CONGRATULATIONS TO CATHY ASHTON
Although an obscure political figure, Lady Ashton was the key architect of the SureStart centres, that have been one of the Labour government’s greatest achievements, in providing genuine help to improve the chances of the most disadvantaged children.
I am not quite sure how that prepares you for being the EU’s foreign affairs spokesperson, but at least Cathy Ashton is a politician of real substance who has done something good.
SureStart is based upon evidence that disadvantage, poor parenting and poverty in early years typically lead to ill health, poor educational attainment and continued disadvantage throughout a person’s life; so extra help for parents in deprived areas with the excellent Children’s Centres has been provided.
Scandalously, cutting funds for SureStart is one of David Cameron’s priorities. Despite the fact that evidence based calculations suggest that for every £1 spent in early years £7 is saved over the lifetime of the child by reducing their chances of problems in later life
I agree about Sure Start. It’s good stuff
Comment by Strategist — 21 November, 2009 @ 11:31 am
Sure Start one of new Labour’s best achievment I think we can agree but I hear that they too (like Child Care services)are about to get bogged down with child protection work (handed over by overstretched childrens social services) and thus corrupt the key preventitive role they were established for (same thing happened with Child Care in social services a long time ago). It wont be long before they will be spending X% of time on the computers inputting data to service the management anxiety over child protection issues handed down from central government.
Comment by Neil Williams — 21 November, 2009 @ 11:45 am
I’m not sure whether it is accurate to decribe Cathy Ashton as the “key architecht” of Sure Start Centres.
Sure Start local programmes were opened in waves from 1999 and the final wave started in 2003. Ashton served as Minister for Sure Start between 2002 and 2004, several years after the scheme was first designed and implemented.
I would assume crediting her with Sue Start is a good spin tactice to deflect from the fact few have heard of her and that she has seemingly never been elected to office.
Comment by Alex — 21 November, 2009 @ 12:14 pm
The interesting thing for me about Sure Start is that it’s a Home Office programme, ultimately justified in terms of crime prevention. This may not mean much in practice - the people delivering the service are generally doing a good job - but it’s worth flagging up the ‘criminalisation’ of social policy as a trend in New Labour.
Comment by Phil — 21 November, 2009 @ 12:41 pm
‘at least Cathy Ashton is a politician of real substance who has done something good’
If so, why couldn’t she have risen to her current position of political power by standing and winning elections rather than through personal appointment? You remember - democracy and all that. Isn’t this blog supposed to be called ‘Socialist Unity’ - rather than ‘New Labour Unity’?
Comment by Snowball — 21 November, 2009 @ 1:00 pm
Another fatuous rightwing comment from a blogger fast becoming a laughing stock on the left. The Stan Laurel of Sociulust Umity.
Congratulations to Cathy Ashton an unelected Neo Con Ally of Browns Privatising Labour Party.
Labours Sure Start Policy in Iraq worked really well too
Hundreds of thousands of kids physichally lifted out of poverty and blasted to bits by bombs and rockets. Result thousands maimed, traumatised and shredded by the Labour Party and its gutless members.
For every pound the Labour Party spent killing Iraqi kids their rich pals gained hundreds in oil, aid, payoffs to Haliburton, military budgets and dividends.
The Labour Party,
corrupt, torturing, Privatising, anti-democratic and bloodstained.
Labour the Party of the unelected wealthy few against the many. Not worth anyones vote, support or time.
Comment by Red Bandits — 21 November, 2009 @ 1:03 pm
Nice to socialists waxing lyrical about Baroness Ashton of Upholland. I’m thoroughly pleased that Lady Ashton was the key architecht behind Sure Start scheme: it’s proof that the aristocracy of this country really do care for our poor, disadvantaged, needy, deprived and socially exluded children
Comment by Owen — 21 November, 2009 @ 1:38 pm
Charles Murray :
Our grandparents thought you couldn’t “do” with a youngster who wasn’t brought up right. Today’s translation: social programmes for intervening with children at risk have consistently meagre results. This finding has even longer shelves of analysis than the literature on the children of single parents.
During the 1960s and 1970s, the Americans tried everything: pre-school socialisation programmes, enrichment programmes in elementary schools, programmes that provided guaranteed jobs for young people without skills, ones that provided on-the-job training, programmes that sent young people without skills to residential centres for extended skills training and psychological preparation for the world of work, programmes to prevent school dropout, and so on. These are just the efforts aimed at individuals. I won’t even try to list the varieties of programmes that went under the heading of “community development”. They were also the most notorious failures.
We know the programmes didn’t work because all of them were accompanied by evaluations. I was a programme evaluator from 1968 to 1981. The most eminent of America’s experts on programme evaluation — a liberal sociologist named Peter Rossi — distilled this vast experience into what he called the Iron Law of Evaluation: “The expected value of any net impact assessment of any large-scale social programme is zero.” The Iron Law has not been overturned by subsequent experience.
I should add a corollary to it, however: “The initial media accounts of social programmes that ultimately fail are always positive.” Every training programme for young men or parenting programme for young women can produce a heart-warming success story for the evening news. None produces long-term group results that survive scrutiny.
None of this experience crosses the Atlantic. When the Blair government began its ambitious job-training programmes, I wondered whether anyone within the bowels of the appropriate ministries said: “You know, the Americans tried lots of these things years ago. I wonder how they worked?” But apparently nobody did or nobody listened. Now the government seems ready to admit that the results of the training programmes have been dismal. But as it sets off on the next round of bright ideas, I still don’t hear anyone saying: “You know, the Americans tried those programmes too . . .”
