Author Archives: Joe

Are you a ‘but’ man?

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sergeantbilkoI was reminded earlier today, whilst reading a book called ‘Life 101’,  of a useful piece of advice from one of the more under-rated personal development gurus of the mid 20th Century – Sergeant Ernest Bilko of the United States Army.  Let’s listen to what he has to say on the topic of a three letter word…

You said, “but.” I’ve put my finger on the whole trouble. You’re a “but” man. Don’t say, “but.” That little word “but” is the difference between success and failure. Henry Ford said, “I’m going to invent the automobile,” and Arthur T. Flanken said, “But . . .”

And so it was, according to Bilko, that Ford remains in history whilst Flanken doesn’t even make the footnotes.

‘But’ is indeed one of the words in the English language that fills me with trepidation.  During my years in consulting, hearing someone agree with what you were proposing, and then adding the word ‘…but’ (complete with pause) to the end of a sentence was the equivalent of telling me that I was as likely to get cooperation as I was to win the Nobel Prize for Physics and Literature in the same year.

There some occasions when it’s valuable to pull someone up short before they thunder off and implement some plan or other that at best can be described as ‘unwise’.  And there are times when the use of but can provide a useful reminder for folks that their master plan requires a few tweaks before it will work properly.  But often ‘but’ is used as a prelude to a road-block.

Rather than ‘but’ I now try and use ‘and’ or ‘or’ instead of ‘but’ – then rephrase the part of teh sentence after the old ‘but’ to look towards solutions.  For example:

I’d like to buy a new computer, but it costs too much.

becomes

I’d like to buy a new computer, and in order to give me time to save the extra money, I’ll put the purchase off for a month and see if I can do some overtime in the meantime to help raise the extra cash.

The first sentence becomes, in the but-less second sentence, an intention with a timescale and a partial solution to the problem of money.  As the guys at Honda say, ‘and’ is a great little word – it opens up opportunities for solutions, rather than closing things down.

Don’t be a but-nik!

All hail the scapegoats!

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scapegoatIn ancient Jewish society, the scapegoat was a normal goat that was ceremonially loaded with all the sins of the community, and then driven from town in to the wilderness, as part of the ceremonies around the Day or Atonement.  The goat would almost certainly die in the desert, and with it would die the sins of the community.  The term has passed in to general usage, as we all know, to refer to someone who gets to carry the can when the crap hits the fan.

Earlier today I blogged on the topic of Philip Laing, the student in trouble here in Sheffield, and was reminded of a comment made by my better half about whether the venom being expended towards this fellow was actually a form of scapegoating.  We’ve had over two years of miscellaneous nonsense here in the UK – the banking crisis, MP’s expenses, the Recession, the War in Afghanistan and Iraq – the list goes on.  Then conveniently along comes someone who we can all have a go at, who isn’t rich and powerful and who’s actually done something that is pretty damn stupid and manages to annoy vast numbers of people.

In fact, the perfect scapegoat!

Here’s a quick guide for you to help you play ‘Spot the Scapegoat’ – a useful parlour game for this winter preceding a general election when we can expect the Government and Media to try and blame anyone and everyone  – except the genuine culprits – for the wrongs of the world.

Plausibility

A scapegoat must be plausible.  there’s little point in picking on someone totally innocuous.  You need someone or a group of people who’ve been bad, been caught out, and for whose behaviour there can be little excuse.  Little old ladies caught exceeding the speed limit by 5 miles per hour don’t really meet the requirement. 

Powerless

An ideal scapegoat would be suitably powerless.  After all, we don’t want them coming back at us, do we?  Really powerful people will rarely become scapegoats unless they’ve upset some even more powerful people.  The media don’t want to upset someone with muscle who could make the media look like horse’s bottoms.

Scalability

Having found a plausible, powerless person to act as scapegoat, their bad behaviour has to be ‘scalable’.  Scalability is a technical term for the ability of a system to cope with heavier loads than expected without needing a lot of work.  So, if we want a good scapegoat on which we can unload a pile of public anger, the scapegoat’s behaviour must be something that can be ‘worked up’ in some way.  So, Mr Laing’s offence can easily be used to indicate that it’s the start of the end of Western Civilisation as we know it as respect for all that is good in society declines, etc. 

