Fear and loathing in Victoria Quay

Charities that provide public services are increasingly reluctant to speak out against social injustice because they fear they will lose their funding,according to a report from the Independence Panel, a commission set up in England to monitor the voluntary sector as it grapples with huge cuts in public funding.  It said service provider charities that traditionally have also had an advocacy role were censoring their public utterances for fear of reprisals from local authority and central government funders.

So far, so clear, so unsurprising.  

Martin Sime - CE at SCVO

And then you go looking for something similar by way of intelligence on what is happening in Scotland.  Where better than the web site of the Scottish Council of Voluntary Organisations, SCVO?  Well, for one thing the SCVO web site takes ages to load and is not the most accessible of web sites.  That apart, can I find an analysis of the strained relationship between government and the voluntary sector?  Three guesses and the first 4 don't count.

Keith Wimbles - CE at VAF

Then to the web site of the Voluntary Action Fund, VAF, which acts as a banker for government in distributing funds to the voluntary sector to do some of the equalities work needed in Scotland.  They distribute at least £4,683,807 of funds to 65 projects and get £180,402 themselves for doing this work.  I have tried asking questions of VAF [like what difference that work makes to individual people] but I have been told that they are not accountable to citizens, only those who use their services.  Do they offer any insights as to the atmosphere of fear and loathing between voluntary sector organisations working in equalities and the government?  Do they even tell you what the 65 projects are to do with over £4 million of funds and how it will make a difference to you, me and other people?  No, no and once again no.  

So VAF, like SCVO, are unable to say just how much voluntary sector organisations are bullied by government into not openly and overtly challenging or criticising government, with the sub-text being if you challenge you will lose funding at the next round.  Maybe not unable to say.  Maybe not willing to say?

This is not my fevered, paranoid, opium-fuelled gibberings.  In conversation with a number of people working in the sector over the last couple of years I have been told that very direct threats have come from civil servants in Victoria Quay, when some voluntary sector staff have been challenging or in some cases accused of being 'overly familiar' in their approach to and engagement with government minsters.  The message?  Simple.  Back off, else the funding tap gets turned off.

The debate on this issue has now opened up in England.  In Scotland, we are clearly so cowed by the government's bullying culture and in hock to government funding, we can't even bring it out of the closet.  We need cold turkey, and the drug is government funding.


As one of the first steps, why not challenge the two umbrella voluntary sector organisations to comment on the climate of fear and loathing created by Victoria Quay?  Ask Keith and Martin what they are doing to protect the independence and integrity of staff in the voluntary sector?


In addition, you could ask your MSP what she/he knows about this and what she/he thinks should be put in place to remove bullying from the relationship between government and the sector.


Finally, Nicola Sturgeon has ministerial responsibility for equalities in her bag.  Why not drop her an email asking if she is aware of the climate of fear and loathing, and what checks and balances she has in place to make sure it is eliminated?

You can be free only if I am free

Just a few days ago, Stonewall published its eighth annual guide to what it coyly describes as a Workplace Equality Index [WEI] of ‘Britain’s most gay-friendly [sic] employers’.  Credit to Ben Summerskill, Chief Executive, of Stonewall and his crew for getting employers to buy into the concept of benchmarking their work on delivering lesbian, gay and bi-sexual [LGB] equality and using the publication of the results to leverage further improvements in workplace equality for people who are LGB.  The WEI wheeze also generates income for Stonewall, as well as lots of column inches in the media. 

 

Who would have guessed, for instance, that MI5 would have been persuaded to enter the Stonewall WEI after decades of scaring the shit out of LGB people in government and public services as being a threat to national security ?  In the year past the spooks secured 62^nd place in the ‘top 100’ employers, beating [but not at Guantanamo Bay one hopes] such as the Royal Navy at 77^th and the Scottish Prison Service at 94^th.

 

So far, none of the other major equality communities have managed to come up with a similar initiative which has been quite so successful as Stonewall’s Workplace Equality Index.  Leastways, if you count success as getting into bed with such fragrant company as Goldman Sachs, merchant bankers, and persuading them to host a reception for those working in LGB equality where champagne cocktails were served on the rooftop garden of the Goldman Sachs offices in London’s Covent Garden [I may have got some of the fine detail on that blurred – it was the champagne – but the overall thrust – rooftop gardens and merchant bankers - is accurate].

