Malevolent voices that despise our freedoms - by Philip Pullman

Are such things done on Albion's shore?

The image of this nation that haunts me most powerfully is that of the sleeping giant Albion in William Blake's prophetic books. Sleep, profound and inveterate slumber: that is the condition of Britain today.

We do not know what is happening to us. In the world outside, great events take place, great figures move and act, great matters unfold, and this nation of Albion murmurs and stirs while malevolent voices whisper in the darkness - the voices of the new laws that are silently strangling the old freedoms the nation still dreams it enjoys.

We are so fast asleep that we don't know who we are any more. Are we English? Scottish? Welsh? British? More than one of them? One but not another? Are we a Christian nation - after all we have an Established Church - or are we something post-Christian? Are we a secular state? Are we a multifaith state? Are we anything we can all agree on and feel proud of?

The new laws whisper:

You don't know who you are

You're mistaken about yourself

We know better than you do what you consist of, what labels apply to you, which facts about you are important and which are worthless

We do not believe you can be trusted to know these things, so we shall know them for you

And if we take against you, we shall remove from your possession the only proof we shall allow to be recognised

The sleeping nation dreams it has the freedom to speak its mind. It fantasizes about making tyrants cringe with the bluff bold vigour of its ancient right to express its opinions in the street. This is what the new laws say about that:

Expressing an opinion is a dangerous activity

Whatever your opinions are, we don't want to hear them

So if you threaten us or our friends with your opinions we shall treat you like the rabble you are

And we do not want to hear you arguing about it

So hold your tongue and forget about protesting

What we want from you is acquiescence

The nation dreams it is a democratic state where the laws were made by freely elected representatives who were answerable to the people. It used to be such a nation once, it dreams, so it must be that nation still. It is a sweet dream.

You are not to be trusted with laws

So we shall put ourselves out of your reach

We shall put ourselves beyond your amendment or abolition

You do not need to argue about any changes we make, or to debate them, or to send your representatives to vote against them

You do not need to hold us to account

You think you will get what you want from an inquiry?

Who do you think you are?

What sort of fools do you think we are?

The nation's dreams are troubled, sometimes; dim rumours reach our sleeping ears, rumours that all is not well in the administration of justice; but an ancient spell murmurs through our somnolence, and we remember that the courts are bound to seek the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and we turn over and sleep soundly again.

And the new laws whisper:

We do not want to hear you talking about truth

Truth is a friend of yours, not a friend of ours

We have a better friend called hearsay, who is a witness we can always rely on

We do not want to hear you talking about innocence

Innocent means guilty of things not yet done

We do not want to hear you talking about the right to silence

You need to be told what silence means: it means guilt

We do not want to hear you talking about justice

Justice is whatever we want to do to you

And nothing else

Are we conscious of being watched, as we sleep? Are we aware of an ever-open eye at the corner of every street, of a watching presence in the very keyboards we type our messages on? The new laws don't mind if we are. They don't think we care about it.

We want to watch you day and night

We think you are abject enough to feel safe when we watch you

We can see you have lost all sense of what is proper to a free people

We can see you have abandoned modesty

Some of our friends have seen to that

They have arranged for you to find modesty contemptible

In a thousand ways they have led you to think that whoever does not want to be watched must have something shameful to hide

We want you to feel that solitude is frightening and unnatural

We want you to feel that being watched is the natural state of things

One of the pleasant fantasies that consoles us in our sleep is that we are a sovereign nation, and safe within our borders. This is what the new laws say about that:

We know who our friends are

And when our friends want to have words with one of you

We shall make it easy for them to take you away to a country where you will learn that you have more fingernails than you need

It will be no use bleating that you know of no offence you have committed under British law

It is for us to know what your offence is

Angering our friends is an offence

It is inconceivable to me that a waking nation in the full consciousness of its freedom would have allowed its government to pass such laws as the Protection from Harassment Act (1997), the Crime and Disorder Act (1998), the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2000), the Terrorism Act (2000), the Criminal Justice and Police Act (2001), the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act (2001), the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Extension Act (2002), the Criminal Justice Act (2003), the Extradition Act (2003), the Anti-Social Behaviour Act (2003), the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act (2004), the Civil Contingencies Act (2004), the Prevention of Terrorism Act (2005), the Inquiries Act (2005), the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (2005), not to mention a host of pending legislation such as the Identity Cards Bill, the Coroners and Justice Bill, and the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill.

Inconceivable.

And those laws say:

Sleep, you stinking cowards

Sweating as you dream of rights and freedoms

Freedom is too hard for you

We shall decide what freedom is

Sleep, you vermin

Sleep, you scum.

Philip Pullman will deliver a keynote speech at the Convention on Modern Liberty at the Institute of Education in London tomorrow

What it's like to live in Palestine this week

Dad, when are we going to die?

