A Life without work part 2...Remember when everybody used to work?

A Life without work, ( part 1 reviewed here ) while not nearly as uplifting as Reggie Perrin ( see below) was supposed to be, hit the mark from the first second. Part two which aired last week, covered York in 2010 and asked the question, has anything changed in a century. Using prototypical examples of key demographics Richard Bilton, walks us through the life of the young unemployed, the chronic unemployed, the single mum, the older unemployed, the living on the edge unemployed, all the while asking if the reforms created from the original study by  Seebhom Rowntree, have made a difference. In a few words Yes and no.  Yes for the single mum who no longer has to struggle half as much as the lady in 1910 who's husband died or left her had to. Overall the desperation of the workhouse and abject poverty no longer hover like the grim reaper, but it has robbed some of the need to look for work. While I would never advocate the wholesale destruction of the social safety net we have today, I find it sad that a job centre employee has to convince large groups of young people of the importance of getting off social assistance. Surely the welfare state is not the zenith of life one should be aspiring to?  While the state should keep people from the depravity of 1910 like poverty, it should do all it can to move people off the rolls and into proper full time well remunerated work.

The other problem that comes to light is that in some sectors where work should exist, and in fact does, desperate English parasitical men are stealing the jobs of those who have been the victims of bankruptcy of private firms. Why wasn't the man and his mates who lost work when the firm closed , not made to get first shot at work on the contract that had just lost it's long term workers? These same workers that had been doing the same work on the same spot since it was state owned?  Then to see this man who is a highly trained professional being steered towards CV classes and the possibility of call centre work or other such low paying work. The program answered as many questions as it raised and I would hope people from all parties watched this. We need to make the next step where validation of motherhood is as important as the validation of skilled labour and the chance to do it within 25 miles of home. The country is filled with the remnants of industry that used to employ millions, empty factories, mills, rail yards, ship yards and coal pits that were closed down by that (fill in own expletive) Margaret Thatcher in favour of foreign capital. Now that the Chinese are themselves closing down parts of their manufacturing base, just where are we supposed to get the things they used to make? Why right at home of course, but where from exactly, who has the skills, who will rebuild the factories turned into lofts and housing projects? I don't know the answers to those questions , but I suspect they are in the hands of the next government after this one.

One of the overwhelmingly depressing aspects of the program was that the statistics of 1910 were near perfectly mirrored in 2010. If you are a man, if you are living alone, of you are not a single mother, you are living about as close to desperation as is humanly possible without actually falling through the chasms. Seems compassion comes only when you are attached to something cute under the age of 10. Older workers, young men, and women who haven't gotten pregnant, in some areas, have about as much hope of finding a job as it does of it not raining . The fact that the system appears to be built around helping people survive and and move up the ladder is based on the good intentions of those running it, the reality is that the best they have achieved is keeping the least of our society from losing all hope. We need to get a government that will tackle the real problem of a sick economy. The real problem of having shipped so many jobs out of Britain that there isn't enough to keep most people busy and in decent wages. I doubt seriously the ConDemn government is capable of seeing beyond the needs of the super wealthy and the upper middle classes that voted for them. As and when Labour are back, they need to start the job of rebuilding the old industrial infrastructure and farming base that used to exist. Rebuild the factories, the rails and the shipyard, reopen the mines, save the farmers, then maybe the call centre job won't be the first last and only option open.

The fact that untalented young people with an overblown ego, see the only way out is to ape American pop culture on X factor and dress as oddly as possible is a symptom of a greater illness. The idea that you could aspire to something is gone. The notion of ambition was killed off when you saw your father, uncle, grand father and the rest of your neighbourhood pensioned off and become the last of..... The greatest ambition is now to become famous, that's it just become famous. Because if you do, even for 5 minutes, not even Marshal McLuhan's 15 minutes, you can achieve financial security from the exclusive deals you'll get before the next flash in the pan shows up.  Sadly or for the good, that even seems to be harder and harder to do. More and more of the human race and by extension, your neighbours are surplus to requirement. What if anything are we to do?

