Disney's Magic Kingdom

The Orwellian dystopia of Toy Story 3 is the latest in a long line of films by Pixar/Disney and Twentieth Century Fox with a strong moral message. From the environmentalism of the Ice Age franchise through to Wall-E’s critique of human decadence and excessive consumerism there has been a growing trend for animated allegories which progressively challenge the status quo. It seems odd that Disney – inextricably associated with the American establishment – could produce such radical fables. What next – a posthumous Noble Peace Prize for Walt Disney?

Of course much of Hollywood’s output remains conservative. Films such as The Incredibles and Finding Nemo reinforce ideas of the ‘nuclear family’ whilst Ratatouille’s notion that a genius can come from any walk of life converges with the traditional ‘American dream’. But it still seems strange that Hollywood can take an environmentalist and anti-consumerist stance. After all, without consumerism Hollywood ceases to exist.

I may have missed the subtle parables of my childhood Disney films – Robin Hood, The Jungle Book, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast – but they seemed more simple. They were about Kings, Queens and Princesses. There was always a straightforward fight between good and evil. Nowadays, knowing what ‘good’ is isn’t quite so simple. Toy Story 3 echoes Animal Farm by suggesting that a totalitarian police state is wrong. Who could disagree with that? But is the ‘freedom’ of American democracy really much better? It’s a compelling if skewed message.

Stark parallels can be drawn with Hollywood’s treatment of Native American Indians. The old Westerns were quite simple – they were about good versus evil. Cowboys were good and ‘Indians’ were evil. Everyone knew Native Americans were backwards. They had been demonised and ghettoised for decades and the hegemonic rise of ‘American’ culture relied on their marginalisation. Yet once they were crushed, Native Americans underwent a remarkable resurrection and Hollywood gave them a makeover. Since Dances with Wolves you can barely go through a whole film without a wise old Indian philosophising and counselling a disillusioned white man. Why? Because Native American culture is no longer a threat – it has been disarmed and romanticised.

It’s a similar situation with Hollywood today. In many ways Disney remains reactionary and conservative, but where it does take a ‘progressive’ stance it is not because of altruism, it is a response to changed circumstance. In the same way that trans-national corporations adopt environmental policies, they do so because of public pressure and international consensus. Corporations must be seen to care about the environment – but all they care about is profit margins.

Ultimately, whatever message Disney gives – whether they give one at all – they do so to make money. They’re ‘family films’ so why shouldn’t they be about family? And why not try to encourage people to care a little more about the environment, even when Hollywood represents the height of capitalist decadence? In the end, who cares? What else are you going to watch on a Sunday afternoon?

In Britain today war is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength – and the media agrees

British government announcements regarding the ongoing war in Afghanistan remind me of a John Pilger article I read last year entitled Welcome to Orwell’s World. In this piece, Pilger draws on Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four in his analysis of US – and by extension, British – foreign policy and shows a disturbing parallel between the censored dystopia of Orwell’s fiction and the lies told by leaders of Western societies today:

“In Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell described a superstate called Oceania, whose language of war inverted lies that passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past’, ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past’. Barack Obama is the leader of a contemporary Oceania. In two speeches at the close of the decade, the Nobel Peace Prize winner affirmed that peace was no longer peace, but rather a permanent war that “extends well beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan” to “disorderly regions and diffuse enemies”.”

This “language of war” is constantly drilled into us, not just by politicians, but the mainstream media as well. Cast your mind back six or seven years and the ‘War on Terror’ was generally accepted as a neo-con fiction designed as an excuse to perpetually wage war against any country or people that had strategic or economic value to the West, or who could be used as a convenient scapegoat (as mentioned in a previous EoP blog). It is now routinely described as a necessary conflict to spread human rights and stop terrorists carrying out massacres on our streets. Al-Qaeda are no longer described as a miniscule extremist faction, but as a monolithic organisation that have cells in almost all countries. The fact that the US, UK and their allies siphon off the natural resources of Iraq, Afghanistan and numerous other countries is no longer a topic for discussion. These occupied countries now have ‘democratically-elected’ governments who are in no way puppets of the West, apparently. To suggest anything else would be to question the values of Western society itself.

