Today marks the 25th anniversary of the start of the year long miners strike which was to lead, ultimately, to the breaking of union power and also to the decimation of the coal industry.
Back then, it was one of the most divisive issues of the time - you were either for Thatcher or for Scargill - but it was never really as cut and dried as people make it seem. Neither Thatcher nor Scargill were entirely honest about their intentions. The truth is that the strike was never really about coal, but about who governs the country.
Scargill was an unreformed Marxist who believed that the unions represented the proletariat and that the proletariat was where true governmental power should lie. Never mind the issue of democracy - that was never a big deal to Marxists (still isn't) - for Scargill this was about the power of the working man to dictate terms to the ruling classes. That, on its own, could be considered a noble cause, but Scargill was also a self-important egoist.
He'd seen the almost legendary status that Joe Gormley achieved when he led the miners strike that eventually brought the Heath government to its knees and he wanted a similar confrontation to bolster his own reputation. Thatcher recognised this character flaw and set about preparing to give Scargill the confrontation he wanted - but this time with a different outcome.
Both sides had been preparing for this battle for years. The government had begun stockpiling coal at least three years in advance - easy to do as Britain was producing far more coal than we could actually sell, while Scargill had been sniping at the government and stirring up the miners to prepare them for the battle months in advance.
When the confrontation actually began it was portrayed as being a fight by the miners to retain their jobs against a government determined to break the union power which they believed - quite rightly - as being the single biggest barrier to Britain's economic progress. Many of those who supported Thatcher - myself included - supported her not because we wanted to see the closure of pits and the end of coal mining in Britain (far from it, in my view), but that we just wanted to see an end to that union power.
Those who supported Scargill often supported him more because they wanted to prevent pit closures and preserve their jobs, but weren't really interested in usurping the government which was Scargill's actually intention.
As it happened, the miners lost and union power was finally broken. Scargill's tactics had given Thatcher all the excuses she needed to bring in new laws to restrict union practices which most people in Britain actually agreed with.
What we didn't agree with was the rampant pit closures that followed. Britain was producing too much coal which we couldn't sell, but this was always going to be a temporary problem. There was no need to close so many pits - just cut back on their production so that they were kept open and viable for when we needed them again. Yes, there would still have been thousands of job losses, but the mines would still be there and the communities that depended on those mines would not have been ravaged when the pit closed.
The 1984-1985 miners strike was a folly driven by two massive egos and the consequences of that are still felt today. For Scargill, it was a folly driven by his craze for power and status, but Thatcher having won the confrontation then embarked on a folly of her own as the pit closures were driven by a desire to "punish" those who had challenged her government's authority.
Although I can't prove it, I remember saying even back in the mid-eighties that the pit closures would come back to haunt Thatcher and Britain. The dash for gas and oil based on North Sea reserves was always going to be nothing more than a bubble which would eventually burst and we would, eventually, regret not having the coal mining capacity to make use of our most important natural fuel reserve.
As we enter what I believe will be a prolonged and deep depression it is my opinion that we now need to start making use of those reserves again. The countries that come out of this depression best will be those countries who have something they produce that they can either use or sell.
As I have been saying since I started this blog - a nation that makes nothing is worth nothing. We don't make anything - but we could. We have coal in abundance and we need to start opening up pits and mining that coal right now. We don't have to restore the power of the unions to do that, but we do have to do it.
Showing posts with label Community. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Community. Show all posts
Thursday, March 05, 2009
Friday, February 20, 2009
Thought for food
Over on The Times comment section, the gloriously named Camilla Cavendish kindly writes a piece in support of my suggestions for agriculture yesterday - well almost.
Most of us are confused. We bleat about animal welfare, but shun the pricey local butcher in favour of meat that may or may not have ever seen a daisy.