Publicity

If you want a good scapegoat, they have to be public figures or elevated in to the rank of public notoriety by the media or the Internet.  If you can get a good gossipy campaign going, apparently driven by the general public, you’re in clover.

No apologies

Your perfect scapegoat should ideally be photographed with a black cloak and a Victorian moustache, eating babies and shouting that they are sorry for nothing.  If this ideal scenario can’t be achieved, then a lack of apology will do.  If the scapegoat attempts a half-arsed apology, all the better.  But if they go for the genuine apology, their value as a scapegoat is diminished.

Have something ready to sneak out

Apart from deflecting blame from the real culprits, the exposure and persecution of a good scapegoat can offer the Government and other people of power and influence the opportunity to sweep other things under the carpet.  If you have a scapegoat, never waste the opportunity to get a few bad-news stories out at the same time.

‘A butterfly on a wheel’

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laingThe phrase ‘A butterfly upon a wheel’ was used in originated in piece of writing by Alexander Pope in the Eighteenth Century, but was popularised by Sir William Rees-Mogg in a Times editorial in July 1967 in which he railed against the jailing of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards on a drugs charge.

His piece finished with “If we are going to make any case a symbol of the conflict between the sound traditional values of Britain and the new hedonism, then we must be sure that the sound traditional values include those of tolerance and equity. It should be the particular quality of British justice to ensure that Mr. Jagger is treated exactly the same as anyone else, no better and no worse. There must remain a suspicion in this case that Mr. Jagger received a more severe sentence than would have been thought proper for any purely anonymous young man.”

And so we fast forward 42 years to the story of Philip Laing, a 19 year old Sports Science student from Sheffield Hallam University who was incredibly daft in two ways; he urinated on a wreath on a war memorial, and was photographed doing it. 

My own view on his behaviour is that it was absolutely disgraceful; whether he deliberately set out to urinate on a wreath is a debatable point; I have no idea one way or another – but the bottom line is he committed a profane act on sacred ground, something frowned upon in all civilised society since Ugg the caveman decided to bury the body of his best friend rather than leave it for the vultures.

There is no excuse; there’s no excuse for using any street as a toilet, and to be honest he or his friends colleagues (one of which was obviously sober enough to take a photo) should have known, even in a drunken state, that there are certain places you don’t pass water on. 

Enough – I can go on for a long time about the fact that to me it’s desecration of the memory of the dead, and that the chap should be punished. 

What the punishment IS, however, is the point of this piece.   In the last few weeks I’ve seen some serious vitriol poured out about this young man on the two local forums here in Sheffield and on Facebook.  Indeed, I was told to ‘get a life’ because I dared to suggest that any form of urination in public for an adult is inappropriate.  I’ve seen people suggest that guy should be tortured, executed, thrown out of college.   I had the feeling that were it possible, his lands would be ploughed with salt, his house reduced to ashes (and then ploughed in as well), a sign saying ‘the glory is departed’ hung over the wreckage and he and his line cursed unto the Seventh Generation.

The judge at his trial yesterday said that a prison sentence is a possibility.  OK folks…STOP!

Isn’t this all getting out of hand?  If he’s jailed, will South Yorkshire Police be expected to arrest any drunken oik who urinates in the street with a possible result that the drunk ends up filling up a prison cell likely to be needed for a more serious crime?  Despite the emotions raised here, we do not have a crime of desecration in English Law.  For example – grave robbery tends to be treated as a particularly unpleasant form of theft, breaking headstones as vandalism or, in some cases, racially aggravated crimes. The closest we have in terms of a law that applies to this sort of thing is the Military Remains Act that covers war graves – that’s typically used to stop folks looting sunken ships and other designated ‘war graves’ for souvenirs and such.  No matter how deplorable and ill-advised his behaviour, this youth committed an act of vandalism on the wreath, and a public order offence. 

What might be appropriate?  Send him down from University for 3 years; have him pay a suitable fine and then have him spend some time cleaning our war memorials.  Appropriate punishment, I feel.

And perhaps, whilst we’re at it, we might invite the the company who organised the event to make a contribution from their profits to the British Legion as an apology. 