I'd never watched Reggie Perrin before, and considering what a massive Martin Clunes fan I am, it makes me to wonder why I missed the first series last year. A few friends had banged on about it and as they seemed to know of what they'd spoke most of the time, I took a chance. I watched episode one of the new series last night. Reggie Perrin is a disjointed sitcom written in two parts. Part 1 where you get an As Time goes by feel where two adults have a conversation that just happens to be funny, then it switches into part 2 where you enter wacky sitcom land ( his office). The entire thing would more palatable if it didn't have the geet annoying laugh track throughout, telling me when to laugh or titter or not. Every time I think the laugh track is gone, it interrupts a perfectly good bit of dialogue between Reggie and his wife or his office. I do not like Reggie Perrin, I do not like laugh tracks and I do not like being told where to laugh nor do I trust producers who think so little of what they have done they feel the need to add a laugh track just insure we know what the funny bits are supposed to be. As and when the laugh track is taken off, I will give it a shot, but not as it stands now.  Well at least Martin Clunes gets to eat till his next bit of decent acting...Vogon bad scale 4 ...

And as not to leave you on a totally depressing note....Watch Russell Howard's Good News, he made me laugh.

Wood's story of England ends,Life without Work is Getting on and Mad Cat Ladies

What a week it's been so far. Loads of  telly to watch and most of it really good. But before I get onto that, a few  quick notes about the Tyne Wear Derby coming up and the e-mail I got from my editor. As some of you might know if you've been good readers and read ALL my stuff, you'll know I'm working on a few articles for a Sherlockian journal. Today I got a pdf of the mock up of the first draft of article one without images. My reviews of BBC's Sherlock have been reduced to a smooth veloute sauce of silky verbiage in praise of the New Sherlock risen from the minds of Moffat and Gatiss. I'm assured there will be one last version presented as and when the editor can sort the copyright issues for a few images from the BBC.  Just as big is of course the build up towards the long missed Tyne Wear Derby taking place at the weekend. BBC Radio Newcastle's Total Sport team had on tonight a special edition where the usual cast of talking heeds and  fan forum members took themselves to a 5 aside pitch in North Shields to decide once and for all just who's supporters could play Sunday side best. As it happens the Mackem lads edged our boys 4-3, but to hear our manager tell it, the ref ignored a clear penalty shout and the net wasn't big enough for some of our shooters. Not to be outdone by the main sport site, Total Sport then went to several cages at the zoo to ask The monkeys, the dolphins and octopi for a score line.  Monkeys 2-0 for the SMB's, Dolphins 2-2 draw and the octopus called for 0-0 draw. Seems even the animal world's opinion is divided on this. Hear the entire bit of madness on Listen again Radio Newcastle for 28th of October.  Good Luck Lads, we're playing at home, don't embarrass us.

On to business dear readers. As the title implies, this one is mostly history and a dash of NHS comedy.

This week Michael Wood's Story of England wrapped up the series with part 6 dealing with modern Kibworth/England. In Victoria to the present day, we trace the progress of Kibworth from 1830 when all right thinking people feared society changing revolution from below. Turns out they were right , but it wasn't the violent ideological revolution of Cromwell or Marx, but that of the reformers and the dissenters. Commercial interests, along with the growing British Empire served to drag England into the next century whatever the old world thought of it. Several things happen to insure that the lot of the poor and illiterate is improved.  In 1832 90% do not have the right to vote, a number that changes in fits and starts. By 1870 school for the 5 to 12 year olds is accessible , by 1880, it's mandatory. Children who enter service at 12, were expected to be smart and know how to read, a skill that served them well when it came time to challenge the Poor law courts. By1900 there is 90 % literacy rate. The railroad also came to town in  1857 . Kibworth's own Loveday, in a single stroke, creates more voters and homes for workers of modest means, by building houses. These people achieve the status of franchise holders, thus causing the Tories of the day to respond to workers or risk losing power.  ( insert own coalition joke or barb here). Despite things like the march for the unemployed in 1905, truly revolutionary tendencies are sublimated by the firm hand of the clergy on the moral pulse of the village through Penny Concerts filled with upright songs about tea and the tragedy of  a girl imploring people to ask her father to come home form the pub. This is not to say that the working men's clubs did not have the saucier sort of songs, dances and broad comedy we have come to call "Music Hall". WW1 and II do their worst and the full vote comes to all in 1928. Baby boomers come, Land Girls become mums and Kibworth becomes part of one the most multi ethnic parts of Britain.

