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Leeds United – Does the Fightback Start With This Sweetest of Wins?

Posted on 15/04/2013 | Leave a comment

Welcome to Leeds, Brian McDermott.  Whatever else happens during your reign at Elland Road, you could hardly have had a better start, and there were signs aplenty of much-needed change in application, atmosphere and attitude in the team, the crowd, the whole club.  And who better to win against in your first game?  Sweet as a nut.  Thank you so much.

Saturday’s 2-1 victory over Sheffield Wednesday was actually beyond sweet, for several reasons. Probably the most important of these was the fact that, after months of saying “we must win today to squeeze into the play-offs”, we’d finally woken up to the brutal reality that a run of poor results had brought us juddering down to; so now it was “we must win today because, oh sweet Jesus, we could get bloody relegated.”  That pressure has at least eased off slightly in the wake of a somewhat nervous but rapturously welcomed win.  We’re not out of the woods yet, but we may at least be out-distancing the wolf and leaving poor Grandma to face a bottom three finish on her own.

The other reasons for relishing Leeds United’s win at the expense of the Wendies, as we fondly think of them, date back to the return fixture at Hillsborough earlier in the season. For those who have forgotten, Leeds played awfully, went behind and looked well on the way to defeat.  Then Michael Tonge’s stunning equaliser was followed immediately by a yob invading the pitch from among the Leeds fans who’d turned up merely to watch the game, and proceeding to land the third-best punch of the evening on the unsuspecting face of Wendies ‘keeper Chris Kirkland.  The two best punches had been landed earlier in the piece by thuggish home defender Miguel Llera on two different Leeds players, and were ignored by the ref, in the normal FA-approved manner.  Llera, a lanky dork in a head-guard, might normally have been subject to some scrutiny after the game for his free interpretation of the rules regarding lamping your opponents in the jaw, but on this occasion the focus was almost entirely upon the actions of the miscreant who’d emerged from the away support.  Questions were asked in the House, resolutions were passed by the United Nations, the NATO alert status was upgraded to Amber and the Galactic Federation issued an ultimatum demanding that Leeds United be relocated to dwarf planet Pluto.  Or that’s how it felt.

Strangely, the only person even slightly to distract the full attention of the Fourth Estate from this heinous act of a drunken thug, was Wendies manager Dave Jones, who seemed confused as to who the real victim was in the whole sorry episode.  Interviewed directly after the match, an over-emotional and highly-strung Jones was asked about his take on events, the interviewer clearly expecting a confirmation that his ‘keeper had been assaulted, that it was disgusting and that it was all Leeds United’s fault.  What Jones came up with though was a protracted whinge about the chants directed at him by Leeds fans, that he’d had this for years, that it was disgusting and that it was all Leeds United’s fault.  He rounded off his tirade of barely-suppressed sobs by stating that the Leeds fans were “vile animals”.  All of them.  No exceptions.

In the next few days, once the laughing over Jones’ histrionics had died down somewhat, many Leeds fans took to posting pictures on social media of their sweet little eight or nine-year old lad or lass, clad in Leeds United regalia, clearly incapable of melting butter in their innocent little mouths, to point out that said little lass or lad had been tarred by the obnoxious and unwisely gobby Jones as a “Vile Animal”.  It was an apt demonstration of how silly it is to open your trap without first engaging your brain, but there was no real climb-down from the defiant Wendies boss, and – the rantings of the gutter press aside – it was generally agreed that he hadn’t come out of it too well, and had indeed made something of a prat of himself.  Apart from seeming entirely focused on his own perceived (non-physical) injuries, to the exclusion it appeared of his poor goalkeeper who had actually copped for a fourpenny one, Jones had also managed to cock a deaf ‘un to the vile – if I may borrow his word of choice – chants from the Wendies faithful about the two Leeds fans murdered in Istanbul.  Jones’ lexicon of sick insults  would seem to be a highly selective publication.  If only he could have foreseen how the “Vile Animals” tag would be taken up by the Leeds faithful, almost as an inverted badge of honour, maybe wiser counsel would have prevailed.  But it’s probably fair to say that Jones doesn’t have a wiser counsel.

Annoyingly after all this, Mr David Jones, Sheffield Wednesday’s current manager, was not apparent on the touchline at Elland Road on Saturday.  We’d all been looking forward to renewing the acquaintance, to seeing Jones trying to avoid the scornful gaze of twenty thousand people, to watching him squirm as the hated Whites (hopefully) trod his on-form Wendies into the turf.  The victory came to pass, as we know; but Jones had managed to incur a highly convenient and opportune touchline ban, so was mercifully spared running the gauntlet of vile animals and copping for another load of earthy West Yorkshire humour.  Some would say that Jones had engineered this situation by deliberately making intemperate comments after a draw at Bristol City which he knew would see him wriggle out of an Elland Road ordeal, and that it was the act of a coward and a hypocrite.  And I’d be among their number.  Dave Jones is a ridiculous and embittered little man, and I can hardly think of a more fitting victim for what was – I sincerely hope – only the first of many McDermott-inspired victories for Leeds United.

So this victory was the ideal start, but the Strife of Brian may yet be lurking ahead.  Even if Leeds do finally pull well clear of the drop-zone in the remainder of this season, the new Gaffer certainly has his work cut out to rebuild the morale of a club that has lurched through a long drawn-out crisis of a season which has brought massive disappointment in the league, only partly assuaged by two decent Cup runs and the slaying of several Premier League “giants” at Elland Road – just to remind us what being Leeds used to be all about.  Can Brian restore these heady times and glory days?  It all depends, not least on the support he can winkle out of whoever owns the club by the time summer finally comes.  Next season will be a success if the playing style can be found to suit the personnel available, and if the team actually compete like they mean it, instead of strolling through the motions like case-studies for chronic apathy.  Promotion would be nice, but it’s not mandatory, not in a manager’s first season.  Let’s just battle, show some application and skill, and let’s get that old Leeds United spirit back, so that we can be not just loud, but proud again.