Oh…and whilst we’re at it…perhaps determine whether such events should require special licensing permission from the City Council?

When Ministers are right to fire advisors

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nutt_bbcnewI think it’s safe to say that these days I rarely agree with the behaviour of Government Ministers.  Part of it is a knee jerk reaction (:) ) and part of it is that Government Ministers rarely seem to exhibit a capability in their jobs above that of Jim Hacker – without the aid of Sir Humphrey.  But, much to my dismay, I found myself agreeing with the Home Secretary with regard to the firing of his Drug’s Advisor, Professor David Nutt.  Now,  I have no intention in getting in to the rights and wrongs of Cannabis classification or whether illegal drugs are more dangerous than alcohol and tobacco.  My thoughts here are on teh roles and responsibilities of advisers.

It’s inevitable and highly desirable that Ministers will have access to a wide range of advisers to help them and their departments come to policy decisions.  The role of any advisor is to advise;  that statement may appear to be a tautology but it seems that some advisers believe their role is to actually make policy.  It isn’t.  When a Government policy fails, it’s incumbent on the Minister to fall on his or her sword.  (OK…that’s how it should be, but I appreciate that that doesn’t happen much these days!)  the advisor responsible for giving the advice that led to a policy being made is almost certainly going to be unknown to the public.  The process is that the advisor gives their advice, the Civil Servants and the Ministers and Secretaries chew it over, and eventually the Minister decides and takes it to Cabinet for approval.

It’s similar to some of the consultancy work I do – I (as Advisor) am briefed on a problem by my client (Minister).  I advise the client to the best of my professional abilities, and the client then takes the choice to go with my recommendations as given, implement part of what I suggest or use my consultancy report to line his cat’s litter tray.  I obviously hope that it won’t be the latter.

But that’s the prerogative of the client, whoever they are – to take or not to take your advice.  Whilst you’re on the payroll you may argue your case strongly within the confines of the organisation, but if you don’t get what you want you have two – and ONLY two – choices.  Shut up or quit.

That is all – if you feel very strongly about your advice not being taken then the only intellectually honest and principled thing to do is to quit the job.  As a consultant I’ve done it maybe once or twice in 20 odd years.  My own thoughts were that there was no point in me being paid and giving advice if it was never taken, I felt I was just taking money for nothing, so I quit.

What you don’t do is mouth off to teh media or outside the organisation in a way that’s likely to get attention whilst you’re still employed.  That is, in my opinion, disloyal.

For me, the role of an advisor is like that of an Executive Officer on a ship.  You advise the Captain, you may even question the Captain’s decision, but once that decision has been made you fulfill whatever duties you have in making that decision work.  If you can’t, then ask for a transfer or ersign your commission; don’t try and organise a mutiny.

I was a twit not to Tweet!

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twitter-logoMany moons ago I posted a piece on here – ‘Am I a twit not to twitter’.  Well, I’ll admit it.  Yes, I was a twit not to Tweet, and I’m happy to say that.  I can’t argue with objective facts, so here’s my brief thoughts on what converted me.  Just in case anyone wishes to follow me, I’m on twitter, funnily enough, asJoePritchard.  Serious lack of imagination there but no excuse for missing me! 

So, here are my hints and observations from a beginning Twit!  There are plenty of articles around with more detailed hints and tips of how to use Twitter, and I’m not going to re-hash what’s said elsewhere.  These observations are my personal thoughts and insights, for what they’re worth, as to how I found that Twitter could be useful.

 

Two Way Street

I think the first thing that I learned about twitter (or rather had it pointed out to me) was that it’s a two way street; if you want people to follow you you need to follow people, and that you need to have an idea of what you want to gain from Twitter.

Identify what you want

Apart from keeping up with your friends and colleagues, I’ve found Twitter invaluable for getting a good newsfeed from sites of interest.  In fact, I’ve found it a better proposition than RSS feeds.

Use a Twitter Client

When I first tried Twitter out, I used the Twitter web interface to use the Twitter service. It didn’t work well for me – so this time I decided to try out a couple of dedicated Twitter applications.  I have Twhirl and Tweetdeck installed and they’ve both made using Twitter on a regular basic much easier – I just leave them running quietly in the background, they dynamically update, and they make it a pleasure to Tweet.