So what in all of this was strictly Kibworthian? Well rather a lot as it turns out. This time Professor Wood utilises the resources of the best local volunteers to search through hitherto untouched parish records from the 19th century, later used to illustrate the Poor Law section. Whole groups of children walk through Kibworth on a Victoria walk, learning  that Thomas Cook was of Kibworth. The fact the dissenters movement was deeply imbeded in the village, with the result that much of what we take for granted of the writing and traditions of the movement was from Kibworth and can still be studied in libraries long since merged with more mainstream institutions, brings home the importance of the place, even if the descendants of those reformers are not spoken to directly. One of the truly nice bits was when the town was pressed ganged into recreating a Penny Concert as well as a less moralistic or upright Music hall show. A particularly poignant moment was when a class of children read of the experience and deaths of family members in the Great war then went on an annual trip to visit a battle field in France where a group of Leicester soldiers posed for a photo. Sat in the same spot, it wasn't hard to imagine most of those young people about to waste their lives on a trench charge. They then went over to the large cenotaph  to pick out the names of great grand parents. Another great use, In this last segment of the Kibworth series, Michael Wood, through photos, film and re enactment, connects the streets and homes to the events of the recent past and makes the current village seem more than a semi rural destination you might normally avoid unless you knew somebody there.Not a bad way to wrap up a series. Catch up the entire series on the iPlayer

Continuing with the theme of the working man's history of the recent past, BBC A life without work, does a brilliant job of bringing the poverty and working conditions of 1910 Yorkshire to life. Richard Bilton explores the report that is the very underpinning of the modern welfare state the Government is so busy taking apart bit by tiny bit.  While there are some abuses and ill effects of the policy on modern society, it is no reason to destroy it. In watching this programme, you realise just how close we are to the family in the 1910 diary but for the very safety net keeping large portions of the population out of abject poverty and subsistence labour.  Seebhom Rowntree, a dissenter, a Quaker ( see Kibworth) and deeply religious man, continues the grand tradition of the social reformers of the earlier Victorian era. In 1910, York is a city just recovering from a recession, a city that was among the wealthiest in the land, in which there were no poor people or social problems. All was good with the land and no person worthy of note was doing badly.  In fact the opposite was true. A full quarter of the population in poverty or constituted the working poor. Seebhom , who was later to run Rowntree's, set up a methodical survey of all persons on some form of relief or out of work. The results were assembled, collated and boiled it down into a shocking picture where even in one of the wealthiest cities of Britain, people were living on tea, bread and margarine with the occasional bit of fish on Sunday. Mrs Nevinson of the survey, has 22 children, of whom 5 survive to adulthood.  The Nevinsons are but one family among many who help with raw data, but the words of the father ring out from the pages 100 years on urging us to see his agony, the futility of his efforts at times, and the fact he is working very hard for little return.