However, with Wikileaks’ release of the US ‘war logs’ from the conflict in Afghanistan last month – and the subsequent mainstream media response – it appeared that the sanitising mask that had been covering the Middle Eastern conflict was beginning to slip. And yet the overall reaction to the ‘revelations’ such as “hundreds of civilians killed by coalition troops,” and “covert unit hunts leaders for 'kill or capture'” was one of grim recognition. Was it really a surprise to anyone that the US and its allies have killed hundreds of non-combatants? It seems more than likely that these files were only the tip of the atrocity iceberg. So why weren’t people more shocked as the Guardian purported to be? The answer lies in the “language of war” which we have become so accustomed to. We know massacres are taking place and that illegal occupations are being carried out by our governments, but over time this has become the norm – it is the everyday. War is now peace.

The media do talk about the troop and civilian death toll, but this is never really in terms of the conflict being fundamentally wrong. Deaths are usually portrayed as a lamentable but necessary cost for ‘completing the mission’. No coverage is given to the viewpoint that the wars in the Middle East are just modern day imperialism – a way of reinforcing economic dominance on a global scale by plundering resources and crushing dissent. The BBC’s claims of impartiality and of giving every viewpoint a fair airing are quite simply laughable when you start to analyse their coverage of anything regarding ‘national security’ (or perhaps ‘national interest’ would be a more fitting term?). The next time you watch a report on the war in Afghanistan see how often the journalist refers to ‘getting the job done’ or the regularity with which a sound bite is played of a well-groomed officer saying ‘we’re making good progress and protecting the civilian population’. When reporters explain what the rather bland-sounding term ‘getting the job done’ actually means it usually involves ‘forcing the Taliban out of their strongholds’ and ‘bringing stability’ to the country (helping previously oppressed girls go to school seems a particularly common theme used to appeal to Western sensibilities). These aims are never questioned by the BBC – to do so would be to undermine the legitimacy of our ‘free society’ and cast aspersions on the motives of our democratically-elected leaders. But if you think a little more about what this cheer-leading of ‘getting the job done’ actually entails a far more disturbing truth is revealed. The BBC – and the majority of mainstream journalists – are sanitising state-sanctioned murder and occupation, all for the pursuit of the West’s economic and cultural domination.

Television coverage of the Afghan war usually consists of images of soldiers firing over walls at unseen enemies, or grainy night-vision footage of troops running around while the journalist’s voice-over utters bland, state-approved sound bites like ‘the fort comes under attack twice a day, but the soldiers are determined to get the job done’. If the 10 O’clock news instead regularly showed the aftermath of air-strikes on villages with pieces of civilians scattered throughout the bombed-out wreckage of their homes, and the reality of the damage inflicted by modern infantry warfare, whilst also allowing a full spectrum of views to be publicised, then there is little doubt that public opinion in the West would turn against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In addition, we may even avoid future conflicts in places such as Yemen and Iran. But this simply won’t happen if the mainstream media acts as a filter for the real face of occupation and war, sifting out most of the ‘disturbing’ images (and facts), replacing them with inanities and implicit support for the ruling elite’s agenda.

In July, Jon Snow wrote a blog entitled Sanitising War in which he wrestled with the morality of his role in how war is reported. When discussing the “absence of bodies” in war coverage and the families who have lost loved ones in Afghanistan, he wrote: “It could not be right, could it, for them to have their loss splashed so brutally and bloodily across our screens? Or am I myself busy sanitising war?” To answer your question, Jon: yes, you are, but don’t worry – you’re not the only one.

A Victory for Keynesianism?

According to the Office for National Statistics, economic growth between April and June this year was the fastest rate in nearly a decade. GDP rose by 1.2% during this period – primarily due to an 8.5% increase in construction output and a 0.7% increase in consumer spending. But don’t send off the thank you cards to Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg just yet, because the Coalition’s Emergency Budget didn’t take place until 22 June.

The recent economic growth is significant – not because it guarantees recovery – but because it suggests that Labour’s policy to invest rather than cut was working. The economic growth of the last quarter is underpinned by a 0.3% advance in Government spending. This includes £986m towards transport projects and £480m towards new school buildings – most of which has been abandoned by the Coalition. A large proportion of private construction relies on state subsidy and public contracts – so where else is the stimulus going to come from? Cameron is desperately trying to encourage international trade to fill this government void – but the international economic situation is far from stable – whilst Cameron’s diplomatic faux-pas will probably undermine any meaningful discussions, anyway.

