An unfortunate acronym

When the current UK government came to power there was a great deal of talk about fairness. Some of us might naively have believed that this meant sharing the burden of austerity so that those most able to pay might pay the most but it turned out that what they had in mind was the selfish adolescent version of fairness that simply shouts "it's not fair" at some perceived personal sleight.

So, we get poorly paid workers pitted against the even poorer unemployed and people in insecure employment against immigrants who are "coming to take their jobs". Such is the talk in the popular press of benefits scroungers and welfare dependency that, as might be expected and was probably calculated, a number of myths have grown up. For example, a good proportion of people believe that most welfare spending goes on the unemployed. In fact this is less than 7% with the biggest chunk going to pensioners and most of the rest going to people in badly paid employment (i.e badly paying employers are being subsidised by the state). They believe that 27% of claims are fraudulent whereas the true figure is 0.8%.

It's clear that what people like is a coherent story and the one about the crisis being caused by a profligate Labour Government spending all of their money on ne'er-do-wells has been told so often that it is readily believed. I'm reminded that shortly after the most recent Gulf War some 70% of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11. This was the only way to make sense of their invasion of Iraq. Let's just say that neither the US nor UK governments were keen to put this misperception right.

Now because this is something I've thought about quite a lot I find it very hard to separate people from the circumstances they find themselves in, - see an early post Dispositional or Situational - and tend to react against any form of stereotyping even if its of Tory cabinet ministers (much to the annoyance of at least one of my sons). But one day I began to see if I could give it a try and build up a sense of resentment against some other sub set of the population.

Since I was riding my bike at the time and finding the traffic somewhat annoying I suddenly hit upon a potential target for my spleen. Fat people driving cars. There they are lardy and self righteous, doing themselves and everyone around them no end of harm while at the same time looking down (albeit in an upward direction) on me as either a pauper or a freak. Meanwhile, there I am gently muttering to myself that I pay my taxes to pick up their health problems.......

That was it, by then I'd left the traffic behind and was cycling up through the woods on Oliver's Mount, any excess adrenaline was now well used up, my thoughts had turned back to the circumstances that had led to their car dependency and I began to feel sorry for the years of ill health and alienation from their own bodies that was likely to follow.

See, I'm just not very good at scum bashing, partly because I know from my jam making experience.that scum tends to rise to the top - So perhaps the 85 extremely rich people who own as much as the poorest half of the world are indeed the scum of the earth - but mainly because I really do believe that we're all in this together and there but for some accidents of history go I (with philosophical reservations given in my very first post )

You may have noticed that I've got a current obsession around the public health and physical inactivity and was plotting a way to discuss this at a meeting of public officials which I happen to attend. Earlier in this post I used the pejorative term fat to describe people carrying more weight than is good for them. This isn't a good term to use in polite company, especially when its statistically likely that a good proportion of your audience will be overweight, so an alternative  medicalised expression came to mind. Not fat people but those of Super Optimal Weight. Now its usual with such terms that they get replaced by their acronyms.....