Shelina’s (belated) Friday Miscellany, 25th June
Okay, okay, so I’m a little bit late for the Friday Miscellany this week, but what’s a girl to do when there’s a lot going on? This week I’ve been enjoying the glorious sunshine in London, although I must confess that it’s been a bit hot for me. In my search to discover the cause of the warming, I discovered according to The Spoof website, that the solution is simple: global air conditioning.
The big news in the UK this was of course the announcement of the budget. One of the statistics that caught my eye was around housing benefit. The chancellor said the new caps were needed because the cost of the payments had risen 50% to £21bn in 10 years. Of course the system isn’t perfect and it’s easily imaginable that some people are getting more than they should, but isn’t the bigger question – how is it we live in a society where so many people can’t afford shelter?
Last week I raised the issue of loneliness – which of course puts pressure on people financially and emotionally. But one of it’s by products is the current shortage of housing we have which pushes prices up, making housing too expensive for large tracts of the population. Another possible issue is that people simply aren’t paid enough. Businesses complain that they’ll be untenable with a higher minimum wage (and what a battle there was over that!), but it’s not good enough to pay people a wage which they can’t subsist on. BTW, corporation tax has come down. One campaign which I admire is the Living Wage campaign which argues not for the minimum wage, but for a higher wage which people can actually live on. Living wage is a term used to describe the minimum hourly wage necessary for shelter (housing and incidentals such as clothing and other basic needs) and nutrition for a person for an extended period of time (lifetime). According to the London Citizens, who participate in the campaign the living wage in London due to its higher costs is actually £7.60 per hour; £1.87 above the National Minimum Wage.
This week I reviewed the Seen and Not Heard: Voices of Young British Muslims report which raises the issues that young Muslims themselves want to raise about identity, intergenerational experiences (feeling different at home, and out in the ‘world’) and feeling disconnected for wider society.
Sadiq Khan gave me hope that there are politicians out there who take rape seriously when he wrote a letter to the PM challenging proposals to give anonymity to rape defendants. Anonymity was in fact removed for defendants in 1988 following police claims that it was preventing women from coming forward to report rape. Why should rape defendants have more protection that defendants of other crimes, he asks? Of course, in the case of false allegations, these are harmful to the defendant, but Khan states: “where there is a balance to be struck, I would urge you to take no risks and give the benefit of the doubt to the victim,” adding: “What evidence is there that false allegations, which we all agree can be extremely damaging, are higher for rape than for other crimes?”
In slightly more positive news, it seems that in Kyrgyzstan, religion may be helping to heal ethnic tensions during the horrible conflicts that are ravaging the country. But, according to Al Jazeera, “It is rare for government officials to turn to religious leaders of Imams for help. But as ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks attempt to reconcile in the wake of ethnic violence, government officials in Kyrgyzstan are hoping that Islam will help smooth tensions.” You can watch the video clip at the bottom of the post.
This week I’ve been reading the fabulous “The Corporation that Changed the World: How the East India Company Shaped the Modern Multinational” by Nick Robins. The book blurb says: “Founded in 1600, the East India Company was the forerunner of the modern multinational. Starting life as a trader in Asian spices, the Company ended its days running Britain’s Indian empire. In the process, it shocked its contemporaries with the scale of its violence, corruption and speculation. This is the first-ever book to expose the Company’s social record. Robins reveals a hidden story of tragedy and intrigue. War, famine, stock-market bubbles and even duels between rival executives are all to be found in this new account. For Robins, the Company’s legacy provides compelling lessons on how to ensure the accountability of today’s global business.”
With current corporations seemingly wreaking havoc with humanity – think BP, think the banks, think child slave labour, think Halliburton, think the wars in the Middle East – the book is prescient, and has certainly given me pause for thought on how today’s corporations are really calling the shots, just as the East India Company did during its long existence. As Robins describes: “It remains an oddity that although companies are among the most powerful institutions of the modern age, our histories still focus on the actions of states and individuals, on politics and culture, rather than on corporations, their executives and their impacts.”
Remember how during the period of governmental uncertainty after the UK elections in May, what people were worried about was how “the markets” would respond.
What started out as a commercial organisation, used force and conquest to generate profits. As the Dutch historian Steengard writes “the principal export of pre-industrial Europe to the rest of the world was violence.” Of course the British were not alone in their use of force. At the beginning of maritime trade with Asia when the Portuguese were in the ascendancy, only those who bought Portuguese permits were allowed to do business on pain of confiscation and death, on the grounds that the right to free trade was limited to Christians. Barros comments that the rights of others hold against them in Europe but not beyond and since the Moors were “outside the law of Jesus Christ which is the true law” then violence and even death was acceptable. Hmm, wonder if today we could replace that with ‘western democracy’ or other similar ideological descriptions. It just seems to echo horribly.
Overall, an excellent insight into how the corporation’s unfettered drive for power and profit with no mechanism for constraint was a problem then, and continues to be one now.