Furthermore, an increase in consumer confidence is contributing to the economic recovery, but what will happen to confidence when the cuts of the Comprehensive Spending Review come into effect, VAT rises, public sector redundancies hit and unemployment increases?

The Coalition recognise that the economy is in for a “bumpy ride” but they seem intent on steamrollering through their regressive economic policies. Perhaps economic fragility – and even a possible ‘double-dip’ recession – is a price worth paying to reduce the role of the state. But for all those interested in economic recovery rather than political point-scoring, maybe Labour’s spending wasn’t so “crazy” after all.

A history of the PR age

The importance of press relations in politics is about as original as the ‘new, progressive’ politics of the coalition Government i.e. not very. The rise of PR coincided with the rise of New Labour, and began during the era of Tony Blair and Alistair Campbell.*

Remember cool Britannia? After the dull grey years of John Major, people cottoned on to Tony Blair as a man of the people. Not only did he talk politics, but he looked and did normal stuff like strum an electric guitar (all be it in a suit) and kick a football around. To Alistair Campbell, this was all brilliant, and culminated in Noel Gallagher knocking on No.10 and sipping champagne (“someone get the camera out!”).

The Tories were a little slow to catch on to the idea that they needed a leader who could get down with the ordinary folks. After all, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. So it was the turn of William Hague to strut his ‘normal’ stuff. Now Alistair Campbell gets a lot of slack, but at least he could do PR properly. I’m not sure what Hague’s advisers were thinking when they told him it would be a good idea to sit in a log flume in a cap, and to say he drank 14 pints of beer a day. Utter nonsense and the Tories were punished for it (and their ridiculous ‘last chance to save the pound’ campaign) in the 2001 general election.

Everything was hunky-dory for Labour until the Iraq war in 2003. Cool Britannia was denounced and the knives were out for Tony Blair. Alistair Campbell had more important things to do like save Blair’s skin. These were serious times.

When David Cameron was elected as the leader of the Conservative Party in 2005, there was a resurgence in the use of PR in politics. The Tories changed their logo from a blue torch to a tree, Cameron got out his push bike and the message was ‘look at us, we’ve changed, we’re now environmentally friendly’. And PR wasn’t only about promoting one’s self. It became a weapon that the Tories used aggressively against Gordon Brown.

In the run up to the 2010 general election people started analysing whether Gordon Brown was comfortable in front of the camera, and if not, then perhaps we should question his ability to ‘connect’ with the public, and even his ability to lead the country. Unfortunately, this attack was taken seriously enough by Labour to start a backlash. Cameron was often portrayed as a shallow salesman, something Jon Cruddas thought was a mistake. However these slanging matches were a main stay of the 2010 election. Trading personal insults on the ability of a politician to be able to come across ‘well’ in the media, and especially on TV, signalled a new, unpleasant dimension of electioneering. One which is also Blair’s legacy.

*Actually, I lie. It originally started in the US with John F. Kennedy and continued with Ronald Reagan, but that’s a whole new blog we’ll perhaps save for another day.

Living in the age of PR

Are we living in the information age? The age of austerity? The age of endarkment? A moral stone age? Definitely no to this last one. I propose that we’re actually living in the age of press relations, where as long as what you’re saying sounds good, policy and substance won’t be scrutinised by the electorate.

It’s happened before when Cameron said pre-May 5 that the Tories were the party of the ‘great ignored’ (That sounds great, David, but what does it actually mean?) And it happened again today, when the Chancellor George Osborne talked about creating a ‘fairer society’ whilst making public sector cuts.

I believe the primary purpose for Osborne using ‘fairer society’ was to make people think his proposals are a means to create something good. Although there is no unbiased definition of what a ‘fairer society’ is, its weakness is that it’s generally agreed to be a good thing. So by equating cuts with ‘fairer society’, if you’re not sure whether the cuts are a bad thing, it will create ‘a fairer society’, a good thing, so they can’t be all that bad can they?

Well, it depends what you mean by ‘fairer society’ and how you get there. What Osborne meant by a ‘fairer society’ today was that which has its finances in order and does not force the next generation to pay the debts of this generation. Well again, that sounds great George, but how are you going to do that? Answer: by cutting public sector spending on policies that will hit the poorest and disadvantaged in society the hardest (reported on this blog ). We already talk about the ‘lost generation’, so I’d rather we concentrate on making sure the current generation has employment opportunities and can afford an education.

