[Campaignforrealdemocracy] 30th Nov demo / direct action ? Re: [politicsandspiritnetwork] Born in the USA: Big Society? ~ "flexicurity"

[Mark Barrett]

*Suggest demo gets called for this ?*
**
* http://www.bigsocietyconference.co.uk ***
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On 7 November 2010 03:30, jyoti  wrote:
>
>
>
>   *How Britain's new welfare state was born in the USA*<http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/nov/07/britain-welfare-state-born-usa>‎
> - 2 hours ago
> The gathering was small and discreet and made no headlines at the time –
> but its significance for the future of our *welfare state* and for David
> Cameron's *...*
> The Guardian - 2 related articles<http://news.google.com/news/story?client=gmail&rls=gm&q=How+Britain's+new+welfare+state+was+born+in+the+USA&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ncl=dKzKbSuA_N1xnGM&hl=en&ei=zBXWTMG4H8jh4AaFuP3tBw&sa=X&oi=news_result&ct=more-results&resnum=1&ved=0CBcQqgIwAA>
>  - Shared by 20+<http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=gmail&rls=gm&tbs=mbl:1&q=link:http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/nov/07/britain-welfare-state-born-usa&source=univ&sa=X&ei=zBXWTMG4H8jh4AaFuP3tBw&ved=0CBgQtgowAA>
>  [image: guardian.co.uk home] <http://www.guardian.co.uk/>
> [image: The Observer home] <http://www.observer.co.uk/>
>   How Britain's new welfare state was born in the USA
>
> The main themes of David Cameron's 'big society' are becoming clear – as is
> the influence of Republican political thinking
>
>    - Anushka Asthana <http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/anushkaasthana>, Toby
>    Helm <http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/tobyhelm> and Paul Harris<http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/paulharris> in
>    New York
>    - The Observer <http://observer.guardian.co.uk/>, Sunday 7 November
>    2010
>    -  larger <http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/accessibility> | smaller<http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/accessibility>
>
> [image: President Obama at a US charter school]
>
> snip
> Tim Horton, research director of the Fabian Society, likens Cameron's big
> society to George W Bush's "compassionate conservatism". He believes
> elements of the Tory right are under the influence of the anti-tax,
> anti-state Tea Party movement<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/31/tea-party-sarah-palin-andrew-neil> that
> had such a profound influence on the Republican surge in last week's US
> midterm elections. "Tax-funded public services are perhaps the best possible
> example of the big society," said Horton. "But the Tories simply can't see
> it that way."
> snip
>
> In continental Europe, other countries are already marching in a different
> direction. Though time-limiting of benefits is used, providing security for
> individuals is seen as vital. Many have been inspired by an idea that has
> its root in Denmark, where the former social democrat prime minister, Poul
> Nyrup Rasmussen, coined the phrase .
>
> This was developed to respond to two competing pressures: the need for
> businesses to flexibly adapt to globalisation and new technologies, and the
> desire among workers for security. Flexicurity is about providing security
> for individuals, not jobs, and protects them as they move between employers.
> It works by encouraging regular training, tailored support for job seekers
> and equal opportunities for men and women.
>
> snip
>
> Back here, Horton argues that if the idea of the UK coalition government is
> to pare down services and the role of the state too much in the name of the
> big society, then it will not work. The British, he says, will not accept
> it.
>
> "The Tories have long looked to the US Republicans for their inspiration.
> But they will struggle to import the same kind of politics to the UK.
> Britain was not founded on a tax revolt, and Brits are highly attached to
> their public services. That's why David Cameron spent the election campaign
> promising to protect frontline services."
>
> snip
>
> The gathering was small and discreet and made no headlines at the time –
> but its significance for the future of our welfare<http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/welfare> state
> and for David Cameron <http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/davidcameron>'s
> vision of a "big society" will become clear this week.
>
> It was on a warm day in June that Professor Lawrence Mead, who inspired
> many of the US welfare reforms of the 1990s, strode into 10 Downing Street.
> The American guru had been invited by Steve Hilton, Cameron's chief
> strategist. Also present were senior Whitehall officials from the Treasury
> and other government departments. They were joined by Neil O'Brien, director
> of the rightwing thinktank Policy Exchange.
>
> Mead was immediately struck by how eager the assembled team was to hear his
> ideas. "I was surprised how interested they were," he said.