Bacon is a particular issue. Our pork production has halved in the past ten years, putting pig farmers out of business. This nation of animal lovers has pushed for higher welfare standards than any other EU country, but we are not prepared to pay the higher prices that result. Instead, we eat bacon and pork from Denmark and the Netherlands, where many sows apparently never escape from the kind of tiny, dark stalls that are banned here.
Being a product of her environment, Cavendish can't quite come to the conclusion that protectionism is the only solution - I guess she is one of those millions who have been brainwashed by the globalisation message over the years from this next statement.
I'm not arguing that we should rule on “British food for British workers” - that might be more than some can stomach, given our penchant for exotic foods and the very real travails of Kenyan farmers.
I don't know why she thinks that the travail of Kenyan farmers are any more real than those of Kent farmers - it's all relative. Yeah, they don't have the latest 4x4 tractor in Kenya, but they can hire an army of workers to do the job for less than a tankful of red diesel.
Cavendish also misses the point that all that food imported from Kenya means a whole lot less for native Kenyans and higher prices for what they can buy - but hey, that's globalisation for you. Who cares if a few Kenyan kids go hungry as long as we can feel good about helping a Kenyan farmer - and if you do feel guilty, just give a tenner to Comic Relief and you'll be able to forgive yourself.
I don't want to turn this into a Cavendish bash, though - mostly I agree with what she says. She makes some very good points about packaged food and food origins which I heartily agree with. A couple of weeks back I had a small argument with someone called "Anonymous" about a post that mentioned Tesco. Basically the upshot was that he/she felt I was a hypocrite who moaned about supermarkets and then rushes off to my local Tesco every Saturday.
Well, to be fair - I used to be just like that. Except it was Sainsbury's. I was like everybody else, packing the wife and kids into the car on Saturday morning to drive up to the local hypermarket where we'd spend the next 3-4 hours mooching around, buying two trolleys of stuff we don't really need and then spending ages waiting at the checkout queue to pay for the privilege.
Like everyone else we'd get home and pack our fridge, freezer and cupboards with our purchases for that week grateful that we'd got all the shopping done. Come the end of the week we'd have thrown a bunch of stuff out that had gone past it's "best before" date and we'd have made two or three other trips to the local shops for things we'd forgotten - a bag of sugar here, a pot of marmalade there and so on.
Then, one day, we had a revelation. Planning a family Sunday lunch with both sets of in-laws invited over, we needed a decent joint of meat and, our trip to the local supermarket done, the missus suddenly realised she'd forgotten to buy the joint. Fortunately, close to where we live is a local family butcher so we decided to pop in there.
We parked right outside the shop (which you can still do, today), popped in and less than 5 minutes later emerged with a fantastic joint of English lamb from a local farm. The butcher was friendly, knowledgeable and courteous. He knew where all his meat came from (mostly local) and how it is looked after. There was no queueing, no hassle and even the kids didn't mind as we were in and out so quickly.
The joint was delicious - the best piece of lamb I had tasted in ages. Even the mother-in-law was happy! Thanks to our pleasant experience with this butcher, Missus Stan and I sat down that evening and decided we'd try a different approach to our shopping. Like most families, we both work and time is critical - but we have lunch breaks and commutes so we decided we'd buy what we need when we needed it from local shops rather than supermarkets.
Seven years later we are still doing it. We have found a number of local shops and farm shops which supply our requirements and we do our shopping a little bit at a time when we can. We rarely buy for more than two days in advance, but when you add up the total time of each shopping trip we make we manage to do all our shopping in half the time we'd spend at Sainsbury's on a Saturday.
Because we only buy what we need when we need it, we don't end up with trolleys full of stuff we don't really want - no ready meals and very little processed food (just a few tins, really). As a result our weekly shopping bill is around half to a third less than my friends with similar sized families who still shop at Tesco.
We pay a little more for what we do buy, but as we don't buy so much we actually save money. We save time. We avoid all the stress and hassle of the big Saturday shop. The kids don't grumble about being dragged around the supermarket so they're happier. They're healthier too as we cook proper meals with proper locally sourced food and we have a good relationship with a variety of local shopkeepers rather than the indifference (at best) of some checkout girl who might say "have a good day", but doesn't really mean it.