 

And who wants to be peer reviewed on equality when the peer group includes MI5 who are linked to people have been illegally imprisoned and tortured in Guantanamo Bay and held without trial for a number of years? 

 

Stonewall friends and occasional hosts Goldman Sachs – in at number 6 – have been cited as discriminatory in relation to gender, with three former female employees claiming in 2010 that the firm has a testosterone-driven culture of press-up contests on the trading floor, male-dominated golf outings and scantily clad escorts at an office Christmas party.

 

In at 90 and way behind the merchant bankers [why do I keep itching to use a ‘w’ instead?] and spooks is the Scottish Government.  Yes indeed, that same organisation which routinely discriminates against disabled people when publishing information in printed form or on its web site.  And the same government which steadfastly delays, delays and delays again the delivery of equal pay for women working in Scotland’s NHS. 

 

In the top half of the ‘top 100’, at 45^th place, is Morgan Stanley, yet another merchant banker.  There may well be a link between dealing in and holding on to obscene amounts of money at the same time as causing world economic disater, but Morgan Stanley are no strangers to discrimination, having paid out $54 million in settlement of a class action on sex discrimination in 2004.

 

I have neither the time nor the inclination to dig further beneath the glossy and glittery surface of what Stonewall’s WEI purports to tell the reader on equality.  There is already a strong enough whiff building up around the buried evidence of real discrimination and I do not want to lose my lunch.  It would appear you can blag your way into Stonewall’s ‘top 100’ of ‘gay-friendly’ employers while at the same time being discriminatory against people from other equality communities. Duplicity ?

Clarence Darrow

You can protect your liberties in this world only by protecting the other man's freedom. You can be free only if I am free.

It was Clarence Darrow who first coined what I consider to be a robust truth : 'You can protect your liberties in this world only by protecting the other man's [sic] freedom.  You can be free only if I am free.'  I would commend this truth to Ben Summerskill and all others who strive to secure equality and freedom from discrimination for people from all of the communities of people who experience discrimination on a daily basis.

Inequality - don't let it become invisible

Two Pandas or the futures of 100,000+ young people?

Angela Constance - Minister
for Youth Employment -
will be paid £81,449

I'm going to try and keep this blog short [that counts as hard work for me] and simple [that is also hard work for me as I love exploring all the nuances .......].

• there are now over 100,000 young people [16-24 years old] unemployed in Scotland
• Angela Constance was recently appointed as Minister for Youth Employment
• the post has no decision making powers. It has to report to two Cabinet Secretaries
• she will be paid £81,449
• there is to be a £30 million budget for youth unemployment [it is not 'new' money, it is re-allocated money]
• that equals an investment of just over £300 per young person currently unemployed.

• there are now two Pandas in Scotland
• No Minister for Pandas been appointed
• Panda leasing costs to be paid to Chinese government are £600,000 a year for 10 years
• Panda food costs £70,000 a year
• that equals an investment of over £335,000 a year, for each panda

A spokeswoman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) said: 

"Edinburgh Zoo is putting the 'con' in conservation by trying to hoodwink the public into believing that the salvation of pandas lies in warehousing these sensitive animals."

Chris Draper, of the Born Free Foundation, said the panda deal was a 

"short-sighted and retrograde step".

Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon told Channel4 News she is 

"very optimistic"

 about the extra visitor numbers the pandas will attract in order to pay for the loan.  She described them as a 

"very generous and welcome gift"

from the people of China to Scotland.

Go figure.

Voluntary Action Fund banging a cracked kettle on equality

Mark and Helen Mullins

The 'third sector' is a strange under-explored world in Scotland, and is home, according to the Scottish Council of Voluntary Organisations [SCVO], to over 137,000 employees and spending £4.4 billion a year.  Parts of it do wonderful, incredible work, and a lot of the organisations operate in the ghettos and gulags of our society where the public sector rarely ventures, bringing comfort, humanity and dignity to people who have slipped through the few remaining fragile fingers of safety society now grudgingly offers in the shape of a government-ravaged care and support system.  I have blogged elsewhere about the decision of Mark & Helen Mullins to kill themselves in October 2011, rather than face another winter of poverty even Dickens would have found beyond his powers of description.  It is sometimes difficult to work out if the economy will topple off the cliff first, just before the shredded safety net of care and support finally bursts under the impossible weight of the tens of thousands of people who now survive, just, on food parcel handouts.