The bottom line for this accumulation of experience in America is that it is impossible to make up for parenting deficits through outside interventions. I realise this is still an intellectually unacceptable thing to say in Britain. It used to be intellectually unacceptable in the United States as well. No longer. We’ve been there, done that.
Comment by Laban — 21 November, 2009 @ 2:26 pm
Andy - have you got a reference for those ‘evidence based calculations’ ?
Comment by Laban — 21 November, 2009 @ 2:34 pm
I’ve seen it all now. American neo-cons on SUN quoting the bell curve. By what curious route do they arrive on a socialist website? Is it just a feature of the age of the internet? Or is Harry’s Place the key link?
Comment by johng — 21 November, 2009 @ 3:10 pm
Oh and we’ve seen your brave new world. And we don’t like it. And nor apparently do most Americans. Sell your wares elsewhere.
Comment by johng — 21 November, 2009 @ 3:10 pm
johng’s ‘thought’ process as applied to ‘political debate’.
Murray … neo-con … Bell Curve … racist … Republican … wibble … exterminate !
I suppose it’s a lot easier than argument.
Comment by Laban — 21 November, 2009 @ 3:22 pm
“Some arguments are best answered with rifles”.
V I Lenin.
Comment by johng — 21 November, 2009 @ 3:29 pm
A lifelong apparatchik. Whatever happened to democracy? It was a good idea while it lasted.
Comment by Charles Dexter Ward — 21 November, 2009 @ 3:35 pm
I agree with johng in 13. Nothing to be gained from arguing with punks who quote a thoroughly discredited piece of racist garbage.
Comment by christian h. — 21 November, 2009 @ 3:51 pm
whats democracy got to do with it?
Comment by johng — 21 November, 2009 @ 4:03 pm
Of course if American conservatives were really concerned about family values they would protect mothers from being forced to neglect their children by working insane long hours making money for corporate employers.
Reason for American social problems is sick American value sytem worshipping money and regarding the poor as losers.
If you are concerned about the family, poverty and reducing the underclass there is no alternative to a welfare state and limits on employers power to exploit their workers.
Comment by attila — 21 November, 2009 @ 4:06 pm
For my money Tory Eurosceptic Daniel Hannan was pretty close to the mark when he observed how anti-democratic this whole procedure was. The European ruling class’ political representatives had a nice dinner and decided who would speak for them in international fora and they chose someone whose political life has been one big rightward move and never was elected to anything. What is there to celebrate in that?
Comment by Liam — 21 November, 2009 @ 4:06 pm
Re Charles Murray his racist piece of garbage, the Bell Curve may be contemptible but interestingly enough he came to the conclusion that there should be a basic income for everyone of $10,000 a year just for being alive. Abolish all the means tested bureaucratic conditional benefits that humiliate and hurt the poor and set up perverse incentives. Then you can afford to leave everything else to the market.
Comment by attila — 21 November, 2009 @ 4:09 pm
I’m very glad she got one of the top two positions rather than Blair, but I don’t feel any need to congratulate her. Where was my vote? I’m very much in favour of having an EU President and Foreign Minister, but the manner in which they were brought in has spat in the face of democracy. I’m not even outraged that there was no referendum on Lisbon - it was quite clear, in Britain at least, that a referendum on Europe is another word for voting no - but to create these positions and elevate them beyond public accountability is outrageous.
Comment by Salman — 21 November, 2009 @ 5:07 pm
#7
“thoroughly pleased that Lady Ashton was the key architecht behind Sure Start scheme: it’s proof that the aristocracy of this country really do care for our poor, ”
????
How is she an aristocrat???
Comment by Andy Newman — 21 November, 2009 @ 5:37 pm
Yes good point Salman. It is shocking that people are appointed at a private dinner party. No wonder people hold the EU with such contempt.
Comment by Owen — 21 November, 2009 @ 5:40 pm
Are you sure that wasn’t a Goering quote, johng ?
Comment by Laban — 21 November, 2009 @ 5:44 pm
Apoligies to Andy and Lady Ashton about my earlier comments that Lady Ashton was part of the aristocracy. Lady Ashton is offically a Baroness so I think that makes her part of the nobility. So if it makes Andy happy I will rephrase my sentence and say that its good that some sections of the nobility care for the poor and needy.
Comment by Owen — 21 November, 2009 @ 5:48 pm
“Are you sure that wasn’t a Goering quote, johng ?”
How’s Iraq and Afghanistan going Laban? Blown up any kids today?
Comment by Ray — 21 November, 2009 @ 6:05 pm
#24 she is an appointed member of parliament, and hasn’t been elected, but she is not in any way part of the nobility in the normal understanding of the word.
Comment by Andy Newman — 21 November, 2009 @ 6:11 pm
What interest me here is how socialists are so keen to simply follow the Tory agenda on this subject.
For sure, the EU is undemocratic, temm us something we don’t know. But given there are no elections, cathy Ashton cannnot be criticised for not being elected to this post. you can only use the mechansim that exists.
Howebvr, there is an opportunity, as I have done, to use this zstory to flag up the act that SureStart, which is a major benefit to disadvantaged families and children is under atack by the Tories
Ok we get it, you are more wing that Cathy Ashton. Well done, I am sure that makes you feel very happy. But the real immediate issue is to defend those aspect of social improvement that Labour have introduced and resist what the Torys are threatening.
Comment by Andy Newman — 21 November, 2009 @ 6:28 pm
yup. state and revolution I believe. Or perhaps it was left wing communism an infantile disorder. One of those.