Best of all, we don't waste half our Saturday in a bloody supermarket so our weekends are our own again.
Go on - try it yourselves. You'll be amazed.
Most of us are confused. We bleat about animal welfare, but shun the pricey local butcher in favour of meat that may or may not have ever seen a daisy.
Bacon is a particular issue. Our pork production has halved in the past ten years, putting pig farmers out of business. This nation of animal lovers has pushed for higher welfare standards than any other EU country, but we are not prepared to pay the higher prices that result. Instead, we eat bacon and pork from Denmark and the Netherlands, where many sows apparently never escape from the kind of tiny, dark stalls that are banned here.
Being a product of her environment, Cavendish can't quite come to the conclusion that protectionism is the only solution - I guess she is one of those millions who have been brainwashed by the globalisation message over the years from this next statement.
I'm not arguing that we should rule on “British food for British workers” - that might be more than some can stomach, given our penchant for exotic foods and the very real travails of Kenyan farmers.
I don't know why she thinks that the travail of Kenyan farmers are any more real than those of Kent farmers - it's all relative. Yeah, they don't have the latest 4x4 tractor in Kenya, but they can hire an army of workers to do the job for less than a tankful of red diesel.
Cavendish also misses the point that all that food imported from Kenya means a whole lot less for native Kenyans and higher prices for what they can buy - but hey, that's globalisation for you. Who cares if a few Kenyan kids go hungry as long as we can feel good about helping a Kenyan farmer - and if you do feel guilty, just give a tenner to Comic Relief and you'll be able to forgive yourself.
I don't want to turn this into a Cavendish bash, though - mostly I agree with what she says. She makes some very good points about packaged food and food origins which I heartily agree with. A couple of weeks back I had a small argument with someone called "Anonymous" about a post that mentioned Tesco. Basically the upshot was that he/she felt I was a hypocrite who moaned about supermarkets and then rushes off to my local Tesco every Saturday.
Well, to be fair - I used to be just like that. Except it was Sainsbury's. I was like everybody else, packing the wife and kids into the car on Saturday morning to drive up to the local hypermarket where we'd spend the next 3-4 hours mooching around, buying two trolleys of stuff we don't really need and then spending ages waiting at the checkout queue to pay for the privilege.
Like everyone else we'd get home and pack our fridge, freezer and cupboards with our purchases for that week grateful that we'd got all the shopping done. Come the end of the week we'd have thrown a bunch of stuff out that had gone past it's "best before" date and we'd have made two or three other trips to the local shops for things we'd forgotten - a bag of sugar here, a pot of marmalade there and so on.
Then, one day, we had a revelation. Planning a family Sunday lunch with both sets of in-laws invited over, we needed a decent joint of meat and, our trip to the local supermarket done, the missus suddenly realised she'd forgotten to buy the joint. Fortunately, close to where we live is a local family butcher so we decided to pop in there.
We parked right outside the shop (which you can still do, today), popped in and less than 5 minutes later emerged with a fantastic joint of English lamb from a local farm. The butcher was friendly, knowledgeable and courteous. He knew where all his meat came from (mostly local) and how it is looked after. There was no queueing, no hassle and even the kids didn't mind as we were in and out so quickly.
The joint was delicious - the best piece of lamb I had tasted in ages. Even the mother-in-law was happy! Thanks to our pleasant experience with this butcher, Missus Stan and I sat down that evening and decided we'd try a different approach to our shopping. Like most families, we both work and time is critical - but we have lunch breaks and commutes so we decided we'd buy what we need when we needed it from local shops rather than supermarkets.
Seven years later we are still doing it. We have found a number of local shops and farm shops which supply our requirements and we do our shopping a little bit at a time when we can. We rarely buy for more than two days in advance, but when you add up the total time of each shopping trip we make we manage to do all our shopping in half the time we'd spend at Sainsbury's on a Saturday.
