Unsustainable Burdens

Communitarian citizenship, food banks, and the end of the social state

'Communitarian citizenship'

Replacing the social state with 'public duties and social responsibilities' ...

... the European Union is navigating towards what can best be described as a ‘neoliberal communitarian’ citizenship model ... [which] ... implies a fusion of neoliberalism with a communitarian element that attempts to countervail the most harmful effects of neoliberal restructuring not by reinvigorating the Keynesian welfare state but through attempting to ‘activate the state’ in strengthening (private) community networks ...

As a model of citizenship, neoliberal communitarianism signifies a movement away from the social rights of citizenship (considered to hamper global competitiveness), towards an emphasis on providing opportunities for skill upgrading and life-long learning so that citizens will be ‘willing to accept more public duties and social responsibilities’.

The citizens’ role is thus contained within the mantra of ‘no rights without responsibilities’ forming the basis of its citizenship conception, as opposed to '"unconditional" social citizenship entitlements' of social democracy which advocate 'positive welfare' intervention by a ‘social investment state’...   [SBH]

Record breaking 5 new foodbanks in 5 days!

In which the 'reserve army' meets 'communitarian citizenship' ...

This week we've launched 5 new foodbanks in 5 days!

In the past week media ranging from BBC Radio 4's Today Programme to Bloomberg have reported the increased need for foodbanks and we're working hard to keep up with demand.

To maintain this accelerated growth we urgently need your help ...

Yesterday a social worker in Kingston-upon-Thames emailed us asking how she could get emergency food for her clients struggling to afford food.

Just five days ago we would've had to reply saying that there was no foodbank near her; instead we could tell her that this week The Community Church, Surbiton, has signed up to open 'Kingston foodbank'.

The growth of the foodbank network has been phenomenal: this year we've launched a new foodbank every week, but in the last five days we've launched five new foodbanks!

As thousands of the UK's poorest are hit by rising food prices, the need for more foodbanks is greater than ever.

Last week Bournemouth Mum, Jenni, told BBC Radio 4 that she'd cried herself to sleep with hunger after she went without food to feed her children.

She is not alone.

Last week Tower Hamlets foodbank gave emergency food to a client who had collapsed due to lack of food.

There are thousands of people living in places with no foodbank, thousands who will go hungry tonight.

Will you help us to reach our goal of a foodbank in every town?

Trusssell Trust email, 24 June 2011

Cracking down on Benefit Claimants

"Thousands of the UK's poorest" are also hit by the winding down of the social state, constant attacks by the corporate media on 'scroungers' and 'workshy layabouts' and this sort of 'commmunitarian citizenship' from a Guardian blogger:

JamesGaunt
23 June 2011 8:44AM

1) No welfare unless you take up part time work helping the local community.

2) Total welfare benefits capped at the national average pay

3) No welfare for any more than 2 children

4) Welfare immediately withdrawn if a job offer is refused

5) All cash welfare payments issued via debit cards that cannot be accepted as payment for alcohol   Gdn

You can also find similarly motivated material on the Benefit Fraud blogspot.

A blog from three years ago on alcoholism is emblematic:

Glugging & shooting up on incapacity benefit

As we mentioned last week, seventy people in south Essex alone give alcoholism as their main reason why they claim benefits for people out of work.

Forty people in Southend list their dependency on drink as the predominant medical condition leading them to claim incapacity benefit and disability living allowance.

This could potentially cost the taxpayer more than £300,000 a year in south Essex alone.

Now we learn that over 51,000 people classed as drug addicts are receiving incapacity benefits worth an estimated £40million a year, a figure that's rising each year.

The government pretends that only £10m of incapacity benefit is claimed fraudulently - a mere 0.1% of the total paid out.

Clearly a fraudulent claim in itself.

Sadly, alcoholism is an illness.

I know from personal experience of living with an alcoholic that it's not possible to force treatment: they have to want to be treated.

Alcoholics are also chronic liars, and will assure you they can give up "any time I want", as one said to me.

Whether, and to what extent, alcoholics should have their benefit stopped as a punishment is a moot point. Presumably they would take to theft and end up inside where they would cost the taxpayer even more.

There's also the matter of employability. Some alcoholics are employable, some are not.

I know of one case where an alcoholic was put on a back-to-work programme.

He ended up in an office on his own, and was withdrawn from the course soon afterwards.

(The 'Benefit Fraud blogspot' website seems not have been updated since 2009, btw.)

