Beat the Poorest Child

What people say, and what they do, are different things. The Queen provided the perfect example on Wednesday. She said that her Government would "promote social cohesion" and "give every child the best start in life." What she meant was "my Government will take £14 billion from welfare."

The Queen takes 15 minutes to deliver her anodyne speech. If you want the real story, you have to read the 103 pages of Background Briefs produced by Prime Minster Cameron's office. Here you will find stuff that Her Majesty forgot to mention - a Buses Bill, and one on Psychoactive Substances, for example.

It is in the detail of the briefings that you find the horrible stuff. It is no surprise to find that the Queen, a mother of four, omitted to mention that her Government would freeze Child Benefits for two years from 2016-2017. As the Child Poverty Action Group pointed out, the Department of Work and Pensions own impact assessment reveals that the freeze "is nine times more likely to hit children than adults." Her Government will keep poor children as poor as possible for as long as possible in the wholly mistaken belief that this will drive their parents into work. "Beat the child and the parent will obey" - it could be a Tory motto.

Her Majesty did deign to tell us that her Government would require "young people to earn or learn." That's an ad-man's catch phrase for a much nastier idea, explained in a little more detail in the briefings: 18-21 year olds will be required to start an apprenticeship, training or community work placement after 6 months of Youth Allowance. If they don't, they will get no allowance. And by the way, the same group will get no housing support payments. Poor families with young parents will be forced to move back in with the grandparents, and mum and dad will both be forced out to work even when their children are tiny.

And why?

All of this is so that Mr Cameron can stick to his pledge, as announced by the lady from Windsor that there shall be "no rises in Income Tax rates, Value Added Tax or National Insurance for the next 5 years."


The Queen could have put it in a nutshell:

"My Government will beat the poorest children so that my Lords and members of the House of Commons don't have to tax the well-off."

Alms Race

Today is Maundy Thursday, the day when the Queen offers Maundy money - alms - to a carefully selected group of "deserving poor" - a slightly odd twist of a phrase which might be taken to mean people who deserve to be poor.

This is the oldest form of philanthropy - royalty making gifts to the poor. Like all philanthropy its motivations and its impact are multiple, from reminding the monarch that she or he is human to reminding everyone else that there is a social order - in this case, with a Queen at the top, and religion at its heart. As Eliana Magnani showed [1], from the 4th-6th century AD "...almsgiving developed as the result of the creation of the social category of the poor." In other words, we needed people whom we called "poor" in order to have a philanthropy that gave to them.

Philanthropy is a constant across religions and time - it seems to be built in to people wherever they are [2]. Is poverty a constant too? Yes, as it is currently defined in Europe as living on less than 60% of the median income. As a society gets wealthier the threshold for poverty, in cash terms, rises. So there is no point in any politician claiming that he or she wants to eliminate poverty. Unless there is a titanic shift in the way that society is organised (for example, a move to Anarchy, or theoretical Marxism) we will always have poverty.

If we must always have poverty and thus always have wealth, let us propose that Maundy Thursday be the day on which those of wealth step into the shoes of those without. Let us propose that David Cameron, Rupert Murdoch and the Windsors spend Maundy Thursday living in poverty. David, you are invited to spend the day in a Job Centre, being sanctioned for not spending 35 hours last week looking for a job. Rupert, you will spend the day on a zero hours contract cleaning plates in your local McDonalds. Elizabeth, you can spend the day just down the road from Buckingham Palace with the cardboard community that lives in the underpasses at Waterloo.

That would be a Maundy Thursday true to the spirit of alms.


1.Magnani, Eliana. “Almsgiving, Donatio Pro Anima and Eucharistic Offering in the Early Middle Ages of Western Europe (4th-9th Century).” In Charity and Giving in Monotheistic Religions. Walter de Gruyter, 2009.
2 see for example Jordan, W. K. Philanthropy in England, 1480 - 1660: A Study of the Changing Patterns of English Social Aspirations. Routledge, 2013.

Be Ready, Scotland

Be ready Scotland for the plea from the Queen to stay in the Union

Be ready Scotland, for Cameron’s love bombs

Be ready Scotland, for MI5 to pull down one of our leading politicians*

Be ready Scotland, for a “terrorist incident” designed to scare us into the arms of the Union

Be ready Scotland, for a sterling crisis that will be blamed on you

Be ready, Scotland. 

The next few days are going to be a bumpy ride.

Be ready, Scotland, to stand fast by Yes.


* Still not convinced? Read Jim Sillars' letter to the cybernats - "agent provocateurs, special branch and MI5"