Ruth Kelly Quits Cabinet. Good.

News breaks this morning that Ruth Kelly has quit the Cabinet.

Long-time readers will be familiar with the contempt in which I hold Ms Kelly - whether she is cutting back on translation services in order to 'fight fascism'; or sending her son to private school to get him out of the under-funded state system that she used to be in charge of; or pretending to be a champion of women's rights.

Usually, when a politician departs from office "to spend more time with his/her family", it is widely seen as code for "sacked" or "resigned because pissed off with party leadership". In this case, maybe it is this, but maybe it really is to spend more time with her family, as she has four kids of primary-school age (and this usually seems to be seen as more of a 'responsibility' for women than for men).

We can expect many tributes to her superwoman status, bravely juggling the competing demands of kids and work, courageously blazing a trail for mothers in politics.

I can certainly empathise with this juggling act, with three primary-age kids of my own, and many years behind and ahead of me of battles with my employer and sometimes even within my union for this not to be held against me.

But my empathy does not extend to Ruth Kelly. Why? Because her policies have condemned many working-class women to a struggle harder than hers:

• The pathetic level of the minimum wage leaves many women having to work long hours, or have two or even more jobs to make ends meet, leaving them very little time to spend with their families.
  
• Most of us can not afford to send our special-needs kids to private schools, and would be happy with their state schools if the Government in which she used to be Education Secretary had funded them properly and reorganised them to meet children's needs rather than burden them with tests and targets.
  
• Many people are unable to balance work and parenting, because New Labour's flexible working legislation is so piss-weak.
  
• She led the charge to allow 'faith-based' adoption agencies to discriminate against gay people - so presumably, some people have more right to spend time with their children than others.
  
• And her opposition to abortion rights would force women to have children that they didn't even want.

So, mincing no words - good riddance. Let's have some concern for working-class parents left to struggle by New Labour instead.

Shock Horror! Five-Year-Olds Can't Write Their Names!

The reactionary 'school standards' brigade are up in arms about a new report that shows that some five-year-olds can not write their own name.

Er, why is this such a big deal? The priority for kids in their first year of primary school should surely be that they are happy, settled, making friends, and developing the skills that will enable them to learn.

Instead, the government - egged on by the aforementioned reactionary 'school standards' brigade - is concerned only with their ability to pass regimented measures of achievement regardless of their personal development. It is a recipe for a generation of kids who may be able to write a list of key words, but may also be stressed, anti-social and able to learn only by rote and not by creative and critical thinking.

The report goes on to bemoan that many five-year-olds can not write a shopping list. A shopping list?! Why on earth would a five-year-old need to write a shopping list?! Going to despatch them to the local Tesco's for the family's weekly shop, are we? Er, no.

It's not that I'm against school standards. Heavens, no. It's just that my standards are different from those of the government or the Mail on Sunday. They are to do with children's well-being and rounded development, not just their ability to write 'oranges, pasta, coffee' at an age when they should actually be having fun.

Oh, and one more thing. If the government announced the necessary measures that would genuinely improve school standards - eg. better pay for teachers and support staff, more staff to teach smaller classes, more books and equipment etc - that would necessarily involve higher public spending, how do you think the Mail on Sunday would react?!

Dear Sir / Miss

Tomorrow, I will be handing in this letter to my kids' school ...

To NUT members at Brook Community Primary School

I am writing on behalf of myself and my partner to express our full support for your strike action on Thursday 24th April.

Over the last six years, many of you have taught one or more of our sons Alex, Joe and Harrison. We want you to know that we really appreciate the work of our kids’ teachers, and we understand that you do that work in very difficult conditions. You are not paid nearly as much as you deserve, with the result that not enough people want to become teachers and of those who do, too many become demoralised and leave. As a consequence, there is a fast turnover of teaching staff and instability for kids.

The government should be offering teachers a hefty pay rise, not a miserly offer that amounts to a pay cut in real terms. Perhaps MPs should vote to pay you as much as they pay themselves!

Thursday’s strike may be an inconvenience for parents (though the kids seem well pleased!) – but it is a minor inconvenience compared to the ongoing damage to our kids’ education caused by under-paying teachers.

Yours in support and solidarity
Janine Booth
(on behalf of myself and John Leach)

Child Benefit Data Disks

Some comments on the loss of the child benefit data disks ...

There is a glaringly obvious link between cutting civil service jobs and funding, and the civil service cocking up. PCS has commented on this. I'd have thought that the CWU should be pointing out the pitfalls of a government department using a private courier rather than Royal Mail, but there is nothing yet on its website.

I also agree with the chorus of people pointing out that this incident should be the nail in the coffin of ID cards.

There has been a lot of concern about ID theft, and yes, as one of the people whose details are on those disks, I feel a little flustered.

