Lee

As you say - it is a great mystery. Each of us works forward inch by inch to our own explanation over a life time.

Where my model departs from yours is in the tribal nature of the group that carries the DNA. A small band or tribe. They are carrying the potential for both fierce combat and great nuturing. There are a range of necessary and as you say conflicting responses in the hard wiring. Some characteristics are divided roughly according to gender. Some characteristics are divided up between different individuals. Everyone can't be leader. Where it gets complicated is that individuals who are strong on one characteristic still carry weaker competences in the others. There would come a point where I would kill but it would be way, way down the line for me.

This allows the tribe to rebalance and rise to disaster and in general gives it lots more choice and options than a bunch of lemmings who all have carbon copy responses although the lemming tendency is alive and well in the Labour Party at Westminster.

So by hard wired I don't mean every individual has the same profile of responses and behaviours. They all major in different things. The tribe as a whole carries them all. And a tribe only needs one leader and a spare.

And the leader will bring out the appropriate responses and set the climate for individuals to contribute as they can.

Frances, I think you are taking us into territory of great mystery.

Every impala on the African plain, unless its deaf or otherwise accidentally disabled, freezes and then scatters when it hears a snort from a sentinal buck that communicates "danger is approaching". Every humpbacked whale that hears the sound made by a grieving mother that her infant has died, sings the same song of mourning. Every human child, in all cultures, will jump out of its skin when presented suddenly with certain images accompanied by certain sounds.

So we know that humans and animals, in ways specific to their species, respond in a similar "hard-wired" way to stimuli.

However I want to challenge the notion that compassion is hard-wired in the same way. If it were, why isnt it universal and beyond our control ? There are various explanations that I find unsatisfying:

"Humans are just more sophisticated than animals and have some choices and controls over how they react". This is a belief statement for which there is no rigorous proof. There are many examples of humans responding in a consistent, universal, knee-jerk, no-choice fashion to certain stimuli, just as animals do. This suggests that this explanation is a myth, and that compassion is not hard-wired in the way we understand that term.

Another explanation is that some of our hard-wired reactions sit side-by-side in conflict with one another. So, the explanation goes, we are hard-wired to jump into a river to save a drowning child, but we are also hard-wired to protect ourselves from drowning, and that explains why some people do the former and some do not. However, for this to work, you would have to show that every time a situation would naturally spur a hard-wired compassionate response, there is another contradictory hard-wired response of similar strength that threatens to turn off the compassionate reaction.

This explanation works for me in the case of the drowning child, but it does not work for me in the case of compassion. The reason is that people are capable of being chronically uncompassionate...they carry it as an attitude and even have rationalisations for it...they are not in a state of continual conflict about whether to respond compassionately.

This leads me to conclude, at least as a hypothesis, that compassion is not hard-wired, but is something else. In what way it is an evolutionary behaviour seems to me to be unproven. Dawkins, cynic to the end, claims that it compassion is self serving, in the sense that it tends (but does not guarantee) reciprocal compassion. In other words, the rescuing angel is building up a "compassion credit account". That's not very nice, but it is surprising how many of humanity's "best characteristics" may have just such origins.

See, I am not even sure that we have a foolproof mechanism for detecting compassion, for determining how wide-spread it is, identifying whether it is unmoderated in individuals or a specific response to a specific situation. I am not at all sure of whether it is even a set of bahaviours whose definition we would commonly agree. Is someone who helps a terminal loved-one in terrible pain, end her life, being compassionate or being evil and murderous ? Is compassion a motiveless quality ? Does it vary widely by culture in terms of its manifestation and its recognition ? How do beliefs intersect with compassion ?

If these are legitimate questions which do not have immediate, simple, and conclusive answers, that suggests to me that "compassion" is not a sufficiently rigorous construct that would allow us to speculate that it is hard-wired. So, if its not hard-wired, what is it ?

This is not an academic issue. It lies right at the heart of the dillemas you have described in post after post about different reactions to the mentally (and otherwise) disabled. And I would hazard going even further and suggest that being unable to get a steady grip on this (not just you, me too) is one of the reasons why it causes you so much pain.

