Keep them hungry, keep them compliant

At least some people will have felt a warm glow today, as British Gas announced that its profits had been boosted by the colder weather.

But while the Centrica-owned company was busy patting itself on the back and promising nice rewards for shareholders, Anne Robinson, director of consumer policy at the price comparison website Uswitch, had a different take on the matter.

“Seven out of 10 of us actually went without heating at some point during this winter,” she commented. “Over a third of us have reported that we feel it’s actually affected the quality of our life and also our health.”

Rising energy costs is just one of the factors meaning that an increasing number of people in the UK go hungry, because they find themselves having to choose between heating and eating.

In 2011-12, foodbanks fed 128,687 people nationwide. In 2012-13, the Trussell Trust, one of the major charities behind foodbanks, anticipates that number will rise to over 230,000.

The trust itself says that rising costs of food and fuel, combined with static income, high unemployment and changes to benefits are causing more and more people to come to foodbanks for help.

“With over 250 foodbanks currently launched,” says the trust, “our goal is for every town to have one.

The first Tressell foodbank opened in 2000, while the UK Foodbank Network came into being in 2004.

According to the trust, many of the people who are seeking help are in work.

So even setting aside the vexed issue of What To Do with the feckless, idle unwashed – for which there is far less evidence than David Cameron would have you believe with his ‘three generations who’ve never worked’ routine, itself thoroughly debunked last autumn by research from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which could find no such family – we are left with the issue of many families with members in work but who work, but cannot afford the cost of living even at a basic level.

There’s plenty of other evidence for this: debt counsellors for the welfare arm of the trade union UNISON, for instance, are seeing an increase in calls and referrals.

As one of the counsellors explained to me recently, this is not people who are living it up and spending massively on luxuries.

Many are simply struggling to pay the mortgage – and then falling into the trap of taking out loans with pay-day loan sharks.

Let’s face it, the national minimum wage for an adult over the age of 21 is £6.19 an hour. If you’re lucky enough to be in full-time work, that’s £216.65 a week, gross.

Just to give you an idea of what that means, according to rentright.co.uk’s residential price index today, there is no one-bed accommodation for rent in Hackney for under £270 per week (studio flats start at £230 per week).

If you were lucky enough to be getting the Living Wage, (£7.45 in the UK, £8.55 in London) and be on 35 hours, that would mean £299.25 gross in London – so still little to actually feed and clothe yourself, never mind pay for heat, light and water or, heaven forfend, anything like a TV or a phone, after you’ve paid for a roof over your head.

So it’s hardly a shock when, with rising fuel bills (British Gas raised their costs by 6% last autumn, remember) increasing numbers of people are finding themselves in serious difficulty.

Yet the idea has lovingly been nurtured by substantial elements of the UK media that even the working poor are somehow ‘undeserving’ – or at least guilty of nicking the hard-earned money of the better-off via benefits paid for by the tax.

It’s classic divide and rule, and a return to the Victorian belief that the poor are in that state because they somehow deserve it.

Oh, we might have grown past the idea that sin was the reason anyone was in poverty in the first place, but little else seems to have changed.

Now since this started with British Gas and increased profits, let’s, for the sake of clarity, stress that I am not opposed to profits.

But the search for ever-increasing profit, and the need to appease the City on growth (and arguably the agencies who decide whether you’re getting an AAA battery or just an AA one) is also the reason for the horsemeat scandal that continues to rumble on and on, encompassing ever more of Europe.

Lengthened supply chains increase the number of companies that are involved and need to make a profit.

Unless the retailer at the end of that chain then hikes the price to the customer, someone is either going to have to see their profits reduced – or find other ways of maintaining profit margins.

Here’s a non-food example. London’s Victorian sewers are currently being replaced. One of the main contractors is Murphy, a major civil engineering company. But look at the vans if you see one: ‘working in partnership with Optimise for Thames Water’.

So, whereas in the bad old days of nationalised utilities, it would gave been one company doing the job, now it’s three. With three lots of staff and three lots of shareholders to pay.

And this is efficient?

It really isn’t rocket science to see that, when you cut through the crap, this is at the root of what has happened with all those burgers and meatballs and cottage pies.

It’s like the dodgy tobacco from China that’s full of the sweepings of the floor, and probably some even less pleasant things. Or the ripped-off vodka.

