coalition

The world according to Michael Gove

Yesterday,  Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, was asked about food banks distributing school uniforms to parents who could not afford to clothe their children.

His response?

A lot of people are only at food banks because, “[they are] not best able to manage their own finances”.

Oh! That’s why they are there! Thanks Michael, I was getting worried it was something to do with a prolonged fall in household incomes and/or your government’s reckless policy of austerity. But I was wrong after all. They are simply there because of their own poor judgement. Well, thank God for that!

If everyone was as good with their money as Michael Gove is with his, we wouldn’t need these food banks in the first place. This is a man who knew exactly the right moment to pay back the £7,000 expenses he claimed to lavishly furnish his second home. It was when he got caught, of course.

The whole episode only further enhances the Education Secretary’s reputation as a rigorous academic thinker. In less than a minute, Gove was able to explain an economic phenomena that many have spent their whole lives studying. He was able to pinpoint the root cause of poverty in a matter of seconds. People are poor because they are crap with money. It really is that simple.

We should encourage Michael Gove to share his not inconsiderable wisdom. He is after all, in the perfect position to do so. As the Education Secretary he should at least make sure his wise words find their way on to the curriculum. But he should go further than that and include other Goveisms.

Before they start whining about a social and economic system that is rigged against them, the so-called ‘poor and vulnerable’ of tomorrow need to know that:

  • People freeze to death in Winter because they don’t know how to use their heaters. It has nothing to do with energy prices or inadequate insulation.
  • Young people can’t find jobs because they (quite literally) do not know what work is. This conceptual gap completely explains unemployment. The economy does not come into this.
  • Polar bears are dying because they don’t know how to manage their own properties and fisheries. Not because their homes are melting.

Perhaps we are being a little harsh on Gove. To be fair, poverty is not his area of expertise. He is the Education Secretary. The people best placed to judge him are the teachers, headteachers and support staff  that work tirelessly in schools up and down the country. And I hear that they absolutely adore him.

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These April Fools welfare jokes are no laughing matter

Tower block.

Photo: Flickr / kandyjaxx.

Originally written for publication in The Boar, Warwick University’s student newspaper.

—

At the start of this week I was in a rel­a­tive­ly good mood. With a string of unfinished essays hanging over me, I knew that it would be one filled with the woes of ac­tu­al­ly work­ing. How­ev­er, it began with April Fool’s Day and I was look­ing forward to en­joy­ing the tra­di­tion­al hoax story put out by my favourite lefty-hip­py news­pa­per and spir­i­tu­al home, The Guardian.

I had to run er­rands in the morn­ing and hav­ing got up late, I knew I would only have time to skim the piece. I loaded the web­site over break­fast. ‘The day Britain changes’, the head­line read. “This should be a crack­er”, I thought to my­self. Some brilliant Brook­er-es­que satire of the coali­tion gov­ern­ment, no doubt. Oh Guardian! How I adore thee.

The joke ap­peared to take the form of a list – a spoof set of ab­surd poli­cies the gov­ern­ment was sup­pos­ed­ly en­act­ing this week. It began with a ‘spare bed­room tax’. The sort of thing the Mon­ster Rav­ing Loony Party would come up with but with a twist. The Guardian had su­per­im­posed a sin­is­ter Tory edge – the ‘tax’ would take the form of cuts to hous­ing ben­e­fit, pri­mar­i­ly hit­ting the most vul­ner­a­ble. Clever. Very clever.

I glanced down the page and spot­ted a ‘plan’ to scrap the dis­abil­i­ty liv­ing al­lowance and re­place it a new means-test­ed ben­e­fit. A sub­tle nod to a clas­sic episode of The Of­fice, in which the na­tion’s favourite so­cial­ly-in­ept bigot, Gareth Keenan, pro­pos­es ‘dis­abil­i­ty tests’ to clamp down on fraud. Not as funny and I doubt that many would get the ref­er­ence.

Be­fore I left the house, I had just had time to skim the other ‘re­forms’ the paper had fab­ri­cat­ed. Tax cuts for mil­lion­aires and an ar­bi­trary cap wel­fare pay­ments also made the list. These were of course, pre­pos­ter­ous­ly back­ward pro­pos­als clev­er­ly craft­ed to act as a re­duc­tio ad ab­sur­dumat­tack on greed-is-good Con­ser­vatism. But they weren’t par­tic­u­lar­ly wacky ideas, so didn’t re­al­ly raise a smile. Be­sides, in this cli­mate, min­is­ters wouldn’t be able to offer the rich any­thing like a break so the be­liev­abil­i­ty of the piece suf­fered.

