James Purnell benefit reforms: failing in Falinge
Posted on Wednesday 10 December, 2008
Filed Under Society
FALINGE, you say? Never heard of it, at least not until this morning. Turns out it’s an area of Rochdale. Not sure exactly how the place name is pronounced, but presumably the enunciation is not dissimilar to ‘falling’. Or maybe you say it something like ‘failing’.
I do know all about Rochdale, though. Never been there – I am a consciously hip North London media type after all, why would I bother? – but I am vaguely aware that it is up north. Somewhere. It was once the home of Gracie Fields, while the local football team has played in the bottom division of the Football League continuously since 1974.
But those are not Rochdale’s only claims to fame. Falinge, according to the Manchester Evening News, has the distinction of being ‘the sick note capital of the country’. And that’s only the start of its social problems. Of 4,500 people living there, just 250 of them hold down a job:
New figures show more than four in 10 of the working population in the Central and Falinge ward of Rochdale are too sick to go to work.
Figures from the Office of National Statistics revealed 490 of the 1,141 people of working age – 42.9 per cent – are claiming incapacity benefits.
Earlier this year the same ward was identified as having the highest level of unemployment in the country, with over three quarters on benefits.
It sounds, in other words, just the sort of place James Purnell has in mind with his latest valiant assault on dependency culture. Not for much longer will those malingering northern scroungers and their feckless feral offspring fund their fast food diet and perpetual fag smoking lifestyle choices on the backs of the taxes of swing voters in marginal southern seats. Oh no.
From now on, virtually everyone will have to do something in return for their benefits, Mr Purnell told the Today Programme this morning. People in places like Falinge are going to have to live up their obligations, he stressed.
The odd thing is, Rochdale was once a pretty prosperous kind of place. It has even been described as ‘a boomtown of the industrial revolution’. There was no shortage of employment opportunities in the hey-day of the Lancashire textile industry.
More recently, the infamous Turner & Newell asbestos factory provided the backbone of the local economy. Nasty business, that mesothelioma, but musn’t grumble. A job is a job, after all. I would ask Mr Purnell for confirmation on that sentiment, but with a CV that shows effortless progress from public school to the ministerial benches, via Balliol, a spot of policy wonkery and a sinecure at the BBC, I’m not sure his knowledge would be firsthand.
But even T&N is now long gone. Probably the chief reason that thousands of people in Falinge don’t have a job is because there are no jobs to have. If there are no jobs, threats to cut benefits are simply to no avail. But hey, they’ll make for great headlines in the Daily Mail tomorrow morning, and that’s what counts, isn’t it?
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26 Responses to “James Purnell benefit reforms: failing in Falinge”
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“It sounds, in other words, just the sort of place James Purnell has in mind with his latest valiant assault on dependency culture.”
Yeah, but NL have been banging on about the evils of ‘culture of dependency’ for ages, first mentioned by the evil Frank Field. The Tories also lurve it as well.
“From now on, virtually everyone will have to do something in return for their benefits”
And that’s called Workfare. The politics of the workhouse beckon….
And I have to say the new so-called improved benefit ESA (Employment and Support Allowance) is already causing migraines for the state and claimants ‘cos it’s unworkable…
It makes you wonder if the reforms are practical? http://www.matthewtaylorsblog.com/politics/welfare-reform-a-complex-debate/
Good post, but you liked Deborah Orr’s column? Seriously?
Orr wrote, “The politician who talks the most sense about social deprivation is Iain Duncan Smith” and “[Labour] has inadvertently made it pay – in cash, aspiration, intelligence and self-respect – to have children if you are poor.”
Proof, as if it were needed, that no knowledge of a subject is required in order to pontificate on it in a national newspaper.
Well, apart from those bits, maybe. But she Deborah Orr is miles better on social policy than Polly Toynbee.
Frank Field can;t be that evil. He was interviewed on the tele-box and made the point that if there are no jobs, councils should create decent paid jobs for unemployed young people.