Think of it as less intrusive MSN

I’ve actually used Twitter as a form of MSN with some people – it’s more spread out in time than a typical MSN conversation, more compact than Email and certainly doesn’t clutter my inbox with lots of short mails.

Use it for promotion

I’ve recently re-activated this Blog and integrated it with both Twitter and Facebook, and have been studying the referral logs to see where blog referrals are coming from.  There does appear to be a fair amount of traffic from Twitter.  A recent event I participated in – ActionForInvolvement’s Climatewalk – made significant use of Twitter in the run up to the event to promote it and encourage re-tweeting about the event.  Again, I gather that the results were well worthwhile!

If you need to, run multiple accounts

I was considering tweeting on behalf of my business from within my ‘personal’ Twitter account but I’ve decided to set up a separate account for the business.  The reason?  People following my business may not be very interested at all in everything else I do.  Let’s call it ‘brand protection’ – I want my business brand and my ‘JoePritchard’ brand to be different entities online.  Whilst folks who know me will know that I run ’em both, the separation will be useful for business connections who I really don’t want in my personal life – and vice versa!

Be picky in following and blocking

Spam has certainly increased on Twitter.  When someone follows me, I’ve got Twitter configured to mail me.  I always go and check out their profile, and then determine first of all whether to block or not.  Folks who look like spammers always get reported; if someone seems to be mainly pedalling MLM or just looks ‘dodgy’ in terms of their content or places linked to – again, block ’em.  I can’t understand why American High School kids of either sex can think that I can be interested in reports of their weekends drinking or shopping and don’t bother completing any parts of their profile  – sorry guys, you get blocked.  I know this sounds arrogant of me, but I want followers who know me or who are interested in what I say or consider that I somehow add value for them.  If you are a US High School kid who IS interested in what I say, then let me know – but have something of interest to me on your profile, somewhere!  In return, when I follow, I want to be following people that I know, am interested in or who add value to my online life by introducing me to new stuff or ideas.  Twitter does seem to encourage the ‘numbers game’ in people.  I prefer quality.

And that’s that – I’m going to start using Twitter Lists shortly and will let you know how I get on.  And then there’s the API stuff….watch this space.

Luvviedom rules – time for a dose of reality for some?

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I rarely post twice in succession on the same item.  But hey, it’s a very wet November 1st, it’s Sunday, we’re still in recession and I’ve let my tea go cold.  Oh, and the issue concerned is one of those things that annoys me at so many levels – including making me wonder “Why am I so bloody annoyed?”

It’s Mr Fry again.  After the rattle throwing episode I mentioned here last night, it appears from this article on the BBC that the rattle was, in fact, on a length of elastic and has come back to Mr Fry’s hands. “Huzzah!  Call off the state mourning! Tell the luvvies to stop weeping!  Let Guardian readers rejoice!  He’s not leaving Twitter! ”

Now, let me state immediately that I am a big fan of Stephen Fry’s portrayal of the immortal Jeeves – the box-set of Jeeves and Wooster is currently spread out in front of the TV – and his magnificent General Melchett.  However, on Twitter, he’s a writer.  Writer’s get critiqued – it’s part of the job.  It’s inevitable that occasionally you will produce a stinker of an article (I know I have) or even a boring Tweet or Facebook status.  Again, I know I do…..  It comes with the  territory and to be honest if you don’t balls up occasionally and mis-read your public I wholeheartedly believe that you’re not pushing the envelope hard enough.

We now have Alan Davies wading in:

“Alan Davies, who stars with Fry in the television quiz QI, also waded in, calling the criticism of him “moronic”.”

Hello?  Earth calling Alan?  Why is criticism of Stephen Fry ‘moronic’?  He’s human like the rest of us and will occasionally be boring to someone.  If not, it isn’t personal enough.  Some of my friends may well be very interested in the fact that I baked bread a few days ago.  Others won’t give a toss.  And that’s what life is like, Alan.  You can’t please everyone, all of the time.  (Oh Lord…I like Alan Davies as well….sorrrrry….)

