Understanding UK Society—Long Term Longitudinal Study

Understanding Society is a long term study of 40,000 UK households beginning in 2009. It is published as a series of articles in Understanding Society: Findings 2012, which, drawing on information gathered from the first two years of the study, has yielded a detailed portrait of a society suffering the effects of a deep recession in which young people have been hit hardest. The research, managed by the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) at the University of Essex, also shows that efforts to get more students from poorer backgrounds to go to university have not been successful and that more needs to be done to get teenagers to live a healthier life in order to assure their future happiness.

Professor Nick Buck, Director of Understanding Society, said:

The findings provide a fascinating insight into UK society and predicted that some of the research would be influential in helping policy and decision makers to address some of the key issues facing a society battling to emerge from the depths of recession. The large number of people and households involved in this excellent survey means that this research really does paint an accurate picture of our society. As we continue to talk to these people in the coming years, that portrait will become even clearer and even more useful in helping us to address many of the crucial issues that affect us all.

UK Tory Minister for Universities and Science David Willetts said:

Longitudinal studies like Understanding Society are invaluable for researchers, decision makers and society as a whole. They provide important evidence on how social and economic factors influence people’s lives, which in turn informs Government policy on a wide range of issues, from education to public health.

SUMMARY FINDINGS

• young people, despite the bad press they receive are, on the whole, well behaved and happy
• policies to widen access to higher education have failed
• perceived employment discrimination among ethnic minorities is low
• women, once they earn 65 percent or more of the household income pick up a greater share of the housework chores than their economically underperforming spouse.
• middle classes benefit most from higher education expansion:
  • policies to expand access to people from less advantaged homes have not been successful: an analysis of the social backgrounds of almost 34,000 adults between the ages of 22 to 49 reveal that it is the children of the middle classes, not the working classes, that have benefited the most from the expansion of higher education in the last 15 years
  • since 1992, there has been an 11 percent increase in first degree holders among the children of white collar workers, while among children of manual workers this increase is less than half at just five percent
• A healthy teenager is a happy teenager—teenagers who turn their backs on a healthy lifestyle and turn to drink, cigarettes and junk food are significantly unhappier than their healthier peers
  • young people who never drank any alcohol were between four and six times more likely to have high happiness than those who reported any alcohol consumption
  • youths who smoked were about five times less likely to have high happiness scores compared to those who never smoked
  • higher consumption of fruit and vegetables and lower consumption of crisps, sweets and fizzy drinks were both associated with high happiness
  • the more hours of sport young people participated in per week the happier they were

Whereabouts of Children

Only a minority of 15 year olds say they have been out after 9.00 pm without their parents knowing where they were in the last month, but for those that did, it is associated with problematic behaviour:

• 14 percent of boys and 11 percent of girls who have frequently stayed out late without their parents knowing in the last month (3 or more times) were visiting pubs or bars once a week or more
• 25 percent of girls who stayed out once in the last month without parents knowing admitted to consuming alcohol more than once in the last month. Alcohol consumption rises to 64 percent for girls who stayed out past 9.00 pm without telling their parents where they are more than three times in the last month
• however, family income has little effect on whether a child stays out late without telling their parents
• living in social housing or with a single mother increases the probability, but living in a stepfamily does not

Defining White British

The UK population remains predominately White British, but if one considers parentage going back just two generations, then the White British majority becomes much less homogenous:

• of those who define themselves as White British, 17.2 percent have some connection with another country
• 17 percent of those not UK born call themselves White British
• 35 percent of those who have parents of different ethnic groups call themselves White British
• but, 57 percent of White British people, or 48 percent of the UK population, are only associated with England. This means that nearly half of the UK population does not have connections to the smaller countries of the UK over the last two generations and for this period had only family links within England

Youth Unemployment

An analysis using Understanding Society together with its predecessor the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) of what is driving the extremely high employment amongst young people finds that they suffer from a “double penalty” in their attempts to find and keep a job. The two surveys looked at young people and employment over many years, so research making use of them together is able to demonstrate precisely how young people are more adversely affected in the recession and why their numbers in the dole queue continue to swell:

