Army vs Rioters: Criminality and Legitimate Violence among Deprived Youths

Message to all the rioters .......... . u wanna be big men and fight to the death , well get your sorry little arses on the next plane to Afghanistan and stand alongside real men , they're called soldiers and they are fighting a war unlike you bunch of pathetic wastes of space !!!!

We've all seen them. Trite pieces of regurgitated propaganda masquerading as social commentary like the one above appearing in our news feed on various social networks. Perhaps some of your contacts expressed support for one of the pages set up by the BNP demanding that the government „bring our troops home“ and unleash them onto the streets.

The contrasting imagery of soldiers and rioters jolted my memory of something I had read a while back about the armed forces recruiting most of their enlisted men and women from deprived areas. So I did a little research and came across a report called „Informed Choice? Armed forces recruitment practice in the United Kingdom“.

One of the findings of the report confirmed what I had suspected:

„Non-officer recruitment draws mostly on young people from 16 years of age living in disadvantaged communities, with many recruits joining as a last resort.“

But this was only the start.

The UK is the only country in the European Union which recruits minors as young as 16 into its armed forces. Although under 18s are required to provide written consent from their parents or guardians, the report found that neither the recruit nor their legal guardians were provided with enough information about the risks of service in the armed forces, or the rights and responsibilities of enlisted men to be able to make a fully informed decision.

For example, they are unlikely to be told that male soldiers under 20 years of age face a 50% greater risk of suicide than those of similar profile in the civilian population, or that there is a disproportionately large number of suicides among discharged veterans who have seen combat. 20% of soldiers want to leave the army at the earliest opportunity, but must wait until they have served up to six years due to terms of service which the House of Commons Defence Committee’s Duty of Care report of 2005 criticised as ‘unnecessarily restrictive’ and ‘counter productive'.

In the knowledge that joining up is not a career decision without drawbacks and certainly not one to be taken lightly, we might ask who is a typical recruit into the ranks of our glorious armed services.

„While roughly 45% of all young people leave school with 5 GCSE subjects graded A-C, only 17% of all Army recruits in 2003–04 had English at A-C level, with the figure for Maths at about 10%. On average Army recruits have 0.9 of a GCSE at grade A-C.“

„The army’s own research suggests that up to 50% of recruits have literacy and numeracy skills at Entry Level 3 (equivalent to those of an average 11 year-old) or Entry Level 2 (equivalent to an average 7 year-old).“

Using information obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, Welsh Assembly Member Leanne Wood showed that the army was 50% more likely to visit schools in the most deprived areas of Wales than to visit those in less deprived areas, and further research has shown that army recruiters deliberately target schools in deprived areas.

Little surprise, then, that most non-officer recruits joined up after an extended period of unemployment or after being able to find only casual work. One study found that 40% of recruits reported that they had taken the Queen's shilling only as a last resort.

Now, leaving aside moral or ethical considerations, the armed forces does offer an opportunity of employment for marginalised young people who would otherwise face little prospect of gainful employment.  Although it is a significantly lower percentage than in civilian employment, 64% of military personnel reported that they were satisfied with their jobs.  However, the report points out that this „glosses over the injustice of young people being forced by circumstance to make career choices from a position of socio-economic weakness“ and that this „ also suggests that defence of the realm depends on the existence of a socio-economic underclass“.   How shameful that our government exploits the desperation of young people and provides them with no legitimate way to make a living other than to take a job where they risk:

• A one-in-five chance of, if a young woman or a woman of low rank, having a particularly upsetting experience of unwanted sexual behaviour directed at her.

• A one-in-six chance of contracting post-traumatic stress disorder if involved in more than five firefights.

• A one-in-seven chance of feeling that he or she has been discriminated against in any 12 month period.

• A one-in-ten chance of being bullied during initial (Phase 1) training.

• A one-in-eleven chance of working a 70-hour week.

• A one-in-thirteen chance of being bullied or harassed in any 12-month period of his or her service, on average.

• A one-in-thirty chance (if a woman) of being sexually assaulted one or more times in any 12-month period.

• A one-in-thirty-five chance of being discharged for ‘service no longer required’ (i.e.being made redundant) on average in each year of service after training.

• A one-in-fifty chance of becoming homeless after discharge.

