An Abundancy of Redundancy (aka An Embarrassment of Poverty) But Does It Have To Be Like This?

Visiting my widowed mother in Ireland last week, I happened upon a dusty but trashy looking old paperback in a bookcase called 'How To Be Rich' by J. Paul Getty. I picked it up and was surprised to find it a riveting read, elegant in its straight talking economy of words, as it detailed Mr Getty's rise to success from his early wildcatting days as an oil (black gold rush) seeker in early 20th century California through all his subsequent triumphs and failures along the way, refreshingly devoid of business bullsh*t speak, but sharing his business wisdom with all who wished to learn.

Naturally I had heard of Mr Getty (one of the world's wealthiest men), but I had never paid much heed to him or his life, except to recall he was also renowned as a miser, even turning his house phone into a payphone to deter guests from taking advantage.

Yet reading his book, one of the most startling passages of all went as follows:

'Labor costs are also high but I've often observed that the man who complains the loudest about excessive wages is the same one who spends fortunes on advertising and sales campaigns to sell his products to the millions. How on earth he expects the workers who form the bulk of those millions to buy his chinaware, garden furniture or whirling spray garden sprinklers unless they are well paid is beyond my comprehension. Labour is entitled to good pay, to its share of the wealth it helps to produce. Unless there is a prosperous 'working class' there can be no mass markets and no mass sales for merchants or manufacturers - and there will be precious little prosperity for anyone.'

How has Britain so seemingly neglected this absolute bedrock of a truth to eat out its own heart? Everywhere around me I see working class jobs disappearing fastest of all as shops either close down or become self-automated and once-safe council clerk jobs, librarian jobs and bank jobs are also being shed by the thousand. Customer feedback surveys such as the easyJet one I just completed are evidently geared towards dispensing with the check-in staff and reducing the number of flight attendants. Even Tourist Information offices are suddenly closing as if to say. 'Sod off tourists - you've all got smartphones so you don't need human beings to welcome you to this area and assist you any more!' Yet who do the powers that be think they are catering for if not the normal average-earning individual whom they are so quick to shed?

And where are all these people going to go and what are they supposed to do for the rest of their lives? Claim benefits? Emigrate? I know I've written similar postings in the past, but there are few subjects that remind you of them on a virtually daily basis quite like this subject does. Since I have been away for a week two of my favourite stores have closed down. Meanwhile in Ireland my old once-prosperous hometown of Ballymena is looking increasingly ragged round the edges and the poor old county town of Antrim has been decimated altogether, its once-gleaming and bustling 'Castle Centre' now like the Marie Celeste!

The top 10% of UK households are now said to be 850 times wealthier than the bottom 50% and the wealth inequalities continue to widen.

At the top end of the scale company director salaries have increased from the traditional 8 x the average worker's salary to 25 x and beyond, the justification being that 'you can't get the best for less', despite some spectacular and even criminal falls from grace by selfsame 'top' company directors and bankers. This also fails to take into account the inevitable drop in morale, and therefore productivity in the staff under such an overpaid chief, not least if they are being treated in a way engineered to subsidise the cost to the concern of this director's (and sometimes co-horts) salary, whilst simultaneously being patronised by company literature and events pretending they are valued. In the last fortnight it has emerged that the chief of Save the Children is earning £234,000pa, a fact which has outraged donors and the many volunteers who work for the charity for free and naturally consider a great deal more per £ should be going to children. It is all very well some pundits commenting 'Well you can't have a muppet running an international charity', but who is to say that someone who did it for say a quarter of that salary would be a muppet? Or any more of a muppet than the individual currently running it? On this basis I hereby allow my name to be put forward to do at least as good a job of saving children at a fraction of the salary...

While Mr Getty may well have been a miser on the personal front, he took his responsibilities as an employer generating wealth and employment very seriously it seems, and never lost sight of the bigger picture. In his view too, managers were there to 'direct' operations, not dictate or micromanage them, and imaginative thinking was always encouraged in employees, as was the feeling they had a personal stake in the success or failure of the company which inspired them to think of their own efficiencies and improved ways of doing things. He also found that formal education was little indicator of what made the best employees and was never scared of competing internationally, decades before most companies began to think globally. Could that be why so many of his companies and enterprises still exist and thrive today, nearly 40 years after his death? 

