These Foolish Things: They call it efficiency (1996)

The Scavenger column from the October 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

They call it efficiency

Railtrack, the owner of the track the country's trains run on, is busily getting into the privatised spirit by closing 62 signal boxes and axing 217 jobs. The jobs will go through natural wastage, as if that does not really count. Naturally the company is anxious to assure travellers that the cuts will not affect safety, implying that the surplus boxes were merely ornaments among the trackside furniture. Having fewer signal boxes, we are told, will give signalmen ‘a broader picture of the traffic on their line’. Financial Mail on Sunday, 4 August.

We call it murder

The collision on Thursday killed one woman passenger and injured 68 others . . . Despite concerns among senior staff, neither BR nor the network’s current owner, Railtrack, attempted to deal with the risk at the track junction on the line between London and Milton Keynes . . . Despite concerns, the potential risk was increased when the signalling was updated to a more sophisticated computer- controlled system four years ago .. . The enquiry into the Clapham rail disaster in December 1988, which killed 35, recommended the [Automatic Train Protection] device be installed all trains. But the scheme was shelved on cost grounds. Mail on Sunday, 11 August.

You pays your money . . .

One in eight buses and coaches examined by the Vehicle Inspectorate in roadside checks over the past year were defective. Some were so dangerous they were impounded, while in other cases the operators were given deadlines for repairs. Figures released by the Vehicle Inspectorate reveal an increase of 600 faulty buses and coaches over the year, bringing the annual nation-wide total to 4,338. Mail on Sunday, 4 August.

Real education!

Such is the importance of taking responsibility for one’s own financial future that the [Weinberg Committee) report is asking the government to consider making personal finance a core subject on the National Curriculum. Besides the stock market, Sir Mark envisages teaching in the use of credit cards, handling debt and using a bank account. This, the committee argues, is the only way of educating youngsters to cope with the steady whittling away of the welfare state.

Lacking education?

Jailing fine defaulters:

• Unpaid fines [in Britain) total £200 million, £31 million is written off each year.
• In 1994, 22,469 men and 1,454 women were jailed for non-payment—the highest number for ten years and accounting for more than a quarter of all new prison receptions. Each was inside for an average of seven days.
• Three quarters are unemployed and half had other outstanding debts, usually electricity, gas, telephone or council, tax. Two thirds had been in prison before.
• Most men had been convicted of motoring offences. A third of the women had been convicted of prostitution. Guardian, 11 July.

That’s the spirit!

“As managing director at Tarmac during the 1980s I used to dream about doing my competitors in. And as MD of British Telecom I dreamed of doing Bryan Carlsberg in. I will not describe the methods used.” Graeme Odgers, Chairman of Monopolies and Mergers Commission.

The Scavenger

Proper Gander: Splashing out on drip (2023)

The Proper Gander column from the July 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Wearing designer clothing and flashy accessories to show off wealth is nothing new; it’s the particular styles and favoured brands which come and go, along with the terminology used. The word ‘bling’ became as unfashionable as neon legwarmers once it picked up connotations of tackiness. Since around 2018, ‘drip’ has steadily come into vogue, meaning blatantly fashionable, proven only by owning eye-wateringly expensive clothes, shoes, jewellery or watches of the right brands. The term comes from ‘dripping’ with money, enough to fork out £5,500 on a Chanel bag, for example.

Presenter and comedian David Whitely, also known as Sideman, explores the ‘drip’ lifestyle in a documentary shown as part of Channel 4’s Untold strand. Addicted to Drip is aimed at viewers aged 16 to 34, those most likely to be attracted to the trend. The research liberally quoted throughout the show is from a study of 2,000 people in that age range carried out by financial coaching company Claro Wellbeing.

Addicted To Drip follows a usual template for documentaries, starting with a rapid round of clips from the show ahead, patronisingly expecting people not to stay tuned in unless they already know what they’ll be watching. The rest of the programme keeps to the familiar pattern of the presenter meeting people affected, serious points made by experts and occasional bouts of worrying stats. The presenter is expected to go on a personal journey while making a documentary like this, which is just Whitely finding out whether he becomes inclined towards a drip-fed lifestyle and deciding ‘no’.