Oh – and if Mr Jones has somehow clung on to his Hillsborough hot-seat – six points off the Wendies would be just lovely too.  Thanks again.

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After Thatcher – What Does Her Death and Her Legacy Mean To Us Now?

Posted on 14/04/2013 | 4 comments
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Thatcher: 1925 – 2013

I’ve left it nearly a week after the death of the former Leaderene to chip in with my two penn’orth on her demise, and on the legacy she’s left behind. In that time, I’ve read many and varied accounts of what Margaret Hilda Thatcher’s death means to us, here and now – given that her term of office ended nearly 23 years ago. Those accounts have encompassed widely varying points of view, and have ranged from vitriolic hatred with a joyous celebration of the fact that she’s gone, to real grief arising out of sheer adulation and an evident belief that she was some sort of Messiah for our country.

My own position lies at neither extreme, but somewhere in between – though I will freely admit that I lean significantly towards that end of the scale where people do not have much positive to say about the late former Prime Minister. For what it’s worth, I feel that she was a divisive and damaging influence on the country; indeed such a massive effect did she have on the political and economic landscape, that we simply no longer have the options – in terms of achieving increased fairness in society – that we potentially had before she entered Number 10. She greatly reduced – in fact almost destroyed – the manufacturing industry in this country, advancing the cause of financial services and speculative banking to take its place as the main means of wealth creation. She sold off a large proportion of the social housing stock and failed to invest in construction to replenish it, thus creating a shortage of homes for the less well-off at reasonable rent levels, and forcing a greater reliance on private landlords, with rent levels being set by the market. The long term consequence of THAT was an exponential growth in the Housing Benefits bill, which has led in turn (in these times of austerity) to the perceived need for the Government’s unpopular “Bedroom Tax”. Even though it’s nearly 23 years since Thatcher left Number 10 for the last time as PM, tear-stained but defiant, her legacy affects us to this day, regardless of what they might say who would defend her with the specious “Well, it was all a long time ago.”

Those who still idolise her seem to do so for reasons which would appear not unadjacent to self-interest. Former footballer Paul Parker has blogged:

“Personally, I don’t see why football shouldn’t pay respect to Thatcher. She should be given a minute’s silence at football grounds because without Margaret Thatcher my mum and dad would have never been able to buy a house.”

Presumably, Parker is including in his rationale thousands of others besides his mum and dad, who were also given the opportunity to buy their council houses, many at hefty discounts. But the theme of “well, she was wonderful because, hey – look what she did for me” is a recurrent one among those who remember her most fondly. Parker goes on to say:

“At the end of the day, she was the Primer (sic) Minister of Great Britain so there should be a minute’s silence as far as I’m concerned.”

He doesn’t elaborate on his views as to whether or not Heath, Wilson or Callaghan should have been so honoured (they weren’t) – but I suspect his devotion is to The Lady alone – and good defender though he might have been, Parker is clearly not a cerebral heavyweight.

The other end of the scale is represented (at its extreme) by people who felt moved to dance in the streets in celebration, and contribute to a surge up the music charts for “Ding Dong, The Witch is Dead” by Judy Garland. Yes, I bought it too. Sue me. Rather than simply bemoaning human nature for these displays of jubilation at the death of a bewildered old woman, it would perhaps serve us better to re-examine some other factors lying behind such hatred.

Quite apart from the policies I’ve referred to above, it’s also possible to find fault in what might be termed Thatcher’s unfortunate personal style. Early in her long stint as leader of the Tories, she was taking elocution lessons to modulate her slightly shrill voice, but the effect was of suburban faux gentility, with a teeth-grindingly patronising edge, rather than anything persuasive or statesmanlike. She was ironically at her most effective when she became strident, as she often did when faced with anything other than unquestioning agreement and obedience; then, she simply blew everything but the most determined opposition clear out of the water, terrifying male colleagues with smaller, less hairy balls than hers, and encouraging cowed Soviets to dub her the “Iron Lady”. She was also referred to as “The Iron Chicken” and “Attila the Hen”.

Still others who remember her less than fondly will recall that she was in very real danger of becoming just another one-term PM, and the least popular ever at that, when an opportune military conflict with Argentina cropped up in 1982. The summer of ’81 had seen a wave of riots as her policies saw unemployment rise sharply, seemingly a price her government was willing to pay for the economic direction it was so rigidly set on. Thatcher was in trouble at this point, trailing massively in the polls, but as a result of the “Falklands Factor” she won a landslide in 1983. Then the miners were unwise enough to take her on in the middle of the decade, pronouncing themselves determined to bring her government down. But Thatcher was wise to them; she had learned from Edward Heath’s mistakes in the early 70’s and had stockpiled enough coal to, in effect, starve the pit-men back to work – albeit with much human suffering and collateral damage, not least on the picket-lines at Orgreave and elsewhere. It was a humiliating defeat for miners’ leader Arthur Scargill, but – whatever you may think about him – his prediction that the Tories were out to kill the mining industry, along with its close-knit and long-standing communities, proved to be spot-on. Relatively fresh from subduing Scargill and his followers, Thatcher won again in 1987, and would eventually occupy the office of PM for over eleven years. In the end, it took her own colleagues to remove her in a coup that she ever after thought of as the basest treachery. But the fact remains that she clung on to power despite profound levels of unpopularity, aided in her latter two election victories by what many still see as naked opportunism and the survival instincts of a mongoose.

