Recently I watched one of my right on and new age friends rage with unrestrained passion about something that he didn't agree with at an event he was involved in. It made me want to use his own words and assure him that 'everything happens for a reason and perhaps he needs to embrace this set back and look for the positives in it', but I couldn't help think that it would be seen as antagonistic rather than anything else - and to be fair there would have been an element of antagonism in there, but only after a fashion.
The thing is it made me realise that even the most non-judgemental of us are exactly the opposite of what we hold as a solid human trait. Prejudices appear all the time and it isn't just the ignorant or the rich who do this. I recently made friends with a man who seemed extremely decent; his job, wife and lifestyle suggested the last thing he is was an ignorant xenophobe with obvious BNP/EDL leanings - even seemingly intelligent people can exhibit levels of fuckwittedness that beggar belief.
I've met wilfully ignorant people in the last few weeks; people who smoke while pregnant; people who work zero hour contracts and have the urine extracted from them by their employers; people who still believe the NHS will be £350billion a second better off now we're out of the EU, because they haven't taken any notice of a newspaper or a news program since the day after the referendum. I've met a school teacher who voted Leave, who told me she did it because she wanted her country back, that the country was getting to the point where there wasn't enough room and it would be nice to have the majority of kids in her class where English was the first language... A teacher... You have to start wondering about whether humanity has just subconsciously developed an absurdist self-destruct gene?
Having a wife who earns a little too much money has meant that my periods of unemployment in recent years has garnered me the absolute minimum I should be entitled to, yet someone I've known best part of my life and hasn't been remotely interested in getting a job - since 1992 - gets so much support, even now - in the wake of IDS and his purges - that it actually made me feel anger towards him (my friend that is, I've felt anger towards IDS since about 1999). After years of contributing to the economy and paying my NI, I was entitled to essentially fuck all. Had I been 'a feckless workshy wanker' I could have got just about everything I needed - like free prescriptions, bus fares or other frivolous things people with money take for granted. The sad thing is I'm not a particularly nice person but I felt slightly ashamed of myself for feeling angry towards my friend's 'life choice'.
It also should be noted that my friend with the unemployment fixation is also damaged goods and probably now falls into the category of 'people never likely to be able to do a real job again, ever'. Whether he arrived at this situation through nurture or nature isn't for debate (I know the answer to this specific question, though), but one thing is clear 50% of the blame, at least, has to be placed at the feet of the governments of the late 1970s and early 1980s, because they didn't do enough to change attitudes, or invest enough in education (because what sense is there investing in our future?) and it only got worse in the 80s and 90s.
After spending over 15 years working with the disenfranchised and becoming a good socialist as a result, I know the difference between the disenfranchised and those who play the system because they don't want to work or contribute - the people who think it is okay to live off of everyone else without contributing anything other than more actual cost to the taxpayer. Yes, you can argue, it isn't their fault they're in whatever predicament they're in - more the fault of successive governments doing little or nothing for the most isolated and alienated in already poor communities, while simultaneously finding something unrelated to blame - but I'm also not that left wing where I won't call a feckless wanker a feckless wanker.
Take the argument that migrant workers put too much strain on our services. The blame for this appeared to be placed firmly at the feet of the EU despite the fact that 62% of our migrants come from outside of the EU and never once, during the EU debate, did any party - Corbyn's included - point out that the strains on hospitals, schools and public services was actually the fault of the government for not investing in expanding it all when the need grew. I mean it doesn't take an idiot to realise that even if they hooked private business into the building of these things, they would all have been patronised, would have employed more people and would have injected money back into the economy. That isn't socialism, that's common sense that could have been exploited however the Tories wanted and still been beneficial to the majority of people.
I have suggested before that I'm beginning to think that politicians are mainly all idiots, or have finally decided that we're all idiots, because all politics seems to be choreographed now; even Corbyn really appears to be quite toothless because no one - apart from the lovely Mairhi Black (who is 21) - seems to asking the pertinent questions or making any salient points. Take the decision to overrule the No Fracking decision by Lancashire Council - whatever way you feel about fracking, when you consider the overall costs compared to, say, putting up an offshore wind farm, you have to wonder if our politicians are also brainless psychopaths too. Am I the only person who questions his (or her) own sanity at comments, actions or interviews given by politicians. I mean, is Priti Patel even real?
