Back before the last general election I wrote at how opportunities for people who have not been to a public school (i.e. an elite fee-paying school in the UK sense of the term) to have a good career and a decent salary were being closed off: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2009/08/death-of-opportunity.html I anticipated that if David Cameron came to power then this situation would worsen, which is certainly the case. I also see that I thought that it would be difficult for Cameron to get into power which also proved to be the situation given he was only able to do it as a part of a coalition which was difficult to negotiate. Up until now I have tended to view the decline in the opportunity for ordinary people (the 90% of the population who earn up to £40,000 per year or less; the average yearly income was £38,547 [€45,870; US$59,740] in 2011 which means since I was made redundant in 2010; on £35,000 per year, I have fallen back below average whereas in 2005 I was earning about 50% more than the average) as a rather objective situation. However, with the 10-year old living in my house it has began to impact literally closer to home.
In his first week back at school he received a letter advising his mother about the steps she could take to prepare him for the 11+ examination. This letter went out to all parents no matter what academic ability they have. Until the 1970s the 11+ exam was universal in the UK. It was the examination which pupils took at 10 to determine which school they went to. There were supposed to be three strands along the lines of the German model: the grammar school for academically capable pupils, the secondary modern school for the ordinary pupil with a vocational focus and the technical school for pupils who showed particular technical ability. Typically for Britain the number of technical schools was tiny and many have become technical colleges these days instead offering post-16 education. This system was introduced in 1947 and while it began to disappear from much of the UK in the 1960s and 1970s it was retained in certain counties such as Kent, Buckinghamshire, Lincolnshire and parts of other counties such as Wiltshire, Warwickshire and Merseyside.
The trouble with the so-called Tripartite (read Bipartite) System is what it denied the 75% of pupils who would be sent to a secondary modern school. They would not have a chance to study a foreign language and the school would be poor in science facilities. The secondary modern pupils would not have the ability to study the curriculum for certain qualifications let alone take the examinations. Thus, there would be no chance to go to study in further education (i.e. for 'A' Levels) let alone higher education. You can see why the creation of the Open University in 1969 setting no such hurdles was so radical in this context. At the age of 11 a person was locked into a path which unless they were incredibly lucky or their parents had the money to take them out of the system and pay for a school place, they could not escape.
There was a further challenge. Across England and Wales 25% of pupils went to grammar school but the level at a local level could vary considerably. A mark in the 11+ plus which would have easily got you into a grammar school in one district, say one with an ageing population, would be insufficient to win you a place in another district with more younger families. Some towns had more grammar schools than others. Grammar schools were often single sex so a twin boy and girl could get exactly the same grade in the 11+ and one would get into grammar school and one would not, usually the girl as the mark needed to get into grammar schools was higher for girls than boys both due to provision and girls' abilities at 11. In a country that was trying to develop an educated workforce and provide equal opportunities you can see why the system was unsatisfactory. If you have, as I have done, spoken to teachers who work in secondary schools in the areas where this system persists, you find how demoralised secondary modern school teachers are knowing their pupils are being shut off from a range of opportunities. Similarly talk to parents shifting across the Kent-Sussex border.
In most places in England and Wales schools steadily turned to comprehensive schools which means that they take pupils without any selection by ability, though they may select on the basis of where they live and increasingly on faith as well. As was reported last month, the Church of England will be able to associate itself with schools that have previously been non-faith, despite the fact that only 5% of the UK population attends any denomination of church regularly. When a school becomes a faith school it can discriminate against pupils and staff on the basis of religion and even which church or other religious institution in the case of non-Christian faiths, they attend. Discrimination on the basis of faith is also a covert way to discriminate on the basis of social class and ability, something I have discussed before: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2008/12/ranking-religious-faith.html The woman in my house sent her son to a faith school and he got in on grounds of proximity to the school rather than her particular faith, to the disadvantage of less capable pupils who were regular attenders at the associated church. An additional unsettling fact about the school is how self-righteous its interaction is with parents and how with a faith is supposed to come a subscription to a kind of lifestyle which was going out of date in the 1950s: mother at home all day, able to bake and sew to provide cakes and historic costumes for school events at regular intervals, able to collect a child from school at any time of the school day.
The Blair governments in the 2000s allowed the creation of more faith schools and of new grammar schools, thus beginning to turn back from the comprehensive model which had been promoted by the Labour Party in previous decades. To a great extent this was because Blair's personal agenda was Christian Democrat rather than Socialist, Labourite or even Liberal. We now have a mish-mash system with a mix of faith schools, selective grammar schools and academies which are centrally funded schools often revived failing schools with a particular curriculum focus such as in art, sports or technology. On top of this are the so-called 'free schools' permitted by the coalition government which can be created by groups of parents or other interested bodies. It might appear that this creates wider opportunity through greater variety. However, it becomes an issue of Venn circles. If you are not of a particular faith (or even if you are but attend a different church), if you child cannot pass a particular examination, if you did not have the time to insinuate yourself into a particular circle of parents, if your child's strengths are not in the area of the specialist schools in your district, then you quickly find that your choices have fallen away.
I will turn to the particular example of the selection facing the 10-year old in my house. Those who live in the town, which is in southern England, may detect it from the statistics, but as always I will hold back from naming it due to wanting to protect my identity. In the town precisely 30% of the secondary schools are girls' schools and 30% are boys' schools. This is an unusually high percentage and I wonder what the history is behind this. In the town 20% of the schools are selective grammar schools; 20% are Christian faith schools of different denominations; 20% are specialist schools focusing on two different subject areas. As you will have guessed, there is some overlap between these different categories but I will not outline how many fall into more than one category for fear of giving the town away too easily. Now, only 20% of the schools are co-educational, comprehensive schools. Thus, if you do not mesh against the particular criteria (a number of which are mutually exclusive, i.e. boy/girl, different denominations, different specialisations) you rapidly come down to selecting between only 20% of the school stock in the town and that is entirely ignoring geographical location.
The boy who lives in my house has already been told that he cannot sit the 11+ as his handwriting is insufficiently good. As it is, the guidance provided by his primary school (which though a faith school is comprehensive) is that unless his mother can afford to buy past papers and engage a personal tutor then his chances are low. We are already familiar with income shutting the boy out from certain opportunities as even our combined household budget does not stretch to the £365 needed for him to attend the residential course for Year 6 pupils and so he is shut out from that. We are not a 'poor' 'family' compared to those on benefits and yet even in our kind of average income we cannot access opportunities that would benefit the boy; it will be worse when he reaches secondary school.
It is ironic that he is already written out of the 11+ as he is in the top set for mathematics in his school and his abilities in computing and science have already been recognised; his vocabulary too is extensive and his reading age is about 12 though he is too lazy to read more. Now, the National Curriculum compels all schools to teach a wider curriculum than was the case with secondary modern schools. Even specialist schools ironically have to teach subjects which seem a long way from its specialism. In addition we do not live in an entirely tripartite system area and whilst 60% of the schools select on certain criteria they do not explicitly discriminate in terms of ability.
The trouble with the rum assortment of schools on offer is the attitude. Single sex schools benefit girls much more than boys. However, in an age where the division between sexes is hardening at an alarming rate and is a tendency which promotes sexist behaviour and violence especially from young men, it seems terrible to put so many boys into an environment without girls. Ironically the teaching will still be a more female friendly approach but without the girls to show how this works. It is tougher for the boy from my house as he works so well with girls let alone being popular with them. I can just see him being transformed into one of these thugs that expects girls to serve him sexually and that fighting is a norm. In a town with a grammar school he will know from the age of 10 that he is 'not good enough' to attain that level. What does that do to his aspirations?
Until the mid-2000s Britain was doing pretty well in encouraging people who were 'late developers' in academic study or need to change track in what they had studied. Funding has been shut down for such education and the number of mature students going to university has already fallen by 15%. Thus, as back in the 1950s once you have failed to get into grammar school, later opportunities will be scarce. A 10-year old is amazingly alert to such divisions and the likelihood is that he will be shut off from pupils who might write more neatly and yet not be half as good in science or computing and be made to feel that he is the 'second best'. He may also be shut off from girls as if they were a different species. What is that going to do to his interaction with the opposite sex when inter-gender relationships are becoming dangerous, not only in terms of personal relationships but in the workplace where they need to function well.
I know I am beginning to sound like an embittered middle class parent whose child failed the 11+. However, this is the perspective of the majority in England and Wales. The British schooling system may have faced difficulties but since 1997 there has been a rush to wreck even the good that was there and to adopt so many different fads and to adopt so many criteria on which children can be categorised that we have been left with a bewildering array of schools without an increase in overall quality and which promote mindsets that say putting people into boxes on gender, religion and ability is fine. You cannot sustain a fair and equal society when so many young people are being exposed both to such segregation and for so many a sense that already at the age of 11 they have failed. Are we surprised at the disengagement with our society and the violence that breeds if a child of well-educated (pseudo-)parents of a reasonable income face such disappointment, how much harder must it be for those without such advantages?
Showing posts with label public schools. Show all posts
Showing posts with label public schools. Show all posts
Sunday, 5 February 2012
Sunday, 5 September 2010
Rooksmoor's Manifesto
Recently, an anonymous commentator said that when discussing political issues I only criticise and never put forward positive suggestions. See: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2010/05/dark-days-return.html The person asked where the 'The Rooksmoor Manifesto' was. In fact I put forward lots of suggestions for making Britain a better place, but I recognise that these are spread across numerous postings and it would take even regular readers time to root all of them out from the different postings which include them. I have eschewed the title 'The Rooksmoor Manifesto' despite the wonderfully 17th century feel to it, mainly because it seems too much like the title of a Robert Ludlum novel.
My politics are very simple. I am a democratic Socialist who favours European integration. I know people say Socialism is dead and certainly there is no political party that I can find in the UK at present that embraces the kinds of policies I favour. While I feel that British democracy is ailing, because of the ever-growing resurgence of the ultra-wealthy and the privileged, as yet I have not gone far enough to begin advocating revolution; I believe democracy can work well in the UK it just needs attention.
I take a lot of my lead from former MP and minister, Tony Benn. I never held the anti-EEC/EU views that he did. However, I believe that certainly since the era of the Social Chapter as part of EU's legislation, even he has moved to see the benefits of European states working together and that the EU can be far more of a benefit to ordinary people than the 'capitalists' club' that its predecessor the EEC was seen simply as.
I accept that, since 1974, it has been highly unlikely that any candidate standing on the manifesto I outline below would be elected. The central ground of British politics has moved so far to the right since the advent of the New Right ideas in the mid-1970s. However, I see myself as being in the position right-wing British Conservatives must have felt themselves to be in, in the period, say 1945-72, in perceiving the 'mainstream' of politics as ignoring their concerns. Yet, their time came again, and such views have been in the ascendant in the UK certainly since 1976. There was a brief period 2008-10, when, as regular readers of this blog will know, I had a feeling that the financial crises were bringing politics a little more back to the kind of Attlee Consenus policies that I favour. The UK, the USA and other states seemed to be embracing Keynesianism once again. Under Obama, the USA is likely to stay with such an approach, whereas Britain has rushed headlong into even more virulent New Right/monetarist policies than even Margaret Thatcher was able to pull off. Some commentators have noted that this was aided by the fact that Tony Blair's impetus came very much from the Thatcher Consensus and his support for policies such as private intervention in hospitals and schooling, with increasingly selectivity in education, formed a solid foundation for David Cameron's government's far harsher policies.
