On 15th September 2004 I set myself the task of doing an Eric Blair by living at the bottom of the social heap for twelve months. Out of the experience will come the best-selling Diary of A Scrounger…I have a well-thumbed copy of George Orwell’s Down & Out in Paris & London as my style guide…that and Thoreau’s Walden. I am now wondering how reliable my account will be when it is published as things are deteriorating fast judging by a recently published report from the House of Commons Select Committee on Work & Pensions.

While on Job Seeker Allowance I had to travel to St. Leonard’s-on-Sea every fortnight to sign on. In the beginning I got my train fare reimbursed. But halfway through my term of vagrancy this was stopped…a de facto pay cut of five percent. But this it seems is nothing compared to the welfare recipients in Kirkby Stephen in Cumbria who have to make a 90-mile round trip to Carlisle every two weeks to collect their entitlement of £56 per week.

However the report’s most damning condemnation was reserved for outsourcing of telephone answering to call centres. Here are two of the harrowing tales from the report’s small print. A woman went to a Jobcentre to make a claim for Job Seekers Allowance and was told to apply by telephone. She returned some days later to complain that she could not get through but was turned away again and told to ‘keep on trying’. She did.

After ten days she ran out of money and went back to the Jobcentre cap-in-hand and at her wit’s end to beg for a Crisis Loan to keep her going until she had spoken to the Jobcentre. ‘No problem, Madam. You can make your application at the phones in the corner!’ Franz Kafka was born before his time. Another woman whose husband had left her and their two children tried for a week to get through to a Call Centre to make a claim for income support. When her money had run out she went ‘stressed and anxious’ to the Citizens Advice Bureau for help. Their advisers ain’t seen nothing yet.

This depressing report from the House of Communities got me thinking about poor Lord Browne of Madingly of British Petroleum…formerly known to its fellow seven sisters as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. His pay was only £3.3 million in 2005…down £ 453 000 from 2004 because of disasters like the Texas City Refinery Explosion and the near sinking of the Thunder Horse Oil Platform. It’s enough to make him join Goldman Sachs who have just reported the highest quarterly revenue and profit figures ever for a Wall Street Bank…equivalent to ten billion dollars of income a year…a fifth of it from insider trading - or equities trading as they like to call it on Threadneedle Street.

A study by the Danish UNICEF Committee showed that in 1979 a net sum of $4 billion flowed from the rich North to the South. That flow was reversed in 1983 when the developing world sent $6 billion to the industrialised North. Since then the amount has risen to £30 billion a year. But if the transfer of resources due to falling raw material prices throughout the 1980s is taken into account the transfer of capital from the under-developed countries to the over-developed countries is closer to $60 billion a year…and that is before counting capital flight and black money.

This study by Hans Rasmussen pointed out that since the early 1980s there has been a wealth transfer from the capital-starved Third World primarily into financing of deficits in the United States and to a lesser degree Britain. Rasmussen estimated that during the 1980s the developing sector transferred a total of $400 billion into the United States alone. This allowed the Reagan administration to finance the largest peacetime deficits in world history whilst claming credit for the world’s longest peacetime recovery. Put another way the Third World defeated Communism and destroyed The Evil Empire. Even Karl Marx would have been struck by the irony.

A good friend of Francoise de Naillat has two grown-up children. Her daughter spent her formative years at Benenden School just across the county line from us here in Rye and is now living in London and training as a doctor. Her son meanwhile is doing entrepreneurial things with property development all over Europe. But before setting out on his own he worked as a whiz-kid in the City of London. He was recommended for his job as a high-flyer by his university tutor Patrick Minford.

Patrick Minford was in the news last week after recommending a simpler tax system. He calculated that anyone on £30 000 a year pays half their salary in tax. For every £1000 earned £314 goes on Income Tax and National Insurance contributions and £123 on indirect taxes like value added tax and duties on fuel & alcohol. Margrit Kennedy reckons it’s worse than this because prices include a Usury Surcharge. This could be eliminated if money were not issued as debt. The higher the capital element in a product’s cost the higher the usury in the price.

Christopher Strangeways is standing as a candidate for the Rye Town Council. Opposing him for the only place up for grabs this year is Jessica Neame, the 24-year old Mayoress of Rye. It should be no-contest…but it’ll be close. Christopher runs the Rother Environmental Group and was responsible for getting Rye Farmer’s Market set up. Next year will be the big push though when all sixteen places on Rye Town Council come up. Plotting has begun.