About Gaza

Qalballah and Shukr have both blogged eloquently about this, and I've just watched America's only intelligent politician talking about it and other things. Well worth a look.

I want to know what we can do, though? How do we stop these so-called 'pre-emptive' strikes, as Ron Paul describes them? If an aggressor is determined to be aggressive in the face of universal opposition, if governments are determined to bankrupt their own countries, if people with great power throughout the world persist in acting in this way, what can we do? Protest? It doesn't stop them. What will?

I've read quite a bit about what's happening in Gaza and am as outraged as everyone else, but this post by 'Babs' perhaps comes closest to my thoughts on it, such as they are.

Demented.. dementors..

Jacky Fleming's "Demented" strips in the You magazine are usually brilliant, but this week's is so good that I couldn't resist scanning and posting it in a picture link to her site. I hope she won't mind.



Remember JK Rowling's dementors?



Well, for some reason this article about a "Doomsday Seed Vault" in the Arctic funded by Bill Gates, the Rockefeller family and the GMO giants (amongst others) which I've also been reading, reminds me of them.

Apparently they've been selling seed with the 'Terminator' gene to developing world farmers, leading to their financial disaster and thousands of suicides, whilst at the same time spending hundreds of millions of dollars on this project to preserve as many natural seeds as possible.



Suspicious?

I suspect the only way to ensure the freedom to harvest one's own seeds in future will be to hand-weed one's own food crops.

Complaint to BRE and Early Day Motion

This is what I sent to some home ed lists yesterday:

Please cross-post this widely.

Regarding the welfare reforms, some of us have put in a formal complaint to the Better Regulations Executive about the scope and breadth of DWP's consultation targets. It's a bit late in the day, but BRE is supposed to respond within 15 days of our email which will take us to the day before the first changes are due to be implemented (25th of this month). Ideally, we want another consultation with the most important stakeholders (individual Income Support claimants) being informed about it this time, so that they can have a say in these life-changing decisions. Letters have also gone to MPs in West Yorkshire, asking them to press for a delayed implementation date pending the result of the complaint.

If you want to help in delaying these reforms to allow for more, essential thinking and debating time, please write to your MP, asking them to press for a postponement of the first implementation date pending the outcome of our complaint to BRE. You can also ask them to sign Lynne Jones's Early Day Motion (ED 2434). If you've never done it before, writing to your MP is very quick and easy via http://www.theyworkforyou.com/. You just key in your postcode, write your message then confirm it by email. Your MP is obliged to at least read and reply to your message.

You could also make a complaint to BRE yourself, which might strengthen the call for a rethink. (Email address: regulation@berr.gsi.gov.uk). It is in keeping with their Code of Practice on Consultation (http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file47158.pdf) to expect DWP to inform all IS claimants about the consultations by post, which they have neglected to do up to press.

This is what we sent to BRE:

Dear Sirs,

We would like to draw your urgent attention to the matter of imminent key changes to the Welfare System, particularly in regard to the public consultations: In Work, Better Off (DWP, July 2007) and No One Written Off: reforming welfare to reward responsibility (DWP, July 2008).

These consultations, whilst being open to responses from all interested parties, nevertheless failed to effectively represent a significant section of primary stakeholders and a group whose lives will be directly affected if the changes take place: lone parents on Income Support.

We feel that DWP was negligent in disseminating the necessary information about the process of Welfare Reform, including the two relevant consultations, and that DWP could and should have written to every Income Support claimant to inform them of the consultations, so that they were in a position to have a say about this life-changing issue.

Lone parents on Income Support also have to attend regular Work-Focused Interviews with DWP staff at job centres and have been routinely misinformed about the process of changes, with many being told that the decisions had all been made and would definitely be executed. We do not know of any lone parent who has been told about the consultations by their Lone Parent Advisor, so DWP has failed to “be proactive in disseminating consultation documents” at least via these two glaringly obvious channels of contact with this key group of stakeholders.

We would like BRE, therefore, to urgently consider the overall validity of the aggregate responses to the two consultations in question, bearing in mind that the first phase of change is due to be implemented later this month, that an Early Day Motion has been laid down by Lynne Jones, MP (http://tinyurl.com/6ds6ew EDM 2434
SOCIAL SECURITY [LONE PARENTS AND MISCELLANEOUS AMENDMENTS] REGULATIONS 2008 - 06.11.2008) and that the Social Security Advisory Committee itself recommended that the Government does not proceed with the regulations (http://www.official-documents.gov.uk/document/cm74/7480/7480.pdf).

In conclusion, DWP has failed to notify the majority of lone parents of the two consultations pertaining to the changes and is therefore in breach of BRE’s Code of Practice on Consultation, criterion 4.