Before going into an outline of the policies I would pursue if elected Prime Minister, I would draw your attention to the fact, that, whilst they may appear to be embedded in 'Old' Labour attitudes, many of the policies I outline have actually been put into place in neighbouring European states, quite often under conservative governments. Much of this stuff is not radical, it simply stems from a rational approach to making a country not only function more effectively, but, vitally, having a fair society with opportunities for all, not simply those who are already very wealthy or are privileged. My prime motivation behind all my policies is to create a Britain which is safe for all of its citizens no matter what their background; has a firm economy which all benefit from not just the richest and that is not classless but allows all people to rise by ability rather than by connections. I do not see any political grouping in the UK working to such an agenda. I have no expectations that they will in my lifetime, but I remain an optimist.
The Manifesto
Fiscal and Economic Policies
1) The outline of income tax is presently (using the rates for the 2010/11 tax year, our current one) no tax until you earn £6,475 then you pay 20% on earnings up to £37,400; then 40% on £37,401 to £150,000 and then 50% on everything over £150,000. On dividends you pay 10%/32.5%/42.5%. These rates are a legacy of the Brown government's approach and have not been tweaked by the coalition. From this year on your personal allowance, the part you can earn tax free, will fall by £1 for every £2 you earn over £100,000. So, once you earn above £112,950, you will pay tax on everything you earn. My approach would maintain many of these ideas. I would have a personal tax allowance of £10,000 as proposed by the Liberal Democrats, then a 25% rate on £10,001-£20,000; 28% on £20,001-£30,000 (80% of the population earn below £31,000 per year); 33% on £30,001-£50,000; 43% on £50,001 to £150,000; 53% on 150,001 to £500,000; 63% on anything above £500,000. The personal allowance would be reduced as currently once you earn beyond £50,000 per year. These rates will apply to dividends of these levels too. Given the plans outlined below, the government will need more revenue. These figures are low compared to historic ones. In 1979 the basic rate of tax was 33% and the highest rate was 83% (yet business prospered); in the mid-1960s it rose from 38% to 41%. Rather than hammering people on benefit, greater efforts would be put into chasing down the £17 billion in unpaid tax.
2) Value added tax (VAT) would be at a basic rate of 15%, but higher for specific goods, notably petrol and cigarettes with a graduated extra VAT on alcoholic drinks dependent on their alcoholic content.
3) No boss of a company would be permitted to earn more than 20 times the salary of the lowest paid worker in that company or contracted by that company. If the company has staff on the minimum wage, £5.93 per hour from October 2010, then the highest a boss could earn in that company would be £240,600, still a pretty decent salary. Those bosses who did not feel that such pay was sufficient to keep their 'talents' in the UK could leave, though there would be restrictions on how much capital they could extract from the UK at one time. If this means many ultra-wealthy leaving the UK, then it will be better for the long-term health of the British economy no longer blackmailed by their capriciousness.
4) Bosses would benefit from the fact that the minimum wage would rise to become that defined by the Council of Europe Decency Threshold which is 60% of average net earnings. In the UK the current national average salary is £31,000 (though far less in some regions), giving a minimum salary, on this basis, for full-time work, of £18,600 per year (compared to £12,300 on the current rate) allowing bosses to earn up to £361,200 on the '20 times' rule.
5) In Belgium employees receive 14 pay cheques per year, even in South Africa they get 13. I would make it compulsory that all employees earning less than £40,000 per year would receive 14 pay cheques per year, with doubling up in June and December as in Belgium. This would apply to part-time workers too. This would help in many ways by stimulating consumption, increasing savings and reducing the risk of house repossessions as employees will have been able to put more money aside, compared to now when many individuals and families spend all their monthly income in a month due to high rent, food and utility prices. Of course, for some people having 2 extra pay cheques will lift them above £40,000. This would be permitted for a year and after that period their salary would have to have risen to at least £40,000 and then the extra payments would stop. If their pay is cut then they would again become eligible for the 14 payments per year.
6) Companies will be barred from having more than 10% of their employees on temporary contracts. Temporary employees will receive the same rights as full-time employees after working for the company for 3 months rather than 1 year as at present. Companies would not be permitted to lay off a temporary worker and then put someone else into the same position unless a period of 9 months has passed. This would stop companies simply laying workers off after their initial period so as to avoid having to grant them full employment rights. This happens too often and leads to too much instability for individuals and the economy. In addition, despite what companies think, this constant 'churn' of staff actually damages the efficiency of their business, due to constant training and enculturation of new staff.
7) All companies with more than 5 employees would be compelled to have representatives of the workforce on the company Board or the equivalent in smaller companies. This policy has been in place for fifty years in Germany and has benefited the country's economic growth.
8) There would be a charge on all financial transactions with a rising scale dependent on how risky the activity was. This would be combined with far more stringent regulation of merchant banking.
9) Banks would be compelled to hold the coverage of reserves that they have to in Spain, the success of this has been seen in the prosperity of Santander.
10) The government will have control of the percentage of their bill that credit card users have to repay each month. Since the abolition of hire purchase regulations has the government really had any control over consumption, certainly beyond high-value items as large as houses. Regulation abilities of this kind could have been very useful in the 1990s to slow down consumption and reduce pressure on inflation, let alone heading off personal credit difficulties.
11) The government would not only set the base rate, but also the upper limit of interest charges. Anyone exceeding such charges, such as 'pay-day loan' companies would be treated as loan sharks and face criminal prosecution. Financial support would be given to the establishment of more mutual building societies and credit unions across the whole country, though often on a very local basis. Nationalisation of a bank would occur far sooner than has been the case in the 2000s, for example, Northern Rock would have been nationalised two years earlier than it was in reality.
12) National insurance of 10% would be payable from earnings of £5000 upwards and would have no upper limit on payment.
13) The UK would join the euro immediately and the bulk of the British population will be able to see immediately more easily how much more they pay for food and other essentials compared to citizens of neighbouring countries.
14) Nationalised banks would, in particular, be encouraged to provide low-interest loans to start-up and expanding businesses.
15) Capital Gains Tax would be 10% up to £2,500; 20% £2,501-£10,000; 30% £10,001-£30,000; 40% £30,001-£100,000; 50% £100,001-£500,000 and 60% on £500,001 and above. There would be no 'allowance', so the rate would be imposed on all the money which brought the total above that sum. For example, if you gained £20,000 then you would pay 30% on the entire £20,000 not just on the last £10,000 above £10,000.
16) For UK citizens who keep large sums of money abroad, I would introduce the US system, i.e., if you have above a certain sum, I would say £50,000 (in the USA it is around US$87,000), in a bank in a country where the tax rate is lower than in the UK, then you must pay the difference between that tax rate and the rates prevailing in the UK, to the British Treasury. If your money is in a country with the same or higher tax rate then you pay nothing to the UK. If you do not comply with this rule, then you will be stripped of UK citizenship within 3 years of your money going abroad. This is no different to US policies even under George W. Bush, so cannot be considered to be a radical policy. However, it is estimated that by using tax havens, wealthy British citizens save paying £10 billion in tax. Stripping a person of nationality and making them stateless is usually forbidden but would be permitted for people penalised in this way. Given their wealth they would have no difficulty in getting a new nationality somewhere else.
Housing Policy
1) Stamp duty would be banded in an attempt to slow the apparently inexorable rise in house prices.
2) Limits on rents would be introduced on the basis of the council tax rating of the house. Tenants would be granted greater rights, for example, to be given at least 3 months' notice of the repossession of a property when the owner has defaulted on the morgage. Fixed-term tenancy contracts would be banned, with either the tenant being able to leave or the owner to ask them to leave with 2 months' notice. These policies and the limits on rent rises will help people move more easily to where work is available.
3) All tenants would be permitted to have repair work done to the property themselves, having taken at least 3 quotes, and charge this to the owner, who would be compelled to pay for it.
4) No owner would be permitted to leave a property for longer than 3 months without seeking tenants for it. Empty properties must be kept in a decent state, along the lines of regulations in New York, otherwise the owner will be fined.
5) Like other property owners, banks and building societies will be compelled to rent out or sell repossessed properties within 3 months of taking them back rather than leaving them empty until the local price reaches a set level as they currently often do.
6) Councils and housing authorities would be assisted in building a mix of social/affordable housing, both for direct renting and for shared equity purchase. This would particularly be supported in areas facing depopulation due to high house prices. Access to this housing would be on the basis of economic standing not on age or ethnic grounds.
7) All private housing developments above a certain size, will be compelled to build social housing. The neglect of this often causes problems for those in the more expensive properties anyway, as seen in Milton Keynes where due to local resident opposition to social housing, the supermarkets have to bus in staff from 30Km away. There would be a ratio such as 1 social house per 10 expensive houses built.
8) Companies abandoning a site, will be compelled to demolish any unused retail/industrial buildings and return the site to a standard suitable for housing to be built on it.
9) There would be a nationwide scheme to insulate every house currently with insufficient insulation. Once this was complete, solar panels would be installed on every suitable property, not only residential but also industrial. There would be incentives to assist with this and it would create jobs at this time of employment need.
Social Policy
1) There would be free childcare for all working parents until the child is 16. Those with the money would be free to opt out and use private provision. All childcare would continue to be monitored by OFSTED. Such a policy would free up many parents to work.
2) As currently is the case in Scotland, everyone would be entitled to free residential care once they pass the retirement age, again people are free to opt out and buy private provision if they choose.
3) The retirement age would rise immediately to 70 and stringent anti-ageism policies would be enacted. The SERPS pension approach would be re-introduced and pensions would rise (or fall) with the cost of living.
4) All health care will be free at point of usage. Again, people are free to opt for private care. However, all doctors practising in the UK would be obliged to work for the National Health Service to the number of hours currently required by Belgian health authorities for their doctors.
5) All municipal sports facilities, especially swimming pools, would be free to users. Private sports facilities charging a fee and requiring membership would be permitted. All museums and public galleries will have free entry, though visitors could give donations if they wished.
Constitutional Policy
1) All elections across the UK would be run on the basis of proportional representation as they already are in Northern Ireland. Parties would have to receive at least 5% of the vote to be represented in the Westminster Parliament, the level they have to achieve in Germany.
2) The monarchy will be abolished immediately. Instead, a directly-elected President, accountable to parliament, would be introduced, able to be elected twice for 4-year terms. The powers of the President will be the same as those of the President of Germany.
3) The House of Lords would be abolished and be replaced by a Senate elected by the regional assemblies every five years. Noble titles will remain but grant no powers, they would simply be courtesy titles and rewards, as at present.
4) The Supreme Court recently introduced will remain. It will have the power to prosecute members of parliament, the Senate or the President, if necessary.