At the start, I described this as a mystery, because it is for me. I have read more books on evolutionary behaviour than most people have had hot breakfasts, I suffered a year on Dawkins's awful internet forum trying to get these and similar issues clarified, and they never were....except in cliches (oddly enough Dawkins is just as "religious" in his dogma as the religions he attacks).

We all of course work from our experience and beliefs, and so you are satisfied that people you describe as compassionate, are genuinely so, and you would be quite right to dismiss any attempt to question that as impertinence. We have to continue living, in the face of mystery, as best we can. What I know from my own experience is that in part of Eritrea, which I got to know well, when a community or a family is faced with starvation, the first members who are fed are the aged...it doesnt matter how old or infirm they are, or even whether they have a reasonable chance of surviving through the night. (Next children of both genders, then women, then older men, and finally young men). In another geographical site which I also know, but will bot shame by identification, once an old person is incapable of caring for themselves or do anything useful for others, she is taken into the desert, buried up to her neck, and left for predators.

What's hard-wired ?

Lee - I'm a great believer in evolutionary biology and see our species doing great and dreadful things from a very primitive basic hardwired instinctive base. The basic dinosaur brain is far more simple than we want to admit and underpins all we do but on top of that very elaborate edifices can be built using language and other skills. This fools us in to thinking we are more complex than we are but each generation has to start again from the inherited base.

I have more respect than you do for the hardwired base. I think it comes in various mixes suitable for making up a small tribe. 70% extrovert followers can be easily led down any path or up any gum tree. A few dominant leaders - a great smattering of nurturers. They might almost be different species. It works by having pools of different tendencies on tap for changing circumstances. And come a war most people can reach their war like arousal spot. I'm a freak on this - I don't seem to have it.

Every strong leader through history from church to royal to politician worked all this out in the playground.

Great leaders do have nurturing in their mix - tyrants don't. The personality of the leader does matter because of the tendency to follow in most of the population.

The upside of the campaigning I have been doing recently is I have met some wonderful people who are strong and real leaders and fighters but are blessed with endless compassion. Compassion is the word we are looking for here. It will tell you who is a leader and who is a tyrant.

The Tories know compassion has to be factored in to their greediness to sell it or they end up the nasty party and feature the word in their PR. Gorillas have no problem choosing a caring sharing silverback to lead them over stronger more limited males. We idealise that all rounder type leader so we also know that is what we should be choosing. Unfortunately we keep getting fooled by manipulative sociopaths who pretend compassion and don't feel it. The grassroots should keep them grounded but they cut themselves free of those irritating little people acting as a conscience.

Never once has Purnell said a single word to reassure the genuinely sick people whose very pittance that keeps body and soul together is in his power to and which he is now making 'conditional' and withdrawing. Not a single word of reassurance. How stony hearted is that? He thinks it makes him a 'strong' man when it actually makes him a dangerous choice.

SG: I am sure you recall our long debate on Israel and the USA. I have been thinking about your analysis; and while I still think it is too apocalyptic, I am seeing some important dynamics taking place. We have a highly truculent and attitudinal regime in Israel, with a fascist in the foreign minister post. In the US we have a President under seige because of his backpeddling on torture and war crimes, and the mess he is creating by his Afpak surge.

The statement today, through Clinton, that all work on illegal settlements must cease immediately is an important piece of kite flying...not just to test Netanyahu resolve (we all know that cowardice goes hand in hand with bullying, but Netanyahu is not a very intelligent man); but also to test American public opinion.

So, in deference to your analysis, I am now working with a hypothesis, as follows: that what has appeared as universal and strident US public support in Israel is not monolithic. It is in large part a function of the Terrorism Fear Level (TFL).

