Originally published - @ 8:57 am, Tue 16th Nov 2010
“Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”; well at least the measurement of happiness.
“The UK government is poised to start measuring people's psychological and environmental wellbeing, bidding to be among the first countries to officially monitor happiness.” – Guardian
Now of course, it would be a great deal more use if the ConDems were to focus on relieving people of the misery of loss of jobs, businesses, mortgages and the services and quality of services we enjoy, rather than deciding to measure the impact.
But the ambition for people has gone and really, the values were never really there. The focus on the individual leading to caring only for the few and not the many.
So a G20 that a year ago was agreeing $1 trillion deals to keep economies and businesses going is broken apart and nation are instead preparing work in isolation to tackle their own debts, and to hope in some way that changes in currency valuations will give each of them something of a new edge. In defiance of the latest developments in Ireland (where a bail-out now seems likely), a year on from following the IMF’s advice.
Debt has a purpose (ask anyone who takes out a mortgage). Better to keep businesses and people going (with the international co-ordination needed so that the globalised financial markets don’t undermine it). Pay the debt back when the economy truly grows again.
We’ve been here before, fighting to establish core values for the country against the 5 evils of squalor, ignorance, want, idleness and disease. The welfare state was established for all our sakes in return for the sacrifice made in the Second World War and to express a higher aim for a country than that of Fascism – to truly be in it all together. And we only paid off the financial debts for that struggle in 2007.
What can we do to get the policies reversed before the damage is done? Truly hard to envisage a change of government, because such a change means political obliteration for those in charge now.
The traditional way is public opinion expressed by voting. Happened in 1990, as the Conservatives realised what the heavy defeats in local government elections were telling them, and talked Margaret Thatcher into resigning, although the media often tell this story in the context of the Poll Tax riot. This story, and last week’s frequent refrain from quite respectable media commentators about how the Parisian suburbs don’t stand for any nonsense, doesn’t exactly help us persuade protestors that rioting is not the way forward. (And it isn’t; a fire extinguisher dropped from a height can kill.)
The response to the announcements to treble tuition fees seems to the reason for Labour achieving a small lead in the polls. (The ConDem proposals take us way beyond Alan Johnson’s original aims and scope for tuition fees. Frustrating too to see Nick Clegg, who not only signed a pledge during the General Election for no tuition fees but had designed it, so easily embrace the argument for the increases.)
The ConDems have shown some confidence up to know that they’re winning the argument. But the reductions in service are some way off. Only now are the reductions in personnel starting to be known. Voluntary groups supporting people with Alzheimer’s in Boston and Skegness are to close. Yesterday, the people of Manchester found out that 3,000 of their Police establishment – a quarter – are to be lost in 4 years.
This on the day when David Cameron was telling big business that the ConDems had cut corporation tax to help them.
The ConDems have issued an appeal to bankers to not award themselves the usual bonuses in December. But they’d taken the tax Labour levied on bonuses away.
People are going to realise that David Cameron’s mantra – we’re all in this together – is not true.
The ConDem's policy is old-fashioned (executed to a decade of stagnation in the nineteen-thirties), damaging to the services they’ve come to value, likely to prolong the failure of the private sector to recover (the prediction is a 500,000 loss in public sector jobs will lead to a loss of 500,000 in the private sector), failing in Ireland, partial (most damaging to those most in need) and likely to lead to chaos (huge movements of tenants out of London are already being envisaged).
Old-fashioned, damaging, failing, partial, chaotic.
The alternative - to aim high, keep businesses, jobs and homes going - required boldness. Hard to achieve with a such a cynical media, an expenses scandal undermining faith in political leaders, the crisis having happened under Labour’s watch and a loss of support for Labour’s then leader for reasons beyond policy and results.
Harder still to attain when there is so much anxiety and fear for the future around.
Maybe then a focus on happiness is to be welcomed. But it’s going to sound hollow.