Some would seek to defend her place in history as the first – and to date only – female Prime Minister. Even I might be tempted to support a historical achievement such as that – if she had done more for women whilst in power. But she didn’t. Her Cabinet composition remained predominantly male, and you can search throughout her record for anything of note to ameliorate the lot of women in society, but you will search in vain. Glenda Jackson, speaking in the so-called “Tribute Debate” two days after Thatcher’s death, conceded the fact that Thatcher was Britain’s first female Premier but added: ‘A woman? Not on my terms.’

When push comes to shove, I would argue that Thatcher’s legacy is an almost wholly negative one; her Premiership saw a massive rise in unemployment, the decimation of manufacturing industry, a bizarre promotion of greed and acquisitiveness as hideously acceptable virtues, a decrease in growth relative to the previous thirty-four years since Clement Attlee became Prime Minister in 1945, a widening of the gap between richest and poorest where that gap had been narrowing somewhat and of course the selling-off of “the family jewels” in the shape of any nationalised industry she could lay her hands on, without sufficient regard to what would happen come the next rainy day. And there have been many rainy days since, but none rainier than the one we’re living through right now, and nothing to fall back on.

Against that, we have the perceived rise in the stock of the UK in the eyes of the rest of the world; she “made Britain great again” – some say. This presumably refers to her determination in recovering a few large pebbles in the South Atlantic at the cost of many young lives, including those of conscript Argentinians who drowned when the General Belgrano was torpedoed as it sailed away from the combat zone. “Gotcha!” crowed the Sun, while mothers of sons on both sides wept. I have to say, I don’t value an enhanced international reputation or the approval of jingoistic nations like the USA – not at that price.

And now we have to pay the cost of her funeral, having already shelled out many thousands in expenses for a one-off recall of Parliament only five days before a new session was due to start anyway. Funeral cost estimates vary between £8m and £14m depending on who you listen to, and how much her successful arms-dealer son Mark is prepared to stump up. He should really be generous – she helped him a hell of a lot. All this furore over money, at a time also when we hear her £6m London town house will not incur any inheritance duty as its actual ownership appears to be vested in an offshore company. Companies, of course, don’t die – and so don’t pay inheritance tax. These are murky waters, and it becomes ever easier to see exactly why so many regard her, and the goings-on around her in life and afterwards, with feelings of antipathy amounting to loathing.

For myself, I’ll be glad when her funeral is over and paid for, and we can all move on – and refocus on the urgent need to get rid of the current shoddy lot. Thatcher is dead; but we’re still living with a society that, in a lot of its negative characteristics can be traced back to the sea-changes she ushered in post-1979. It’s no defence against vilification to say that she left office in 1990, and can’t be blamed for what’s happened since. She created the conditions whereby what has happened since could happen, and she took away a lot of the more benign possibilities that a more sympathetic and caring attitude to investment, social care and collective responsibility in society might have realised. For that, I blame her and her alone.

Ding dong.

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There’s Only Two Brian McDermotts

Posted on 12/04/2013 | 2 comments

In 1996, Arsenal confirmed the appointment as their new manager of one Monsieur Arsène Wenger. I took a distant but distinct interest as I did with any news story concerning Arsenal, a club I have always thoroughly admired. And I must confess; at first I thought it was a wind-up, some weak attempt at a joke. An Arsenal manager called Arsène? Were our major clubs recruiting managers on the basis of weirdly appropriate names now? How ridiculous. You couldn’t make it up.

History shows of course that Arsenal FC was being deadly serious and decidedly astute. They were appointing a man who would become their longest-serving and most successful manager, a man widely credited with revolutionising the whole of English football, a cerebral man with a scientific approach to the art of beautiful football. But others reacted initially as I had. Former Arsenal captain Tony Adams has said

“At first, I thought: What does this Frenchman know about football? He wears glasses and looks more like a schoolteacher. He’s not going to be as good as George [Graham]. Does he even speak English properly?”

This seemed to reflect most people’s level of incredulity at what appeared an odd decision. Who, indeed, was Wenger? What had he done? He was certainly no Johan Cruyff, a global “name” who had been touted by many for the Highbury hot-seat. Rarely though can such a seemingly strange appointment have turned out so well. Despite the more recent lack of actual silverware, look at Arsenal now. Look at the football they play. It’s enough to make a Leeds fan drool – I know I do.

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Dioufy meets McDermotty

Fast forward to 2013 and there has been another “you couldn’t make it up” appointment – the strangeness being of a somewhat different nature, but nonetheless bizarre for that. Leeds United have recruited one Brian McDermott, recently sacked by Reading FC. This appointment has come with just five games to go of a season that was always supposed to be about promotion to the top league, but has latterly taken a nightmare downturn towards a struggle to avoid relegation back to the third tier. United of course share the city of Leeds with Rugby League superstars Leeds Rhinos – Coach: another Brian McDermott. Furthermore, the Rhinos have an outstanding winger called Ryan Hall, a world-class exponent of the game and prolific try-scorer; a major contributor to his club’s dominance of the Super League. And – lo and behold – we find that Leeds United also have a winger called Ryan Hall, a man of more modest accomplishments but much promise; one who produced a game-changing, match-winning performance at Huddersfield which gave Leeds United fans a lot of hope for his future.

Two clubs in two different sports sharing one city; both managed by a Brian McDermott, both with wingers named Ryan Hall. That’s stretching credibility quite a long way; has anything like it happened before? Could weirdness of that degree have a happy ending comparable to the way the weird Wenger story turned out?