It’s all about selling something cheap – and still making a profit.

There’s a slight difference in that the horsemeat in various products may not be harmful – although there are questions about the presence of veterinary drug ‘bute’, which may have illegally entered the food chain.

But one aspect of this that is particularly distasteful, though, is that the entire business highlights the exploitation of the working poor. It’s no coincidence that the scandal has centred on ‘economy’ and ‘value’ ranges.

If the CEO of Centrica, for instance, eats horse, then it’s likely to be a piece of prime meat and with knowledge.

It all raises questions about the food chain, about sustainability and about localism – even if secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs Owen Paterson was trying to use a speech at the National Farmers’ Union conference today to push the case for GM, despite it’s own inglorious record.

Still, that might help secure him a job with Monsanto if his political career ever ends, and help keep him from the doors of a foodbank.

In Germany, development minister Dirk Niebel has suggested that horsemeat that has been mislabelled as beef should be distributed to the poor.

Which raises an interesting point. It’s pretty dire reading of all these products being withdrawn and, presumably, destroyed. This is, for the most part – on the basis of what we know – safe to eat.

Now a policy of ‘giving it to the poor’ is just downright patronising and paternalistic, but why not sell it at a substantial knockdown, relabeled as containing (or possibly containing) horsemeat, and let customers decide for themselves?

It avoids vast amounts of wasted meat – something that is surely close to criminal – gives people the option of buying a very low-priced product and even means that the retailers get something back on the product instead of nothing.

But the hysteria around the issue – talk of products being ‘contaminated’ is but one illustration – is a block to coherent thinking like this. Although it does help to cloud the real issues.

And in the meantime, it's very 'Big Society' that organisations such as the Trussell Trust are (thankfully) helping to keep people going.

However, it's worth noting that this is yet one more illustration of the hypocrisy of a government that has sought to claim that 'we are all in this together'.

Let's be clear. We are not 'remotely 'all in this together'. Because unfortunately, the likes of David Cameron and Nick Clegg and George Osborne are not remotely likely to need a foodbank any time soon.

But crucially, if we have arrived at a point where, even in one of the richest countries in the world, working people cannot afford to live without charity, then we need a massive rethink.

And we need to start seriously considering a way of organising society differently.

We don’t need to abandon profit. But we do need to remember that life must come first. And we do need to think about that life in a sustainable and people – and planet – friendly way.

And perhaps the start would be combating the notion that having people in the UK, in the 21^st century, seeking help from foodbanks is even remotely acceptable.

Let the fighting begin

It took less than a week for Euro 2012 to be marred by scenes of fans fighting.

Amazingly, they weren’t English. In this case, they were Polish and Russian, who seem to have a number of fans hellbent on competing for the title of biggest yobs of the tournament.

We’d already had more than one incident of Poles directing monkey chants at black players, while stewards had been attacked by Russians.

So it was probably only a matter of time until they decided to have a little go at each other.

What a change it made!

To be fair, it’s not England fans at the matches who tend to go in for thuggish behaviour, but usually people some considerable way a way from the actual football action.

The last occasion I remember when that was not the case was in 1995, at Lansdowne Road in Ireland, when a friendly between the Republic and England was targeted by the neo-Nazi Combat 18, in conjunction with the Chelsea Headhunters.

In that case, they didn’t care who they injured – England fans were hurt as well as Irish (an innocent English fan was speared by flying wood; an elderly Irishman died of a heart attack) – and ‘calling cards’ were left to make it quite clear as to the political nature of the riot.

It was hardly surprising, then that before Euro ’96, there were fears of violence at matches – in particular, rumours were doing the rounds of far-right thugs intending to start a scrap at Villa Park, during the Scotland-Netherlands clash.

That turned out to be a boring match – but wonderfully good-humoured. As, indeed, was every match I attended – 13 of the 31.

The atmosphere at Wembley was generally good – when England beat the Netherlands 4-1 (a shock result) it was like a big party, with the soundtrack song of that summer, Three Lions on a Shirt, being sing gustily for ages afterwards.

Travelling up and down the country to matches, it was a delight to see how English football fans, attending matches involving teams other than their own, acted as super hosts to our guests in the country.

When trouble did start, it was miles away from the actual football: in Trafalgar Square, as England went out on penalties to Germany in the semi-final.

