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Dealing with the exploited desperation undergirding the War on Welfare

By John Charles Dyer, UK Correspondent

28 January 2013 Panorama -- BBC’s investigative news arm -- examined the Coalition's programme of “Welfare Reform."  One hopes Panorama may have convinced someone of something. One also doubts it.   Public Support for Welfare Reform wasn’t fueled by fact in the first place. Public support was -- and is -- fueled by exploited fear and desperation.   

Perception 

Welfare Reform builds upon a widespread perception that benefits recipients choose benefits as a lifestyle because they do better on benefits than they do in work. Those who hold this perception resent what they believe is recipients’ free ride on the taxpayer’s already too tightly stretched pocketbook. They believe the Coalition pseudo statistic that over a third of government expenditure is on benefits, more than is spent on the total spent on the military, the NHS and the police force. But more important than pseudo statistics is the constantly heard refrain, “my neighbour does better on benefits for which I pay than I do working hard and going without.” 

Many who oppose Welfare Reform immediately respond to perception and feelings with facts and statistics. I certainly do. But the facts and statistics have yet to win the debate.  We may be right. We may be slowly “changing the dial.”  But it is not yet enough.   

What to do? 

I sometimes suggest those who hold the perception sit down with their neighbour to compare accounts. I’m fairly confident such a comparison would prove what the facts and statistics show - the perception is inaccurate.   

Suggesting it may shut some up. But for others it leads to the rejoinder their neighbour does better because their neighbour has an x, y & z the speaker (or his/her family) doesn’t have.  So I ask, have you noticed the a, b & c you have which your neighbour doesn't?  Then comes the argument, I know because (fill in the blank) told me my neighbour said she was better off on benefits.  In the end, no one takes up my suggestion. No one sits down with the neighbour, much less with an open mind. In the end, the discussion convinced no one.

It may not surprise you to hear that this attitude aggrieves benefits recipients. They sometimes see it as raw envy - a sort of communal sibling rivalry that would rob the recipient of the means of life the recipient needs so desperately.   

Other times recipients do know something more profound underlies stubborn adherence to the perception. 

Exploited desperation

Many who hold this stubborn perception are all too close to the circumstances of the benefits recipients.  But even among those who are better off, many struggle to make ends meet. The perceptions about "my neighbour" originate in the quiet desperation to provide for oneself and one's family as real incomes decline, real costs increase. 

An unscrupulous media and cynical politicians capitalized on this desperation. They spun it into a narrative that puts negative focus on the fairness of benefits recipients “profiting” from an alleged “life style choice.”  It isn’t fact. It isn't. But that no longer matters.  It is the prevailing narrative. This narrative provides both social acceptability & a confirming echo chamber to a harsh and negative focus on benefits recipients and the welfare system -- with an intensity born of the British public’s increasingly desperate anger at their own increasingly desperate situation. 

It is the con man distracting the mark with his left hand while his right appears to move the shells without doing so.  The Coalition diverts public attention with a war on welfare recipients (and a debate on a European Union Referendum of unspecified detail four years from now) while the Coalition systematically undercuts the wages and hours of those same desperate British householders under an expert-sounding term, “competitiveness.”  

The strategy works.  

If opponents are to succeed, opponents cannot rely on facts, the moral righteousness of their position or the better correctness of each advocate's separate counter arguments.  Opponents must unite. But more importantly, opponents must find a way to “bridge” to the exploited desperate. Only if the exploited desperate believe themselves fully heard will more open themselves to the facts and by so doing at last end the hold this destructive narrative has on the public.

The Daily Report Card of Unresolved Coalition Issues

By John Charles Dyer, UK Correspondent

It is rarely as much fun for a publicly funded news agency to report the ambiguity of fact -- or a politician to deal with the loose ends of sometimes awkward and inconvenient but necessary action -- as it is to pander to unfounded hopes or cherished prejudices.  It’s never a win-win and kind of feels like going to the dentist.  

A little nudge

We all sometimes need a little nudge to help us do so.  So I’ve decided to help BBC and David Cameron with a nudge. The nudge takes the form of a Daily Report Card on issues that languish unaddressed or unresolved.   