Well, maybe it could. Once you get past the long-odds coincidence which certainly rivals the strangeness of Arsenal’s Arsène, you begin to look at the merits of the appointment. It’s an move being welcomed quite whole-heartedly by long-suffering Leeds fans, who had been certain for a while that former manager Neil Warnock’s approach was going to produce nothing but dire football, inexplicable substitution decisions and a heavy reliance on his old favourites from previous incarnations of his managerial career. He was going to build on his excellent record of promotions gained; he was going to top off that record by returning his biggest-ever club to the Premier League. But it all went horribly wrong, and Neil has clearly been yearning for his Cornwall home, hearth and tractor for months now. He’s seemed tired and dispirited, forced to defend the inadequate efforts of a palpably rudderless team, reduced to cliché after cliché as he attempted to deflect criticism of the performances of a squad he’d recently described as “Leeds’ best in years.”

McDermott though appears to be a horse of a different colour. A younger, hungry man, a still slightly angry man who you’d guess feels wronged by his dismissal from Premier League Reading, a club he’d served undeniably well and against whom he now seems destined to compete in the Championship next season. That’s if Leeds stay in that league – which is by no means certain as yet. With five games to go, McDermott quite possibly needs at least four more points to secure Championship football for next season and give him the chance to plan in the longer term. He has said already that he’s been given “assurances of support”, and we can but hope that these don’t turn out to be yet more of the same forked-tongue promises we’ve heard for a good many seasons now. McDermott though has the air of a man who is happy and confident as he picks up what many in the game see as a poisoned chalice. Leeds United has the reputation of a managers’ graveyard going back many years now and – surely – nobody entering via the revolving doors that have seen so many unceremonious exits can be at all optimistic they won’t share the same fate. Nevertheless, Brian McDermott has made all the right confident and determined noises, he has his right-hand man with him and he says he can’t wait to get stuck in. This is what we want to hear.

At some point, for heaven’s sake, Leeds United’s owners have to get it right. We’ve had a decade or more of stumbling, shambling descent into the pits of despair, followed by an almost equally stumbling and shambling partial recovery. As yet another era starts – and at Leeds we seem to have two or three new eras per season – the patience of the always potentially truculent masses cannot be relied upon for much longer. Leeds could so easily go the wrong way in just the next few weeks, and that would make for a terrifyingly long journey back at a time when – as in wider society – the rich are getting ever rich while the rest scrap for crumbs. Those who seek happy omens might look at how Arsenal’s strange appointment of Arsène turned out, or they may look across the city and look at the Brian McDermott who is in charge of the current Super League Champions. The omens are there, and in hard times they’re the straws we might reasonably clutch at.

We could go the wrong way – but we simply can’t afford to. It has to be safety first, followed as soon as possible by definite progress on and off the field. New investment is clearly sought, and appears to be a must-have without which the club will, at very best, continue to tread water.

This is not an option if the club is to have any real success in the foreseeable future, so the owners must deliver support to their new man. And Brian McDermott just has to be the right man; he has to get it very right very soon, establishing a pattern of success comparable with his fine work at Reading and leading us back to the top before the club is cut irretrievably adrift of the powers in the game.

That’s the scale of his task. That’s the urgency of the situation we now face. Good luck, Brian.

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Widespread Disgust as the Coalition and Press Lurch Further Down the Path of Herr Doktor Goebbels

Posted on 05/04/2013 | Leave a comment
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The not-so-good Doktor

For some time now a lot of us out here in Leftie-Land have been worrying out loud, and in print, at the direction this Coalition Government are taking. We have concerns over their policies and the way they’re being presented; we have concerns over their rhetoric, directed invariably at sections of society against whom they wish to justify savage cuts; we have concerns about the very language they use, language calculated to stir up hatred in the less intellectually-acute of their supporters, terms such as “shirkers”, “malingerers” and “something-for-nothing culture”. I’ve written myself about the transparent desire on the part of Cameron, Gideon Osborne and their colleagues to divide and rule, and the way in which they’ve spread malicious falsehoods about the targets of their policies, lies that have been eagerly taken up and spread far and wide by the right wing coterie in the Press. I compared the phenomenon of their wilful deceit to the “Big Lie” technique employed by Josef Goebbels for the embryonic Nazi party in the late 20’s and early 30’s. Basically, if you repeat a lie often enough – and the bigger the lie, the better – it will seep into the public consciousness and be accepted. I feel that the Government’s endorsement of this tactic is the fair and obvious conclusion to draw from the way they have relentlessly sought to paint the poor and helpless as a malign, self-seeking and parasitical section of society.

The turn of events this week, though, has taken even the most cynical and suspicious of us by surprise. In a shocking and rather sinister plunge towards the gutter-end of their ideology, the Government and certain sections of the press have decided to use a criminal case which concerns the unlawful killing of six young children as material for a further attack on their hated and hapless targets at the bottom of the economic pile. In the wake of the conviction of Mick Philpott and his accomplices for the manslaughter of six out of seventeen children, the lamentable Mail has – without allowing a decent interval to elapse, indeed hardly pausing to draw breath – launched a bitter front-page broadside against a welfare state which, it astonishingly contended, was at the root of the whole Philpott tragedy. This blatant tarring of all benefit claimants with the brush of a sociopath/psychopath like Philpott predictably and quite rightly brought vilification from proper newspapers and media outlets alike. Scandalous, opportunistic, tasteless, vile, they screamed, accusing a bang-to-rights Mail of making cheap political capital out of the deaths of innocents. Quite so.

