work we live with is so barbaric; it steals our time, our energy, our lives and then throws us out when it finds it no longer needs us. And this is civilisation!
Ruth Milligan
Each job loss is a family tragedy, full of bitter personal humiliation as well as hardship.
Polly Toynbee, The Guardian, 30 December 2011
The classic definition of redundancy (sometimes called layoff) is that of being superfluous to requirements. At times it is a misfortune occasioned by the decline or reconstruction of a company or organisation that simply cannot be avoided. But, all too often, redundancy is simply a means of cutting costs at the expense of the services that the employees provide. As such it is called downsizing. It is a strategy that mostly results in both grievous consequences for the people laid off and a diminution of efficient provision. Graham Smith in his history of the Excise, Something to Declare (1980), gives an early example. Over the winter of 1772/73, Thomas Paine, then an excise officer, led a campaign to seek an increase in pay, encouraged it has been said (though not Graham Smith) by one of the Excise Commissioners. Salary levels had been frozen for the best part of a hundred years, but a substantial case for better pay failed to move the Treasury, and Paine was dismissed: not for making the case, but for absenting himself without leave to promote it. Nevertheless, in a service renowned for its efficiency and able administration, discontent persisted, until sixteen years later the Board of Excise came up with a solution: a proposal to make 760 officers redundant (nearly a quarter of the staff then working in the collections), thus allowing the salaries of the remaining officers to be increased from the savings. This scheme was welcomed by the Treasury. It extended the responsibilities of the survivors and added an average £5 to their annual salary of £50!
Today we face a similar, and massive, impending cull across most of the public services. The objective is to reduce the national deficit, and in purely economic terms there are obviously prospective cost savings in cutting the salary bill. The process appears to require departments and local authorities to achieve specified spending reductions, as a result of which public services will be allowed to contract and redundancies will inevitably follow. By this cost-cutting strategy the redundant workers, notwithstanding previous loyalty, will be cast upon a metaphorical scrap heap and transformed from productive, tax-paying consumers to potential claimants of welfare benefits.
Unlike the generous contractual severance pay enjoyed by top bankers, the minimum statutory redundancy payment is meagre. The calculation is reasonably straightforward. By way of example the DirectGov website gives the case of an employee who, at the point of redundancy, is aged 45, earns £400 a week before tax (there is an upper limit of £430) and has completed 15 years full service. This gives an entitlement of £6,800, roughly a third of annual salary.
Most employees seem to accept redundancy as a fact of life, but I think that the morality of this kind of pruning is decidedly questionable. It takes no account of the human cost of rejection and the demeaning transition from gainful employment to the miserable lot of the ‘job seeker’. Given present levels of unemployment, finding a suitable and comparably rewarded job is not easy and the prospects are slim. Whereas income falls dramatically, costs such as mortgage payments and day-to-day living expenses continue unabated. Those who have enjoyed the use of a company car find themselves without wheels. Any savings they may have are quickly diminished. It is a crippling, stressful and depressing experience not of the victim’s making and not shared by those who order such things. I hate it, and believe that there are richer citizens, tax dodgers and extravagant projects better fitted to balancing our books.
WE HATE NO.49: THE HIV/AIDS MENACE
“Si no puedes ser castro, ser cautos” (If you cannot be chaste, be cautious)
Spanish proverb
Twenty three years ago Ann and I devoted a chapter of our Sex Directory to this sexually transmitted infection - then a novel subject. We explained that AIDS starts with infection by one of a number of closely related human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV). The virus attaches itself to, and damages, certain lymphocyte cells, whose normal function is to promote an immune response against infection, causing their depletion in the blood and thus reducing the person’s ability to resist infection. The number of people in the UK then carrying the virus was estimated as between 30 and 50 thousand. Fewer than 1,000 of these cases had then progressed to full blown AIDS, but a steep increase was predicted. 371 of these patients had already died.
The danger of an explosive rise in the incidence of HIV infection was clearly recognised. The call was for ‘safe sex’ and STI clinics and organisations such as Terrence Higgins Trust provided a range of services, and the risks attracted huge publicity.