So, our brave and honourable servicemen and women in Afghanistan have more in common with the „mindless thugs“ destroying their own neighbourhoods in the major urban centres of England during the past few days than one might think.  Both have chosen to act out of desperation in an effort to escape the hopelessness of their environment.  Both perpetrate violence, destroying property and livelihoods and ending lives in the process.  If destroying the homes and businesses of strangers in North London is, in the words of David Cameron „sickening“ and „criminality, pure and simple“, what is so honourable about destroying the homes and businesses of strangers in Kandahar?  Somehow, I don't think Afghans enjoy seeing their homes, livelihoods and communities obliterated by youths from Britian's most deprived areas any more than the residents of Clapham or Salford do.

Why Should I Pay for You to go to University?

A bachelor's degree is a very expensive piece of paper. According to Lord Browne's report on Securing a Sustainable Future for Higher Education in England, on average an undergraduate degree course at a UK university costs £7,000 per student per year to run. The Higher Education Funding Council for England, suggests a slightly higher figure of £7,300 per year.

For the graduate, higher education has obvious benefits. David Willetts, the Universities and Science Minister, has emphasised that over their lifetime graduates earn an average of £100,000 more than people who do not have a degree.

In addition to their higher pay, graduates face a lower risk of unemployment, are more likely to be in high-level positions using their university-acquired skills, receive more job-related training and also have greater promotion prospects than non-graduates.

Graduates aren't just more affluent than those who haven't studied at university. By the age of 30, a person educated to GCSE level is 75% more likely to be a smoker, while graduates are less likely to be obese, with 3% lower Body Mass Index on average. In addition, graduates are between 35% (women) and 55% (men) less likely to suffer from depression.

In summary, we can say that, on average:

• It costs £21-22,000 per student to run a three year degree programme
• A graduate will take home £100,000 more over the course of their career than a non-graduate
• Graduates face lower prospects of unemployment and higher chances of promotion, and will receive more job-related training
• Degree holders enjoy better physical and mental health

Clearly the graduate enjoys great personal benefits from tertiary education. So why should the taxpayer, who in most cases will not have had the privilege of studying at a university themselves, pay for it?

Let's look at those private benefits again. The extra £100,000 a graduate earns over their lifetime is calculated after tax.  In fact, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) annual report 'Education at a Glance' states that "The net public return is almost three times the cost of investing in tertiary education". The £100,000 figure also does not take into account the cost of tuition fees and maintenance loans, currently estimated to leave each graduate with £25,000 of debt, rising in many cases to over £40,000 under the new fees system which will be implemented from 2012.  The BBC also published a study which showed that, when interest is factored in, under the new system graduates face paying back double what they borrowed – over £80,000.  This may be a worse case scenario and, hopefully, won't be a typical graduate experience, but it has left some financial advisors questioning whether the benefits of a degree are worth the cost.

The side benefits of higher education enjoyed by the graduate have a monetary value for the taxpayer. The lower chances of unemployment and better health mean that the graduate is less likely to be reliant on public healthcare or income support and therefore draw less on public money.

The benefits of higher education are also passed onto the children of graduates. Graduate families (defined as families where at least one parent is educated to degree level) are more engaged with their child’s education – they are more involved with school work, more often read to the child at night when they were younger, and more regularly attend parents evenings. As a result, the children are more likely to have good attendance at school and are far more likely to do well at GCSE.

Beyond the family, graduates are around 3 times more likely to be a member of a voluntary organisation than someone educated to GCSE level or below,and are between 30% and 40% more likely to hold positive attitudes to race and gender equality. They were also less blindly accepting of authority and less politically cynical.

Universities play a key role in social mobility. Social mobility's effect of making the UK a fairer and more meritocratic society is seen by many as an end in itself, but a study by Boston Consulting Group found that improving levels of social mobility for future generations in the UKwould boost the economy by up to £140 billion a year by 2050 in today’s prices, or an additional four per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) over and above any other growth.

Finally, our economy needs graduates. Employers benefit from university education through a more productive and healthy workforce; highly-skilled workers more quickly adapt to new tasks and technologies, and are themselves a direct source of innovation. Further, there is compelling evidence to show how education investment results in higher economic growth rates for the economy as a whole, and one report attributed higher education as being the most important in OECD countries. Indeed, the Browne Report quotes research showing that in the UK between 2000 and 2007, the increase in employed university graduates accounted for 6% of growth in the private sector or £4.2bn of extra output.

