Students of law, politics and sociology click all the links.
AND END THEIR PONZI CULTURE
STAGE ONE– Ego-orientated “Single issue fanatics” <Bernard Levin> – my words crusading zanies, today’s KnightsTemplar – entrench themselves in the system. They think that they have seen the light that others haven’t. Read birth of Inclusion in House of Lords in 1976, Death of a Nightingale, and chapters on Sustrans, cycling lobby, given major executive planning role in central and local government.
STAGE TWO Create the beautiful dream. There’s always a dream in a Ponzi.
Present a human right to something that does not exist but would be wonderful if it did. No-one in their right mind can object to it. Even better, label it an Equal Right for everyone. And no-one can object to that.
STAGE THREE With missionary zeal, find endorsement from human rights lawyers,their allies in Whitehall and local government, the media and in the political parties. The Quick-fix brigade. The Me-Too brigade. They all share the same dream and give it their unquestioning and unqualified blessing and stifle all protest and complaint. Money, patronage and approval. See how Sustrans did it.
STAGE FOUR – Find suckers to buy into it. Every Ponzi needs a constant flow. Politically those who never take account of the infinite complexity of the world, human rights at variance with their own, human fallibility, including their own, and the downside of Equality, its blood-stained pedigree, the Terror, the Gulag, the Great Purges and the Holocaust. Even Adolph Hitler adopted it for his Aryan race. Frederick Reck Diary of a Man in Despair saw it “Complete equality, absolute submission, absolute loss of individuality”. The warnings of Darkness at Noon, Animal Farm and 1984. Sustrans statisticians took lessons from O’Brien and the number of his fingers.
And, there are those who believe that once you have created a human right, you have cracked the problem. Ho Ho.
STAGE FIVE – Using the levers of power. In a Ponzi, ends always beget the sordid means. Read Mad Hatter’s Committee Meeting in Kafka’s Cycle provoked by deviousness unlimited that I witnessed when chair of governors of a special school lined up for closure, and equally appropriate with Cycle Lane implementation. Every single line a protest.
Consultation – The Titanic in a fog is offered a choice between two truly beautiful icebergs. I have seen this twice.
STAGE SIX – Rights of those categorised as “disadvantaged” asserted, rights of everyone else don’t exist. See below.
STAGE SEVEN – The State Ratchet. The State can do no wrong. Complaints suppressed. Warning lights always show green. Grenfell Tower and 2006 Building Regs illustrates this. My experience of Ombudsmen in Kafka’s Cycle and Audit Commission with SEN.
STAGE EIGHT – Disillusionment – Just a dream, as it turns into a nightmare! Even the disadvantaged remain disadvantaged.
This is price of power without accountability.
This happens when Bullocks put in charge of the China Shop.
Measure this against the following dreams
1. The right of children with special needs to mainstream education
2. The right of all children to equal opportunity to go to University
Children with special needs have other rights. Are they being met? 60,544 “home schooled” last year, many of them “off-rolled” to benefit stats.
1. An education free of bullying.
2. Are their audio/visual needs being met.
3. Are their individual needs being met? There is a multiplicity of needs.
4. Specialist teachers meeting their needs with enough time, not just left in hands of NTA?
5. A curriculum suitable for semi-skilled and unskilled work? To fill the vacancies after the new immigration policy. The jobs thousands of less skilled immigrants have been taking for years.
6. A curriculum that doesn’t set them up to be failures.
7. A curriculum that doesn’t contribute to attention deficit hyperactivity and treatment with Ritalin? And to Exclusions and classroom disorder.
8. Are their mental and physical health needs being met?
9. Are gifted and talented children being stretched, and individual talents met?
10. Are they getting education in living, cooking, diet, art & music, street-wisdom
Children without special needs have other rights. Are they being met?
1. A curriculum suitable for semi-skilled and unskilled work? Are they getting an education in quality living, cooking, diet, sporting achievement, art & music, technology, a conversational foreign language and street-wisdom; not designed for 19th Century Karl Marx influenced teachers but for 21st Century pupils facing the challenges of a fast changing world?
2. A curriculum that doesn’t set them up to be failures if they fail to get into a Uni
3. A disturbance free learning environment. Disturbances currently logged by the hundred. Latest TES suggests teaching “wellbeing” as a cure.
4. An opportunity to pursue the inequality of excellence.
Teachers have their rights too.
1. To enjoy teaching
2. When their time is finite, to have the time to give to all their class.
And Parents have their rights too
1. To get the right education for their children without a long battle
2. To have a constructive dialogue with their children’s teachers.
Dumping some children’s right to “parity of esteem” – society’s label – and substituting a duty to give all children an opportunity to gain “self-esteem“, a badge of their own creation.
By way of example. Blyth Valley’s new Conservative MP worked as a health care assistant and described himself as a mental health nurse. Prof. Judith Ellis protested in Nursing Times that “the inference to the public is that he is a registered nurse.” Here you can see the dogma of equality of status versus fair play in putting a value to a job, its dignity. Let every man be great including the man who makes my galoshes. Yevtushenko.
Here is another dream promoted by cycling enthusiasts – the right to clean air. Cyclists have been given increasing right to cycle on cycle lanes, often introduced in such a way as to narrow further narrow roads, slow traffic, increase congestion and consequential pollution. Eg roads roads from Westminster to Tower, London Bridge to Greenwich and proposed single lanes on main bridge over Tyne.
Others have their rights too. 98% of road users.
1. All vehicles to reach their destination as soon as possible.
2. Ambulance and fire services not to be obstructed unnecessarily. Cars are not allowed to go into bus lanes to give them clearance.
3. Easy access to fast chargers if they do not have their own parking space to accommodate one. EVgo has provided 100 million Americans access to a fast charger within a 15-minute drive.
4. Personal choice as to how best to contribute to clean air, not bureaucratic persuasion by taxes, impositions and restrictions.
5. To take their children to school by car to avoid risk of molestation or injury by bicycle on narrow congested roads in rush hour.
As I keep saying ” We are equal only sometimes, unequal most times, and different always” AND we want to be.
When Rights conflict, rights are different not equal. Fair play not Equality the solution.
And Labour won’t win till they dump teachers muddled with 19th Century stuff, tune into needs of 21st Century kids in fast changing world and dump their Madoffs robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Leave a Reply