I recently spent a few hours talking to the owner of a small private hire company and he told me some astounding facts about taxis. 54% of all taxis booked are by girls/women aged between 14 and 40. But even more incredible is that upwards of 60% of all taxis are booked/hailed by people on benefits. As someone who has, at times, viewed £10 as an important third of my shopping bill, to be in a position where walking or catching a bus doesn't even feature in someone's thinking, despite having nothing makes me begin to wonder if the Tories are right and that some people exploit the system. Or perhaps kids in poor schools need more education as to how to prioritise their money better when they leave education and go straight into a career on welfare. Ironically, we've allowed TV, the media and commercialism/advertising to brainwash the young into thinking that having an iPhone is more important than eating healthily and we've seen, throughout the last few decades, common sense levels in most individuals drop to the point where (almost) statistically more than half of the people here are twats. We've all been persuaded to spend all of the money we haven't got on cheap shit that won't last while simultaneously blaming Johnny Foreigner for stealing someone else's job...
The unswerving power of commercialism has placed many of our citizens in a position where they view essentials as trivial and trivia as essential and urban ghettos and isolated areas of deprivation are as a result of no government ever addressing - in my life time, at least - the problems in any long-term way. Mix commercialism with a bit of prejudice and you create a dependent with the belief of entitlement. That's the fault of governments since the 1960s who didn't acknowledge prevention was better, and cost less, than cure. Governments never really see or understand the problem until it is too late to fix. And then you need to acknowledge that to fix just some of society's ills - the ones who wield power fancy supporting - it would cost far more money than is available and we all know money is an exclusive privilege of the rich.
***
Over the last few days we've seen the right-leaning media ratchet up the hate and racism against migrants, or in fact anyone not from the UK. I fail to see what the ultimate aim is, unless Murdock, Beaverbrook and the rest actually want the UK to become a xenophobic, isolated island with no trade deals and vilified by the rest of the world.
What good are these 'rags' doing? What possible positive outcomes can we hope to get when facts are ignored in favour of jingoistic hate and bile? With at least 52% of the country's voters prone to believe sensationalist bullshit and lies you have to start wondering if there's a crazy agenda being set out by the media. Because it has to be crazy - Jeremy Corbyn is a fair politician but is treated and talked about like he was a former Nazi death camp guard, while the Tories and their supporters get nastier and the only places these are covered are in blogs, news sites (not affiliated to money) and Twitter - thus having little or no credence to the 52% because it wasn't seen on the BBC or read in the Sun or Daily Mail.
We're in the depths of a self-fulfilling prophecy; I'm not sure what the prophecy is, just that it appears to involve hate and ultimately violence.
The Politics of ...
Showing posts with label Islam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Islam. Show all posts
Friday, 21 October 2016
Monday, 3 October 2016
Crazy crazy world
Honestly, you couldn't make it up.
If, say 15 years ago, you were told that the UK would elect a Tory government despite more than 50% of the country being pissed off with poverty and misery, and would also vote to come out of the EU based on a mixture of feelings, misplaced patriotism and idiocy and then we might witness the election of a President of the USA who, frankly, is crazier than batshit daiquiris, you'd probably think I was describing a new Armando Iannucci political comedy, because I'd think all of that and I'm a) writing this and b) living it too.
We live in a Post-fact, post-expert, post-logical world where people simply don't give a fuck about facts - especially those who voted for Leave. Experts are just there to scare us. Logic is there to confuse us and Facts are there to be ignored and derided because Feelings and Pride are far more important to the future of everyone.
The problem is we're talking about a majority of people now. You know and I know that it isn't really a true majority, but it's big enough and ugly enough to dictate the country's rhetoric. The sad truth is a large percentage of the 52% voted as a protest to the shit they've been suffering for years without really understanding that the referendum had nothing to do with what has been happening to them and no one made a big enough issue out of the fact that it was the EU that stopped the worst off and most disenfranchised among us from being marginalised even more. If you weighed up the difference between what Westminster and Brussels has given to the people of South Wales you would have thought they would have voted 99% to remain, instead of 61% of them opting for the exit button. What's worse is these people think that our government is going to save them... That's how stupid people are now.
There are people in Sunderland facing economic oblivion as their largest employer scales back and considers moving elsewhere who actually feel happy and proud that they've helped precipitate their own downfall. I'm amazed Cameron quit; the referendum gave a warped legitimacy to everything him and Gideon were doing; the fact that Treeza May is actually attempting to reverse some of their less humane achievements almost smacks of the same level of crazy.