It is true that the 'third sector' does sometimes heroic work.  I have witnessed it, both when I worked in it and when I was on the Boards of a number of its many organisations.  I also know that not all in the sector live up to that heroic standard.  I have blogged before about a friend, bullied out of her job in a voluntary organisation which works for disabled people.  I know of some organisations where the integrity of financial management was not a million miles removed from that which was to be commonly found in the money markets and banks of 2007 before the crash of 2008.  I know of organisations who still think of disabled people as 'problems to be solved' and not simply accepted for who they are.  The sector is like the rest of the world - chock-a-block full of the sometimes great, the often good, the regrettably useless and the occasionally dangerous.


As a citizen, I reckon too many of our organisations are not properly held to account for what they do [and equally for what they don't do, but should] and have become accustomed to working away in the darkness which descends when good governance and scrutiny goes on a long holiday.  From time to time the work of an organisation catches my attention.  I switch on the headlights and take a long, hard, look.


One of the more recent to be caught in my headlights is something called Voluntary Action Fund [VAF].  The main reason it caught my eye was the number of colleagues working in the equalities field who were required to dance to a strange tune called by VAF who in turn dance to an all too familiar tune whistled by the government's own Equality Unit.  Their testimony made me think VAF could, in that time-honoured phrase, be part of the problem and not part of the answer.


I started by asking a number of questions which aimed to establish just what VAF were doing, why, and how much of a difference it was making.


The kind of questions I asked included :

Keith Wimbles, Chief Executive
of  Voluntary Action Fund

Part of the funding [to voluntary organisations] appears to come from government via VAF. I am at a loss as to why. Could you please explain why there is a need to filter/channel funds from the government’s Equality Unit through VAF and what added value I as a citizen gain from that arrangement, as I presume the role of VAF is also funded by government and thus the funding for VAF has to be top-sliced from that available for the voluntary sector?  

This was just one of the questions I put to Keith Wimbles, Chief Executive of VAF.  He chose not to answer that question.


On another tack I asked:

I would also appreciate sight of any quantitative evidence VAF has on how its funding to other bodies has helped citizens lead lives free of discrimination, access more equality of opportunity and encounter greater understanding and tolerance even though they are different?

The response I got to that ? :

Reports from funded organisations on what has been achieved against specific outcomes and an evaluation of VAF’s performance are sent to the Scottish Government as the funding agency. 

Which translates, roughly, as 'piss off we are not telling'.


Overall I have found it difficult to shine much of a light on the workings of VAF and to find out just what difference VAF makes to the lives of people.  The cupboard door behind which this information is to be found is being kept resolutely closed and the mushrooms, from the quality of answers I have received, are clearly flourishing.


There appears to be a strong reluctance on the part of VAF to be transparent and accountable to citizens and those who might be seen as beneficiaries of any work being done on equalities.


Have a look for yourself.  Try to find out what VAF [email Keith Wimbles via this link] does and what difference it makes to the lives and needs of your sister, brother, your mother, father, or your lover - all of whom might need society to better recognise their diversity and be comfortable with them being different.  It was said, long ago, by Gustave Flaubert, that :

'Human language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, when all the time we are longing to move the stars to pity'

Maybe it is because I am deaf, but the cracked kettle being used by VAF to beat out a tune for the organisations it funds to dance to would find even Fred Astaire and Flavia Cacace scratching their heads.  If you do find out the difference VAF makes and why your sister, brother, your mother, father, or your lover benefit, please send it on to me and I will publish it here so that others can be better informed.

Nicola Sturgeon

If you can't find it out, get in touch with Nicola Sturgeon, who carries equalities in her bag, and ask her to take the cracked kettle away from VAF.

Hierarchy of Equality ?

Your NHS in Scotland employs 131,340 people across 22 health boards and in 2010/11 spent £10,358million in revenue expenditure. 