5) British regional assemblies would be re-introduced. They would be elected, not appointed as they were before, and their regions would be far smaller than those of the regional assemblies that existed in the UK until 2010. All large cities would have their own assemblies and directly-elected mayor because (despite Boris Johnson) this approach has worked well in London. Taking large cities out of the assemblies of the surrounding countryside would also secure a voice for more rural regions of Britain and those with particular local interests, for example, Cornwall. Any border town that wished to join Scotland or Wales would be permitted to do so following a local referendum.
6) Anyone who wishes to be elected to parliament, the Senate, as President or to the Supreme Court or is to work as an advisor to the government for more than 6 months, must be resident in the UK and pay at least 90% of their total tax bill in the UK. You may say governments need foreign advisors and they will still be able to use them for specific projects or advice, but the bulk of people in all branches of government will be UK domiciled and taxpayers.
7) Local councillors will receive a set salary the way MPs do. This would mean that ordinary people could become councillors in a way in which they cannot do now and this would end the domination of local politics by prosperous business people who have vested interests which are often not beneficial to the local population more broadly.
Infrastructure
1) The railways and all utility companies will be immediately nationalised. State control will not be on the model of previous UK control but like that of France. The fact that the French state-run electricity company, EDF, was until recently, a very successful company in the UK is a good indicator of the benefits.
2) Second or Standard class travel will be abolished, everyone will have the chance to travel first class in so-called Harry Perkins carriages.
3) All freight being carried over 100 Km must be carried by railway. This policy was in place in Germany in the 1980s and enable greater profitability. Heavy goods vehicles could be filled at special depots near the ports to enable this freight to be driven in countries still permitting long distance road haulage.
4) Britain was the leading country for wind power in the 1970s a position it foolishly gave up. To rectify this we must increase wind power to the level seen in Germany if not in Denmark. Brownfield sites, such as along motorways should be used and attention paid to the environment when constructing wind farms elsewhere but it must be recognised that wind farms are far less intrusive than a nuclear, oil or coal-fired power station. As is happening in Scotland now, wave power must be adopted with all vigour.
5) Incentives will be given to increase the use of hybrid and electric vehicles, and new compressed air vehicles with charging/refilling points all over towns.
6) 4x4 vehicles will be banned except for people working in agriculture or specific industries and living in particular areas, certainly not towns and suburbs. The maximum permitted capacity of motorcycles on British roads would be 750cc and of cars, 2 litres. More powerful vehicles would be permitted on race tracks and private land.
7) All drivers must be re-tested every 5 years. HGV drivers have medical tests every 5 years after they pass 45. I am talking about an entire test to ensure they still have the abilities to drive safely. Many car drivers seem to have quickly forgotten the basic requirements of driving and a large part of the Highway Code. The 'P' sticker would be introduced as in other European countries, and drivers would have to have it on their vehicle for the first year after they have passed their first test. Being awarded any penalty points while carrying the P would mean having your licence removed and you wouldhave to sit the test again and start again with your P year from the date you passed that second test. Drivers under the age of 21 would be limited to vehicles of 1 litre capacity or less. No-one under the age of 21 would be permitted to ride a motorcycle of more than 50cc and no-one under the age of 25 would be allowed to ride a motorcycle of more than 125cc.
8) Anyone wishing to drive a rental box van, even for a few minutes, would have to have already passed the CPC test that commercial van drivers have to pass for vehicles of 3.5 tonnes and above. The reason for this is that there are few drivers more hazardous than people who have hired a van for a day and then proceed to drive it as badly as they drive their car and yet with all the added weight and visibility issues.
9) Sat navs already alert drivers to the fact they are exceeding the speed limit for the road they are travelling down. Such systems will be installed in all vehicles in the UK and would remain on at all times when the car is being driven, even if the driver is not using a sat nav to find their way. Cars from overseas coming to the UK would have to install such a device on entry to the UK at the entrance port. Speed limiters are already installed in certain commercial vehicles. These would be compulsory on all road vehicles of any kind driven in the UK. The maximum speed any vehicle could be driven on a UK road would be the same limit that you can drive on a UK motorway, i.e. up to 10% above the 70mph speed limit, that is 77mph. In time, I trust that these two systems could combine so vehicles' speeds would be limited to adjust to the road they are on, i.e. that they could not exceed 33mph in a residential area or 22mph where the 20mph limit is already in force, as in most of Portsmouth. Of course, speeds would now be measure in metric, giving 123 kph, 52 kph and 35 kph as the maximum speed in these three examples.
10) As in parts of Belgium, lorries would not be allowed to overtake other vehicles. I would make an exception if the vehicle was going slower than 10 mph below the speed limit for on A roads or smaller road and 20 mph less than the speed limit of motorways. This would stop the ridiculous 'races' between lorries moving just 1 mph different, which so congest much of the UK's motorways. Of course, with increased rail freighting the numbers of lorries on motorways would be reduced. Vehicles pulling caravans would be restricted to 50mph as they were in the 1970s. Coaches would face the same restrictions as lorries and so would not be permitted to charge along at 70mph and disrupt motorway traffic by regularly overtaking.
11) Anyone charged with using a mobile phone while driving will have the phone seized and destroyed and would be banned from driving for 1 year. Cyclists, skateboarders, roller- and inlineskaters would be barred from wearing headphones of any kind while travelling on the pavement or road, at the risk of an on-the-spot-fine and seizure and destruction of their electrical equipment.
12) The Post Office will remain in/be returned to state control. There will be subsidies for post offices in small villages in which even in this internet age they serve a vital role. Ultimately BT will be renationalised and provide reasonably priced telephone, television and internet connections. Private companies will be permitted to compete with it in all of these areas.
13) There will be state provision of internet connections of the highest speed feasible across the UK. Some regions such as Cornwall, as yet, have very poor broadband provision, just at the stage when other regions are moving to fibre optic provision. Rural regions need excellent internet connections to prevent isolation and allow the development of a range of employment in those locations.
Defence and Foreign Policy
1) All trade, especially arms trade, will cease with dictatorships. This includes China. I accept that this will damage the UK economy, but despite the wishful thinking of the 1990s, China has made no steps towards democracy and still has an appalling human rights record. It has become a neo-imperial power and is supporting unsavoury regimes across the world.
2) The UK would scrap all its nuclear weapons immediately. There has never been any point in having them and they have been an immense drain on the British economy for far too long.
3) The UK will never again be involved in military action which is not sanctioned by the United Nations, except in the case of direct threat to the UK and its dependent territories. The UK military, like that of countries such as Eire and Norway, will be predominantly focused on UN peace-keeping activities and the nature of its forces and equipment will be focused on such work rather than as a nuclear 'Power'. Unless NATO similarly changes, the UK will either leave the organisation dealing with its members on a bilateral basis on defence issues if these should arise.
The Law
1) The permitted level of alcohol or narcotics in the blood while driving will be reduced to 0.
2) There would be no change to the categorisation of drugs. 'Legal' highs would be made illegal if this had not already been done.
3) Anyone killing or injuring someone while driving will face the same terms of imprisonment as a person killing or injuring someone with a blunt instrument.
4) No-one who assists someone in dying who has made a living will requesting such assistance, will be prosecuted.
5) Facilities for the support of rape victims will be increased rather than cut back, as at present. The identity of those accused of rape or physical or sexual harrassment, especially when that person is a teacher, social worker or in a medical/caring profession would be kept strictly secret until the time when they are convicted, if that is the case, and indefinitely if found not guilty.
6) The constabulary system of policing will remain. Watch committees formed from members of the local council will be re-introduced to oversee local policing. Regional assemblies will scrutinise regional police activities. Chief Constables, however, will be appointed by the Minister of Justice.
7) In the case of the death of anyone at the hands of the police or through being run over by a police car, an immediate criminal investigation will be launched. Hopefully such cases will be less common than in recent years, but if not, a specific national Internal Affairs unit will be created.
8) A prison building programme will be launched to provide places for 100,000 prisoners with a limit of one prisoner per cell. Prisons will be constructed, as in the USA, in areas of high unemployment to create jobs. Brownfield sites would be favoured as will the demolition, in stages, of any prison built more than fifty years ago and the construction of a modern prison on that site. All prison services will be taken back from private contractors. Detention camps for asylum seekers will be closed immediately and used instead as low security prisons for criminals.
9) Legislation incompatible with the spirit of human rights legislation, notably introduced supposedly to combat terrorism, would be repealed, in particular the RIPA which has been terribly abused by local authorities. The UK would not extradite anyone to a country with a bad human rights record or the death penalty (including the USA). No evidence acquired by torture is permissible in a UK court and no official from the UK must have any involvement in torture anywhere. Any UK citizen committing torture or being involved in the carrying out of torture anywhere in the world, is liable to be prosecuted by the British legal system.
10) The import, let alone the planting and growth of GM crops or livestock, or the products of these, would be banned in the UK.
11) Steps will be taken to criminalise tobacco. In time, as with other harmful narcotics, it will only be available to addicts in restricted quantities on prescription.
12) The approach to the restriction of alcohol through price rises and limits in terms of availability along the lines of the policy adopted in Sweden will be introduced. Both this and the tobacco measures will not stamp out use of these substances but will reduce the human and financial costs of them.
Education and Society
1) Given that anyone who has attended state school since the mid-1970s, over 22 million people, has learnt metric measurement, we will finally eliminate all imperial measurement from British society.
2) As announced by the previous government, all children are expected to remain in full-time education or training until they 18.
3) The school day will be lengthened, so reducing parental dependence on childcare. The curriculum is already crowded, so additional time at school will permit the extension of sports activities to reduce obesity and greater engagement with cultural activities such as art, music and drama. Despite the longer school day, teachers will have the amount of preparation time within the school day increased, initially back to the level of 1975. With better funding for schools and more teachers trained this will allow a better rotation of teaching staff and more specialist teachers, for example, in modern languages, to be available at all levels of education.
4) SATS tests will be abolished in England as they have been effectively in Scotland and Wales. Pupils are far too heavily examined in Britain especially aged 16-18. The AS qualifications would be scrapped. A levels would be replaced by the International Baccalaureate, which is already popular in parts of the UK, notably Oxfordshire. GSCEs would be adjusted to allow a better feed into the Baccalaureate. The new curriculum being introduced in Scotland would be reviewed with the possibility of it being introduced across the UK as a whole.
5) Fee-paying schools, notably the so-called 'public' schools, will be abolished; their facilities will be turned over to local education authorities to use for the benefit of the community. Selective education on any basis bar religion, will be scrapped. Grammar schools and academies will be compelled to return to being comprehensive schools. All faith schools will have to adopt a liberal selection policy and will be compelled to follow the national curriculum in all aspects outside specific religious practice, notably in terms of PSHE lessons.
6) Universities will be funded by graduates paying a supplementary tax of 1% above the standard rate for their earnings category for the rest of their lives, including if they are on taxable benefits; i.e. paying 26% for earnings £10,001-20,000; 29% for earnings of £20,001-30,000 and so on. Whilst at university, students will have all fees and a subsistence payment, paid by the government. Students wishing to take postgraduate courses will also receive such funding but will incur additional increments of 1% supplementary tax up to a maximum of +5%, for each course they take. Fees will be set by the government on institutional and course basis. Courses in teaching of scarcity areas, in nursing and social work will be free to students, with no tax repayment. Along the lines of policies in the USA, students taking medical degrees can have these funded by the state in return for working where they are needed for five years following graduation.