More recently there has been an attack on benefit fraud in Rochdale. I cannot find the website concerned, which lists excuses people give for 'forgetting' to tell the DSS about changes in their circumstances, but it was the assertion made about the numbers claiming incapacity benefit that concerned me.

Rochdale is claimed to be the biggest unemployment blackspot in the country, and while I cannot find any confirmation of this, the June 2011 unemployment figure for the town is 7,138

Jerry Stokes, Chief Executive of Work Solutions said:

“Today’s national labour market statistics will be welcomed by the Government as they show a fall in unemployment.

It is disappointing that this trend is not reflected in the North West, with data showing that unemployment is increasing and the number of people in work is falling.

“Our data suggesting there has been healthy private sector job creation in manufacturing and the professional services sector across Greater Manchester, which has led to the claimant count for Greater Manchester falling by 142 in May.

"This would have been stronger had we not started to see the impact of public sector losses and the Government’s policy of moving people to Jobseeker’s Allowance from other benefits.

“We should take this as positive news that business confidence is holding up at present and there are jobs out there; but regional disparities exist and it will be easier for some rather than others to find work.”

Hidden in that statement is the probablity that incapacity claimants have been switched to Job Seeker's Allowance, another controversial issue worth a page in itself.

The relationship between unemployment and mental illness is one which the neoliberals - of all three parties - are anxious to play down.

Alcoholism is a condition which can de seen; conditions like anxiety and depression reveal themselves slowly, are not simple to diagnose, and do not necessarily stop sufferers going out and about, so they are fair game for the likes of Benefit Fraud blogspot, and the corporate media in general.

Added to which the rampant prejudice against 'nutters' can render them unemployable through no fault of their own.

The indications are the government's latest 'crackdown' on the mentally ill is not medically based.

These two conflicting reports from the Guardian summarise the controversy:

Three-quarters of sickness benefit claimants fit to work

Fitness for work test not fit for purpose

The CAB's report on the 'work test' confirms the line of travel:

Since ESA was introduced, CAB advisers across England and Wales have been reporting high numbers of seriously ill and disabled people being found ‘fit for work’ under the new Work Capability Assessment.

Examples of CAB clients in this situation include people in the advanced stages of Parkinson’s Disease and Multiple Sclerosis, people with severe mental illness, and some who are dealing with acute short-term health problems, such as awaiting open heart surgery...    CAB

The Work Test is solely about cutting the costs of welfare.

The Myth of Full Employment

Governments since 1979 no longer pursue full employment as state policy.

As a result of the recession caused by Brown's de-regulation, and bankers' greed, the UK now has an official unemployment figure of 2.43 million [ONS], and a vacancy figure of 463,000 vacancies. [ONS].

The ONS do not report vacancy figures every month: this one dates from February, so is almost certainly out of date.

However, the gap between the two figures confirms that the problems faced by job seekers are more serious than the corporate press - and the Tory Party - might have you believe.

These may well be compounded if/when a recovery starts, as the amount of part-time working suggests that a recovery - at least in its stages - may well be jobless:

The number of employees and self-employed people working part-time because they could not find a full-time job increased by 46,000 on the quarter to reach 1.21 million, the highest figure since comparable records began in 1992.    [ONS]

In this context, and recalling Sandy Brian Hager's 'communitarian citizenship', it's clear that the 'Big Society' is the answer to the neoliberal's need to shrink the tax-take.

The Big Society is about charities - like the Trussell Trust - taking over from the DHSS.

So, the conundrum posed to donators to charities - like the Trussell Trust - is "am I conniving with the neoliberals' destruction of the social state?".

The hard left will answer with an unequivocal 'yes', claiming that when 'do-gooders' give to charity they are putting off the revolution, which will only come about when conditions are so bad that people get onto the streets.

The alternative - a Citizens' Income as of right to anyone who is unemployed - would run up against the same problem as the Minimum Wage: it would have to be kept low enough to get the support of taxpayers conditioned to see the unemployed - like the old, and the sick - as a financial burden only, empathy and altruism having been abolished by the new social Darwinism, dressed up by Ayn Rand as a bogus 'philosophy' called Objectivism

The question, then, is brutally simple: will a 'society' of Objectivists be 'willing to accept more public duties and social responsibilities', such as funding food banks for 'losers'?

The answer is almost certainly no!

Sainsbury's shoppers asked to donate food ...

America, land of the free to go hungry

Benefit cuts: single mothers are the biggest losers

Benefit fraud

1%: the real extent of benefit fraud

Foodbanks are booming

Governmentality

How European Elites Lost a Generation

No such thing as society

Radical Pedagogy

Welfare