We live in a time of contradictions. I have often criticised others for being (in the words of Mike Leigh) too ‘miserablist’. I didn’t subscribe to the ‘Toxic’ view of childhood expressed by Sue Palmer and worried that there was a tendency to keep picking holes in society, revelling in what was wrong rather than what is going right. However, last week has shaken me up a bit. It may be a down phase to my normally optimistic, cheery outlook – but everything really does feel a bit critical at the moment.
We have the road crash of Universal Credit genuinely making people poorer, the OECD telling us it will take five generations before those with the least prospects can gain an ‘average’ income, a top judge indicating that it is easier to get children into care than keep them with their families, university grants in crisis and a school asking parents for toilet rolls and Blu Tack. Please note, I have made a special effort not to go off about early years funding, business rates and 30 hour codes…
I think I might have been able to maintain my regular happy demeanour if the issues weren’t so startlingly obvious in real life rather than something you read about. It is clear our political representatives are utterly unaware of what life is like for the majority of the population, but what alarms me is that there doesn’t seem to be a plan to improve the current situation. Government departments respond by making glib comments (normally quoting figures of hundreds of millions of pounds and how much more is being invested than five/ten/20 years ago). To be honest, none of that matters to someone fleeing an abusive relationship or to a child on the child protection register, even if it isn’t political sleight of hand.
I am not so naïve to believe that there are simple answers to increasingly complex questions, but it is morally correct to be honest and take the situation seriously. I am quite frankly appalled at the lack of action, or at the least a strategy. Those in a position of authority should be ashamed of the current ‘state of the nation’. If we let our nurseries fall into the disrepair of our social and community services, they would rightly be branded as ‘inadequate’. In all honesty, our prospects look grim unless we wake up and start prioritising people over profit.