Each of those 22 health boards has a legal duty to do all sorts of work around delivering equality and eliminating discrimination.  In other areas of this blog you will find, if you choose to browse, that one of the many areas in which our health service is failing is in delivering equal pay for women who work in our NHS. 

As citizens we are able to expect health boards to publish information on what they are doing [or even what they are not doing] on delivering equality and eliminating discrimination.  We should be able to find out, say, just how many black minority ethnic people are employed on senior salary bands across our NHS and, by comparing data year on, find out just how quickly or slowly racial discrimination in employment in our NHS is being eliminated.  The idea is that by making things transparent, you and I can hold health boards to account.  It is a long haul.  People who work in government and in health boards [all of whom tell you they have a best friend who is gay/black, or a neighbour who is deaf/Jewish] don’t really like being held to account, and make it hard for you to know what they have done and what they have still to do in delivering equality and eliminating discrimination.

Compare and contrast.

What is known as the ‘third sector’ [charities and voluntary organisations] is, according to the Scottish Council for VoluntaryOrganisations [SCVO], a bigger employer than our NHS, with 137,000 people employed in it.  The sector raises and spends £4,400 million each year.

Do they have a legal duty to deliver equality and eliminate discrimination?  No.

Bigger employers than our NHS and yet no legal duty to show that black minority ethnic people are employed on senior salary bands across the sector and, by comparing data year on, find out just how quickly or slowly racial discrimination in employment in our ‘third sector’ is being eliminated?

Is it because they are intrinsically ‘good’ employers and the public sector bad employers?  No, no and again, no.  I have blogged before about with an anonymised story about someone I know who has been bullied out of her job by a ‘third sector’ organisation which works for disabled people. 

Don’t just take my word for the failings of the sector.  A report by the Young Foundation [he of ‘Big Issue’ fame] ‘concluded that most of the literature on social innovation in the voluntary sector points to a sector that is ‘better at believing they are innovative than being innovative’.  Or in the words of Bernard Bailey, ‘When science discovers the center of the universe, a lot of people will be disappointed to find they are not it.’

when is she going to stop drooling
and dribbling over the pandas

The Young Foundation report [Mapping the Third Sector] said, in relation to equality, ‘Reducing inequality and enhancing diversity: Despite valuing social justice, there are significant gender and ethnic inequalities in the [third sector] workforce.  Female chief executives receive £11,000 less per year than their male counterparts and there are very few chief executives from ethnic minority backgrounds, particularly in larger charities.  The voluntary sector has been good at advancing social justice issues up the external agenda but organisations need to reflect on these same issues internally.’

In other words, the third sector is talking the talk, but not walking the walk, on equality.

We need to be able to expect, and demand, more from our ‘third sector’. 

If you want more out of the third sector, drop an email to Nicola Sturgeon, government minister with the equality portfolio, asking her when she is going to stop drooling and dribbling over the pandas and instead use her power as minister to get the third sector in Scotland to do the right thing on delivering equality and eliminating discrimination.

Martin Sime

You can also email Martin Sime, Chief Executive of SCVO and ask him why he has not driven change in the third sector in Scotland to ensure equality is visible and evidenced and any hierarchy of equalities is dismantled.

Their Agony, their Despair and our Inhumanity

The agony, the despair, the inhumanity of what we have created.

Mark Mullins and his wife Helen died in a suicide pact sometime in October this year after giving up on a life of grinding poverty .  Their bodies were undiscovered for several weeks in their home in the small market town of Bedworth, Warwickshire .

From what is known, the poverty was not simply about a lack of money.  That said, when the couple died, they were living in a wretched and appalling state. They had been living on £57.50 a week for the last 18 months. This tiny sum, just £4.10 each per day, was the unemployment benefit that was claimed by Mark.  Our systems and structures which provide the building blocks of what we call society have become poverty stricken - of humanity, dignity, decency and respect.

It has been reported that Helen had her Child Benefits stopped, but was unable to claim Jobseeker’s Allowance, as she was not deemed fit to work. She was then informed that she also did not qualify for incapacity benefit, due to her not being officially diagnosed with a medical condition.