Comment by johng — 21 November, 2009 @ 6:30 pm
My understanding is that a Baroness is offically part of the British nobility-but I stand corrected if that is not the case.
I agree with you about Sure Start and it would be a great loss if this service was cut by any government. And I’m not trying to be more left wing than Lady Ashton-I was just explaining that people should be elected. I’m actually pro-EU and would support extending more power to the European parliament. But thats another debate
Comment by Owen — 21 November, 2009 @ 6:34 pm
Andy Newman now thinks the house of lords and unappointed EU presidents are good things. Sweepstake on when he starts bigging up the monarchy?
Comment by Keith Watermelon — 21 November, 2009 @ 6:51 pm
what social improvement Andy?
there do many damage the good and there push this country back years .
Time and time again matey ,if some good as come out of new labour it been took over by the free markat thinking.
Comment by steelcityred — 21 November, 2009 @ 6:52 pm
Andy, how is the application going to stand as a parliamentary candidate for the Labour Party?
Comment by Pego — 21 November, 2009 @ 6:54 pm
#30
“Andy Newman now thinks the house of lords and unappointed EU presidents are good things. ”
No I don’t think unelected appointments are good, but neither is it such a scandal it is worth all this boring and predictable ineffectual leftist sounding off.
The EU is undemocratic, who knew?
#31 “what social improvement Andy?”
SureStart. haven’t you been paing attention.
All this labour is as bad as the Tories stuff is pathetic.
Comment by Andy Newman — 21 November, 2009 @ 7:00 pm
I note your silence on the question of the lords though. Are you hoping Gordon will give you a seat?
Comment by Keith Watermelon — 21 November, 2009 @ 7:03 pm
my view of the Lrds is here:
http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=280
Comment by Andy Newman — 21 November, 2009 @ 7:13 pm
Sure Start? You’re beginning to sound like Polly Toynbee. Crumbs off the table, with a significant uptake from the middle classes. Meanwhile, grotesque inequality and child poverty but I’m sure Andy Newman will wax lyrical about some exciting New Labour targets they’ve carried on plucking out the air.
Comment by Doug — 21 November, 2009 @ 7:26 pm
“with a significant uptake from the middle classes.”
????
Well given that Children’s centres are located in the most deprived areas that clearly is not true.
Comment by Andy Newman — 21 November, 2009 @ 7:45 pm
Pathetic is what new labour is and yes we migth get a tory goverment next but we had that for the last 10 years (yes i know then been in power for 12 years)
Am a ex-member of said party and like a lot of others it make my cry to see a party take on the all as help working ppl sold out just about everything what was good about it
Comment by steelcityred — 21 November, 2009 @ 7:46 pm
I wish the Labour Party would stop doing stuff like this then I could criticise them all the time with a clear conscience.
Can I just put out a word for mother Florence, and six-year old Precious, unexpectedly abducted by UK immigration and taken to Dungavel detention centre - and now at Yarl’s Wood apparantly,
See -
Indygal Goes to Holyrood!
Here is who to email, before we’re deprived of mother and daughter first thing Monday -
email phil.woolas@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk
all the best SU
Comment by joe90 kane — 21 November, 2009 @ 8:03 pm
Another ex-CND leader who now applauds nuclear weapons and warmongering. I think it should be remembered that she’s not in charge of childcare policy for the EU, but foreign policy and she has toed every New Labour warmongering line to climb the greasy pole.
Try asking her what her policy is on US and British nuclear weapons and what she thinks about the £30billion New Labour is committed to spending on the Trident replacement instead of on schools, hospitals and the welfare state. On yes, and don’t mention the war!
Comment by Prinkipo Exile — 21 November, 2009 @ 8:22 pm
But surely it’s a great thing to have in post an unelected warmonger who has a connection with a half-decent policy (in another area completely, nothing whatsoever to do with this job)? Or don’t you care? You ultra-left fat arse.
Comment by KrisS — 21 November, 2009 @ 8:36 pm
1. Not all the USA experiments failed. One was measured over 25 years and had excellent results. Google Highscope for more if your interested. It helped inform Surestart.
2. There was indeed significant colonisation of Surestart by the middleclasses. Check the evaluations.
3. Charles Murray found the same traits in criminals as he did in police and soldiers. He supressed that part of his evidence. I saw him challenged on it - he winced but could not deny it.
‘at least Cathy Ashton is a politician of real substance who has done something good’ Not really but she is not the Devil either.
Comment by Christy — 21 November, 2009 @ 8:58 pm
Sure Start - all about acculturation, or ’schooling Mum’ as someone put it. Fortunately, the indended target group, New Labour’s untermensch, have largely escaped unscathed, as those more fortunate parents, already acculturated to the business of family-oriented child rearing, were the ones who made most of it. Of course, it could still qualify as New Labour’s ‘best policy’.
As for Phil Woolas I remember him sitting bemulleted on the floor at a party in London during the mid-80s, sucking on a spliff for all he was worth.
Comment by Jonathan — 21 November, 2009 @ 8:59 pm
As for Phil Woolas I remember him sitting bemulleted on the floor at a party in London during the mid-80s, sucking on a spliff for all he was worth.
- Top man Jonathan.
Please click on the email link and send just the shortest and courtiouse of emails to splifferooni Woolas on behalf of this beautiful mother and daighter couple mate.
Comment by joe90 kane — 21 November, 2009 @ 9:18 pm
with a significant uptake from the middle classes.”
????