The format of the Daily Report Card is a series of Tweets on Twitter to David Cameron and the BBC, “copied” to Nick Clegg, Ed Milliband, the BBC Trust and the Channel 4 News Team. These tweets call attention to issues which in my honest opinion (to use the lingo) languish, inadequately reported by the BBC and inadequately addressed if at all by David Cameron.   

You may ask yourself, why the two together, Dyer?   

There is sometimes a remarkable degree of similarity between BBC and David Cameron in describing some issues. For example, Office of National Statistics reports monthly estimates of employment and unemployment.  Just 15 January I reported what I considered misleading claims concerning these ONS reports contained in both BBC’s analysis and David Cameron’s claims during Prime Minister’s Questions. On 23 January both BBC and David Cameron simultaneously changed how they packaged their claims in - it seems to me -- exactly the same way and word choice. I don’t mean to be paranoid. I'm not suggesting conspiracy. I just notice they both suffer from the same misapprehensions I will detail subsequently.  So I choose to inform both of this outstanding issue on the same report.  

Well, then, why the BBC Trust?    

It is the job of the BBC Trust to safeguard the license payer's interests. It is decidedly not the Trust's job for the Trust to interfere in editorial policy. Indeed, it would be wrong. I certainly wouldn’t want that. But it is the responsibility of the Trust to monitor BBC to ensure the interests of the license payer and the public generally are safeguarded.  It is appropriate for the Trust to nudge BBC regarding issues of concern to the license payers.  The rest is editorial decision and entirely the responsibility -- and the accountability -- of management. I copy BBC Trust so it is informed of the ongoing concern of at least this license payer.  

And Channel 4 News Team?  

The Channel 4 News team is IMHO the most perceptive and thorough television news team in the UK. Together they remind me of the old Huntly-Brinkley-John Chancellor era at NBC.  They cover the issues the Daily Report Card covers. It seems to me only appropriate everybody knows what everybody else knows. There isn’t room on a Tweet to include ITV and Sky news so I exercised some editorial discretion. 

What sorts of issues does the Daily Report Card cover? 

As of this writing the Daily Report Card nudges include the unaddressed recommendations of the Leveson Report. It appears to too many that the entire issue has been "kicked into the long grass" all too traditional for such reports.  

The DRC also reminds all of the grass growing under the report of Tyrie’s special committee on banking . Regular readers may remember I reported on this special committee some months ago in conjunction with the LIBOR scandal.  The committee wrapped up its business in December, finding that planned banking reforms do not go far enough to adequately address the problem.   

Mainly Continuity: Foreign Policy during a Second Obama Administration

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

The following piece is also appearing in the Bengali daily published by the Times of India in Kolkata, India

U.S. President Barack Obama had practically nothing to say about foreign policy in his second inaugural address, but the figures he has chosen for his new national security team tell us almost all we need to know.  There will be no internal squabbling over foreign affairs, there will be an emphasis on diplomacy and there will be continuity. 

Above all, it is highly likely that disproportionate attention will be paid to foreign policy.  One indication?  The new White House Chief of Staff won’t be a domestic policy specialist.  He will be Denis R. McDonough, who has been deputy national security advisor this past few years.  Already a member of Obama’s inner circle of trusted counselors, McDonough shared in planning for the Abbottabad raid that killed Osama bin Laden.  He was also instrumental in shaping Obama’s decision to ignore military preferences by accelerating the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.  In short, the era of high and mighty generals is over.   Not only McDonough, but the new secretaries of State and Defense will see to that.

Recall how Generals Stanley McChrystal and David Petraeus attempted to undermine the authority of the newly inaugurated President Barack Obama, which is to say, how they challenged civilian control of the military?  McChrystal allowed his contempt to be expressed in print, and Petraeus lobbied publicly to undermine the President’s determination not to expand the U.S. military footprint in Afghanistan.  And what happened to these supposedly PR-savvy generals?  McChrystal was invited to resign.  Petraeus, soon to be compromised by personal arrogance as well as stalemate in Afghanistan, was kicked upstairs to CIA director—no uniform, no chestful of medals, and no imperial general staff.