Mark had found life hard since leaving the army and had been unable to find regular work. He was Helen’s full-time carer but he was unable to claim Carer’s Allowance (£53.10 a week), as he was told he was ineligible until she had been diagnosed with a disorder.

In December 2010, Mark and Helen, who had recently married, appeared in a short documentary about people living below the poverty line in Warwickshire.  Mark gave an interview to the Salvation Army [watch it via this link], whom the couple relied on for food parcels. He detailed their daily struggle for existence. They were interviewed at a soup kitchen in Coventry, where they came each Sunday for a “soup and food handout”. Unable to afford travel costs, the couple had to walk the 12-mile round trip. Mark told the interviewer at the time that they had been doing this for nearly a year.

He said that social services had taken Helen’s youngest daughter away from her, “because she was looking after Helen and doing everything for her”.

“My Helen is learning disabled, but it took her a very long time to get any kind of benefits or social security,” he said. “The job centre decided that she couldn’t sign on because she had no brain function, no numeracy, literacy skill, any mobile abilities. But the Incapacity [Benefit] and disability people wouldn’t recognise her until she had been fully diagnosed. We are caught in Catch-22 situation. We couldn’t sign on the dole. Couldn’t get the Incapacity established. Couldn’t get the disability established, so basically we are living on very little, hand to mouth.”

They could no longer afford food, he added, saying, “We’ve basically survived on a lot of your food handouts. We live in the one room of our property. Obviously we can’t afford all this heating in minus 10 and 15. We can’t afford to run the heating…. The food we gather here we basically put into a big pot and I keep one broth going continuously because your household bags gives us lots of fruit and veg, potatoes and there’s a lot of bread here. And we really have from week to week at times survived on what you have given us.”

They had to put the food parcels they got from the soup kitchen “out in the shed, because it’s cooler in the shed. We don’t have a fridge or a freezer. We bring it [the food] in piecemeal and add to the big broth pot as we go along.”

Commenting on their inability to claim the benefits they were entitled to, Mark said, “I think the system is very unkind. We have lost count of how many appeals we have had. We’ve had to fight tooth and nail every step of the way to get benefits.

“They have no problem in suspending benefits. It’s not an issue for them. They just put a tick in a box and a stroke across a piece of paper and they alter your lives, which is fundamentally unfair. You have those who have the power to do this to you and those of us who don’t have the power to resist it.”

'I think the system is very unkind....You have those who 
have the power to do this to you and those of us who 
don’t have the power to resist it.' - Mark Mullins

This happened within our society.  It will go on happening until we decide it must not happen on our watch again.  

That means more than a donation to a charity, of whatever size.

It means more than shedding a tear at the slick video clips with often heart-rending content shown on such as 'Children in Need'.

It means more than getting off your backside at elections once every few years, forgetting about the 'X-Factor' or 'Coronation Street' for one night, and getting down to the voting station to cast your vote for radical change.

It does mean you have to reclaim how we build and maintain our society from the numpties and eejits who have been left to get on with it at Westminster and Holyrood, for their model of society has failed Helen and Mark in the worst possible way.

It does mean you have to start holding your MP, your MSPs and your governments to account - fully and properly and regularly, not just at elections.  If you need training in how to do that, contact me via this blog.

I have borne witness to another human being driven to killing herself.  It is an experience beyond both comprehension and description, and yet my experience is nothing to what each of these human beings has endured.  For some, death is a better answer than life, as the system has nothing to offer and my personal experience has made me accept and respect that.  For Mark and Helen Mullins, the system changes needed to give them real support and real hope were so minor, the fact that they were missing tells us we have created a society where life is cheaper than than the average weekly shop.  We are but a heartbeat away from sliding into becoming a society where the value systems on display would not be unfamiliar to those who lived in national socialist Germany in the late 1930's.


One of the few who did challenge the cheapening of life of those who did not fit the Nazi model was Pastor Friedrich Niemöller.  His legacy to us is a piece of verse which is as relevant today as it was then:

First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.

With Helen and Mark, they did not have to come for them.  'They' [we, us, our society] simply stood aside and allowed them to fall to such depths of agony, despair and inhumanity, that death offered them a warmer, safer place.