One of the people Whitely talks with is Samantha, who says she tried ‘to fill some kind of void’ after bereavements with spending sprees on clothes and accessories using her inheritance money. When she reached the point of having thousands of pounds worth of designer gear but not enough funds to buy a train ticket, she came to believe she was wasting money and her life. Others have got into debt in order to buy into drip: one in ten young people are taking out credit at least monthly to fuel their spending on designer brands. Not all of the under-35s surveyed would have heard of the term ‘drip’, but regardless, almost half are in debt from purchasing luxury goods, and almost a third have less than £100 in savings. The kind of pressure this can involve causes problems beyond the fiscal. Although being in debt has been normalised, especially since prices shot up, 58 percent feel stressed about their financial situation. For some, the effects are worse: Whitely meets fashion influencer Michelle, whose mental health declined from trying to live up to the lifestyle to the extent of ending up in hospital.

Whitely also speaks with some of those who have done well for themselves financially through drip. Drew dropped out of studying medicine, realising he could make more money building up his business as an influencer with his own clothing brand. ‘Godfather of Drip’ Chiefer has a well-established and lucrative business selling jewellery to celebs. He says that most people who are into drip weren’t born into wealth, and wear designer clothes now because they weren’t able to have them when they were growing up. Being motivated to have an affluent lifestyle by wanting to escape from past hardship seems to be one of the characteristics of drip.

Drip-friendly brands tend to be pitched at younger people, especially those still living with their parents and who don’t have the financial commitments which come with having children. Once a drip product is launched, much of its promotion is put together and spread by its own customers, which is a capitalist’s dream come true. Those living the drip life market themselves and what they’re wearing through social media, aiming for an image which will be popular enough to bring in enough of an income.

The up-front role of omnipresent smartphones is what makes the drip lifestyle different to previous niche wealth-based groups, such as ‘sloanes’. As Stacey Lowman of Claro Wellbeing tells us, there’s a ‘perfect storm’ of social media, advertising strategies and online banking these days. Technology has been shaped to pair up products with customers, so that their money can easily move, largely upwards, with just a few taps on a screen. Some people have become rich and happy through this, others have suffered both financially and emotionally, as shown on Addicted To Drip.

Wanting to have nice things isn’t the issue in itself; problems lie with what drives this. In capitalism, ‘nice things’ get reduced to a series of wealth-related values. The people interviewed by Whitely may be bashful about how much they’ve spent on togs and trinkets, but the exorbitant prices are themselves a selling point, weirdly. Everything else in the process can also be boiled down to a monetary amount, from whatever wages those who make the commodities receive, to the spending power of customers following a social media influencer, to, ultimately, the amount of profit made by those at the top of the food chain. For them, the money’s coming in more like a flood than a drip.

Mike Foster

Voice From The Back: The limits of reform (2004)

The Voice From The Back Column from the May 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

The limits of reform

“The minimum wage was hailed as one of the great achievements of New Labour. But five years after it was introduced more than 200,000 people in Britain are still on illegally low rates of pay . . . Unions and low-pay campaigners say hundreds of companies are still flouting the law, and not one has been prosecuted by the Inland Revenue since the minimum wage was introduced. Since 1997, the IR has identified £15m in arrears of minimum wages which should have been paid to workers” Independent (3 April).

Humanity and hypocrisy

Amidst all the controversy about the President Bush’s  National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice and her role in the Iraq invasion one interesting fact emerged. “And although she insists that the Presidential hopeful she agreed to tutor in foreign affairs has brought as much, if not more, to their partnership, the foreign policies of the Bush presidency throughout its international crises have all borne the stamp of the Rice credo. It is a world view that emerged from her Stanford Cold War studies, which she articulated most clearly in an essay on foreign affairs in 2000. Then Rice insisted the guiding principle of America in the world should be the balance of power and the national interest, not humanitarian interventions – a somewhat cold-hearted formulation to which Bush added that the use of that power should have a moral dimension that would encourage the spread of American-style democracy” Observer (4 April). We can safely ignore that piece of political flannel by Bush. He, like every statesman carries out the policies that he thinks will be most beneficial to his national capitalist class. Whatever else she may be, in her 2000 essay she was being a lot more honest than the president. 

