Freud's slip and the dangers of the unsayable

It’s been an Orwellian week in terms of any concept of free speech in the UK, with two rather different cases provoking the sort of widespread outrage that threatens once more to dampen the inclination to actually saying anything that might go against the accepted view of the (mostly) elite.

It can be all too easy, sometimes, to forget that the test of whether one believes in free speech is not allowing what you agree with, but what you don’t.

And there is a danger that, increasingly, social media in particular is rendering some things unsayable.

Welfare reform minister Lord Freud is under continuing fire days after a recording from a Conservative Party conference fringe meeting was released, appearing to show that he had described disabled workers as ‘worth less’ than their non-disabled counterparts – and therefore should not be entitled to the national minimum wage.

That’s a précis of how the story has been tackled, with calls from across politics, mainstream and social media for him to resign or be sacked, and screams about how it illustrates that ‘the nasty party’ is back.

Also during the last few days, TV personality Judy Finnigan made comments on the TV show, Loose Women, to the effect that, while all rape in unacceptable, some rapes are more serious than others.

A few more tons of metaphorical bricks were rained down on her head – and now, it seems that she and her daughter have had threats of rape made against them via Twitter.

There are a number of points here.

First, the hysterical responses disguise certain nuances and therefore deplete any proper debate.

It is not the first time that the issue of disabled workers and pay has arisen.

Back in 2011 that Philip Davies, the MP for Shipley, suggested in the House of Commonsthat disabled people should be able to opt out of the minimum wage, as thismight make employers more likely to consider them for a job.

He was, of course, roundly castigated.

But there is a certain disingenuity in the way that Freud’s latest slip has been tackled in many quarters.

It is worth pointing out that the peer was responding to a question from David Scott, a Tory councillor from Tunbridge Wells, who had said:

“The other area I’m really concerned about is obviously the disabled. I have a number of mentally damaged individuals, who to be quite frank aren’t worth the minimum wage, but want to work. And we have been trying to support them in work, but you can’t find people who are willing to pay the minimum wage.

… “And I think yes, those are marginal areas but they are critical of actually keeping people who want to work supported in that process. And it’s how do you deal with those sort of cases?”

In response, Freud noted:

“ ...You make a really good point about the disabled. Now I had not thought through, and we have not got a system for, you know, kind of going below the minimum wage.

“But we do have … you know, Universal Credit is really useful for people with the fluctuating conditions who can do some work – go up and down – because they can earn and get ... and get, you know, bolstered through Universal Credit, and they can move that amount up and down.

“Now, there is a small … there is a group, and I know exactly who you mean, where actually as you say they’re not worth the full wage and actually I’m going to go and think about that particular issue, whether there is something we can do nationally, and without distorting the whole thing, which actually if someone wants to work for £2 an hour, and it’s working can we actually …”

You can – and please do – read the fulltranscript (and listen to the audio) at Politics Home.

It’s pretty clear from reading that that Freud was thinking on his feet. This wasn’t a policy statement – but ruminating on a question.

There is no evidence that the ‘not worth it’ aspect of his comments was not an economic comment.

Let’s take issue with that by all means – discussions of economic policies and markets and goodness knows what else often flounder on a simple, basic fact: that they are abstract and exclude the ‘real world’ and real human beings.

Let’s take issue with any sort of suggestion that lowering pay even further could ever be positive. 

But frankly, the approach seen in that exchange doesn’t sound as much ‘nasty’ as just downright patronising and paternalistic.

And if anyone wants to say that ‘the nasty party’ is ‘back’, well, you’d could do rather better by looking at Iain Duncan Smith, who has repeatedly lied about matters related to welfare, and been pulled up for it by the UKStatistics Authority.

By all means disagree with the gaffe-prone Freud, who has form for cretinous remarks – and presumably, Scott, although his comments seem to have been forgotten – but screaming for resignation or the sack because you disagree with something that someone said is way over the top. 