Well given that Children’s centres are located in the most deprived areas that clearly is not true.
Comment by Andy Newman — 21 November, 2009 @ 7:45 pm
There’s 2 surestart children’s centres about half a mile in opposite directions from my house. Both in deprived areas. The nurseries are totally dominated by middle class children because their parents are the only ones who can afford the £40 per day fee. When a child gets to the age of 3, they are entitled to 2 and a half days free nursery placement.
It’s almost impossible to get your children in them as they have massive waiting lists. My daughter has been on the waiting list for 2 years and will probably get offered a place next year when she’s three, even though income support parents are supposed to have priority.Some of the surestart services are good but they are only normal health visitor services with a few extras such as speech and language specialists and behaviour.
There’s nothing that surestart centres do that could directly lift people out of poverty but they are better than nothing. But they are not the panacea beloved of labour propaganda.
Comment by Ryan O'Connor — 21 November, 2009 @ 9:30 pm
Joe90 - I’ll do just that mate.
Comment by Jonathan — 21 November, 2009 @ 9:35 pm
Top man Jonathan.
Don’t think I’m into emotional blackmail or anything like that.
Folks do what they do.
It’s all a bit ironic what’s happening to Precious and Florence, especially after the annual sick-bucket fest ‘Children in Need’ that the plight of children subjected to British-style gestapo middle-of-the-night Kafka tactics don’t get an airing, when we can all do something about it at the time.
Maybe next year, when Precious has been subjected to genital mutilation, she’ll be featured on Children in Need, but I doubt it.
All the best
Comment by joe90 kane — 21 November, 2009 @ 9:44 pm
Andy - I’m afraid there is nothing in Sure Start for anyone who thinks the real problem facing society is ruling class power rather than working class recidivism. The national evaluation of Sure Start found that the programme was being taken up by people already endowed with the appropriate attitudes to family and parenting. We should be grateful that most of the delinquents have escaped re-programming.
Comment by Jonathan — 21 November, 2009 @ 9:46 pm
Done, Joe. I’ve not seen Phil Woolas in several years or been in contact with him. But, I quite liked him back then. He’s gone off the tracks big time and to what end? His career plateaued at Minister of State level several years ago. He must be disappointed.
Comment by Jonathan — 21 November, 2009 @ 10:03 pm
Andy when will be jumping ship from RESPECT to Labour surely it is only a matter of months now, if not weeks?
Is a council seat really worth it?
Comment by S.O — 21 November, 2009 @ 10:42 pm
48-This is just ultra-leftist nonsense. Whether you like it or not there is a problem with parenting in many working class areas (and also middle class) and Sure start is a small step in the right direction-it may not be challenging the ‘real problem facing society which is ruling class power’ but it is making a small difference everyday in socially excluded communities. And that’s what counts.
Comment by Owen — 21 November, 2009 @ 10:42 pm
It’s not ultra-left, Owen. That’s way wide of the mark. On the contrary, what I wrote in #48 is a pretty mainstream critique of Sure Start in social policy research. The point about take-up by the wrong people is direct from the evaluation commissioned by New Labour.
I’m afraid Sure Start was not a pro-working class policy, it was one of a suite of social engineering policies, including the appalling ‘mixed communities’ designed to make working class people more like the middle classes.
Comment by Jonathan — 21 November, 2009 @ 10:57 pm
#27 For sure, the EU is undemocratic, temm us something we don’t know. But given there are no elections, cathy Ashton cannnot be criticised for not being elected to this post. you can only use the mechansim that exists.
Mr. Newman, perhaps she could have said ‘this is undemocratic and I will have no part of it.’
But I suppose they are too busy taking ‘democracy’ to Afghanistan to bring up the democracy issue in the EU
Comment by Peter Hine — 21 November, 2009 @ 11:18 pm
Could we not take some democracy to the House of Lords, in the same way?
Comment by KrisS — 21 November, 2009 @ 11:20 pm
And @ #37
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article663212.ece
or are Tony Blair and Beverley Hughes irreconcilable ultra left critics of the New Labour agenda who can’t see the wood for the trees?
Comment by paulm — 21 November, 2009 @ 11:45 pm
Andy, didn’t you oppose the EU constitution/Lisbon Treaty which allowed this post to be created?
And what do you think the EU foreign affairs representative’s job is? Isn’t this really a puff piece for someone whose job role is going to advance the militarisation of the EU and help better coordinate NATO…
Comment by David — 21 November, 2009 @ 11:47 pm
Jonathon wrote:
‘Afraid there is nothing in Sure Start for anyone who thinks the real problem facing society is ruling class power rather than working class recidivism’.
And then went onto argue:
‘We should be grateful that most of the delinquents have escaped re-programming’.
And you claim this is not ultra-leftist!I would hardly say this constitutes a mainstream critique in social policy-sounds more like 1970s radical sociology than mainsteam contemporary social policy?. If you feel this way about Sure Start, particualry in regards to the sentence I quoted above, then I suppose you would be in favour of the Sure Start being scrapped. To suggest that some ‘delinquents have escaped being re-programmed’ sounds like you have a very romanticised view of the working class.
Comment by Owen — 21 November, 2009 @ 11:52 pm
Owen
I would be in favour of Sure Start being scrapped in favour of an entirely different set of policies. I certainly don’t have a romanticised view of the working class, but I reject the idea that what it needs is a dose of middle class culture. The viewpoint I’m expressing, that Sure Start is about social engineering, is widely shared among social policy analysts who have no affinity with Marxism. If you like, I will supply you with some references from mainstream academic publications. You can find the national evaluation documents easily enough without my help.
