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Wednesday 8 February 2012

Prefer the Most Quick-witted...


Interesting day, today.  Watched Ed M get creamed by Dave C to start in PMQs from the segregation of the public gallery.  Maybe it was the sheet of bulletproof glass, but I saw Ed M put up a good fight - which probably clinched it overall.  But it was when the PM alluded to the debate being less about NHS reform and more about Ed’s career prospects as a leader that both sides of the House sucked air in, simultaneously. 

"This is not a campaign to save the NHS: this is a campaign to try and save his leadership and I make this prediction: the NHS will keep getting better and his prospects will keep getting worse." -PM

Ouch.  I am grateful that our leader had Labour's NHS track record to fall back on.

When heckled by his opposite about the proximity of his Health Secretary to the dispatch box during questions on the NHS, the PM also made a very witty comeback [in less than five seconds - that's the test of genuine wit; any more than eight seconds and people can see you thinking] about how good it was to get advice on happy families from Ed M. 

Ouch, again. Andy Burnham was practically sitting on Ed's lap.  Andy Slaughter wasn’t spared a sideways sneer about the Twitter ‘fiasco’ created by his aide.  Another chance to snipe at Labour was irresistible, apparently.  Even if press coverage was online blog, brief.

Add one meeting with an ambassador and a boundary commission talk – and I am out of here.

I saw a friend at the bus stop, who kindly added that she read my stuff.  I said I shout her so – J: it was lovely seeing you and wish you all the very best of everything.

Wednesday 1 February 2012

Someone give Camila Batmanghelidjh public office...

"Gang leaders are scanning estate agents' windows and Google Earth.  The riots were merely a warning.  Street crime has hardened into a new kind of nihilism and gangs are recruiting ever more youthful members.  There's a new type of kid on the block...they are lethal.  The drug trade is prospering...it is run with corporate efficiency...and its leaders are looking to expand.  They have their eye on country houses and charming landscapes.  They like the look of Gloucestershire.   We need to enter the teenagers' world in order to save others from it." - Sarah Sands, interviewing CamBat, Evening Standard, 31 January 2012.

I would have said 'someone add CamBat to the Honours list' except some little known Whitehall committee might take it back on realising the extent of her deep emotional ties to gangland glitterati.

Yesterday's Evening Standard feature highlighted that Ms Bat has her finger on the pulse of clammy, mutating trends within underclass, underbelly, underfoot culture; while those with the actual power to effect change throw the patient a clean bandage from afar every now and again.

Festering concurrently alongside other major crises - such as the deficit, soaring unemployment, highest on record youth unemployment - is a 'crisis on the streets'.

CamBat is not wrong.  The 'topboys' that I used to know from back in the day are still unknown to the system because they have never worked and never signed on.  But they 'move a key' [sell a kilo of illegal substances] here and there using little foot soldiers who should be in bed.  It's sad. 

Some mothers of those really young children often accept the proceeds of such activity; treating the kid as a type of breadwinner.  And it is easy enough to point at this from the moral high ground, but some of these families frequently only have tap water and a tin of beans to look forward to at dinner time, when the money runs out.  And others just want to acknowledge and respect their dispossessed boy children for contributing in the only way they know how; sadly, it is the only vocation that will employ them.

These dispossessed are the generations of boys and girls who were ignored in schools, excluded - instead of inspired; and the heaped pile is finally catching up with us.  The gangland hierarchy is a self-sustaining cycle swallowing up kids and churning out society misfits who might never engage.  These misfits go on to [not] parent their own children - it is those who will most likely not have a stable home, but will serve as more fodder and similarly be ignored and excluded from schools.

Typically, the young men [and sometimes, the young women] can't get a job because they failed [were ignored] at school and have no prospects.  In order to get prospects, they must effectively pick up from where they left off and study something; eventually being defeated because they are unable to 'earn' money or because they have no real passion or talent for the subjects on offer.  And increasingly because after study, a degree of initiative is required in order to market themselves continuously for the job market, and the courses don't teach that.  Even if they are persistent, study hard, get a job - it's working for peanuts and they have a whole other world to tackle, like the rest of us, called discrimination in the workplace.

Most people have the opportunity at school to discover what they are good at; that talent is nurtured and frequently remains with the person throughout life as a potential avenue.  I was always well above average in English but dyslexic at Maths. 

The time that these young men and women should have spent at school, they were on the streets.  So they didn't develop a 'classroom' talent, but a talent for the streets.  They are often good with money, have an interpersonal gift to diffuse arguments between fellow soldiers or with clients.  They have persistence to endure dirty drug dens for days without washing or eating a hot meal, because they know they will have money after it all.  They are witty and have a good knowledge of national geography, because they have had to avoid high roads [and police] enroute to sell drugs at the coastal seaside town. 

During that life on the illegal side, they develop a self-importance that is both intimidated by legality and will not stoop to it.

An organisation like Kids Company would do well as a government department [I'm an idealist, I know it will never happen] - employing exactly the same people as it does now [not unseasoned civil service types] and bringing a significant chunk of other successful grass-roots organisations who work on the gangster frontline onboard to collaborate on strategy and policy that will really make a difference.

I have to applaude the direction that the Evening Standard has taken since the Oligarch bought it.  The paper has continuously run high-profile campaigns targetted at improving the lot of those affected by poverty.

All processes evolve over time.  It has become glaringly obvious that there has been a consensus of naivety among those with the obligation; who have overlooked that in the dark - the dirty, shady processes were evolving, too.