I loved a short statement made by *Yasmin Ali - "Tonight I went to a Tory Party meeting on Brexit. More specifically, I went to a Tory meeting on what happens after Brexit to bring the nation together again. So what did I learn? If I distil it down, it is that they have no idea. No idea how to leave the EU. No idea what happens now. All they know is that they are so loved up with their vote that all these tedious questions are nothing but Party pooping nonsense."
Doesn't this just about sum up the feeling of the Brexiteers across the country? The same people who claim quite self-righteously that if they'd lost they wouldn't be making such a big issue about it... Yeah, right and if my aunt had balls she'd be my uncle...
It isn't just us; there's this Rodrigo Duterte fellow in the Philippines who is basically advocating and promoting a criminal-cleansing spree, allowing his citizens to kill anyone they suspect is a drug dealer or taker or friend of either. The weird thing about Duterte is despite caterwauls of horror and disgust from the rest of the world, he's a bloody popular bloodthirsty tyrant among his own people - the right wing/Libertarian supporting Philippinos think 'Digong' is top banana and his popularity has grown as the graves of the criminals have filled up.
Hungary has been trying to out-Farage Nigel by having a referendum that I'm still not entirely sure about. I could check this but that takes the fun out of it, but apparently they've just had a referendum to reject the EU's migrant policy, which kind of doesn't make any sense because as part of the EU they've already caused ructions by putting a bloody great fence around their country and restricting movement (you know, the thing 52% of our population would get massive erections about if offered the chance). The fact that not enough Hungarians actually voted to make it officially recognisable is, hopefully, a testament to nice Hungarians, because, according to my Romanian neighbour, 'Most peoples from Hungaria are shit.'
I'm sure Hillary Clinton isn't all the things she's being accused of, because if she is then the USA has finally succumbed to Total Dumb by having two unbelievably crooked and dislikable people vying for the job of Chief Button Pusher. I know it's more about how much money you can throw at it than politics, but if the USA wants to be treated with the respect it deserves it should really take a good hard long look at itself. Sometimes the idea of the Yellowstone Caldera Extinction Event seems like a damned fine idea.
Oh and while this isn't strictly politics, you have to wonder what kind of world we're now living in if fear, scaremongering and worst case scenarios are touted as news... At least four tabloids in the last week have picked up on the 'Britain is headed for an apocalyptic winter' news story. This incredible prophecy of doom first appeared in the Daily Express - the paper that essentially talks about three things: the weather, Princess Diana and the evil Labour party. The Express actually just rehashed a story written last October, with a slight edit to suggest they were a hair's width from being totally right about saying 2015 would be the worst winter since the opening sequence of The Empire Strikes Back. The truth was last winter was one of the mildest on record. The Express would have been more accurate had they said 'Pretty bog standard winter with some cold days and some mild days, lots of wind and a cold spring', because this is essentially what six of the last 10 years have been. Of the other four we had two colder than average winters and two warmer than average winters and warm springs (both of these years my apricot tree fruited).
The thing is as the Met Office says on a regular basis - anything over a week and you get into chaos theory and frankly you can only base long range forecasts on trends and computer models, therefore the Met Office has said what I said in the paragraph above - 2016/17: an average winter with colder spells and milder ones. Yet this is the sixth time in seven years the Express has told us we're all going to freeze to death.
Why?
What does scaring the shit out of Brexit-voting pensioners achieve? Do governments just say to newspapers that parts of the economy need stimulating so make up some shite that'll get pensioners in Bournemouth bulk buying bog paper from the local Asda, or is that just a crazy conspiracy theory too far?
* Yasmin Alibhai-Brown (left-ish UK Muslim journalist)
If, say 15 years ago, you were told that the UK would elect a Tory government despite more than 50% of the country being pissed off with poverty and misery, and would also vote to come out of the EU based on a mixture of feelings, misplaced patriotism and idiocy and then we might witness the election of a President of the USA who, frankly, is crazier than batshit daiquiris, you'd probably think I was describing a new Armando Iannucci political comedy, because I'd think all of that and I'm a) writing this and b) living it too.
We live in a Post-fact, post-expert, post-logical world where people simply don't give a fuck about facts - especially those who voted for Leave. Experts are just there to scare us. Logic is there to confuse us and Facts are there to be ignored and derided because Feelings and Pride are far more important to the future of everyone.