Charity boom

There is one industry that continues to grow in Britain today – the Charity Industry. In 1991 there were 98,000 charities registered in Britain, today there are 153,000. The number of paid charity workers is now 569,000. Figures from the National Council of Voluntary Organisations, quoted in the Observer Magazine (4 April). When one considers the legion of unpaid charity workers that pursue you from door-to-door to shopping centres it can be seen that this is truly a major industry. But if workers are supposed to be getting better off, why does capitalism need more charities?

Conspicuous consumption

Here is a tale to anger all those workers who are homeless or inadequately housed. “One of the richest foreign tycoons living in Britain has lavished £70m on a central London home – a world record for a house purchase. Lakshmi Mittal, whose links with Tony Blair sparked a cash-for-favours row, exchanged contracts earlier this month. He plans to move his family into the mansion, which has 12 bedrooms but is 55 times bigger than the average house and has garage space for 20 cars” Sunday Times (11 April).  This is the reality of capitalism – they own everything and we own next to nothing.  

Mother’s little helpers

The quiet desperation that is the lot of many working class women is summed up in the following report. “More than half of British women have taken some form of anti-depressant, according to a survey by Prima magazine. It showed 56 percent had taken prescribed anti-depressants or homeopathic alternatives. Many women were stressed, overstretched and generally unhappy. Half of the women questioned cited problems at work. The same proportion wanted to live somewhere else. Money appeared to be more important than physical appearance, with 86 percent saying they would rather win the lottery than be a size 10 for the rest of their lives. One in four said money was their biggest worry” Guardian (15 April). Money and working for wages seems to be bugging everyone – let’s get rid of the social system that makes this misery.

Live now, pay later

According to Datamonitor, a financial information company, credit card debt has reached a new high in Britain. “Its report charts an increase of 59 percent in average balances outstanding in the UK, from an average of £719 per adult in 1999 to £1,140 in 2003. Credit card balances in the UK amounted to £53.5bn at the end of 2003 – up from £33.1bn at the end of 1999, an increase of 62 percent” Herald (15 April). Datamonitor forecasts that this debt will continue to grow and look upon this growth as just a modern way of buying things. “However, Citizen’s Advice Scotland said that credit card debt was as much a debt of poverty as a tool of financial management.“ ‘This research suggests that some people will never be able to repay the substantial sums they owe, due to the sheer scale of debt, their age, and the unlikelihood of any change in their financial circumstances,’ said Kaliani Lyle, CAS chief executive.” So whatever happened to all those defenders of capitalism who had ideas about the working class getting steadily less poor? Perhaps they are now employed by credit companies Capitalism is an adaptable system.

Voice From The Back: Poverty and Wealth (2011)

The Voice From The Back Column from the February 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Poverty and Wealth

American patriots like misguided patriots elsewhere in the world are fond of holding up “their” country as a paragon of fairness and equality, but where is the equality in the following figures quoted by the ultra patriotic CNN? “The richest 1% of U.S. households had a net worth 225 times greater than that of the average American household in 2009, according to analysis conducted by the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank. That’s up from the previous record of 190 times greater, which was set in 2004” (CNN Money.com, 23 December). The truth is that the USA like every other country in capitalism has a wide gap between the haves and the have-nots.

Poverty and Ill-Health

It is often claimed by supporters of the NHS that while poor people may live in sub-standard housing and experience economic insecurity they have at least access to excellent medical care, but this is a complete fallacy. “Maternity services are close to breaking point and care for mothers is worsening, the UK’s leading midwife warns in a dramatic plea over the declining state of childbirth on the NHS. Labour wards are struggling to give women the proper quality of care under the ‘relentless’ pressure of a record birth rate, staff shortages and increasingly complex births, says Cathy Warwick, general secretary of the Royal College of Midwives” (Observer, 2 January) So you are exploited inside capitalism but at least you were born unlike some members of the working class that were even denied that by capitalism’s drive to cheapen production – and even reproduction.