For me, the Tories’ cuts will create the antithesis of what I consider a ‘fairer society’, so it’s only when you look at the policy do you realise you’re not talking about the same good idea of a ‘fairer society’. A warning that this phrase and similar 'buzz concepts' such as 'progressive' and 'social justice' should not be taken at face value.

If I ever hear someone on a vox pop saying “yeah, I think it's a good idea because it’ll create a fairer society’. the Conservatives' job will be done, and I'll be moving to Antarctica to live amongst the Emperor penguins.

Fair trade cigarettes?

No, I thought you hadn’t heard of them. And neither had I until listening to this excellent programme broadcast on Radio 4 today:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00t8rky/The_Battle_for_Hearts_and_Lungs/

The effect of tobacco production and use in developing countries has many economic, political and health repercussions, all explored in the programme. For example, how do you monitor the use of child labour on tobacco farms? How can the Government afford tackling smoking-related health issues when there is already an HIV and malaria epidemic? How can you avoid the negative health side effects of farming the crop? How can you suppress advertising cigarettes when an economy depends on tobacco crops? How can you encourage farmers to diversify the crops they grow when tobacco is the most lucrative? All these big questions are addressed with statistics in the programme, but what struck me first of all was now that the UK is becoming more aware of the need for fair trade produce, why are we not pushing for the same with our cigarettes?

Despite the large sums of money made by cigarette companies (BAT’s 2009 profit was close to $4.5bn for example), farmers in countries such as Malawi and Uganda are still struggling to survive. The farmers receive no profit, and can spend more on pesticides and transport than they will receive from selling the crop. In a desperate bid to raise cash for food and education, they sell their tobacco to middle-men for as little as 5 cents per kilo, way below the minimum price of $2 set by the Government each year.

Middle-men are in fact illegal in Malawi, and is just one of the measures introduced to try and combat this injustice. However, like many developing countries whose economies depend on exportable goods, they’re often at the mercy of international companies.

So here’s where fair trade could come into play. The profile and popularity of fair trade products has risen in the UK, with some retailers now only stocking the fair trade version of goods such as bananas. Whilst there is still a long way to go, the effect of fair trade produce on farmers in developing countries should not be underestimated. The improvements have gone beyond economics, to other parts of the farmers lives such as health, empowerment, business and environment and farming systems:

http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/includes/documents/cm_docs/2009/f/1_ft_banana_reportweb.pdf

Despite the decline in UK smokers, cigarettes will always be a necessity to people in this country. So why not produce a fair trade cigarette to help the lives of the tobacco growers? I searched for them and the nearest thing I could find was ‘ethically-sourced’ 1st Nation cigarettes. They were denied fair trade accreditation by the Fairtrade Foundation on the basis that tobacco is too politically sensitive crop for the organization to engage with:

http://peopleandplanet.org/navid5986

Of course there are ethical and moral arguments against fair trade cigarettes, which could affect the credibility of the organization. Perhaps we should be looking at the bigger picture and find a way to reduce the dependence on tobacco, but that’s not the day-to-day concerns of tobacco growing farmers. They have no say in how the macro-economic structure of their country is built. So whilst I understand the concerns and possible contradiction in fair trade tobacco, I can’t help feeling that the livelihoods of thousands of farmers in the developing world deserve some help, and paying the farmers a fair price for their tobacco may be a start.

Tory Policy Isn't Welfare

In a recent article in the Sunday Times, David Cameron described the loss of £5.2bn annually through benefit fraud and errors as “the one area of ingrained waste that out-ranks all others”.

Cameron’s aspersion – forgetting its reliance on questionable figures – is deeply flawed. Firstly, the vast majority of the £5.2bn figure can be attributed to system failures rather than fraud. Secondly, labelling benefit fraud as waste that “out-ranks all others” conveniently ignores the fact that benefit fraud is dwarfed in comparison to the revenue lost through tax evasion and avoidance.

HM Revenue & Customs estimate that there is a £40bn gap between tax collected and what HMRC calculates should be collected – and many economists argue that this figure is even higher. This figure breaks down into £7bn lost through tax evasion, £7bn lost through tax avoidance and £7.2bn lost through inaccurate self-assessments. I’m no economist, but it seems fairly obvious that if you’re committed to reducing waste and raising revenue then tackling the tax gap would be a good place to start. Yet, for some reason, the government isn’t inclined to do this. Maybe it’s something to do with the type of people who avoid/evade tax – the millionaire bankers, accountants, lawyers and judges. Or ‘the Cabinet’ as David Cameron likes to call them.