This information from 1988 provides something of a baseline to evaluate the present state of affairs. And notably we now have a current report from the Health Protection Agency. The first thing to say is that treatment has greatly improved. On the HPA website Dr Valerie Delpach, consultant epidemiologist and head of HIV surveillance at the HPA, is quoted as saying that those infected with HIV, if diagnosed promptly, can look forward to experiencing similar life expectancy to an individual without the infection. She explains that thanks to the development of anti-retroviral treatments and universal access to world class health care through the NHS, HIV is now a manageable illness for the vast majority of people affected in this country. What gives rise to concern, however, is that a significant number of people are unaware of their HIV status and are diagnosed late, sometimes too late.
The number of people living with HIV in the UK reached an estimated 91,500 in 2010, with approximately a quarter of them unaware of their infection. One in five people who visited an STI clinic did not accept an HIV test, prompting the HPA to advocate that no one should leave such clinics without knowing their HIV status. Indeed, in areas with a high prevalence of HIV, the HPA suggests that there should be universal testing of all new GP registrants and of in-patients admitted to hospital. As things stand, over half of people diagnosed in 2010 had come forward for testing only after the point at which treatment of their infection should ideally have begun. Two thirds of those who died in 2010 had been diagnosed late.
The HPA’s annual report on HIV recorded 6,660 people newly diagnosed in the year, and said that infections probably acquired in the UK almost doubled between 2001 and 2010; from 1,950 to 3,640 (the latter total exceeding the number of those whose infection was probably acquired abroad: 3,020). And this rise was mainly due to infections acquired among men who have sex with men. One in every 20 gay men is now infected with HIV nationally (one in 11 in London). The HPA predicts that by the end of 2011 more than 100,000 people in Britain will be living with the virus. Yet the subject is one that has somewhat faded into the background.
In part the increase in people carrying the HIV virus is due to the effectiveness of drug treatments in keeping people with HIV alive and well, but this comes with a huge cost tag. Far better to avoid infection, essentially by always using condoms or, if that is unacceptable, renouncing sex altogether. We could learn a lot from the pandas.
Saving Lives UK, a public health awareness campaign, which began as a local initiative in a Birmingham Foundation Trust, is working to educate people about HIV, and to encourage testing., Not only are those unaware that they are carrying the infection missing out on the effective treatment now available and are at greater risk of developing AIDS, but they may be passing the infection on to others.
The website, www.savinglivesuk.com, provides access to a wide range of information about HIV. The HPA report is at www.hpa.org.uk/Publications/InfectiousDiseases/HIVAndSTIs/
WE HATE NO. 48: DIVORCE
“A divorce is like an amputation; you survive, but there’s less of you.”
Margaret Atwood, Time, 19 March 1973
“Marriage is the chief cause of divorce.”
Groucho Marx
A number of potential subjects for this feature have assailed my mind over the past month. Not least the shock revelation that the royal prerogative extends to Prince Charles, justified by a slender constitutional argument that if and when there is no heir apparent, the Duchy of Cornwall reverts to the throne. This anomaly requires the Prince to be consulted on any legislation that might affect the interests of the Duchy. And because of the controversial royal exemptions under the Freedom of Information Act (News Briefing no.16, December 2009) relevant correspondence with ministers is secret. I have concluded, however, that antagonism on this issue probably has had a sufficient airing elsewhere and that there must surely be a momentum for democratic change, if only in transparency.
Then my thoughts turned to the mounting disaffection between government policy and the populace at large, with protesters taking to the streets because, as the New Testament has it (four times), “unto everyone that hath shall be given, and shall have abundance; but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.” Such reflections have been exacerbated by the news that the remuneration of directors of the top 100 FTSE companies has increased by nearly 50% in the past financial year. But we already saw this coming and inveighed against the trend in News Briefing no.8 (February 2009). I’m glad that the High Pay Commission is now on the case.