Poverty and Sex

Every Hollywood romantic screenplay and lots of popular songs depict the magic of love but for many members of the working class the reality is much more sordid. “A fifth of homeless people have committed ‘imprisonable offences’ to spend a night in the cells and more than a quarter of women rough sleepers took an ‘unwanted sexual partner’ to escape their plight, new research out today shows. A survey of more than 400 rough sleepers by Sheffield Hallam University reveals the desperate steps taken by the homeless to find shelter…Unwanted sex has become a way out of homelessness for many. One in seven men and 28% of women had spent a night or longer with an unwanted sexual partner to ‘accommodate themselves’” (Guardian, 23 December). The reality behind the Hollywood fantasy and the pop song magic is that poverty destroys even the best of human aspirations. It is not the sort of thing Frank Sinatra would sing about – is it?

Poverty and Credit Cards

One of the jibes often thrown at socialists is that the concept of world socialism is an idea that has been outgrown by the 21st century. We are constantly being told that we live in a new modern society where far from suffering the poverty of the 19th century members of the working class now have bank accounts, credit cards and mortgages. This rosy portrayal is hardly backed up by recent figures released by the charity Shelter. “Nearly one in ten of those in private rented accommodation used their credit card to cover the housing bill in the year August 2010, while about 8 per cent of mortgage borrowers did the same, the housing charity said. In many cases, residents struggling to make ends meet have withdrawn cash from their card to pay housing costs, pushing them deeper into debt” (Times, 6 January). Charity claim that two million now use their cards to pay their housing costs. This is hardly the new poverty-free society that its supporters claim.

It's Not Cricket

As children if we happened to be born in England we were taught about “sizzling sixes over the tuck shop roof” and nonsense about “play up play up for England chaps” and other such foolishnesses about cricket. If you happened to watch the England v. Australia cricket matches on TV you may have seem grown-up children still indulging in that nonsense. They call themselves “the Barmy Army” and who are we to argue with that adjective? Behind the worthwhile sporting endeavours of all the cricketers concerned lurks the usual sordid commercialism of capitalism. “This week, the England and Wales Cricket Board will try to capitalise on the first Ashes victory in Australia for 24 years by auctioning the rights to sponsor home Test matches from 2012. It is talking to a number of potential replacements for the current sponsor, npower, in the hope of netting up to £5m, 25% more than the previous deal” (Observer, 9 January). You may have seen it as a great 3-1 victory – they saw it as a great commercial opportunity. That is capitalism for you.

Debt is a four-letter word (1990)

From the December 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a speech which did not dominate the discussion in pubs and work canteens the Governor of the Bank of England recently revealed how anxious and angry he is about the state of the nation.

"Some people", he moaned, "are undoubtedly in difficult situations . . . they feel vulnerable and confused . . . The distress suffered by individuals and their families is obviously a matter of concern for all of us . . ." He was not talking about impoverished bankers with their begging bowls obstructing the free passage in the City of London nor about pathetic landowners developing claustrophobic tendencies when they are shut up in their stately homes with only a few thousand acres around them. What stimulates the anxiety of the Governor is the growth of what he calls consumer credit, but which others might call living on tick, which he says has doubled over the last ten years:

  Thrift has gone out of fashion. Indeed the all-to-prevalent outlook on life has become I want it, and I want it now.

These sentiments would have been well received in Downing Street, by a prime minister who has such fond memories of her father's dour parsimony and whose professed ambition is to run British capitalism like a thrifty housewife who never gets in debt. The only snag is that the credit boom has happened while the thrifty housewife has been in charge, even if the Chancellor who did so much to help her is now increasingly denounced as a reckless wastrel. It is not new for a moral issue to be made of debt: this governments contribution to this particular piece of hypocrisy has been to link it with what it has called the dependency culture—of single mothers passing their responsibilities on to the state, of scroungers battening on to a naively generous Department of Social Security, of hypochondriacs absorbing almost the entire resources of the National Health Service.

Tally men and credit cards

It is not convenient to this theory that people who rely on earning a wage for their living can hardly avoid getting into debt and that it has been like this for a long time. A lot of today's consumer credit would once have been supplied by the less exotically named tallyman with his bicycle and his mini-ledger and through the "cheques"—credit vouchers—often sold by churches who took a commission on the repayment by instalments. Now these same functions are performed through credit cards, mail order, HP agreements, bank overdrafts and the like. This is not to mention one of the most common forms of modern debt—the mortgage which, according to the Governor, has grown even faster than the other types of credit and which has widely replaced rental as the most available method for a worker to get somewhere to live. At the lower end of the poverty scale, this government has recently created a new tribe of debtors in the social security claimants who are now forced to grovel for a loan from the DSS if they need things like clothes or furniture, where before they were likely to get an outright grant.

