‘WORK WILL MAKE YOU FREE’
PART ONE - PROPAGANDA
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| How ‘Idsy’ would have looked in a smart Nazi uniform. Would he have pleased Hitler? |
history repeats itself
Failed Tory Party leader, Iain Duncan Smith, struggled for years to launch his vengeance weapon: the Universal Credit scheme. That was his final solution to the British Welfare question, but it seemed strangely similar to the Nazi ideological model which they inflicted on Europe. The Nazis identified ‘subhuman’ people whom they wanted to eradicate. Their pernicious methods included propaganda, slave labour, and euthanasia.
if you
repeat something often enough ...
Duncan Smith’s Ministry of Propaganda is the redundant and barmy Department for Work and Pensions. It has regional offices which are staffed by thousands of ‘job’s worth’ bureaucrats who seem to reprocess continually the same data. They are his ‘rear-guard’. His ‘front line’ is occupied by the local Job Centres which are protected by security guards and are staffed by sadistic, junior clerical officers who plead the Nuremberg Defence: they are ‘only following orders’.
Duncan Smith’s Ministry of Propaganda is the redundant and barmy Department for Work and Pensions. It has regional offices which are staffed by thousands of ‘job’s worth’ bureaucrats who seem to reprocess continually the same data. They are his ‘rear-guard’. His ‘front line’ is occupied by the local Job Centres which are protected by security guards and are staffed by sadistic, junior clerical officers who plead the Nuremberg Defence: they are ‘only following orders’.
Duncan Smith, himself, comes forth to appear at
national press conferences where he vilifies the unemployed and outlines his
strategy to deal with them. His
psychology is visceral but effective. It
relies on frequent repetition to produce mass hypnosis, ‘brain-washing’, and
hysteria. He is likely to reiterate: ‘Unemployment
is a lifestyle choice’, or ‘Life is meant to be hard’, or ‘The Government is encouraging
unemployed people to find work’. His pejorative
slogans, which sound like autosuggestion, seem to blame the unemployed for the global
economic mess. He knows it is popular
claptrap but he is sneering at the British public because he also knows the
joke is on them. The unemployed include
the disabled, the sick, and the pensioners.
They are everyone’s friends, families, and relatives and everyone will
get a chance to join them.
new technology
old hat
Duncan-Smith is obsessed with uniformity that ensures narrow mindedness and blinkered vision. He has restructured the DWP into a colossal data-processing network which resembles a fictional dystopia. The civil service ‘pen-pushers’ have been replaced with Advisers who are really just Call-Centre Operatives and Data-Inputting Clerks. They behave like cyborgs that wear head-sets and interact with computers and follow flowcharts. Their own intuition has been replaced by artificial intelligence, and their glib patter may be interpreted as: ‘You are being assimilated; resistance is futile!’
Duncan-Smith is obsessed with uniformity that ensures narrow mindedness and blinkered vision. He has restructured the DWP into a colossal data-processing network which resembles a fictional dystopia. The civil service ‘pen-pushers’ have been replaced with Advisers who are really just Call-Centre Operatives and Data-Inputting Clerks. They behave like cyborgs that wear head-sets and interact with computers and follow flowcharts. Their own intuition has been replaced by artificial intelligence, and their glib patter may be interpreted as: ‘You are being assimilated; resistance is futile!’
The DWP’s computerised system is designed to ease
decision making and eliminate human error, but the system is complicated and
the Advisers are easily confused by inconvenient questions; it is just another
example of ‘garbage in garbage out’.
News media recently reported how the DWP had wasted £40 million on IT
systems that did not work.
The DWP expects unemployed people to have access
to telephones and to the Internet. That
kind of technology is needed to process benefit claims and to search for jobs,
but some people do not own telephones and personal computers. The DWP directs them to public libraries and
to public telephone boxes.
Claimants who cannot navigate a way through the
DIRECTGOV website, which is still under construction, may try to navigate a way
through its labyrinthine, telephone menus.
The calls are free but they might take up to forty five minutes. At the end of their calls, DWP Advisers might
decide to send bundles of paper forms and notes to the callers through the post,
or they might direct the callers to collect forms from their local Job Centres,
or they might do both. A typical
application-form runs to fifty two pages and is supplied in a booklet. Callers might have to supply supporting
documents and return all of it in a prepaid envelope. The DWP has spent lots of money on automation
but it is not yet a paperless office.
if you
can’t beat them, join them
Frequent widespread confusion is caused when the DWP moves its regional offices from one location to another. Processing backlogs and delays are inevitable. When that happens, Advisers do not know who is in charge or what is going on, and they cannot contact anybody because the phone numbers and postal addresses are obsolete. Many Advisers have become demoralised with their adverse management and they have ‘gone native’; they have accepted the ongoing chaos as an occupational hazard.
