Approaches to Monitor the Government's Strategy to Tackle Poverty and Social Exclusion - Book Report/Review Example

Management Book Review Polly Toynbee (born Mary Louisa Toynbee on December 27 1946) is a journalist and with social democratic views in the United Kingdom, and has since 1998 been a columnist for The Guardian newspaper. Her columns commonly support New Labour, but she has also made keen criticisms of the Blair government. She was born on the Isle of Wight. After she attended the Holland Park School, a comprehensive school in London (she had failed the Eleven Plus examination), she read history at St Anne's College, Oxford, but dropped out before completing her degree. She then went into journalism, working for many years at The Guardian before joining the BBC where she was social affairs editor (1988-1995). At The Independent, which she joined after leaving the BBC, she was a columnist and associate editor, working with then editor Andrew Marr. After Marr's principal spell as Independent editor she rejoined The Guardian. She has also written for The Observer and the Radio Times; at one time she edited the Washington Monthly USA. Currently Toynbee serves as President of the Social Policy Association. Polly Toynbee was married to the late Peter Jenkins, also a journalist. She now lives with the journalist David Walker, with whom she has collaborated on books reviewing the successes and failures of New Labour in power. Both she and Jenkins were supporters of the SDP breakway from Labour in 1981 - both signing the Limehouse Declaration. Toynbee went on to stand for the party at the 1983 General Election in Lewisham East, garnering 9351 votes (22%). She later became something of a rarity in refusing to support the subsequent merger of the SDP with the Liberals (to form the Liberal Democrats), reacting instead by moving back towards Labour when the rump SDP collapsed. In recent years, Toynbee has been critical of many of Tony Blair's New Labour reforms from a social-democratic position, yet she believes it remains "the best government of my lifetime" and condemns those who are so critical of it that they believe it is indistinguishable from the Tory alternative. Toynbee was awarded an Honorary Degree by London South Bank University in 2002. In 2005, she was made an Honorary Doctor of The Open University for "her notable contribution to the educational and cultural well-being of society". One of the most famous books published by Toynbee is Hard Work: Life in Low-Pay Britain, which succeeds to describe in details an experimental period of voluntarily living on the minimum wage, which was '4.10 per hour at the time. She worked as a hospital porter in an NHS hospital, a nursery assistant, a dinner lady in a primary school, a call-centre employee, a cake factory worker and a care home assistant. She contributed an introduction to the UK edition of a similar publication, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, by the American writer Barbara Ehrenreich about Ehrenreich's field-work in low-pay America. Toynbee strongly disagrees with the level of the minimum wage, which she argued should be increased considerably. Besides wage increase another argument that Toynbee is expressing is about terms and conditions issues such as holiday pay and working hours. It was quite striking to see the difference in perception of the book between some left-wing critics, which criticized the book a lot some right-wing critics, who considered that it pooled narcissism with a poor clutch of the underlying issues. Toynbee recently topped a poll of 100 "opinion makers", carried out by Editorial Intelligence. She was named the most-read columnist in the UK. However, there are a few claimed discrepancies in her use of facts and references. Despite being considered a fierce opponent of selective education, Toynbee educated her own children privately, which has led to charges of hypocrisy. She is arguing for a levelling down of consumption and for rationing rather than for a general raising of living standards. In Hard Work: Life in Low-pay Britain Polly Toynbee uses a vibrant representation to portray the plight of the poor in our population. Imagine a caravan crossing the desert, with the poor bringing up the rear. During the 1980s, those at the back moved more slowly than the sheikhs and their entourage at the front: by the 1990s, the poorest fell even further behind, almost out of sight. This metaphor helps to explain the paradox that, as a nation, we are now twice as well off as in 1970, while it is harder than ever for the poorest third to catch up. Seen through this perspective, the 1970s represented the end of a golden age of upward mobility. Does it feel worse to be poor in an affluent country' Yes, almost certainly: Toynbee claims that 'economic exclusion' means a large no-no sign on every normal enjoyment. So the lack of choice about health-related factors such as nourishment and way of life is compounded by the enticement all around to get into a debt hole. When it comes to the panorama of escape, Toynbee challenges the complacency of a society that finds social inequality ethically comfortable, on the basis that people can rise through their own efforts. One in five workers earns less than '6 per hour, or '240 a week. Many of these workers are women in jobs described as 'ancillary', a word derived from the Latin for a handmaid or woman slave. Such term appears to place cleaning or assistance in classrooms, hospitals and nursing homes, as in some way superfluous or unnecessary to the smooth running of society. Even the term used serves apparently to rationalize low pay and poor conditions. The novel by Toynbee includes a deep analysis of the low paid workers. In order to research low-paid work, she moved into the worst available housing on a council estate and took on a variety of minimum-wage jobs. Inspired by a similar experiment in the USA,7 she did her best to cast aside the trappings of an affluent life as a broadcaster and journalist and attempted to survive on the minimum wage (then '4.10 an hour, due to increase to '4.50 from October 2003). While living under cover for a few weeks on 'the biggest and worst estate in one of London's poorest boroughs', she worked as a porter, hospital cleaner and care assistant, amongst other jobs. Her self-styled 'social exclusion' included assuming no network of friends and relatives to help her out, living alongside problem families