Yours faithfully,

Gill Kilner

Founder: West Yorkshire Home Educating Lone Parents (WYHELP).

NB: This is a formal complaint.

(My MP's lovely admin assistant has also kindly forwarded our BRE complaint to the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, who are responsible for the Better Regulations Executive.)

"We are people, not pit ponies" - my response to the Benefits Reform consultation (deadline: tomorrow)

Here is my response to the latest consultation on benefits reform: No one written off: reforming welfare to reward responsibility, the deadline of which is tomorrow.

I've been putting off responding because I'm very consultaion-weary at the moment, life is busy, etc., but it was important to me to put the time aside to do this because, although I think my views will be ignored, it makes me feel better to express them in the right place anyway. And once I got started, I actually enjoyed answering the questions.

No one written off: reforming welfare to reward responsibility

List of Consultation Questions

Question 1: How long should ‘work for your benefit’ last at different stages in the claim?

I feel very strongly that lone parents should not be expected to work for money at all. Children of all ages – especially children who only have one parent living with them – need the security of full-time parental availability. Ignoring this need will cause mental health issues in young people due to further fragmentation of their family lives.

Question 2: How could capacity and capability to provide full-time work experience in the community sector be provided and incentivised to produce the best employment outcomes for participants?

By making it a matter of choice, not compulsory. Forced labour is not productive labour anyway, and stay-at-home parents are doing an absolutely crucial, but vastly underrated job by being available for their children at home.

Question 3: Is full-time ‘work for your benefit’ as an alternative to a sanction of loss of benefit for repeated non-compliance with work search requirements an effective option for some jobseekers? How should it be targeted?

Neither option is a good idea in my opinion. Financially penalising people who are already trying to raise families on breadline benefits will plunge those families further into poverty, and forcing lone parents into the workplace is bad for children’s mental health and safety.

Question 4: What penalties do you think would be most effective to deter more people from committing benefit fraud?

Make the benefits system properly fair and usable. Better train your advisors to advise people well and to actually help them, instead of just threatening them. The system must be sympathetic to individual cases – this cannot be just about money and using stick and carrot measures to achieve economic aims.

You should also consult far more widely about your plans. I know many single parents on Income Support and not one has been told about this consultation by their lone parent advisor. How can you call it a public consultation when most of the people who will be directly affected don't even know about it? This is a vitally important point which needs to be addressed.

Question 5: Do you think it would be appropriate to reduce or withdraw entitlement to benefit after a first offence? How long should the sanction period be?

People who commit fraud are in need of extra help, not punishment in my opinion. There should be no sanctions, only investigation, counselling and further assistance.

Question 6: Do you agree with the proposed approach for identifying problem drug use? How should it be implemented? Do you think that everyone claiming a working-age benefit should be required to make a declaration of whether or not they use certain specified drugs?

Drug use (both legal and illegal) is a symptom of a broken society. The government’s time would be better spent trying to better understand why some people feel the need to escape from the day-to-day reality of life in the UK. This is not a problem that can ever be solved by taking the ‘strict parent’ approach.

Question 7: What elements should an integrated system of drug treatment and employment support include? Do you agree that a rehabilitation plan would help recovering drug users to manage their condition and move towards employment?

Drug addicts will only get clean when they want to, not when the government or anyone else wants them to. I don’t think any incentives will work.

Question 8: When is the right time to require ESA claimants to take a skills health check?

It should always be an option to them.

Question 9: Should ESA customers be required to attend training in order to gain the identified skills they need to enter work?

Not required, but free to do so as and when they wish.

Question 10: In view of the need to help lone parents develop the skills they need to find work, are we right to require lone parents to have a skills health check and training as a condition of receiving benefit?

Absolutely not. The first and most important job of a lone parent is that of parenting.

Question 11: Should we pilot extra benefit payments for lone parents in return for training, and if so, when the youngest child is what age?

No, you should focus on allowing them to be available for parenting if you are at all concerned about people’s long term mental health and safety.

Question 12: Are there any other circumstances where customers cannot get the skills they need to enter employment under present and planned arrangements?

It’s difficult if one is dealing with benefits staff who obviously don’t care. This situation is improving but there are still some bad apples. Tightening up the rules and regulations for claimants will only exacerbate this problem in my opinion. Better training for staff and better selection of staff is needed. Also, asking claimants for feedback about staff would seem sensible. I’m amazed you don’t do this already.

Question 13: How might we build on the foundations of the current rules so that they do not discourage unemployed people from volunteering as a deliberate back-to-work strategy, while retaining a clear focus on moving off welfare into paid employment?

I disagree with your ‘clear focus’. There is no need to have everyone in this country – even 80% - in employment and I would question the motives of those who propose such agenda.

Question 14: Do you agree that the WCA and WFHRA should be re-focused to increase work-related support?