Another startling proposition was General Lord Dannatt’s view that the military can teach society about the importance of ethics and morality, and that young British soldiers must be able to kill and show compassion at the same time (The Guardian, 8 November). I remembered, however, that we had our say on this dubious morality in News Briefing no.19 (March 2010).
Finally, I was tempted to comment on the dismal performance of the ruling Coalition: most recently the continuing failure to reduce the deficit, and the unedifying confusion over the relaxation of border controls. Aren’t you just sick of the mantra that the previous government is responsible for all our ills?
Eventually, however, I decided to hate divorce, a subject of which I have some personal experience.
Let’s start with some facts. In 2008, the Office of National Statistics predicted that, if prevailing rates continue, 45% of marriages will end in divorce before their 50th anniversary, with almost half occurring before their 10th anniversary. The divorce figures for the six years to 2009 in fact showed a decline (from 153,065 in 2003 to 113,949 in 2009), but this may have been due to a drop in the number of marriages.
And by this time the incidence of divorce was already in full spate and overflowing. In 1858 only 24 divorces were recorded, but thereafter the annual figure gradually increased. In the 1950s the average annual count was 27,572; in the 1960s 36,217; in the 1970s (when I gained my own experience) 112,985; in the 1980s 150,144; in the 1990s 154,477; and in the 2000s 137,593.
The reasons given for divorce are various. The ONS statistics for 2009 break down as follows:
Adultery 16.3%
Unreasonable behaviour 47.8%
Desertion 0.4%
Consenting after 2 years separation 25.3%
Separated after 5 years separation 10.0%
Others 0.2%
These figures (which omit the thousands of couples who just ‘soldier on’) are surely shocking, yet have generally come to be seen – much like road deaths – as simply a fact of modern life. But the economic and emotional impact on couples can be devastating, along with divided loyalties and unhappiness for their children. Family breakdown is seen as one of the major causes of social disorder. Various mediation services are now available, but these are generally a last resort, when marriages are already on the rocks and conflict embedded, and seem to be aimed not so much to avoid divorce as to negotiate on questions of money and custody.
The road to divorce usually begins with an original mismatch of partners; and the need for advisory services pre-dates the marriage ceremony. Traditionally, the church – to some extent – fulfilled this role. But the form for the administration of the solemnization of matrimony in the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer has a somewhat narrow view when it says that “it [marriage] is not to be enterprized, nor taken in hand, unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly, to satisfy men’s carnal lusts and appetites, like brute beasts that have no understanding; but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly … duly considering the causes for which Matrimony was ordained”. These are said to be the procreation of children; a remedy against sin and (for those who lack “the gift of continency”) to avoid fornication; and the mutual society, help and comfort that one partner should have for the other, both in prosperity and adversity. I like the latter sentiments best, but if society, help and comfort are to be found wanting, it is by the time of the marriage ceremony already too late; the die is cast.
Let’s face it. The expectation that most marriages will survive a lifetime is precarious. It could be argued that the church is unrealistic in having couples – particularly young couples - give vows of undying fidelity. It might be said, at least from a male perspective, that couplings begin with sexual attraction; yet that is something which inevitably recedes with time, not to mention that younger and more alluring potential partners may appear along the way.
May I offer up my own blueprint of the essentials for a successful marriage, some more important than others? First, I put sexual compatibility. I really mean, in practice, male competence as a lover. Nowadays it is likely, at least in open societies, that this will have been tested (and perhaps found wanting) before marriage is contemplated. Second, a meeting of minds; ideally leading to co-operation: something like the liaison of Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears. Third, an understanding as to whether or not both partners want children. Fourth, some measure of agreement on day-to-day matters such as thrift, work and shared homemaking. Fifth, basic unanimity on religion and politics. Lastly (though I could go on), harmony in matters of taste and pleasure.