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Silly Gideon

But then, whose trotters did we hear, galloping over the horizon as he raced to dump his porcine carcass on this timely bandwagon? None other than Gideon Osborne; failed Chancellor, shameless blagger of disabled parking spaces and determined first-class rail traveller (albeit with only a standard-class ticket.) Such is the measure of this vapid man; his brainless arrogance leads him to believe that what he wishes will naturally come to pass, that ordinary conventions are for ordinary people and not for such bright shining stars as Gideon. Now he could hardly wait to endorse the Mail’s bile-ridden outburst in his haste to appeal to little Hitlers everywhere and further perpetuate – indeed enlarge – The Big Lie. He was swiftly backed by his boss, Cameron, a beleaguered PM whose eggs are now clearly all in one basket. Shocked and horrified, the rest of us were left gaping at the sheer, malevolent viciousness of it; the appalling timing, the unwarranted slur on people who wouldn’t dream of harming a fly, the public-school adolescent nastiness of it. What to do?

Well, some thought they might try a little satire laced with logic, a standard procedure for putting in their place those of arrogant stupidity. By your own arguments, it was forcibly and eruditely pointed out to the Gruesome Twosome, the crimes of Peter Sutcliffe could be laid at the door of the Road Haulage Association; those of Harold Shipman at the feet of the NHS and provincial medical practices everywhere; while the evil-doings of Fred West are to be blamed on private enterprise and aspirational construction workers throughout the land. The effect of all this admirable logic? Negligible at best. Those who are currently on the attack and have the poor, disabled and vulnerable in their sights are in talk mode, with a view to draconian action. They are not for listening. And readers of the Sun and the Mail are likely to listen, sadly enough, only to other such readers – or perhaps to like-minded know-it-alls down the pub.

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The Offensive Daily Fail

In the absence of many other practical options, I’ve made my views known to the Press Complaints Commission. I’m not exactly holding my breath for a positive response though, as high-ups at the Mail are also influential in the PCC, so it’s a little bit like complaining to your mother-in-law about your wife’s nagging. But something clearly has to be done; this is not the kind of “politics” that can be taken lying down. The utter, untimely viciousness of it, as well as the blatant opportunism, leaves a rancid taste in the mouth. It’s easy to forget in these alarming times that this is a coalition we have in charge, with – supposedly – a restraining, moderating influence ready built-in as it were. The shocking lack of balls displayed by the Liberals in matters like this and many others will — if there’s any justice* — contribute to their deserved annihilation at the next election. But that’s not going to come soon enough to protect this country from a Tory Party that seems to be diseased at the very top, intoxicated with the sickness of megalomania and determined to visit their own brand of evil on their own chosen targets.

The spirit of Josef Goebbels is alive and well in the corridors of Tory High Command as well as in the editorial offices of our less salubrious newspapers. Those of us with opposing views – those who are resolved to speak out for the helpless and vulnerable – had better make sure we speak loudly and constructively enough to be heard over the brazenly unashamed rhetoric pouring like so much liquid sewage from the lips of Osborne and Cameron. If we don’t, we’ll simply be begging for more of the same, and worse.

*There isn’t; so don’t hold your breath there, either.

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I Blame The Parents : Thoughts Arising Out of the Philpott Tragedy

Posted on 04/04/2013 | Leave a comment
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Life sentence: Philpott

I find myself wondering today, in light of the fact that a waste of DNA like prison-bound Mick Philpott is biologically capable of fathering 17 children – and evil enough, aided by his accomplices, to hatch a money-making plan that took the lives of six of them – whether it is now time to reappraise the adoption regulations.  These strange little bits of judicial nonsense currently deny – quite arbitrarily – the chance to adopt for various categories of people who are unable to have their own children.  I’m talking here about the people who are adjudged to be unable to bring up prospective adoptees in the “right” cultural environment, people deemed too old or too compromised in official eyes by relatively mild mental health conditions, even people reckoned to be suffering emotionally from their inability to conceive naturally – and so on.

There seems to be an awful lot of good parenting skills out there being needlessly wasted, while all the time utterly unsuitable people are producing positive litters of children without the first clue of how to bring them up, look after them or contribute in any positive way to their well-being and social/emotional development.   All of this, just because of the accident of being physically capable of reproduction.  We simply can’t afford to waste good parenting skills – they’re all too rare and precious, as even the most cursory glance around us will reveal.

What is the cost of this evident anomaly down the line, in terms of the kind of society members – quite apart from the tragedy of children who don’t survive – that such a crazily-weighted lottery is producing? And meanwhile, let’s not forget, good people with much to give of both love and the example they’d set in bringing up children, are left on the sidelines, wringing their hands as a whole generation of clueless “parents” brings up a succeeding generation in their own repugnant image.

I can honestly foresee a time when parenting will be by licence only; not that I would advocate this as “A Good Thing”.  It would smell uncomfortably like social engineering to me, and I’d want to know a great deal about the machinery involved in any such process.  But can we really carry on as we are?  Talk to any teacher, and you’ll hear a tale of despair when the conversation turns to the contribution of many parents to their children’s disciplinary standards, and to their education as a whole.  Teachers appear currently to be struggling to accomplish the virtually impossible: turn out well-rounded, educated individuals who are fit to take a place in society, with hardly any support or input from the people most intimately connected to those children concerned.  That’s not just a big ask, it’s a massively unfair burden on professionals who can influence only a portion of each day their students experience, for a relatively small slice of that child’s life.