7) Between 150-180,000 pupils have been turned away from university places for 2010/11, many with very good grades. I am aware that many commentators want a return to more elitist higher education and question the need for jobs such as nursing and police roles to require a degree but the UK has to be aware that it is competing in a global market where degrees are the norm. I would authorise the construction of 6 universities in parts of the UK currently without one. There would be control over who was permitted to run these universities so that we did not see the problems that occurred with academies.
8) A key problem in the UK has been the snobbery against vocational qualifications. It is impossible to legislate against such snobbery and there is a sense that certain professions should not be graduate professions. However, for the benefit of the country we need to raise standards and introducing degree level requirements is an aspect of this. I would advise the revival of BEd. and BA QTS degrees to allow people to go direct into teaching. I would advise the creation of other specialist degrees such as those for nursing. Rather than having all universities chasing after classic subject areas, we should laud the fact that 50 of the staff animating 'Avatar', including the lead animator, were graduates of Bournemouth University, the largest number drawn from any UK or US university. Combined with having technical and working representatives on company boards, slowly we might be able to reduce this unhealthy snobbery against vocational qualifications. It must be noted that they should not become simply training courses for specific companies but allow students who take them to be flexible.
9) No-one would be permitted to own more than one media resource, for example, only 1 newspaper or 1 national radio channel or set of combined radio channels covering Britain or 1 set of television channels if there are 5 or less channels in the set. News International could either own the Sky television channels or one of the newspapers they currently own. Virgin Media, for example, would not be permitted to buy any newspapers. Owners of media resources would preferably be a consortium rather than an individual. Anyone in the consortium could be a foreigner, but they must be resident in the UK and being paying UK tax or have to give up their control of the media resource.
10) The licence fee for the BBC services would continue to rise as it has done over the past decade.
I expect many of these policies will be unpopular with commentators, but they are as legitimate in their conception as the policies being driven through by the current government, which, in my view will harm the UK for decades to come and bring so much suffering to the British people now and in the future. My policies seek a re-balance back towards the rights of ordinary people to live their lives and be judged on their abilities and how they behave not on the basis of what bed they were born in. In addition, I feel, that whilst retaining the identity of Britain, these policies would help it get out of being fixed in the past and instead become a modern country suited to tackling the challenges of the future, rather than constantly harping on peculiarities of the past as if they were glories of today.
My politics are very simple. I am a democratic Socialist who favours European integration. I know people say Socialism is dead and certainly there is no political party that I can find in the UK at present that embraces the kinds of policies I favour. While I feel that British democracy is ailing, because of the ever-growing resurgence of the ultra-wealthy and the privileged, as yet I have not gone far enough to begin advocating revolution; I believe democracy can work well in the UK it just needs attention.
I take a lot of my lead from former MP and minister, Tony Benn. I never held the anti-EEC/EU views that he did. However, I believe that certainly since the era of the Social Chapter as part of EU's legislation, even he has moved to see the benefits of European states working together and that the EU can be far more of a benefit to ordinary people than the 'capitalists' club' that its predecessor the EEC was seen simply as.
I accept that, since 1974, it has been highly unlikely that any candidate standing on the manifesto I outline below would be elected. The central ground of British politics has moved so far to the right since the advent of the New Right ideas in the mid-1970s. However, I see myself as being in the position right-wing British Conservatives must have felt themselves to be in, in the period, say 1945-72, in perceiving the 'mainstream' of politics as ignoring their concerns. Yet, their time came again, and such views have been in the ascendant in the UK certainly since 1976. There was a brief period 2008-10, when, as regular readers of this blog will know, I had a feeling that the financial crises were bringing politics a little more back to the kind of Attlee Consenus policies that I favour. The UK, the USA and other states seemed to be embracing Keynesianism once again. Under Obama, the USA is likely to stay with such an approach, whereas Britain has rushed headlong into even more virulent New Right/monetarist policies than even Margaret Thatcher was able to pull off. Some commentators have noted that this was aided by the fact that Tony Blair's impetus came very much from the Thatcher Consensus and his support for policies such as private intervention in hospitals and schooling, with increasingly selectivity in education, formed a solid foundation for David Cameron's government's far harsher policies.
Before going into an outline of the policies I would pursue if elected Prime Minister, I would draw your attention to the fact, that, whilst they may appear to be embedded in 'Old' Labour attitudes, many of the policies I outline have actually been put into place in neighbouring European states, quite often under conservative governments. Much of this stuff is not radical, it simply stems from a rational approach to making a country not only function more effectively, but, vitally, having a fair society with opportunities for all, not simply those who are already very wealthy or are privileged. My prime motivation behind all my policies is to create a Britain which is safe for all of its citizens no matter what their background; has a firm economy which all benefit from not just the richest and that is not classless but allows all people to rise by ability rather than by connections. I do not see any political grouping in the UK working to such an agenda. I have no expectations that they will in my lifetime, but I remain an optimist.
The Manifesto
Fiscal and Economic Policies
1) The outline of income tax is presently (using the rates for the 2010/11 tax year, our current one) no tax until you earn £6,475 then you pay 20% on earnings up to £37,400; then 40% on £37,401 to £150,000 and then 50% on everything over £150,000. On dividends you pay 10%/32.5%/42.5%. These rates are a legacy of the Brown government's approach and have not been tweaked by the coalition. From this year on your personal allowance, the part you can earn tax free, will fall by £1 for every £2 you earn over £100,000. So, once you earn above £112,950, you will pay tax on everything you earn. My approach would maintain many of these ideas. I would have a personal tax allowance of £10,000 as proposed by the Liberal Democrats, then a 25% rate on £10,001-£20,000; 28% on £20,001-£30,000 (80% of the population earn below £31,000 per year); 33% on £30,001-£50,000; 43% on £50,001 to £150,000; 53% on 150,001 to £500,000; 63% on anything above £500,000. The personal allowance would be reduced as currently once you earn beyond £50,000 per year. These rates will apply to dividends of these levels too. Given the plans outlined below, the government will need more revenue. These figures are low compared to historic ones. In 1979 the basic rate of tax was 33% and the highest rate was 83% (yet business prospered); in the mid-1960s it rose from 38% to 41%. Rather than hammering people on benefit, greater efforts would be put into chasing down the £17 billion in unpaid tax.
2) Value added tax (VAT) would be at a basic rate of 15%, but higher for specific goods, notably petrol and cigarettes with a graduated extra VAT on alcoholic drinks dependent on their alcoholic content.
3) No boss of a company would be permitted to earn more than 20 times the salary of the lowest paid worker in that company or contracted by that company. If the company has staff on the minimum wage, £5.93 per hour from October 2010, then the highest a boss could earn in that company would be £240,600, still a pretty decent salary. Those bosses who did not feel that such pay was sufficient to keep their 'talents' in the UK could leave, though there would be restrictions on how much capital they could extract from the UK at one time. If this means many ultra-wealthy leaving the UK, then it will be better for the long-term health of the British economy no longer blackmailed by their capriciousness.
4) Bosses would benefit from the fact that the minimum wage would rise to become that defined by the Council of Europe Decency Threshold which is 60% of average net earnings. In the UK the current national average salary is £31,000 (though far less in some regions), giving a minimum salary, on this basis, for full-time work, of £18,600 per year (compared to £12,300 on the current rate) allowing bosses to earn up to £361,200 on the '20 times' rule.
5) In Belgium employees receive 14 pay cheques per year, even in South Africa they get 13. I would make it compulsory that all employees earning less than £40,000 per year would receive 14 pay cheques per year, with doubling up in June and December as in Belgium. This would apply to part-time workers too. This would help in many ways by stimulating consumption, increasing savings and reducing the risk of house repossessions as employees will have been able to put more money aside, compared to now when many individuals and families spend all their monthly income in a month due to high rent, food and utility prices. Of course, for some people having 2 extra pay cheques will lift them above £40,000. This would be permitted for a year and after that period their salary would have to have risen to at least £40,000 and then the extra payments would stop. If their pay is cut then they would again become eligible for the 14 payments per year.
6) Companies will be barred from having more than 10% of their employees on temporary contracts. Temporary employees will receive the same rights as full-time employees after working for the company for 3 months rather than 1 year as at present. Companies would not be permitted to lay off a temporary worker and then put someone else into the same position unless a period of 9 months has passed. This would stop companies simply laying workers off after their initial period so as to avoid having to grant them full employment rights. This happens too often and leads to too much instability for individuals and the economy. In addition, despite what companies think, this constant 'churn' of staff actually damages the efficiency of their business, due to constant training and enculturation of new staff.
7) All companies with more than 5 employees would be compelled to have representatives of the workforce on the company Board or the equivalent in smaller companies. This policy has been in place for fifty years in Germany and has benefited the country's economic growth.
8) There would be a charge on all financial transactions with a rising scale dependent on how risky the activity was. This would be combined with far more stringent regulation of merchant banking.
9) Banks would be compelled to hold the coverage of reserves that they have to in Spain, the success of this has been seen in the prosperity of Santander.
10) The government will have control of the percentage of their bill that credit card users have to repay each month. Since the abolition of hire purchase regulations has the government really had any control over consumption, certainly beyond high-value items as large as houses. Regulation abilities of this kind could have been very useful in the 1990s to slow down consumption and reduce pressure on inflation, let alone heading off personal credit difficulties.
11) The government would not only set the base rate, but also the upper limit of interest charges. Anyone exceeding such charges, such as 'pay-day loan' companies would be treated as loan sharks and face criminal prosecution. Financial support would be given to the establishment of more mutual building societies and credit unions across the whole country, though often on a very local basis. Nationalisation of a bank would occur far sooner than has been the case in the 2000s, for example, Northern Rock would have been nationalised two years earlier than it was in reality.
12) National insurance of 10% would be payable from earnings of £5000 upwards and would have no upper limit on payment.
13) The UK would join the euro immediately and the bulk of the British population will be able to see immediately more easily how much more they pay for food and other essentials compared to citizens of neighbouring countries.
14) Nationalised banks would, in particular, be encouraged to provide low-interest loans to start-up and expanding businesses.
15) Capital Gains Tax would be 10% up to £2,500; 20% £2,501-£10,000; 30% £10,001-£30,000; 40% £30,001-£100,000; 50% £100,001-£500,000 and 60% on £500,001 and above. There would be no 'allowance', so the rate would be imposed on all the money which brought the total above that sum. For example, if you gained £20,000 then you would pay 30% on the entire £20,000 not just on the last £10,000 above £10,000.
16) For UK citizens who keep large sums of money abroad, I would introduce the US system, i.e., if you have above a certain sum, I would say £50,000 (in the USA it is around US$87,000), in a bank in a country where the tax rate is lower than in the UK, then you must pay the difference between that tax rate and the rates prevailing in the UK, to the British Treasury. If your money is in a country with the same or higher tax rate then you pay nothing to the UK. If you do not comply with this rule, then you will be stripped of UK citizenship within 3 years of your money going abroad. This is no different to US policies even under George W. Bush, so cannot be considered to be a radical policy. However, it is estimated that by using tax havens, wealthy British citizens save paying £10 billion in tax. Stripping a person of nationality and making them stateless is usually forbidden but would be permitted for people penalised in this way. Given their wealth they would have no difficulty in getting a new nationality somewhere else.