The original poster of the ‘boring’ comment has apparently been on the receiving end of abuse from a baying mob of Twitter users.  This is the dark side of Twitter – dare to make an unpopular comment and the local-yokels will be turning up on your electronic doorstep with burning brands, pitchforks and nooses looking for an online lynching.

I’ll give Stephen Fry his due – he commented as follows:

He wrote: “Arrived in LA feeling very foolish. Wasn’t the fault of the fellow who called me “boring”, BTW. A mood thing. Sunshine will help. So sorry.

“Feeling terrible for that poor guy. He had every right to call me boring. Not his fault it caught me at a vulnerable time. Pls be nice to him.”

He also apologised to the critic.

All now appears to be well in the world of the Luvvies.  But maybe Fry and a few other celebrity Twits, Bloggers and Facebookers need to get a dose of reality from this story.  If you put yourself up in this way you will get criticism.  It’s inevitable.  But these critics are your fans and people who bother about you.  They keep you gainfully employed and support your lifestyle.  And that lifestyle is a privilege that your fans give you – when you’re in LA or wherever, whinging about a perfectly legitimate item of criticism, or here in the UK calling someone who dared to criticise someone ‘moronic’ – do remember that those fans of yours who don’t have your ability and lifestyle actually pay your wages.

Be grateful to them.  If you engage in conversations with them through Social media, play the game and be mature enough to take the occasional bit of crap.

In other words, grow up, stop whining, and appreciate your privileged position.

Luvvie Strop Throwing 2.0

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dead-twitterThere are days when we all feel like chucking it in.  There have been a couple of occasions when I’ve basically thought that using a certain web site, dealing with a particular individual or organisation or even working for a specific client.  But recently the media luvvies have been having a bad attack of stroppiness.  A few weeks ago Lily Allen declared herself a ‘neo-Luddite‘ and disappeared herself from the online world.  And tonight, Stephen Fry has announced he’s considering leaving Twitter.  Given that he’s the ‘poster boy’ of that particular online service here in the UK, one has to wonder what has driven him to it. 

Let’s think what could be behind it…

 

  • He’s been the victim of a massive Twitter based attack, as was experienced by journalist Jan Moir after this article?
  • He was outed as a raving heterosexual?
  • He was subjected to an intense online bullying campaign?
  • His privacy was violated and all sorts of personal information were posted online?

Sorry, but no.  Apparently Mr Fry is contemplating quitting Twitter because, accoridng to the BBC:

The disagreement began when the other tweeter said “I admire and adore” Mr Fry, but that he found his tweets “a bit… boring… (sorry Stephen)”.  That same tweeter later revealed that Mr Fry had blocked him as a result.  [Stephen Fry] sent a message – or tweet – to the user with whom he fell out, saying: “You’ve convinced me. I’m obviously not good enough. I retire from Twitter henceforward. Bye everyone.”

What the Hell?  Fry has said in The Guardian that he is still considering his position.  I’m sorry, but this is a grown man who has been in the public eye for years, an author, an actor.  And he takes his bat and ball home because one person out of 900-odd thousand followers on twitter dares to say ‘You’re a bit boring?’  He’s claiming that there is too much aggression and unkindness.  Oh please, for…feck’s… sake.  Whilst I appreciate his long battle with depression, there are lots of people who’ve suffered the same way and who manage to get through this nasty, aggressive and unkind world without the support systems and good will that Fry gets.

Sorry Stephen – time to take some advice that I was given when I was in my 20s.  I received a bad review for a book I’d written.  My publisher asked me whether the magazine had my name, the book title and the book ISBN correct.  They had.  My publisher then commented that folks would still buy the book if it appealed to them, and that very few reviews had massively negative impacts on sales – the advice was to simply read the review, take on board anything useful, then move on.  And he was right; I sold books, learnt a little something and just got on with things.

Stephen – please – get a grip man and don’t throw a luvvie strop 2.0.

Get a life!

