1 A number of niggling issues...

I'm sitting here as 3 fire engines and 2 police cars race past my house (both the fire and police stations are at the end of my road), telling myself that I cannot possibly revise for Physics and Maths tomorrow because of the noise of passing emergency vehicles and next door's kid drumming badly. 

Of course, you know this is a lie, and so do I. I just can't bring myself to sit down with a C2 past paper and do it. The most depressing part of it all is that I'm starting not to care about university. This time next year there will be record demand for university placements and such chronic supply that any chance I may have had even with decent grades has been diminished. I'll take the liberty of blaming the government for slashing the number of available university placements this year. Because it will have a knock on effect next year as failed applicants reapply. 

So, when I can't revise, I have to do something that feels ever so slightly productive. I kid myself that this blog is in any way productive. So, you can see the logic.

Tuesday morning saw me sitting in registration after having a fairly rough night's sleep. My friend was reading a crumpled copy of the Metro he'd picked up on the tube. I caught a glance of Cameron's pledge to cut Child Trust Funds. Now, I'd heard rumours of this the night before, but this was official.

Incredulously, I mentioned that it was the first of many mistakes this government was going to make and that it was completely unfair on children and families. Then a voice piped up with "All these people claiming benefits should just go out and get a job. It's not fair that we have to pay more tax so that they can do nothing".

At this point, you should understand that I go to a predominantly Christian school in a Conservative safe seat (Epping Forest). Even so, I was shocked that anyone could be so narrow minded as to think that every person who claims benefits in this country does so because they're lazy. Even moreso, I was shocked that she thought that people could "just go get a job" in the current economic climate. 

It'd been a bad night. I rounded on her. 

"What's not fair, Ashley, is that there are families out there who have to choose between a hot meal or heating on a daily basis. What's not fair is that there are families out there who cannot afford funerals when a loved one dies, and who must choose between school shoes and a school shirt for their children. Your family pays more taxes because they can easily afford to without being thrust into absolute poverty." Fairly satisfied with my response, I stopped and turned around to find my form tutor grinning at me. Silently pleased with myself I stuck my head in a Maths textbook, and then...

"But they should still have to pay taxes! It's their fault they're poor, not ours!". 

I wasn't exactly sure if I'd heard right. I really hoped I had, but the look of pure outrage on my friend James' face told me that I had indeed heard correctly. At this point a lot of the class had tuned into the conversation.

"What, exactly, do you expect them to pay taxes on? Do you not understand the concept of having literally nothing? And how on earth can you accuse people of bringing it on themselves? People don't decide to be poor and then scrounge on benefits. If you offered any impoverished family in this country a £40k/year job paying 20% tax they'd jump at it! A lot of the low income and unemployed people in this country are like that because of the previous government who cut their jobs and didn't think it was worth offering them training or employment! That's why there are generations of poor families in this country. Not because they're lazy as you put it"  I was practically foaming at the mouth by this point. James took over. 

"You basically believe that people who are rich deserve to be rich and people who are poor deserve to be poor. You're on about fairness. How is that fair? People who are homeless can't get jobs or benefits because they need an address and a bank account, but they can't get an address if they can't pay for a house, or pay rent, and they can't get a bank account if they don't have an address. Is that fair?" 

I high fived him. 

This debate went on for some time. James and I got a cheer from the rest of our form when registration ended and we (thankfully) had to leave the debate til another day. 

What shocked me most is not so much what she was saying, but the attitude. The "well, I'm okay so everyone else must be too, really" attitude. The idea that if people are on benefits or are homeless, it must have been their fault and even so, their lives aren't really that bad.

This is the attitude of people who've never been in a position of absolute poverty. It's the attitude of people who quite simply don't understand what it's like. These are people who don't understand who Labour has traditionally fought for. They're the people who want to cling on to money no matter what that means for the rest of society. They delude themselves with the idea that people will be able to help themselves if it really comes to it. 

