Tag Archives: austerity

Why Austerity Kills

April 19, 2020 Andrea Gibbons Leave a comment

I think COVID-19 has made all of us realise just how deadly austerity is, but The Body Economic by David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu should be required reading for its death-dealing potential outside of pandemic conditions.

Please, can we not go backwards after this.

I am often nervous about anything that draws parallels too strongly between society and body, policy and medicine. But I think they do it really well here.

Austerity is medicine intended to reduce symptoms of debts and deficits, and to cure recessions. It cuts governmnet spending on healthcare coverage, assistance to the unemployed and housing support. At the start of the trial, its potential side-effects were not well understood (ix).

There is a wealth of work on the social determinants of health such as Marmot‘s review — there is nothing so new here but yet it can’t be repeated enough it seems.

Good health doesn’t start in hospitals and clinics; it starts in our homes and our neighbourhoods, in the food we eat, the air we breathe, and the safety of our streets. Indeed, a top predictor of your life expectancy is your zip code. (xi)

They study the impact of the economy on health and find that it is not recession but austerity that impacts it most negatively. ‘Recessions can hurt,’ they write, ‘but austerity kills (xx)’. Even the IMF has recognized this, reversing previous policy, writing that ‘austerity slows down economies, worsens unemployment, and hampers investor confidence.’ Yet how little has changed.

This book consists of chapter after chapter of evidence pulled from around the world (I love this scope around the world…) where divergent paths can be seen and tested to some degree, starting with the Great Depression in the US. States implemented the New Deal very differently, states taking fullest advantage of government supports and providing social services showing mortality rates far below those states which did not. They move on the the post-communist mortality crisis–which I am humbled to say I had never heard of. The authors show that the huge rise in mortality in men — the awful, heartrending rise in mortality — took place wherever in the former Soviet Union they pushed Shock Therapy, ‘a radical package of market reforms’ designed to push the transition to capitalism as quickly as possible. Primarily Harvard economists were behind this: Andrei Shleifer, Stanley Fischer, Lawrence Summers and Jeffrey Sachs. Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan followed this advice. Stiglitz was on the other side of this argument, pushing for gradual reform, Belarus, Poland and the Czech Republic followed this path.

The austerity imposed through shock therapy did not just cause a spike in mortality, it also significantly slowed economic recovery — even by its own justification (if there could be such a thing causing so many deaths), it failed. Milton Friedman himself admitted Stiglitz was right.

Another chapter on East Asia, again showcasing the deaths caused by IMF imposed austerity in Thailand, South Korea and Indonesia, as compared to Malaysia where austerity was resisted. Heartbreaking again.

On to the ‘Great Recession’, the approach taken by Iceland prosecuting bankers rather than imposing austerity. Quicker economic recovery, fewer deaths. Compare this to Greece. Compare this to the US, where they write:

A 2009 study found that people who lack medical insurance were 40 percent more likely to die prematurely than those who had it. During the great Recession, before the PPACA came into effect, there were approximately 35,000 avoidable deaths due to the lack of healthcare insurance (99).

People were dying, and at the same time

Profits of health insurance companies soared…In 2009 the top five US health insurance companies reported $12.2 billion in profits, a staggering increase of 56% over the figures for 2008. In 2009, a year that saw 2.9 million people lose coverage, insurance companies’ profits rose by 56 percent (101).

I haven’t read Kenneth Arrow, Nobel prize-winning economist, but he wrote in a 1963 paper that markets ‘often fail to deliver affordable, high-quality healthcare‘ (101). What they do instead, is make some people a whole lot of money.

Stuckler and Basu move on to Italy, the protests of the vidove bianche, or white widows of the increasing numbers of men committing suicide after losing employment. This opens a chapter on suicide and its connections to work, the ever increasing numbers of primarily men killing themselves after the imposition of austerity around the world. The way that governments, as they have done here in the UK, averaging out the numbers of deaths erase the spikes that demand attention.

From work to housing… They look at the unprecedented rise of the West Nile Virus during droughts, ultimately it was discovered that this had been caused by the foreclosure of homes and the breeding of mosquitoes in neglected pools. As an aside, West Nile Virus is a pretty terrifying disease.