>
> Under detailed questioning, he told his inquisitors that attitudes to
> welfare in Britain had been characterised by a culture of "entitlement" for
> too long. The jobless knew they could get benefits while doing nothing in
> return, he warned.
>
> In the US, attitudes had apparently moved on long ago and it was high time
> the UK followed suit. Welfare should no longer be seen as a "lifestyle"
> option. "Serious reform means ending entitlement by clearly imposing work as
> a requirement for aid," said Mead – and his words struck a chord. Even the
> disabled should be expected to work. In some cases benefits could be
> time-limited to help shunt people into jobs, he suggested.
>
> "They really wanted to know how it could be done. It surprised me," Mead
> told the *Observer*.
>
> This week, five months on from that meeting, the work and pensions
> secretary, Iain Duncan Smith<http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/iain-duncan-smith>,
> will publish a white paper on welfare reform. It will outline plans to make
> jobseekers take 30-hour a week job placements for periods of four weeks.
>
> If they refuse or fail to complete the placements, their benefits will be
> stopped for three months. The buzz phrase of the new system will be
> "conditionality" – the idea of working for benefits under a contract with
> the state. Ways of talking about the unemployed are already changing even
> before the white paper is out. Yesterday the Department for Work and
> Pensions said the reforms aimed to "break the habit of worklessness". A few
> years ago such statements from Whitehall would have been unthinkable.
>
> Such US-inspired policy changes on welfare will be far-reaching in
> themselves. But after six months of the coalition government, it is now
> clear that they do not exist in isolation. As one Labour MP who applauds
> some aspects of the coalition's thinking put it: "Something far bigger is
> going on. It is to do with redefining personal responsibility across the
> range. After all the talk of cuts in spending, we are starting to see what
> this lot are all about in philosophical terms."
>
> That MP and policy experts are beginning to see a consistent theme driving
> government policy on everything from schools to higher education, policing,
> prisons and the health service. It is a process that – like it or loathe it
> – is finally beginning to give some shape and meaning to Cameron's hitherto
> ill-defined big society agenda.
>
> snip
>
> Nick Seddon, deputy director of the independent thinktank Reform, says the
> Tories promoted the idea before fixing the detailed narrative that would
> frame it. But now through a blizzard of policy announcements, the theme is
> emerging.
>
> Just as the welfare reforms place a responsibility on the jobless to get
> into the "habit of work", so the coalition is promoting ideas of personal
> responsibility as a way to cure society's ills as a whole. At the Home
> Office and Ministry of Justice, Nick Herbert is impressed by US-style
> policing methods. Citizens who complain about too much crime and a lack of
> police on the street will be given a stake in the issue through a right to
> elect local police commissioners. Police chiefs will answer directly to the
> people. Power is to be pushed outwards.
>
> Similarly Michael Gove, the education secretary, believes parents who moan
> about poor state schools should be given the power to establish new ones –
> drawing on models in Sweden and the charter schools of the US. And in the
> National Health Service, GPs will be entrusted by the health secretary
> Andrew Lansley with the power and responsibility to commission medical
> services themselves, freed from central control.
>
> The overarching theme is that the coalition believes it can free people to
> find their own solutions by rolling back what it sees as an interfering,
> bureaucratic and stifling state. That state, it argues, can anyway no longer
> be sustained in its present form, at a time when the £155bn deficit must be
> slashed. So students will no longer be funded by the state but will have to
> take responsibility for paying back the cost of their education later in
> life.
>
> Seddon says it is an agenda on which Tories and Lib Dems in the coalition
> have found themselves able to unite for different reasons – but ones that
> suit both parties' political visions. "For the Lib Dems, spinning power
> outwards has always been about devolution. For the Tories it is probably
> more about changing and reducing the role of the state and increasing the
> role of individuals and communities."
>
> snip
>
> The June emergency budget and last month's comprehensive spending review
> have already been widely criticised for hitting the poor hardest. As the*
> Observer* reports today, the government has abolished the social exclusion
> taskforce in the Cabinet Office – a unit established to stop people ending
> up on the margins of society. Government documents show it has been reborn
> as an office called "Big Society, Policy and Analysis".