Because we only buy what we need when we need it, we don't end up with trolleys full of stuff we don't really want - no ready meals and very little processed food (just a few tins, really). As a result our weekly shopping bill is around half to a third less than my friends with similar sized families who still shop at Tesco.
We pay a little more for what we do buy, but as we don't buy so much we actually save money. We save time. We avoid all the stress and hassle of the big Saturday shop. The kids don't grumble about being dragged around the supermarket so they're happier. They're healthier too as we cook proper meals with proper locally sourced food and we have a good relationship with a variety of local shopkeepers rather than the indifference (at best) of some checkout girl who might say "have a good day", but doesn't really mean it.
Best of all, we don't waste half our Saturday in a bloody supermarket so our weekends are our own again.
Go on - try it yourselves. You'll be amazed.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Balls of confusion
Ed Balls is suggesting that the global depression could lead to a resurgence in fascism which, given the authoritarian nature of our current government, is kind of ironic.
What Balls is trying to do is equate "nationalism" with fascism - but they are not the same thing. It is true that those fascist regimes we most usually think of - Nazi Germany and 1930's Italy - were nationalistic as well as fascist, but it's also worth remembering that Britain was also a nationalist country up until relatively recently and the USA remains hugely nationalist, but neither were or are fascist.
Nationalism and fascism are two separate political concepts - and like many political concepts they can co-exist. The general view - propagated by the left - is that fascism is nationalism with a racial element, but this is something I disagree with. In my view, fascism is socialism with a racial element. The best way to describe this is by looking at two nationalist countries and comparing them - the USA and China.
Yes, the USA is nationalist - strongly so. It is, effectively, at the point Britain was at around 50 years or so ago (yes, Britain also used to be strongly nationalist) and is now facing many of the challenges that Britain faced back then. Whether it will come through those challenges better than we did remains to be seen.
China is also strongly nationalist. Like the USA, China arrived at the nationalist state through a revolutionary war, but unlike the USA China applied the ideology of Marxism as the political doctrine while the USA reverted to liberal democracy.
If you now compare the two states for the elements of fascism you will find that China meets most of the criteria - authoritarian, dictatorial head of state, oppressive state, crushing of political dissent, intolerance of government criticism, intrusion of the state into individual freedoms, intrusive state surveillance on the people, an informer society (to the extent where family members inform on other family members) and a single party political system.
Compare that to the USA and, although many leftists will disagree, none of those things exist in the USA. So both are nationalist, but China is far more fascist than the USA even though it has no racial criteria in its nationalism. The USA once did, though - but even when it did it still wasn't a fascist country! Do you see the difference? Even though the USA once had a strong racial element and was also a nationalist country it still wasn't fascist, while China which has no racial element to its political ideology is very much, in every other way fascist.
So what is the difference? The difference is, of course, authoritarianism. but because of the nature of socialism - the requirement for the state to take more control over peoples lives - socialism always leads to authoritarianism. So both socialism and fascism share a key element - the only difference between the two is that socialism does not include a racial element (at least, not an expressed one. The only significant difference between the USSR and Nazi Germany was that the USSR never actually admitted to wanting to exterminate the Jews - although they had a pretty good go all the same).
So fascism is not nationalism with a racial element - it is authoritarianism with a racial element. Balls suggestion that fascism could rise once again is, presumably, based on a concern about the possible rise of the BNP, but although the BNP have a clearly expressed racial element to their policies, I've seen nothing in those policies that would lead to authoritarianism - so they would not be fascist.
Indeed, the BNP (if you believe their policies) appear committed to real democracy based on popular sovereignty and political plurality - which, combined with significant, constitutional checks and balances on political hegemony, are all essential to avoid authoritarianism - and that stands in stark contrast to the party Balls supports.
