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Big Tony to tackle 'menace' children

  
  

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Phex: Dorset Doom
19:25 / 02.09.06
PW- While your anecdote does point towards a messed up situation in this country I don't see the connection between it and what I said in my post or with this thread in general.

I used the all-caps mispelt 'voice' for that particular opinion since I don't consider the belief that the leaders who are temporarily in charge of democratic countries consider 'power' to be an end in of itself (c.f O'Brien's speech in Orwel Nineteen-Eighty Four) to be any more valid or helpful an opinion than the belief that the government is drugging people through water flouridation and aeroplane contrails or, yes, that the U.S government was somehow complicit in the events of 9/11 (Noam Chomsky explains the flaws in this line of thinking here, via Youtube, but it is as you say a topic for another thread). The power they have is usually directed towards some less abstract end- personal greed (Prescott's two Jaguars, Brown's Casino trip, 'cronyism' in general etc.) or the advancement of some particular ideology.

the only rule about people in power that makes any sense to me is that people in power want to remain in power for as long as they can and get as much power as they can while they're at at. Anything that threatens their grip and control will be dealt with however they can get away with it, especialy during wartime...

If people in power wish to stay in power for as long as possible why does democracy even exist? Wouldn't Blair/Bush or whoever suspend all elections and declare themselves sole dictator? Why would Blair be talking of resigning if he wanted to remain in power? I'm afriad this view doesn't tally up with what I see happening. Again it seems much more likely based on the evidence that leaders like Tony Blair are greedy and stupid rather than evil and power-hungry.
 
 
nighthawk
19:36 / 02.09.06
I don't consider the belief that the leaders who are temporarily in charge of democratic countries consider 'power' to be an end in of itself

Yes quite, especially when privelege and power in modern democracies are mainly tied to social class, so for the most part it doesn't really matter whether your team is in power or not. There's no need to instigate a police state, unless e.g. terrorism escalates to such a level that it threatens the stability of society at large, in which case power will be up for grabs, and probably will be defended with some pretty extreme measures..
 
 
paranoidwriter waves hello
00:15 / 03.09.06
Phex, I didn't say anything about who I believe to be behind 9/11, just that I have reasonable doubts about what's supposed to have happened. Anyhoo...

The power they have is usually directed towards some less abstract end- personal greed (Prescott's two Jaguars, Brown's Casino trip, 'cronyism' in general etc.) or the advancement of some particular ideology

I'm not so sure, but if this were universally true, how far could greed make a person go? Depends on the person, right? So what is Tony's character and ideology, or that of the rest of New Labour? The new Clause 4 and/or thinking "the Government knows better than its people", to the extent he'll allow laws to be passed that take away the basic rights that our ancestors fought for?

Don't get me wrong, I'm worried about the next election. The Tories might get in, which is slightly worse, and with these knew powers they'll inherit...well, who knows?

If people in power wish to stay in power for as long as possible why does democracy even exist? Wouldn't Blair/Bush or whoever suspend all elections and declare themselves sole dictator? Why would Blair be talking of resigning if he wanted to remain in power? I'm afriad this view doesn't tally up with what I see happening. Again it seems much more likely based on the evidence that leaders like Tony Blair are greedy and stupid rather than evil and power-hungry.

Well, and this is going to sound annoying, but.... it depends on what how one sees the evolution of "democracy" in the UK in (say) the 316 years since the Bill of Rights. As I see it, the ebb and flow of true democracy in the UK is almost strangely like the simple 'Boom and Bust' economics model a friend once showed me (but I'm not an economist). Here's a very crude representation, as I see it:

UP: we fight for our rights and actually get one, e.g. the right to vote. Yay!

Down: the dust has settled after the party, and slowly the old order manage to put controls on the new system. (constitutional monarchy, new legislature with caveats, the Council Tax, etc)

UP: we protest and the powers that be have to give us more to stop chaos breaking out, again. (e.g. women get the right to vote). Yay!

DOWN: the powes that be start a war, or stir up a civil war of some kind, then steal some of our rights back while we're too distracted, brusied, or scared to care.

UP: the old leader leaves/ gets voted out / dies; time for a change? Yay! At first, maybe, but...

DOWN: nothing really changes, except legislation, which is usually changing for the worse.


It all starts with a huge upward shift, but after the first 'down' every 'up' has actually declined in strength, until the graph looks like a set of nasty Toblerone stairs, going down, down, down as time moves forward. Of course, occasionally something great happens (e.g. women get the vote), and the cycle appears to leap up, but in time and with perspective we realise it hasn't, it just felt a bit better than it was just before, for a little while, anyway...

You can apply this crude model to the NHS, free education, civil rights, the Labour Party, and many other things that are actually good in our society. It's all declining. Or rather it will if we don't see it and do more to stop it.

Eventually, nobody will have to declare themselves a dictator, we'll be so confused we'll hand the crown to them on a platter. It's happened in other countries, why not the UK? All it takes is the right conditions and the right laws, and a hell of a lot of fear.