(A short explanatory diversion. America is unique in terms of TFL. It is more likely than any other country to spin into a mindless flurry of panic and toilet roll buying, when its button is pressed. That button has been cultivated for generations through the educational system: an almost mindless respect for authority, massive gullibility about threats, and a deep investment in the myth of America's greatness. There is a constant theme in US modern history of superman-style heroes saving a panicked and powerless population from evil boogie-men (communists, atheists, chinese, muslims, terrorists.. the list is almost endless)

As long as (i) Obama does not press the TFL button, (ii) there are no major terrorist incidents that Cheney (now the leader of the opposition, thanks to Obama who has let him off scot-free) can exploit as Murka Under Threat; (iii) Hamas doesnt do anything crazy; (iv) Netanyahu and Lieberman continue to behave like punks; and (v) Livni is careful to show a (relatively) decent alternative face of Israel.....then it may well be that American public opinion will line up behind Obama. Its not going to be easy, but I do now agree with you that this is a possibility. Its been very good for the Palestinian cause that Netanyahu and Lieberman have been elected, and it should have Israelis scratching their heads, wondering what the f**k they have done.

But it could still go other ways. All we need is a suicide bomb in an Israeli pizza restaurant and all bets are off.

Frances, my committed Darwinist outlook convinced me a long time ago that homo sapiens is over-rated. Because our species has produced rare individuals of immensely noble stature, we have been fooled into believing that the entire species is somehow capable, at least in principle, of scaling similar heights. Christianity has spread the myth that "creation", or certainly the planet earth, was brought into being for the special use of homo sapiens and that it all somehow belongs to us to use as we wish with divine blessing. We are also taught the all of creation is divided into two main categories: humans, and the rest. And we are created in God's image.

I find that a hideous set of beliefs but it is shared by the vast majority of humankind. In reality, we are sophisticated animals who occasionally throw up great thinkers and technicians (maybe they arent even the same species, who knows...the common single ancestor belief is almost as dogmatic as the creed of the Catholic church). But our natures are far more basic than our skills, and we have scarcely evolved in terms of our natures in the last two thousand years. We are as violent, selfish, greedy, and exploitative as we have been at any point in the evolution of our species...and in that sense far more primitive than many lesser species that show an instant nurturing capacity (whales, dolphins, elephants, gorillas).

The simple message of this impudent and unsolicited homily is that maybe, Frances, you expect too much from the human species. We have highly sophisticated ways of documenting, describing, and analysing our greed, self-interest, and indifference to others, but none of that sophistication changes the way we are. Doctors still smoke, adults in high risk HIV situations still have unguarded sex, MPs still steal money, and people like me still take tjhe risk of posting self-evident facts as if they are news to anyone.

'I don't think that madness plays any great role in evil unless we are prepared or inclined to accept the evildoer is, in fact, the real victim. For instance, I do not think that Hitler was mad, nor is Tony Blair or George Bush, nor is Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu, but they have all deliberately initiated evil acts with truly devastating consequences for others.'

I'm not sure. Not being sensitive to the pain of others is on the road to being a sociopath. It could be a close call. (Note - personality disorder of which sociopath is an example is far more intractable and hasn't been defined as mental illness. Until the last few months it has been considered as just bad. But I'm a bleeding heart and I want to reach out to everyone so I am prepared to accept it as a mental illness).

Profile of the Sociopath
Some of the common features of descriptions of the behavior of sociopaths.

Glibness and Superficial Charm

Manipulative and Conning

They never recognize the rights of others and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They may dominate and humiliate their victims.

Grandiose Sense of Self
Feels entitled to certain things as "their right."

Pathological Lying
Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities. Extremely convincing and even able to pass lie detector tests.

Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt
A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, they have victims and accomplices who end up as victims. The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.

Shallow Emotions
When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion it is more feigned than experienced and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises.

Incapacity for Love

Need for Stimulation
Living on the edge. Verbal outbursts and physical punishments are normal. Promiscuity and gambling are common.

Callousness/Lack of Empathy
Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.

Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature
Rage and abuse, alternating with small expressions of love and approval produce an addictive cycle for abuser and abused, as well as creating hopelessness in the victim. Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.

