I recall the gay-rights activist Peter Tatchell writing a piece
recently in The Guardian saying that he was able to survive on
'welfare benefits' (and the odd piece of commissioned journalism)
within London. He did say that he had a rather simple lifestyle -
but that's his choice and fair play to him I say - and that he made a
major saving by using his bike to get around London.
Cheers,
Paul
========================================================
> Priority: normal
> Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2002 14:11:12 GMT0BST
> Reply-to: John Veit Wilson <[log in to unmask]>
> From: John Veit Wilson <[log in to unmask]>
> Organization: Dept of Sociology and Social Policy
> Subject: (Fwd) Re: BBC programme on the adequacy of Income Support bene
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Paul Ashton wrote --
>
> Social policy academics and others claiming to represent poor people who
> can come up with a figure like stlg84.76 a week as a 'stringent minimum
> income' are, of course, ten a penny. What is more interesting is whether the
> BBC bothered tried to find any researchers who think that the current level
> of benefits is adequate, or any (of the many, according to surveys) benefit
> recipients who don't find it a struggle to manage. Somehow I doubt it.
>
> Paul Ashton
> 2002-07-14
>
>
> == Paul raises an important methodological point. The BBC asked me about
> my work on how to find out about the adequacy of social assistance
> benefits. Precise cash sums are not part of that work and I did not
> mention any, though others interviewed may have done. I quoted the
> research I know of which includes government studies and which shows that
> on average benefit levels do not give access to participatory levels of
> living according to UK people's own standards. I also referred the BBC to
> several research institutes which study these matters, where colleagues
> should have been able to point to the research which Paul mentions.
>
> The issues are 'on average' and 'participatory'. Every distribution has
> tails, and some people may achieve participation as society defines it at
> lower income levels, though most don't. By the same token, some don't
> achieve it on higher income levels. Perhaps the BBC should have
> interviewed them as well.
>
> The other thing is that some people [and I have known some] choose to live
> on a low level of income and to restrict their aspirations of
> participation, because [in the cases I knew] they did not share the values
> of consumerism and consumption which are dominant in our society. So they
> would have asserted that they did not find it a struggle, and their diets
> and health were good. But they lived very simple lives materially,
> something which most UK people would not want to do.
>
> So perhaps the BBC could have interviewed people who managed on less than
> the sum quoted, but what do we know about the lives that they were able to
> live? Did they sacrifice healthy diets [as measured by the experts] so
> that they could take a full part culturally in society? Or did they give
> up other, unseen, social necessities so that the seen things could be
> reported to be OK? {that's a paraphrase from Seebohm Rowntree, actually,
> because he knew full well that the appearances were not the same as the
> realities of managing or of deprivations].
>
> So if there are researchers who have found empirically that the weekly
> incomes from JSA/IS are higher than those estimated to be needed for a
> healthy diet in our society [and also to allow for a participatory life,
> since this is a both/and matter and not an either/or] then I hope they
> will produce their evidence to this debate and elsewhere publicly so that
> it can be tested and replicated. I shall be delighted to learn that the
> IS/JSA rates are adequate for full social and material life, if this can
> be shown to be the case.
>
> I was told the programme was about 'how does the government know that the
> benefit levels are enough to live on?', and not about any particular sum.
> I replied that my own research suggested that UK governments have always
> known that benefit levels were not enough for decent participatory life,
> but they have always defended this on the basis that [a] nor were low
> wages and [b] it would be too expensive to increase benefits and to do
> so would create incentive problems with inadequate low wages levels. If
> this is untrue, the challenge lies with the government to show in what
> ways it is untrue. It may be that things will change in the future, but in
> the mean time I look forward to seeing the evidence, and to hearing the
> programme to find out what other researchers and claimants have said
> about the adequacy of the benefits.
>
> So, Paul, the challenge to you is, what proportion of people dependent on
> JSA/IS benefits can manage without a struggle, and what proportion find it
> a struggle? And what can the research you quote [references, please] tell
> us about the degree and quality of participatory achievements of those who
> manage without a struggle? In other words, can you give us empirical
> evidence which refutes the majority view which you seem to criticise?
>
> John VW.
>
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------
> From Professor J. H. Veit-Wilson
> Department of Sociology and Social Policy
> University of Newcastle upon Tyne
> NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE NE1 7RU, England.
> Telephones: +44-191-222-7498 or +44-191-266-2428
> Fax: +44-191-222-7497.
> E-mail: <[log in to unmask]>.
>
>
Dr. Paul J. Maginn
Research Fellow
South Bank University
Faculty of Built Environment
Room 808
202 Wandsworth Road
London
SW8 2JZ
Tel: +44 (0)20 7815 7342
Mob: +44 (0)7971 544098
Fax: +44 (0)20 7815 7198
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