• before the latest recession, about 50 percent of 16-24 year olds who were not in work in 2006 had found a job in 2007, but it halved during the recession, with only 27 percent of young people who were out of work in 2009 making the transition into employment by 2010
• in contrast, the proportion of 25-44 year olds entering employment between 2009 and 2010 fell by just three percentage points compared to 2006-07, while year on year transition rates into employment among people aged 45 or above actually increased
• young people were also more likely to be laid off than older people, and this increased during the recession with 11 percent of employed young people in 2009 became “Not in Education or Training” (NEETs) in 2010, but the proportion of people aged 25 to 44 in employment who found themselves out of work increased from three percent in 2006-07 to 4.5 percent in 2009-10

Shale Gas Fracking Solves No UK Energy Problems But Leaves us with Many

The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) says the advent in Europe of a shale gas boom—hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking, extracting natural gas from shale using chemicals and water—is not a game changer for energy policy in the UK. Though it has been approved as safe, reports keep emerging with a different message.

Dozens of cases of illness, death and reproductive issues in cows, horses, goats, llamas, chickens, dogs, cats, fish and other wildlife, and humans could be the result of exposure to the gases or the chemicals used in the process, Robert Oswald, a professor of molecular medicine at Cornell’s College of Veterinary Medicine, and veterinarian, Michelle Bamberger, have found. They interviewed animal owners in six states—Colorado, Louisiana, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas—and cited 24 cases where animals seem to have been affected by the gas drilling.

The authors note that the “most striking finding” of their study was how difficult it was to get solid information on the link between hydrofracking and health effects. Consequently, it is not possible to make a direct link between death and illness due to incomplete testing, proprietary secrecy from gas drilling companies regarding the chemicals used in hydrofracking, and non-disclosure agreements that seal testimony and evidence when lawsuits are settled. Oswald said:

We have a number of case studies—they don’t tell us about the prevalence of problems associated with hydraulic fracturing, but they do tell us how things can happen.

The case studies include:

• In Louisiana, 17 cows died within an hour of direct exposure to hydraulic fracturing fluid. A necropsy report listed respiratory failure with circulatory collapse as the most likely cause of death.
• A farmer separated his herd of cows into two groups: 60 were in a pasture with a creek where hydrofracking wastewater was allegedly dumped; 36 were in separate fields without creek access. Of the 60 cows exposed to the creek water, 21 died and 16 failed to produce calves the following spring. None of the 36 cows in separated fields had health problems, though one cow failed to breed in the spring.
• Another farmer reported that 140 of his cows were exposed to hydrofracking fluid when wastewater impoundment was allegedly slit, and the fluid drained into a pasture and a pond. “These farmers saw workers slitting the liner to decrease the amount of liquid in the impoundment in order to refill it”, said Bamberger. “We have heard it now on several occasions”. Of the 140 cows, about 70 died, and there were high incidences of stillborn and stunted calves.

To provide better assessments of health impacts, the researchers recommend:

• prohibiting nondisclosure agreements when public health is at stake
• increasing food safety testing and research, as the study documented that animals exposed to chemicals were not tested prior to slaughter, and little is known about the effects of hydrofracking chemicals on meat and dairy products
• improving the monitoring of routes of exposure, including in water, soil and air
• most importantly, fully testing the air, water, soil and animals prior to drilling and at regular intervals after drilling is completed, and disclosing fully the chemicals used when hydrofracking.

Bamberger concluded:

Without knowledge of all the chemicals being used, you can’t test before drilling. And if we don’t have predrilling tests then if you find a chemical postdrilling, how can you prove that it came from hydrofracking.

The CCC in its annual report to Parliament examines the notion of a second dash for gas by some who are optimistic that Europe will benefit from the same sort of cheap shale gas boom as that experienced in the USA. The first dash for gas in the 1990s reduced the UK’s emissions as power generation switched from dirtier coal. It thinks a cheaper option than a new “dash for gas” is a fourfold increased investment in clean energy to avoid breaking laws on renewables and climate change, though that would still raise the annual energy bill of a typical household by £100 by 2020. It says the government is giving mixed messages on gas, and should explicitly rule out a new dash for gas.

The report confirms that greenhouse gases fell in the UK by 7 percent in 2011, but says most of this was down to the warm winter, rising fuel costs and falling incomes. Only 0.8 percent of the CO₂ cut was due to policies from government.

It says investment in wind power has been running at only a third of the annual amount that will be needed by the end of the decade. Plans for new nuclear power, and carbon capture and storage projects have also both slipped. There has been an improvement in insulating roofs and cavity walls but little progress on solid walls and low carbon heating. Emissions from new cars have continued to fall but there has been scant progress with vans.