Marriage is too important and divorce too traumatic not to have guidance before tying the knot. The breakdown of a marriage is like the damaging of a pot. There may be no more than a hairline crack or it may shatter into a hundred pieces. We may try to restore it, but it can never again be perfect. What should be clear, however, is that at the outset some pots are more fragile than others. I give the last word to William Congreve. In his Old Batchelour (1693) he wrote: “Thus grief still treads upon the heels of pleasure: Married in haste, we may repent at leisure.”
WE HATE NO. 47: IDLENESS
“Forasmuch as man, being not born to ease or rest, but to labour and travail, is by corruption of nature through sin so far degenerated and grown out of kind, that he taketh idleness to be no evil at all, but rather a commendable thing, seemly for those that be wealthy; and therefore is greedily imbraced of most part of men, as agreeable to their sensual affection, and all labour and travail is diligently avoided, as a thing painful and repugnant to the pleasure of the flesh; it is necessary to be declared unto you, that, by the ordinance of God which he hath in the nature of man, every one ought, in his lawful vocation and calling, to give himself to labour; and that idleness, being repugnant to the same ordinance, is a grievous sin. And also, for the great inconveniences and mischiefs which spring thereof, an intolerable evil.”
An Homily against Idleness (no.19 of the Second Book of Homilies, mainly written by Bishop John Jewel for the Church of England, 1571)
In declaring an aversion to idleness I am referring only to deep-rooted, habitual idleness. As an honoured friend reminded me, there are times when we are all happy to pull up the sheets and sleep a bit longer. Nor by hating idleness do I suggest that work is necessarily an unqualified virtue. Work can be exhausting, monotonous, demeaning, pointless and inadequately rewarded. Yet in recent years it has become fashionable in government circles to advocate work, without qualification, as a blessed antidote to dependency. I have said before that we are now seeing something of a return to Victorian values. Samuel Smiles in his 1859 treatise Self-help commended, unreservedly, labour, industry and perseverance as the healthiest training for every individual. And in revising the Poor Law in 1834 the authorities attributed the indigence of the out-of-work ‘able-bodied poor’ to defects of character rather than to the vagaries of unemployment, believing that most pauperism arose from fraud, indolence or improvidence. This, it was argued, should be countered by the utmost restriction of financial relief. If the only state provision on offer was to live and work in a grim institution – a workhouse – then those in need would surely find other alternatives, even gainful work. That would sort out the loafers and shirkers. Hence was developed the concept of ‘the undeserving poor’, seen as a class of people too lazy to work; and thus a crude reverence of the work ethic with a corresponding antipathy to any suspicion of idleness. This is an interpretation of social justice, conceived by people with rewarding jobs, less concerned with relieving the needs of those disadvantaged in life than with seeking to ensure that the state does not provide benefits to those whose only real disability is idleness.
The roots of this thinking can perhaps be traced back to the homily quoted at the beginning of this article, which was an expansion of a fragment from the Church of England’s 39 Articles. I have not gone religious, but this blast, replete with apposite scriptural references, ends with observations that have a remarkable affinity to current government policy:
“God in his mercy put it into the hearts and minds of all them that have the sword of punishment in their hands [the DWP?], or have families under their governance, to labour to redress this great enormity of all such as live idly and unprofitably in the commonweal, to the great dishonour of God and the grievous plague of his silly people! … Let all officers therefore look strictly at their charge. Let all masters of households reform this abuse in their families. Let them use the authority that God hath given them. Let them not maintain vagabonds and idle persons, but deliver the realm and their households from such noisome loiterers; that idleness, the mother of all mischief, being clean taken away, Almighty God may turn his dreadful anger away from us …”
Governments have a legitimate interest in discouraging exploitation of the benefits system. The trick is not to penalise the genuinely disadvantaged at the same time. But here I want to hate idleness in a different context, not least because in practice indolence is not confined to those in poverty. Traditionally, as the homily of 1571 notices, a degree of idleness has been seen as a virtue among the leisured aristocracy, who have been able to employ others to do life’s irksome work, conferring status and freeing them for the pursuit of pleasure. Reluctantly, I suggest that Smiles may have had a point when he observed that “An easy or luxurious existence does not train men [sic] to effort or encounter with difficulty; nor does it awaken that consciousness of power which is so necessary for energetic and effective action in life.” But I think there is now also a growing disaffection among the mass of working-age people in the so-called middle classes. Often ground down, frustrated and demoralised by relentless, boring slavery, it has become common to regard work as simply an unpleasant means to the end of earning a living. In this construct, the maximisation of leisure for pleasure becomes life’s objective, with early retirement as a cherished goal. Whereas, I think, the proper course should, wherever possible, be directed towards achievement, a sense of purpose and fulfilment. If that sounds pious, consider the alternative: work only as a necessity, and leisure spent as a passive spectator – simply marking time to life’s inevitable conclusion.