If, in the incredibly unlikely event, the BNP were to win a General Election there is nothing to suggest in their policies that we would become an authoritarian nation - and therefore we would not become fascist. Racist - possibly, fascist - no. Of course, the BNP could be lying about their intent, but unless they get elected we'll never know.
What is certain, however, is that if we continue along the lines we are currently on we most certainly will become authoritarian. We're halfway there already and if the continued erosion of our true democracy, political plurality and constitutional checks and balances continues unabated then we may soon reach the point of no return (or rather, no return without significant upheaval).
I am a fervent nationalist. I believe that the nation state is the ultimate development of a community - a people with a shared language, history, heritage, traditions and culture. I believe that race is no barrier to membership of that community - only the willingness of an individual to accept the things I mentioned - language, history, heritage, traditions and, most importantly, culture.
I know this is not a problem for many (if not most) Indian Asians, black Africans and Afro-Caribbean's who originate from countries which share many of those things with Britain thanks to the legacy of empire and I know that many (if not most) have no desire for Britain to change any of that. They are happy to be British within the confines of British culture because, essentially, that is what they are used to anyway.
I also know that it is impossible for a single nation to be multicultural. A single nation depends on having a culture - the norms, practices, traditions and laws - which all accept, but you can not have two different cultures competing for the same space. Either one will come to dominate the other - leading once more to a mono-cultural nation - or the nation will divide.
This has been a long post - sorry about that, but it is something which I feel very passionately about. I'm fed up with toerags like Balls painting nationalists as "fascists" when nationalists are nothing of the sort. Nationalism, in the context of a liberal democracy, is a good thing. We have nothing to fear from nationalism, but lots to fear from authoritarianism - and that is the road on which Balls and his like currently have us headed.
What Balls is trying to do is equate "nationalism" with fascism - but they are not the same thing. It is true that those fascist regimes we most usually think of - Nazi Germany and 1930's Italy - were nationalistic as well as fascist, but it's also worth remembering that Britain was also a nationalist country up until relatively recently and the USA remains hugely nationalist, but neither were or are fascist.
Nationalism and fascism are two separate political concepts - and like many political concepts they can co-exist. The general view - propagated by the left - is that fascism is nationalism with a racial element, but this is something I disagree with. In my view, fascism is socialism with a racial element. The best way to describe this is by looking at two nationalist countries and comparing them - the USA and China.
Yes, the USA is nationalist - strongly so. It is, effectively, at the point Britain was at around 50 years or so ago (yes, Britain also used to be strongly nationalist) and is now facing many of the challenges that Britain faced back then. Whether it will come through those challenges better than we did remains to be seen.
China is also strongly nationalist. Like the USA, China arrived at the nationalist state through a revolutionary war, but unlike the USA China applied the ideology of Marxism as the political doctrine while the USA reverted to liberal democracy.
If you now compare the two states for the elements of fascism you will find that China meets most of the criteria - authoritarian, dictatorial head of state, oppressive state, crushing of political dissent, intolerance of government criticism, intrusion of the state into individual freedoms, intrusive state surveillance on the people, an informer society (to the extent where family members inform on other family members) and a single party political system.
Compare that to the USA and, although many leftists will disagree, none of those things exist in the USA. So both are nationalist, but China is far more fascist than the USA even though it has no racial criteria in its nationalism. The USA once did, though - but even when it did it still wasn't a fascist country! Do you see the difference? Even though the USA once had a strong racial element and was also a nationalist country it still wasn't fascist, while China which has no racial element to its political ideology is very much, in every other way fascist.
So what is the difference? The difference is, of course, authoritarianism. but because of the nature of socialism - the requirement for the state to take more control over peoples lives - socialism always leads to authoritarianism. So both socialism and fascism share a key element - the only difference between the two is that socialism does not include a racial element (at least, not an expressed one. The only significant difference between the USSR and Nazi Germany was that the USSR never actually admitted to wanting to exterminate the Jews - although they had a pretty good go all the same).