The problem is we're talking about a majority of people now. You know and I know that it isn't really a true majority, but it's big enough and ugly enough to dictate the country's rhetoric. The sad truth is a large percentage of the 52% voted as a protest to the shit they've been suffering for years without really understanding that the referendum had nothing to do with what has been happening to them and no one made a big enough issue out of the fact that it was the EU that stopped the worst off and most disenfranchised among us from being marginalised even more. If you weighed up the difference between what Westminster and Brussels has given to the people of South Wales you would have thought they would have voted 99% to remain, instead of 61% of them opting for the exit button. What's worse is these people think that our government is going to save them... That's how stupid people are now.
There are people in Sunderland facing economic oblivion as their largest employer scales back and considers moving elsewhere who actually feel happy and proud that they've helped precipitate their own downfall. I'm amazed Cameron quit; the referendum gave a warped legitimacy to everything him and Gideon were doing; the fact that Treeza May is actually attempting to reverse some of their less humane achievements almost smacks of the same level of crazy.
I loved a short statement made by *Yasmin Ali - "Tonight I went to a Tory Party meeting on Brexit. More specifically, I went to a Tory meeting on what happens after Brexit to bring the nation together again. So what did I learn? If I distil it down, it is that they have no idea. No idea how to leave the EU. No idea what happens now. All they know is that they are so loved up with their vote that all these tedious questions are nothing but Party pooping nonsense."
Doesn't this just about sum up the feeling of the Brexiteers across the country? The same people who claim quite self-righteously that if they'd lost they wouldn't be making such a big issue about it... Yeah, right and if my aunt had balls she'd be my uncle...
It isn't just us; there's this Rodrigo Duterte fellow in the Philippines who is basically advocating and promoting a criminal-cleansing spree, allowing his citizens to kill anyone they suspect is a drug dealer or taker or friend of either. The weird thing about Duterte is despite caterwauls of horror and disgust from the rest of the world, he's a bloody popular bloodthirsty tyrant among his own people - the right wing/Libertarian supporting Philippinos think 'Digong' is top banana and his popularity has grown as the graves of the criminals have filled up.
Hungary has been trying to out-Farage Nigel by having a referendum that I'm still not entirely sure about. I could check this but that takes the fun out of it, but apparently they've just had a referendum to reject the EU's migrant policy, which kind of doesn't make any sense because as part of the EU they've already caused ructions by putting a bloody great fence around their country and restricting movement (you know, the thing 52% of our population would get massive erections about if offered the chance). The fact that not enough Hungarians actually voted to make it officially recognisable is, hopefully, a testament to nice Hungarians, because, according to my Romanian neighbour, 'Most peoples from Hungaria are shit.'
I'm sure Hillary Clinton isn't all the things she's being accused of, because if she is then the USA has finally succumbed to Total Dumb by having two unbelievably crooked and dislikable people vying for the job of Chief Button Pusher. I know it's more about how much money you can throw at it than politics, but if the USA wants to be treated with the respect it deserves it should really take a good hard long look at itself. Sometimes the idea of the Yellowstone Caldera Extinction Event seems like a damned fine idea.
Oh and while this isn't strictly politics, you have to wonder what kind of world we're now living in if fear, scaremongering and worst case scenarios are touted as news... At least four tabloids in the last week have picked up on the 'Britain is headed for an apocalyptic winter' news story. This incredible prophecy of doom first appeared in the Daily Express - the paper that essentially talks about three things: the weather, Princess Diana and the evil Labour party. The Express actually just rehashed a story written last October, with a slight edit to suggest they were a hair's width from being totally right about saying 2015 would be the worst winter since the opening sequence of The Empire Strikes Back. The truth was last winter was one of the mildest on record. The Express would have been more accurate had they said 'Pretty bog standard winter with some cold days and some mild days, lots of wind and a cold spring', because this is essentially what six of the last 10 years have been. Of the other four we had two colder than average winters and two warmer than average winters and warm springs (both of these years my apricot tree fruited).
The thing is as the Met Office says on a regular basis - anything over a week and you get into chaos theory and frankly you can only base long range forecasts on trends and computer models, therefore the Met Office has said what I said in the paragraph above - 2016/17: an average winter with colder spells and milder ones. Yet this is the sixth time in seven years the Express has told us we're all going to freeze to death.
Why?
What does scaring the shit out of Brexit-voting pensioners achieve? Do governments just say to newspapers that parts of the economy need stimulating so make up some shite that'll get pensioners in Bournemouth bulk buying bog paper from the local Asda, or is that just a crazy conspiracy theory too far?