A couple of months ago, Labour MP Katy Clark grilled the government on the amount of public money spent on advertising tackling benefit fraud opposed to preventing tax evasion. In the last year, HMRC spent £633,284 (excluding VAT) “on advertising for the purposes of preventing tax evasion”. There was no expenditure in the previous two years. I guess no-one was fiddling their taxes back then.

In contrast, the following amounts were budgeted for advertising tackling benefit fraud in each of the last three financial years:

2007-08 - £6.5 million

2008-09 - £6.0 million

2009-10 - £5.0 million

In the last three years £633,284 has been spent on trying to reduce a £40bn annual tax gap whilst £17.5 million has been spent on trying to reduce the relatively minor amount lost through benefit fraud. But the amount spent on advertising benefit fraud is not meant to reduce lost revenue, it is intended to reinforce the stereotype of unemployed scroungers and benefit cheats. It’s about inciting bigotry and hatred about some of the most vulnerable people in society. It also fortifies the positions of government lackeys in the City.

All fraud is wrong and should be tackled, but the government’s selective demonisation of benefit claimants over bankers illustrates that ConDem policy is motivated not by economic need but by ideological dogmatism. But don’t worry, we’re all in this together, right?

Tories Playing the Generation Game

A report by the TUC today confirmed that the number of 18-24 year olds claiming Jobseekers’ Allowance for over six months “has increased in 142 local authorities across the UK since last year, compared to just 78 where it has fallen”.

17% of young people are now in receipt of JSA – twice the national average – with hundreds of thousands more defining themselves as students, despite having no confirmed place at university in the autumn. Without robust and proactive employment schemes, we risk losing a whole generation of young people to a life-time of unemployment and economic inactivity.

The increase in youth unemployment is at best the result of naive ConDem policy and at worst seen as a price worth paying. All government policy thus far seems intent on compounding the situation of jobless young people: increasing the retirement age, reassessing people on Incapacity Benefit, expecting single mothers to return to work earlier, scrapping the Future Jobs Fund, strangulating Connexions, mass cuts in the public sector and inevitable redundancies in the private sector. All these contrive to push young people further and further away from the labour market.

The Office for National Statistics recently compared the latest recession to the recessions of the 1980s and 1990s. According to ONS “the labour market has been more resilient this time round” and, whilst the recession has been “remarkable for its depth and duration, the loss of employment was relatively low”. This may be true but the stagnation of job creation has intensified the plight of the long-term unemployed and, by extension, young people. This is backed up by recent figures which show that, although the overall numbers of people claiming JSA has decreased, the number of long-term unemployed has hit its highest level since 1997. For those with experience and qualifications it may be relatively easy to get a job, but for those with little experience (chiefly by virtue of the fact they’ve been on the planet for a shorter period of time) it’s never been harder.

The Future Jobs Fund and Young Persons’ Guarantee were, by definition, counter-recessionary measures. As experienced workers were made redundant, they were first in line for new vacancies. This increasingly reduced the chances of a young person finding work. The Chartered Institute of Personal Development predicts that 8% of the population will be affected by public sector cuts alone. This will create a vast pool of experienced workers ready to snap up all the new private sector jobs which the Tories are promising us. Young people – without something like the £1.2billion Future Jobs Fund – will find themselves last in line for jobs but first in the firing line for the government’s punitive benefits system. Youth unemployment cannot be solved by draconian measures, it needs intensive and resourced support backed up by guaranteed jobs. Without it, the Tories will create a lost generation. But maybe that’s a price worth paying?

A Decade of Brilliant US Foreign Policy

I used to naïvely believe that America's right wing War on Terror was a childish over reaction to a limited terrorist force that has destroyed any international sympathy it had gained after 9/11. I thought that its actions critically ignored classic counter insurgency theory which was its only means of success in the Middle East. I now believe that it wasn't really looking for success in the East at all, just a new enemy to perpetually fight. Its foreign policy over the past decade has achieved this recent aim perfectly.