The committee draws on International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasts to project that gas costs up to 2020 will remain around 80p per therm, which will make it unaffordable for electricity when the price for carbon is added. However, its projections are challenged by some who believe the global glut of gas will eventually lead to much lower prices if the historic link between oil and gas prices is broken.

The CCC says it has modelled a future with gas at 40p per therm which still shows gas confers no advantage over nuclear power. That is because the government’s controversial carbon floor price will increase from £30 per CO₂ tonne in 2020 to £70 in 2030, forcing up the cost of generating with fossil fuels. Shale gas is a fossil fuel which emits CO2, though it would be hard to know it through its hard sell as a “clean” fuel. Nuclear is also being plugged as a clean option, in the sense that it emits no CO₂, but the residue of radioactive waste with a lifetime of thousands of years is just polluting the earth for distant generations.

Keith Allott, head of climate change at WWF UK, said:

For the fourth year running, the Committee on Climate Change has made clear that a dramatic step change in ambition is needed. Too many key policies—such as the Green Deal, the Green Investment Bank and now the Energy Bill—are hobbled by lack of ambition and poor implementation.

He added that the government risked letting the Climate Change Act wither by neglect.

Barclays Bankers Show Banking is Bent

So Barclays Bank have been fined a fortune for fiddling their books in cahoots with other banks to seem more prosperous than they really were when other banks were in dire muck a few years back. Bob Diamond, Barclays CEO has offered to forgo his bonus this year, presumably therefore accepting responsibility. He was in charge of the fiddling division at the time. What an honest Joe he is!

My understanding is that insider trading is a serious crime. How is senior bankers fiddling interest rates to their advantage any less a serious crime? How is it even possible. We poor dumbos down here thought interest rates were set by governments or by a state bank, the Bank of England in the UK, but now we find that is not so. bankers set their own rates, and evidently can set them to their own advantage.

Can we be told why an autistic computer hacker can be extradited to the USA for alleged potential threats to computer networks, with the prospect of a long period of incarceration in some US semi-feudal dungeon full of violent muderers and psychopaths, but the genial, smiling mega crook, Bob Diamond, is not even investigated by the police here in the UK?

And whose money pays those massive fines? Is it Diamond's? Even his annual bonus of £several million is puny by comparison, and he is careful to tell us he will not be receiving it this year. Next year he will receive double to make it up!

This man and his weaselly fellow crooks throughout the bent banking kingdom should be arrested and properly brought before the courts of justice, with no permissible excuses like suspected senile dementia, no last minute conversions to the way of God, truth and light, and no fobbing off the case with some legal technicality. All of these have been used to get rich crooks off the punishment they deserve. Where then are the police? Where are the MPs asking questions like these in defence of the rights of the citizens who elected them?

The truth is that they are all cheaply bought by men like Murdoch and the bankster mafiosi. If no one in public office demands action over this criminality, then we know what a diseased state western society has fallen into. All our public servants are greedy opportunists, cheaply bought by latter day robber barons. Are there any honest people of principle left in public office? If so, let them show themselves!

What Civil Disobedience has Done for Us

The Kinder Scout Trespass

Peter Frost, the author of the definitive Haynes Camping Manual, has been writing about a memorable event in the history of political struggle in the UK—in this case the struggle for access to land grabbed in centuries past by so-called noblemen—the Kinder Scout mass trespass. The great act of civil disobedience was inspired by young communists and is widely recognised as the event that opened up the enjoyment of the countryside to ordinary people and led to the establishment of our National Parks and to countryside access legislation. Though it happened 80 years ago, those who enjoy the British countryside are still enjoying the benefits of this act of political defiance, and act that shows what mass resistance can do, even in our right dominated supposed democracies.

Then, in the shadow of mass unemployment, lads and lassies from northern mill towns with little or no money sought free entertainment by walking the high countryside, much of which was private shooting estates and grouse moors. Frequently turned away by gamekeepers protecting the private shoots, members of the Lancashire branch of the British Workers Sport Federation (BWSF) decided they would make a public mass trespass on Kinder Scout, the highest point in the Derbyshire Peak District. Some of the BWSF were members of Manchester Cheetham Young Communist League, and they advertised their trespass in the Daily Worker, the forerunner of the present day Morning Star. The leader of the trespass was a Young Communist called Benny Rothman.