And considering that MPs have been claiming their Sky subscription and food bills from the taxpayer, it’s a bit rich them talking about a dependency culture…
If there are no jobs, how did the half million or so East Europeans who came here after 2004 find work?
A leftist who cares about the unemployed and disabled? That’s a turn-up for the books.
Only 4,500 people live in Falinge and it is a ward on Rochdale Council? That makes no sense.
According to the MEN which you quoted from, that 4,500 figure covers people of working age – over 16 and under 65.
So the total population is going to be 10,000+ which sounds about right to be.
These Workfare proposals are a violent assault on democracy and the welfare state. They effectively make a large class of the long-term unemployed criminals doing ‘community service’ (the expression actually used). Workfare to be exploited by the ‘voluntary sector’ and private companies, where they will have none of the normal legal statute of employees and will be paid a pittance. Others will have to do ‘detention’ (again the word really used) -applying for an ever-shrinking pool of jobs, 8 hours a day. There will have no normal human rights. Accept the rule of the bullies or be made homeless and starve.
That’s without going into the conditions for the disabeld, single parents, and those with psychological difficulties. Or the vast growth in a parasitic class of overseers and ‘training’ compnaies (offering muck and keeping the brass for themselves).
Needless to say Tendance Coatesy, which had signaled this looming threat many many months ago, has been blogging furiously and spitting blood about this.
http://tendancecoatesy.wordpress.com/
Saw an advert for an oakum picker in the local jobcentre. 35hr week and flexitime.
‘A leftist who cares about the unemployed and disabled? That’s a turn-up for the books.’
There are a fair few, but I have to say I am increasingly worried why the left, such as it is, not taking the reforms up, the labour (soft) left certainly is:
http://www.compassonline.org.uk/campaigns/campaign.asp?n=3451
The welfare system has been brutal, inconsistent and inneffective now for many years, yet I cannot think of one meeting any of the left have hosted specifically on the welfare chanages, etc. maybe the comment posted on grimmer up north may give us a clue, (see below) i do hope he doesn’t represent all marxists/trots, etc.There is so much wrong with it,
Andrew Newton said
The populist left needs to come up with some alternatives rather than pretending that the lumpen proletariat (i.e. the benefit dependent class) does not exist.
There’s an excellent exhibition at Urbis right now that shows how the Black Panther movement worked to raise political consciousness among black people who had found themselves in this social class. They ran impressive social programmes (including providing healthy breakfasts to many thousands of children; something kids born into poverty in Britain today would benefit from).
The lumpen subculture has always been a real problem. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels called them, ‘The “dangerous class”, the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society…’ and warned of their reactionary nature. In ‘What is Fascism?’ Trotsky warned of their tendency to support fascism… and where do we find the BNP?
http://grimmerupnorth.blogspot.com/
‘Frank Field can;t be that evil. He was interviewed on the tele-box and made the point that if there are no jobs, councils should create decent paid jobs for unemployed young people.’
Charlie,
Frank field is the N/L Sir Keith Joseph!, he wants benefits time limited and has called for the return of the workhouse,
frenetic,
I think you’re right the wider Left should be taking up these issues, and should have done it ages ago, as you’ve pointed out in posts here and at SU blog
It seems as if there is a tendency to get sidetracked into “sexier” issues, and the nitty-gritty of the working classes’ existence comes a poor third place in the political priorities of a British Left dominated by a London centric political culture.
The multiple pronged attack by new Labour should have been expected, as they have managed to repudiate so many worthwhile Labour notions of old and adopted a Tory-lite approach to governance.
As I’ve written before, there are longer-term political ramifications if new Labour manages to push through the destruction of Social Housing and the reintroduction of a Victorian themed benefit system, and all that goes with it, such changes could certainly lead to resurgent support in the BNP, as they fill the vacuum.
Thus, the Left needs to take up these issues as a matter of urgency.