This is not the only cost to health from the housing and foreclosure crisis. Housing is a precondition for good health — to be without it is to be among the most vulnerable groups.

People without homes tend to die forty years earlier than those with a roof over their heads. They often suffer from a raft of health problems and lack adequate access to healthcare. In addition, the homeless are at high risk of contracting infectious diseases like TB, which can then spread to the rest of the population. Poor health and homelessness are so closely linked that it is difficult to ascertain which came first, but the public health outcome is the same: a huge increase in the risk of death and avoidable suffering (127).

They describe people skipping medicines to be able to pay mortgages, a rise in hospitalisation leading to increased medical debt leading to increased likelihood of foreclosure. They write that the rise in foreclosures in communities strongly correlated to a rates of emergency room visits.

Heartbreaking.

Ultimately austerity has failed because it is unsupported by sound logic or data. It is an economic ideology. It stems from the belief that small government and free markets are always better than state interventions. It is a socially constructed myth–a convenient belief among politicians taken advantage of by those who have a vested interest in shrinking the role of the state, in privatizing social welfare systems for personal gain. It does great harm–punishing the most vulnerable, rather than those who caused this recession (140).

Well said. These are their recommendations:

To break the cycle of radical austerity programs, we need a New New Deal…To work, it must follow three key principles:
1. “First, do no harm” is the ancient higher law of the healing professions. Because social and economic policies have collateral effects on health and sickness, the doctors’ mantra should become a requirement for all such policies.
2. Help people return to work: In hard times, having a stable job is often the best medicine. Unemployment and the fear of unemployment are among the most significant drivers of poor health that people face in an economic crisis (143).
3. Invest in Public Health (144)

Stuckler, David and Sanjay Basu (2013) The Body Economic: Why Austerity Klls. Recessions, Budget Battles, and the Politics of Life and Death. NY: Basic Books.

Austerity, politics

Dickens, Boris Johnson, down with the Aristocracy

December 12, 2019 Andrea Gibbons Leave a comment

Finding it hard to focus. Election day today, having such high hopes and no hopes all at the same time. I may be a dual citizen but never feel I will be particularly effective here canvassing or phone banking with this accent, but I give talks you know, play the ghost of Britain’s future, write impassioned things like

Vote today! Vote for the party that will transform Britain. I am interviewing people starving themselves for days, freezing because they cannot afford heat, abandoning all social contact because they can’t afford bus fare or the cost of a coffee, facing and fearing and enduring homelessness, worrying about the suicides of people they work with or people they love, looking forward to a bleak precarious future without an end to it and contemplating suicide themselves…This is Tory Britain. We can do better.

I have never had to wait in line to vote at my current polling station here in Longsight, but today they’d moved everything to the big hall and there I was with around 30 of the most diverse group of people I have shared a space with in some time (unless it was the 192 bus), and a number of kids getting to post the votes for their parents into the box…it was pretty beautiful. I listened to those conversations around me, that was one hall full of labour voters. I know we’re a safe seat but still. It’s the community side of it that always gets me, though the bread and roses is pretty good too. 🌹🌹🌹

The other side? I was looking at my hundred blogs unposted in a flighty fretful unable-to-settle mood and found this from Nicholas Nickleby. It sums up Johnson perfectly in our worst of times, Dickensian times:

‘There’s something in his appearance quite—dear, dear, what’s that word again?’
‘What word?’ inquired Mr. Lillyvick.
‘Why—dear me, how stupid I am,’ replied Miss Petowker, hesitating. ‘What do you call it, when Lords break off door-knockers and beat policemen, and play at coaches with other people’s money, and all that sort of thing?’
‘Aristocratic?’ suggested the collector.
‘Ah! aristocratic,’ replied Miss Petowker; ‘something very aristocratic about him, isn’t there?’