Early Behavior Problems/Juvenile Delinquency
Usually has a history of behavioral and academic difficulties, yet "gets by" by conning others. Problems in making and keeping friends; aberrant behaviors such as cruelty to people or animals, stealing, etc.

Irresponsibility/Unreliability
Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed.

Promiscuous Sexual Behavior/Infidelity
Promiscuity, child sexual abuse, rape and sexual acting out of all sorts.

Lack of Realistic Life Plan/Parasitic Lifestyle
Tends to move around a lot or makes all encompassing promises for the future, poor work ethic but exploits others effectively.

Criminal or Entrepreneurial Versatility
Changes their image as needed to avoid prosecution. Changes life story readily.

"It needs ideology to feel righteous about inflicting pain.

"Evil needs to be driven by madness. And the only way to stop it is to stand up and denounce it. I don't think that is limited. I think it is probably naive because it is felt humanity standing up to pseudo sophisticaed dogma. Dogma gets to get all the best songs, all the sophisticated theory and logic. Humanity just says NO."

Evil is driven by evil and an unwillingness to accept that others feel pain and to empathise with them. Dogma is usually a means we use to justify our own practice of own particular variant(s) of original sin and our rejection of the practices of others of which we disapprove.

Think of Augustine: first, he finds a God of Love, and then later in life and richer in human experience, when he pursued the logic of the predestination of saints to its inevitable conclusion, the Saint found God's universe to be the bleakest imaginable place.

Dogma usually follows a development path leading from the tolerably human through thoroughly inhumane to the utterly evil.

I don't think that madness plays any great role in evil unless we are prepared or inclined to accept the evildoer is, in fact, the real victim. For instance, I do not think that Hitler was mad, nor is Tony Blair or George Bush, nor is Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu, but they have all deliberately initiated evil acts with truly devastating consequences for others.

SG - thank you for the kind words - they are valued highly especially for their rarity value.

I am not sure my aims are more limited. I have never witnessed evil before. Everyone wonders how they would act if they did and this is a strange novel experience for me. Lee is right that no one who doesn't come across the sick in their daily lives will know what is beginning to happen as the regime comes on line. The pleas for help from frightened people are building all the time now.

Right thinking people won't believe what is really going on in the shadows because it is unbelievable and refusing to believe it is a healthy response.

I express my anger here because on the health forums I hold back. I tell sick people it will probably be alright. I feel their fear and I tell them less than the whole truth.

I have never seen evil before and I now know the beast and know that it has to go hand in hand with ideology. It needs ideology to feel righteous about inflicting pain.

Evil needs to be driven by madness. And the only way to stop it is to stand up and denounce it. I don't think that is limited. I think it is probably naive because it is felt humanity standing up to pseudo sophisticaed dogma. Dogma gets to get all the best songs, all the sophisticated theory and logic. Humanity just says NO.

"By serendipity David Marquand is arguing exactly the same as I am in the Guardian today."

frances, I get the impression that Marquand finds it convenient to conflate "state" and "government" whilst, Spengler-like, asserting that "The EU – the last, best hope for European ­civilisation in the continent of its birth – is in grave danger" and ending up railing at original sin (woe, oh woe). For him, it's all black and white, high on apocalyptic rhetoric but low on argument, concluding in a windy and essentially apolitical rant about the need for "moral reform". You have much more limited but attainable aims like improving funding to mental health services, halting and reversing the privatisation of the NHS and our social welfare services, and making sure that Purnell's electorate dump him before or at the next general election. I think that, compared to you, Marquand is just posturing and wordsmithing on a grand scale, taking advantage of the current political crisis to screw a few bob out of the Guardian while he's got the chance.

By serendipity David Marquand is arguing exactly the same as I am in the Guardian today. He says this isn't a financial or a constitutional crisis but a moral crisis. He defines neo liberals as celebrating the immoral which puts Purnell as the putative leader of the neo cons exactly as I see him. Celebrant of evil.

