Chris Co

Think TANK!

Friday 22nd March 2013 2:26 pm

Think TANK!

Our progressive think tank recommends
a back to work welfare solution. Disability offends
us all with it’s idea of reliance, so what we need now
is a soft pastel re-focus on aspiration.

You should appreciate our reclassification,
the monetary cut-back to your benefit
shows how well you actually are.

You simply wore the wrong tag;
were impoverished by what society deemed you
until our think tank came to clean you.

We’ve made you healthy by perception,
incentivised your needs, with a label correction.

You’ll come to know the empty pocket
entitlement of our terms,
understand the antonym of value,
hear deprivation labelled freedom!
and see our spokesman on the news
call his views your “reforms”.

You should know; we never had a hope for you.
It’s nothing personal, but we’ve set the course
and you’re in our way.

We know where we’re going and how hard it’s going to be,
and though for you it maybe painful, for us it is easy.

You’re a tax break for the middle class
we’ve decorated your arse and called it a path.

Think TANK!

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Comments

Chris Co

Mon 25th Mar 2013 16:06

Hi Harry, Laura - thx for reading and the feedback - appreciated.

Glad it worked for you and you found something in the poem of merit.

I agree with those Stanza marking out the poem and the turn-around Harry. I think that might be the best part of the piece.

Quote
The alarming thing is that so many working class people are becoming convinced that the system is being milked and so-unfortunately-the majority of genuine deservers are being punished for the `sins` of the few.
Quote

Alarming is correct. But I don't think it is a case of the majority being punished for the sins of the few - though the few do exists and are sinful. I think it is more a case of using the recession and the perceived need for austerity as an excuse to wage class warfare.

I see the article below as getting it pretty much spot-on - have a look it might be of interest;

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/25/tories-shrink-state-wont-say-publicly

Quote
The present `dependancy` situation was caused by finacial liberation and the consequent moves towards globalisation and significant switch towards financial -rather than industrial - earnings.
Quote

A lot of truth here Harry and as a trade unionist and someone who worked at the coalface, I dare say you know a lot more about the nature of these events first hand than I do.

David Starkey - as right wing and strange a historian as he is said;

Of the reliance on the financial sector - that we were ridiculously overly reliant upon it - accounting for 25% of the economy. And that we don't make enough things that people want. That the problem of this relates to no added value and an economy being too reliant on something dependent itself on perceived value.

I think you might feel the same in this regard. It certainly looks to be a significant problem with our economy.

Quote
I think the squeeze on welfare will go further under whatever government (thanks to the bankers who (ineptly but lucratively) couldn`t even keep the booze-up in their own brewery going.
Unquote

Indeed.

Quote
With the exception of a certain percentage near the bottom, I agree with you that the pensioners generally are doing quite well, thankyou. However the politicians are runningout of money to bribe the electorate with so no one is going to be safe for the next decade or so
Unquote

I suspect you're right. The pensioners and universal benefits have been safe and are safe for now due to a very misguided Conservative manifesto pledge. What I would say is that whilst pensioners will probably take a hit at some point; due to their power as a lobby group and because of their voting numbers/turnout at elections, they will not be touched in anywhere near the way that other groups will. very unfair, but since when did fair mean anything in politics as in life?

Of course I do not mean to attack pensioners myself. I make a clear distinction between, the national state pension and how low that is and how poor pensioners on the lowest incomes are (the state pension should be much higher) and the fact that the removal of universal pensioners benefits to those on middle incomes and above has not even been considered.

We can all take our political positions of course, and I have offered too much of mine - outside of the poem. But think tanks and their ilk, they try to ensure a fundamentally dishonest political climate, via their use of the language of marketing/advertising. I think I object to that most of all - the dishonesty.

Hey Laura

Yea I wanted to go for the jugular and hit hard, but I wanted to do it with the language of think tanks. I didn't want to just state a political opinion...and was trying to make it very much a poem and use poetic language.

Quote
We’ve made you healthy by perception

:D
Unquote

Yes - the idea that by relabeling something you change what it actually is. Like massaging figures for the likes of league tables - it's just so fundamentally dishonest. Also I wanted to get across the idea that we're also dealing with an ideology here, an ideology willing to do awful things and justify them through the use of creative language. The kind of language where they almost seek to insulate themselves from the despicable nature of their own actions.