But there is, I think, a greater concern, which I have not heard in the extensive news coverage. There are vulnerable parents and children whose details are on those lost disks - women fleeing violent ex-partners, families who are refugees from oppressive regimes, parents who have been rejected by hostile families or 'elders' who do not approve of their relationships. For many of those kids and their parents, the confidentiality of their addresses and personal details is absolutely essential to their safety. Yet the BBC asks how worried we should be, but considers only the threat to our bank accounts and credit facilities.

Maybe I've missed it. But maybe the politicians are too busy trading insults to even think about the potential victims.

Lone parents and the green paper on welfare reform

Article for next month's Labour Left Briefing

Peter Hain recently insisted that getting lone parents back into work, was, apparently a respectable socialist cause.

According to Hain, full employment and conquering child poverty, in his opinion are socialist statements and “nobody can argue with them”.
But Peter, penalising and coercing people back into work with threat of benefit loss is something socialists would reject.

The proposals outlined in the green paper on welfare reform have a dishonest ideological basis with the emphasis on “culture of dependency”. With various legislative attacks on the poor in this society (Welfare Reform Act and Freud Review) this green paper and its contents comes at no surprise.

What comes across is that worklessness in marginalised groups such as single parents is seen by the government as the result of individual failure. If it is anything collective at all, in the government’s view, it is about culture of dependency and low expectation.

A real progressive socialist government, contrary to Hain’s recent pronouncements, would envision a more inclusive society that has affordable housing and good quality childcare as opposed to the free market view of work as simply being as much productivity as possible for as little wage as possible.

The aspiration behind the green paper is full employment for disadvantaged groups. A noble goal but to be pursued by ignoble means: More mandatory requirements on Jobseekers and tighter job search conditions before benefit is paid.

Nowhere in the green paper is there any mention of universal childcare be provided; a traditional socialist demand that would immediately free up single parents to study and work.
John Hutton earlier this year sited Sweden, which has around 80% of lone parents back at work as opposed to over 56% in the UK. Hutton failed to mention that money has been invested in the childcare system in Sweden.

Many European countries spend 3 or 4 times more than the UK on child care provision. In Sweden the early system is an almost universal public service and in Finland every child has the right to childcare from birth. While in the UK childcare is fragmented and beset with uncoordinated initiatives.

As Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) recently argued, lone parents need good supportive and flexible working conditions (certainly the pay gap is amplified for women workers who return to the workplace).

For example nowhere is there a proposal to help fund study so lone parents can increase their chances of getting better paid work. Instead the list of companies the green paper boasts as “partners” suggests careers of badly paid drudgery in the retail, hospitality and care home trades…the jobs nobody else wants. Many of these jobs would vanish over night in a recession. It would people from disadvantaged groups that would be laid off first if the firms are hit by the fallout from the credit crunch or a similar crisis courtesy of the merchant banks.

A recent book (Collapsing Careers by Joanna Grigg) reveals that every year 30,000 women in Britain are sacked, made redundant or leave their job because of pregnancy discrimination.

And further stigmatising of lone parents is David Cameron’s support for tax breaks for married couples as Britain must “lose its anti-marriage bias" if the UK's "broken society is to be fixed”. Cameron has back peddled over this as last year he said the, “Tory war on single parents was over”. He is surging towards to the right and championing the ideology, once again, of the heterosexual nuclear family (married of course). The same old Tories!

The culture of dependency is an invention of right-wing ideologies and those who go along with this thesis demonises the powerless. Socialists have to challenge this ideology.

So Farewell, Tanya Byron

Dr Tanya Byron has announced that she is quitting parenting programmes on TV. She reckons that the genre is getting out of control, presenting a simplistic and unrealistic picture of parenting.

I have powerfully mixed feelings about these programmes. On the plus side, I think that parents need and deserve education in what we are doing, and despise the idea that it should all come naturally to us and that any kind of advice is intrusive/unnecessary/patronising etc. And I have picked up some genuinely useful tips and thinking-material from some of them.

But on the negative side, some of these programmes are horrible. I can not bear 'Supernanny' Jo Frost deriding hard-pressed parents with a nasty "What do you think you are doing?!" or a sneering "Well that's just going to make things worse, isn't it?!" Frost destroys the little confidence that parents have, presumably aiming to rebuild them in her own image.

Even worse is 'Honey, we're killing the kids', a vile format where working-class parents are made to feel like a pile of shit. There's no "Junk food is killing the kids", or "Long parental working hours are killing the kids", or "Underfunded public services are killing the kids". No, its everything blamed on mum and dad.

Tanya Byron's programmes - Little Angels and The House of Tiny Tearaways - are, I think, the best of the genre, being not as patronising or scornful as the others (though not entirely free of it). Although I might even miss her on the box, I understand her reasons for jumping ship and agree with many of her comments.

Mostly, I come away from watching parenting-TV thinking that everyone trying to raise kids should have their own personal Tanya Byron. Someone who will give them hands-on help and advice at what is one of the most difficult jobs in the world - and does so as part of public social and health services, not just because a TV channel thinks it will pull in the ratings.