Comment by Jonathan — 22 November, 2009 @ 12:04 am
Get a life - or just open your eyes.
Surestart “warts and all” improves the quality of life of many living in poverty.
Anyone with an ounce of responsibilty and socialists - will need to defend our few community services…in minthw to come!
Surestart does not address structural inequality and poverty.Surprise, surprise learned comrades…..
Comment by bmcc — 22 November, 2009 @ 12:09 am
bmcc - it doesn’t address poverty and inequality at all. It addresses the moral turpitude of the working classes. Classic patrician-disciplinarian conservatism. As mentioned two or three times on this thread, mine is not a view confined to the hard left. It is mainstream.
Comment by Jonathan — 22 November, 2009 @ 12:19 am
Surestart was sound enough as a policy when kids are having kids its responsible to offer support. But of course many of the target group is difficult to work with and also those who did not need Surestart wanted it. So there you go one of Labour’s better iniatives diluted in implementation. It is time for the Left to accept that chaotic lifestyles need to dealt with for the greater good of the working class communities who are most likely to be victims of the consequences. The days when the working class policed itself have gone.
Comment by Christy — 22 November, 2009 @ 1:08 am
Sure Start will have to be defended, as will almost every other aspect of state intervention except wars and funding voluntary sector charities and faith groups in place of public services.
Not sure if linking sure start with unelected and soon to be unpopular Brussels appointees is the best way to mount that defence. We can fight for public services without being new labour cheerleaders.
Comment by Jota — 22 November, 2009 @ 9:25 am
Defending again sorry but no let move on ,
Comment by steelcityred — 22 November, 2009 @ 9:59 am
I think expenditure and investment have to be defended, not patronizing conservative policies like Sure Start.
Comment by Jonathan — 22 November, 2009 @ 12:15 pm
Ashton is a fixer and has been appointed not for her outgoing personality but because it is hoped that with the introduction of majority voting she will be able to pour oil on troubled waters and negotiate unprincipled compromises between pissed off foreign ministers. She won’t. Majority voting will slowly exsacerbate the already existing differences and poison the relations between the EU members until it ultimately collapses into competing blocks. This is the beginning of the end for the EU. Blair would have been the choice for an outgoing, united, confident, imperialist Europe.
Comment by Eeeeuuu — 22 November, 2009 @ 2:31 pm
‘I think expenditure and investment have to be defended, not patronizing conservative policies like Sure Start’.
So you are saying that Sure Start should be scrapped?
Comment by Owen — 22 November, 2009 @ 7:02 pm
“I think expenditure and investment have to be defended, not patronizing conservative policies like Sure Start.”
You see your wrong there. The conservative approach is to do nothing and leave the prisons to take strain eventually. Ideally privatised prisons. The socialist approach is to intervene as early and often as necessary. To make for better lives. If you don’t believe in doing that what is the point?
Comment by Christy — 22 November, 2009 @ 8:37 pm
If you read the biography sketch on BBC Ceefax, you might be forvien for thinking that Cathy Ashton’s activities began when she was appointed a life Peer.
That’s just a load of sloppy journalism and BBC bias. The clue is in her title Baroness Ashton of Upholland.
She was elected, several times, to Lancashire County Council.
Comment by Alan Ji — 22 November, 2009 @ 9:23 pm
‘She was elected, several times, to Lancashire County Council.’
Then she does have a mandate to vote at Lancashire County Council meetings.
Comment by AJT — 22 November, 2009 @ 9:48 pm
Christy - that’s a caricature of Thatcherism. Neoliberals are interventionists, they cannot help it. There is not a single neoliberal regime out there that has been able to avoid it. They always end up having to worry about social cohesion and so proselytize church, family, nation, community etc etc drawing on the repertoire of traditional conservative values. That is over and above the heavy duty policing to which you rightly draw attention. The neo-cons did it the USA, Thatcher started doing it here towards the late 1980s after the unions were defeated and New Labour’s interventions around welfare reform, active citizenship etc etc are clearly in the Conservative tradition. The fact that they involve spending money does not mean there is anything in them worthy of support from socialists. Sure Start and all the other paraphernalia around ‘New Deal’ are part of the problem and can be traced back directly to the thinking of the late Thatcher period.
Comment by Jonathan — 22 November, 2009 @ 10:09 pm
Jonathan, I suggest you visit, ideally at night, the communities in this country that were decimated by Thatcherism. We now live with the results. I think it would be instructive for you.
The Thatcherites managed to avoid social intervention aimed at individuals. In fact Neo cons are generally indifferent to the consequences of their actions. That’s why they have the army and the police. There was a genuine attempt by New Labour in their first term at policy to address some of the consequences of Thatcherism on working class communities. Then they got distracted.
Any progressive Government will have to deal with these issues. I did not mention over heavy policing you made that up. In fact the tragedy is many areas are woefully underpoliced. We will come back when you have been murdered-that sort of thing.
Can I suggest,and I mean this well, you get your head out of your arse and accept that there are real problems that need intervention.
Comment by Christy — 22 November, 2009 @ 11:13 pm
Christie. I have spent a lot of time in those places. I don’t see why you think it’s acceptable to indulge in personal abuse. It doesn’t win arguments or change worlds.
Comment by Anonymous — 22 November, 2009 @ 11:33 pm
I read a two-word review of New Labour’s SureStart. I think it was `Shit Start’.