Matthew Rees

I have never experienced PR so I probably do imagine its better than it is. I know what FPTP produces - two enormous coalitions tightly whipped and controlled from the centre colluding in staying in power for ever. The sheer momentum of shiftign them defeats the electorate.

I'm sure in time politicians will find a way to corrupt a PR system but at first sight it seems less easy because with more smaller parties around there are more opportunities for whistleblowing. The electoral coalitions will be made after an election more openly and the issues that unite and divide will be spelled out in public instead of everything disappearing in to No 10 and emerging through a PR filter.

I'd like to give it a chance.

*********************************

As for arguing the finances rather than the morals I think it's a delusion. It sounds like arguing the price of everything and the value of nothing.

How can you do a cost analysis on the war in Afghanistan. It definitely costs a fortune. Whether the pay off is worth a fortune in real terms of money back to us is unknown. The financial argument even if you leave out the morals is impossible to determine. Morals are actually easier.

Even down on the details of a domestic program the costs are impossible to work out. The cost of the Welfare Reform program is the cost of a whole duplicate set of doctors on the payroll because you don't trust the first lot to betray their patients - a whole lot of back to work providers costing billions who say they will take the money and get lots of sick people in to work and who I say will take the money and fail to get many in to work because no subsidy is on offer to the employer. I say the whole thing will cost a fortune, cause untold pain and fear and save almost no money. Purnell says it will be a brilliant success get all those sick people working and save all their benefit money and then they will all be happy and thank him.

How can you you do a cost analysis on that? You would have to decide who to believe.

I always think when you are the one suggesting causing pain like going to war or frightening the sick that the onus is on the person proposing the violence to prove the benefits are massively in their favour.

It always comes back to morals. Even if there is a massive financial pay off - the means do not justify the end. The means are part of who you are.

We need to do a lot more to reform democracy, i.e. to enable people to have a real say in the decisions that affect their lives, than to change form one flawed voting system to another and to herald PR as the answer to our current problems is to focus on one small, and largely irrelevant, aspect of a much bigger problem.

More important are issues like the selection of candidates, terms of office, in-term accountability, number of MPs, roles of MPs within constituencies with their Party and within Parliament, role of Parliament v Cabinet v Executive, role of non-elected people within Government, etc. etc.

To just consider how best to vote the same MPs into the same system misses the point completely and misses the opportunity for real reform and real democracy.

The response to Frances and Dugsie is mine as well

Lee

Of course you're right that isolated moral arguments are not enough - I would never counsel such a naive appeal.

For example New Labour and the Tories will never really help Carers - and both will privatise the Post Office, because the present system (which they're both wedded to) is desperately in need of cuts. Arguing over who is most ideologically committed to privatisation is irrelevant - they both wholly set on getting the Public Spending down in areas that excluded military expenditure.

As you know I share your point about our Foreigh Policy being the elephant in the room so many on the laughably so-called left want to ignore. And you're spot on here:

'Another way to put it, is that you cannot really campaign against Newlabour reneging on social welfare without at the same time campaigning for budget cuts in military spending, trident, and other policies which you dont only oppose, but which is using the money you want to seen being spent on social programmes.'

But being aware of which MP are the most hypocritical is a matter of public concern. And Frances has within two hours of my post - given me information I needed to demonstrate how utterly irrelevant most MPs are to the left.

And if I throw into the mix, the record on Trident and Iraq, an even more interesting picture will emerge...

(And if you want debate where you can start your own thread - and authors almost always respond - I thoroughly recommend Red Pepper debating threads - the contributors are entirely independent from the magazine. Dugsie flagged it up a year or so ago in relation to ecosocialism and I like it. The tone is mostly cordial and all kinds of leftists debate there - ie no 'neoliberals'!)

Frances

I don't dislike your response at all - as a libertarian socialist I'm perfectly aware that no party represents my view.

A reasonable reaction for a 'progressive' would be to vote for the candidate most likely to win in a constituency who is either LRC member or a Lib Dem.

If there isn't one of these don't vote. The others are not worth it.

