Tendring Topics………on Line
Full Marks for Ingenuity!
I have to give Britain’s coalition government full marks for ingenuity. The announcement of their new ‘workfare’ idea revealed true genius. Originating, as I suppose we might have guessed, in the USA, it means that people on benefit who are considered capable of any sort of work (never mind the fact that there may not be any appropriate work for them) will lose some of their meagre allowance unless they undertake ‘voluntary work’ for the community. The tv image of a ‘benefit volunteer’ happily swabbing hospital floors in a tv news bulletin revealed the true brilliance of the scheme.
In order to achieve the cuts demanded by central government, local and other public authorities, and managers of large private institutions, are having to ‘downsize’, ‘rationalise’, or ‘re-evaluate their human resources’, or whatever else may be the current fashionable euphemism for sacking some of their staff. Among those sacked will be computer programmers, draughtsmen, and other holders of jobs demanding skill, long training, and experience. There will also be holders of menial jobs – cleaners, porters, gardeners and so on. But floors will still need to be cleaned and rubbish cleared away, trolleys pushed from one place to another, hedges trimmed, lawns swept clear of leaves, vehicles hosed down, and so on.
That’s where those happy, smiling volunteers appear on the scene. ‘Menial tasks’ (I quote a government spokesman) that had been undertaken by employees on at least the minimum wage, will now be carried out by ‘volunteers’ regardless of their professional skills and experience, for a benefit guaranteed to be lower than the pay obtainable by anyone ‘in work’. Further cuts will ensure a never-ending supply of such cheap labour. This is called ‘encouraging the workless (and by implication the work-shy) back into work!’
Not even the most hard-nosed owners of Blake’s ‘dark, satanic mills’, of the early nineteenth century could have dreamed up a better way of obtaining cheap labour!
The Chinese ‘Secret Weapon’
No, there’s no cause for alarm. It’s not that kind of a weapon and it is not in the possession of the present or any likely future Chinese government, but of the ethnic Chinese whether they live in mainland China, in Hong Kong, in Taiwan or in London. It is a weapon that hurts no-one and is available to us all if we wish to have it. It is, I am convinced, of immense value to those who possess it, yet in Britain in recent years, fewer and fewer people seem to appreciate this.
It is a thirst for and a deep appreciation of the value of education. I first became aware of this as a result of emails from my grandson Chris who teaches English both to young children and adults in Taiwan, after having first done this in mainland China. We had been reading in our British newspapers about rising truancy in British schools, disrupted classes, violence toward teachers, and children who expected to be rewarded for simply turning up regularly and refraining from disruptive behaviour. Chris, on the other hand, was telling me about children eager to learn, and to please and earn the praise of their teachers, and of parents who gladly offered co-operation and respect to those who were helping their offspring to ‘get on in the world’.
Chris (at the back on the right) with some of his colleagues
It seems that this attitude towards education is to be found in Chinese worldwide. My younger son Andy (when one is old, how helpful it is to have eyes and ears elsewhere than in Clacton!) sent me a press cutting from the Guardian about the prowess of British Chinese in the field of education.
Nationwide in 2009, 26.6 percent of pupils eligible for free school meals (children from poorer families) achieved five or more GCSE grades (including maths and English) between grades C and A*. British Chinese children who were also eligible for free meals achieved 70.8 percent. Overall there was a wide attainment gap between children from the poorest and those from the better-off children. Among the Chinese, the gap between that of the children of the wealthy and the poor was just two percent. The Chinese poor are obviously just as keen as the wealthy to further their children’s education. So it is for young people and adults. British Chinese people of school-leaving age and over, are four times as likely to be full-time students as the rest of us.
The explanation, the Guardian reporter was told, was that with the Chinese, ‘education isn’t just desirable; its an obsession. Parents don’t just want their children to do well; they assume a ferocious duty to make it happen. Young children know that they have to study hard not to disappoint parents. The children have their own incentives too. A lot grow up in restaurants and want a different life for themselves. They work ten times as hard. Customers see the front of the restaurant. They don’t see the son or daughter of the proprietor bent over homework on a little table somewhere in the rear, under the occasional watchful eye of an adult’.
I dare not think what a twenty-first century British ‘educationalist’ or child psychiatrist would think of it all. I have little doubt though that it is dedication of this kind that will produce Britain’s leading lawyers, doctors, scientists and top politicians of the future.