It's worrying. I only wish I could somehow have shown the girl in my form exactly what it's like to be beyond all hope. I wish that I could show Michael Gove exactly what Child Trust Funds mean to thousands and thousands of low-income families. They've been a way of helping and encouraging families save for their children, and to give them less of a burden when trying to balance the 'here and now' needs of their children with the future and long term needs of their children. It's meant that every child is at least guaranteed something when they turn 18 which may well help them to start saving. 

"The wealthy have always relied on assets to smooth the path into adulthood, but now every single child will be able to do the same. The lumpy costs, the risky decision, and upfront investment involved in making ones way in life will be eased, whether that means spending money on training, starting a businesses - or simply buying the suit needed to attend an interview... CTFs recognise that assets, not just income, can bring security and opportunities"

~ Institute of Public Policy Research

The IPPS quote sums up what I'm trying to say rather well. Child Trust Funds weren't intended as a means of redistribution of wealth, but rather as a way of encouraging and enabling saving. Something that the new coalition Government is harking on about a fair bit. It's certainly worth considering that there's a positive Cost-Benefit associated with CTF's, as young people have a step-up when they're 18 and at least have a chance to fly, rather than having absolutely nothing at all and being forced to claim benefits. Worth considering is the fact that the cost of CTF's this year is less than 0.05% of the Department for Education's budget. When you consider how much is spent by local government on pointless beaurocracy, would it not at least have been better to pass CTF responsibilities to local government and ask them to recycle some of their efficiency savings into it?

Of course, what wound me up further was Michael Gove's ridiculous "free schools" programme. Encouraging parents and communities to set up their own schools and teach children some form of curriculum. Quite how the government can justify paying out for, essentially, an enormous social policy experiment while claiming that CTF's are "wasteful" is beyond me. 

Gove, quite possibly the scariest looking man in government (and thus probably not suitable to be dealing with children), has casually overlooked the fact that setting up a school in your front room deprives young people of science facilities, sports facilities, decent social interaction... the list goes on! What's more, the expectation that parents have time to take out of their day to teach children is at best a fantasy - parents have jobs and need to earn money. This speaks for itself really. The sort of parents who can afford not to work will be the ones that are best known as "mother" and "father", and who enjoy a leisurely game of croquet in the garden on Sundays . 

This is another idea aimed at helping the richest prosper and then cutting funding to normal schools so that the poor can rot. Not that Michael Gove will admit this. He's claiming that he can spend spend spend on Free Schools while maintaining spending on state schools, while trying to make efficiency savings and dealing with a reduced budget. Any five year old can tell me that if I had 10 pennies, but I had to save 3 pennies, I could only use 7 of my pennies, and that therefore, I would have to spend on less. So it's clear that something's got to give. That will be the Comprehensive around the corner (although, the Grammar will probably be safe), it'll be the College in the next town (although the private school down the main road will be okay). 

A friend challenged me earlier on this by telling me that it was no different to home-schooling children. I beg to differ. The government does not invest money in home-schooling. It is entirely at the parent's discretion. Nor does the government spend millions regulating home-schooling. That's a local authority remit, if at all. Which brings me to my next big problem. How exactly does the government intend to quality control thousands of free schools all teaching different and varying levels of qualification? Gove will have to set up another QUANGO. (oh no!). 

Gove would have us know that the Conservative government is entirely on the side of the poor. So, why then, are they proposing to reverse the Academy programme in order to give the the schools in rich, affluent areas a better status than those in poor deprived areas? Labour's Academies were a way of investing in poor areas, and trying to give young people from those areas a better chance of success. Conservative Academies will do just the opposite. Invest in the rich, leave the poor to fend for themselves. 

For all the talk of "change", there is nothing different about this government. I've taken 3 policies and shown just how specifically they're engineered for the rich and against the poor. You'd have thought that this government would take a little more care in dressing up the policies, but no. It doesn't take much digging to see what they really mean for young people. For poorer people. For the people that really need the Government's help. 

I can only say, on behalf of Labour, we're sorry. We're sorry to all of you that we didn't win this election. 

We're so, so sorry.