Films, Intersections, Struggle & Movement, Writing

Reading I, Daniel Blake: Screenplay and Film

August 18, 2017 Andrea Gibbons Leave a comment

I, Daniel Blake was my first screenplay, I found it quite a fascinating read after watching the film and reading lots of interviews and watching lots of Loach’s other films and writing a film review (another thing done! Whew). I might have done all of this in the wrong order, but I liked seeing where things started and comparing that to where things ended up. I liked seeing where they had stuck tightly to the script, and where actors had improvised lines. I liked how Laverty wrote their lines, disjointed, like speech actually comes. I liked seeing the sections cut, and the pieces added. You get a much better sense of the process of making a film, the collaboration involved — the extras in here, interviews and bios, add even more insight. And of course, as I always love most about reading, you can linger, go at your own pace. Sometimes I resent how films hurtle you through space and time, or like this one, drag you towards an ending you know will momentarily blot out your sun.

And of course, it was as powerful, though I didn’t cry quite as much because I find words a kind of buffer between events and my tear ducts though not my emotions. I liked that too. Still, this ending…it gets me.

Katie

They call this a “pauper’s funeral” because it’s the cheapest slot, at 9:00. But Dan wasn’t a pauper to us. He gave us things that money can’t buy. When he died, I found this on him. He always used to write in pencil. And he wanted to read it at his appeal but he never got the chance to. And I swear that this lovely man, had so much more to give, and that the State drove him to an early grave.

And this is what he wrote.

“I am not a client, a customer, nor a service user…. I am not a shirker, a scrounger, a beggar, nor a thief… I’m not a National Insurance Number or blip on a screen… I paid my dues, never a penny short, and proud to do so. I don’t tug the forelock, but look my neighbour in the eye and help him if I can. I don’t accept or seek charity. My name is Daniel Blake. I am a man, not a dog. As such, I demand my rights. I demand you treat me with respect. I, Daniel Blake, am a citizen, nothing more and nothing less. Thank you.

Save

Environment & Justice, Sustainability

Food is Free: A Practical Lesson in Community Gardens

November 24, 2015 Andrea Gibbons Leave a comment

In my day job we are looking at creating a community garden among other projects — which seems like it should be easy enough if we get the right people together and just figure it out. Better yet, I have asked for a little help from local organisations of people committed to growing food in the city, and there are lots of people working in the East End on just exactly this. But I thought I would also just see what the internet had to offer, doing a little more research on projects to learn from when we come to build our own gardens.

Besides going a little overboard on permaculture books, which I’ve been obsessive about for a long time, but without much chance to do anything at all about for the past few years. I’ll be writing about those as I go through them, I am so glad that my garden-drought is ending.

Food is Free

If not free now, perhaps some of it can be free in the near future — with food banks on such a steep rise, I think we should be doing all we can to work with people to grow their own healthy veg. Only yesterday through a friend’s post, I stumbled across the Food is Free project, which seems to me to have a particularly lovely way of both framing the project and breaking down the process of bringing people together in urban spaces to grow food not just for themselves, but for neighbours.

This is making me wish I had made a little time to do this ages ago.

In explaining who they are, they write:

The Food is Free Project is a community building and gardening movement that launched in January of 2012. We teach you how to connect with your neighbors and line your street with front yard community gardens which provide free harvests to anyone.

The gardens are built and offered for free using salvaged resources that would otherwise be headed to the landfill. By using drought-tolerant, wicking bed gardens, these low maintenance gardens only need to be watered every 2-4 weeks. This simple tool introduces people to a very easy method of growing organic food with very little work. A wide variety of vegetables along the block promote neighbors to interact and connect, strengthening our communities while empowering them to grow their own food.

They work with people who have brought friends, family and neighbours together to build bed gardens in a whole variety of available places. They’ve even put a how-to booklet together to allow others to do what they do. The simple steps summarised:

1. Declaration – let people know what you’re doing so they can get involved!

2. Location – find a spot

3. Discover Resources – look at what you have and what you need to get — and don’t be afraid to ask for things that can be reused and recyled

4. Planting! – pretty self-explanatory, just know you will make mistakes.

5. Sharing – share the harvest, it’s nicest that way.

We love how this breaks everything down, makes it sound easy to start up something in any neighbourhood. I like the way this opens up the city so that food can be integrated into improving everyday life along every street, not just for those with allotments or a car or a garden.

What is great about this is that these kind of projects can be done almost anywhere, even in very small spaces, so they complement our amazing local city farms like Stepney and Spitalfields, as well as existing allotment spaces.