A Four-Year-Old Takes A Rational Decision To Reassess Her Beliefs About God, The Universe And Everything. Not.

How bloody ridiculous is this!? A Sikh couple is offering to baptise their daughter as Roman Catholic to get her into the junior section of a primary school she already attends.

Sikh critics are upset because, they say, of the history of Sikhs being persecuted for refusing to convert to other religions in situations rather more threatening and oppressive than this one.

Of course, the whole thing just exposes the irrationality of the very concept of 'faith schools'. How in God's name (ha ha) is a four-year-old supposed to make a considered choice as to what set of superstitions, if any, she subscribes to?!

Young Maya expresses a feeling on which four-year-olds are eminently more qualified to have an opinion - she doesn't want to be separated from her friends.

My Son Is Not A Monster

I may have mentioned before that I hate the Daily Mail, and this article has done little to endear me.

Jan Greenman has written a book about life with her son Luke, who has Asperger's syndrome and ADHD. My son Joe has Asperger's syndrome. He's a beautiful, affectionate, intelligent, sociable, funny, charming and sometimes infuriating boy.

Asperger's makes a parent's life difficult. On one level I have a lot of sympathy with Greenman. Yes, experiencing violence from your own son is horrible. Yes, the Asperger's desire for sameness and routine can be very frustrating and demanding. And maybe, since Luke has ADHD as well, he is much harder to cope with than Joe. Poor Jan had to give up her job as the treasurer of a private merchant bank. Perhaps the further you fall, the harder it is, eh?

But Greenman's article is cold and negative. Luke, according to the headline, is a 'monster'. A tip: his behaviour may at times be monstrous, but he is not a monster. If you must label, label the behaviour not the person.

Some of what Greenman complains about is behaviour common amongst children, although probably exaggerated in an Asperger's child. Lots of kids - autistic or not - wake up at 5am, write on the walls, and want to send their new baby sibling back to the hospital.

Greenman's upset at Luke's damage to expensive belongings contrasts with a notable lack of sympathy for Luke himself. There is not a word in this article acknowledging that Luke's life might be difficult, that he as well as his mother might find situations distressing. There is nothing about any positive aspects of his character. Greenman doesn't say she loves him, doesn't even really say she cares (in an emotional rather than strictly practical sense).

Luke has been excluded from mainstream secondary school because someone bullied him and he responded in a highly inappropriate manner. Hang on - Luke was bullied and he was excluded?! Sure, his response may have been inappropriate (that'll be the Asperger's), but what about the bully?! And what about the school, which can find no way to support a boy with Asperger's and ADHD and help him learn more appropriate social behaviour, and so chucks him out? Luke's mother has no such criticism or questions to raise. She only demands (reasonably enough) more special schools.

Maybe the Daily Mail has highlighted the negative and the book is more balanced. Maybe the newspaper, rather than the author, put the word 'monster' in the headline. There are several books around about bringing up - and about being - a child with Asperger's syndrome. I've not read any of them yet. But judging by this article, I won't be reading Jan Greenman's.

The Holiday Bottle

I was going to blog about this, but I'm off to down a bottle of red instead.

Hain Hits Single Parents

It seems that because the victorious candidate for Labour Party deputy leader enjoys cutting benefits to lone parents, the defeated ones have to get in on the act.

New Work and Pensions Secretary Peter Hain - you know, the 'left wing' bloke - has announced that he is to withdraw benefits from single parents who are not 'actively seeking work' once their youngest child reaches the age of seven. This has shocked even his right-wing mates, who were satisfied with the upcoming reduction in entitlement following the kid's 12th birthday.

May I point out that a seven-year-old child should not have to, for example, walk themselves to and from school unaccompanied, or look after themselves when sick. And a single parent of a seven-year-old (plus maybe older siblings) does not need to 'actively seek work' - she or he already has work, very active and demanding work, looking after those kids.

But, says Brother Hain, we have to get single parents out of poverty, which means getting them into jobs. It's a weird kind of 'anti-poverty' policy that is based on taking people's money away. And a yet weirder one that forces poeple into jobs which, because they must fit around school hours and school holidays, are likely to be low-paid, and which will be even lower paid when the parent has to take unpaid leave to look after sick kids. Perhaps Hain is running a recruitment drive for low-paid Learning Support Assistants or Lunchtime Supervisors.

I look forward to a future speech by another of the Deputy-losers, Alan Johnson (he who is the Education Secretary and to the best of my knowledge was never a Marxist, rather than he who has recently renounced his sinful Marxist youth), bemoaning standards of discipline and behaviour in schools, and blaming the parents for not helping kids with homework, attending parents' evenings, instilling values etc. And conveniently forgetting that one of the reasons they are not doing so is that Peter Hain has made them go out and get menial jobs.