But this nation apparently seething with debtors is not a happy place where everyone is getting everything they want now because they can't be bothered to save for it, through the benevolence of the money-lending institutions. A survey of the situation in 1989 carried out by the Policy Studies Institute, Credit and Debt in Britain, found that more than ten per cent of families in the UK were is arrears, some of them with multiple problem debts. The average arrears amounted to £600. which may not be much to the Governor of the Bank of England but is a mountainous sum to a single parent family or someone who is unemployed. In these days of the mortgaged home, rent arrears remain a serious problem; the survey said that over a million families were in trouble over rent last year.

There is no happier news about mortgages, which have long been fondly advertised as the way to a secure home. "Mortgage misery" is a phrase which has been overworking in the headlines of the popular press lately. It encapsulates the kind of evidence published in August by the Council of Mortgage Lenders—that the number of mortgages in arrears of six to twelve months was 95,030 in the first six months of 1990. compared to 58,040 in the same period last year. Mortgages more than 12 months behind rose from 12,030 to 18,750. Those friendly banks and building societies, who have put so much effort into assuring us that their main concern is to help us get a roof over our heads, have responded to this situation by taking the roof back, with the rest of the house. Repossession cases numbered 7,390 in the last half of 1989; in the first half of this year they reached 14,390—almost double. A spokesman for Barclays Bank said (he was trying to be helpful). "Anyone who is having difficulties shouldn't just ignore them . . ." as if it were possible to ignore the trauma of repossession, of being homeless. "We've advised him to go the the council's homeless person's unit", said a local Citizen's Advice Bureau of one man with a pregnant wife and two children who owes £3,500 to a building society. "He’ll have to prove real financial and personal difficulty before they rehouse him”.

Capitalist debts

At the same time we have been hearing of many other cases of people who, whatever the Governor of the Bank of England may think, wanted something now and were willing to get into debt for it. There is a crucial difference between these people and those who fall behind with the mortgage, or can't pay for the fridge they got on HP, or have to apply for a loan from the DSS and that is the scale of what might be called their operations. The Parkfield group, which had investments in engineering, property and entertainments, recently crashed owing £288 million of which £27 million is unlikely ever to be repaid. News Corporation, the huge media conglomerate controlled by Rupert Murdoch whose British papers have worked so hard to keep Thatcher in power and in so many other ways to titillate working-class delusions. has a "long-term” debt of A$7.58 billion (£3.22 billion). The vast and complex empire of Robert Maxwell, who was once a Labour MP and who is still extravagant enough to call himself a socialist, has debts of over £1.5 billion. It is the same story with other groups whose reputations rest on the charisma—or should it be the media hype associated with one person such as Brent Walker and Saatchi and Saatchi. When capitalism was in boom these people were revered as super intellects who had done the impossible—they had produced infinite profitability even if the proceeds were not available to all those readers of the Sun and the Mirror who so admired them. Sales went on soaring and the groups snapped up one expansionary deal after another. It seemed it would never end.

That was all very well as long as profits kept rising and interest rates were low but as the situation changed the extravagant debts of these groups put them under a lot of pressure. Many famous company names—Coloroll. British and Commonwealth—were extinguished while others—Laura Ashley—struggled on. Among the most spectacular of recent struggles has been Polly Peck whose chairman and chief executive, Asil Nadir, has been under scrutiny by the Serious Frauds Office. Polly Peck controlled over a third of the press in Turkey, it owned the Sansui hi-fi company and Russell Hobbs Kettles. Most famously it also owned Del Monte, the canned fruit firm which ran those TV ads in which Mediterranean peasants waited anxiously in the early morning sun for the Man from Del Monte to sample the fruit and give the go-ahead for it to be picked for canning . . . Polly Peck borrowed about £570 million to buy Del Monte: its total debts were estimated at around £1.3 billion and Asil Nadir anxiously grovelled to the Turkish government to help rescue him before disaster, not to mention the boys from the SFO, overtook him.

