Month: November 2023

Requiring any person to work for a weekly wage that’s less than what they can afford to live on without help is legitimised Slavery – No matter what Politicians say | Autumn Statement

I realised a long time ago that the Politicians running the UK today work on the basis that unemployment and poverty are synonymous, or exactly the same thing.

Some politicians have even built a public platform by trading on it and the arguably heartless policies that people have trusted to look after the  UKs poor and vulnerable tell us as much as we need to know about where the so-called Conservative’s priorities lie.

It wouldn’t be anywhere near as much of a problem if the ‘poverty isn’t real’ approach was only a message.

However, the idea that poverty isn’t a problem has gone way beyond being just a message. It is the basis of how today’s public policies are formed.

Today will see the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement – where the ‘Official’ announcement will be made to Parliament, that amongst a new range of sanctions against those on benefits (the punishment for the poor and vulnerable who don’t behave), the National Living Wage will rise in April 2024 to £11.44 (the gift to all the poor and vulnerable who behave and do as they are told).

For those in low paid jobs earning the current National Living Wage of £10.42 per hour (or less if they are too young), an uplift of over £1 an hour does sound great.

But £11.44 is still nowhere near enough to live on. And that was a month ago.

In October, I worked through the figures in an attempt to work out how the UK’s elected parliamentarians could be so confident that they are correct in their analysis of what it costs to live. Whilst those actually living the experience of being poor know that they are not.

At the moment I discovered that using the average costs for all of the important things that a single person, working a 40-hour week would need to earn per hour came to £9.41 per hour, I admit that I did genuinely wonder if everyone other than the Politicians had got this all wrong.

However, as I then went on to consider, averages only tell a helpful story to anyone who will benefit from presenting a story in that particular way.

Facts are, that when we consider the real world cost of everything a single person needs – including the ‘poverty premium’, which is the overcharge too many people are forced to pay, because being poor is perceived as being ‘a risk’, the real minimum hourly wage required – for ANYONE working a 40 hour week – just so that they can live WITHOUT SUPPORT – is a MINIMUM £14 per hour!!!**

Again, that was IN OCTOBER 2023 – without adding in the rapid rises in the cost of living. An inflation rate that might have halved, but is still running rampant at 4.7% or more.

It should be a basic human right that people be able to provide fully for themselves on a weekly wage. That’s even before thinking about the realities that married couples and people with family commitments have to contemplate.

Requiring anyone to work for a whole working week and then paying them any less than what it will cost them to cover the cost of meeting all of their basic needs, without subsidy from government, having to take out loans, or having to seek help through charities (such as food banks) is nothing less than sanctioned or legitimised slavery.

Just think about that for a moment. You cannot fend for yourself on what you earn but are being forced to work. Doesn’t that mean you being treated as a slave?

Yes, being honest with ourselves and seeing poverty and how Politicians ‘interpret’ it doesn’t make comfortable reading. Especially for all the small business owners who will already be wondering what the hell they are going to do to cover the upsurge in costs when wages rise – not only by £1.02 per hour in April 2024 – but with all the additional costs that the employers will then be forced to pay afterwards too.

However, all those business owners who couldn’t (or wouldn’t) pay a minimum £14 per hour (Plus the on-costs) in October 2023, should also be asking themselves the very troubling question ‘WHY?’

It won’t take long to realise that none of this adds up for anyone. Other than those who have already got more than they should ever need.

The world does not exist to do business or make money for those who have already got too much of it.

An economy should function purely to support and sustain happy and healthy lives that are humane for every one of us, above all else.

**It may be worth considering that with the average UK annual wage for all workers is currently at 27,756.00, even this realistically low figure sits way below the annual wage of what I am suggesting EVERYONE needs as a minimum of £14ph – which is £29,120.00. It is perhaps telling that only this week, the announcement was made that Foreign workers coming to the UK will need to earn at least £30K per year. Does someone working for the Government know something?

Free Trade is Market Governance by Private Interests rather than Publicly Elected Government…

The idea of free markets, small government and deregulation providing a capitalist utopia is intoxicating. Especially when it comes wrapped with the promise of low prices, ease of access to everything you could possibly want, and the promise of a golden payday for anyone who joins the gravy train.

After all, having looked closely at what successive governments in the U.K. have done with their own forms of political idealism, converted into policies which we are told are there for our benefit, but still end up somehow hurting everyone, why wouldn’t we reject this disaster for a model of democracy and let business do its thing?

What the neoliberals and big business don’t tell you is the real reason for all the deregulation isn’t do that they can be allowed to shower generosity on the general public in ways that publicly elected government will never be able to afford. This sham is so that they can use civil laws and expensive courts to bully, control and then make more snd more money from EVERYONE!

You only need look at subjects like the patents and controls now levied on seeds – yes, the seeds that grow the food that feeds us – to see how this model of privatised tyranny actually works.