And of course in Europe vote for a Lib Dem or a Green (my preference).

New Labour (defined as anyone who voted for the Welfare Reform Bill) and New/Old Tory aren't interested in genuine democracy. They're both ideologically bankrupt and institutionally compromised.

Dugsie

I know the website - just hoped that someone at Carer Watch had something I could complete!

Lee, there is limited information available on where public money is being allocated under the pre-budget reports, the actual budget and the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR). The last CSR was published in 2007 and by the looks of things the next one will be published in 2011. Admittedly it doesn’t give too much away as to the logic underlying the allocation of resources however it could give an idea as to where the “drift” in expenditure is going. If the information provided by the Treasury and Direct.gov is insufficient, maybe you could write a Freedom of Information request. Details of how to do this are available from the Ministry of Justice website (NB. Might be worth seeking advice from F.O.I campaign organisations if the guidelines are not that clear)
I support your proposal in principle however implementing it in practice may be slightly more difficult. I would stab a guess that a lot of the specifics of the budget allocation is done by Civil Servants, with Ministers providing general oversight and direction. No doubt issues such as Trident will have some military input as well.
Those outside of government and the state (i.e. us), lack the resources and time to be able to provide a coherent and viable alternative. Even groups like Compass have a limited amount of resources and time that forces them to focus on individual issues rather than take a step back and take a more system-based approach to campaigning. There are however, as you will already know, the odd specialist organisation that deals specifically with government spending, for example the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
Maybe there needs to be more cooperation between campaign groups and research institutes that can help break the details down for us. This would open up the opportunity for ordinary folk, like us, to participate in a debate that is currently off limits. In this sense we would be creating a mirror structure of the current process but within civil society. Does that make any sense?
With regards to articles and authors responding to comments; I would be more than happy to do so; as I have tried to do in the past. I'm not too sure whether the big-name authors will have enough time to do so but the general principle of debate and discussion should be an aspiration. Without deliberation or discussion articles can become a monologue, with the audience as passive spectators. Conversely, comments can often go off the beaten track and revert to counter-monologues that don’t address the point of the article at hand. No doubt this is primarily because of the respondent’s passion and their wish to be heard however it does not lead to constructive discussion.

MPs voting records are available on the internet.I'm not allowed to post the link here, but just Google it.

Lee: I support your public expenditure review. When do we start ?

'Were there any MPs who voted against the inhumane Welfare Bill, didn't exploit the expenses system and who are in favour of genuine Constitutional reform?

If there were their names need to be known.'

I do know the answer to this but you may not like it.

Basically the only people who put up any resistance to the Welfare Reform Bill were the group of Campaign/LRC Labour MPs led by Jon McDonnell and all the LibDems.

By and large these two groups of MPs also come out reasonably unscathed in the expenses debacle.

On the whole they are the ones in favour of PR.

This is logical because the Welfare Reform Bill is an ideologically driven initiative that is being forced through detached from considerations of fairness and humanity on the ground. It's part of NewLabour ideology. Vote number 216 in Compass Policy Vote. Are we allowed to canvass?

The expenses row is connecting with people's wearines with a FPTP system where two enormous coalitions squeeze out everyone else and rule as elected dictators and leave their individual MPs no input and nothing to do except fiddle their expenses to make themselves feel important. Everybody knows the FPTP system is corrupt. NewLabour played the FPTP system for all it was worth and thereby exposed it.

They are both manifestations of a rotten system so you would expect the same groups to oppose them both and go for PR. Leaders of the two main parties will continue to play the existing system and will never go for PR.

The only way this will get cleaned up is by a move to PR and the public are ready for it. No one swallowed Dave's silly constitutional reforms which came down to reducing the MPs by the taking out the current unfair bias in favour Labour and definitively ruling out PR as undemocratic.

Nick Clegg has to play this right. It's his moment in history.