These debts put into proportion the problems of mortgage, HP and rent arrears. The working class, who depend on employment for their living, need to borrow money—sometimes to survive, sometimes to buy something which the Governor of the Bank of England and Margaret Thatcher's father would no doubt regard as a luxury like a TV set or a washing machine. At one time they did this through "cheques" or tallymen or the pawnbrokers who lent small amounts on the flimsiest of security such as a man's best (and only) suit. There was always a certain stigma attached to these methods—tallymen did not advertise themselves and there was nothing brazen in the manner of those who slipped into the pawnbrokers on a Monday. But this does not apply to credit cards or bank overdrafts or mortgages: in most cases these are seen as evidence that a worker has arrived at some sort of economic maturity: they have solved the problem of poverty and can read the financial press with the same interest as a Maxwell or a Nadir. Not many people regard themselves as members of the working class when in the company of their Flexible Friend.

But capitalism can wipe out delusions as fast as it promotes them. Facing reality can be a painful business, for the worker whose dream of a secure home turns into a nightmare of council bed-and-breakfast accommodation and possibly for the tycoon whose financial juggling act falls into disarray and ends up in bankruptcy. Except that when this happens it usually leaves them down to their last few million, their last few thousand acres, their last private jet and yacht. It is the class who end up in homeless families accommodation who make all these things, who produce the profits which finance the machinations of people like Murdoch and Nadir but who suffer the anguish and the humiliations of poverty. And that will not Do Very Nicely.

Ivan

These Foolish Things . . . (1997)

The Scavenger column from the July 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

American bad dream

In 1994 every US resident between 18 and 65—that is 150 million people— received at least 17 offers of credit cards  . . .  A survey by the Federal Reserve, America’s central bank, reveals that over the past three years the number of families running up credit card debts on annual incomes of less than $10,000 (£6,250) has more than doubled from 11 percent to 24 percent. And the number of personal bankruptcies has reached a record 1.1 million. The average bankrupt is aged 30 to 40 with an annual income of $25,000 to $35,000 and up to $40,000 in credit card debt. Typically, this person will have between 10 and 12 cards with a credit limit per card of $3,900. (Financial Mail on Sunday, 23 March.)

Out of sight . . .

Government scientists have decided against further research in to a cluster of leukaemia cases around one of Britain’s most powerful FM radio transmitters. The decision comes five years after the Guardian first revealed an unusual number of cases near the BBC’s TV and radio transmitter at Sutton Coldfield north of Birmingham. The existence of the cluster was confirmed by a subsequent government funded study published, after a long delay, in a US journal this year . . .  the effect was to ensure that the UK press did not cover the story of the Sutton Coldfield cluster. (Guardian, 29 May.)

Wage slavery

About 200,000 employees in the West Midlands—12 percent of the region's working population—receive no paid holiday . . .  One in five get only 15 days annual holiday entitlement and 25 percent work more than 48 hours a week. (Evening Mail, 28 February.)

A class act

Lloyd’s insurance market is bracing itself for the biggest wave of City job losses since Big Bang in 1986. More than 200,000 workers face the sack as some of the worlds largest insurance brokers merge with former rivals. The massive cost-cutting drive has been triggered by the Aon corporation, a US insurance broking group already embarking on extensive takeovers in London and the US in a bid to become the world number one. (Financial Mail on Sunday, 6 April.)

Penury

Elderly people in state-funded care homes are left with barely a third of what they need to pay for personal needs such as clothes and toiletries . . .  The personal expenses allowance of £14.10 a week compares with £38.78 needed to meet the ‘‘modest but adequate” outgoings of someone living in a residential home, according to the research for the charity Age Concern. (Guardian, 24 April.)

As we say . . .

Differences between the three main parties are wafer-thin—a matter of nuance rather than fundamental approach. That may be because we really have little choice about where we go from here. Politicians are merely trying to fool us when they claim they can change our lives for the better at little cost, fearful that if they tell the truth we shall turn against them. (Financial Mail on Sunday, 27 April.)

                                                                                                                         The Scavenger