Housing Policy
1) Stamp duty would be banded in an attempt to slow the apparently inexorable rise in house prices.
2) Limits on rents would be introduced on the basis of the council tax rating of the house. Tenants would be granted greater rights, for example, to be given at least 3 months' notice of the repossession of a property when the owner has defaulted on the morgage. Fixed-term tenancy contracts would be banned, with either the tenant being able to leave or the owner to ask them to leave with 2 months' notice. These policies and the limits on rent rises will help people move more easily to where work is available.
3) All tenants would be permitted to have repair work done to the property themselves, having taken at least 3 quotes, and charge this to the owner, who would be compelled to pay for it.
4) No owner would be permitted to leave a property for longer than 3 months without seeking tenants for it. Empty properties must be kept in a decent state, along the lines of regulations in New York, otherwise the owner will be fined.
5) Like other property owners, banks and building societies will be compelled to rent out or sell repossessed properties within 3 months of taking them back rather than leaving them empty until the local price reaches a set level as they currently often do.
6) Councils and housing authorities would be assisted in building a mix of social/affordable housing, both for direct renting and for shared equity purchase. This would particularly be supported in areas facing depopulation due to high house prices. Access to this housing would be on the basis of economic standing not on age or ethnic grounds.
7) All private housing developments above a certain size, will be compelled to build social housing. The neglect of this often causes problems for those in the more expensive properties anyway, as seen in Milton Keynes where due to local resident opposition to social housing, the supermarkets have to bus in staff from 30Km away. There would be a ratio such as 1 social house per 10 expensive houses built.
8) Companies abandoning a site, will be compelled to demolish any unused retail/industrial buildings and return the site to a standard suitable for housing to be built on it.
9) There would be a nationwide scheme to insulate every house currently with insufficient insulation. Once this was complete, solar panels would be installed on every suitable property, not only residential but also industrial. There would be incentives to assist with this and it would create jobs at this time of employment need.
Social Policy
1) There would be free childcare for all working parents until the child is 16. Those with the money would be free to opt out and use private provision. All childcare would continue to be monitored by OFSTED. Such a policy would free up many parents to work.
2) As currently is the case in Scotland, everyone would be entitled to free residential care once they pass the retirement age, again people are free to opt out and buy private provision if they choose.
3) The retirement age would rise immediately to 70 and stringent anti-ageism policies would be enacted. The SERPS pension approach would be re-introduced and pensions would rise (or fall) with the cost of living.
4) All health care will be free at point of usage. Again, people are free to opt for private care. However, all doctors practising in the UK would be obliged to work for the National Health Service to the number of hours currently required by Belgian health authorities for their doctors.
5) All municipal sports facilities, especially swimming pools, would be free to users. Private sports facilities charging a fee and requiring membership would be permitted. All museums and public galleries will have free entry, though visitors could give donations if they wished.
Constitutional Policy
1) All elections across the UK would be run on the basis of proportional representation as they already are in Northern Ireland. Parties would have to receive at least 5% of the vote to be represented in the Westminster Parliament, the level they have to achieve in Germany.
2) The monarchy will be abolished immediately. Instead, a directly-elected President, accountable to parliament, would be introduced, able to be elected twice for 4-year terms. The powers of the President will be the same as those of the President of Germany.
3) The House of Lords would be abolished and be replaced by a Senate elected by the regional assemblies every five years. Noble titles will remain but grant no powers, they would simply be courtesy titles and rewards, as at present.
4) The Supreme Court recently introduced will remain. It will have the power to prosecute members of parliament, the Senate or the President, if necessary.
5) British regional assemblies would be re-introduced. They would be elected, not appointed as they were before, and their regions would be far smaller than those of the regional assemblies that existed in the UK until 2010. All large cities would have their own assemblies and directly-elected mayor because (despite Boris Johnson) this approach has worked well in London. Taking large cities out of the assemblies of the surrounding countryside would also secure a voice for more rural regions of Britain and those with particular local interests, for example, Cornwall. Any border town that wished to join Scotland or Wales would be permitted to do so following a local referendum.
6) Anyone who wishes to be elected to parliament, the Senate, as President or to the Supreme Court or is to work as an advisor to the government for more than 6 months, must be resident in the UK and pay at least 90% of their total tax bill in the UK. You may say governments need foreign advisors and they will still be able to use them for specific projects or advice, but the bulk of people in all branches of government will be UK domiciled and taxpayers.
7) Local councillors will receive a set salary the way MPs do. This would mean that ordinary people could become councillors in a way in which they cannot do now and this would end the domination of local politics by prosperous business people who have vested interests which are often not beneficial to the local population more broadly.
Infrastructure
1) The railways and all utility companies will be immediately nationalised. State control will not be on the model of previous UK control but like that of France. The fact that the French state-run electricity company, EDF, was until recently, a very successful company in the UK is a good indicator of the benefits.
2) Second or Standard class travel will be abolished, everyone will have the chance to travel first class in so-called Harry Perkins carriages.
3) All freight being carried over 100 Km must be carried by railway. This policy was in place in Germany in the 1980s and enable greater profitability. Heavy goods vehicles could be filled at special depots near the ports to enable this freight to be driven in countries still permitting long distance road haulage.
4) Britain was the leading country for wind power in the 1970s a position it foolishly gave up. To rectify this we must increase wind power to the level seen in Germany if not in Denmark. Brownfield sites, such as along motorways should be used and attention paid to the environment when constructing wind farms elsewhere but it must be recognised that wind farms are far less intrusive than a nuclear, oil or coal-fired power station. As is happening in Scotland now, wave power must be adopted with all vigour.
5) Incentives will be given to increase the use of hybrid and electric vehicles, and new compressed air vehicles with charging/refilling points all over towns.
6) 4x4 vehicles will be banned except for people working in agriculture or specific industries and living in particular areas, certainly not towns and suburbs. The maximum permitted capacity of motorcycles on British roads would be 750cc and of cars, 2 litres. More powerful vehicles would be permitted on race tracks and private land.
7) All drivers must be re-tested every 5 years. HGV drivers have medical tests every 5 years after they pass 45. I am talking about an entire test to ensure they still have the abilities to drive safely. Many car drivers seem to have quickly forgotten the basic requirements of driving and a large part of the Highway Code. The 'P' sticker would be introduced as in other European countries, and drivers would have to have it on their vehicle for the first year after they have passed their first test. Being awarded any penalty points while carrying the P would mean having your licence removed and you wouldhave to sit the test again and start again with your P year from the date you passed that second test. Drivers under the age of 21 would be limited to vehicles of 1 litre capacity or less. No-one under the age of 21 would be permitted to ride a motorcycle of more than 50cc and no-one under the age of 25 would be allowed to ride a motorcycle of more than 125cc.
8) Anyone wishing to drive a rental box van, even for a few minutes, would have to have already passed the CPC test that commercial van drivers have to pass for vehicles of 3.5 tonnes and above. The reason for this is that there are few drivers more hazardous than people who have hired a van for a day and then proceed to drive it as badly as they drive their car and yet with all the added weight and visibility issues.
9) Sat navs already alert drivers to the fact they are exceeding the speed limit for the road they are travelling down. Such systems will be installed in all vehicles in the UK and would remain on at all times when the car is being driven, even if the driver is not using a sat nav to find their way. Cars from overseas coming to the UK would have to install such a device on entry to the UK at the entrance port. Speed limiters are already installed in certain commercial vehicles. These would be compulsory on all road vehicles of any kind driven in the UK. The maximum speed any vehicle could be driven on a UK road would be the same limit that you can drive on a UK motorway, i.e. up to 10% above the 70mph speed limit, that is 77mph. In time, I trust that these two systems could combine so vehicles' speeds would be limited to adjust to the road they are on, i.e. that they could not exceed 33mph in a residential area or 22mph where the 20mph limit is already in force, as in most of Portsmouth. Of course, speeds would now be measure in metric, giving 123 kph, 52 kph and 35 kph as the maximum speed in these three examples.
10) As in parts of Belgium, lorries would not be allowed to overtake other vehicles. I would make an exception if the vehicle was going slower than 10 mph below the speed limit for on A roads or smaller road and 20 mph less than the speed limit of motorways. This would stop the ridiculous 'races' between lorries moving just 1 mph different, which so congest much of the UK's motorways. Of course, with increased rail freighting the numbers of lorries on motorways would be reduced. Vehicles pulling caravans would be restricted to 50mph as they were in the 1970s. Coaches would face the same restrictions as lorries and so would not be permitted to charge along at 70mph and disrupt motorway traffic by regularly overtaking.
11) Anyone charged with using a mobile phone while driving will have the phone seized and destroyed and would be banned from driving for 1 year. Cyclists, skateboarders, roller- and inlineskaters would be barred from wearing headphones of any kind while travelling on the pavement or road, at the risk of an on-the-spot-fine and seizure and destruction of their electrical equipment.
12) The Post Office will remain in/be returned to state control. There will be subsidies for post offices in small villages in which even in this internet age they serve a vital role. Ultimately BT will be renationalised and provide reasonably priced telephone, television and internet connections. Private companies will be permitted to compete with it in all of these areas.
13) There will be state provision of internet connections of the highest speed feasible across the UK. Some regions such as Cornwall, as yet, have very poor broadband provision, just at the stage when other regions are moving to fibre optic provision. Rural regions need excellent internet connections to prevent isolation and allow the development of a range of employment in those locations.
Defence and Foreign Policy
1) All trade, especially arms trade, will cease with dictatorships. This includes China. I accept that this will damage the UK economy, but despite the wishful thinking of the 1990s, China has made no steps towards democracy and still has an appalling human rights record. It has become a neo-imperial power and is supporting unsavoury regimes across the world.
2) The UK would scrap all its nuclear weapons immediately. There has never been any point in having them and they have been an immense drain on the British economy for far too long.
3) The UK will never again be involved in military action which is not sanctioned by the United Nations, except in the case of direct threat to the UK and its dependent territories. The UK military, like that of countries such as Eire and Norway, will be predominantly focused on UN peace-keeping activities and the nature of its forces and equipment will be focused on such work rather than as a nuclear 'Power'. Unless NATO similarly changes, the UK will either leave the organisation dealing with its members on a bilateral basis on defence issues if these should arise.
The Law
1) The permitted level of alcohol or narcotics in the blood while driving will be reduced to 0.
2) There would be no change to the categorisation of drugs. 'Legal' highs would be made illegal if this had not already been done.
3) Anyone killing or injuring someone while driving will face the same terms of imprisonment as a person killing or injuring someone with a blunt instrument.
4) No-one who assists someone in dying who has made a living will requesting such assistance, will be prosecuted.
5) Facilities for the support of rape victims will be increased rather than cut back, as at present. The identity of those accused of rape or physical or sexual harrassment, especially when that person is a teacher, social worker or in a medical/caring profession would be kept strictly secret until the time when they are convicted, if that is the case, and indefinitely if found not guilty.
6) The constabulary system of policing will remain. Watch committees formed from members of the local council will be re-introduced to oversee local policing. Regional assemblies will scrutinise regional police activities. Chief Constables, however, will be appointed by the Minister of Justice.