Frequent widespread confusion is caused when the DWP moves its regional offices from one location to another. Processing backlogs and delays are inevitable. When that happens, Advisers do not know who is in charge or what is going on, and they cannot contact anybody because the phone numbers and postal addresses are obsolete. Many Advisers have become demoralised with their adverse management and they have ‘gone native’; they have accepted the ongoing chaos as an occupational hazard.
The Job Centre clerks are more zealous and malevolent. Their real purpose is to withhold
benefits. They do that by preventing
unemployed people from claiming benefits, and by stopping benefit payments to
unemployed people who are already claiming them. Unemployed people who are not claiming
benefits do not get counted as unemployed.
That paradox is the Job Centre's hidden agenda. Its pretext is Duncan Smith’s propaganda message: ‘The Government is
encouraging unemployed people to find work’.
what’s
in a name?
The DWP has spent millions of pounds on rebranding things. Some of the old terminology, which reminded people of the Great Depression of the 1930s, has been ‘made-over’. Labour Exchanges, the Unemployed, and the Dole have been given new names. The Social Security offices have been shut permanently; the concept of Social Security no longer exists because ‘Life is meant to be hard’. The Exchanges are now called ‘job centre plus’ offices, which are uniformly furnished and decorated in DWP livery and they have ‘inclusive’ posters hanging on their walls. Unemployed people are now called Job Seekers. The ‘Dole’ is now called Job Seekers Allowance.
The DWP has spent millions of pounds on rebranding things. Some of the old terminology, which reminded people of the Great Depression of the 1930s, has been ‘made-over’. Labour Exchanges, the Unemployed, and the Dole have been given new names. The Social Security offices have been shut permanently; the concept of Social Security no longer exists because ‘Life is meant to be hard’. The Exchanges are now called ‘job centre plus’ offices, which are uniformly furnished and decorated in DWP livery and they have ‘inclusive’ posters hanging on their walls. Unemployed people are now called Job Seekers. The ‘Dole’ is now called Job Seekers Allowance.
None of that helps anyone to find a job,
but it does help to alienate and ‘condition’ unemployed people. It helps them to feel unfamiliar with
Britain’s fantastic, ‘brave new world’; it lowers their self-esteem and
confidence, and it helps them to feel depressed and socially inadequate.
When Job Seekers become Claimants, the DWP prefers
to call them Customers. Those words
need to be defined and contrasted.
Claimants assert their rights to draw something out of the system. Most of them have worked and have paid taxes
into it, and they have lost their jobs through no faults of their own. Customers purchase goods or services.
If we call Claimants, Customers, we are denying
them their rights and we are forcing them to accept services which are not
fit for purpose. Most Claimants deserve
welfare and have a right to it. They did
not pay taxes to employ spurious Advisers who do not listen but read prepared
scripts and talk impertinent nonsense.
Claimants do not want that kind of service; it is inferior and it is a
fraudulent swindle. The ‘Customers’ are
not buying it.
the
three c’s
The DWP has spent more millions of pounds on short training courses for its staff. Its fully trained Advisers are now supposed to be skilled in Customer Care, Communication, and Conflict Management. That kind of ‘Investment in People’ looks good on paper, but it is actually a cynical misuse of money. The aim of all that training is to manipulate society’s least sophisticated people. They are the humble unemployed who have been identified as the ones most open to persuasion.
The DWP has spent more millions of pounds on short training courses for its staff. Its fully trained Advisers are now supposed to be skilled in Customer Care, Communication, and Conflict Management. That kind of ‘Investment in People’ looks good on paper, but it is actually a cynical misuse of money. The aim of all that training is to manipulate society’s least sophisticated people. They are the humble unemployed who have been identified as the ones most open to persuasion.
DWP Advisers receive the same kind of Customer
Care training that car salesmen receive.
They try to identify the personality type of their customer and then
match their spiel to that type. The
American business theory which underpins that procedure defines just four
personality types for the whole of humanity. Everyone ought to be alarmed about that
‘carry on’ because it means Advisers are practising amateur psychology; they
are ‘analysing’ Claimants and then prescribing treatment that will ‘cure’ them
of their unemployment. What kind of
quackery is that? It sounds like unemployed
people are being used as guinea-pigs in a pseudo social-science experiment.
DWP communication techniques are based on research carried out in the 1920s by the Soviet Union. The Soviets ascertained the lower social
groups such as workers, peasants, and soldiers tended to use more words than
educated people to say the same thing.
They also ascertained educated people used more nouns and uneducated
people used more verbs. They concluded
that good communicators ought to adjust their vocabulary, loudness, speed of
delivery and accent to match their listeners’ levels of sophistication. DWP Advisers presume therefore all Claimants
are uneducated, and they speak accordingly to them.