Fortunately Benny wrote the whole story down and his book was published in 1982 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the trespass. Today his book, long out of print, is a collector's item. Rothman's unique story is still an inspiring read, so a much enlarged version has been published to mark the 80th anniversary of the trespass (The Battle For Kinder Scout, Benny Rothman, Willow Publishing, £9.95). The new volume has more pictures, many in colour, more eyewitness reports and tributes to some of the participants such as Communist folk singer Ewan MacColl. The new and additional material, albeit focused on a single issue, makes this an inspiring guide to those in the battle for equality, fairness and justice for ordinary people.

Ignoring “Trespassers will be prosecuted” signs, Benny led about 400 ramblers from Bowden Bridge quarry on Sunday, 24 April, 1932. The trespassers scrambled up towards the Kinder plateau and came face to face with the Duke of Devonshire's gamekeepers armed with sticks, and a scuffle ensued in which one gamekeeper was bruised. The ramblers pressed on to the plateau, where they were greeted by a group of trespassers from Sheffield who had set off that morning, crossing Kinder from Edale. Five ramblers were arrested, four others besides Rothman, and they were charged the next day with unlawful assembly and breach of the peace. Rothman had a previous conviction. He had been jailed earlier for chalking slogans welcoming the launch of the communist newspaper, the Daily Worker, in 1930. Benny Rothman was a firm supporter of the Daily Worker and the Morning Star all his life.

All pleaded not guilty and were remanded to be tried at Derby Assizes by a jury consisting of army officers. Five were found guilty and were jailed for between two and six months, with Rothman getting the longest sentence. It unleashed a huge wave of support and public sympathy, and brought unity to a divided community. Previously, other more respectable and more middle class bodies like the Ramblers and Holiday Fellowship had strongly opposed direct action and the trespass, but public opinion shifted with the reports of the prison sentences.

A few weeks later more than 10,000 ramblers—the largest number in history—assembled for an access rally in the Winnats Pass near Castleton and the pressure for greater countryside access continued to grow. That pressure led in 1949 to “The National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act” and to the establishment of Britain's first national park to preserve our countryside treasures. It also led to the Countryside and rights of way legislation that we enjoy today.

At the celebration of the 70th anniversary of the trespass, the Duke of Devonshire and owner of the Kinder Scout grouse moor made an amazing admission:

I hope to have the opportunity of making an apology on behalf of my family. The ramblers were entirely in the right. My grandfather, I think, took the wrong attitude.

In April this year, the Kinder 80 festival, which spanned a week, included nearly 30 walks, talks, exhibitions and events in and around the Peak District. The event was launched at the Moorland Centre in Edale, Derbyshire, where there was a Trespass exhibition. The event saw the launch of the revised, updated and expanded version of Benny Rothman's book. To end the festival was a ceilidh in Sheffield. Kinder 80 committee chairman Roly Smith said:

The 1932 mass trespass was an iconic event not only for freedom to roam legislation, finally achieved by the Countryside and Rights of Way Act of 2000, but as a catalyst towards the creation of our National Parks of which the Peak District was the first in 1951. The Trespass anniversary has become an important date in the outdoor calendar and many people believe that the sacrifice made 80 years ago by these ramblers should never be forgotten.

Today the fight to protect the British countryside goes on. Cameron and his coalition government have slashed National Park funding by a quarter and have sought to sell off much of our national forests. Public bodies charged with protecting our landscape, like the Environment Agency and Natural England, have seen their budgets slashed too. The right to enjoy Britain's landscape was never just handed down freely as many people, devoid of historical knowledge and even interest in it, think. Like most of the rights we enjoy, we have fought for them. They have come to us as a result of political struggle and activities like the Kinder Trespass, struggles that still go on today. We let them cease at the risk of again being enslaved.

More can be read by Peter Frost in the Morning Star by searching for “Kinder Scout”, and there is a web page at Kinder Scout Trespass. The book by Benny Rothman is available from Amazon.

Basic Arguments for Socialism by Tony Benn, former UK Minister

Tony Benn, who was a cabinet minister under Labour Prime Ministers Harold Wilson and James Callaghan, and represents the now disappointly small socialist wing of the Labour Party, has written in his diaries (published 1988):

As a minister, I experienced the power of industrialists and bankers to get their way by use of the crudest form of economic pressure, even blackmail, against a Labour Government (1). Compared to this, the pressure brought to bear in industrial disputes [by trades unions] is minuscule (2). This power was revealed even more clearly in 1976 when the IMF secured cuts in our public expenditure (3). These lessons led me to the conclusion that the UK is only superficially governed by MPs and the voters who elect them. Parliamentary democracy is, in truth, little more than a means of securing a periodical change in the management team, which is then allowed to preside over a system that remains in essence intact (4). If the British (or American) people were ever to ask themselves what power they truly enjoyed under our political system they would be amazed to discover how little it is, and some new Chartist agitation might be born and might quickly gather momentum.

