Coppola Comment

On Saturday, I watched Ken Loach's 2016 film "I, Daniel Blake" for the first time. The following evening, I watched the second episode in the BBC's adaptation of Victor Hugo's 19th century novel "Les Misérables". And here is my unpopular opinion. I think that as a parable of the U.K. today, particularly the difficulties experienced by single parents, "Les Misérables" beats "I, Daniel Blake" hands down. Why? Because Fantine's story is closer to the experience of single mothers today. True, we don't (yet) have a market for hair and teeth, and women today are much less likely to die of undiagnosed tuberculosis than they were in the 19th century. But the exorbitant cost of child care, and the fragility of employment, that were so disastrous for Fantine - these are all too often the reality for single parents today. Sadly, "I, Daniel Blake" highlighted neither. Contrary to popular opinion, the vast majority of sin

Today is a day for celebration. After nearly 60 years of inequality and discrimination - originally against women, and more recently against men - the state pension age is at last the same for men and women. For one day only, both men and women will retire at 65. Tomorrow, the state pension age for both men and women will start rising again in lockstep, reaching 66 by 2020 and then to 67 and 68. I make no apology for celebrating the equalisation of pension ages. In my view this is long overdue. I have expected it all of my working life, having first discussed it when I was still at school. I never thought it was fair that my brother 14 months younger than me should receive his state pension 6 years and 4 months later than me. We both work for our livings and we have both brought up children. Life has dealt us different cards - I am significantly poorer than him - but that is not a reason for me to have a much earlier state pension purely by virtue of being female. That said, t

This is David Hencke's response to my comment on his blog . You can find the Coppola Comment version of my comment here . For the record while not replying to all your points. 1. I cover a wide range of topics on my blog – child sex abuse, domestic violence, bad treatment of the disabled, the rise of Jeremy Corbyn, dodgy privatisations, institutional racism etc. 2. Given the government has to write to everyone telling them when their pension is due, it is not beyond the wit of man or woman to tell everyone personally when the change came into effect. 3 your main point seems to be that pensions are not a right but a benefit that presumably could be means tested. I am afraid they are not marketed like that – with all the qualifying rules for NI to get one for a start. they are still a universal benefit and therefore I am drawing one at the moment and long may it continue. 4. You seem to fall into the trap that many other well off people do ( I am not saying you are well

This thread on Twitter has attracted a lot of attention. It goes some way towards explaining why older people are generally in favour of Brexit, and why Theresa May's "strong and stable" mantra particularly appeals to the baby boomer generation. For those who aren't on Twitter, I've paraphrased part of the thread here. I have been thinking about the "strong and stable" mantra, in the context of my mum, who thinks Theresa May is great. Mum is a product of post war Social democracy (born 1947). She got 6 good O levels despite failing the 11+, and went into the civil service. She got into a mess due to creating me with my irresponsible dad, but then met my stepfather, whom she is still with. In material terms, since the early 80s my mum and my stepfather have had no money worries. They've had stability from their 40s to their 70s. And they also had stability in their earlier lives through full employment, the NHS, workplace/union rights, public

How effective is monetary policy? Highly effective, according to the Governor of the Bank of England. In a speech earlier this week, Mark Carney robustly defended the Bank of England's record: "Simulations using the Bank’s main forecasting model suggest that the Bank’s monetary policy measures raised the level of GDP by around 8% relative to trend and lowered unemployment by 4 percentage points at their peak. Without this action, real wages would have been 8% lower, or around £2,000 per worker per year, and 1.5 million more people would have been out of work." Well, lots of us might agree that monetary policy did help to offset the damaging effects of bank and household deleveraging in the aftermath of the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. Carney suggested that monetary policy also dampened the effect of premature fiscal consolidation when everyone panicked about government deficits in the wake of the Greek crisis: Fiscal policy quickly came under sev

I know that lots of you are heartily sick of the WASPI campaign, but it does have a tendency to throw up interesting issues. This time, it is the legal status of the UK's state pension. A couple of days ago, the WASPI campaign announced a crowdfunding campaign to raise funds for legal action against the Government. Their CrowdJustice page says that legal action would potentially be twofold: (this is a screen print from the CrowdJustice page. Regular readers of my blog will be aware that I do not post direct links to WASPI campaign material.) Personally, I am of the opinion that judicial review of the legality of the state pension age changes in the 1995 and 2011 Pension Acts is a non-starter. The timetables for the changes are built into the Acts themselves, so any successful challenge to them would require repeal or amendment of one or both Acts. Since the UK has no written constitution and Parliament is sovereign, judicial review cannot be used to challenge primary le

I've written before about the arbitrary and cruel judgments made by DWP frontline staff in relation to ESA claimants, particularly the mentally ill. And Guy Standing, in his excellent books about the precarious lives of the "new underclass", describes how the process of claiming benefits creates huge amounts of unproductive "work". Benefit claimants have to "earn" their benefits by what amounts to jumping through hoops. But I confess that - not being a claimant myself - I lacked real understanding of just how insane and tortuous the JSA & ESA system is. Today, I read a powerful blogpost by Lizzie Cornish, a 61-year old woman who has found herself without a job and - because of women's rising state pension age - also without a pension. She describes her personal experience of claiming JSA and ESA. The story she tells is worthy of Kafka. Lizzie (who is involved with the WASPI campaign) blocked me on Twitter long ago, so I have not been