7) In the case of the death of anyone at the hands of the police or through being run over by a police car, an immediate criminal investigation will be launched. Hopefully such cases will be less common than in recent years, but if not, a specific national Internal Affairs unit will be created.
8) A prison building programme will be launched to provide places for 100,000 prisoners with a limit of one prisoner per cell. Prisons will be constructed, as in the USA, in areas of high unemployment to create jobs. Brownfield sites would be favoured as will the demolition, in stages, of any prison built more than fifty years ago and the construction of a modern prison on that site. All prison services will be taken back from private contractors. Detention camps for asylum seekers will be closed immediately and used instead as low security prisons for criminals.
9) Legislation incompatible with the spirit of human rights legislation, notably introduced supposedly to combat terrorism, would be repealed, in particular the RIPA which has been terribly abused by local authorities. The UK would not extradite anyone to a country with a bad human rights record or the death penalty (including the USA). No evidence acquired by torture is permissible in a UK court and no official from the UK must have any involvement in torture anywhere. Any UK citizen committing torture or being involved in the carrying out of torture anywhere in the world, is liable to be prosecuted by the British legal system.
10) The import, let alone the planting and growth of GM crops or livestock, or the products of these, would be banned in the UK.
11) Steps will be taken to criminalise tobacco. In time, as with other harmful narcotics, it will only be available to addicts in restricted quantities on prescription.
12) The approach to the restriction of alcohol through price rises and limits in terms of availability along the lines of the policy adopted in Sweden will be introduced. Both this and the tobacco measures will not stamp out use of these substances but will reduce the human and financial costs of them.
Education and Society
1) Given that anyone who has attended state school since the mid-1970s, over 22 million people, has learnt metric measurement, we will finally eliminate all imperial measurement from British society.
2) As announced by the previous government, all children are expected to remain in full-time education or training until they 18.
3) The school day will be lengthened, so reducing parental dependence on childcare. The curriculum is already crowded, so additional time at school will permit the extension of sports activities to reduce obesity and greater engagement with cultural activities such as art, music and drama. Despite the longer school day, teachers will have the amount of preparation time within the school day increased, initially back to the level of 1975. With better funding for schools and more teachers trained this will allow a better rotation of teaching staff and more specialist teachers, for example, in modern languages, to be available at all levels of education.
4) SATS tests will be abolished in England as they have been effectively in Scotland and Wales. Pupils are far too heavily examined in Britain especially aged 16-18. The AS qualifications would be scrapped. A levels would be replaced by the International Baccalaureate, which is already popular in parts of the UK, notably Oxfordshire. GSCEs would be adjusted to allow a better feed into the Baccalaureate. The new curriculum being introduced in Scotland would be reviewed with the possibility of it being introduced across the UK as a whole.
5) Fee-paying schools, notably the so-called 'public' schools, will be abolished; their facilities will be turned over to local education authorities to use for the benefit of the community. Selective education on any basis bar religion, will be scrapped. Grammar schools and academies will be compelled to return to being comprehensive schools. All faith schools will have to adopt a liberal selection policy and will be compelled to follow the national curriculum in all aspects outside specific religious practice, notably in terms of PSHE lessons.
6) Universities will be funded by graduates paying a supplementary tax of 1% above the standard rate for their earnings category for the rest of their lives, including if they are on taxable benefits; i.e. paying 26% for earnings £10,001-20,000; 29% for earnings of £20,001-30,000 and so on. Whilst at university, students will have all fees and a subsistence payment, paid by the government. Students wishing to take postgraduate courses will also receive such funding but will incur additional increments of 1% supplementary tax up to a maximum of +5%, for each course they take. Fees will be set by the government on institutional and course basis. Courses in teaching of scarcity areas, in nursing and social work will be free to students, with no tax repayment. Along the lines of policies in the USA, students taking medical degrees can have these funded by the state in return for working where they are needed for five years following graduation.
7) Between 150-180,000 pupils have been turned away from university places for 2010/11, many with very good grades. I am aware that many commentators want a return to more elitist higher education and question the need for jobs such as nursing and police roles to require a degree but the UK has to be aware that it is competing in a global market where degrees are the norm. I would authorise the construction of 6 universities in parts of the UK currently without one. There would be control over who was permitted to run these universities so that we did not see the problems that occurred with academies.
8) A key problem in the UK has been the snobbery against vocational qualifications. It is impossible to legislate against such snobbery and there is a sense that certain professions should not be graduate professions. However, for the benefit of the country we need to raise standards and introducing degree level requirements is an aspect of this. I would advise the revival of BEd. and BA QTS degrees to allow people to go direct into teaching. I would advise the creation of other specialist degrees such as those for nursing. Rather than having all universities chasing after classic subject areas, we should laud the fact that 50 of the staff animating 'Avatar', including the lead animator, were graduates of Bournemouth University, the largest number drawn from any UK or US university. Combined with having technical and working representatives on company boards, slowly we might be able to reduce this unhealthy snobbery against vocational qualifications. It must be noted that they should not become simply training courses for specific companies but allow students who take them to be flexible.
9) No-one would be permitted to own more than one media resource, for example, only 1 newspaper or 1 national radio channel or set of combined radio channels covering Britain or 1 set of television channels if there are 5 or less channels in the set. News International could either own the Sky television channels or one of the newspapers they currently own. Virgin Media, for example, would not be permitted to buy any newspapers. Owners of media resources would preferably be a consortium rather than an individual. Anyone in the consortium could be a foreigner, but they must be resident in the UK and being paying UK tax or have to give up their control of the media resource.
10) The licence fee for the BBC services would continue to rise as it has done over the past decade.
I expect many of these policies will be unpopular with commentators, but they are as legitimate in their conception as the policies being driven through by the current government, which, in my view will harm the UK for decades to come and bring so much suffering to the British people now and in the future. My policies seek a re-balance back towards the rights of ordinary people to live their lives and be judged on their abilities and how they behave not on the basis of what bed they were born in. In addition, I feel, that whilst retaining the identity of Britain, these policies would help it get out of being fixed in the past and instead become a modern country suited to tackling the challenges of the future, rather than constantly harping on peculiarities of the past as if they were glories of today.
Thursday, 11 February 2010
Sent From Home At 8 Years Old: How Boarding Schools Screw Up Britain
It has always struck me as odd that local authorities and children's homes battle so hard to find adoptive parents or at least foster parents for the children in their care, 'in care' as the phrase goes and yet wealthy parents are permitted to send their children away from home to boarding schools which pretty much resemble children's homes of the past. It is argued that children need solid families to permit them to grow up as balanced individuals and less likely to fall into crime, mental health and a whole range of problems that impinge on UK society. However, the rules for the privileged seem to be very different and they are allowed to put their children into a context which severely damages them and in fact makes them socially disfunctional. The huge difference is that a child from a children's home will never become an MP whereas a child sent to a boarding school quite possibly will end up in the government or a leading civil servant or military commander or lawyer or clergy person. Why do we think it is fine to cut one set of people off from their families, and in some cases actually see it as a better method and yet for another set of people it is seen as something we should be trying to end and to find families that will take these children and give them a 'proper' family? Of course, one argument is that it is about money. By definition, a child sent to a boarding school comes from a wealthy family so even if they have no talent or are lazy they will succeed and will get a house and a good job whereas a child from a children's home or local authority care has no-one to provide these advantages so are more likely to end up homeless or facing mental health issues.
The thing that triggered off this posting was the Channel 4 programme 'Cutting Edge' which today had an episode 'Leaving Home at 8' about 8 year old girls sent from their parents to a boarding school. For those unfamiliar with the UK system, boarding schools are those at which a child stays all year except during school vacations. They sleep, eat and live at the school. Some of these boarding schools are the elite 'public' schools, but there are other less prestigious institutions. They all do, however, charge high fees which mean a small slice of the population can attend. However, as adults this small slice is over represented among the elites in British public life and business. In total 67,000 children in the UK attend boarding schools; 59,000 children are in local authority care. Of children in care 53% leave school with no qualifications; 45% end up with a mental health disorder (compared to 10% of the general population) and of those people in custody 30% have been in care, though children in care make up only 0.5% of all children. In contrast 70% of judges, 68% of barristers, 55% of partners in law firms, 54% of journalists and 54% of doctors went to fee paying independent schools, of which boarding schools make up 13% of the total private school pupil population.
The programme was harrowing even though it featured very privileged people, the girls themselves were distraught at being separated from their parents and many of the parents were too. This is unsurprising. At 8 a child can do many things on their own but they are far from being an independent person. Whilst boarding schools probably lack the bullying and in fact torture of pupils by others whether their peers or older, that happened in the past, certainly it is an unhealthy environment into which children should be put, and this is recognised by the fact that, as noted above, local authorities and charities always seek to house children in their care with adoptive parents as much as they can.
The damage that boarding schools do to children was highlighted in a 2008 investigation by MPs:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/may/11/publicschools.schools Of course, not only are there the initial problems created by taking a child from their home and putting them in an instituion, anyone who has worked in the UK especially in London and towns like Oxford where adults who went to boarding school are more numerous, sees the problems that such an education lays for life. The people who have been through the boarding school system have been doing something like military service for their childhood and of course this makes them tough but it also makes them very callous and uncaring about others. I have seen no evidence in adults who attended boarding school, of the team spirit that such schools argue they promote. When you have had no privacy, no space of your own, no space to be yourself and no security for the things you hold dear, of course you will always snatch whatever you can from others and give no thought to anyone's needs bar your own.I will take a real life case: a woman I met some years ago in Oxford. Her name was Tiffany 'Tiffy' Foster who though from Suffolk had attended a boarding school in Oxfordshire. Her family numbered senior military officers and clergymen in its ranks. I worked with her for nine months and found immediately that she viewed anyone she met who had not been to such a school with disdain which was ironic as she wanted to become a school teacher in a comprehensive school presumably to lord it over the pupils and fellow staff. She argued that we who had not attended a boarding school were all too weak to deal with life. I was particularly angered when she complained that neither a single (by determined choice) mother who had an incredibly intelligent daughter able to produce poetry that scanned at the age of eight stood no chance in life before she was not faced with the toughness of a boarding school. She made no apology for the advantages of wealth and connections she had gained that made her life so easy. However, this did not stop her taking other people's things in the office without apology. I guess that the privileged do not feel rules apply to them or really that anyone else's concerns matter. Another offensive remark she made was to ask what all the fuss was about the First World War (she intended to teach history). I asked her what was the lowest rank of any of her family who had fought in that war and she said colonel; none of her relatives died in the war. The highest rank any of my ancestors attained was sergeant-major and that was because he had served in the Anglo-Boer War in which he was decorated. He was demoted twice for striking officers who were younger and less experienced than him but casualties always meant re-promotion. He survived the war but died soon after from the affects of gas poisoning. I have come a long way in social standing from that ancestor of mine (he drove a tram in peacetime) but I realised that it brought minimally closer to where Tiffany saw herself as standing. To make such a remark about the war that took the lives of millions and mutilated many others was sickening. Other boarding school families were not spared in the way the Fosters were, yet her own narrow horizons and self-obsession, promoted by her schooling barred her from seeing that.