The jokes – or attacks – were all too obvious and the paper was losing me. Sadly, I was forced to admit to myself that The Guardian‘s April Fools joke had been a disappointing one.

I returned from my nondescript errands and in an effort to avoid starting work, logged on to the BBC News website. To my surprise and disappointment they seemed to be running with a similar joke themselves. They’d hired an Ian Duncan Smith impersonator to come on one of their respected radio stations and make the ridiculous claim that he could live on £53 a week, without recognising any of the challenges inherent in doing so.

Satirizing wealthy ‘out of touch’ government ministers should left to The Thick Of It. It should not pervade the respected news output of a public service broadcaster. It was at that point, I knew things were spinning out of control.

In recent days, we have witnessed an even more bizarre turn of events. Presumably in a bid to lift spirits amidst a triple dip recession, several news outlets have conspired to continue running April Fools style hoax stories beyond the first of the month. The Telegraph reported that the Queen was to receive an additional £5m of funding, a huge sum supposedly sanctioned by George Osborne as thousands face the prospect of unemployment.

Enough is enough. The first of these jokes a rather weak ‘what would happen if the Tories had their way’ piece stretched out far too long. Now, even ultra-lefties like me have to take a stand against openly mocking the coalition with these stunts. We need our media to go back to reporting on what the government is actually doing rather than presenting us with some sick parody of what we might expect from it.

It’s time for us to listen to the steps the government is going to take to better the lives of us the most vulnerable in society. I for one, can’t wait to find out.

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Is this the end of the coalition?

Image: Flikr / Liberal Democrats

Originally written for publication in The Boar, Warwick University’s student newspaper.

—

This week a number of journalists were reluctantly torn from the beach volleyball and boxing to report on a story they were dismayed to find had no link to the Olympics at all. Little did they know that they would soon be witnessing an event nothing short of a scientific miracle. As they gathered round to hear yet another run-of-the-mill Nick Clegg concession to his Conservative colleagues, they were startled to find something very odd happening to the Deputy Prime Minister. Initially he seemed on edge. Then he started shaking. Finally, his body started pulsating in a petrifying rhythmic frenzy. Was he dancing? Was he possessed? No. Eventually, it became clear that the impossible was happening. Nick Clegg was growing a backbone before their very eyes.

The Conservatives have abandoned the House of Lords reform they promised the Liberal Democrats, and Clegg has said that the coalition contract has been broken. Needless to say, many commentators – not least self-important student journalists like myself – will be quick to point out that this is a man who knows a thing or two about broken promises. The rather difficult question it leaves us with, is, given that Nick Clegg has shown he is willing stand up for what he feels he and his party are owed: why has it taken the man so damn long? Why has inadequate support for House of Lords reform spurred him to action as opposed to, say, the tripling of university tuition fees he once tasked himself and his party with preventing? Or the heavy-handed cuts to public services which will negatively impact some of the worst off?

Make no mistake about it – he has taken a stand when he could have sat back and let the reforms slip away and suffer what he called ‘a slow death’. In doing so he has challenged the stability of what was previously an unlikely – but at least workable – coalition. The trouble is that he’s taken a stand at a time when, frankly, nobody is particularly interested. The public are currently more preoccupied with drooling over athletes’ bodies, rather than re-examining legislative ones, and the only politician who seems to have the power to grab headlines is Boris Johnson. The Mayor of London can secure more media attention by getting stuck in on a zip-wire than the Lib Dem leader can by taking on the Prime Minister. His attack is ill-timed to put it mildly.

Can we at very least conclude that Clegg has shown he is principled enough to break rank and speak out? We can; but this is not enough, and his timing is not his only problem. He has taken a stand on what most regard as one of the least pressing of issues of the day – regardless of its place in the coalition contract. Protests pertaining to fees, cuts or the NHS may have (re)gained Clegg some left-wing kudos. House of Lords reform is simply not in the same league.

Going forward, he needs to pick his battles more carefully. This challenge has had all the timing of Paul McCartney’s opening ceremony performance and all the excitement of central London’s currently decimated high streets. If he’s going to shake things up, he needs to think bigger, better: get in time and sing in tune. There may, against all odds, be hope for him yet.

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