Money and profit through market control – not freedom – are the only aims, and the people behind it are becoming more and more successful each and every day.

Where are the public representatives when we need them?

A 9% rise in demand for Food Bank support in the South East should be ringing alarm bells…

I’ve just picked up an article published by the BBC that says Food Banks are reporting a 9% surge in demand for help – all from families with children, between April and September this year.

In the same article, the Department of Work and Pensions is quoted as saying that ‘there are 1.7 Million fewer people in absolute poverty since 2010’, and it’s fair to say that anyone who hasn’t really had reason to think about this issue in any depth would be forgiven for wondering if both statements can be true.

The regrettable reality is that both statement certainly can be true, and depend very much on how data – and therefore the reality that real people are facing – is interpreted.

What was clear when a well-known Conservative MP recently declared that real poverty last existed in the 70’s, is that there are different interpretations of what poverty really is and how it can be identified,

Sadly, it serves the purposes of some to be able to declare that people who need help aren’t actually poor in a way that they can ‘hand on heart’ tell the world is right. But as I discussed in my recent blog about the hourly wage that the lowest paid single person really needs to earn before deductions are made, the difference between the figures the government is using to qualify people for help, versus the reality that people are living through when they genuinely do need help, are likely to be two very different things.

Food Banks are the acceptable face of a culture that believes for some to be rich, others must therefore be poor. And the fact that the need for them is growing – and very quickly too, is something that should give us all considerable cause for concern.

Who will need help from a Food Bank next?

Is anyone reading the deeper messages from the Red Tractor dispute?

Before anything, I will say that the Red Tractor Scheme was a good idea, even though with my consumer hat on, I’m not convinced it really meant all that much to shoppers.

On that note rests the question of who really gets the value from it, and from that perspective, its possible to begin joining up the dots regarding the latest row that has developed around future changes and the relationship between the Scheme and ‘green farming’.

Whilst everything looks very simple, the truth is that complexity rules the day and many of us don’t understand the relationships and motives that lie behind many of the problems that agriculture and businesses are facing.

At face value, most people simply wouldn’t believe what’s actually happening and what corporate interests are doing to entire industries as they seek to control every part of the food supply chain across the UK. Acting as if even the farms they buy produce from, are no more than facilities that they own.

Regrettably, big money interests want more profit than they already have and they have successfully hidden behind the lie thar is ‘free markets’ and yes, Globalisation, to trash genuine government and regulations and then replace it with a system of their own that they control.

My concern is that whilst overtly created with the best of intentions for Farming and Food Production, devices like the green agenda are just new ways of ratcheting down more and more control of the food production system. So that every penny of profit or ‘the fat’ that exists at any point within the entire food supply chain is controlled and funnelled into the hands of those who control it.

Consider this scenario:

Many farmers – perhaps every farmer, has at some point signed up to some kind of contract sale arrangement for their crops, animals or produce, perhaps with a dairy, a big retailer or an agent of some kind.

Within these relationships, it has been considered normal or necessary to share just about every bit of data about the farm, what equipment is used, the number of animals, number and type of staff – and much, much more.

Afterall, what does it matter when you are working for the same goals and these are people you can trust?

It’s likely that right now, an unworldly economics graduate, perhaps sat in a commuter town HQ, somewhere near London, is looking at every detail their employer has hoovered up through this process of ‘granting contracts’ or ‘beneficial arrangements’ of some kind. That’s the one mentioned above where they have insisted that they are the farmers friend and that all this information helps to raise standards, meet targets, and no doubt of late ‘helps to achieve Net Zero, or make the industry green’.

What they didn’t tell you is that from this data, this analyst or someone like them that the farmer will never meet, can work out exactly what everything is costing on that farm. They can then then use statistical averages and data of the kind that inform our politicians, to make decisions on what the farmer is ‘entitled’ to earn – knowing exactly what their spreadsheets have told them the farmer should ‘charge’ to cover the costs of their ‘wage’ and absolutely everything else.

***

Yes, the chances are that the companies and retailers that farmers ‘sell’ to are working out what they believe those farmers need so that they earn the average wage (if they are lucky), and without the farmer even being aware, nothing is any longer that farm business owners’ choice.

If farms are dependent on these companies and their contracts – no matter how well intended or how they were sold, the business that the farmer is contracted too basically owns the farm.

As such, farmers are right to be very concerned about where so-called standards are taking the industry, as the level of data and therefore control that these interests will have and will be able to exert, is only likely to grow, whilst politicians continue to fail to represent the interests not only of the food producing industries, but of the public at large.

Right now, the destination is already over the cliff. But it could get worse, with Supermarkets now trying to claw back whatever they can from what they clearly believe to be over generous relationships with the key suppliers within the UKs Food Supply Chain.