Other Examples of Street by Street Awesomeness

There are people doing this everywhere. From Ron Finlay in Los Angeles, who helped changed LA’s laws to allow people to plant vegetable in medians and along sidewalks, to the Yorkshire village of Todmorden growing its own food all over the place, to Growing Communities in Hackney, with its patchwork farm made up of 12 market gardens.

There are also incredibly beautiful and creative ways of making plants that we normally only think of as being grown for food both decorative and inspiring. Like this wonderful archway of squash:

Or this spiral of flowers (that could have been strawberries or tomatoes or herbs):

From the community gardens we hope to grow on our community site now to the rooftop gardens that could lie in our future, there is so much to learn from and be inspired by as in joining this growing movement.

For more ideas, look at the amazing collection of stories about what people are doing here, on the Community Lovers Guides site. But this is probably the first of many a post on local food growing.

I like the idea of Food is Free. It should be. Especially the food that is so good for us, both as something to eat, but also something that gives us joy to plant collectively, tend and grow.

Struggle & Movement

No To Austerity, No to £90m cuts in Lambeth

February 25, 2015 Andrea Gibbons Leave a comment

Protests all look the same in pictures, and sadly these days they all feel the same too. Bigger than you feared, but not as big as you hoped.

We’ve had years of cuts. There’s no way more won’t hit an artery or two and bone. This year Lambeth Council is proposing selling Waterloo and Minet library, and using the proceeds to allow communities to run (poorly) three more for which ALL other funding will be cut — Durning, Carnegie and Upper Norwood. Goodbye librarians we love and services we need. Jason Cobb has done a brilliant rundown of what the Lambeth Council Cultural Consultation holds in store when you slog through all 22 documents — the first part can be found here. There are lots of other cuts to investigate.

The Tories know that once we lose this land, lose these services, lose these qualified and wonderful workers, we will never get them back. And they are profiting from all of it.

The Council’s just carrying out their hatchet job. Reprehensible as I feel not taking a stand and doing that is, we really should have brought down the precarious coalition government by now, shamed anyone with actual power in the Labour Party for refusing to fight and supporting their councillors to fight. For bowing to neoliberal logics and refusing to be an alternative. For being so stupid and lame.

All I want is a real fight. This wasn’t it.

On the positive side, however, standing outside City Hall is so much nicer when not surrounded by SWP signs branding everything, but nice hand-drawn ones instead. And flags, I love flags. Unions are good for flags, if not for leading the battle against austerity and preserving their own existence into the future. I don’t want to be too pessimistic and say it’s all over for the unions once the librarians are gone, but it might very well be true.

But more than puppies on signs and flags, I love Cressingham Gardens. Like the Ritzy Living Wage Campaign, like the Guinness Trust Occupation, like the Co-op tenants, they are keeping some hope alive with their awesomeness.

You can find more photos on Brixton Buzz, and get updates on the campaign to save libraries here. There will be a public meeting on 11 March to plan further campaign steps.

Save

Struggle & Movement

My Speech for the Lambeth SOS delegation to the Mayor and Council

March 13, 2013 Andrea Gibbons Leave a comment

The demo was great last night I thought, especially given that we are now in the long hard grind of the 3rd year of cuts, and services have been cut, coworkers made redundant, and contact with friends and families lost. We wanted to highlight the deep cuts to children’s services that have already taken place by building our own adventure playground on the steps of city hall. We painted a backdrop over the weekend while leafleting for the demo

And the miniature inflatable playground gave everyone a taste of the joy that the lost adventure playgrounds once brought Lambeth’s kids

We created a library backdrop as well, as our libraries are still on the block. Only a small delegation was allowed in of course, though many joined us in the gallery. Public speaking isn’t quite my forte, but this is what I did my best to say:

Good evening Mr Mayor and Councillors. Thank you for agreeing to listen to me.

My name is Andrea Gibbons and I am speaking on behalf of Lambeth Save Our Services.

We set up Lambeth SOS in 2010 because we could see the cuts that were coming and we could see the damage that they
would do.

Over the past two years you have made £66 Million in cuts, and they have done real damage.

We have lost the Park Ranger:s.