Obama’s new Secretary of Defense will be no more easily cowed by top military brass than his boss. He will also be invulnerable to criticism from the hawkish right.  Chuck Hagel, a heartlander and Republican maverick, served as a much-decorated enlisted man during the Viet Nam war.  It’s widely expected that Hegel, after a brief but obligatory grilling by his old colleagues in the Senate, will be confirmed, as will ex-senator John Kerry, who’s been nominated  to replace Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State.

And so, surge over, troop reductions accelerating, soon there will be a mere remnant of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, whose government will have to provide its own defense using an army whose professionalism—i.e., loyalty to a secular national government in Kabul—cannot be guaranteed, despite sustained training efforts by US and NATO troops.  Moreover, should the Taliban come to power in a year or so, the Obama administration will not intervene—at least, not unless or until a credible threat of cross-border  terrorism al Qaeda style results.  In that case, the response will be swift.  Thanks to pilotless drones, the world offers few safe havens to violent extremists.  Whether or not Pakistan’s military was harboring Osama bin Laden, the brain behind the 9/11 attacks was found and killed.  Also consider the assassination by drone of Al Awlaki,  the American-born Islamist propagandist long headquartered in Yemen.

Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me ‘round - reclaiming a decent society

By John Charles Dyer, UK Correspondent

17 Jan 2013. Parliament back benchers debated ATOS’ performance of Work Capability Assessments for those receiving benefits based on disability. It was more damnation hymn in round than "debate." All sides of the Commons’ several sides laid out in detail the many failings of the Work Capability Assessment process conducted by ATOS under the direction of the Department of Work and Pensions.  Many -- including Conservatives -- demanded that the government dump the contractor if not the entire programme. 

Then Mark Hoban rose to speak.  

Mark Hoban is the most recently appointed Minister in charge of the government’s programme. Hoban allegedly attended the debate to listen and respond constructively. Hoban’s reply, however, more resembled Alabama Gov. George Wallace’s “Speech at the Front Door” at Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama.  Where Wallace snarled, Hoban sneered. Hoban’s reply simply wasn’t up to the standard of the debate either in quality or tone. It was an anti-climax after so many clear, impassioned, thoroughly researched and documented -- and sometimes awe-inspiring -- backbench speeches.   

Muttering I returned to U-Tube  

I had been listening for sometime to Sweet Honey in the Rock. This remarkable group and its music embodies the challenge, the energy, commitment and courage of the American Civil Rights movement.   

Theirs is a type of music that has been a part of my life since I was a small child. My parents had been missionaries in the West Indies. My mother’s fondest lifelong dream was to replicate that experience in Africa. It was not to be. She nearly died from Malaria shortly before I came along.  My father loved his time in the West Indies. He was blessed with a remarkable voice. The spirituals and gospel of choirs almost exclusively "of colour" --  sounding much like Sweet Honey in the Rock -- resonated within my parents' souls and in our home. It -- and the sense of connected mission -- helped bind the family together. 

American Civil Rights Movement 

The music of Sweet Honey in the Rock reconnects me both to my roots and to that very special time in American history called the Civil Rights movement.  15 January would have been Martin Luther King Jr’s 84th birthday. As the world knows, he became the inspiring and unifying face of the American Civil Rights movement.  Almost uniquely eloquent, his “I have a dream” speech etched itself into the consciousness of a generation.  

Maura Harty’s Latest State Department Reincarnation

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Also see Peter Van Buren "An Example of Petty Corruption and Cronyism at State", January 23, 2013.   Van Buren worked on Congressional Relations for State's Bureau of Consular Affairs at the time of the passport fiasco.

It wasn’t all that long ago that Maura Harty, State Department darling – and Congressional bête noir – somehow received a Presidential rank (the US government’s most prestigious civilian) award. This happened in 2010.  But for what?  Staying home after being fired for causing such a mess with the normally routine issuance of passports to American citizens for the first six months of 2007 that members of Congress finally summoned her to the Hill to testify - to her and the Department’s chagrin?

 We remember it all too well since WhirledView became the “go-to” website for advice on how to circumnavigate the interminably long delays caused by incompetent bureaucratic decisions because, well the mainstream media and most everyone else had largely been ignoring this very human story. Perhaps as importantly we made it possible for applicants to share experiences and for those successful in navigating the Passport Agency’s rocky shoals to offer practical advice.   