You Gotta Keep the Hamster Alive to Keep The Wheel Turning

In the wake of Chancellor Osborne's wielding of the £83 billion axe, decapitating a headcount of 1-in-10 public sector workers, coupled with the government's refusal to end banker's bonuses, cap footballer's pay, plug the brain drain or address the criminal wastage in the NHS, I find myself distinctly underwhelmed, if not exactly turning French to take to the streets.

And the French only have to work to 62 and there's riots in the streets – whereas we have to work to 66 and merely shrug our shoulders about it! Though of all the injustices to protest about, you'd think there was little arguing against the fact that most of us are now living longer, save those who worked in manual trades, and where allowances could more fairly be made than by the former system of gender division.

Meanwhile the banks continue to refuse to lend money to small businesses, systematically strangling the life blood out of one of the few resources for job creation, while companies large enough – even James Dyson - have stiffed the British economy by making their names here and then largely relocating to take advantage of cheap third world labour, expecting us (shortly with no jobs) to carry on buying their products.

In the midst of the number of jobs being slashed in every sector and quangos being quashed, the coalition government has decided in its wisdom that benefits are to be cut for the long-term unemployed and those on long-term incapacity benefit, in tandem with the drive to force, er persuade, people to work longer into retirement. Never mind where are the jobs for all these people, shortly to be unleashed onto an already oversubscribed labour market, but where is the back-up training and support they are going to need if they haven't trained or worked for years, if at all? And in these cases, confidence is as much an issue as training and the jobs for them to go to. This plan also presumes a society which has now successfully dispensed with ageism – one of the main reasons older redundant workers are actively encouraged to develop depression and a drink problem and opt for long term incapacity benefits. It's just easier and there's no need for them to show up on those inconvenient jobless figures.

Does it not occur to the Government that every time a job is cut, so is a consumer and that UK employees are also UK customers in many cases? If every former consumer is to be reduced to rent, bills and bread subsistence level, then all other goods and service providers may as well shut up shop, reducing wage bills still further.

But is the Big Society for the people or what? Is it about to decree a 'right to work' alongside its enhanced legislation against disadvantage in the workplace on the grounds of disability, gender, sexuality etc, and is the 'right to work' a philosophical or an economical question? We live in a society where women walk around believing they have a right to have babies. Or not have babies. We believe we have civil rights, democratic rights and entitlements from the State. Some of us even believe we have a right to be happy, despite lacking a constitution on this. But what about the 'right to work' for every man and woman from 16 to 66? Would industry be forced to redistribute itself more evenly across our green and pleasant land to accommodate? And would we get to decree our hours, pay and commute time preference?

Previous governments have decided that the right not to starve, or die for want of affordable medical care, is more achievable, hence the inception of the 1948 Welfare State and its promise of care 'from the cradle to the grave'. If this government seeks to erode that promise, it better jolly well have a superior idea up its sleeve as countless generations fought, suffered and sacrificed to attain that basic birthright, abused as it may have been by the feckless of later generations.

But I suppose we are luckier with the coalition government than Eire is with a premier who looks like he just lost the country in a game of gin rummy for College rag week.

Redundant Times

I am wondering when new PM David Cameron will take the opportunity to make Nick Clegg redundant on 'cost-cutting' grounds (ie that there is no need for two of them to do the same job). Mr Clegg is yet to pass his six months probation or qualify for full employment rights (two years) after all, so he could get away with shafting him without paying him a bean over whatever half day Mr Clegg has had time to accrue.

And while it might not be the most popular move amongst a less predictable electorate, it is better surely than starting another war - the usual means by which a PM or President asserts their masculine iron rod and assures their place in the history books, whilst distracting that same electorate from the fact that they are actually doing bugger all to make their country a better place or honour their election promises. Mr Clegg would do well to take a data recorder to every meeting and refuse to meet him without a 3rd party of his choice in the room methinks.

Secretly I wish their coalition well (I'll be a bit more positive than 'hung parliament') and hope they save cheques and marmalade and all the other residue of being British worth saving before that 74% of the population enact their expressed Mori poll threat to emigrate from the good sinking ship Britannia. Unless of course the percentage concerned is of the calibre we used to send to the Colonies anyway.

But I fear cynicism will get the better of me.

I have just one thing to say to all politicians - at least care about your statues if you're not going to be sincere about your statutes.

This was supposed to be a nice fluffy post sharing lovely photos with you incidentally, as I realise I've gone a trifle political lately, but I still can't get my new LG cameraphone to recognise my PC after many nights of tinkering/endless software downloading. Needless to say LG are being less than helpful.