In the present crisis these words mean more than ever:

1. We have given £1 trillion (£1 million million) to banks (mainly) and various industrial groups and scammers
2. The government and press blame trades unionists and workers defending their work and conditions for “living beyond our means”, and all those with low IQs accept it!
3. The money magicked out of the treasury into bankers' coffers is to be replaced, not by taxing bankers and their wealthy chums, but by laying off public servants and cutting benefits for the poor
4. Our so called democracy is smoke and mirrors, intended to pull the wool over the eyes of simpletons. Regrettably, we have a lot of them, mainly yes-men in comfortable jobs, but many who think politicians and the media cannot tell a lie!
5. Both Britain and the USA have a two party system but with only one policy between them—lining the pockets of the rich and powerful, and blaming working people for being idle!

Benn himself had to fight to get a seat in the British House of Commons after he inherited—at his father's death and the previous death in action of his elder brother—the peerage his father had been awarded earlier for his public service. The constitutional point about this is that peers (Lords) were confined to the feudal House of Peers and were, for constitutional reasons, not allowed to stand in the commons. But nor were they allowed to renunciate their peerage to do so. Already an MP for ten years, Benn had tried to introduce renunciation bills to allow those, like himself, who did not wish to inherit a title, they personally had not earned, to renunciate their inheritance. Both houses refused them.

Benn had his parliamentary seat removed, and a by-election was arranged, for which Benn sought and received selection by his local constituency party. Benn then won with a vastly increased majority, but was not allowed to take his seat. Two senior judges were appointed to test Benn's case which was based on some precedent, but mainly on the fact that, in a modern democracy, a properly elected candidate ought to be able to take a seat if constituents had vote for him. The judges found Benn's case inadequate and his losing opponent was given the seat. There was such a public outcry that the government of the day had to introduce a bill allowing a peer to renounce his peerage and take up a legitimately elected seat in the commons. So Benn returned, convinced that the system was designed to maintain the status quo, but that concerted public action could change things.

Benn's call for a new Chartist agitation has been answered in the UK, where there is a charter movement, but unfortunately not strong enough, not least because the non-democratic media tell us nothing about it. Needless to say, the odious sociopathic crook, Tony Blair, partner in murderous crime of the pathetic G W Bush, gets every chance to defend his get-rich-quick policies such as the PFI, as it is called, which has driven large hospitals into bankruptcy and has doubtless put many other public enterprises into the red, all the better for greedy corporations to privatize them.

Benn elsewhere pointed out that the Labour party of 1935 proposed in its election manifesto to nationalize the banks. The crisis then was similar to the one we are experiencing now. The present one is, if anything, worse. Why then is there no demand by the Labour Party to nationalize our banks instead of putting our taxes directly into the share dividends of people rich enough to go without their unearned incomes for years, and still be rich?

There are millions times more people who are poor or only moderately well off, yet so many of them are deluded into thinking they are among the rich. The 1% is richer than most people can imagine, let alone sensibly defend as being in their own best interests. Support a people's charter. You'll probably find there is a charter group near you. If not, draw one up and get your friends and fellow workers to support it. If we do nothing look around the world at what our ruling classes are willing to do to others. Think you'll be any different when push comes to shove? Don't delude yourselves.

Honderich Interview

Bid for Palestine Statehood and the Arab Spring

Calling People “anti-Semitic” is a Trick, we Always Use

So says a former Israeli minister, Shulamit Aloni, answering Amy Goodman. This video from Representative Press is a response to that trick used repeatedly against dissidents, among them being that channel in channel comments. It is the standard defamation tactic of calling people anti-Semitic who speak out against those supporting immoral and illegal Israeli policies in violation of basic human rights. Raising the specter of the Holocaust is similarly used to deflect criticism, as if Zionists have the right now to abuse other people such as Palestinians because Jews have been horribly abused as scapegoats to distract attention from their own abuses by totalitarian regimes in the recent past.

The Holocaust and the suffering of the Jewish people justifies what we do to the Palestinians.

Shulamit Aloni