This is one example, I have encountered many others in my career, but fortunately now I am out in the provinces, far fewer than I once did. The trouble is that the higher echelons of our society are filled with these people and unfortunately no-one seems to really ask whether people who have been through such a harsh, uncaring school system (despite the efforts of the teachers to make it welcoming, the whole set up of divorce from their parents cannot be counter-balanced effectively) are really mentally fit to have so much power. Of course, the generation above them lift them up without even thinking about it and they have an effective propaganda machine working for them. When training as a teacher in a comprehensive school in Oxfordshire I was stunned to find that the headmaster of that school which took a wide range of ordinary pupils had a peculiar deference for neighbouring boarding schools. Did he have no faith in the system he was part of? Did he simply do it because it was a job? Did he look on his own pupils with disdain and only see his role as fulfilling some compelled duty? He might have been an isolated case, but the way that he privileged teachers who had had a boarding school background, was rather unsettling. Even though he had not been part of that system he was incredibly deferential towards it much to the dismay to those who had come up through the same type of school that he was overseeing. I do not have to say anything about the Harry Potter stories and how they show that boarding school pupils are 'magic' and special, to indicate that boarding schools get lots of free propaganda, most importantly to educate us, the bulk of the population, how reverential we should be to their pupils and alumni.
The sense that boarding schools are 'special' producing exceptional people, rather, than in fact, screwed up ones with out-of-date knowledge, is terribly prevalent in UK society. Even the review in 'The Guardian' of this 'Cutting Edge' programme ended saying '... the kindness of the teachers shows that the boarding school model, somewhat [!] anachronistic in the 21st century, can still work.' Work at what? Producing another whole generation of people who will get power as a gift, almost a right, and yet have been screwed up by a system that makes it impossible for them to engage properly with the large majority of people they will encounter in everyday life. However much they dislike it, they will have to mix with the rest of us.
Monday, 2 June 2008
The Privileged Strike Back
I have often commented that the UK seems to becoming a more divided society. In the period after the Second World War, there was a sense that the strict social hierarchy of the 19th and early 20th centuries was beginning to be shaken off. Access to free education at all levels and a free health care system combined with a prosperity around 1956-73 that increased social mobility. In the 1960s people began to talk of a 'meritocracy' (though this term was originally a derogative term it was captured to be used in a more positive way) that people could get on it life due to their abilities rather than which social class they had been born into. The hope that was that in contrast to the 19th century and pre-1945 era the UK would never suffer deaths and failure as a result of stupid rich people being in charge as they seemed to have been on so many occasions in British history. You just have to think of the Crimean War, the Boer War and the First World War for starters, in fact most of the Napoleonic Wars before Wellington was put in charge in Portugal in 1808.
In the 1960s and into the 1970s I think we probably got as close to a meritocracy as we ever will in the UK. Of course most senior politicians, government officials, leading military personnel, church leaders, many business people, all still came from very privileged backgrounds and were unmolested by the increase of more ordinary people in positions. In some sectors like the police, hospitals and certainly in the media, popular music, writing, etc., though there were greater opportunities for people to 'get on' than ever before. There was a sense of this in other countries like West Germany, France and the USA too. Of course the privileged remained unthreatened but there was more space and opportunity for people to rise from humble origins. I would argue that despite Bush seeing the wealthiest as his core support, in fact partly due to the public education system, you can still rise in the USA in a way you no longer can in the UK. Financial pressures are making it harder of course right across the Western world.
John Major, the UK prime minister 1991-97, who worked his way up from bank clerk to head of the government despite his nostalgia for the 1950s, would often speak of working towards a 'classless society'. In fact his period of office marked the end of the greatest assault on opportunities for ordinary people. The years of Margaret Thatcher 1979-91 had seen the selling off of council housing, the ending of grants to attend higher education, the smashing of trades unions who were both a voice for ordinary people and a way for individuals to advance, plus she had tried to even end the concept of 'society' denying it existed, to quote, she said: "There's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families." Searching for quotes from her, I have just found so many in which she revelled in a divided society: "If your only opportunity is to be equal then it is not opportunity." Yet interestingly she also said: "Object to merit and distinction, and you're setting your face against quality, independence, originality, genius; against all the richness and variety of life." Of course the merit for her did not come from ability but from societal status.
Thatcher engineered a society which actually would have prevented her a woman who only went to grammar school, not public school, ever reaching the position she did. This is represented by the current leader of the Conservative Party, David Cameron and the Conservative Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, both who come from a public school background more like the Conservatives of the past like Sir Anthony Eden or Lord Douglas-Home; even Sir Winston Churchill for all his popular touch was from the family of a duke. Thatcher did ridicule the concept of social class saying "I'm working class, I work jolly hard". For her it was about individuals rather than structures, but she actually barred access to so many opportunities for so many individuals through her policies, that in spite of the superficially inclusive nature of her rhetoric in fact she was dividing society even further.
Blair, of course, more Conservative than Socialist or even Liberal, added to the divisiveness of British society. In this education, which famously was his watchword, has played a huge role. He tirelessly promoted divisive schooling through encouraging grant-maintained schools, grammar schools, faith schools, foundation schools and city academies. All of these were free to put up barriers to universal entry. They received better funding too, meaning those children left to go to what were increasingly demeaned as 'bog-standard comprehensives' had to be taught under tighter budgets. In theory the Blair regime sought to expand access to higher education, but as in my posting last month, in fact the financial arrangements have meant no increase in working class children going to university since 2002 and in fact even middle class families are being priced out of sending their children to higher education. In addition graduates are saddled with £20,000 debt and so are shackled into working in the UK in any job they can get to pay off these debts before they are in their 40s. I was speaking to a man last week who looks at the employment of graduates and he told me that my estimates of what a graduate earns when they leave university, apparently it is not the average national salary of £24,000 (€30,200; US$47,000), but more like £17,000 (€21,400; US$33,200) that they earn in their first jobs no matter what subject area they have studied, though people who have not done business studies courses have a more realistic impression of what they will earn. Those who have done business studies apparently expect to walk into high-paying jobs and are disappointed.
What is now interesting to note is that given the increasing restrictions on social mobility brought about by a combination of sustained government policies over the past thirty years, those in privileged positions are now beginning to voice attitudes that would have seemed a little improper even in 1908 and outrageous in 1968 or even 1978. I am grateful for the BBC Education website for alerting me to these. Education is not the full extent of the issues around privilege and social mobility, but it is clearly a central aspect. The new head of the Independent Schools Council (independent schools are fee-paying schools that educate 6% of the school aged population), Rear Admiral Chris Parry, told a select committee of Parliament that he was angered by attempts to make independent schools more open to access by people from poorer backgrounds that received attention earlier this year. In fact the Blair government gave greater power to independent schools by allowing them to back city academies and create new kinds of independent schools in the form of foundation schools. Yet, this does not seem enough for the independent sector and they clearly now feel strong enough to try to force back initiatives to open their doors wider and share facilities with poorer children. This is a re-assertion of divisive education and also embraces strengthening of the sector in terms of resources and its status in society, so turning away from the egalitarian education approaches of the past. Of course such schools have never been under threat, but what is interesting is now rather than staying quiet and sometimes defensive, they are now being aggressive and clearly feel that the government has created an environment that permits that to happen without them being criticised. Even in the 1980s with Thatcher at her peak there were sufficient old left-wingers and strong liberals who would have contested such attitudes, but they are now generally extinct, especially in political terms.
More alarming than the rear admiral's comments were those that came from Dr Bruce Charlton of the University of Newcastle. He stated last week that the reason why working class students were not getting into university had nothing to do with lack of opportunity, it was simply because they lacked the intelligence. This is a shocking return to the attitudes of the 19th century and is a eugenic attitude that would have been out of place in the 1950s let alone the 2000s. Again, such attitudes seem to be increasingly expressed, if you think back to Dr James Watson one of the investigators of DNA. He was banned from speaking at the Science Museum in October 2007 because he argued that Black people will always be less intelligent than White people because of their genetic make up. This is Social Darwinism and racism on a level that I hoped had died with the Nazi regime or at the latest with the end of the apartheid regime in South Africa. These attitudes began as distortions of Darwin's theories in the 1860s and evolved into eugenics. This was an attitude towards race and class that underlay the Nazis' slaughter of millions of people on racial, sexuality and disability grounds. The whole Nazi legal system became founded on people being guilty not by what they did but simply by what kind of person they were.
What these disgraceful men are effectively saying is: if you are Black or come from a working class background there is no point the state even making provision for you to go to university because you will never be intelligent enough to take up your place. That is the ultimate divisiveness in society. Already the government is saying: 'we will make it financially hard for you to get an education' and universities are admitting 'we will make it hard by having all these unwritten codes and social rules that will exclude you and even if you get there you will not understand what we are doing or expect because you cannot know these codes it says now'. Yet the next stage is coming upon us very quickly. The privileged, now freed from what they saw as the shackles of equality are saying openly now 'we are simply going to bar you as we do not like your kind soiling our universities and you have nothing to offer to education or our society and you should just stay in the low-paid jobs we feel you are suitable for'. It seems criminal that all the improvements which people worked and died for over the past two hundred years are being swept aside so quickly. Can it be long before we have the stamp on our foreheads at birth designating which opportunities we are permitted? Brave New World, we are on our way, very quickly.
P.P. This is on 12th June, interesting news that Rear Admiral Chris Parry has been forced to step down from his position in representing 1200 private schools. I doubt those private schools actually think any differently from what he said, but they just want to be more devious about their feelings rather than the head-on approach he adopted.
In the 1960s and into the 1970s I think we probably got as close to a meritocracy as we ever will in the UK. Of course most senior politicians, government officials, leading military personnel, church leaders, many business people, all still came from very privileged backgrounds and were unmolested by the increase of more ordinary people in positions. In some sectors like the police, hospitals and certainly in the media, popular music, writing, etc., though there were greater opportunities for people to 'get on' than ever before. There was a sense of this in other countries like West Germany, France and the USA too. Of course the privileged remained unthreatened but there was more space and opportunity for people to rise from humble origins. I would argue that despite Bush seeing the wealthiest as his core support, in fact partly due to the public education system, you can still rise in the USA in a way you no longer can in the UK. Financial pressures are making it harder of course right across the Western world.
John Major, the UK prime minister 1991-97, who worked his way up from bank clerk to head of the government despite his nostalgia for the 1950s, would often speak of working towards a 'classless society'. In fact his period of office marked the end of the greatest assault on opportunities for ordinary people. The years of Margaret Thatcher 1979-91 had seen the selling off of council housing, the ending of grants to attend higher education, the smashing of trades unions who were both a voice for ordinary people and a way for individuals to advance, plus she had tried to even end the concept of 'society' denying it existed, to quote, she said: "There's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families." Searching for quotes from her, I have just found so many in which she revelled in a divided society: "If your only opportunity is to be equal then it is not opportunity." Yet interestingly she also said: "Object to merit and distinction, and you're setting your face against quality, independence, originality, genius; against all the richness and variety of life." Of course the merit for her did not come from ability but from societal status.