So fascism is not nationalism with a racial element - it is authoritarianism with a racial element. Balls suggestion that fascism could rise once again is, presumably, based on a concern about the possible rise of the BNP, but although the BNP have a clearly expressed racial element to their policies, I've seen nothing in those policies that would lead to authoritarianism - so they would not be fascist.
Indeed, the BNP (if you believe their policies) appear committed to real democracy based on popular sovereignty and political plurality - which, combined with significant, constitutional checks and balances on political hegemony, are all essential to avoid authoritarianism - and that stands in stark contrast to the party Balls supports.
If, in the incredibly unlikely event, the BNP were to win a General Election there is nothing to suggest in their policies that we would become an authoritarian nation - and therefore we would not become fascist. Racist - possibly, fascist - no. Of course, the BNP could be lying about their intent, but unless they get elected we'll never know.
What is certain, however, is that if we continue along the lines we are currently on we most certainly will become authoritarian. We're halfway there already and if the continued erosion of our true democracy, political plurality and constitutional checks and balances continues unabated then we may soon reach the point of no return (or rather, no return without significant upheaval).
I am a fervent nationalist. I believe that the nation state is the ultimate development of a community - a people with a shared language, history, heritage, traditions and culture. I believe that race is no barrier to membership of that community - only the willingness of an individual to accept the things I mentioned - language, history, heritage, traditions and, most importantly, culture.
I know this is not a problem for many (if not most) Indian Asians, black Africans and Afro-Caribbean's who originate from countries which share many of those things with Britain thanks to the legacy of empire and I know that many (if not most) have no desire for Britain to change any of that. They are happy to be British within the confines of British culture because, essentially, that is what they are used to anyway.
I also know that it is impossible for a single nation to be multicultural. A single nation depends on having a culture - the norms, practices, traditions and laws - which all accept, but you can not have two different cultures competing for the same space. Either one will come to dominate the other - leading once more to a mono-cultural nation - or the nation will divide.
This has been a long post - sorry about that, but it is something which I feel very passionately about. I'm fed up with toerags like Balls painting nationalists as "fascists" when nationalists are nothing of the sort. Nationalism, in the context of a liberal democracy, is a good thing. We have nothing to fear from nationalism, but lots to fear from authoritarianism - and that is the road on which Balls and his like currently have us headed.
Monday, February 02, 2009
The selfish society
A Church backed study has caused controversy by citing "female empowerment" as a major cause of family break up according to The Telegraph.
It describes an increase in the number of mothers going back to work when their babies are less than a year old as a "massive" social change and cites the fact that women are now less dependent on their husbands as a cause of family break-up.
One of the myths of feminism is this "dependency" belief. The whole point of a marriage is to create a partnership. Yes, women depended on their husbands for money, but husbands were equally dependent on the wives to manage the home and, for the most part and certainly true in the kind of working class household I grew up in, that usually meant that the women controlled the purse strings entirely.
Yes, my mother had a weekly "housekeeping budget" and yes my dad had a say in how much that was, but my dad also had a weekly "allowance" which was also agreed by both. Like many working class homes back then, my dad brought home his weekly pay packet which he handed to my mum.
The issue of "dependency" only arose when the family broke up and this was why most couples preferred to work to resolve their problems rather than turn to divorce as a first resort at the slightest difficulty.
I'm not denying that their were bad men back then who dominated, bullied, abused and assaulted their wives, but I doubt that it was anything like as prevalent as it is today. The only reason we believe it was commonplace is the modern mythology created by countless TV documentaries and programmes that portray it that way in the past and the proliferation of feminist writers who draw on their own narrow, often middle class (and usually anecdotal) experiences.
I'd also argue that so called female "empowerment" (actually, feminist doctrine) has left many women feeling less empowered and more unsatisfied. Many women envy their mothers and grandmothers and would like nothing more than the kind of family security which they enjoyed, but because the sisterhood demands that they follow the feminist path they feel compelled to reject the very things they truly desire.