Presidential awards are rare and special. 

These awards are normally reserved for a very few US government officials successfully employed and in responsible positions who had performed their duties in exemplary fashion for the previous three years.   This, we pointed out in 2010, Harty had not been or done because she had been let go – not just moved to another position in the Department - in early 2008 for incompetence in the passport affair. She submitted her resignation on November 21, 2007 effective February 29, 2008.

How is it that no one in authority in the Department noticed Harty’s Presidential award nomination and questioned its propriety - before it was announced?  Shouldn’t this have come from Nancy Powell then Director General of the Foreign Service?

Or what about – let’s fast forward to the present – Harty’s far more recent reemployment by the Department – this time in the Office of the Inspector General?  Didn’t Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the current Director General think more than once about rehiring someone who had been let go for cause just a few years earlier?  Guess not.    

While Harty herself is now back at State in the Office of the Inspector General, we understand that her husband (different last name) is employed in State’s Consular Affairs Bureau front office.  Guess they can carpool together.  Wonderful.

There’s one thing about bringing someone back on contract or into the Foreign Service who performed well, left of his or her own volition or was forced out because of the Foreign Service’s antediluvian up-or-out promotion system despite the individual’s sustained superior performance.  But face it Harty does not meet those criteria.  And employing her non-State Department husband in the front office of the bureau she formerly headed (before she became a public embarrassment) simply smacks of a weird form of questionable cronyism.

But why the Office of the Inspector General (OIG)?  How can the Department hire someone for a position in the Inspector’s Office with this track-record?  Should she really be allowed to make judgment calls as to how others perform their jobs?

Tipping Point in Pakistan?

 By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Some months ago I swore off writing about Pakistan. I got tired of calling attention to the same old problems over and over again.

What were the characteristics of this status quo? Bear with me. The army playing two dysfunctional parties off against one another, while preserving the pleasant fiction of civilian rule. Successive governments headed by non-tax-paying elites propped up (along with the army) by U.S. largesse, both salving pride by biting the hand with the aid. A well-armed and well-trained military-industrial complex tolerating (and perhaps encouraging) murderous sectarian violence throughout the country, especially since Taliban-allied fanatics may be guaranteed to assassinate any credible, secular civilian leader with the potential to challenge military supremacy. A social structure that punishes women and girls who aspire to be more than brood mares and/or mutely acquiescent wives for males whose perverted sense of honor (at all levels of the social structure) resides in female degradation. And so on. Oh dear, I forgot to mention the corruption. Think Swiss cheese. Total. Plus this: any decent, relatively moderate religious leader who doesn’t keep his mouth shut is also likely to be assassinated.

Enter—after six or seven years in Canada, no less— Dr Tahirul Qadri, who announced that he would lead a “million man march” from Lahore to Islamabad to cleanse the country.

Nowhere Near a Million

In fact, only some tens of thousands converged on Pakistan’s capital, where many remain, peaceably, but closely watched by security forces. I had wondered how many unhappy people would join the march on Islamabad. The numbers, while considerable, fall well below the regime-toppling minimum, I’d guess.

And yet, the prime minister Raza Pervez Ashraf has been arrested and hauled before the Supreme Court on charges of graft. He may be the second People’s Party Prime Minister to lose his job this way in very short order. Jusuf Raza Gilani was dismissed last June, also on charges of massive corruption. Is there any connection between the fate of the current PM and the Qadri march?

The Supreme Court under Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry has been at odds with military and civilian governments for years now. General Pervez Musharraf, as president, tried to get rid of this troublesome Chief Justice, who survived to become the bane of the country’s sitting President Asaf Zardari, also PPP, the widower of Benazir Bhutto. Given CJ Chaudery’s feistiness, I’d suspect he hasn’t been cowed. He’s being opportunistic. Is this sagacious?  Or is it evidence that the Supreme Court, at the moment, isn’t feeling powerful or confident enough to act without serendipitous populist cover? A Supreme Court that doubts its mission and capacity to act constitutionally is not a very good bastian of the rule of law. This would be very troubling.