* Yasmin Alibhai-Brown (left-ish UK Muslim journalist)
Wednesday, 23 September 2015
Fear of Islam
The climate of fear generated by the current government, the coalition and, sadly, the last Labour administration has finally begun to eat itself. There will still be Daily Mail readers who will quiver with fear at the mention of immigrants, Muslims, communist Labour leaders, or, if they're Express readers the fear will probably be apocalyptic weather, foreign spiders and the ghost of Diana coming to haunt us all... I said this before (it's a famous quote): the only thing we have to fear is fear itself and politicians and newspapers have this tied up like an ebola-infused Christmas turkey complete with ISIS chef hats and a semtex stuffing.
The latest example of our (non) Nanny State was the interrogation of a 12-year-old Muslim lad for using the term 'eco-terrorism', in a French lesson (so he said it in French - that's more impressive than I could have managed), when talking about protecting the planet from global warming. The boy was taken out of class a few days later, questioned about terrorism, about ISIS and naturally his parents went incandescent with rage. Sadly, this didn't surprise me in the slightest...
A few years ago I worked for one of those Academy schools - the kind that essentially are run as businesses and not as benevolent educational centres. The school was results driven, behaviour intolerant and was run by a former businesswoman with less educational experience than the average schoolkid - she cosseted her teachers, abused her support staff (treating them in many ways worse than students) and began a form of ethnic cleansing to ensure her school was never ever regarded as a Special Measures place, ever again.
Regardless of that, this school has a good Ofsted rating, good examination results and a good reputation throughout the town (not too good locally, though). I was employed to work with the 'problem' kids - the disruptive, the non-conformists and the poor and disenfranchised that were needed to be alienated and oppressed so they perpetuated the situation into future generations (but not at this school...). I was taken on by the new deputy head of behaviour; he had a brief to change the way the school worked and looked at problem students, and I got the job because of the diversity I brought to it and the fact that I am a reformer and not a disciplinarian. This school was not addressing issues in a proactive way and therefore the problem was not going away - I was the antidote.
But this isn't about that, because with all the best intentions some things won't change if you get too much opposition from people who don't understand how this new, progressive way of dealing with young people works and want immediate, gratifying, punishment. 50% of the teachers at that school were simply not interested in why, they just wanted blood and therefore my boss continually had to justify my methods - even with the evidence of it working staring them in their collective faces. But, this really isn't about that and I have a gagging order to prove it. What this is about was one of the things that happened that probably just ensured the school enforced said gagging order on me.
I'd been doing the job about a year when I met 'Mohammed'. He was the least likely occupant of my 'bad kids' class - an extremely intelligent young British Pakistani Muslim from an exceptionally good and well-respected family. Mo (as we shall call him) was placed in isolation because he'd hacked the school's computer system and altered all of his mates' exam results. I have to admit to having more than just a bit of sneaky admiration for this. The school employed six IT specialists and this kid turned them inside out and was punished. I argued that we were doing the wrong thing; that the kind of punishment this kid needed was education not being placed with the 'usual suspects'. I also argued that the school should embrace such a precocious talent and get him working with the IT department to devise a way to stop future Mohammeds from hacking their system. This suggestion was treated in the same way as suggesting we made a child porn movie with the pupils - what made it worse was no one, not even my boss, could see the sense in doing something Microsoft and Apple did wholesale in the 1990s - employ the enemy.
Mo spent a week with me and there was nothing I could do with him; a Class A student who was now a cult hero in the school and that was the school's fault - they did nothing the way it should have been done and as a result this extremely intelligent kid was banned from using a computer or mobile devices while on the premises - a school with pretty much a net book for every pupil, limited net access and a progressive learning policy that embraced the future of technology; so they treated a potential child prodigy like a criminal.
Fast forward six months...
My job had changed; a new school year and a new role, one that took me all over the school dealing with unacceptable behaviour as it happened rather than dealing with it in a retro way. It was one of the few progressive suggestions I made that was treated seriously - although the senior members of staff who wanted us to go back to the cane were always challenging my role with my boss. It was hard work dealing with the staff because unlike the kids many of them were set in their ways. I had spent six years working with young offenders and seriously disenfranchised young people - I was actually in a far better position than half of these archaic dinosaurs to understand the whys and wherefores - so I was obviously ignored with gusto.
I got a call on my radio; it was lunch and I was asked to go and check a commotion in the boys toilets. On arrival I found Mo in a seriously bad way. He had had some kind of seizure, and was flailing around saying he couldn't see and my gut feeling was I was witnessing something very very bad. I cleared the toilets, radioed reception and ordered them to call an ambulance. this was initially refused because I wasn't the school nurse. When she arrived and radioed reception to tell them to call the bloody ambulance you would have thought they would have done that, but no, reception informed the headmistress and her deputy and they 'took over'.