Ironically, the female "empowerment" has actually empowered men far more than women in many ways. Women may have sought sexual liberation, but they are still constrained by biology and the fact that men don't get pregnant. This has led to men being able to enjoy guilt and conscious free sex with multiple partners - so depriving women of the one thing they always had complete power over.
The point is that marriage is all about partnerships and that dependency - on both sides - is part of that. If none of us depended on anyone else would that make the world a better place? I don't think so - just more selfish.
It describes an increase in the number of mothers going back to work when their babies are less than a year old as a "massive" social change and cites the fact that women are now less dependent on their husbands as a cause of family break-up.
One of the myths of feminism is this "dependency" belief. The whole point of a marriage is to create a partnership. Yes, women depended on their husbands for money, but husbands were equally dependent on the wives to manage the home and, for the most part and certainly true in the kind of working class household I grew up in, that usually meant that the women controlled the purse strings entirely.
Yes, my mother had a weekly "housekeeping budget" and yes my dad had a say in how much that was, but my dad also had a weekly "allowance" which was also agreed by both. Like many working class homes back then, my dad brought home his weekly pay packet which he handed to my mum.
The issue of "dependency" only arose when the family broke up and this was why most couples preferred to work to resolve their problems rather than turn to divorce as a first resort at the slightest difficulty.
I'm not denying that their were bad men back then who dominated, bullied, abused and assaulted their wives, but I doubt that it was anything like as prevalent as it is today. The only reason we believe it was commonplace is the modern mythology created by countless TV documentaries and programmes that portray it that way in the past and the proliferation of feminist writers who draw on their own narrow, often middle class (and usually anecdotal) experiences.
I'd also argue that so called female "empowerment" (actually, feminist doctrine) has left many women feeling less empowered and more unsatisfied. Many women envy their mothers and grandmothers and would like nothing more than the kind of family security which they enjoyed, but because the sisterhood demands that they follow the feminist path they feel compelled to reject the very things they truly desire.
Ironically, the female "empowerment" has actually empowered men far more than women in many ways. Women may have sought sexual liberation, but they are still constrained by biology and the fact that men don't get pregnant. This has led to men being able to enjoy guilt and conscious free sex with multiple partners - so depriving women of the one thing they always had complete power over.
The point is that marriage is all about partnerships and that dependency - on both sides - is part of that. If none of us depended on anyone else would that make the world a better place? I don't think so - just more selfish.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Food for thought
Over on the Civitas blog, David Conway has some interesting thoughts on social mobility.
Doubts about the value of social mobility have begun to arise after reading, in addition to all the newspaper reports about it, about the results of a recently published nationwide survey conducted by Ofsted of 150,000 teenagers living throughout England.
It found that the seemingly most happy of them were those living in the most deprived areas and attending the least well-performing schools. Meanwhile, amongst the least happy of them were those living in middle class districts and attending high-achieving schools.
This got me thinking about my own situation - not for the first time!
As I've mentioned before, I come from a very working class family and grew up in a very working class and tight-knit community. Pretty much everyone knew everybody else and looked out for one another. We all lived on the same streets, worked in the same factories, shops and offices and played in the same places.
We didn't have much money - it was well into the seventies (might even have been the early eighties) before we got our first colour television - but for some reason we were always pretty happy and satisfied. There were always visitors to our humble home, you'd always bump into someone you knew when you walked up the local street and the few "bad eggs" that there were were well known and kept their distance.
But I, like my brothers and many of my friends, attended grammar school and became (unintentionally) socially mobile. Now I suppose I would be considered middle class by many - though I still think of myself as working class (but I believe that everyone who works in the private sector is now a member of the new working class - i.e. the ones that pay taxes to pay for the state).
Unlike my brothers and most of my friends, I stayed in this area - despite everything you hear about Slough, it is MY home town and I still love it ... though probably more for what it used to be than what it is now.