'Thank you My Lord Archbishop'
It is always very pleasant to have our ideas, particularly when they are a little controversial, endorsed by someone for whom we have the greatest admiration and respect. I was delighted therefore to note that my concern about the effects of the government’s cuts on the poorest and most vulnerable members of our society are shared by no less a person than Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, and head of the Church of England and of the Anglican Church world-wide.
Not only did he endorse my general concern on this subject. He also referred to a matter that hadn’t occurred to me but had been raised by my son Peter in his letter to his Lib. Dem. MP; the fact that capping housing benefit at £400 a week would have the effect of driving all but the very-comfortably-off out of city centres, particularly out of central London.
A glaring example of this was recently illustrated in Metro, the London free newspaper. A two-bedroomed council flat in London’s Elephant and Castle area (a traditionally working class neighbourhood) had been sold to an existing tenant under the infamous ‘right to buy’ legislation. It had subsequently been resold and was now advertised to let – at £500 a week! Here was a property that had been provided by local taxpayers at public expense to house working people. It was now being made inaccessible to the people for whom it had been intended. It could however be expected to make a comfortable profit for its now-private owner.
Needless to say, the Archbishop’s warning was greeted with derision by the popular press. In the columns of the Sun the Archbishop was described as ‘a chump’ and his words as ‘Bish-bosh*’. I don’t imagine that Dr Rowan Williams was greatly concerned. He was the latest in long line of spiritual leaders who have dared to criticise established authority, ranging from the Old Testament prophets through St Thomas a Becket, one of Dr Rowan Williams’ distinguished predecessors, and Fr. John Ball of Colchester, a leader of the Peasants Revolt, to the martyred Archbishop Romero of Costa Rica, Sheila Cassidy who endured torture at the hands of the henchmen of General Pinochet of Chile and later became a nun, Trevor Huddlestone, Archbishop of Mauritius and the Indian Ocean, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa.
We hear a great deal in the press about ‘The Christian Religious Right’ particularly in the USA (Sarah Palin and her ‘Tea Party’ friends for instance). It is good to be reminded from time to time that there is, and always has been, a Christian Religious Left and a Christian Religious Centre, and that among their leaders have been men and women of renowned courage and spirituality!
*The Sun tries desperately hard to speak the language of the English Working Class of whom it aspires to be the voice. It never quite succeeds. When, for instance, did you last hear anyone wearing workman’s overalls describe a stupid person as ‘a chump’ or his utterances as ‘bosh’?
Full Marks for Ingenuity!
I have to give Britain’s coalition government full marks for ingenuity. The announcement of their new ‘workfare’ idea revealed true genius. Originating, as I suppose we might have guessed, in the USA, it means that people on benefit who are considered capable of any sort of work (never mind the fact that there may not be any appropriate work for them) will lose some of their meagre allowance unless they undertake ‘voluntary work’ for the community. The tv image of a ‘benefit volunteer’ happily swabbing hospital floors in a tv news bulletin revealed the true brilliance of the scheme.
In order to achieve the cuts demanded by central government, local and other public authorities, and managers of large private institutions, are having to ‘downsize’, ‘rationalise’, or ‘re-evaluate their human resources’, or whatever else may be the current fashionable euphemism for sacking some of their staff. Among those sacked will be computer programmers, draughtsmen, and other holders of jobs demanding skill, long training, and experience. There will also be holders of menial jobs – cleaners, porters, gardeners and so on. But floors will still need to be cleaned and rubbish cleared away, trolleys pushed from one place to another, hedges trimmed, lawns swept clear of leaves, vehicles hosed down, and so on.
That’s where those happy, smiling volunteers appear on the scene. ‘Menial tasks’ (I quote a government spokesman) that had been undertaken by employees on at least the minimum wage, will now be carried out by ‘volunteers’ regardless of their professional skills and experience, for a benefit guaranteed to be lower than the pay obtainable by anyone ‘in work’. Further cuts will ensure a never-ending supply of such cheap labour. This is called ‘encouraging the workless (and by implication the work-shy) back into work!’
Not even the most hard-nosed owners of Blake’s ‘dark, satanic mills’, of the early nineteenth century could have dreamed up a better way of obtaining cheap labour!
The Chinese ‘Secret Weapon’
No, there’s no cause for alarm. It’s not that kind of a weapon and it is not in the possession of the present or any likely future Chinese government, but of the ethnic Chinese whether they live in mainland China, in Hong Kong, in Taiwan or in London. It is a weapon that hurts no-one and is available to us all if we wish to have it. It is, I am convinced, of immense value to those who possess it, yet in Britain in recent years, fewer and fewer people seem to appreciate this.