Better, surely, to use such an opportunity to engage with the subject and, as here, ask what can meaningfully be done to help to get disabled people into work.

This case offered an opportunity to raise the issue of the abysmal treatment of disabled people by the government since 2014; the general difficulties in disabled people finding work; the very idea of seeing human beings in purely economic terms, and even a chance to raise awareness of mental illness in particular.

Indeed, one positive on the social media side was the appearance of a list of famous people who had a variety of mental illness conditions, which was an easy way to illustrate that geniuses can be disabled (in our current use of the term) too.

After all, who would question, for instance, whether Beethoven was ‘worth it’?

Similarly, in terms of Finnigan’s comments, behaving as though she has no right to voice her views is ludicrous.

In fact, it was less a view than an observation of straightforward fact.

In the context of whether Ched Evans should be able to return to plying his trade as a professional footballer after his prison sentence for rape, Finnigan observed:  “The rape – and I am not, please, by any means minimising any kind of rape – but the rape was not violent, he didn’t cause any bodily harm to the person.”

“It was unpleasant, in a hotel room I believe, and she [the victim] had far too much to drink.”

Now how can any half-way intelligent person conclude that those comments make Finnigan ‘pro-rape’, as was subsequently suggested on social media by some?

Indeed, many women would go further than Finnigan. A 2010 survey, for instance, revealed that women are less forgiving of a rape than men – and indeed, that many believe that, in some cases, the victim should bear at least partial responsibility.

Disagree with Finnigan by all means, and make the case against what she said, but hysterical shouting down of comments such as that, to the extent that a row blows up and people are threatened (however credible or not the threat is), is completely detrimental to any sensible, considered public discourse. 

As is something that, in effect, would see any political meeting turned into something that has to be scripted in order to avoid something that could be jumped on in such a manner, rather than permitting open discussion that might be far more revealing of far more things.

Be Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells (or Islington) all you want, but your disgust should not stop a discussion. 

Indeed, there’s an irony in all this that seems to have rather passed some people by. 

Making certain things unsayable was a factor in the way in which the systemic abuse and rape of vulnerable girls and young women by groups of men from particular ethnic backgrounds was allowed to go unchallenged for so long in Rochdale and Rotherham. 

That point alone should be enough to convince of the dangers of making things unsayable – no matter how unpalatable they may be.

Keep calm – and carry on being grumpy

Even if ‘50 is the new 40,’ as some claim, it’s very much the case that I am now middle aged. And with it, grumpy.

And this has been a week for grumpiness to thrive.

No, I’m not “grumpy” about children being blown to bits as they sleep; or about an increasingly vicious civil war between, on the one hand, a deeply unpleasant dictator and, on the other, rebels that include a bunch of fundamentalists who are too extreme even for Al-Qaeda to want to be associated with.

Or that Iraq is cracking up – as predicted – with some of those same nutters taking over swathes of the country; or that more nutters in Nigeria are kidnapping scores of women and girls, and killing many more hundreds of people in the name of their particular sky pixie.

Or that someone – concrete evidence appears to be somewhat lacking at present – blew a civilian plane out of the skies in the middle of their own grubby, nasty little nationalistic war, killing the 298 innocent men, women and children on board, including many scientists who have been leading the global fight against HIV/Aids.

Or that our own government, hand-in-hand with a complicit media, is continuing to push policies that increase the prevalence of poverty in the UK, including among those who are in work, while at the same time demonising the vulnerable and, in more and more cases, effectively driving them to their deaths.

Or that there is also, in the UK, increasing evidence of an Establishment cover-up of Establishment abuse of children.

These things don’t make me “grumpy”: these things make me fucking furious.

But today, let’s focus on a few causes of the “grumpy”.

It was 29 July when I was told, via Twitter, to contact Carphone Warehouse by phone.

I refused, because I want something in writing – even if only digitally so.

Let me explain.

I had just discovered that the contract for my mobile phone (the only phone I have) was up. The handset was originally from Carphone Warehouse, while the service was provided by Orange.