Clearly there are some on this thread that think that New Labourism isn’t sufficiently discredited yet. They want election slogans like:
tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime; education, education, education; supplemented by:
`but this time we really mean it man’.
Or, how about `socialism good, social mobility better… baaahhh!’?
Voting labour in solidarity with those who have illusions or who just want to keep the tories out is not the same as rationalising New Labour’s patronising, anti-working class nasty policies. In any case, it’s snip, snip, snip from here on in and if that doesn’t work let inflation rip.
I see `Tory Dave’ is promising an emergency budget within 50 days of getting elected if he does in which he will slash public funding and create the `conditions for growth’. The arse is either just cynical or really doesn’t understand that there is no basis for growth anymore. There are hundreds of thousands of cars sitting unsold in factory car parks along with billions of other commodities. Capitalism is glutted, it is suffering from over-production, it cannot be helped. What we need now is not growth but consolidation and on that basis humanity can eventually go forward. Share the wealth, share the work.
Comment by David Ellis — 23 November, 2009 @ 1:37 pm
Well if you have been to those places did you notice how the eldery only came out in the morning? Did you notice how those deemed to be different and vulnerable were preyed upon? Did you observe the high levels of casual and meaningless violence? And if you did notice those things did you think they were OK?
Comment by Christy — 23 November, 2009 @ 3:55 pm
#74 I don’t pretend to know much about SureStart, although I was under the impression that it was far wider than simply being aimed at the potentially “disfunctional”.
Christy, given your comments, I would be interested to know what you think about ASBOs and the related policies and legislation.
Personally I have big problems with them.
Btw so as you know, I live in a housing association (until recently Council) flat in an area of inner city Manchester with gang related problems, and an elderly neighbour of mine was murdered a few years ago in her own home.
Comment by Armchair — 23 November, 2009 @ 4:07 pm
There may be issues with the funding of Sure Start and I do have issues with the ‘voluntary’ or ‘third sector’ providing services which should be run by local government.
However to say that Sure Start is ‘top-down cultural engineering based on conservative values’ is of no help at all and sounds like a first year Social Policy student who has just read Marx for the first time.
I suppose from a structuralist/Marxist perspective you could say that about most of the welfare state.
Meanwhile, in the real world people at Sure start do a difficult job in difficult circumastances-child protection, childcare, providing volunteering opportunities for parents or working with parents to help them back into work or college, providing counselling services and so on.
All is not perfect-but to argue these abstract critiques of welfarism as Jonathon does during a time of economic recesssion and cuts in services serves no positive purpose whatsover.
Comment by Owen — 23 November, 2009 @ 8:06 pm
“Christie - I don’t see your point.” My point is it behoves us to intervene and prevent people living in fear and misery. It behoves us to prevent an endless cycle of chaotic criminal lives. Surestart was part of addressing that issue. You seem to be little thin skinned so let me say I think protracted experience of the realities of living on an Estate would usefully change you world view. If you lasted - which you wouldn’t.
Armchair if we ever have a Criminal Justice thread here I will contribute fully. However in brief yes there are both conceptual and implementation problems with New Labour’s Crime legislation. There is a bigger problem with police culture. If you have a specific issue you want to talk about I will give you my views. I also live somewhere where people get murdered and gang violence is a reality.
Comment by Christy — 23 November, 2009 @ 10:44 pm
Apologies for the insult-but I think your perspective is too academic. Foucualt does indeed have a valuable contribution to make in terms of the welfare state and the ways in which sites such as social work, education, pscyhology etc act as controlling agents. But this is not the issue. Context is everything here. This is not an academic debate on the purposes of welfarism under capitalist societies-Instead this a practical/politcal issue about defending a public service from potential Tory cuts.
Comment by Owen — 23 November, 2009 @ 10:49 pm
Sigh… you really wouldn’t last would you. These are big issues and the Left damages its credibility if it fails to address them in a coherent fashion that reflects the reality of working class experience. For you its a theorectical exercise carried out at a safe distance with a little lip service about ‘working class communities should be defended’. Yes indeed but how, here and now do you do that? Surestart was a well infomed and intentioned initiative that failed in implementation. Improving life chances does not equate ‘make(ing) people active in their own subjection.’.
I will tell you what a chaotic life is - its when your mother is a smackhead who habitually steals and prostitutes herself to feed her habit, your father when he is not in prison occasionaly drops by to rape your sister and knock you and your mother about before disapearing with whatever money you have. You are excluded from school and involved in burglary and robbery. Your family are involved with fourteen types of State agency but life just chugs along. You have just started to deal but unfortunatley have missed a payment. Now your really in trouble. True instance Jonathon and that’s chaotic.
Comment by Christy — 24 November, 2009 @ 11:30 am
#78
JOnatahan
It has been a long term goal of the left to reduce inequality. But how that is accomplished is not so easy.
In particular what has happened is a paradoxical one that impoved social mobility and a more meriticratic society compared to 30 or 50 years so has still left “the last domino standing” - that there is a 8% to 10% of the population who are very hard to help out of poverty; and this is partly because of their own reluctance to do the things that would improve their life; and they make choices which contribute to their own disadantage.
You can take the view that the Tories do, that these people shoudl be abandoned; or you can take the mainstream labour movement view that a mixture of carrot and stick is need to incentivise a change of behaviour. The ultra-left view that society should simply collude in perpetuatig such inequality for ever, on some sort of spurious celebration of the rebel glamour of being dirt poor is pathetic.