and long-suffering fellow residents. The reader shares her disappointment about the 'thick crusty aroma of decades of decaying detritus' in the staircase of her meeting block and the feeling of imprisonment in her temporary home, bounded by the unwelcoming and sinister public space of a run-down estate. After a few days, she became aware of social segregation once she found herself in a world where many shopping streets, as well as activities were not within her financial reach -something only to see. Toynbee's way of writing manages to captures both conversation and a sense of place despite the fact that the world that is depicted in her works is unglamorous. During the foray into unfamiliar territory one can notice a special humour that partially emerges unconsciously. In her book Toynbee experiences 'very dull food', where she has to add garlic in order to make it bearable. Only under those circumstances, she fully grasps why the poor risk debt at outrageous interest rates. At some point Toynbee was wondering if the politicians of her acquaintance would notice her when she took a job in a government department. It did not take her long to realize that kitted out for a lowly service job people become invisible. She undergoes the Byzantine forms and procedures of the social security system and the petty meanness of employers and agencies. On the other hand, she experiences the conspiratorial egalitarianism of minimum wage jobs, the 'perks' of free left-over food, and the ways of rotating out the work to justify the hours booked and to fool the man studying the computer printouts, all in all, she is a fast learner and absorbs everything very fast. Of course, some of these jobs were for a very short period -between a day and a week, but even that was enough for a journalistic purpose to spot unfairness at different levels. Toynbee makes discerning comments about the state of our public services, incredibly short shrift in order to squeeze higher productivity with more flexibility, saving every last penny of efficiency out of each worker. She points out to the detrimental effects of 'outsourcing' of services, where demoralized and exploited work force is produces and a management is loosing touch with what the job entails. Contracting out implies that it is now unfeasible to conclude precisely how many people work in the public sector, where there is no loyalty to the outsourced staff, nor is any expected of them. High turnover is just one of the costs of this policy. Only 7% of public-sector workplaces now have any low-paid employees left: this vulnerable group has been transferred almost entirely to the private sector. For this group, it is not just a matter of low pay: pensions, holidays, sick pay and overtime have all been reduced to a bare minimum. Toynbee points out that being one of the working poor is to be overwhelmed at every turn, where all adventures start when she gets her dark, moist, unfurnished flat, she has to borrow money from the Housing Authority to get it furnished, because she will only get paid when she has been working for at least two weeks. She can't afford an appointment with the doctor because her job doesn't allow any paid time off. She can't even to apply for another job because all the interviews are scheduled during her working hours. Life is a constant "fight-and-strive" and she finally admits defeat when she has to move out of her apartment because the building's front door doesn't lock, there are drug dealers in the lobby, and she can't afford a phone. In between metaphors of her alternate life in the slum, she srarts discussions of the politics behind the policies regarding wages and poverty in Great Britain. Even for someone who isn't familiar with British government, it is very clear. I would credit Toynbee a lot for being able to use this knowledge to question her own principles and values as well as those of our society. She had spent hours and hours searching for jobs and waited for days to be interviewed, heatedly observing that inexpensive labour is treated as if it were something easily dispensable. She also reflects that she merely is not used to being treated in such a way and she almost timidly points out that basic education sessions would not go wrong for this undervalued workforce. Training for the job was also deficient in most of the workplaces she sampled, notably in healthcare: the wonder is, as she notes, that so much commitment and dedication is often shown. In a chapter entitled 'It doesn't have to be this way', Toynbee turns to solutions: this comes down to raising the minimum wage, whatever the cost. She is unsympathetic to any consequence for small businesses or to pay differentials: arguing that the former provide, in general, poorer conditions for the low paid; and that there is little evidence for 'knock-on' effects in pay demands. A reader may say that economic argument appears to some extent unsubstantiated here, she makes a strong quarrel for freeing up the bottom 30% of society from hopeless poverty. She does not see it as a utopian dream to fight for fairness, a cohesive society and a better-educated workforce. Whilst her work experience proved that there is 'meaning in cleaning', her sombre conclusion is that reimburse is everything in our society, conveying status, chance and health. The main message of the book can be summarized by a well known phrase that George Bernard Shaw observed almost a century ago, that 'The greatest of evils and the worst of crimes is poverty'. Bibliography: 1. World Health Organization. World Health Report 1999: Making a Difference. WHO: Geneva, 1999. 2. World Health Organization. Health: a Precious Asset. Proposals by WHO for the World Summit for Social Development, 2000. WHO: Geneva, 2000. 3. Wilkinson R, Marmot M, eds. Social Determinants of Health: the Solid Facts. Copenhagen: World Health Organization (Europe) Centre for Urban Health, 1998 [http://www.who.dk/tech/hcp/index.htm]. 4. Department of Social Security. Indicators of Progress: a Discussion of Approaches to Monitor the Government's Strategy to Tackle Poverty and Social Exclusion. London: DSS, 2001 [http://dss.gov.uk/publications/dss/2001/iop.pdf]. 5. Toynbee P. Hard Work: Life in Low-pay Britain. London: Bloomsbury Publishing [242 pp; ISBN 0-7575-6415-9; '6.99 (p/b)]. 6. Office for National Statistics [www.statistics.gov.uk]. 7. Ehrenreich B. Nickel and Dimed: Undercover in Low-Wage USA. London: Granta, 2002. Read More