It is a thirst for and a deep appreciation of the value of education. I first became aware of this as a result of emails from my grandson Chris who teaches English both to young children and adults in Taiwan, after having first done this in mainland China. We had been reading in our British newspapers about rising truancy in British schools, disrupted classes, violence toward teachers, and children who expected to be rewarded for simply turning up regularly and refraining from disruptive behaviour. Chris, on the other hand, was telling me about children eager to learn, and to please and earn the praise of their teachers, and of parents who gladly offered co-operation and respect to those who were helping their offspring to ‘get on in the world’.
Chris (at the back on the right) with some of his colleagues
It seems that this attitude towards education is to be found in Chinese worldwide. My younger son Andy (when one is old, how helpful it is to have eyes and ears elsewhere than in Clacton!) sent me a press cutting from the Guardian about the prowess of British Chinese in the field of education.
Nationwide in 2009, 26.6 percent of pupils eligible for free school meals (children from poorer families) achieved five or more GCSE grades (including maths and English) between grades C and A*. British Chinese children who were also eligible for free meals achieved 70.8 percent. Overall there was a wide attainment gap between children from the poorest and those from the better-off children. Among the Chinese, the gap between that of the children of the wealthy and the poor was just two percent. The Chinese poor are obviously just as keen as the wealthy to further their children’s education. So it is for young people and adults. British Chinese people of school-leaving age and over, are four times as likely to be full-time students as the rest of us.
The explanation, the Guardian reporter was told, was that with the Chinese, ‘education isn’t just desirable; its an obsession. Parents don’t just want their children to do well; they assume a ferocious duty to make it happen. Young children know that they have to study hard not to disappoint parents. The children have their own incentives too. A lot grow up in restaurants and want a different life for themselves. They work ten times as hard. Customers see the front of the restaurant. They don’t see the son or daughter of the proprietor bent over homework on a little table somewhere in the rear, under the occasional watchful eye of an adult’.
I dare not think what a twenty-first century British ‘educationalist’ or child psychiatrist would think of it all. I have little doubt though that it is dedication of this kind that will produce Britain’s leading lawyers, doctors, scientists and top politicians of the future.
'Thank you My Lord Archbishop'
It is always very pleasant to have our ideas, particularly when they are a little controversial, endorsed by someone for whom we have the greatest admiration and respect. I was delighted therefore to note that my concern about the effects of the government’s cuts on the poorest and most vulnerable members of our society are shared by no less a person than Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, and head of the Church of England and of the Anglican Church world-wide.
Not only did he endorse my general concern on this subject. He also referred to a matter that hadn’t occurred to me but had been raised by my son Peter in his letter to his Lib. Dem. MP; the fact that capping housing benefit at £400 a week would have the effect of driving all but the very-comfortably-off out of city centres, particularly out of central London.
A glaring example of this was recently illustrated in Metro, the London free newspaper. A two-bedroomed council flat in London’s Elephant and Castle area (a traditionally working class neighbourhood) had been sold to an existing tenant under the infamous ‘right to buy’ legislation. It had subsequently been resold and was now advertised to let – at £500 a week! Here was a property that had been provided by local taxpayers at public expense to house working people. It was now being made inaccessible to the people for whom it had been intended. It could however be expected to make a comfortable profit for its now-private owner.
Needless to say, the Archbishop’s warning was greeted with derision by the popular press. In the columns of the Sun the Archbishop was described as ‘a chump’ and his words as ‘Bish-bosh*’. I don’t imagine that Dr Rowan Williams was greatly concerned. He was the latest in long line of spiritual leaders who have dared to criticise established authority, ranging from the Old Testament prophets through St Thomas a Becket, one of Dr Rowan Williams’ distinguished predecessors, and Fr. John Ball of Colchester, a leader of the Peasants Revolt, to the martyred Archbishop Romero of Costa Rica, Sheila Cassidy who endured torture at the hands of the henchmen of General Pinochet of Chile and later became a nun, Trevor Huddlestone, Archbishop of Mauritius and the Indian Ocean, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa.
We hear a great deal in the press about ‘The Christian Religious Right’ particularly in the USA (Sarah Palin and her ‘Tea Party’ friends for instance). It is good to be reminded from time to time that there is, and always has been, a Christian Religious Left and a Christian Religious Centre, and that among their leaders have been men and women of renowned courage and spirituality!
*The Sun tries desperately hard to speak the language of the English Working Class of whom it aspires to be the voice. It never quite succeeds. When, for instance, did you last hear anyone wearing workman’s overalls describe a stupid person as ‘a chump’ or his utterances as ‘bosh’?
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