In the hard word of real politics the problem of stubborn and intractable social; disadbatge has proved hard for polticians of all stripes to find solutiosn to. Surestart was envisioned as an attempt to help parents to support children in early years to give the youngsetrs a better chance of escaping disadvantage. It makes me angry too see you celebrating the idea that parents might somehow thwart the system by refusing help to learn how to be a better parent. It seems thatt to your the real life benefits to the youngc children who might be helped are less important that your childish desire to sound clever by innanely parroting long words you have learned from books
Comment by Andy Newman — 24 November, 2009 @ 1:04 pm
`In the hard word of real politics the problem of stubborn and intractable social; disadbatge has proved hard for polticians of all stripes to find solutiosn to.’
This is a joke right? New Labour bought in a million ready-trained Polish workers rather than spend the necessary money to end structural unemployment even though they’ve had 12 years to do it. Of course, now they want these people off the dole or sick benefit when the poles have gone home and there are no jobs or money except in the banking sector.
By the way did you see Gordon Brown pledge £1 million to Cumbria on the news the other day. Wow, a whole million. That should get them off to a sure start…not!
Comment by David Ellis — 24 November, 2009 @ 1:45 pm
#86
Dave Ellis, do you honestly believe that everyone on benefits is keen to work, and only prevented by the lack of jobs?
Whe we usually discus this, we have people like Louise poppoing up and defending the idea that people should be able to choose not to work, and should be paid generously by the state while they do so. IMO that is not a socialist argument. So tis attitude not only exists it has defenders
From each accordinig to their ability, to each accordig to their need is the socialist viewpoint.
Comment by Andy Newman — 24 November, 2009 @ 2:12 pm
“It is really about equipping working class people with the right attitudes for getting on in a vicious neoliberal dystopia driven by the New Labour principle that there shall be no entitlements unless people first meet their obligations.”
Assuming for a second that’s all it is, which it isn’t, why are you opposed to this? Would you rather working class people were the only ones not equipped for coping with this society? I assumed everyone on the left shared the joint goals to make the working class as well-off as possible whilst simultaneously seeking their political support for wider change, and that we just disagreed on what change meant exactly.
I see no possible justification for a socialist to oppose any help available to working class people to cope with the world as it is, even if you want that world to change, and you haven’t given one.
“When it talks about ‘chaotic lives’, that’s what it really means.”
No, it means drug addiction, alcoholism, worklessness, poverty, violence etc. You can pretend these aren’t chaotic if you like. I’m sure Foucault (the giant nihilistic nitwit that he was) would approve.
Comment by reader — 24 November, 2009 @ 2:48 pm
Well Im neither a Tory or a new labourite and if I do write well. That is probably because its from first hand experience. As I say it informs perspective. If on the otherhand I had been buffered against such unpleasant realities I dare say I would find it much easier to dismiss them.
Comment by Christy — 24 November, 2009 @ 4:29 pm
Social mobility has obvioulsy massively changed compared to 50 years ago, when Britains’s class structure was very highly stratified, based upon relatively arbitrary rules, that did not reflect merit.
To say that “social mobility has slowed down in our country” is completely compatible with observing that there has been an enormous shift in social mobility compared to the previous situation; and that britain is much much more meriticratic than it was. looking back to before the war it was charecteristic of working class life that people regardless of intellectual or cultural level had very similar work and social prospects. That has not been true for several generations.
The erosion of older forms of class snobbery has brought with it a different form of social stratification, because meriticracy can be as resistant to social mobility as status related class structure; and of course the former Bullingdon Club members getting ready to run the country are evidence that wealth and connections still count.
I am sorry jonatahan, but completely disagree that you don’t deserve juvenile insults when you write thnings like:
Insults are the only rational response. Helping mothers with parenting skills is a good thing, not a dastardly drive towards social conformity
And in my view anyone who reduces all problems in society to “ruling class power” should be treated with utter contempt.
Comment by Andy Newman — 24 November, 2009 @ 4:31 pm
I will have to live with your ‘utter contempt’ and desist from posting on your site. I don’t usually because the tenor of the discussion is often so vile, but I’ve been sucked in the past few days. Silly me. That said, one or two of the postings on this thread have made me think I should revisit the evidence on Sure Start/Head Start. Who knows. Maybe I’ll change my mind.
As a parting shot on social mobility, the reports I refer to appear to contradict your view more substantively than my ill-chosen one-liner from Milburn. This is more comprehensive.
“The first wave of social mobility experienced by the post-war generation has since flattened out. For the most recent cohort surveyed (born in 1970) the rates of social mobility are very similar to those of the previous cohort (born in 1958). A comparison of sons born in 1958 with those born in 1970 shows that there has been a small reduction in the proportion obtaining better jobs than their fathers (see figure 1e). Although there is some recent evidence that the UK may have reached the bottom of a long-running decline in social mobility, access to society’s top jobs and professions has become less, not more, socially representative over time” (p. 18).
These are the findings from the LSE/Sutton Trust report:
“In a comparison of eight European and North American countries, Britain and the United States have the lowest social mobility
Social mobility in Britain has declined whereas in the US it is stable
Part of the reason for Britain’s decline has been that the better off have benefited disproportionately from increased educational opportunity”. …
“Comparing surveys of children born in the 1950s and the 1970s, the researchers went on to examine the reason for Britain’s low, and declining, mobility. They found that it is in part due to the strong and increasing relationship between family income and educational attainment. …
The researchers concluded: ‘The strength of the relationship between educational attainment and family income, especially for access to higher education, is at the heart of Britain’s low mobility culture and what sets us apart from other European and North American countries.’