I am acutely aware that the late and great Bertrand Russell wrote an essay In Praise of Idleness (1932). It is a delightful and perceptive study, but surely concerned more with the oppressive nature and commonplace futility of work than absolute indolence. He thought that there was far too much work done in the world, and that “immense harm” was caused by the belief that work was virtuous. The practical reality, in his view, was that much human toil was devoted to objectives that failed in their purpose.
Russell suggested that work was of two kinds: the first unpleasant and ill-paid, the second devoted to telling others what to do. The latter kind of work extended to those who advised others as to what orders should be given. And usually beyond this there was advice given simultaneously by two organised bodies; this, said Russell, is called politics: “The skill required for this kind of work is not knowledge of the subjects as to which advice is given, but knowledge of the art of persuasive speaking and writing.” Unremitting toil, on the other hand, diminished opportunity for leisure, cutting off the person concerned from many of the best things in life. He was aware that, since the wise use of leisure requires civilisation and education, there was a counter argument that those who worked long hours all their lives would be bored should they suddenly become idle. While a little leisure could be seen as pleasant, it was being said that men would not know how to fill their days if their working hours were significantly reduced (as Russell proposed).
None of this, however, made a case for idleness. Russell conceded the importance of what he called ‘the leisure class’. But these were not idle people; rather those who cultivated the arts and discovered the sciences, wrote books, invented philosophies, and refined social relations. Without them, “mankind would never have emerged from barbarism”. Russell’s whole life, indeed, was surely a testament to his rejection of idleness.
The point here is to recognise the distinction between creative leisure activities and idleness. Floyd Dell remarked that idleness in not doing nothing; rather being free to do anything. The fact is that we cease to be idle when the opportunity to do something is taken up, and the state of idleness is properly defined as a consistent failure to make good use our time. It is one thing to have ‘time off’; quite another to use that time constructively. The problem, perhaps, as Thomas Alva Edison put it, is that: “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”
Duff Cooper, in his famous autobiography Old Men Forget (1953), was, like Russell, sceptical of the value of long hours of work, convinced “that many people waste a great deal of time in their offices which might be more properly spent elsewhere”. He loved leisure, but hoped that he should never relapse into idleness: “for there are books that I want to write, and I enjoy writing.”
There have been many scholarly dissertations on the nature and purpose of work in its many guises. For anyone who is interested there is a splendid commentary in the introduction to The Oxford Book of Work. I would add a fragment from personal experience. My mind goes back fifty years to a visit to a textile factory where I found myself in a vast room full of weaving machines, all of them working at full tilt with not an operative in sight. I discovered that each machine was ‘instructed’ by some kind of computerised programme. All that was needed to keep the looms going was a single controller, who didn’t need to be in attendance all the time. It was an early example of the replacement of labour with technology; at the time an eerie experience and one, of course, that had already contributed to a reduction in the work force. People had been made idle, rather than choosing not to get up in the morning. A lack of meaningful work and low pay for most of the jobs that are available are central to our current malaise. It would be entirely unreasonable to conjecture that humankind in general instinctively prefers idleness to work, and is happy to be unemployed. Oscar Wilde is said to have joked that work is the curse of the drinking classes, but in truth it is enforced idleness that emerges as the more pernicious and destructive influence.
UPDATED December 2011