Classic counterinsurgency doctrine arose as a state centric response to domestic guerilla actions. Robert Thompson's writings on counterinsurgency are key. Writing first hand on successful counterinsurgency experiences in Malaya and unsuccessful American policy in Vietnam, Thompson exposed the weaknesses in insurgency strategy and provided a good model to counter it.

This thought centres around the fact that the insurgent has to win the hearts and minds of the populace to survive. Mao famously stated that “the guerrilla must swim in the people as the fish swims in the sea”. The insurgent relies people for supply, movement, personnel and camouflage. The state on the other hand does not have any of these limitations but instead has its own weaknesses, based on its large mass. By being small and mobile guerilla forces can strike and withdraw to safe areas (usually rural areas). Their aim is to elicit a response from the state such as the sending out forces, to be targeted, or a disproportionate and unfocused use of force (such as the bombing of village havens for insurgents in Vietnam). This response further alienates the population and increases the support for the insurgents. The insurgents then are able to amass more support than the state to encircle cities and take power. This third stage is key for success, happens quickly and is the only point where anything that resembles conventional warfare takes place. Thus conventional warfare strategy is largely irrelevant for the state.

The state vs insurgent struggle hinges on which side can encourage the other to piss off the populace the most. The state can do this by having a clear political vision to combat insurgent propaganda, sticking to the rule of law so that it can be seen to be just, limiting movement, using an economy of force and using small well supplied and trained mobile units to fight the insurgents on their own grounds. This is designed to put pressure on the insurgency without losing support from the population. Similarly if the insurgent's actions cause civilian damage then they lose any moral authority and claim to power. The modern world only increases the importance of the counterinsurgency doctrine as mass communication means that all action is captured and relayed faster than ever before. The winning of hearts and minds (a term originally coined in Malaya) therefore is more effective for either side than ever before.

Whilst this strategy concerns a domestic struggle I would argue that they are also applicable on a global scale and thus The War on Terror. If you replace the ideas of central areas of governmental control such as cities with Western states and rural areas with rogue and pariah states much of the same strategy applies. Therefore, it appears that by ignoring this reinterpretation and trying to wage a conventional type of warfare US action has completely played into insurgent hands. They had no political vision for the states they were entering above removing the old regime, they abandoned their own rule of law in Guantanamo Bay, they moved into remote areas with uneconomically large forces that are open to hit and run attacks, they repeatedly use disproportional force such as artillery, bombing and helicopter attacks and have done nothing to prohibit the movement and supply of the insurgents. As a result they have created a more unified enemy in the the Middle East and lost a large amount of troops in the process.

If this is all true then why am I claiming that US foreign policy has been so successful? I believe that the US correctly identified a crucial difference between domestic and global counterinsurgency strategy. This difference is the separation of each area of control. In the domestic struggle the insurgents, if successful, are able to encircle the areas of government control (usually cities from rural areas). The boundary of these areas is not black and white. If you bomb and destroy a village in the countryside you might have killed a government employee's mother which could make them support the insurgency from inside your power base (a city). The US on the other hand can lose all support from the Iraqi and Afghani people without it translating to a loss of power on US soil. The Iraqi and Afghani insurgents will also never be able to encircle the US.

In a post Cold War world the American right had no external enemy to justify military spending and unite the public behind them. There was now no left wing threat to the American way of life which could be used to justify the movement to the right or at least the preservation of the status quo. By doing the opposite of what counterinsurgency doctrine states they were able to construct a better enemy than one which is state led. They were able to create an insurgent enemy that can never be defeated. Every attempt simply solidifies insurgent support which never really threatens US soil. I don't believe this was a conscious plan from the start but an evolutionary road

begining with public demand for action in Afghanistan.

While the administration in the US has changed the situation created by the Republican administration of George Bush still exists. The genie has been let out of the bottle, the enemy has been created. It turns out that sending 150,000 troops, 5000 of which have died isn't such a great strategy to stop 19 people hijacking 4 planes or 4 people blowing up tube trains, it is good for getting George Bush elected twice, Tony Blair three times and everyone else looking the other way.

Saved by the Bill?

The recent Academies Bill introduced by Michael Gove is another in a long line of name changing, selection varying and fiscal altering initiatives introduced in recent years that has left the secondary education system in England and Wales resembling an open market place for all. Private schools, Academies, Comprehensives, Grammar Schools, Secondary Moderns, Faith schools, Specialist schools and more are all currently on offer for children when they reach that grand old career defining age of eleven.

