You are in the company
of
Roger Warren Evans
Roger Warren Evans
|
|
You are in the company
of
Roger Warren Evans |
|
| Part of www.LivePolitics.net < Back to Home Page |
|
|
item0023D 536,537 536 25 November 2002 Grey Power, powerless Much nonsense is talked about the political power of pensioners, the 11m of our fellow UK citizens who have reached retirement age. They are important, as a social phenomenon - but when it comes to political muscle, they are a busted flush.My first essay into pensioner politics came in 1994, when I left Sainsburys. Being especially interested (like, I confess, Tony Blair) in the politics of the Liberal Government of 1906 onwards, I stumbled across an event which had in 1908 been named Pensions Day - the day on which the first Old Age Pensioners registered their claims for 10/- per week, checking in at Post Offices throughout the nation on Thursday 24 September. There was a basic means test, and claimants had to be over the age of 70. But the newly designated Pensions Day was clearly perceived as a major event, principally for the relief it brought to hard-pressed sons and daughters saddled with the maintenance of aged parents. I conceived the idea of resurrecting Pensions Day, as an annual March and Gala, taking central London by storm. And for the following five years I organised that event, working closely with the great Jack Jones, the former TGWU General Secretary, then President of the National Pensioners Convention. I become a dab hand, working closely with the Metropolitan Police, at organising mass marches. And on several occasions, I attended the annual Pensioners Convention in the great Floral Hall at Blackpool. It was all a great political disappointment. The theory is that, with the huge weight of their 11m voting-potential, and their high propensity to vote, pensioners should be able to "name their price", and bring all Governments to heel. But the truth is that the pensioners cannot deliver any coherent political influence, and their requirements remain studiously ignored by all Parties, and by the trade unions. Pensioners broadly stick to the voting habits of their working-lives - Tories vote Tory, Labour votes Labour. Many pensioners begin to see through the posturings and of the young and middle-aged, and refuse to take any of them seriously. Others give way to pessimism and pragmatism, realising that nothing will ever change. Yet others simply descend into quiescence, watching the world go by. Revolutions are not made of this. With this unpromising material, it is even difficult to get a parliamentary lobby together, let alone a decent March and Gala... The passivity of the pensioner population enables Governments to ignore them, and accord priority to other issues. That is the reality. That is what Maggie Thatcher did. And that is what Labour has done under Tony Blair. What do you think? Drop me a line < Back to Text Reference
537 25 November 2002
Forest v ASH Tobacco smoking is an emotive business. The Health Secretary Alan Milburn has launched a new drive against "smoking", and there is good reason for a determined preventive health drive: see The Guardian. I am a non-smoker, and I have never smoked, so I have no personal axe to grind. But in this zealous drive, the authorities must show a proper respect for personal freedom. We should respect the dignity and freedom of all our fellow-citizens. And in the witch-hunt against smokers, we have already gone too far. While tobacco is a very addictive substance, its consumption has for hundreds of years formed part of everyday lives, and those conventions are not to be lightly displaced. It is unconscionable for hospital doctors to withhold treatment from known smokers, on the grounds that they are the architects of their own misfortune. The doctrine of passive smoking has also gone too far. While it is reasonable to impose short-period constraints (e.g. during a public transport journey, or taxi-ride, or over a meal) it is unreasonable for smoking to be prohibited throughout entire workplaces, or indeed entire "public" places - I cringe at the sight of smokers forced to huddle on London payments, furtively drawing on a fag. I support the differentiation between "smoking" and "non-smoking" rooms in hotels, but I am nervous about the drift towards total prohibition. The same differentiation, in most restaurants, is a farce. On the other hand, I support a complete ban on tobacco advertising - partly because that infringes no aspect of human dignity. I do not doubt that some risk is to be associated with "passive smoking". But the regulatory question is whether or not, taken together with all the other "risks" that we run in the course of our everyday lives, the passive-smoking risk is of sufficient prominence to justify the humiliating pariah-like treatment of smokers by the State. The suffering of malaria patients in primitive societies was - and perhaps still is - intensified by their pariah-treatment at the hands of society. In some societies, AIDS carries the same risk. We are surrounded by "risks", at every moment of our lives. The wrongful exploitation of the risk of terrorist attack constitutes a new threat to our personal freedoms. To return to smoking: it must be clear that many people were exposed to their greatest risk as children, either in the womb or in smoking households, where (we must fervently hope) the State will never penetrate. Eventually, a new cultural balance will emerge, enabling a balanced judgement to be made about the conflicts between the quality of life and the incidence of risk. But that day is not yet come. We continue to be buffeted by the merchants of risk, commercial and political, and stampeded into sacrificing freedoms which may be very hard to re-establish.
What do you think? Drop me a line
|
|
|
|
Created by GMID Design & Communication COPYRIGHT NOTICE
|
New