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Being a discussion on the Etiquette of the Insult for the 21st century… 

duellistsI was recently fortunate enough to have this old chestnut of an insult thrown at me online in a discussion about some news item.  It’s a strange thing to say to anyone; the fact that I’m typing indicates I do indeed have a life, and to be honest I think with my achievements I’ve managed to fit 2 and a half lives or so in to things so far.  🙂

The intention of this piece is not to name and shame, however tempting that is…it just set me thinking about insults and abuse in general.  I think in recent years the unpleasant behaviour of insulting folks – especially online or via text – has become much more frequent.  I think a lot of it is that it’s easier to be abusive anonymously, and the extra mileage placed between insulter and insultee does make a smack in the mouth or a slap across the face harder to deliver back to the insulter.  So, here we go.  A 21st Century Guide to insulting Etiquette.

Of course, gentlemen and ladies do not insult each other…as I know very few of either (and doubt I am a gentleman myself) this is hopefully useful stuff for the rest of us!

Consequences

When I was a kid, you tended to bite your tongue before insulting someone because there was a serious risk of being thumped.  In previous centuries you would have had a serious risk of being shot in a pistol duel or scarred or killed in a sword duel.  If you ‘knew the right people’ you could have your insulter beaten up.  Now that you can insult anonymously and from outside arm’s reach, it has made people more willing to insult people than ever before, and for less good reasons.  Which moves us on to point number 2 – have good reason to insult.

Insult escalation

George Orwell once commented to the effect that if you reviewed a book and found it ‘outstanding’, and then three weeks later found an even better book, then you couldn’t really write ‘even more outstanding than the last outstanding book’.  I guess these days it’s ‘ratings inflation’.  But in days when there were potentially serious consequences for insulting people, all involved were careful about the insults thrown and the reaction taken.  I might easily let a mild insult go by if the consequence to my following it up were to be a duel.  I would think twice before slapping someone across the face after he’d called me a moron for wearing black shoes when we all know that brown was the de riguer colour of teh day.  Today, there are fewer consequences and it’s easier to get in to a verbal pissing match.  So, if you feel teh need to insult, be proportionate – don’t go over the top and push the other person in to a corner  from which they may lash out.  And, if you’ve been insulted, think hard and long before escalating.

It was only a joke…

Oh dear – the well worn phrase of the coward, the moron or the child.  If you insult someone, have the guts to stand there when you’re called on it and either repeat your insult  or wholeheartedly apologise for your behaviour.  Bleating that ‘it was only a joke’ is the defence of three groups of people:

  1. The child – it works to some degree in the playground but once you’re over 12 years old you should start leaving this phrase behind.  It’s continued use indicates you may have the mental age of an infant, and should therefore not be out and about with the grownups.
  2. The moron – the sort of slack-jawed suburban yokel who believes the Jeremy Kyle programme to be current affairs and Wayne and Waynetta Slob to be fine role models can hardly be expected to know better.
  3. The coward – falling back on this defence when one doesn’t fall in to category (1) or (2) above indicates cowardice. 

Falling back on this phrase after being called on your insults thus catapults you in to one of three groups of society unfitting for a mature adult.  So don’t do it.

I was drunk / stoned

Some hold this to be a mitigating circumstance, others regard it as making matters worse – as well as you being insulting it indicates you can’t hold your drink / drugs.  Again – don’t fall back on this – either repeat your insult or wholeheartedly apologise.  This is a weasel response.

Water off a duck’s back

Very few insults are worth getting your blood pressure elevated over.  Even fewer are worth engaging in wit and repartee with the insulter.  Remember that by the very fact they’ve insulted you, they’re not ladies or gentlemen.  Therefore they’re unworthy and engaging with them, even to the level of ‘And your mother wears army boots’, simply brings you down to their level.  Sometimes the best response is to behave as if you hadn’t noticed it.  Online this can be most satisfying, as the truly dim insulter will carry on making louder and more ridiculous comments until they prove to the rest of the world what you already know… 

So, ignore where possible!

Graceful Acceptance

Sometimes the recipient of an insult can carry out the graceful acceptance manoeuvre in which there is an apparent agreement with teh sentiments of the insult.  This isn’t always applicable but when it is it can totally disarm the insulter.

Full and wholehearted apology

The original insult may have been triggered by what you consider to be a genuine wrong, and in that case you still need to deal with the original problem.  But if you do find yourself in a position where apology seems to be the most sensible, adult and mature way forward, then apologise for the insult fully, whole-heartedly and publicly.  A non-public apology after you’ve denigrated someone in public is, to be honest, a little weaselly. 