Thatcher engineered a society which actually would have prevented her a woman who only went to grammar school, not public school, ever reaching the position she did. This is represented by the current leader of the Conservative Party, David Cameron and the Conservative Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, both who come from a public school background more like the Conservatives of the past like Sir Anthony Eden or Lord Douglas-Home; even Sir Winston Churchill for all his popular touch was from the family of a duke. Thatcher did ridicule the concept of social class saying "I'm working class, I work jolly hard". For her it was about individuals rather than structures, but she actually barred access to so many opportunities for so many individuals through her policies, that in spite of the superficially inclusive nature of her rhetoric in fact she was dividing society even further.
Blair, of course, more Conservative than Socialist or even Liberal, added to the divisiveness of British society. In this education, which famously was his watchword, has played a huge role. He tirelessly promoted divisive schooling through encouraging grant-maintained schools, grammar schools, faith schools, foundation schools and city academies. All of these were free to put up barriers to universal entry. They received better funding too, meaning those children left to go to what were increasingly demeaned as 'bog-standard comprehensives' had to be taught under tighter budgets. In theory the Blair regime sought to expand access to higher education, but as in my posting last month, in fact the financial arrangements have meant no increase in working class children going to university since 2002 and in fact even middle class families are being priced out of sending their children to higher education. In addition graduates are saddled with £20,000 debt and so are shackled into working in the UK in any job they can get to pay off these debts before they are in their 40s. I was speaking to a man last week who looks at the employment of graduates and he told me that my estimates of what a graduate earns when they leave university, apparently it is not the average national salary of £24,000 (€30,200; US$47,000), but more like £17,000 (€21,400; US$33,200) that they earn in their first jobs no matter what subject area they have studied, though people who have not done business studies courses have a more realistic impression of what they will earn. Those who have done business studies apparently expect to walk into high-paying jobs and are disappointed.
What is now interesting to note is that given the increasing restrictions on social mobility brought about by a combination of sustained government policies over the past thirty years, those in privileged positions are now beginning to voice attitudes that would have seemed a little improper even in 1908 and outrageous in 1968 or even 1978. I am grateful for the BBC Education website for alerting me to these. Education is not the full extent of the issues around privilege and social mobility, but it is clearly a central aspect. The new head of the Independent Schools Council (independent schools are fee-paying schools that educate 6% of the school aged population), Rear Admiral Chris Parry, told a select committee of Parliament that he was angered by attempts to make independent schools more open to access by people from poorer backgrounds that received attention earlier this year. In fact the Blair government gave greater power to independent schools by allowing them to back city academies and create new kinds of independent schools in the form of foundation schools. Yet, this does not seem enough for the independent sector and they clearly now feel strong enough to try to force back initiatives to open their doors wider and share facilities with poorer children. This is a re-assertion of divisive education and also embraces strengthening of the sector in terms of resources and its status in society, so turning away from the egalitarian education approaches of the past. Of course such schools have never been under threat, but what is interesting is now rather than staying quiet and sometimes defensive, they are now being aggressive and clearly feel that the government has created an environment that permits that to happen without them being criticised. Even in the 1980s with Thatcher at her peak there were sufficient old left-wingers and strong liberals who would have contested such attitudes, but they are now generally extinct, especially in political terms.
More alarming than the rear admiral's comments were those that came from Dr Bruce Charlton of the University of Newcastle. He stated last week that the reason why working class students were not getting into university had nothing to do with lack of opportunity, it was simply because they lacked the intelligence. This is a shocking return to the attitudes of the 19th century and is a eugenic attitude that would have been out of place in the 1950s let alone the 2000s. Again, such attitudes seem to be increasingly expressed, if you think back to Dr James Watson one of the investigators of DNA. He was banned from speaking at the Science Museum in October 2007 because he argued that Black people will always be less intelligent than White people because of their genetic make up. This is Social Darwinism and racism on a level that I hoped had died with the Nazi regime or at the latest with the end of the apartheid regime in South Africa. These attitudes began as distortions of Darwin's theories in the 1860s and evolved into eugenics. This was an attitude towards race and class that underlay the Nazis' slaughter of millions of people on racial, sexuality and disability grounds. The whole Nazi legal system became founded on people being guilty not by what they did but simply by what kind of person they were.
What these disgraceful men are effectively saying is: if you are Black or come from a working class background there is no point the state even making provision for you to go to university because you will never be intelligent enough to take up your place. That is the ultimate divisiveness in society. Already the government is saying: 'we will make it financially hard for you to get an education' and universities are admitting 'we will make it hard by having all these unwritten codes and social rules that will exclude you and even if you get there you will not understand what we are doing or expect because you cannot know these codes it says now'. Yet the next stage is coming upon us very quickly. The privileged, now freed from what they saw as the shackles of equality are saying openly now 'we are simply going to bar you as we do not like your kind soiling our universities and you have nothing to offer to education or our society and you should just stay in the low-paid jobs we feel you are suitable for'. It seems criminal that all the improvements which people worked and died for over the past two hundred years are being swept aside so quickly. Can it be long before we have the stamp on our foreheads at birth designating which opportunities we are permitted? Brave New World, we are on our way, very quickly.
P.P. This is on 12th June, interesting news that Rear Admiral Chris Parry has been forced to step down from his position in representing 1200 private schools. I doubt those private schools actually think any differently from what he said, but they just want to be more devious about their feelings rather than the head-on approach he adopted.
Friday, 18 January 2008
Charity Begins at School
One recent government announcement I welcomed is the review of the charitable status granted to private schools. It seems odd that profit-making bodies which charge fees so hight that only wealthy people can afford to send their children to them get charitable status in the UK which means they get tax breaks which saves them millions of pounds per year. They trumpet their academic success, but it is unsurprising when they have such high staff to student ratios; most children would benefit from having greater time in class with their teacher. In the average school lesson of 45 minutes, with the common class of 30 pupils, each pupil will have an equivalent of 1.3 minutes with the teacher, if you take out the time it takes for them to come in and settle down. Every time another pupil is disruptive they effectively steal this time from their fellow pupils as the teacher has to take out time from teaching to deal with it. Of course typically pupils are taught together, but with smaller class sizes in private schools each pupil is far more liable to get individual attention and their education will benefit. As I have noted in previous postings pupils from richer families benefit educationally even when they are in the public sector let alone when in schools with a selected intake.
Whilst I sympathise with the argument that the UK should have no private schools and certainly no 'public' schools (as in the weird UK definition, i.e. elite private schools, as opposed to state schools which are free and open to the public), you can argue that if someone wants to set up a business teaching people they should be free to do so. The difficulty for private schools is the buying power of the middle class has fallen. If civil servants and teachers had as much buying power as they did in the 1950s they would be annually earning over £80,000 (US$157,600; €111,200) whereas they earn around £25-30,000 per year. This means it is difficult for private schools to charge high enough fees to fund the number of staff they want because otherwise they would lose many of their middle class clients who in many cases are the bulk of the parents using some of these schools. This is why financially they have to retain charitable status. Many grant scholarships and open up their facilities to neighbouring communities, but that is the least that should be expected, as the bulk of us pay for state schools through our taxes and are also paying for private schools through charitable status tax breaks even though our children will never get the chance to go to the school let alone be a pupil at it.
Allowing the private school sector to contract from its current standing (2500 private schools in the UK taking 6-7% of school-aged children) would benefit education as a whole across the UK. The schools do not have to teach the National Curriculum which means that the pupils often miss out on in particular the social education which is important in making the pupils tolerant and open-minded, something which is important to have among the people who will make up our elites in the decades to come. Secondly, money saved from not granting all these tax breaks could be channelled into improving schools and their buildings and paying state sector teachers decent salaries. Many schools are suffering from decaying buildings and over-crowded classrooms, partly because money is being siphoned off to grant tax breaks to private schools. A third benefit is that it would make comparatively well-off middle class parents send their children into the state sector and with it bring funds and support for many ordinary schools which will benefit them. The top echelons of the middle class do not care about ordinary state schools or how far they decay because they exempt themselves from that system; they are rich and articulate so can turn their strengths into these ordinary schools. In addition, their children will mix with ordinary people which hopefully will begin to break down the barriers in our society which are painfully harsh; maybe the rich children will despise the ordinary ones, but the ordinary pupils will see that the elites are in fact just human like themselves. It would also provide a more level playing field for ordinary pupils as those pupils who otherwise would have gone to private schools would have to work for their education and their qualifications rather than being led through it by one-on-one tuition in their small classes.
Thus, I urge the government to strip all private schools and certainly all public schools, of charitable status immediately. The collapse of the private education sector cannot come about fast enough (I imagine many private schools will find ways of wriggling out of it, but even if we lose 30-40% it will begin to help change occur) if we are going to achieve a truly well-educated and less socially-divided UK.
Whilst I sympathise with the argument that the UK should have no private schools and certainly no 'public' schools (as in the weird UK definition, i.e. elite private schools, as opposed to state schools which are free and open to the public), you can argue that if someone wants to set up a business teaching people they should be free to do so. The difficulty for private schools is the buying power of the middle class has fallen. If civil servants and teachers had as much buying power as they did in the 1950s they would be annually earning over £80,000 (US$157,600; €111,200) whereas they earn around £25-30,000 per year. This means it is difficult for private schools to charge high enough fees to fund the number of staff they want because otherwise they would lose many of their middle class clients who in many cases are the bulk of the parents using some of these schools. This is why financially they have to retain charitable status. Many grant scholarships and open up their facilities to neighbouring communities, but that is the least that should be expected, as the bulk of us pay for state schools through our taxes and are also paying for private schools through charitable status tax breaks even though our children will never get the chance to go to the school let alone be a pupil at it.
Allowing the private school sector to contract from its current standing (2500 private schools in the UK taking 6-7% of school-aged children) would benefit education as a whole across the UK. The schools do not have to teach the National Curriculum which means that the pupils often miss out on in particular the social education which is important in making the pupils tolerant and open-minded, something which is important to have among the people who will make up our elites in the decades to come. Secondly, money saved from not granting all these tax breaks could be channelled into improving schools and their buildings and paying state sector teachers decent salaries. Many schools are suffering from decaying buildings and over-crowded classrooms, partly because money is being siphoned off to grant tax breaks to private schools. A third benefit is that it would make comparatively well-off middle class parents send their children into the state sector and with it bring funds and support for many ordinary schools which will benefit them. The top echelons of the middle class do not care about ordinary state schools or how far they decay because they exempt themselves from that system; they are rich and articulate so can turn their strengths into these ordinary schools. In addition, their children will mix with ordinary people which hopefully will begin to break down the barriers in our society which are painfully harsh; maybe the rich children will despise the ordinary ones, but the ordinary pupils will see that the elites are in fact just human like themselves. It would also provide a more level playing field for ordinary pupils as those pupils who otherwise would have gone to private schools would have to work for their education and their qualifications rather than being led through it by one-on-one tuition in their small classes.
Thus, I urge the government to strip all private schools and certainly all public schools, of charitable status immediately. The collapse of the private education sector cannot come about fast enough (I imagine many private schools will find ways of wriggling out of it, but even if we lose 30-40% it will begin to help change occur) if we are going to achieve a truly well-educated and less socially-divided UK.
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