Currently only 7% of schools in England and Wales are private fee paying entities so the market is (although heavily influenced) not one solely based on being able to produce hard cash upfront. The issues surrounding the morality of these schools have long been debated (and need to re-addressed) but with the recent decrease in interest in private schooling post the credit crunch it is the state system that is now under pressure to try and offer more ‘choice’ and greater freedom from the state without the fee paying expense.

The government’s bill aims to allow this greater freedom by expanding the amount of academies in the country. Under the Labour government academies, or city academies as they were originally known, were created to improve failing schools by giving them more power to solve their own problems and on the whole these seem to have been a success at improving some of the schools concerned. So the idea being implemented is nothing new only now it is being made available not just to schools who were failing in the state system but to schools who excel in the system.

The structure of these academies allows for 10% of the school to be invested in by a donor whose benefits include having governors on the school board and influence in selection criteria and on areas of the curriculum outside of the core national programme. These donors have so far been in the mould of individual wealthy benefactors, select businesses and charitable organisations of mainly religious background. The latter have been the more common with as many as half of academies believed to be backed by religious organisations.

With this new structure available to them many successful schools in both urban and rural areas will no doubt see themselves improving in terms of results and thus increase the already rising competition for places. This in turn will surely heighten the gap between well performing schools and poor performing schools and leave the system as elitist and fragmented as it always has been, if not more. Add to that the increase in religious and business influence in education and we end up with schools being prey to the bias of certain groups and individual interests as well.

From the Tripartite System with its eleven plus examination to the more egalitarian Comprehensive ideal that lost its way in large towns and cities with the increasing gap between rich and poor causing the appearance of successful schools in catchment areas with higher house prices and poorer schools appearing in areas of deprivation, the system has always had its share of pitfalls. But now it seems we are left with the leftovers from both these flawed systems as well as new government schemes that are unable to remedy, and perhaps even enhance, the poor factors of the former two.

Until the link between poor schools and deprivation and poverty are cemented into the centre of any argument on the education system there is no doubt that inequality and fiscal separatism will occur. The idea of a market place for education is one that will no doubt remain, with the idea of parent choice or school selection of pupils as the cornerstone of the system’s values. Education all the way to University level has been a victim of this market place ideal, leading many to believe that education is only there as a precursor to monetary gain and prestige and nothing more.

Unless both the school and the parent are relegated into second place and replaced by the needs of a new system that generates an equal footing for all, as well as social mobility in deprived urban areas, education will continue to follow market trends with success for some and failure for many.

The Fairer Sex?

On Friday, a leading female rights group – the Fawcett Society – filed court papers alleging that the Con-Dems’ budget breached legislation on gender equality. The Fawcett Society contends that the budget acts to increase inequality between men and women and, by not carrying out an equality impact assessment, the government acted illegally. The case will be costly – and probably fruitless – but it’s a case worth making.

According to estimates by the Fawcett Society – backed up by research from the House of Commons library – 72% of cuts will be met by women. That amounts to a staggering £5.8 billion. It is remarkable that women are expected to pay this disproportionate amount yet still earn significantly less than men. I thought we were all in this together?

Many of the policies unevenly affect women – the freezing of child benefit, cutting tax credits, abolishing maternity grants, strangulating Sure Start – whilst, if Iain Duncan-Smith gets his way, the ‘simplification’ of the benefit system will also see the scrapping of Lone Parent Benefit.

The campaign against the public sector and local government also disproportionately affects women because females represent 65% of the work force. Many will lose their job whilst any earning over £21 000pa (and lucky enough to keep their job) will be subject to a two-year pay freeze. Furthermore, because the overwhelming majority of part-time workers are female, many will not be eligible for the nominal pay rise if their pro-rata salary exceeds £21k.

The campaign by the Fawcett Society demonstrates that the Con-Dems’ budget is not just an ideological attack on the state, it is also an ideological attack on women. It is a thinly veiled attempt to curtail the progress made by women in society and to retrench traditional patriarchal structures. It seems fairly obvious that the government think that a woman’s place is in the home – and even then they won’t be given extra help to raise children.

Women may be seen as the ‘fairer’ sex, but where the Con-Dems’ budget is concerned, it’s anything but fair to women.