It had dawned on me that the contract was nearing its end – not least because, on 14 July, I took a call from a young-sounding man who told me as much, and then tried to engage me in a conversation about renewing or a new deal.

I refused to discuss it on the grounds that I was at work and that I didn’t have any paperwork with me. Not that that stopped him from trying to ignore this and push me into the conversation that he wanted to have.

Now I assumed – rather naively, it now seems – that he was from Orange, since he clearly knew about the expiration of a contract I had. To be frank, I’d forgotten that the handset was from a different company.

That was the second attempt to call me and, between then and this Monday, there were at least nine further attempted calls from that number – a Nottingham landline – that I have a record of.

Quit phoning me, you duplicitous scum!

I refused to answer those I was aware of when the phone was ringing, although I was getting more and more pissed off by what was getting damned close to harassment.

I was steeling myself to ring back and cancel my connection with them.

But before I managed that, I took a call from Carphone Warehouse on Monday morning, telling me that my contract on the handset was up and would I like to renew/upgrade etc.

My suspicions were aroused, and I verified with the caller that I now owed the company nothing – even if I kept the handset.

A short while later, over lunch, there was another of those attempts to phone me from the Nottingham number (0115 828 5045).

By this time, I was seething. So I rang the number back – to hear a recorded message telling me that it was a company called debtmastersdirect.co.uk.

This was the point at which the air turned blue.

What debt? Why the hell is a company with that name harassing me?

I looked them up online – sure enough, they claim to deal with debt, insolvency etc. I Googled further – they have a reputation for harassment, on the basis of comments from people on various forums.

And also from various forums, Carphone Warehouse has form for selling customers’ data.

On Tuesday, after fielding yet another call from Carphone Warehouse trying to push me into rapidly agreeing a new contract, I called Orange to check a few things with them.

Now, here’s where it gets a bit complicated. I have two contracts with Orange – one for the phone that I got from Carphone Warehouse, and one for a tablet that Carphone Warehouse knows nothing about.

Although the handset contract expired this week, the service contract has a few more weeks to run.

The contract on the tablet, which I bought outright, direct from the maker, expired a short while ago. Orange had missed that, as had I.

Now, given that nobody bothered to ring me about that contract, it seems unlikely that it is Orange that is being careless with my data: why would they sell or pass on details of just one contract when there’s another that’s already expired?

And the pestering has, in time terms, come much more obviously closely to the expiration of my contract for the handset with Carphone Warehouse.

Gambling is not one of my vices, but were I a betting woman, my money would be on Carphone Warehouse as the source from which debtmastersdirect got hold of my details.

Now that could mean either that the company sells or hands on data, or that its data security is poor.

I took to Twitter to complain that the company was selling data.

Companies don’t like that sort of social media coverage, so it responded quite quickly by saying: “we are very sorry to hear this Amanda, if you wish we can remove you from our callers lists?”

It wasn’t Carphone Warehouse calling, though – so how could it help to be taken off one of “our callers [sic] lists”?

Remember, it was a Nottingham number that leads directly to a company calling itself debtmastersdirect, which obviously has sidelines in trying to duplicitously bully people into new deals.

I asked Carphone Warehouse if that tweet meant that they were admitting selling data. They responded that they never, ever sell data.

They suggested phoning their customer helpline. Nope. I want this in writing.

They suggested I use the complaint forms on their website. I did, sending them a lengthy screed on Tuesday, detailing the situation and asking, politely, for an explanation.

As of right now –more than 72 hours after been emailed a serious complaint – they have made no reply. So much for customer ‘service’.

And that is what makes me grumpy. One way or another, this is a company that has decided that it has a business ethos of ‘screw the customer’, then ignore them and just hope they go away.

Orange were a little more helpful: once I’d clarified that I had no debt with them, they admitted that, while they say they do not sell data, they do sometimes share it with companies that they have business relationships with, and the very non-pushy human voice at the end of the phone told me that, “unfortunately” they have no control over that data after that.

