Bob's place

Thirty odd years ago I worked in a public building. At the rear there were some staff-only rooms and, at the end of the corridor by the back door, was Bob’s Room.  By the time that I worked there Bob had long since retired, although I did meet him from time to time as, with his wife, he would drop by for a mug of tea with his former workmates. Though retired, he still felt he belonged. 

His room was full of the junk that builds up over the years, when people like the public areas to be tidy but lack the willpower to throw things away. But a careful look revealed that this room had once been a workshop, equipped with tools, benches and bubbling pots of pearl glue. For Bob had been the caretaker / handyman. 

When Bob retired, he was not replaced. For a start, fewer people had the skills and the interest to turn their hand to the range of practical matters that would occupy Bob’s working day. Health and safety concerns meant that simple plumbing and electrical matters now had to be attended to by qualified practitioners.  It was cheaper to discard any damaged Ercol furniture than to repair it (but don’t throw it away – put it in Bob’s Room!).

However the real reason Bob was not replaced is that this was the beginning of the era of efficiency savings. The stripping-out of the ‘dead wood’ from the system that would help to make public bodies as efficient as their private sector cousins. So now, when a fuse or high-level light bulb needed changing or the back of a seat started to work loose, a manager would raise an order for a maintenance company to come in. Eventually, someone in their 20s would turn up in a company van, make an assessment, cost the job and wait – sometimes weeks - for approval to proceed.  And, in bare economic terms, I daresay there were savings although, heaven knows, Bob’s salary was fairly meagre.

Is there a purpose to this reminiscence?  Archbishop Vincent Nicholls has today added his voice to those who believe that our government’s approach to welfare is increasingly ‘punitive’.  More and more Christians and others of goodwill are both saying this and taking practical steps, such as food banks, to show that the punishment of people on benefits should not be done in our names. Now I believe that welfare reform is much needed and long overdue but it needs to take place in a compassionate way that recognises that we have reached our present state because of society’s choices and our collective failures to do what is right. 

But also – and here’s the relevance of the Bob story – because for the past 30 years so many choices seem to have been made on grounds of financial efficiency alone. Wouldn’t a truly just society ensure that there are places where people can contribute and belong even though, economically, no business case would support that? 

You may say I’m a dreamer; but I’m not the only one. We Christians are here to model an alternative way of living – one that reflects the many hundreds of bible verses that consistently reveal God’s bias towards those shoved to the edges of human society.  The suggestion that we revert to a society which found employment for Bob is economic madness. I am content to be thought naive. But our reaction to what I suggest might be one measure of how far we are colluding with the values of the world around us, which are content to leave millions of people without a way to contribute and belong.