Political Economy

Mr Cameron will be the second leader of an EU country to say that multiculturalism is dead. The first was Angela Merkel.

Why is that? After all it has been the bedrock of government policy for 30 years. The reasons are simple and straightforward.

First, multi-culturalism means that for political purposes no culture is any better than any other. Whilst this may be true to an anthropologist it has never been true in political terms. A country that cannot point unequivocally to the values, history and beliefs that are the values, history and beliefs that guide it, is no country at all, merely a collection of disparate cultures.

In a society that collects cultures everyone will assume that the most important culture  is their own private culture and act accordingly. This means teenage white boys wearing an England shirt will be excluded from the corner store when they want to by sweets, as happens in parts of Luton. It means that arrogance holds sway and some groups will speak and act disrespectively about the host culture whilst reacting violently against similar action against their own.

In such societies no one know what is the correct action to take and this has led to tragedies in certain child protection cases. It has also led to the drugging, abduction, abuse and rape of, mainly, white girls because these girls come from a different culture to theirs, a culture that the men carrying out the attacks neither respect nor value.

But there are other problems. Without a clear distinction between public and private cultures public bodies spend endlessly on useless actions employing people in posts such as “Diversity Coordinator” or “Equalities Coordinator” or engaging in programmes such a “Luton in Harmony” – to name but one. None of these expenditures are worthwhile because they are aimed at propping up the indefensible and broken polemic of multiculturalism.

Multiculturalism has caused divisions in England where there should have been none. They have stopped all sorts of groups as being identified as English, which is how they should be identified after all these years. It means that the natural description of the people of England is still, wrongly, an ethnically based one with only one ethnicity being banned – English! It has led to a great deal of dissatisfaction as the English culture has been systematically downgraded, insulted and abused, despite the fact English culture, not Scottish or Welsh or Irish or British, is responsible for parliamentary democracy, the rule of law, toleration and (still) respect for peoples’ private lives and beliefs. It has led to the misallocation of large amounts of public money and the acceptance of many violent crimes, because to point them out would somehow insult a culture and that the many people physically and mentally harmed by this attitude are just going to have to suck it up and the rule of law be dammed. Notably the values of Political Correctness  means that this acceptance does not apply to the English culture

How then we should handle the errors and problems that multiple cultures bring? Well, very simply, by adopting a policy of multiple cultures. That is to say that the everyone must adhere to and accept the public culture of England, which is the English culture, in their public life. What they do in their private life, provided it does not break any law, is up to them. This immediately simplifies decision making, public expenditure, public services such as education, the maintenance of law and order and the emotional and political life of England.

We should remember that the flag of England is Norman and the patron saint of England is Palestinian. England has been handling multiple cultures successfully for a thousand years! It should be allowed to get on with doing so now.

Secondly, getting rid of multiculturalism is insufficient. We also need to get rid of large swathes of political correctness or PC. PC is borne of a natural desire to be polite and considerate to people. Unfortunately the blindness of its supporters  has led to many unnatural practices carried out in its name. Chief of these came to light in the cases of rape referred to above.

Many years ago in North Hertfordshire one of the local papers carried the story of a father and son team who, possessing a van, had the bright idea to park this outside a secondary school and proposition the young female students as they came out at the end of the school day. No time was wasted on PC. The perpetrators were identified as white by the paper and as a result parents, schools and the students themselves were alerted. Had this not been done there would have been, within a few years, queues of white vans with father and son teams outside every secondary school in Hertfordshire. Instead the story is now an inconspicuous item of local history.

Apparently the northern rapes had been going on for decades. Five years ago when the MP Ann Cryer tried to get the local communities to take the lead to stop them they refused, because they saw no particular reason to stop such flagrant breeches of the law. After all did not these girls came from a corrupt culture and deserve no better? When she went public she was viciously accused of racism by the PC brigade. She is no longer in politics. Had these attacks been publicised 30 years ago with the same  lack of PC as was shown in Hertfordshire the local communities would have ensured that they stopped and these activities too would now, also, be only a minor footnote of local history.

Instead PC has ensured that an important English community has been shamed in such a way and for such outlandish breaches of the law that, sadly, it is likely that it will always be a part of English national history.

Let us at least take some good out of this sad case by learning how damaging to society PC is and by getting rid of it forever. Alternatively we could throw the whole lot of the PC brigade into court and prosecute them for what they really did – actions that led to the cover up and aid the commission of  a series of vicious crimes!

And a final message to Cameron:

THE NATIONAL IDENTITY OF ENGLAND IS ENGLISH, STUPID!

Stop stressing and get on with it!

Well it would have to be since I am a teacher. I have taught for 20 years. I feel worried for the system I have been part of for all these years.I have seen what various administrations have tried to impose on education. I have seen the imposition of the National Curriculum. On the whole a good thing as it determined what should be taught. Good schools did it already. The only regret here is that it stopped with core subjects. Testing was needed to get the standards going in the right direction. But we should have prepared teachers and schools for picking it up and used resources available to develop this assessment. A missed opportunity in my view.

Many talk of initiative overload and to be fair they have a point. It is not so much the initiatives; it is that they are not joined up. On their own they seem like a good thing but they seem to exist in a single issue kind of world. Each one vying for time and favour independently. No wonder staff get confused.

Targets on the whole are a good thing. However what no one knew was that politicians and other mandarins did not understand that targets are what you aim for, they are aspirational. There is no recognition that if the targets are good and challenging enough then sometimes they will not be achieved. As a school you always need to meet your targets. Failure is bad. So a game is played. If the outcomes meet whatever the current criteria is then all is well. Forget the children.

Circumstances in school have changed over the past 20 years. I teach in a large comprehensive in a ‘inner city’ type environment. The nature of the students have changed. Families have changed in their composition. Children’s status in the family has changed. Parenting skills are lacking in many cases. Children are often lacking in emotional skills. We are however at least beginning to recognise that we need to support families if we are to support children better. We work with outside agencies to support the child. The Every Child Matters agenda is probably the best thing that has come out of the system in a long while. If all our efforts are child centred we will at last be able to educate children to be able to take part in the world of work.

However we are in transition between these two world views and this makes for difficulties. It takes time to change the traditional views of teachers, parents and the media. Authority in school is earned. (Just the same as it is in society) The safety in challenging unfairness is taken for granted. Everyone knows their rights. Teachers can no longer say ‘because I say so’ and hope to remain unchallenged. The family changes mean that children do not see their parents or other adults as remote beings. We need to re-think our ways of dealing with students who fall foul of the system in school. We need to understand that creating folk heroes (for bad behaviour) does not serve any one well. We are not in the punishment business but in the education business. Creating tomorrow’s future has always been what we are or should be about.

I am still excited about education and I can see what the future vision is about. I am worried that the current financial problems will put all this on hold for a long time. We will revert to a two tier system: those who can afford private/independent education will succeed; those who have to take a state route will face the luck of the draw with their school. All children deserve the best education we can give them. It is all our futures! I am desperately hoping that we will be able to support all that is good and not falter now.