BLOG 6 - THE CULTURE OF ENTITLEMENT - A TREATISE ON GASLIGHTING

18th of October 2019. John Mackintosh Hall Theatre. Some time between 5 and 7am. A particularly theatrical Fabian Picardo is delivering an impassioned victory speech for what will be (yet again) his last term in office. I sit with my small army of TG rebels, feeling proud, digesting a historic yet bittersweet result. The CM looks tired, as do all those who have taken part in this hard-fought election campaign, but he is beaming. He has cried yet again when remembering his family, but his act has been rather flat this time, not reaching the heights of other, more masterful performances. In any case, the CM is always impressive. When in form he has the persuasiveness of a snake-charmer, delivering dialectic pirouettes with extraordinary grace and aplomb. He speaks with the confidence of a man who knows he was born to speak out in victory, even when his words are doused in hypocrisy.

If the moment was not memorable enough, Fabian Picardo then proceeds to deliver the most mind-blowing political statement I have ever heard (in the flesh).

“The age of entitlement is over.”

He says this with a straight face, in front of all his political friends and foes, after having been at the helm of yet another GSLP electoral spectacle of hardcore clientelism in which he rewarded, gifted, and promised the moon to all prospective voters. The magician who reformed No.6 Convent place to suit the stature of a world leader, who is driven around in fancy cars and enjoys staying at the Ritz with his entourage when travelling at the taxpayers expense, whips out a top hat and - now you see it, now you don’t - pulls out the age of responsibility.

This statement has to be the Everest of political hypocrisy in Gibraltar, reaching heights that only a man of Picardo’s boundless confidence and theatrical flair can handle.

The “entitlement culture” phenomenon reminds me of the aftermath of the “great recession” (the period of marked general decline in national economies globally that occurred between 2007 and 2009), particularly in how politicians across the border dealt with the psychological blow of the crisis before it unfolded. “Hemos vivido por encima de nuestras posibilidades” became the mantra of the PP, which then proceeded to mete out close to a decade of austerity that heavily eroded the Spanish welfare state and subjected generations of young Spaniards to job insecurity and low wages. To ascribe blame to the recipients of Government policy as opposed to the designers and executors of said policy is a double whammy for the ruling classes; on the one hand it distracts the public’s attention from the negligent lack of foresight and the irresponsibility of their leaders, while at the same time guilt-trips them into accepting the cuts that inevitably ensue.

The idea of the “culture of entitlement” sounds good, even to people who identify with the working classes. It rests on the tried and tested premise that nobody likes a freeloader, much less a freeloader that takes the help he/she receives for granted. If you look at other countries that implement social programmes you will find similar ideas expressed against those who are seen to be taking advantage of the system, exploiting benefits that are paid for by the taxes levied on the wider community. The question is, is this really happening in Gibraltar? Do we really have a generous and supportive welfare net and a substratum of freeloaders who exploit it?

At first glance Gibraltar’s welfare support system is slim. Gibraltar’s social services are notoriously dysfunctional due to the department being chronically underfunded and understaffed. Go out and have a chat with any of the valiant workers in the system, and they will tell you many horror stories of scarcity and mismanagement. To top it off, Gibraltar’s social subsidies are very low, providing barely enough for recipients to feed themselves and their children. It is for this reason that charities like the EV Foundation and people like Nicole Jones and her army of volunteers have shaken Gibraltar to its core. Whether we like it or not, we need to admit that there is relative poverty in Gibraltar, and that the help we give those who suffer it is simply not enough to lift them out of the gutter.

Then there’s the issue of housing. It is true that the Government of Gibraltar provides housing at a very affordable price to a significant chunk of the population, particularly those on Government rental contracts. It is also true that there has been ongoing abuse in the public housing scheme, with several administrations allowing tenants to rack up enormous debts with the department. Another unfortunate reality is that the system is not means tested or subjected to adequate forms of scrutiny that could guarantee fair allocations and the responsible use of Government premises. Could that classify as entitlement? Are tenants of public housing responsible for this state of affairs?

The fact is this situation is not of the tenants doing. What we have today is the consequence of decades of mismanagement, negligence and lack of courage of current and prior administrations, which has snowballed into an almost unassailable political quagmire. Entitlement however, it is not. When you allow the housing market to spiral into the mess we have today, in which working class families in Gibraltar simply can’t afford to live in their hometown, you have to take responsibility for the aftermath. When you allow certain tenants to get away with not paying their dues, it becomes much harder to stop others from doing the same. When you allow families with high incomes to benefit from subsidised housing, you lose the moral authority to tell others to pay 2k a month for a 2RKB in the private market. To stop people from pursuing the privileges - unfair as they may be - granted to other members of the community is unreasonable and unrealistic, and this will not change until we have a fair system with the SAME rules for all, that is scrupulously implemented ACROSS THE BOARD, and where selective, ad hoc privileges are firmly outlawed.

Then there’s the topic of workers rights, another issue that tends to cause backlash amongst certain sectors of the local population. The truth is Gibraltar has become a two-tier society, with the vast majority of public workers living on decent wages with reasonable working hours, good pensions, good work-leave provisions and generally very dignified working conditions, and the vast majority of the private sector living in a regime more akin to that of a developing country than of a modern, European state. Workers in the private sector today are not protected from exploitative contracts (more about this on last week’s blog on privatisation), are the recipients of insufficient and ineffective pension provisions, have squalid statutory work-leave conditions, paltry unemployment benefits, and, despite being fundamental contributors to the welfare state, are generally treated as “surplus to requirements.”

Considering the above, are public sector workers entitled? Should their working conditions be degraded to match those of the disposable cross-frontier worker?

The answer to this is obviously no, and we must be wary of those who want to pit workers against each other in a race to the bottom of workers rights. The rivalry between the two tiers of our working and middle classes must serve as a backdrop to empower and elevate the rights and conditions of our private sector, making it more productive and capable of adding greater value to our economy. We cannot allow ideas like the “culture of entitlement” to break the bonds of solidarity that exist between Gibraltar’s working classes, particularly if we are to resist the impending onslaught of austerity and privatisation that is coming - and in some respects is already here.

Because one of the things we know very clearly is that austerity deeply damages societies. The gap between the richest and poorest widened sharply in Spain as a result of the crisis and the measures taken to tackle it, as did the difference in levels of inequality between Spain and other European countries. Despite recent efforts to curb the impact of these policies, the country continues to suffer from high levels of inequality that have a detrimental effect on its economy and contribute to polarise a fever-pitched political discourse. In the UK, a barrage of Tory cuts exacerbated the frustrations that drove the country to the Brexit catastrophe, and to a now deeply-rooted identity divide.

see this paper:

https://hbr.org/.../did-austerity-in-the-uk-lead-to-the...

If we do not unite to stop the degradation of our public services and our social programmes Gibraltar can go down the same path, without (as discussed in prior blogs) even considering fairer and sounder alternatives to austerity.

The culture of entitlement is a completely unfair concept created by those who mismanage our affairs to blame others for their own shortcomings, and to “divide and conquer” the working classes. Societal problems of this nature cannot be fixed by appealing to people’s better nature, but by efficient regulation and rigorous implementation, particularly when you have leaders that do not lead by example and contradict themselves with every election manifesto. It is the equivalent of a parent pampering a child only to then punish it for being a spoilt brat. There is no culture of entitlement, but rather a culture of shameless electioneering and financial irresponsibility which will only change if we start to punish those responsible at the ballot box.