Forty minutes of this poor boy fitting, having a seizure and being in complete and utter hysterics because he couldn't see and he had a headache that he said felt like his head was trying to split into two and the school finally called for an ambulance. I was a mixture of horrified and angry, but I had a job to do, as it was made clear to me, bluntly. Mo's family were informed and as his parents arrived at the school, so did the ambulance. Fortunately the paramedics took over, leaving all the staff who were involved to stand around and pontificate about things like Mo's dad and his reaction to his son's potentially serious seizure; how mum didn't seem upset about it and worse than anything else, the suggestion that these Muslims don't think about their kids the same way as us decent British people.
I was appalled and at the end of the day approached my boss and pointed out that I'd worked with Mo for less than a week, but I was aware his father was an Imam and his reaction was perfectly normal, and that because of the diversity training I had had throughout my work with young people, I was aware that the behaviour of the parents was cultural and had nothing to do with how they may or may not have felt about their children, especially in a stressful place surrounded by non-Muslims. He suggested I speak to the designated 'diversity' rep in the school.
I did and she agreed with my complaints and said she's take it to the staff meeting that evening. The following day I was rudely spoken to by the head, in front of my boss, who later tried to say it had nothing to do with me, but it was clear that my criticism of the way the staff treated the boy and the remarks made after had really pissed her off. The school dismissed my call for some diversity training out of hand, claiming it wasn't needed and that I should concentrate on my job and not others. It was an utterly appalling treatment that was made worse by suggestions from senior members of staff that Mo was actually play-acting and was doing it to get attention.
Unsurprisingly over the next couple of months my job was put under tremendous scrutiny; it was clear that I'd upset some people by speaking the truth and the school didn't like that.
The rest is attached to the gagging order - one made, you have to argue to prevent me from talking about the circumstances by which I eventually 'left by mutual consent' and they gave me money too. They didn't want me there, probably because I questioned the way they did things. I even harbour feelings that I might have been set up. I expect nothing has changed at this school; I expect it's still run as a business; culture and cultural deviations are not even taken into consideration and the way the school's CPO goes about her job I'm amazed that we haven't had more anti-terrorist assault squads descend on the school as it has at least a 15% Muslim content and must be regarded as a perfect breeding ground for anti-British, pro-extremist Islam beliefs. The fact that most of these 15% will end up as lawyers, doctors. or successful businessmen is immaterial.
There have been a number of headlines in the press over the last few years about schools and extremism; my guess is the climate of fear has gripped the educational system like someone has laced the chips at school dinners with antibiotic resistant gonorrhoea. If the marginalised see themselves as being targeted by 'authority' then it easily becomes a fait accompli. Having read a number of reports that completely overreacted - therefore inadvertently sowed a seed - and been a witness to cultural ignorance and general disregard by teachers, I'm grateful for some of the kids - whether they're good or bad - because whether you're gay, Muslim, disabled or SEN, most of the kids I have ever worked with have no problem with any of these things. Teachers, on the other hand...
***
I mentioned 'sowing the seed' and back in 2005, I witnessed something that absolutely disgusted me. I was working at Bassett's Court, doing a night shift and I was standing out the back smoking a fag when a young black lad on a push bike came riding towards me aiming for the alley that ran down the side of the hostel. He looked like any normal 12-year-old kid out, after school, riding his bike. Suddenly a police car came racing along the road to Bassett's (a dead end) and a young copper jumped out of the car and shouted at the kid on the bike; who stopped in his tracks and put his bike down - an obvious sign he was guilty if ever I saw one.
The copper searched the kid and asked him a load of questions. The kid did everything he was asked politely despite the heavy-handed casual racism he was being subjected to and all the time the copper was aware I was standing there watching. The kid finally got on his bike and rode off looking shell shocked and upset, while the copper looked at me. I said nothing, but the young fascist obviously read my mind, "He fitted the description of a shoplifter in town," he said to me like this was all I needed to think he was protecting society from dangerous threats.
"Wasn't him though was it?" I asked. The young copper waved his hand at me, like I didn't understand.
"Just doing my job, sir." He said and I couldn't help but reply...
"Just ensuring that that black lad has just lost any respect he might have had for the police, eh?" I walked back inside the building, I had no interest in arguing with a racist wearing a policeman's uniform.