Most of the current campaign against "benefits to work" and privatisation of public services, is based on principles of social justice and basic rights. This is important but it does have its limitations: (i) the policy-makers who introduce and support these schemes are not influenced by moral arguments; and they believe that exposing the hundreds of thousands of claimants whom they believe are dishonestly claiming, is a public duty; (ii) members of the public who feel passionate about the moral principles at stake, are those most closely involved with the chronically sick and disabled; but the general public, especially now, have so many other distractions that while they may sympathise, dont have the energy to throw themselves into a morally-driven campaign, especially given the experience of this government ignoring all public protest (remember Iraq).

So there are undoubtedly limits to how far this approach will take you. There simply isnt enough attachable decency around. So it must be supplemented (not replaced) by other approaches.

Something you NEVER see on Compass, and seldom in the media, is a demand for a public expenditure review and reform. My efforts here to get an interest in this has been largely cold shouldered...not really sure why. A public expenditure review or investigation involves analysing the way the budget is constructed and spent. The push by Newlabour to privatise social welfare and drive the sick into work, is driven in part by the Government's desire to shift money from social programmes to other budget categories, such as military spending, Trident replacement, subsidising nuclear energy, promotion of genetically modified food, and a range of other loathsome policies.

Political opposition to a reactionary government, which does not focus on expenditure adjustments, is fighting with one hand in its pocket. Compass does this, of course, but there is so little policy analysis underlying Compass' work, that this is not surprising. Compass also seems to prefer a rather naive "one-topic-at-a-time" approach, and wont touch anything that deals with Britain's role in the wider world.

In some recent posts I spoke about the establishment and preservation of the Social Contract in progressive European societies: the social contract is based on just such expenditure safeguards...that a given percentage or range is established for social welfare and guarded against cuts or diversion to other purposes. Another way to put it, is that you cannot really campaign against Newlabour reneging on social welfare without at the same time campaigning for budget cuts in military spending, trident, and other policies which you dont only oppose, but which is using the money you want to seen being spent on social programmes.

Restricting the case only to the moral dimension is weakening the likely success of the campaign.
*******************************************************

While I have maybe if I am lucky, one person's attention, I encourage you to press for a new standard on whose articles Compass posts here. It should be a condition in future that they will post articles only if the authors agree to participate. I am getting quite irritated at posts which assert stupid and tendentious positions, where the author is not willing to face the music. Its both cowardly and pointless, and insulting to those of us who participate. SO THIS IS MY MESSAGE TO NEAL. Are you even there ?

Dear colleagues, if you agree with me, please state your own demands. No doubt we will be ignored, but if enough of us are clear about this, perhaps the penny will drop that this site depends on our voluntary participation and we should have a say.

Dugsie

Do you have a list of all those who voted AGAINST the Welfare Reform Bill? This would be a good starting point.

They at least tried to reject to this legal assault on the vulnerable - so having passed the first test, deserve a more sympathetic response than the others. I would like to check their voting records.

If they're also not corrupt and open to reform, then it will prove that there are still some MPs who are actually worth voting for!

Which will be news to many 'voters'...

I think that I'd have to do very detailed research to find anyone like that Jon.

Dugsie and Frances

Were there any MPs who voted against the inhumane Welfare Bill, didn't exploit the expenses system and who are in favour of genuine Constitutional reform?

If there were their names need to be known.

They'll be the only parliamentarians with any credibility and integrity left.

The most significant dividing line in politics currently is between those who believe that public services should be provided on the basis of need, the social democratic-socialist continuum and those who believe that they should be provided for profit- the neoliberals.

People who have become disempowered, either by their own ill health or by the ill health of those they care for, or both, need and deserve to be supported by their fellow citizens. It could happen to you.They don't deserve to be persecuted as they are currently by New Labour. The Conservatives will certainly continue and extend the privatisation agenda when they come to power.These barbarians must be defeated.

See the Roy Hattersley article at top right on Compass site. Roy is coming in from the cold and wants to be forgiven for going along with NewLabour.

While all these worthies are beating their breasts the Purnell Welfare Reforms are going ahead and the Tories are sitting there waiting to take delivery of the new privatised and brutal system.