In summary, we can say that, on average:

• Graduates contribute more in tax than non-graduates, more than enough to cover the cost of their education
• Better health and employment prospects mean graduates draw less on public health and income support programmes
• Graduates are 30% and 40% more likely to hold positive attitudes to race and gender equality and are less blindly accepting of authority and less politically cynical
• Universities drive social mobility, making society fairer and boosting the economy
• Investment in higher education results in higher economic growth rates

At a time when soaring tuition fees and graduate debt lead both school leavers and financial advisors questioning whether or not a degree is worth the cost, when the UK's economy faces rising competion from highly-skilled workers in China and India - the so-called Global Skills Race - perhaps the real question we should be asking is not whether the taxpayer should fund higher education, but can we afford not to.

HE Funding Cuts & Higher Fees: Does the Taxpayer Save Money?

In light of the recent reports that university courses are to cost an average of £8,393 per year from 2012 – nearly £1,000 more than the £7,500 the Minister for Universities and Science had insisted they would cost and on which he based his calculations – I have decided to look again at why I opposed, and continue to oppose, the increase in higher education tuition fees.


„For a nation of our scale, we possess a disproportionate number of the best performing HEIs in the world, including three of the top ten.“

So says Lord Browne in his report on higher education funding and student finance, published last autumn. In fact, in the latest rankings, there are now four British universities in the top ten, with Cambridge sitting pretty in first place ahead of such vaunted private US institutions as Harvard, Yale and MIT.

I know what you're thinking: „If it ain't broke, don't fix it.“
Unfortunately, every silver lining has a cloud.

Lord Browne wasn't finished: „The current funding and finance systems for higher education are unsustainable and need urgent reform.“

Sure enough, the Coalition Government announced a budget that revealed a 60% cut in the teaching grant for universities, retaining some funding for science, technology, engineering and mathematics, whilst completely withdrawing funding for the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (the irony being that only one member of the Cabinet studied a science subject as an undergraduate, the implication being that people with their educational background do not add to the „economic health and well being of the nation“).

Luckily for us, Browne was a man with a plan and the Coalition Government tabled a motion based on his recommendations. On December 9th, 2010, the House of Commons voted to approve the Conservative/Liberal Democrat administration's plan to treble the maximum fees universities could charge students.

Claire Callender, Professor of Higher Education at Birkbeck and the Institute of Education, University of London, sums up the situation thus:

„The government is withdrawing the funds it gives universities for teaching most of its undergraduate courses but will continue to subsidise science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses at a reduced level. The lost income stream will be replaced by higher tuition fees raised from £3,290 to a maximum of £9,000 from 2012/13. Students will be able to repay their fees on graduation via income-contingent student loans, which will remain heavily subsidised by the government.“

Will Charging Higher Tuition Fees Save the Taxpayer Money?

Back in November 2010, Nick Clegg informed us that the raising of tuition fees was necessary „Because of the financial situation... The truth is before the election we didn't know the unholy mess that was to be left to us by [the Labour] party.“ The following month, he was at it again stating „An expanding HE sector means expanding public costs, too. In an ideal world it would not be necessary to ask graduates to paymore towards their degree. But we do not live in an ideal world. We have an economic mess to clear up.“

Sounds reasonable, doesn't it? How can we secure funding for an expanding Higher Education sector when cutting public spending is a financial imperative? However, one doesn't have to look very hard to see how the reality of the situation differs.

Firstly, and most obviously, the funding the inflated loans to students from 2012 onwards will increase public expenditure throughout this parliament and the next, which gives the lie to the repeated claims of Nick Clegg and others that the cuts are an unfortunate consequence of the current economic climate or even due to mismanagement by the outgoing Labour administration.

Secondly, rather than expanding, the Parliamentary briefing papers state that “higher education sector in England especially is faced with... no increase or a possible cut in home undergraduates.“
This flies in the face of the Browne Report's stated aim that „The higher education system will expand to provide places for everyone who has the potential to succeed“. Unless, that is, by „ everyone who has the potential to succeed“, Lord Browne means foreign students who have the money to pay upfront fees.

Thirdly, only a minority of graduates are ever expected to earn enough money to pay off their loans. The rest will struggle even to pay off the interest on their debt, before it is written off at taxpayer's expense after thirty years. The government itself estimates that 50-60% of graduates will have some or all of their debt written off.