I have a friend who is a teacher; from everything I know of her she’s a very good teacher.  I know she despairs of the role that some parents play in the development of some of her students, and I can quite see why.  How hard is it for her to take, then, when her cousin and his wife are turned down as adoptive parents because – among other bafflingly specious reasons – “We don’t think you’ll get over not being able to have your own.”  Doesn’t that rather rule out anybody who can’t have their own kids?  Who actually “gets over” a blow like that?  And can we speculate on why people who can have their own kids would want or need to adopt?  It all seems extremely illogical, and it’s a perpetuation by default of the damage being done, every day, every week, every month and year by the people who – as a matter of biological happenstance – end up with the job of raising the next generation.

Maybe, ultimately, we’ll be able to put right a few of society’s ills, and perhaps more attention and resources devoted to the education and support of people contemplating parenthood will assist that process.  I really think it would help, and let’s praise to the skies the first government that sees this as a priority and does something about it.  If you think it through clearly, you could hardly imagine a better investment, a safer investment, than money devoted to training and support with a view to producing better parents.  The savings arising out of the consequent reduction in crime, mental health issues, anti-social behaviour and the disintegration of communities would be incalculable.  Good parents are the ideal people for the job of parenting – goes without saying, or it should do.  God speed that happy day when this is recognised and acted upon.

But meanwhile, let’s not waste the resources freely available to us now in the shape of a massive pool of potentially excellent parents – who currently see their urgent desire to love and care for children they’d bring up in an exemplary fashion being frustrated.  Thwarted by officialdom with its petty rules and guidelines, and its limitless miles of red tape.  There’s far too much subjective judgement going on in this whole process, too many petty prejudices being reinforced by intransigent regulations and ill-advised, ill-informed officials.

My friend’s cousin and his wife now happily have their own child – but it’s another, unknown child – unwittingly losing out on a wonderfully loving home – who has suffered by the bizarre decision they were faced with when they applied to adopt.  There was even some suggestion that the woman’s Polish nationality figured in the “rationale” employed by the decision-maker.  That’s absolutely scandalous when we’re talking about a stable, affluent couple who were looking at adoption rather than IVF because of their view that there were so many unloved kids already out there.

Ask yourself, honestly: what better motive than that could any pair of prospective parents have?  Let’s embrace what people like this have to offer, and maybe help save future kids from future Philpotts.  The biggest lesson of this tragic case is that the complex and difficult adoption dilemma is an issue that we absolutely can’t afford to ignore any longer.

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How to Wage a War Upon the Poor

Posted on 03/04/2013 | Leave a comment

This is taken from a “Guardian” comments page – I reproduce it here without comment, as I believe it speaks for itself and needs to be shared as widely as possible – particularly after Gideon Osborne’s attempted snow-job yesterday, and Anne Widdecombe’s appalling hypocrisy and opportunism in her linking of the foul deeds of Mick Philpott to the Welfare State – so please try to get it out there:

Probably the most disgusting thing about this coalition has been their propaganda war against the most disadvantaged people in society. By the deliberate spreading of lies, they have facilitated a systematic assault upon the poor, the sick and the disabled. And they have knowingly misled the public for one simple reason, to enable them to totally dismantle the welfare state.
There are lies, damned lies, and then there are lying Tory bastards.
The welfare state has led to a ‘something for nothing’ culture?
It may be utterly repugnant to hear millionaire politicians who have never worked a day in their life telling us that they are ending the ‘something for nothing culture’, but it’s also utter bollocks. Only 2.5% of the total welfare budget of £200 billion actually goes on unemployment, whilst the vast majority of unemployed claimants have worked, and paid taxes, for years and are now on benefits due to redundancy, sickness, disability or having to care for someone. Millions more are receiving benefits due to poverty wages. The Welfare state is actually a massive state subsidy to business which enables it to pay poverty wages and charge exorbitant rents.
Living on benefits is a lifestyle choice?
Only 0.1% of benefit claimants who have claimed for 10 years or more are actually unemployed. Less than 5,000 people, out of over 9 million 16-64 year olds who don’t work, have been on Job Seekers Allowance for more than 5 years. Less than 0.1% of the 20 million working age households have 2 generations that have never had a permanent job. Despite strenuous efforts, researchers have been unable to find any families where three generations have never worked.
People won’t work because benefits are too high?
In 1971, JSA equalled 20.9% of the average wage. Today, it is worth 10.9%. These people are living in poverty. There are 8.5 million people receiving benefits in this country. There are more people IN WORK who get benefits than not working. The majority of all housing benefit claimants are IN WORK. 6.1 million people classed as living in poverty are from households IN WORK.
People on housing benefit live in mansions?
Our newspapers continuously bombard us with these stories. There are around five million claimants of Housing Benefit; of which there were five families who received over £100,000 per year, all living in central London. The average award of Housing Benefit is approximately £85 a week. Only 3% of families received more than £10,000 a year support, and 0.04% received more than £30,000 a year. And no-one ever mentions that housing benefit goes straight to the Landlord and not the claimant.
And those large families screwing the taxpayer? There are around 130 families with 10 children and only 10 families with 12 children IN THE WHOLE COUNTRY who are on benefits.
Benefit cheats are bankrupting the country?
Benefit fraud amounts to about £1.5 billion a year, less than 1% of the entire budget. To put this in perspective, the bank bailout equalled 1,000 years of benefit fraud. Meanwhile, £1.3 billion gets underpaid each year and a further £16 billion goes UNCLAIMED every year.
We can no longer afford the welfare state?
So who is really bankrupting the country? Well, the richest 1,000 people now possess £414 billion between them, a sum more than three times the size of the entire UK budget deficit. The richest 1% of the population are estimated to possess wealth of about £1 trillion. The richest 10% control wealth of about £4 trillion. The Quantitative Easing programme has increased the personal wealth of the UK’s richest 20% by enough to pay for Job Seeker’s Allowance for the next 100 years.
The people of this country are being shafted, but instead of the blame being directed at the real culprits, the rich, it is being aimed at the most vulnerable, the poor, with our own Government shamelessly leading the way.
And every one who believes their bullshit should hang their heads in shame.”