Mind, the imbeciles in question didn’t even wait for the final result before starting a fight – which probably tells you something of their real motivation.

And then there was the murder of a Russian student miles away from London, with police saying they thought he’d been targeted by someone ‘thinking’ he was German.

When Churchill talked of ‘fighting them on the beaches’, he probably wasn’t thinking of a bunch of boozed-up idiots smashing up a holiday resort in Portugal during the 2004 tournament.

And some of the incidents that happened back in England itself were even worse, with a Portuguese community centre being targeted while it was full of women and children.

But the overwhelming majority of fans don’t behave in anything like such a way. And the same goes for other countries where there have been histories of football-related violence. England is most certainly not alone.

When violence does break out, though, there seem to be – at the very simplest level – two basic types.

• The ‘I ♥ fighting’ brigade, sometimes fueled by beer and provided with the ‘excuse’ by the tribalism of football.

• The nationalists and right-wing extremists who see it as war by another means to prove their and their country’s innate superiority.

Obviously, there’s a bit of overlapping goes on.

And to clarify: I’m not talking about patriotism – love of one’s country – but a belief that one’s country (and therefore oneself) are inherently better than anyone else.

Funnily enough, deputy prime minister and Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg was on the subject of extremism recently, pleading with European electorates not to do anything ‘silly’, by voting in extremists.

Well, Nicky boy, politicians like you who help to drive people to extremes. How is austerity affecting you and yours – felt the impact of rising bus fares yet?

The solution to the latter is largely political.

The solution to the former, however, is different.

Now in the case of Britain, we’ve been a boozy, brawling bunch for centuries – even the women. No matter what some commentators pretend, it’s not new.

When the Channel 4 programme, Time Team, did an excavation of a Blitz-hit area near where I live, they found knuckle dusters and goodness knows what else in the buried remains of old houses.

Read some Dickens. Look at some Hogarth. Even Virginia Woolf, in the 1920s novel, Mrs Dalloway, describes a character passing a pub on Tottenham Court Road where there are drunken women brawling outside.

Generally speaking, if people voluntarily want to beat seven shades of shit out of each other, then why not let them? Well, certainly if they’re legally adults.

The problem is if innocent people get caught up in it. And there’s also the small matter of who picks up the pieces.

In terms of the former, it’s easier now that most fighting doesn’t occur anywhere near actual stadiums. But if it does, it can be difficult to get out of the way.

The nearest I’ve come to getting caught up in anything – and indeed even seeing anything, in over 30 years of going to football from non-league level to the Euro ’96 final – was at Manchester City a couple of years ago, when the visitors were Birmingham, and the Birmingham Zulus decided to celebrate their 25th anniversary by starting a riot.

It spilled right out into the carpark and onto the main road, where I found myself skirting a line of police with batons and dogs.

Now I wasn’t scared, but I saw and heard people who were, including elderly women and small children. Football is not just for men – or even just for the few men who actually fancy a fight.

And in the north of England particularly, women have followed the game for a long time, just as they have with Rugby League.

Of course, in terms of the latter point, then given the current privatisation of so much of the public services that do most of the picking up the pieces, it’ll be more profit for private companies.

Except where, as in the case of the NHS, such services haven’t been cherry-picked by the private healthcare providers.

As only a slight aside: we fill people up with crap food and drink, stuffed with chemicals, and wonder that they get a bit aggressive. Why?

Given that it’s generally accepted that children’s behaviour can be negatively impacted by chemicals in food – preservatives etc. Given the amount of chemicals in much of the beer (and ‘fast food’) consumed here, why on earth are we surprised at levels of anti-social behaviour in town centres at the weekends in particular?

Mind, it doesn’t just need bad beer and crap food. As proven by my own reaction to arrogant, fuckwitted cyclists on the damned pavements. I need neither cheap beer nor crap food to want to smash up their shitty bikes.

So perhaps we could have little corrals outside football stadia or in town centres for those who want to fight to be able to do so? Participants could sign disclaimers first – and prove that they have additional insurance to cover any health care required.

While we’re at it, we could also have some standing areas in stadia for those who want to stand – done properly, it is safe, as shown in the German Bundesliga, for instance.

But back to the brawling. At least until England go out of the current tournament on penalties in the quarter finals, doesn’t it make a nice change to be able to finger point at naughty people from other nations?