I may have been naïve in instantly believing that that Nottingham caller was from Orange. But when did we develop into a society where we start from an assumption that businesses can simply treat us with contempt, that it is entirely acceptable for grubby little companies to harass you duplicitiously – and that’s it’s our responsibility to check all these things first?

That’s remarkably similar to throwing the onus for dealing with bullying on to the bullied, isn’t it?

Right, that’s one of this week’s gripes.

One of London's typical sights

Up next is the total lack of bins around King’s Cross station that I noticed when I was walking through just this morning.

Oh, there are plenty of places to pick up a coffee or a can of something or so on, and public space in front of the renovated station, which is just so much better than the ’70s monstrosity that it has replaced, includes a mass of places to sit – but where the hell are the bins?

It’s no wonder central London is such a shabby, scruffy mess every single day.

Having used a single incident of the IRA planting a bomb in a railway station bin as an excuse to get rid of vast numbers of bins and thus save the money required to have them emptied regularly, councils have now hived off refuse collection to private companies that do as little as possible in order to gain as much profit from the taxpayer as possible.

The other thing that’s visible with the rubbish is a clear increase in the number of rough sleepers in central London.

I was at Euston station early on Monday morning for the first time in some months. Now I have a clue about what’s happening in this country, but even I found shocking the sight of at least three people folding up bedding on the grass outside the station, while another lay cocooned in a dirty blanket. I have never seen that before.

There are frequently rough sleepers outside the old Thameslink station when I travel through in an early morning, while recently, I’ve also seen people on a mattress on Northdown Street, while earlier this week, there was someone asleep on the wall outside an office building on lower Pentonville Road.

But that’s not the stuff of grumpiness – that’s the stuff of fucking furious.

And for today, let’s stick with the grumpiness – and let’s talk about cigarettes. Or, to be rather more precise, Gauloises.

Now set aside the health issues. I smoke. And I do like a Gauloises.

Until recently, they were available in some shops in the UK. In Hackney, I could get them at a Costcutter on Hackney Road. However, since the Co-op took that over and rebranded it, the range of tobacco products has been cut – including those.

That left a shop on Marchmont Street and one opposite Borough Market. A newsagent off Euston Road found them from one of the wholesalers and would get them regularly for me – he also found that, once he had them in stock, then other customers would buy them too.

Not for Brits any more

But now nobody has them.

Yesterday, via Twitter, Imperial Tobacco – which bought the brand in 2008 – told me that: “Regrettably we took the decision to cease distributing Gauloises in the UK”.

I’ve asked (politely) why, and am awaiting an answer.

In the interim, I assume that, since there is no indication that the company is ceasing production – and it was easy enough to get them in Paris – it’s more a case of there not being ‘enough’ customers wanting them in the UK to make ‘enough’ profit.

But the wider point is that it provides yet another illustration of the reduction of choices available in many areas of life to UK consumers.

Where, for instance, do we have the sort of small, independent tobacconists that one finds in every city and every village, not just in somewhere like France, but in places like Germany too?

French newsagents fascinate me in general, with a range of magazines that goes way beyond what most places stock here. They have magazines about philosophy – on general display! And not just in Paris!

We, on the other hand, have an increasingly homogenised world, where vast corporates get to decide what we will be sold and what we will not be sold; a world where meaningful choice, via a wide range of small independents rather than vast numbers of a very small number of companies, is being continually reduced – not least if you have a limited budget.

So there you have it: three snapshots, taken over just four days, that reveal something about this lunatic asylum of a country, and what 30-plus years of greed-is-good, cut-throat, no-such-thing-as-society, screw-you, bankocracy and corporatocracy-supporting politics means in day-to-day terms.

And strangely enough, those very same political attitudes have played a substantial role in causing all the things I listed at the beginning of this post too; the things that make me rather more than merely “grumpy”.