>
> In a taste of the arguments to come, Jon Trickett, a shadow minister with
> responsibility for social exclusion, describes the direction in which the
> coalition appears to be heading as "deeply disturbing". He added: "In no
> civilised society does the government wash its hands of our duty to the
> poorest. Yet this is what these changes signify. Both ministers and the
> backbenchers should hang their heads in shame."
>
> snip
>
> Even some Tories are getting worried about the combined social consequences
> of drastic cuts and the drive to change attitudes towards personal
> responsibility. When mayor of London Boris Johnson said he would resist
> "Kosovo-style" social cleansing in relation to housing benefit cuts<http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/oct/31/housing-benefit-cuts-poor>,
> he articulated in extreme language a residual fear among many Conservatives
> that the vulnerable could be left behind in the whole process. Mark Field, a
> London Tory MP, has also voiced his worries.
>
> There is concern among his colleagues that state-backed projects for
> one-to-one tuition in schools that have helped underprivileged children will
> wither and die under coalition reforms. There is anger too among
> Conservative councillors across the country about the way local authorities
> are being stripped of responsibility for local education policy.
>
> snip
>
> Observers see inconsistencies in the big society model. Professor Alan
> Deacon of Leeds University, an expert on welfare policy, says there is a big
> contradiction at the heart of Iain Duncan Smith's reforms, because the heavy
> hand of the state will be required to enforce the "on yer bike" approach to
> benefits. "At one level there is a tension between the authoritarianism of
> work enforcement through the work programme and the emphasis upon personal
> freedom and getting government off our backs," he says.
>
> snip
>
> As for charities – placed by Cameron at the heart of his vision of a new
> energetic and civic society – they too are worried. Dr Peter Kyle, deputy
> chief executive of the ACEVO (the Association of Chief Executives of
> Voluntary Organisations), said there were inconsistencies in the policy. He
> said the sector had doubled in size in 15 years partly because of greater
> delivery of public services. Public spending cuts will hit charities hard,
> along with the VAT increase to 20% and an expected fall in giving. The
> result, according to ACEVO, will be a £4.5bn funding black hole.
>
> Kyle said government urgently need to remove obstacles facing voluntary
> organisations that wished to take on delivery of public services. "Otherwise
> when the transformation does occur, there will be no charitable sector to
> speak of able to rise to the challenge," he said.
>
> In America there is still heated debate about whether the approach to
> welfare now being championed here really works. One of its supporters is
> Charles Murray, author of the controversial book *The Bell Curve*, and a
> leading voice at the highly influential conservative thinktank the American
> Enterprise Institute.
>
> "In America we have got the underclass off the public agenda," he says of
> the impact of the welfare reforms. "Britain has a much worse time with
> crime, welfare dependency, single-parent mothers and men who are able but
> long-term unemployed. You are still in a much worse state than the US was in
> the 1980s and 1990s."
>
> snip
> Lessons from abroad
>
> *The American dream?*
>
> Politicians have not copied what they have witnessed in the US – but they
> have been inspired by it. Take welfare. George Osborne, the chancellor, has
> even borrowed language from his American counterparts. He has spoken of
> people thinking of benefits as a 'lifestyle choice'. Ideas in health and
> education also seem to have some roots in the US – although Scandinavia has
> also provided its models. Another source of inspiration has been Australia,
> where MPs have picked out ideas about payment by results.
>
> *Swedish schools*
>
> Much has been made of how the Conservative party has been inspired by
> Sweden in implementing its free-schools policy, which allows parents or
> other groups to set up schools. But many point to the US as well and its
> charter school revolution, particularly in the case of academies. Here -
> like there - the drive is to free up schools from government control. But a
> key difference is that in the US those running schools lose their contracts
> if they fail to make them successful.
>
> *The 99-ers*
>
> These are the people whose unemployment welfare has been turned off because
> they have been out of work for 99 weeks. There are upwards of 1.4m 99ers in
> America, perhaps driven by the fact that the country's jobless rate is
> lagging behind other signs of recovery. People face losing their homes and
> often build up huge debts as they turn to credit to survive. Many are
> lobbying for the Americans Want to Work Act to extend jobless benefits for a
> further 20 weeks.
>
>    - <http://guardian.co.uk/>guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media
>    Limited 2010
>
> ;-)
>
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-- 
"We hear men speaking for us of new laws strong and sweet /Yet is there no
man speaketh as we speak in the street.”
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