In light of this, an analysis by the Higher Education Policy Institute concluded that if the new funding system yielded any savings to the taxpayer, they would be marginal. More worrying was their finding that the new system was just as likely to result in increased public expenditure in the long term.


In summary, passing the cost of higher education onto graduates will see them saddled with debt for the best part of their working lives. Funding the loans will not only increase public spending in the current parliament and the next, it is as likely to cost the taxpayer more in the longterm as it is to save public expenditure. The only people better off financially would seem to be the banks from whom the Treasury will need to borrow the money to finance the loans.


In a future post I will consider:
Does marketisation of HE improve quality for the student?
How will the changes affect social mobility?
Graduates earn more money than non-graduates, why should the taxpayer fund their education?
How higher education has been redefined as a private investment rather than a public good.

TO REMAIN SILENT IS TO BE COMPLICIT

Copy of letter sent to: Right Honourable Iain Duncan Smith MP,

Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
and
Right Honourable Maria Miller MP,
Minister for Disabled People

Dear Sir/Dear Madam,

I write to you to raise my concerns regarding a recent announcement by the Department for Work and Pensions that a 'Mobile Regional Taskforce' is to target false benefits claimants in what it describes as high risk areas.

The DWP estimates that false benefit claimants stole in the region of £900 million during the tax year 2008-2009. I am sure we both agree that this theft of public money is to be abhorred. However, I am very worried about the impact DWP measures to reduce fraud will have on disabled people.

The DWP press release states:

„The Mobile Regional Taskforce will scrutinise the claims of a high proportion of current benefit customers within a specific geographical location, regardless of age, gender, ethnic make-up, type of benefit recipient, income, disability breakdown or family status.“ (emphasis mine).

It seems quite clear that the taskforce will be authorised to target benefit claimants, including the disabled, without being required to supply any evidence or suspicion of fraud.

Of the £900 million estimated total annual benefit fraud, around £50 million relates to Disability Living Allowance payments. As I am sure you are aware, to combat theft of disability benefit a company named ATOS Healthcare has been awarded a contract to conduct work capability assessments to validate genuine claims and to expose frauds.

However, the stated aims of fraud reduction appear incongruent with the fact that ATOS has been budgeted to reduce the amount of disability payments by 20%, an estimated total of £2.4 billion, when fraud is thought to be only 0.5%.

One might conclude that vulnerable people are being systematically denied the government help which they desperately need and that it is not only welfare fraud but Department for Work and Pensions policy itself which "takes money away from the most vulnerable".  Indeed, this is borne out by the evidence supplied to the Commons Select Committee on Work and Pensions by Tom Greatrex MP which showed that, of those ATOS deemed fit to work, 40% of these had the decision overturned successfully on appeal. Mr. Greatrex goes on to state:

„It is reasonable to suggest that this figure would be even higher were it not for the fact that a large number of those deemed fit for work do not appeal as they do not wish to go through the stress the whole process entails. It goes without saying that it is not acceptable to reduce the numbers of those on Employment and Support Allowance, and its predecessor benefits, simply by making the testing process as difficult and strenuous as possible for those involved.“

The suffering inflicted on disabled people by the denial of the aid they need is demonstrated in the high profile case of former Scottish Ballet prima ballerina Elaine McDonald OBE who is forced to sleep in her own faeces and urine due to withdrawal of support.

Sad to say, Mrs. McDonald is not alone in being subjected to degrading treatment. The mental health charities Mind, Rethink Mental Illness, the Centre for Mental Health, Hafal, and the Scottish Association for Mental Health stated in an open letter to the Guardian that

„The prospect of IB reassessment is causing huge amounts of distress, and tragically there have already been cases where people have taken their own life following problems with changes to their benefits.“

Bearing in mind the difficult and stressful nature of the work capability assessments, I would be very grateful if you could consult your colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions in order to confirm:

A) How banging on the doors of claimants will succeed in exposing frauds where the work capability assessments do not

B) What steps have been taken to avoid distress to disabled and vulnerable benefit claimants who now face the intimidating prospect of a team of people visiting them in their own homes to force them to once again prove that they are not criminals

In a nation where tax evasion and fraud costs the taxpayer thirty times as much as benefit fraud, why is it considered acceptable to treat like criminals the very people who need the most help, to intimidate and harass them in their own homes?

It has often been said that the moral test of a society is how it treats its most vulnerable members.  I fear that our society and your government's policies are failing that test.