With luck, the person you insulted will be gracious enough to accept your apology and walk away from the whole palaver.  At which point you’ll probably both be wondering how the Devil you got in to the mess in the first place….

A bundle of needs…

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I appreciate that this is likely to be read as a massive attack on the Welfare State by some, and that I’ll be suspected of channeling the political spirits of Norman Tebbit, Margaret Thatcher and Atilla the Hun by others.  However, that’s not the intention.  As some of you will know, I hold Libertarian views and am a believer in as small a Government as is practicable, but that does not mean that I take the view that the State should not intervene to help those in genuine need.

This entry grew out of the ongoing study-tidying process that’s been going on for a few weeks now here at the Towers.  I came across a newspaper article that I’d clipped in June of this year, and in the article was an interesting observation from William Beveridge – the architect of the modern UK Welfare State.  In 1948, 6 years after he originally wrote the report that gave ultimately gave birth to the benefits system, he expressed his fear that the reforms he’d introduced might encourage people to be passive about their needs.

The Government of the day didn’t take his words on board; the rest, as they say, is history, and we’re now able to look at the society that was created and wonder whether the result of 65 years of cradle to grave Welfare State has been, in the words of the journalist Camilla Cavendish who wrote the piece, to reduce people to a bundle of needs.

And I agree with her; one of the side effects of the Welfare State, especially in the increasingly Nannyish manner that it has been implemented in the last 12 years, is that many people have been dumped in to a dependency culture.  The risk to entitlements and benefits if a job is taken means that many people are not going to run the risk of taking a job that will result in them losing money from their weekly income – and I can see their point.  For all the talk of dignity of work, self respect, etc. the bottom line is that if you don’t have as much money coming in to the household then, in the words of Quark, the ferengi bartender from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – “Dignity and an empty sack is worth the sack”.

In 2007, roughly a third of all Government expenditure was in the from of State Benefits.  This constituted around 11% of GDP, and about half of the population of the UK were recipients of some form of state benefits.  Now, we live in a system where inevitably some people are going to slip to a point where they need state intervention to keep a roof over their heads.  And it’s appropriate that they get that help.  But half the country?  This is obviously not half the households; many households on benefits slip will involve a number of adults.  Some households can’t get much help at all; anyone who runs their own business or is self-employed will understand that if their business hits trouble they are very much on their own unless children are involved. 

But for those households and individuals who are dependent on benefits, and in many cases have their whole lifestyle driven by the need to maintain their access to the benefits system, let’s take a look at what this means:

  1. There are restrictions on paid and voluntary work that can be done whilst claiming benefits.  In other words, you are effectively being paid to do nothing for part of your week.
  2. The crossover between benefits and work is fraught with problems – it’s very easy to get a nice little job and lose out bigtime in the ancillary benefits that your household may be entitled to.
  3. The problems in moving in to and out of benefits – as may take place if you do contract / temporary work or find yourself on a series of short term contracts (not uncommon in a recession when piece work may be increasingly common) again discourages people from stepping out of the benefits pit to seek ongoing work.
  4. Some people with occasional illness that will prevent them working for a month or so here, a month or so there, again find it easier to stay on sickness and disability benefits rather than step in and out of the workforce and lose the regularity of cashflow of being on benefits.

There are some people for whom a loosening of the restrictions around working whilst on benefits would be a great advantage.  For example, allowing someone on benefits to do a paid job for a couple of months without losing access to benefits might seem strange, but think about what it would permit:

  1. Ongoing guaranteed income over the first month or so when pay in a new job may not be immediately available.
  2. No sudden shock to the family finances.
  3. The work is bringing in extra money for a month or so – it is worth doing.
  4. At the end of this period then the benefits can be stopped. 

There are people for whom this sort of movement in and out of the workforce would never be possible, due to illness or disability, and it should therefore be possible to allow them to do voluntary work / temporary work as required again with no financial loss.

This would require a synchronising of the Tax and Benefits system.  And the Government would also need to make it very clear (and structure tax and benefit regimes accordingly to ensure it) that if you wanted to sit on your backside you could do, but that your income would be less than someone on benefits who is working as and when they can. 