I'm feeling really depressed now...
 
 
nighthawk
09:14 / 03.09.06
Head Shop Thread
 
 
nighthawk
18:08 / 21.11.06
I think this is probably the follow up to the interview which sparked this thread:

"Super-nannies" are to be brought in to try to improve parenting in 77 areas of England with high levels of anti-social behaviour, Tony Blair has said.

...

The child psychologists will be funded by the prime minister's Respect Task Force to work in deprived areas.

They will advise new parents - of children of all ages - and intervene when children get into trouble.

Mr Blair is also expected to encourage families to read a guidebook written by parents in Stoke-on-Trent, complete with tips on how best to control children.

...

The Home Office is also to provide more money for existing parenting courses.

Parents can volunteer for the courses, with others forced to participate when their children break the law or refuse to attend school.


I also meant to link to this in this thread.



Anyway, I still stand by what I said in earlier posts. Policies like this mark a continuing shift away from any vaguely social democracy/reformist programme on the part of labour, and are best understood in class terms. Talking about a 'nanny state' (as the beeb article does) tends to obfuscate this, even if its not strictly inaccurate.

What makes policies like this so incredibly frustrating is that anti-social behaviour is a real problem for many people. Perhaps not 'anti-social behaviour' as it appears in the media, which sort of fades into 'teenage behaviour - but from working class people', but still...

I think its generally accepted that disparities between the rich and the poor of this country are growing wider, and New Labour's programme continues to fail whole swathes of the population, who are left with shit housing, shit schools, and minimal genuine support. This doesn't only lead to the social problems, which are loosely bracketed as 'anti-social behaviour' these days. It also disempowers local communities, which are unable to tackle these problems autonomously (see the short article I linked to above).



I also thought we could link this to the ongoing Definition of a chav thread. Admittedly I stopped reading it quite early on, but I was hoping that we could perhaps push discussion beyond notions of 'classism' - I'm not really sure what that is, but I think its connected to ideas about pre-judging people on the basis of their consumer choices and general appearance - and start talking about the way the government is using real social problems to provide further justification for its own agenda. And how talk of 'chavs', 'yobs', etc. in mainstream discourse supports and encourages this move.



Finally, with reference to this particular initiative, I was wondering whether people think this might be described as a pathologisation of adolesence and the results of social deprivation? Are 'child psychologists' really needed to tackle these problems? It seems, to me at least, that they are being brought in to treat symptoms which are largely (although perhaps not completely) the result of social deprivation; and by focusing so heavily on the symptoms, it seems like 'psyhcology' is the source of these problems, i.e. a distinct class of individuals with a particular psychological make-up which sets them apart from the rest of the populations (call them yobs, chavs, whatever), and not the concrete material conditions people live in. Basically, it marks out particular individuals as wholly deviant, and explains their deviancy by their personal pathology.
 
 
Spaniel
09:48 / 22.11.06
While social deprivation almost certainly has a role to play in youth crime, I think we also need to remember two things: firstly, that the media love to demonise teenagers and that the government are responding to public perception as much as they are to genuine problems; secondly, some experts have argued (can't find a source, but have definitely heard it discussed) that lack of social contact between (older) children and adults is a significant factor in producing socially disfunctional teens.
The second point may well be linked to social deprivation, but I think there are a number of other factors likely to be at work.
 
 
nighthawk
10:16 / 22.11.06
firstly, that the media love to demonise teenagers and that the government are responding to public perception as much as they are to genuine problems

Well sure - but isn't that a bit sinister in itself? That 'public perception' is leading the government to effectively pathologise adolesence, with particular reference to certain communities?
 
 
sorenson
18:46 / 22.11.06
lack of social contact between (older) children and adults is a significant factor in producing socially disfunctional teens.
The second point may well be linked to social deprivation, but I think there are a number of other factors likely to be at work.

Yeah, like school. I hate the whole idea of school, with its strict age-segregation and power laden hierarchy. But that's probably a whole other thread...
 
 
Spaniel
20:10 / 22.11.06
Hawky, damn fucking right that's sinister. And I'm totally appalled at the way that statistic that seems to show that, on the whole, most of us blame the parents has been trotted out as a justification for this Supernanny nonsense.
 
 
nighthawk
10:03 / 01.04.07
Further follow up on this.

Guardian article here

A new-style "11-plus" to assess the risk every child in Britain runs of turning to crime was among a battery of proposals unveiled in Tony Blair's crime plan yesterday.

The children of prisoners, problem drug users and others at high risk of offending will also face being "actively managed" by social services and youth justice workers. New technologies are to be used to boost police detection rates while DNA samples are to be taken from any crime suspect who comes into contact with the police.

The "early intervention" approach is part of a package of proposals on security, crime and justice produced by Downing Street which underline the scale of criminal justice reform Mr Blair believes is still needed despite passing 53 law and order bills since he came to power in 1997.

From The Independent:

Downing Street also suggested health visitors could intervene before the birth of children judged at risk of falling into a life of crime. They could regularly check on "disadvantaged mothers from pregnancy until the child is aged two", it said.
 
  

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