10 years later and we're actually regressing. That's what fear does. Fear also starts wars and I get the feeling that some people in higher politics view a war as the easiest way to solve the wave after wave of crises we keep being warned about, by the government and the neo-liberal press.
The latest example of our (non) Nanny State was the interrogation of a 12-year-old Muslim lad for using the term 'eco-terrorism', in a French lesson (so he said it in French - that's more impressive than I could have managed), when talking about protecting the planet from global warming. The boy was taken out of class a few days later, questioned about terrorism, about ISIS and naturally his parents went incandescent with rage. Sadly, this didn't surprise me in the slightest...
A few years ago I worked for one of those Academy schools - the kind that essentially are run as businesses and not as benevolent educational centres. The school was results driven, behaviour intolerant and was run by a former businesswoman with less educational experience than the average schoolkid - she cosseted her teachers, abused her support staff (treating them in many ways worse than students) and began a form of ethnic cleansing to ensure her school was never ever regarded as a Special Measures place, ever again.
Regardless of that, this school has a good Ofsted rating, good examination results and a good reputation throughout the town (not too good locally, though). I was employed to work with the 'problem' kids - the disruptive, the non-conformists and the poor and disenfranchised that were needed to be alienated and oppressed so they perpetuated the situation into future generations (but not at this school...). I was taken on by the new deputy head of behaviour; he had a brief to change the way the school worked and looked at problem students, and I got the job because of the diversity I brought to it and the fact that I am a reformer and not a disciplinarian. This school was not addressing issues in a proactive way and therefore the problem was not going away - I was the antidote.
But this isn't about that, because with all the best intentions some things won't change if you get too much opposition from people who don't understand how this new, progressive way of dealing with young people works and want immediate, gratifying, punishment. 50% of the teachers at that school were simply not interested in why, they just wanted blood and therefore my boss continually had to justify my methods - even with the evidence of it working staring them in their collective faces. But, this really isn't about that and I have a gagging order to prove it. What this is about was one of the things that happened that probably just ensured the school enforced said gagging order on me.
I'd been doing the job about a year when I met 'Mohammed'. He was the least likely occupant of my 'bad kids' class - an extremely intelligent young British Pakistani Muslim from an exceptionally good and well-respected family. Mo (as we shall call him) was placed in isolation because he'd hacked the school's computer system and altered all of his mates' exam results. I have to admit to having more than just a bit of sneaky admiration for this. The school employed six IT specialists and this kid turned them inside out and was punished. I argued that we were doing the wrong thing; that the kind of punishment this kid needed was education not being placed with the 'usual suspects'. I also argued that the school should embrace such a precocious talent and get him working with the IT department to devise a way to stop future Mohammeds from hacking their system. This suggestion was treated in the same way as suggesting we made a child porn movie with the pupils - what made it worse was no one, not even my boss, could see the sense in doing something Microsoft and Apple did wholesale in the 1990s - employ the enemy.
Mo spent a week with me and there was nothing I could do with him; a Class A student who was now a cult hero in the school and that was the school's fault - they did nothing the way it should have been done and as a result this extremely intelligent kid was banned from using a computer or mobile devices while on the premises - a school with pretty much a net book for every pupil, limited net access and a progressive learning policy that embraced the future of technology; so they treated a potential child prodigy like a criminal.
Fast forward six months...
My job had changed; a new school year and a new role, one that took me all over the school dealing with unacceptable behaviour as it happened rather than dealing with it in a retro way. It was one of the few progressive suggestions I made that was treated seriously - although the senior members of staff who wanted us to go back to the cane were always challenging my role with my boss. It was hard work dealing with the staff because unlike the kids many of them were set in their ways. I had spent six years working with young offenders and seriously disenfranchised young people - I was actually in a far better position than half of these archaic dinosaurs to understand the whys and wherefores - so I was obviously ignored with gusto.
I got a call on my radio; it was lunch and I was asked to go and check a commotion in the boys toilets. On arrival I found Mo in a seriously bad way. He had had some kind of seizure, and was flailing around saying he couldn't see and my gut feeling was I was witnessing something very very bad. I cleared the toilets, radioed reception and ordered them to call an ambulance. this was initially refused because I wasn't the school nurse. When she arrived and radioed reception to tell them to call the bloody ambulance you would have thought they would have done that, but no, reception informed the headmistress and her deputy and they 'took over'.