Every sick person in the country is now being called in for a medical by ATOS - an international health care provider now boasting to be the second largest healthcare provider in Britain after the NHS. The ATOS doctors are in competition with the NHS doctors, will not take the reports form the NHS doctors seriously and have convinved the DWP that they practice 'better' medicine because they say conditions like schizophrenia and bi polar are controlled by meds and you are no longer sick. They are reducing the numbers of sick not by curing them or discovering fraud but by redefining whole categories of sick people as well.

Most sick people are then called in for work related activity supervised by the new "Welfare to Work' Industry comprised of private providers who have bid for the 'several billions' of state money offered to process sick people in to work. They like ATOS are taking the government money by promising Purnell that they can get sick peopel in to work. This activity by sick people is compulsory. If it were voluntary it would be great but as compulsory activity under threat of sanctions and loss of benefit it is humiliating and inhumane. Purnell is ignorant and happy to believe the promises of all these private providers who will tell him anything he wants to hear. The experienced DWP staff are being closed down and ignored. This cruelty is being introduced here daily before your eyes and every one is avertign their eyes.

Roy and all the rest of you who went along with NewLabour stop beating your breast. Get in there and change the Welfare Bill so that sick people are not privatised and threatened in to compliance by sanctions like community offenders. They didn't commit a crime. They just got sick.

You'd also have to vote a Labour government in for a fourth term to get it, and sadly I'm not willing to do that because once in it would be dropped.

Michael:
but don't miss the significance of Alan Johnson's call for a referendum on moving from FPTP to a proportional alternative. This referendum would be a Labour promise fulfilled and a much needed change to our discredited system

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I, for one, dont miss the significance. Johnson made the call only because he knows it wont happen. Its a ploy.

Angela - you mistake AV+ (which is indeed a more proportional system) for straight AV which isn't. Unlike the latter, AV+ means that parties which are not properly represented according to the votes they receive in the constituency section benefit from proportional "top ups" from the list. It would help new parties to come through as a)there is no need to fear giving your 1st pref to a smaller parter in the constituency seats would mean your vote is wasted and 2)the threshold for representation would be considerably lower than under FPTP

We can argue the toss about which PR system is best, but don't miss the significance of Alan Johnson's call for a referendum on moving from FPTP to a proportional alternative. This referendum would be a Labour promise fulfilled and a much needed change to our discredited system,

Why is it that the Labour MP's who have been proved to be "SCAVENGERS OF THE STATE" not resigning or putting themselves up for reselection.
OH let me see, is it because of they won't get a signing off fee.

Some will not have served two terms in office and will lose their pension entitlement.

Lets have a good look at their training and personal development expenses.

Lets have a look at their traveling expenses.

Lets have a look at the Lords and Parliament affiliations to directors of companies.

One thing is for sure you don't have to be a brain surgeon to understand where and who is championing reform. Is it any coincidence that the SQEAKY CLEAN Politicians are raising there profile. There is no smoke without fire.

Labour has been a good turn, tey are about to kicked off the stage.

Then we will look at REFORM

The proposals from Alan Johnson is not for PR at all but for so called AV plus
This is not proportionate and depending on the version implemented make things much worse.
For one thing it entrenches the two party system making it much harder for even third party to break though.
More importantly it gives MORE power to the party leadership of each party.
The best (or rather worst) example of AV is Australia where the choice is between a very right wing 'Labour' party and an even more right wing 'Liberal ' party which is actually conservative.
In the devolved Australian system it also creates more safe seats leading to the machine politics of new rotten boroughs.

The two main parties have made a private agreement to oppose PR and AV is NOT PR.

There is more to democratic renewal than voting systems
Party funding reform must also happen at the same time.

I am afraid the letter from Helena Kennedy and the non political luminaries she has collected is indicative of the naive views which fed in to her Power report which was a complete waste of effort.
The naive think tanks like Charter 88 etc have simply misunderstood the nature of hte crisis facing us.
Because it is not proportionate