So who were the Nevinsons? Bilton tries to answer the question with the help of genealogists and archaeologists, tracking down this working class family. After a few false starts, the blind daughter is identified as Ivy Addy, who's father is John Thomas Addy who with his family, lived for a time on Phoenix street, and whose descendants still live a mere 2 mile  away to this day. Through the search portion of the ep, we visit the Hungate dig already mentioned in my time team piece on the real Vikings, and see the tiny cramped two story hovels these people were forced to live in, sometimes 15 at a time. It's one thing to read about it, but to see the site and the conditions they were expected to maintain a brave face in , is so much harder to ignore. If you follow the dots from Ivy Addy through several generations . you end with the fat bloke from the film The Full Monty, Mark Addy. Ironic isn't it that he should find fame playing an out of work labourer during a depression. Mark and many of his relatives  were brought together on the site of the Phoenix street house for a reunion and to see where they came from. From the humble beginnings of a  labourer, the Addy's achieved greatness in the military, glazing, and now acting. 

Not to ignore Mr Rowntree, his conclusions laid the groundwork for much of the legislation that insured safe working conditions, paid holidays, decent housing, and recreation. As an employer and company president, Rowntree created a village that included pools parks and libraries. He was to create the model for the ideal employer.  During the worst of the depression , he kept the plants going, churning out chocolate and keeping people employed, this despite massive losses of 33% in 1931.  Surely an example of the old notion of noblesse oblige where the lord of the area has an obligation to the people on his land to keep them safe, whole and healthy. Next time, we see the modern face of post Thatcher and current York. It will be interesting to see just how little or how much has changed. Nicely done that, Mr Bilton, telling the story of reform through the very real experiences of one family from 1910 to 2010.

We wouldn't have Getting On  to write about without Mr. Rowntree and people of his ilk. So a big thank you to all those responsible for bringing us the kind of health care we take for granted, and other parts of the world only dream of.  Getting On for those of you who hadn't seen series one, is about a hospital women's unit that deals with all sorts of miseries and illness brought on by poverty, bad diets and the middle class obsessions of personal fitness. Jo Brand and the fat lass from the Thick of it, play out the day to day existence of hospital staff in a modern well equipped, but stressful and rushed environment of a ward trying to juggle beds, doctor time and teaching. One of the great throw away lines was when Jo brand's character was told she could not call Hillary a twat, so she said "Hillary is such a vagina", later she's taking the piss out of a patient... away for disposal. In this Thick of it filming style, the realistic situations of hospital life comes through sharply and still manage to be humorous. The visit of a patient's daughter all the way from Scotland exposes the sort of cold rule based life that has taken hold in all institutions and the admission of a  geet smelly homeless woman, presses the ward to find a place willing to un-ming her while yet others look for her identity so they can at least have a name to call her. In the US and many parts of the world, that poor woman wouldn't even get a second look. But the NHS, imperfect as it is sometimes, HAS to take her. Take the time to watch this comedy gem, you'll be adding it to your must see programmes list. If you like Richard Hawley, he sings the brilliant theme song.

I'd like to write something about the last Wonderland, Mad Cats and Englishwomen, precisely because it was  so troubling to see the way that fully half the cats in London are treated and the shocking conditions in which the people who care for them live in. The heroines of the cat world are overworked, lonely people who have turned to cats after a life of drugs and alcohol. Pat, who we meet starts the programme  thinking she is doing a sacred mission and that men don't understand, but by the end realizes that she has pushed  men and most people for that matter, from her life by taking in so many cats.  This poor soul has had a rough life in Dagenham and it hasn't got any better over time. The Ex vogue model who runs the cat and dog sanctuary is not much better. Poorly funded and overcrowded, the staff and animals live in quarters as sad and cramped as the well intentioned Pat.  I don't know what appals me more, the treatment of cats by careless and horrible people, or the conditions that those who would save them have condemned themselves to live in. This is no sentimental, humour tinged, crazy cat lady special, it is gritty and disturbing, AND well worth the watch if you've the stomach for it. Celia Hammond and her band of volunteers deserve all the help they can get, but the sad part is that they themselves are as lost and sick as some of the cats they save. I felt sick after watching this, I'm not sure why even now, except to say that no one should live like that, man or beast.