Forty minutes of this poor boy fitting, having a seizure and being in complete and utter hysterics because he couldn't see and he had a headache that he said felt like his head was trying to split into two and the school finally called for an ambulance. I was a mixture of horrified and angry, but I had a job to do, as it was made clear to me, bluntly. Mo's family were informed and as his parents arrived at the school, so did the ambulance. Fortunately the paramedics took over, leaving all the staff who were involved to stand around and pontificate about things like Mo's dad and his reaction to his son's potentially serious seizure; how mum didn't seem upset about it and worse than anything else, the suggestion that these Muslims don't think about their kids the same way as us decent British people.
I was appalled and at the end of the day approached my boss and pointed out that I'd worked with Mo for less than a week, but I was aware his father was an Imam and his reaction was perfectly normal, and that because of the diversity training I had had throughout my work with young people, I was aware that the behaviour of the parents was cultural and had nothing to do with how they may or may not have felt about their children, especially in a stressful place surrounded by non-Muslims. He suggested I speak to the designated 'diversity' rep in the school.
I did and she agreed with my complaints and said she's take it to the staff meeting that evening. The following day I was rudely spoken to by the head, in front of my boss, who later tried to say it had nothing to do with me, but it was clear that my criticism of the way the staff treated the boy and the remarks made after had really pissed her off. The school dismissed my call for some diversity training out of hand, claiming it wasn't needed and that I should concentrate on my job and not others. It was an utterly appalling treatment that was made worse by suggestions from senior members of staff that Mo was actually play-acting and was doing it to get attention.
Unsurprisingly over the next couple of months my job was put under tremendous scrutiny; it was clear that I'd upset some people by speaking the truth and the school didn't like that.
The rest is attached to the gagging order - one made, you have to argue to prevent me from talking about the circumstances by which I eventually 'left by mutual consent' and they gave me money too. They didn't want me there, probably because I questioned the way they did things. I even harbour feelings that I might have been set up. I expect nothing has changed at this school; I expect it's still run as a business; culture and cultural deviations are not even taken into consideration and the way the school's CPO goes about her job I'm amazed that we haven't had more anti-terrorist assault squads descend on the school as it has at least a 15% Muslim content and must be regarded as a perfect breeding ground for anti-British, pro-extremist Islam beliefs. The fact that most of these 15% will end up as lawyers, doctors. or successful businessmen is immaterial.
There have been a number of headlines in the press over the last few years about schools and extremism; my guess is the climate of fear has gripped the educational system like someone has laced the chips at school dinners with antibiotic resistant gonorrhoea. If the marginalised see themselves as being targeted by 'authority' then it easily becomes a fait accompli. Having read a number of reports that completely overreacted - therefore inadvertently sowed a seed - and been a witness to cultural ignorance and general disregard by teachers, I'm grateful for some of the kids - whether they're good or bad - because whether you're gay, Muslim, disabled or SEN, most of the kids I have ever worked with have no problem with any of these things. Teachers, on the other hand...
***
I mentioned 'sowing the seed' and back in 2005, I witnessed something that absolutely disgusted me. I was working at Bassett's Court, doing a night shift and I was standing out the back smoking a fag when a young black lad on a push bike came riding towards me aiming for the alley that ran down the side of the hostel. He looked like any normal 12-year-old kid out, after school, riding his bike. Suddenly a police car came racing along the road to Bassett's (a dead end) and a young copper jumped out of the car and shouted at the kid on the bike; who stopped in his tracks and put his bike down - an obvious sign he was guilty if ever I saw one.
The copper searched the kid and asked him a load of questions. The kid did everything he was asked politely despite the heavy-handed casual racism he was being subjected to and all the time the copper was aware I was standing there watching. The kid finally got on his bike and rode off looking shell shocked and upset, while the copper looked at me. I said nothing, but the young fascist obviously read my mind, "He fitted the description of a shoplifter in town," he said to me like this was all I needed to think he was protecting society from dangerous threats.
"Wasn't him though was it?" I asked. The young copper waved his hand at me, like I didn't understand.
"Just doing my job, sir." He said and I couldn't help but reply...
"Just ensuring that that black lad has just lost any respect he might have had for the police, eh?" I walked back inside the building, I had no interest in arguing with a racist wearing a policeman's uniform.
10 years later and we're actually regressing. That's what fear does. Fear also starts wars and I get the feeling that some people in higher politics view a war as the easiest way to solve the wave after wave of crises we keep being warned about, by the government and the neo-liberal press.
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