Could Qadri be the One?

So how about this Qadri character? Not only is he a Shi’a, which is to say a member of the minority sect in Pakistan, he’s a Sufi, which may somewhat overcome that disadvantage, since many South Asian Sunnis are attracted to the mystical elements of Sufism. Nevertheless, the Pakistani Taliban in their various guises have been waging a very violent, very aggressive war against Shi’ism and all other deviations from their own notion of pure Islam. It’s been open season on Shias in Karachi and Lahore for decades. More recently there were ghastly massacres in Quetta which targeted the Hazara, who are ethnically distinct Shi’a refugees from the chaos in Afghanistan. The survivors planted the coffins of the victims in the middle of the city and refused to inter the fallen until the government guaranteed they wouldn’t be mowed down while burial rites were being conducted. In the end, an unresponsive unsympathetic state government was dismissed and the funerals went ahead, but the declaration of Governor’s Rule in Baluchistan has created its own chain of violent protest. This is Pakistan. So fraught with violence is the religious situation that the self-declared pacifist Qadri has had to travel behind bullet proof glass.

The sectarian divide in Pakistan may explain why Qadri’s march has been less overwhelming than he’d hoped or predicted, however unhappy most Pakistanis may be with the current political situation. The country is 75% Sunni, only 20% Shia. This demographic split may also suggest why this nevertheless fairly impressive turnout may not be a tipping point. Qadri may rail all he wants against corruption and elitism. He may also be absolutely right. Yet, especially if the military continues to keep its cool and manages not to shoot a lot of noisy, demanding people, Qadri is not likely to be the figure who brings down the government or the regime.  But he's had more stying power, so far, than might have been expected.

With parliamentary elections scheduled for May in Pakistan, it’s likely that Qadri’s influence will be no greater, and possibly less, than Anna Hazare’s wildly popular, religiously-inspired anti-corruption, pro-reform hunger strike in India a little less than two years ago. But maybe not.  India, for all its problems and complications, is considerably stronger and stabler than Pakistan.  However, my guess is that there's no Arab-style spring ahead for Pakistan.  The most radical thing that's likely to happen is that the military will decide it’s time to step in and take over, again. They won’t if elections produce a sufficiently pliable figurehead government, as usual.  Or if a miracle happens and a truly capable, popular, honest government emerges, which (I regret to say) is hard to imagine, given the peformance of the major parties, in Islamabad and the state capitals, which have been granted far more power in recent years.

And so the cycle will begin again. 

Unless the Taliban get strong enough to attack the "settled areas" with more than car bombs, at which point the Army will be faced with a very interesting decision.  Will it continue to protect, in its own way, the current constitutional order?  Will it protect Qadri whose reform demands, so far, fall far short of the requirements of radical Islam, thus allowing him to agitate without rick of assassination?  Or will it perpetuate its power by throwing in with the Taliban, more or less covertly as the military in Egypt have done with the Brotherhood?

Crystal ball anyone?

 

 

That nagging problem of the "1 million new jobs created"

By John Charles Dyer, UK Correspondent

15 January 2013.  It is a time of dodgy statistics used to support manufactured happy but unsubstantiated headlines, even by some of the news agencies the public trusts to sort out economic fact from convenient political fiction.  

In the United Kingdom one such statistic is the number of new private sector jobs created this past year.  Although some economists have questioned it in blog pieces, this alleged statistic is regularly cited by the Prime Minister, Party officials and even the media as an indicator that the economy may be healing. But -- as this article documents -- it is not a fact or confirmed by the very body that allegedly produced what turns out not to be a statistic at all. 

The Claim 

The Prime Minister and members of his Party regularly and proudly tout the alleged statistic that the private sector created 1 million new jobs this past year.  

The Prime Minister just last week used the 1 million new jobs figure during Prime Minister’s Questions as evidence that his government is on the right track. 

BBC regularly expresses puzzlement how an economy that generated 1 million new private sector jobs in a year could flat line during that same year (and, indeed faces a third quarterly dip into recession). Despite its puzzlement BBC regularly echos the Party line - it is a hopeful indicator in the tea leaves.  