Sir Peter Lampl, chairman of the Sutton Trust, said: ‘These findings are truly shocking. The results show that social mobility in Britain is much lower than in other advanced countries and is declining - those from less privileged backgrounds are more likely to continue facing disadvantage into adulthood, and the affluent continue to benefit disproportionately from educational opportunities”.
Sorry to quote at length, but these conclusions are pretty stark. All this stuff is available online.
Comment by Jonathan — 24 November, 2009 @ 6:30 pm
Andy
“We will delete racist, homophobic, sexist, and derogatory comments about people with physical disabilities or mental distress. Comments will also be deleted that are offensive and insulting about individuals. We will also delete comments by “trolls”, i.e those people whose purpose is to impede debate and who post comments with no regard to the subject matter of debate but whose sole purpose and intention is the baiting of other people.
We expect comrades to behave in a comradely and fraternal way and to treat each other with respect. We will moderate comments in a way that a Chair moderates a meeting.
Bad behaviour stifles debate. It infringes upon others right to freedom of speech”.
As your policy encourages fraternal debate and forbids personal insults, don’t you think that you, at least, should stick to it?
Comment by Jonathan — 24 November, 2009 @ 6:34 pm
Jonathan
As you wrote in all seriousness “the real problem facing society is ruling class power” in a thread dedicated to discussion of the very real problem of how to help disadvanted and often culturally impoverished parents care for young children, you can hardly expect to be treated seriously.
My wife has worked in early years with a charity supporting Children’s centres, and now works as a TA in a reception class in a deprived part of swindon. It is heartbreaking to see children who have been abused and neglected, often becasue parents can’t cope, have inadequate support networks, and simply don’t even know how to play or talk to their children.
By the time they are four, some children are already so disadvantaged by their early years expereince that their whole life is probably mapped out as failure, poverty and social exclusion.
So when someone like you writes
“Fortunately, the indended target group, New Labour’s untermensch, have largely escaped unscathed”
means that you think it is a good thing thaty a two year old child is plonked in front of a TV all day, only fed on crisps, and in one case I know of a child started school agaed four years old only knowing how to say two words “fuck” and “wank”.
So your attitude is contemptible, that you don’t care about real poverty of real children, and how the government has tried to help them, by providing help and training to parants on how to play with and talk to their children.
instread you talk in academic wank about “its attempt to construct new ‘governmentalities’ and make people active in their own subjection”
Can’t you see that when “leftists” like you dismiss attempts to help people with real difficluties, then it makes real world socialists like us angry with you, and justifiably so.
on the subject of social mobility, I see you quote from the LSE/Sutton Trust report, showing that I was right all along, and you were wrong. that was big of you, thanks.
Comment by Andy Newman — 24 November, 2009 @ 7:04 pm
Has Andy handed in his nomination form as PPC for Swindon Labour Party yet?
Comment by Pego — 24 November, 2009 @ 7:23 pm
Sure Start has done more for working class families than 150 years of Marxist shite. Tell it like it is, Andy! Ten more years for Labour!! Believe it folks, it’s gonna happen.
Comment by Labour voter — 24 November, 2009 @ 8:55 pm
`Can’t you see that when “leftists” like you dismiss attempts to help people with real difficluties, then it makes real world socialists like us angry with you, and justifiably so.’
You, a `real world’ socialist? All you are offering is warmed over Blairism.
`From each accordinig to their ability, to each accordig to their need is the socialist viewpoint.’
What a super-cynical piece of de-contextualising. Marx’s description of early post-capitalist societies is just that. It can in no way be applied in a capitalist system where a tiny minority privately expropriate the social product though undboubtedly you are getting amply rewarded for your abilities and are able to look after all your needs unlike those work-shy, feckless dolites. If applied in capitalism the slogan actually comes across extreme right wing so that if you have no abilities clearly you have no needs and are therefore are worthy only for euthanasia.
Comment by David Ellis — 25 November, 2009 @ 1:18 pm
A quick p.s. Not only are you offering warmed-over Blairism but you are offering it in the wake of the biggest credit cruch and banking collapse ever seen. Now if that is `real-world socialism’ then I’m a monkey’s uncle. Even Blair and Brown used to have a basis for this patronising shit.
Comment by David Ellis — 25 November, 2009 @ 1:51 pm
David
Good points, but he’s not worth bothering with. He is a bully, harassing correspondents he doesn’t like in terms that are expressly forbidden in his own code of conduct.
Comment by Jonathan — 25 November, 2009 @ 2:11 pm
#93
Jonathan
You have singularly failed to defend your point of view that the parenting help and guidence in Children’s Centres, aimed at improving the life chances of the most disadvantaged young children is “part of the problem”, as you put it.
Several people have given you real life examples of what the social problems are that Childrens’ Centres are designed to address, but you specifically prasie the idea that parents who don’t know how to look after their children, who don’t play with them or talk to them nor provide them witha decent diet, are somehow gettinig one over on the “ruling class” by coming through unscathed from advoce on how to be better parents.
You are explicitly defending the neglect of children, and colluding with the Tory call for what inadequate measures do exist for helping disadvantaged families shoud be scrapped. No onder socialists get angry at that type of abstract foolishness.
If you located your arguments in the reality of the situation, and tried to argue alternative solutions then we miight be able to debate.
Instead we get your inanity about “ruling class power” etc etc
I am not the only one exasperated by you, as Christy said above: “Can I suggest,and I mean this well, you get your head out of your arse and accept that there are real problems that need intervention.”
Comment by Andy Newman — 25 November, 2009 @ 2:20 pm