We have lost the Ethnic Minority Achievement Team.

Two years ago, I was there when the former Leader promised that no Adventure Playgrounds would close – but if you visit our Parks this weekend you will see the tragic sight of deserted Adventure Playgrounds standing empty. There is nothing more tragic than a deserted and locked up playground.

At the same time you have made more than 550 redundancies and outsourced 100 jobs, jobs belonging to friends of mine, and half of them to Southampton.

These have been some of the effects of the cuts so far.

Now you face making cuts of £108 Million over the next four years, most of which have yet to be planned. These cuts will devastate our services and our communities and throw hundreds more workers on to the scrap heap of unemployment.

We all know two things about these cuts.

First, they arise from the policies of Central Government, who are forcing through spending reductions not to reduce the public sector deficit, because they haven’t and won’t, but in order to destroy our Welfare State.

Secondly, this is not a poor country that is short of money.

Seventy years ago, after the Second World War, when we had far less, the Attlee Labour Government created many of the services which are under attack from this Government.

If they could do that then, we do not need to tolerate these cuts now.

The cuts to our jobs and services are a political attack upon our communities by a Cabinet with a majority of millionaires.

Lambeth SOS believes that Lambeth, the whole borough, all of us, should fight back against this political attack.

And that includes you Councillors.

We believe that, instead of planning only how to live within the ever tighter financial limits which the Government set for you, you should be leading the fight against these cuts.

The Co-operative Council is not going to be an antidote to these cuts – particularly not when your next step is going to be to appoint three new Commissioning Directors each on more than £100,000.

Labour Councillors have rightly taken a strong line in opposition to the threat to Clapham Fire Station. We think you should fight just as hard to protect all our services.

I think that if you are going to set a budget which makes further cuts that you should not meet in this chamber.

I think you should meet in one of our closed down Adventure Playgrounds so that you can reflect upon the consequences of your actions.

Whatever you decide, Councillors, there are citizens and staff who will resist further cuts, whoever is making them.

In reply they said everything I said had been true, we were facing something unprecedented, we had to lobby the central government…but in response to our request for a council that will lead us in the fight? I’m afraid I don’t really see them leading much of anything.

But we will continue to fight, Lambeth residents and staff.

[also posted on www.lambethsaveourservices.org]

Save

Building Social Spaces, Health, Struggle & Movement

Closing Lollard Street Adventure Playground

March 13, 2013 Andrea Gibbons Leave a comment

I was looking up information on the four adventure playgrounds that Lambeth Council has ‘temporarily’ closed and I found these amazing photographs of Lollard Street Adventure Playground

[photo from http://www.tepapa.govt.nz/whatson/exhibitions/brianbrake/brakeswork/Pages/Object.aspx?irn=1015656 ]

[photo from http://www.thearchitectureofearlychildhood.com/2012/01/post-war-adventure-or-junk-playgrounds.html, along with a fascinating description of the importance of playgrounds and theories of play]

This was the birth of the adventure playground. At Lollard Street children gathered to play with the detritus created by the clearing away of a bombed out school. While the children played, children’s rights campaigner Lady Allen of Hurtwood started to form a movement for the building of playgrounds (a short history can be found here). Originally known as ‘junk’ playgrounds, they were renamed adventure playgrounds — a good public relations move I confess — in 1953, and the movement grew.

Look at the beautiful place Lollard Street Adventure Playground grew into. For years this has been a fully staffed facility of fun, learning and mentoring

And now it is closed. Indefinitely. Empty of children for the first time in 60 odd years. In the old black and white photos you can see the houses of parliament in the background, you can still see them today. You can stare over a playground empty of children and committed workers at the parliament (dead center, just visible over the building, compare it to the second B&W picture!) that shut it all down.

[also posted www.lambethsaveourservices.org]

Save

Austerity, Struggle & Movement

March 26th: The Big Beginning

March 27, 2011 Andrea Gibbons Leave a comment

Yesterday was absolutely brilliant, was it not? I was still bouncing up and down when a handful of us arrived at the Westminster Arms to toast the day with the some of the folks from the Bakerloo RMT branch. We only heard last meeting that they’d affiliated to Lambeth SOS, so it was grand to get to know some of them better. But that’s jumping ahead, so back to the beginning.