Well, Modernity, some of us on the left have been banging on about the drive by NL to criminalise and stigmatise the unemployed even before Purnell (where the post of Secretary of State for Work and Pensions was no more than a glint in his eye!)and Hain…when John Hutton and his side-kick Jim Murphy were putting together the appaling Welfare Reform Bill. Some of us saw the writing on the wall and where the oppressive culture of dependency theory will take you….
One way is supporting the campaign initiated by the PCS by bringing together a broad alliance of people to fight these retrograde and nasty attacks on the poor in this society.
‘Everyone on benefits should do something in return’? I’ve _already_ done something in return. To wit: ‘Paid the state at least thirty grand in NI over the last 20-odd years.’ That’t why I think I’m entitled to welfare payments with no sodding Means Test, if ever I get laid off. Duh.
@Confused
“If there are no jobs, how did the half million or so East Europeans who came here after 2004 find work?”
First of all, I’d pick up a dictionary and examine the difference between ‘are’ and ‘were’. Couple what you learnt there with the following little table:
2004: No recession
2009: Recession
Perhaps you should add “Easily” in front of your name.
btw, I should have also said Dave’s article is spot on, but like Mod and Harpy say, the left does need to have a long hard look at itself, to see why the neglect happened, these concerns were first flagged up over three years ago!
Did you read Matthew Norman in The Independent today?
Amongst his many excellent points was a suggestion that this may in fact come to nothing (just as I suspect this lie detector shite may never materialise). They will sooner or later realise that it is a pointless waste of money & go back to having things as they were before.
Just read it, its brilliant! completely nails down Purnell and Freud,
might photcopy it and distriibute it.
“Well, Modernity, some of us on the left have been banging on”
nor would I deny that
BUT and this is a BIG but, by and large the Londoninistic Left hasn’t seen fit to see the significance of these moves by HMG
sure enough there have been a few articles, general denouncements, etc, par for the course stuff, but not a real SHIFT in seeing where it all leads and what is at stake
cos if the Left doesn’t take it up the Far Right might, and use it to grow, several fold
so rather than simply denouncing these attacks, there needs to be a real think as to how best to oppose them, and NOT another excuse for front-organisation from the usual suspects but a real way of stopping them
I’d suggested one route might be to get the PCS members to refuse to implement them
without the support of the civil servants the Government can’t push thru these proposals
ditto the destruction of Social Housing, unless local govt workers oppose it directly then stopping the Green Paper will be very difficult.
I think the thing is Mod you are preaching to the converted with HarpyMarx and Frenetic, both of whom have been raising this issue for a long time .
HarpyMarx covers this a lot on her blog as well as doing stuff in real life so to speak and im pretty sure Frenetic does, and not part of opportunistic front organisations.
I think all three of you are really saying the same thing.
Its the left groups who need to be taking this on board.
Job creation is clearly an issue, but Purnell’s reforms will demand that people are SEEKING work even if they cannot find something straight away. Benefit claimants will no longer be able to just sit back and claim benefits without proving that they are at least seeking work, which is absolutely the right move.
Some IB claimants clearly need state support for genuine disabilities and this will not be affected by the reforms.
Purnell’s approach is all about government finances, reducing those claiming and then limiting the outlay, but with typical civil service timing they bring it out at the start of a recession
what timing!
Perhaps New Labour should reactivate an old slogan: ‘Arbeit macht frei.’
I live on Lower Falinge, a council estate within the Falinge area. It is pronounced fail-inge (like binge). I’m confused about which ward they are talking about, there is Spotland and Falinge ward and Central Rochdale ward. Perversely Lower Falinge is in Central Ward.
It is unsurprising that those who are the poorest live where the rents are lowest.
I had a chance to meet Purnell briefly when he came to our estate in response to the GMTV ‘report’. He was very charming – incredibly posh in context – but he seemed to let his party minders, a local councillor and the prospective MP candidate, field the more awkward questions (they were awfully defensive).
Seems to me it will just create a greater downward pressure on low earnings, making it less worthwhile to work etc.
Anyhow – Citizens Wage.
Thanks Andrew, that’s informative. Please post any further rinformation on the area. And I agree with your call for a citizen’s income.