Skunk in the Woodpile  

There is one, major, nagging problem with this happy headline. The independent body entrusted with these sorts of things -- the Bureau for National Statistics, the very body cited by the Prime Minister, the Party and the BBC for the figures concerning new private sector jobs -- that body denies its figures support that claim. 

FOI response 

The 1 million new jobs creative statistic is so counter intuitive in the face of the flat economy and so integral to the narrative supporting the government’s economic policies I decided to do some independent research. Attempts to do so through the media didn't provide me with answers I trusted.  I submitted a FOI request to the Bureau of National Statistics. 

15 January the BNS replied. The full text of their reply is found here.  With respect to the 1 million new jobs created claim BNS said the following (highlighted by me for emphasis): 

“The Office for National Statistics does not collect any statistics relating to the number of new jobs created. The figures published by the Office for National Statistics on private sector employment are estimates of the total number of people employed in the private sector and the net change in this number. This is not the same as the number of jobs in the private sector, as one person can have more than one job or one job can be shared by more than one person. Nor is the net change in the number of people employed an estimate of the number of jobs created. Therefore the ONS can neither confirm or deny that over a million jobs have been created in the private sector this past year. “

Why wouldn't continued use after notice of this unsubstantiated statistic constitute ministerial misconduct?

My apologies if the British media have somewhere published the BNS disclaimer and I missed it. But I did. The British public has similarly missed it. If it is tucked away in a blog or online report somewhere that is hardly “equal time” with the often and regularly repeated happy headlines albeit they may be repeated with some expression of puzzlement. 

The disclaimer is clear. There is simply no basis for the happy headline that the private sector created 1 million new jobs.

Shouldn't the regular citation of this statistic -- thoroughly debunked by the BNS’s own disclaimer -- cause media to report this "statistic" as debunked by the BNS disclaimer? Wouldn't continued citation of this alleged statistic -- after notice -- be considered fraudulent? Wouldn't continued use be actionable ministerial misconduct? Seems to me that the continuing use of this “statistic” of unknown origin since BNS disavows it (and the companion speculation it proves the economy is healing and, therefore, the Coalition is on the right track) raises serious questions to answer. 

I think Parliament should be asking these questions now. 
 

Comes the Third Age of the Post War Era

By John Charles Dyer, UK Correspondent

A press conference the morning of 7 Jan 2013 began a week of headlines good, bad and ugly for the Coalition.

The relaunch of the good ship lollypop 

David Cameron and that other fellow held a press conference 7 Jan 2013.  They intended yet another “relaunch” to happy headlines, under the banner of a “mid term review” of progress.  In case the British public might not have fully appreciated the positive nature of this oh-so-special special moment, BBC -- armed one suspects with a backgrounder -- helpfully explained.  

As you might expect, the world has been permanently, utterly and magnificently enhanced by their mutually adult relationship.

I confess to muttering aloud. “What if they gave a press conference and nobody came? Another launch? Ho Hum. Like, don’t I have a flower show to cover? How about a Royal visiting a charity? Anything. ”

Within the week embarrassing and ugly headlines replaced the happy

The press caught a senior Cabinet official on camera. He carried an internal memo. Passages of text were visible in the shot. Those passages recorded a discussion of the merits and drawbacks to suppressing a companion piece to the document the Coalition released. 

That companion piece was not released the day of the press conference or, indeed, prior to the revelations caught on camera.  Subsequently-- and after Labour confronted the Prime Minister during Prime Minister’s questions -- an embarrassed government released the companion piece, protesting it had always intended to do so.

The "rest of the story" document catalogued 70 Coalition failures.

The original "review" provided very little substance, a fact relentlessly exposed by Channel 4 News' Gary Gibbon the night of 7 Jan.  Much of it consisted of touting "process steps" linked to goals as if the process steps were the goals accomplished. Some of the "accomplishments" are anything but universally applauded.

But with the revelations the following day, the relaunch's hoped for happy headlines became the embarrassing story of high level cover up -- and a promise of transparency broken. 

No one who reported it dared call it an intentional leak, so I won't either. Regardless, no amount of Coalition effort could put this genie back into its bottle. It was spilt milk.  

8 Jan 2013 Parliament adopted the 1% cap on benefits over strong opposition