The South London feeder was a tremendous success, for all the trials and tribulations and lack of democratic process over the final route. The police reported we had 5,000 people there, so you know that we had more. I’m going to miss people from this list because there were so many groups there, so apologies! Southwark SOS, Lewisham Anticuts Alliance, BARAC, Colacor, all the South London union branches, pensioners, teachers, No Cuts for Kids…and more. Amazing.

What else did we have? The best trojan horse I have ever seen, labeled the TUC Armed Wing. Ha! It was a stallion actually, as Ali swears it was anatomically correct. I’m just sorry, as I know you are, that I can’t provide photographic proof.

I hope you caught some of the activist art on the billboards along the way, I loved the one transformed into a giant legal bust card, (you can see the one featuring David Cameron here); some one has been doing some good work!

The decision to head over Westminster Bridge rather than Blackfriars was a really good one; we had no trouble at all, and we could see the hundreds of thousands of people slowly moving towards Hyde Park.

I was holding the other end of this Colacor (Latin American Colation Against the Cuts) banner for much of the way with a companero from the Latin American Workers’ Association, and originator of my favourite chant of the day: Esto no es marcha, esto es protesta, carajo! (roughly this is not a march, it is a protest damn it). As you can see, the banner cramped our photography style just a little, so I handed the camera off to Paris for a quick shot from on high when we joined the main march:

I’m afraid I never saw Paris again. But the crush of people was glorious and I did see and dearly love the full brass band

The fire brigade from the Isle of Wight with their drum, the folks with the Robin Hood hats, the balloons and the gorgeous banners from all over the country. Most of all I just loved the beauty and immensity of it all:

This last shot I took in the late afternoon as we were leaving after a much needed rest in Hyde Park. I can’t even remember what time it was, but it must have been getting on for 5 pm and people were still streaming into Hyde Park as you can see. We thanked our stars for taking Westminster Bridge and joining the march nearer the beginning than the end. They’re saying half a million people in total but I can’t believe it wasn’t more:

I also got up to Oxford Street for a bit, getting there just too late for UK Uncut‘s action against Topshop, but I did join the revolutionary milling about for a while. Click here to read just why Topshop is a target, and why I personally was quite happy to see this:

Central London was an amazing place this weekend, almost empty but for a handful of confused shoppers, protesters, and riot police.

Just check out the nonchalance of London towards riot police! It was immensely surreal, but surely not business as usual. I don’t think it has been business as usual for a long while, I think that is something we should congratulate ourselves on.

UK Uncut went on to occupy Fortnum and Mason’s as well. Just after I had grown tired of milling about, sadly. You can read the press release here, and a very moving eyewitness account from a new activist who was there. There’s also plenty of live video footage to contradict the reports in the press of violence and mayhem. The police caused the damage, but, you know, it’s Fortnum and Mason after all. As my favourite tweet of the day says: @simonblackwell: According to police, £15,000 worth of damage inside Fortnum & Mason. Someone knocked over a jar of olives.

I know there’ll be a lot of contradictory opinions on the violence of yesterday. For myself, the violence really at issue here is that of the government against the people. It’s in every job cut and every service lost, and the job cuts run into the tens of thousands. For those of us with personal experience of the immense pain that come from lay offs and the destruction they can cause to people’s sense of self, their families, and their communities . . . there is no way to stand by and do nothing. Dismantling the welfare state is nothing if not intensely violent.

This is why we must continue to fight tooth and nail against all of it, from the sackings of RMT reps Arwyn Thomas and Eamonn Lynch (who I met last night, cheers Eamonn), to the cuts to the NHS, to our libraries and librarians, park rangers, public housing and … well, just tell me who and what isn’t getting cut.

Join us next Thursday, March 31st, 6:30 pm at the Vida Walsh Centre in Brixton to see where we go from here. I find myself deeply inspired by yesterday’s march and all of the people I marched with. So now? Now we go back to work to save our jobs and our services.

[also posted on www.lambethsaveourservices.org]

Food is Free

Other Examples of Street by Street Awesomeness

Just communities. Just cities. Just connections between country and city. Also, the weird and wonderful.