It should be very clear that the Christianity of Prime Minister David Cameron differs considerably as an ideological 'locus of control' from that of Council Tax protester Revd Paul Nicolson. http://www.taxpayersagainstpoverty.org.uk/the-need-for-active-participation-in-divine-gratuitous-love-never-greater-than-in-the-current-millennium/
Hi,
Cllr
The
Department for Education & Skills has published figures for
take-up by local authorities (LA's) throughout England regarding
statements
of Special Educational Needs (SEN) and Education, Health & Care
(EHC) Plans for children.(1) Disability News Service has drawn
attention to low
take-up of SEN statementing as suggesting that LA's are struggling
with funding.(2)
Meanwhile
it strikes me that councils' execution of EHC statementing may impact
along the lines of 'papering over the cracks' in their agendas and
thus collude with Conservative Government agendas toward forcing more
adoptions of children from poor families against the ideological
framework of Milton Friedman's 'Holy Trinity' of neoliberal
economics. That 'Holy Trinity', as highlighted in Naomi Klein's 2007
book The Shock Doctrine: The rise of disaster capitalism,
consists of
privatization, deregulation and cuts to social spending -- in which governments …. abandon public ownership, reduce taxes, eliminate the minimum wage, cut health and welfare spending, and privatize education. She calls the means of achieving this goal "disaster capitalism" and describes how it has resulted in a worldwide redistribution of income and wealth to the already rich at the expense of economic solvency for the middle and lower classes.(3)
I
further argue that 'disaster captialism' turns vulnerable service
users into commodities. This has already been observed in the
'welfare to work' industry's secondment of economically vulnerable
people in a new slavery industry,(4) and in the privatisation of
social services in general.(5) There is also, of course, the sell-off
of social housing to private investers that displaces whole
communities.(6) I believe that this conversion of vulnerable people
into commodities may now be a factor in councils' adoption of EHC's
as a rationale for a surge in forced separation of children from
their parents, a
surge that has been highlighted by Legal Action for Women.(7)
In housing advice services funded by
LA's, it has been standard practice for some years to not allocate
legal advice to people facing the prospect of eviction until an
eviction notice has been served. That practice leads vulnerable
families and individuals to crisis point and often to eviction before
alternative accommodation can be found. Now, the Housing and Planning
Bill 2016 raises the prospect of an even greater surge of evictions
of vulnerable people.(8) And the most recent Queen's Speech raises
the prospect of more forced separations of parents from their
children; state intervention into the lives of families at breaking
point as the walls close in on them is far
more likely to focus on forced separation of families than supporting
of the family unit.(9)
It would seem that David Cameron's Government does not regard burgeoning promiscuous sanctions against economically vulnerable people as in any way suspect but entirely corrective..(10) In other words, his focus is entirely upon the violence committed within poor people's homes without regarding the actions of an oppressive State as a root cause and role model. What I have observed and identified as 'burn out' symptoms in people who have been denied benefits by accident or by design has made me somewhat glad that I have only been a one-person household in those times. People can get very irritable and irritating when they are denied basic rights, and such behaviour is all too easily regarded as the fault of the person's nature rather than how they are treated. Gandhi observed: "Poverty is the worst form of violence." And it is often easier to 'lash out' in anger at those most easily to hand rather than to acknowledge just how much we have been abused by supposedly legitimate authority. [Author's note: The link text for (10) and text up to this point has been amended and extended since original publication this morning.]
Caroline Lucas MP (Green Party) has said of that Queen's Speech:
It would seem that David Cameron's Government does not regard burgeoning promiscuous sanctions against economically vulnerable people as in any way suspect but entirely corrective..(10) In other words, his focus is entirely upon the violence committed within poor people's homes without regarding the actions of an oppressive State as a root cause and role model. What I have observed and identified as 'burn out' symptoms in people who have been denied benefits by accident or by design has made me somewhat glad that I have only been a one-person household in those times. People can get very irritable and irritating when they are denied basic rights, and such behaviour is all too easily regarded as the fault of the person's nature rather than how they are treated. Gandhi observed: "Poverty is the worst form of violence." And it is often easier to 'lash out' in anger at those most easily to hand rather than to acknowledge just how much we have been abused by supposedly legitimate authority. [Author's note: The link text for (10) and text up to this point has been amended and extended since original publication this morning.]
Caroline Lucas MP (Green Party) has said of that Queen's Speech:
"Just a few months ago we had another eye watering budget — and further cuts to local services are now hitting hard. The idea that the Government can build social reform on the carcass of a gutted welfare state is a fallacy."(11)
Maybe it all depends on what sort of 'social reform' that government desires?
Thus I ask you as my ward councillor to contact Legal Action for Women toward scrutinising how much [my local council] might or might not be colluding with an agenda of privatising parenthood and reducing the rights of poor people in favour of those whose social worth is supposedly enshrined in their finances.(12) Yet it is a very unequal world that we are living in. With privatisation of adoption services and parenthood, children become commodities in a form of legalised human trafficking.
Thus I ask you as my ward councillor to contact Legal Action for Women toward scrutinising how much [my local council] might or might not be colluding with an agenda of privatising parenthood and reducing the rights of poor people in favour of those whose social worth is supposedly enshrined in their finances.(12) Yet it is a very unequal world that we are living in. With privatisation of adoption services and parenthood, children become commodities in a form of legalised human trafficking.
In conclusion, I would point out that
supporting families in the face of poverty can be an example of what
'Pedagogy of the Oppressed' (1970) author Paulo Freire called
'authentic liberation', whereas forced adoption can be regarded as an
example of 'false generosity'. I would also argue that in cases where
there is domestic violence, that domestic violence is pioneered by
oppressive attitudes and practices by the State against hard pressed parents.
Your constituent
Name
Address
NB: The constituent's home address helps validate their writing to a particular ward councillor or councillors. As Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group is focused on the London Boroughs of Brent and Camden, the respective 'find your local councillor' page links are
TheyWorkForYou.com has a form for helping you identify and contact your local Member of Parliament.(15)
Links
- Reference to Housing & Planning Bill 2016 pending
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