No.

Question 15: What expectations should there be of people undertaking the personalised support we will now be offering in the Work Related Activity Group? Could this include specific job search?

No expectations. Only help if they want it.

Question 16: How can we make Access to Work more responsive to the needs of claimants with fluctuating conditions – including mental health conditions?

Primarily by making it non-compulsory. People with mental health conditions are the last people (after lone parents) you should be pushing into jobs. It would be better instead for the government to work towards developing a better understanding of the real reasons why so many UK citizens suffer from mental health conditions and to set about remedying those on a long term basis. Economy-based stick and carrot governance is not the best thing for people.

Question 17: What additional flexibilities in the system or forms of support would claimants with multiple and complex problems need to enable them to meet the new work-focused requirements proposed in this Green Paper?

The support should be non-compulsory and not based on ‘getting them off benefits’. Public money is used for many potentially questionable purposes. Using it to keep the poor, the abandoned and the sick from starvation is not one of them.

Question 18: What are the key features of an action planning approach that would best support employees and employers to take the steps for the employee to make a swifter return to work?

A swift return to work should not be the priority. We are people, not pit ponies.

Question 19: There is no Question 19.

Question 20: What approach might be suitable to assist partners of benefit claimants who can work into employment?

It would be better to allow them to choose when and if they want to work for money.

Question 21: What are the next steps in enabling disabled people, reliably and easily, to access an individual budget if they want one? Should they include legislation to give people a right to ask for a budget or will the other levers the Government has got prove sufficient? What are the safeguards that should be built in? How can this be done?

I don’t know enough about this to answer it properly.

Question 22: Is a system based on a single overarching benefit the right long-term aspiration? How could a simpler system be structured so as to meet varying needs and responsibilities?

Provide a breadline benefit, like Income Support, for all who need and want to claim it. Relax planning laws to reduce the price of land and houses, and support and enable more people to produce their own power and food, so that living is cheaper. We are more than units of economy. We should not be seen as resources to be mined. Paid employment should be an option for all who can get it, not a necessity.

Question 23: Would moving carers currently on IS onto JSA be a suitable way of helping them to access the support available to help combine caring with paid work or preparing for paid work?

Of course not. They wouldn’t be known as carers if they weren’t needed to care for someone.

Question 24: How might we reform Bereavement Benefit and IIDB to provide better support to help people adjust to their new circumstances while maintaining the work focus of the modern welfare state?

The modern welfare state shouldn’t be work focused and I would question the motives of anyone who said it should.

Question 25: Are lump sum payments a good way of meeting people’s needs? Do they give people more choice and control? Could we make more use of them?

You could certainly be providing people with help to make down payments on their homes. I’d also like to see more grants for wind turbines and solar panels to reduce people’s living expenses. Also the provision of an allotment or similar land to grow food. These measures, taken individually, will better enable our country to weather the new global economic situation.

Question 26: What information would providers need to make the Right to Bid effective? How would the evaluation process need to work to give providers confidence that their ideas would be evaluated fairly and effectively? How do we get the balance right between rewarding those who come up with new ideas and the obligation to tender projects?

If this is about employing private companies to force benefits claimants into jobs, I am strongly against the whole process. Putting profit before people is a horrendous idea, on so many levels. I think everyone knows this intrinsically.

Question 27: What would the processes around contributing to commissioning and performance management look like in a range of different partnership areas? How might they best be managed to achieve the desired outcomes?

If this is about employing private companies to force benefits claimants into jobs, I am strongly against the whole process. Putting profit before people is a horrendous idea, on so many levels. I think everyone knows this intrinsically.

Question 28: How could a link be made to the radical proposals for the pilots set out in Chapter 3, which seek to reward providers for outcomes out of the benefit savings they achieve?

If this is about employing private companies to force benefits claimants into jobs, I am strongly against the whole process. Putting profit before people is a horrendous idea, on so many levels. I think everyone knows this intrinsically.


Question 29: How effective are current monitoring and evaluation arrangements for City Strategies?

I don’t know enough about this to answer it properly.

Compulsory ID by the back door

Passports will be needed to buy mobile phones

"Everyone who buys a mobile telephone will be forced to register their identity on a national database under government plans to extend massively the powers of state surveillance.

Phone buyers would have to present a passport or other official form of identification at the point of purchase. Privacy campaigners fear it marks the latest government move to create a surveillance society."

Does this remind you of any other databases, by any chance? Like the one that collects DNA, which wasn't going to be compulsory but now just happens to include information on nearly 5 million UK citizens?

I'm trying to keep up, but so far it seems to me that if you want to avoid being on a database, you need to:

1. Not have children;
2. Never have any dealings with the police or courts;
3. Not use the NHS; and
4. Not buy a new mobile phone.

And counting.