There’s a storm coming…

Rich Hammond 01/04/13

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Guest blogspot: Bring on Those Funny Money Woes! by Kate Atkinson

Posted on 02/04/2013 | Leave a comment

I’m not normally one to voice my political opinion – this being a matter very close to my heart, I tend to get angry and upset very easily when met with the same meaningless, patronising, verbatim Daily-Mail-headline retorts I’ve been hearing for years. However, it occasionally gets too heated and (usually after bursting into furious tears) I want to add my two pennies’ worth.

Edwina Currie

This morning, I was listening to the debate on Five Live about Iain Duncan-Smith’s recent claim that he could (and would) live on £54 per week. I listened as Edwina Currie declared this a reasonable amount with which to get by; I listened as Stephen Nolan ‘challenged’ her to put her money where her outspoken mouth is; I listened as they suggested going for it together. What a lot of people heard was a very hesitant deal being made, and then backtracked upon as Tories do so very well. People saying, ‘there’s no way she’ll do that, there’s no way – it’d be too hard…’ I heard, however, a highly condescending offer being made to the poor, dumb masses, by these two very generous and philanthropic rich people.

Here, you little insects! Guess what we’re going to do? We’re going to have a go at living your peculiar little impoverished lifestyles for seven whole days! I mean, we’ll probably still be living in our mansions with our central heating and our cleaners and our freezers full of food, not to mention that we’ll still be perfectly mentally healthy due to our previously untroubled lives… and it is, of course, quite beside the point that we personally would no doubt be able to live on just what we have now, and absolutely nothing extra for a number of years if we were to be so daring, but a week should be fun enough, don’t you think? What larks!

Besides this, though, there’s the fact that these two will return to their respective lifestyles feeling that they’ve had a ‘fun experience’, as Currie referred to it live on the radio, and that they’ve actually made a point or done some good. And still there will be people living on even less than that. People that have no choice, no get-out clause – and yet Currie still stands by her principle that we can only pay ‘what we can afford’ to poor people. Oh, really Edwina? So it’s okay to cut their resources even further – to tighten the noose and see just how much more it’s possible to bleed out of them? Two words: bankers’ bonuses. We can afford those, apparently. And there are the other discrepancies: Currie suggesting that her having to live on less than £54 per week in the 60s being comparable to living on the same now. Nolan not actually giving a damn about the state of living people have to put up with, as long as his show is listened to and his wage delivered at the end of each month. I could bring up everything, and would, if I didn’t know it would get shot down with whines of ‘but Edwina says’, and ‘let’s agree to disagree’.

Just wanted to have a small attempt at fighting against this supercilious effort to pour oil on troubled waters – we’re not falling for it and we will never be on your side.

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Iain Duncan-Smith: Anyone Can Live On £7 A Day

Posted on 01/04/2013 | Leave a comment
Image

Iain Duncan-Git

Iain Duncan-Smith could live on £53 a week I reckon, just as most of us could feel quite excited about the prospect of going on a survival course or boot camp or something similar. He’d think of it as a change, something exciting, a sort of toff’s challenge. It’d be a thing for him to do, and something he’d be able to drone on about having done at his club, or whilst having a snifter at the 19th or whatever. He could do it – say for a week or a fortnight, or even a month, and then write a book about it and we’d never hear the last of it.

So make the bastard do it for a year with no get-outs, cut him off from his well-stocked freezer and cocktail cabinet and his fat wallet and bank account, and dump him in a three-bedroomed flat on a sink estate, complete with 25% bedroom tax. See how he fancies that.

Not one little bit, is my guess.  But I’d love to see him try.

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Tories Need to Learn That Carrots Sometimes Work Better Than Sticks

Posted on 01/04/2013 | Leave a comment

Peter Lilley

Ex-Cabinet minister Peter Lilley has unwittingly put his finger on a possible answer to the “spare bedrooms” issue, which has been used to justify the iniquitous Bedroom Tax. Interviewed on BBC Radio Five Live, the former Social Security Secretary attempted to defend savage cuts to Housing Benefit by remarking that his constituents are always complaining that they’re overcrowded in their one-bedroom social housing units. Why then, argued Lilley, is it fair for other tenants to “under-occupy”, and have one or two “spare bedrooms”?

The problem is, of course, that as in all its dealings with the poorer end of society, the Coalition has decided that the bludgeon is the most effective instrument of Government. Hence the rightly-hated Bedroom Tax; ill-conceived, improperly thought-out, poorly presented and unfair to the nth degree. No account is taken of whether there is a genuine option for people affected to move to smaller properties, nor of whether the cost of this undertaking is feasible for them. Any consideration of the distinct needs of the disabled, which may medically justify the use of separate bedrooms for couples, has been specifically ruled out.