The aim is to encourage self-value, self-determination and get out of the need trap.  We cannot carry on like we are doing producing multiple generations of families in which no one has worked.  This is wrong, it’s perverse and we simply cannot afford it financially or as a society.

Screwtape casts the Net

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The following email arrived in my Inbox this morning.  I’m not sure what to make of it, but I thought I’d share it hear as it has some rather intriguing ideas in it.

Dear Wormwood,

You must think we senior tempters spend our heads in the burning sand.  Of course we’re aware of the Internet – we’ve had our influence on it from the very beginning.  There was a time when the humans expressed a concern about going to war based purely on the fact that their pathetic attempts to communicate with each other would fail at the dropping of the first hydrogen bomb.  Old Slitgrubber realised that this was a fine opportunity for us to increase despair by prompting them with a means of improving their communications, and hence making them slightly less squeamish about war.  Of course, it wasn’t the war we were interested in – it was the wondrous sense of fear and despair that such things bring about. 

Of course, The Enemy was soon on the case – they are just SO bothersome – and managed to wrench some good out of the Internet, prompting it’s use by ‘normal’ humans who could use it to talk to each other,  do business, send greetings – all sorts of nonsense.  But, our Research Department was always on the case and they very soon realised that the Internet still provides a fine opportunity for soul-hunting.  Indeed, it’s use as a campaigning tool for us has improved with every new generation of software.  By Web 4.0 I’m sure it will be delivering souls by the Gigabyte!

Your proposals are, as always, dear nephew, of mixed value.  Are you sure that some piece of human brain hasn’t got lodged up there with your own?  They range from the blatantly obvious to the abjectly stupid, with fleeting glimpses of items of possible use.  But, we are here to teach and you are here to be taught; I suppose I’d better get on with it.  It’s a big subject; there are many obvious opportunities for temptation out there that can be used in less than obvious ways for our end, but I’ll investigate those at a later date.

Today I’ll give you a technique of achieving a ‘quick hit’ on your candidate, something that’s useful for …ahem….’grabbing low hanging fruit’.  See how I’m getting all the jargon right?  Who says you can’t teach an old devil new tricks?

The Internet annihilates time.  Wormwood, to you and I time is something that we don’t take too much notice of.  For the humans it’s critical – many of them run around claiming they don’t have enough time to do this, that and the other whilst wasting what time they do have on activities that don’t benefit them at all – in fact, in many cases, they don’t even get pleasure from what they spend the time doing!   The Internet has greatly helped us here. Email, Immediate Messaging, Facebook and even Text Messaging has allowed us to short circuit their thinking by convincing them that whatever pops up in their electronic in boxes is actually important, rather than just immediate.

You might be aware of the work of that objectionable human Jung.  Why he couldn’t have just kept spouting the useful materialism of Freud I have no idea, but The Enemy clearly inspired him on more than one occasion and he came up with the following observation – it’s almost as if he was reading the research Department’s report on technological advances and how we can use them:

“[Most advances] are deceptive sweetenings of existence, like speedier communications, which unpleasantly accelerate the tempo of life and leave us with less time than ever before.  Omnis festinatio ex parte diaboli est – all haste is of the Devil”

Fortunately for us, the humans don’t take too much notice of such comments and we can still con them in to thinking that all these advances give them time.  What they actually do is eat up their time, encourage them to focus on things that are immediate or that give momentary pleasures, encourage them to forget what’s truly important and reply to all these messages quickly and without deep thought – and hopefully in the process cause offence and irritation to the senders of some of the messages by their thoughtless response.  If we’re really lucky we can encourage a good run of selfishness in the souls we’re interested in, encouraging them to forget activities such as prayer and contemplation  – all by the simple expedient of providing a new game to play online.

So, Wormwood – see what you can do with your case in terms of getting them to really take on board as many forms of new technology as possible, and, more importantly, encourage them to take their pleasure in the trivial, accelerate the tempo of their lives so that they don’t know whether they’re coming or going.  And then we can really get to work…

The mail ended here.  I’m going to keep my eye on my inbox to see whether I receive any further missives from Screwtape, who(what??)ever he is.