0245 [0200] [0150] Hrs GMT
London
Sunday
10 April 2011
AADHIKARonline © Muhammad Haque London Commentary
UPDATING George Orwell from the East End of London
How is poverty being created in the East End borough of Tower Hamlets today? On 20 March 2011, the London Sunday Express referred to starvation going on in the UK . It splashed on page one on starvation and said that child poverty was acute and that children were now being criminalised because of being so poor that they had been resorting to criminal acts. It mentioned one child being arrested for in effect begging.
Now, this weekend, the DAILY MAIL online is running a piece blaming Ed Balls [the Opposition shadow chan ccelor in the current UK House of Commons] for creating one of many Bliarist, Brownist scams that could not help the “too poor, too not-middle-class parents in Tower Hamlets” where the minority middle class would get in on the act too fast and far too quickly for the poor and the not-middle class parents to spot in time or beat.
So how real is poverty in Tower Hamlets?
And before going to examine the evidence, what is the DAILY MAIL piece really saying?
Let us see
The DAILY MAIL online has been saying that Ed Balls had been responsible for creating one of the many bourgeois middle-class 'public money waster scams' that were also linked to Tower Hamlets where the deprived people [=implied as being predominantly “NOT middle class”] would not know how to take advantage of the particular Balls scam.
As is always the case, the DAILY MAIL is motivated by Tory intentions.
And therein lies the defeat of the otherwise potential moral case against any actual balls up by any of the Eds, Balls or Milibands.
First off, the DAILY MAIL piece [which is reproduced in texts at the end of this updater and diagnostic commentary] gets the philosophy wrong. The DAILY MAIL piece suggests that CLASS as in Marxist 'thinking', is the faulty factor involved.
I suggest otherwise.
On the facts. Here is why:
The word “class” is less relevant here than “careers”.
In Tower Hamlets, the policies of the local institution, the “elected” Tower Hamlets Borough Council, have not been affected by any discernible class factor so much as by the configuration of careers that have been organised and created by the needs of those concerned to have their own careers by facilitating others.
This has been going ion now for a very good 30 years, starting first with the launching by the then Greater London Council [and by its subsidiary bureaucracy of the then ILEA].
The GLC and the ILEA created examples and the inner London boroughs then adopted and then proliferated thousands of careers that have now enabled their beneficiaries to sabotage the lives and prospects of many people.
The difference is that the former belong to the corrupt networks crated via the local Council bureaucracies and legitimatised under the banner of elections held as a routine, not for democratic accountability.
It is something that ALL three Parties have been guilty of.
Look at the Parties, not at just the odd Balls in one of them!
'Dominated by the middle-class':
Farce of Labour's culture drive for poorer children
By SARAH HARRIS
Last updated at 1:19 AM on 9th April 2011
Comments (8) Add to My Stories
Former children's secretary Ed Balls launched the £25m pilot initiative in 2007 Labour's £25million scheme to treat children to weekly ‘cultural experiences’ was a farce because it was dominated by middle-class parents, research suggests. The Find Your Talent initiative was designed to increase the number of children from all social and ethnic groups taking up typical middle-class pursuits. It was intended to encourage children to do things such as visit museums and galleries, learn instruments and take acting and singing classes. The initiative was supposed to ‘remove barriers to access’ and increase ‘choice’ and ‘opportunity’ for youngsters regardless of background. But a study by Ipsos Mori and consultant SQW, published by the Department for Education, found that the poorest pupils and those from ethnic minorities were least likely to take part in the music, drama and arts activities.
Younger children, girls and those from ‘white and less deprived backgrounds’ were most likely to participate. Former children’s secretary Ed Balls launched the pilot initiative in 2007, announcing an entitlement of five hours per week of ‘high-quality cultural experiences’ for pupils up to the age of 19. He pledged to spend £25million between 2008 and 2011 in ten ‘pathfinder’ areas, in which local authorities would work with arts organisations to run activities.
These areas, including Tower Hamlets, Liverpool and Leicestershire, were ‘relatively more deprived than the national average’.
The initiative was managed by the charity Creativity, Cultural and Education and overseen by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. It was scrapped by the Coalition last June. More... Labour's cherished schools building programme attacked for wasting 30 per cent of its cash The report said: ‘The amount of time spent participating seems to decline with age: it is highest among children in school years one to three and lowest among children in school years ten to 11. ‘Levels of participation varied among specific groups. Older boys, ethnic minority groups and those eligible for free school meals were least likely to participate… while younger children, girls and those from white and less deprived backgrounds were most likely to do so.’ The report concluded that there needed to be increased participation among ‘older children, boys, those from ethnic minority backgrounds and special educational needs/disability and those from low income and single parent households’.
Professor Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at Buckingham University, said: ‘It’s difficult to intervene in this way as you are relying on parents to take the opportunity for their children. The middle-class parents are more likely to be able to see the opportunity and seize it while too many parents of poor children and also from certain ethnic minorities are indifferent so their sons and daughters will miss out.’
Nick Seaton, spokesman for the Campaign for Real Education, added: ‘This seems very similar to many other Labour educational initiatives in that a lot of taxpayers’ money has been spent with little effect. ‘It’s obvious that the aspirational parents have taken advantage of this scheme and the others that it’s supposed to help haven’t.’