A possible answer – a fair, practicable answer at that – lies within the rhetoric of Lilley’s attempted justification of the unjustifiable. If, as he says, there is still a big problem of people suffering from overcrowding, and being in need of larger properties currently under-occupied by smaller families – then why not simply engineer some means whereby these two groups can be made aware of each other and thereby facilitate property swaps? A large part of the reason why the “under-occupiers” won’t be moving is the lack of availability of smaller properties. If “swaps” could be facilitated, on a large enough scale, then we could have a mutually satisfactory solution to the problems of both groups. It would be necessary of course to incentivise such a plan – perhaps a transitional payment and/or financial assistance with removal costs and other formalities. It’s a question of square pegs in square holes – the solution should be neat and simple. But the Government don’t see it that way, because they’re instinctively suspicious of the motives of the poor, who they see as wishing to hang on to their “something for nothing” at all costs, and they are therefore determined to hammer these unfortunates who have no scope to either move on, or pay the rent arising out of the imposed cuts in Housing Benefit.

The whole issue comes down to this Government’s pathological preference for the stick over the carrot. They are bolstered in this instinct by the leanings of their natural supporters, Mail readers and the like, who wish to see “the smack of firm government” applied to anyone who has been sufficiently demonised by a press that seems intent on disseminating Tory propaganda. The ultimate aims of the Bedroom Tax haven’t been all that well clarified either. We hear about the “unfairness” of under-occupation, but it’s being acknowledged that a primary goal is to save on the Housing Benefit bill, with half a billion pounds being mooted as a first year economy. How does this help get larger families into larger properties? Cutting the income of the “under-occupiers” is hardly the best way of persuading them to incur removal costs to move to a smaller property, possibly in the private sector at a higher rent – because all the over-crowded families are in the one-bedroom social housing properties. It’s a real mess, round pegs in square holes, square pegs in round holes, and no strategy to facilitate any sort of reversal to mutual advantage.

Iain Duncan-Smith

Ministers right now are in a full state of alert, ready at the drop of a hat to respond to annoying and inconvenient criticism from the likes of church organisations, fully primed to do their best to defend the indefensible, as Peter Lilley was clumsily attempting to do. To this end, they are prepared to come out, bare-faced with the most unconscionable rubbish. Iain Duncan-Smith, a man who recently claimed £39 expenses for one breakfast, has asserted that he would be able to live on benefit subsistence levels of £53 weekly. Utter nonsense, of course, but this is a symptom of desperation in the face of a tidal wave of opposition, for a government that will brook no alternative. The problem these ministers have is that they are increasingly aware the measures they’re being asked to speak up for are bad policies, and – much, much worse for any mid-term government – bad politics. The current administration are wide-open to charges of callousness, misrepresenting salient facts about poverty and an abject failure, indeed refusal, to listen to any source – however well-informed – that doesn’t unswervingly endorse their chosen path. That’s the kind of leadership that got Thatcher removed – and David Cameron, if he hasn’t already given up hope of winning the next election, increasingly looks in dire need of a Plan B.

Practically, I believe that what I might be tempted to term “The Lilley Plan”, allied to sensible investment in the construction industry, could go a long way towards solving the conflicting issues of over-crowding and under-occupancy – as long as it would be properly funded and incentivised. It’s still a matter of trying to get people to move out of homes they may have lived in for years after all; which is still uncomfortably close to social engineering. But if carrots are tried, for once – instead of the endless battalions of Tories wielding sticks – then maybe some progress could be made, and there would be benefits too for the wider economy of more investment in construction; jobs, taxes raised, housing options created, growth – that sort of thing. They’re all distant and unattainable dreams for the Coalition at the moment, but maybe, just maybe, a little more of an imaginative approach to government might reap some reward.

But it is the Tories we’re dealing with here, and they’re brought up from the nursery to think they know best so – you know – don’t hold your breath.

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Please Support This Blog and Get The Truth Out There

Posted on 28/03/2013 | Leave a comment

I’d like to invite and entreat any WordPress users who feel that the current government of the United Kingdom are acting in a callous manner towards the poor and vulnerable in society to read, follow, share and otherwise support this blog.  I ask this respectfully, but in the hope of gaining your support, because I need your help – or I’m just whistling in the dark.  I believe that, from small beginnings, I can help to make a difference – but not on my own.

In among all the Leeds United and other light-hearted football rubbish within these pages, I’m trying to get a serious message out there as to what this despicable Tory-led Coalition government is doing to people who are being unjustly targeted, and are extremely ill-equipped to fight back.

I’m talking about people driven to suicide by vicious cuts to what is already poverty-level income.  People in extreme stages of ill-health being found fit for work, and dying mere days afterwards.  People who are almost blind, suffering from paralysis, multiple amputations, cancer, cardiac failure and other distressing, limiting and life-threatening conditions, being told that they’re fit for work, being accused – in effect – of shirking.

Meanwhile, the lucky ones earning in excess of £1 million a year will shortly benefit from a £100,000 a year tax-cut – an amount EXTRA for each of them every year that might otherwise fund four newly-qualified teacher posts – or more nurses, better healthcare, less child poverty.  But no, these vast amounts of money are going straight into the back pockets of those who are already fat cats, creaming off the resources so desperately needed elsewhere.

Do you think this is right?

Do you think this is fair?

Do you think this is just?

Or do you think that the truth about our government’s policies should be told, and then spread as far and wide as possible, so that people sit up and take notice of what’s actually going on?  Sharing a blog is the modern-day equivalent of shouting from the rooftops.  So – let’s shout a little.  Please.

It will be June at least before I can hope to gain endorsement by the News Now platform, and so gain a wider audience. In the meantime it would be extremely helpful if WordPress readers/users could help me to expand my readership, with a view to spreading that truth where currently we seem to see mostly lies and malicious propaganda. You may well, if you’re the type of person I’m aiming at, who hates injustice and stands up for the disadvantaged, find some stuff that you can agree with!

Please take a minute to have a read, and then share with your like-minded contacts.

Thank you in advance.

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