Quote
I like to use their terminology too in some of my rants. Am working on one at the moment tentatively titled 'Black is White', about the humungous lies that spew out of their mouths on a daily basis.
Quote

I'll look forward to hearing/reading it - some of the terms banded about these days are positively Orwellian. Over-used term or not, as someone whose favourite author is George Orwell, who has read 1984 more than half a dozen times, I do think in this case the point is legitimate. Of course it applies to all parties across the political divide.

Politics these days is all about think tanks and spin - which reminds me of that great manipulator Richard Nixon. In trying to escape an accusation he once said;

I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.

Policies these days often come with the same duplicity loaded into their language.

Best

Chris

Laura Taylor

Mon 25th Mar 2013 11:08

Excellent Chris - a political and poetic rant! Takes some doing that. Think this line is killer

We’ve made you healthy by perception

:D

I like to use their terminology too in some of my rants. Am working on one at the moment tentatively titled 'Black is White', about the humungous lies that spew out of their mouths on a daily basis.

Harry O'Neill

Sun 24th Mar 2013 21:49

Chris,
Timely poem, witty and ironical. Stanzas two, three, and four point the turn-around exactly.

The alarming thing is that so many working class people are becoming convinced that the system is being milked and so-unfortunately-the majority of genuine deservers are being punished for the `sins` of the few.

The present `dependancy` situation was caused by finacial liberation and the consequent moves towards globalisation and significant switch towards financial -rather than industrial - earnings. Folk are not daft and people forced on to the dole by this process could discern the stupidity of working at a low paid job for a pittance more a week (would their detractors?...I dont think so)

I think the squeeze on welfare will go further under whatever government (thanks to the bankers who (ineptly but lucratively) couldn`t even keep the booze-up in their own brewery going.

With the exception of a certain percentage near the bottom, I agree with you that the pensioners generally are doing quite well, thankyou. However the politicians are runningout of money to bribe the electorate with so no one is going to be safe for the next decade or so

Remember the crazy credit-card boom of recent memory? (ah, happy days!)

Chris Co

Sat 23rd Mar 2013 19:49

Hey Dave, Jon and Stella Thx for reading and for the feedback - appreciated. Glad it seems to have worked and people have liked something of it.

I wanted to go for the jugular with this one as opposed to deal in implications. I also wanted to to frame the issue in the semantics and pointed terminology that think tanks apply when trying to sell their wares to political parties.

They don't acknowledge a problem, but they provide a solution ;) A benefit impoverishes via dependence or reliance. To have those benefits cut is not to have them cut, is for those people to be incentivised and entitled to work. We ignore the fact that most disabled people who don't work generally do not do so because they aren't able to do so.

Hey Dave - Mmmm in terms of figure, well it depends upon where you get your figures. But in relative terms it would be possible to argue that the richest have been hit less than the middle class over a greater period of time. But I take the point. Certainly the middle class have been greatly protected from austerity if we make the comparison with poor people in society.

I agree about every government minister having the graph, unfortunately I think they know only too well what they are choosing to do - I don't think my poem would help (sadly).

Hey John - I was trying to think in terms of their language. Glad you liked that line. Looking back it is very much what could be expected from Oliver Reeder from The Thick of It. I could imagine Malcolm Tucker saying something like, 'yea, let's run with that fucker' lol.

You have to laugh otherwise you'd cry.

Hey Stella - adversely affected, ain't that the truth. I'm gonna rant a bit now - please forgive. But this is some of the feeling behind this poem and others I have wrote of late.

---------------------------------------------

We hear about welfare all the time don't we, the welfare bill being too high and unsustainable. Usually it is a scare story that leaps from welfare straight into unemployment. Scapegoat the unemployed as lazy and feckless and you're on your way to a political mandate to reforming welfare as a whole without any real debate.

First of all welfare, since when did we start with the American terminology convenient catch-all term? For the 'political right', it allows them to talk about one enormous cost, and use that figure to hammer the poorest in society, using as they do unemployment as the way in.

Once you make welfare look like little nothing more than unemployment, and you make unemployment look like little more than the lazy and the feckless - you have your mandate for "reform" (sic). Reform allows you back to work slave wage programs, it allows you to mandate jobseekers (fuckin job seekers - that word itself is a think tank semantic load of shit). Jeezzzz by saying job seekers it sounds positively breezy. Hey would you rather have fewer job seekers. by jove, no! Job seekers, positive people, let's have more! The more the better Haha j/k of course, but this is the language that I most object to, it's this marketing language that allows the promotion of appalling policies via smoke and mirrors.

Welfare reform allows you to reduce money for the disabled without winning any argument for such reductions.