The reality is, though, that the once tight knit community is long gone. The area has been deluged with people from other areas - some socially mobile, many of them geographically mobile - and I'm now more likely to meet someone from Lithuania in my local high street than someone I know.
I can't say I was particularly bothered by or aware of this dismantling of my community when I was 25 or so. I was well paid, drove fast, expensive cars, wore good clothes and took foreign holidays - but now I'm approaching 50 and have a family of my own I realise how shallow that all was. I regret the loss of community that has happened in this area over the last 30 years or so - mostly because my children don't benefit from the community spirit that existed when I was a kid growing up in this area.
Now whether that is the fault of social mobility or something else I can not be certain. My gut feeling is that it has more to do with the massive influx of new immigrants to Slough over the last ten years as much as anything - as new people come in, many of the old people move out. It is certainly true that even as recently as 8 or 10 years ago I would still bump into lots of people I know on a walk down the hight street. Now I hardly ever do.
What I do know, however, is that there is much more to life than material things. My childhood - which, by today's standards would probably be classed as "deprived" was very happy. I would almost say "extraordinarily" happy - but I know that there was nothing extraordinary about it. Most kids back then were happy and enjoyed their childhood. What was always far more important than money, material possessions and fancy job titles was family, friends and familiarity.
Doubts about the value of social mobility have begun to arise after reading, in addition to all the newspaper reports about it, about the results of a recently published nationwide survey conducted by Ofsted of 150,000 teenagers living throughout England.
It found that the seemingly most happy of them were those living in the most deprived areas and attending the least well-performing schools. Meanwhile, amongst the least happy of them were those living in middle class districts and attending high-achieving schools.
This got me thinking about my own situation - not for the first time!
As I've mentioned before, I come from a very working class family and grew up in a very working class and tight-knit community. Pretty much everyone knew everybody else and looked out for one another. We all lived on the same streets, worked in the same factories, shops and offices and played in the same places.
We didn't have much money - it was well into the seventies (might even have been the early eighties) before we got our first colour television - but for some reason we were always pretty happy and satisfied. There were always visitors to our humble home, you'd always bump into someone you knew when you walked up the local street and the few "bad eggs" that there were were well known and kept their distance.
But I, like my brothers and many of my friends, attended grammar school and became (unintentionally) socially mobile. Now I suppose I would be considered middle class by many - though I still think of myself as working class (but I believe that everyone who works in the private sector is now a member of the new working class - i.e. the ones that pay taxes to pay for the state).
Unlike my brothers and most of my friends, I stayed in this area - despite everything you hear about Slough, it is MY home town and I still love it ... though probably more for what it used to be than what it is now.
The reality is, though, that the once tight knit community is long gone. The area has been deluged with people from other areas - some socially mobile, many of them geographically mobile - and I'm now more likely to meet someone from Lithuania in my local high street than someone I know.
I can't say I was particularly bothered by or aware of this dismantling of my community when I was 25 or so. I was well paid, drove fast, expensive cars, wore good clothes and took foreign holidays - but now I'm approaching 50 and have a family of my own I realise how shallow that all was. I regret the loss of community that has happened in this area over the last 30 years or so - mostly because my children don't benefit from the community spirit that existed when I was a kid growing up in this area.
Now whether that is the fault of social mobility or something else I can not be certain. My gut feeling is that it has more to do with the massive influx of new immigrants to Slough over the last ten years as much as anything - as new people come in, many of the old people move out. It is certainly true that even as recently as 8 or 10 years ago I would still bump into lots of people I know on a walk down the hight street. Now I hardly ever do.
What I do know, however, is that there is much more to life than material things. My childhood - which, by today's standards would probably be classed as "deprived" was very happy. I would almost say "extraordinarily" happy - but I know that there was nothing extraordinary about it. Most kids back then were happy and enjoyed their childhood. What was always far more important than money, material possessions and fancy job titles was family, friends and familiarity.
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