Claimants feel like they are being interrogated by
the Gestapo (Nazi German State Police). Advisers face Claimants across desks and do
not offer any encouragement, support, advice, or guidance. They do not try to establish rapport with
Claimants; they flatly contradict them, and they try to monopolise the
conversation. The posters ask Claimants
to be courteous to Advisers, but the posters ought to read: ‘Please do not ask for credit as a punch in
the face often offends.’
The DWP’s notion of Conflict Management is to use
repeated threats and provocations. Every
Claimant can expect to be threatened with sanctions, which usually result in
the loss of benefits, several times during the course of an interview. Advisers will make remarks like: ‘I love my
job,’ and ‘Job Seekers have had it too easy for too long’. Those are deliberate tactics. Every Claimant who ‘storms’ out of the
building or is ‘frog-marched’ out represents a saving of at least £70 a week; that also represents one fewer person on the unemployment register; that also helps
Advisers to reach their quotas and to claim their Performance Related Pay.
an
offer you can’t refuse
Claimants who survive the interview are coerced into signing a job seeker’s contract which contains unreasonable terms and conditions. They might be expected to apply for an ‘agreed’ number of ‘slave-labour’ jobs or for jobs that are too far from home. Claimants are warned not to break their contracts because sanctions will result in loss of benefits.
Claimants who survive the interview are coerced into signing a job seeker’s contract which contains unreasonable terms and conditions. They might be expected to apply for an ‘agreed’ number of ‘slave-labour’ jobs or for jobs that are too far from home. Claimants are warned not to break their contracts because sanctions will result in loss of benefits.
Advisers attempt to justify their appalling behaviour by
alleging they are being monitored by some kind of ‘big brother’ character. That might be true but ‘big brother’ does not
stop them from quitting their terrible jobs and from finding alternative, more
respectable employment: 'There are millions of jobs out there.'
the
green response
The Tories along with their Liberal and Labour stooges are waging class-war on the poor. The Green Party must disassociate itself from all those Parties and it must challenge their propaganda.
Unemployment is not a life-style choice for most unemployed people. They have worked in the past, and they want to work in the present, and they want to work in the future.
Life is not meant to be hard in a prosperous country like Britain. Only someone who has led an easy life would say the opposite. Is Britain short of money? In 2012, Britain managed to celebrate one of the Queen’s anniversaries, stage the Olympic Games, and fight a war in Afghanistan.
The Government is not helping unemployed people to find work. They want high levels of unemployment because that weakens the trades unions and it reduces wages, and it allows employers to exploit workers.
The unemployed are not to blame for the economic depression. The Conservative, Labour, and Liberal Parties, and the Ruling Class (the 1%), whom those Parties represent, are to blame for it.
The Tories along with their Liberal and Labour stooges are waging class-war on the poor. The Green Party must disassociate itself from all those Parties and it must challenge their propaganda.
Unemployment is not a life-style choice for most unemployed people. They have worked in the past, and they want to work in the present, and they want to work in the future.
Life is not meant to be hard in a prosperous country like Britain. Only someone who has led an easy life would say the opposite. Is Britain short of money? In 2012, Britain managed to celebrate one of the Queen’s anniversaries, stage the Olympic Games, and fight a war in Afghanistan.
The Government is not helping unemployed people to find work. They want high levels of unemployment because that weakens the trades unions and it reduces wages, and it allows employers to exploit workers.
The unemployed are not to blame for the economic depression. The Conservative, Labour, and Liberal Parties, and the Ruling Class (the 1%), whom those Parties represent, are to blame for it.
The Green Party must campaign to get rid of Duncan Smith’s complicated and shambolic Universal Credit system. It needs to be replaced by a simplified system which is based on merit. People ought to be entitled to one year’s unconditional, unemployment benefit for every year they have worked and paid contributions. That would give people who want to work the time to find another job or a chance to retrain, and it would give people who do not want to work the incentive to change their ways. It would also greatly reduce the perpetual and excessive bureaucracy which currently consumes a huge amount of the welfare budget.
The Green Party must campaign for a new, high-principled Job Centre ethos. Class-ridden ideology which involves the routine punishment of weak and poor people must be replaced by genuine advice, and guidance, and encouragement, and support. All the embellishments, which include branding and decoration, could stay but the expensive Security ‘goons’ would no longer be needed.
A trip to
the Job Centre could be a positive experience.
Job Seekers could be made to feel welcome. Advisers could greet them with a friendly
smile, a firm handshake, and a cup of hot tea.
Such simple hospitality would be the antithesis of the elaborate hostility
that penniless ‘Customers’ suffer under the Tory jackboot.
WINDUP
The answer to that question is,
no. Iain Duncan Smith would not have
pleased Hitler. Der Fuhrer would have
had him shot for bungling incompetence.
Don’t miss our next post:
‘work will set you free’ – slave labour
‘peace man’ΓΏ☮[
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