It has been shown in multiple studies that when you ask people in the street; how much does unemployment represents as part of the welfare bill? They tend to come back with figures ranging from 60% down to lows of around 40%. Unemployment actually represent less than 3% of the entire welfare bill!

Do you know what costs between 40-50% of the entire welfare bill? Something that is absolutely untouched and is not facing any austerity reforms at all? Universal Pensioners provisions. And why wont the political right, Cameron's conDEM government touch this? Because he needs the vote of pensioners, from the center to the right. They represent a powerful force in lobbying, in Tory constituencies and they tend to vote in great numbers. For this reason we have universal provision to the well off and the rich. We have winter fuel repayments to all. 100K a year or millions of year, no matter how much money you have coming in - you still get a free buss pass, television licence and winter fuel payments. Peter Stringfellow gets winter fuel repayments! We are giving away obscene amounts of money in universal provision that cannot be afforded. Meanwhile we are doing the most appalling things in other areas - such as the policy to sanction those seeking employment - the thing that leaves people destitute, without any money at all and looking for food at foodbanks, with friends/neighbours or looking in bins.

Everywhere you look think tanks and special interest committees/policy groups are thinking outside the box...promoting the marketing language that justifies the most disgraceful and ethically unfair policies imaginable.

We are seeing the economics of recession being used to forward the ulterior agenda of class warfare. People in government keep talking about not being able to afford this or that. What a society can afford is nearly always about political will and choice.

We hear that there will have to be cut-backs. 10 libraries are to close in Liverpool. Yet they have just paid 50 million pounds into a PFI scheme to gain - one central library.

We have the bedroom tax on social housing, rather than a mansion tax. We choose to give a 50% rebate on second homes - whilst taxing an extra bedroom. This is a political choice - plain and simple! It is supposed to be unfair to have to pay full council tax on a second home; why? A second home is a luxury, if you can't afford to pay the full amount on a second home, er, don't buy a second home.

We choose or rather Pickles chooses that we can spend 5.5 billion - I did say billion! To upgrade Liverpool waterfront - again via a PFI scheme. At the same time the council has cut the provision for free school uniforms for those struggling the most. Pickles says the PFI scheme will generate a much needed 9,000 homes. 9,000 homes - what overlooking Liverpool waterfront? Who is he trying to kid, they wont be homes, they'll be plush apartments and second homes for the rich! They will all be sold off for huge gains for the private investor. Meanwhile via the wonga - way of borrowing money we the tax payer will foot the bill.

And take one look at Kirkdale, Huyton, Anfield etc - areas in dire need of real regeneration - what are they getting? Mmmm Nawr they can have cuts and they can deal with the surroundings they have. Can you see any of the families there being offered the Pickles waterfront homes?

No 50p rate of tax - but going back to pensioners, the ones on low incomes have one of the lowest pensions in western Europe. Do they get an increase to help improve their lot? Of course not but the well-off and rich pensioners can keep all their freebies. If your an ex pat from the Wirral living in Portugal or Spain - you too still get the winter fuel payment. At the same time on the Wirral - Moreton just closed a day center that was a major lifeline to adults with learning difficulties. But don't worry - their tears, like their needs - don't matter!

An estimated 90/120 billion lost to the economy every year via tax avoidance, 15.6 billion lost to the economy from tax fraud (more of a middle class crime generally). Benefit fraud which is a non stop ongoing conversation on radio, in the newspapers and on tv runs at 1% and accounts only for 1.2 billion lost to the economy as a whole.

But don't mention any of this, forget it.

We can always get a think tank together to do something about the burden of the poor and needy. And entitle them with incentives ;)

sorry for waffling...

Best

Chris

<Deleted User> (6315)

Fri 22nd Mar 2013 21:36

Aye Chris..far too many folk I know are being adversely affected...a great poem.. :)

Jon

Fri 22nd Mar 2013 17:39

To the point and unwavering Chris! Sentiments I entirely agree with-'what we need now is a soft pastel re-focus on aspiration'
Thing is,I can actually imagine this lot saying that!Great poem mate!

Dave Bradley

Fri 22nd Mar 2013 17:14

To the point, Chris. I was in a waiting room this afternoon and picked up The Times - not something I'd normally read. Page 8 has a graph (source IFS) which shows how changes since 2010 have adversely affected different sections of society from the poorest to the richest. To be fair, the richest line was worst on the graph, but only by a little. Almost as badly affected were the poorest in society - far worse than the middle class. Every government minister should have a copy of that graph (and your poem!) on their wall but that's too much to hope for.

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