After many years of neglect, The Government in England has got round to making policy for people with an intellectual disability (usually called ‘learning disability’ in the UK). The main policy statements have the usual vacuous PR names - Valuing People and Valuing People Now, and include high-minded statements of principle combined with a commitment to ‘choice’. This is to be realised by subjecting people with an intellectual disability to lots of assessments, while at the same time relieving them of the burden of having anything to choose between. This is because services such as day centres are being closed (sorry, ‘modernised’), while funding for any kind of communal living is being withheld. After several scandals, the Government has finally conceded that some action may be needed to improve the health of people with an intellectual disability, but is still committed to winding down specialist mental health services for this group.
This is all justified as being ‘inclusive’ - the latest term in a sequence which began with ‘normalisation’, via ‘social role valorisation’ and ‘ordinary living’. However, these principles to date have only been imposed on people at one end of the IQ scale - those who are two standard deviations or more below the mean, equivalent to an IQ score of lower than 70. To avoid discrimination, we should of course apply the same thinking to the other group of intellectually abnormal people: those two standard deviations above the mean, with an IQ of 130 and above.
When we look at the life-styles of this latter group in England today, we can see that these too offend the principle of inclusion. This is particularly true of arrangements for education and daycare. For a long time in the past, the intellectually-abnormal attended segregated special schools (the so-called ‘grammar schools’). The expansion of comprehensive education has of course reduced this segregation, but wealthy people still pay for their intellectually-abnormal children to attend residential special schools at places like Eton and Harrow. It is, however, after secondary school that non-inclusive policies dominate. Most intellectually abnormal at present go to segregated institutions (the so-called ‘universities’). Fortunately, changes in government policy has meant that these institutions have expanded to include a much wider range of students who are not intellectually abnormal. However, universities still have a major role providing sheltered daycare for many people with intellectual abnormalities for the whole of their adult lives. This is often presented as being ‘work’, but you will often find low levels of activity, most of which comprises pointless and unfulfilling activities like teaching and marking.
The situation is hardly better in the residential circumstances of intellectually-abnormal people. Many seek their friends exclusively among other members of this group, and even marry each other. They often live together in communal settings (particularly when they are ‘students’), and tend to congregate in particular areas of towns. The position is far worse in the USA, where there are rumoured to be whole college towns of people with intellectual abnormalities.
What should be done about this? Following the principles of Valuing People etc, we should enable people with intellectual abnormalities to choose the lifestyles of the general population. There is no reason why they can not work in open employment such as shopwork, clerical activities, and manual assembly-work. Indeed, thanks to recent Government economic policies, more and more intellectually-abnormal people are moving into such jobs after they leave university. We should emphasises the importance of intellectually-abnormal people taking part in ordinary community activities (like going to bingo, the pub and the dog track), which will help them develop friendships with ordinary people. In that way, we will move to a society where everyone will increasingly be the same.
Friday, 26 June 2009
Wednesday, 17 June 2009
How to drive the Worcestershire way
The most common places in which we experience rage are in queues and in cars. In a queue of cars behind a slow driver is worst of all. But this a common experience driving between the towns and villages of Worcestershire. Some drive slow because they are elderly and know their reactions have slowed - this seems fair to me and I try to be tolerant. But others drive slowly as part of a set of strange driving practices that they believe make them a very safe driver. To help understand why they do this, I include a guide to how to drive the Worcestershire way.
Speed limits. Always drive 10 miles/hour less than the local speed limit. This will avoid you being caught speeding if your speedometer is inaccurate.
Brakes. The brake pedal is the most useful part of the car. Push the brakes on when you are coming to a corner (any corner), when you see a car coming towards you on the other side of the road, when you are about to go up a hill, when you are going down a hill, and when you can see some traffic lights in the distance ahead of you.
Traffic lights. Wait a bit after the lights have changed to green. You never know if they might suddenly change back to red again.
Roundabouts. Never go on a roundabout if you can see another car approaching it. When you go on a large roundabout, always stick to the left-hand lane whether you are going left, straight ahead or right.
Country lanes. These do not have white lines down the middle, which means you can safely drive in the middle of the road. If you are lost, just stop the car and look at a map.
Motorways and other roads with three lanes each way. Very careful drivers avoid motorways altogether. But if you are on one, always drive in the middle lane. This gives you a clear view of the road, particularly important when other drivers try and pass you on the inside!
Filter lanes. Do not filter into traffic because you might then need to change lanes while moving. Instead, wait until the road is clear and drive straight over to the lane you want to be in. While you are waiting to do this, you should ignore the drivers behind you beeping their horns - they have obviously not learnt to appreciate how to drive the Worcestershire way.
Speed limits. Always drive 10 miles/hour less than the local speed limit. This will avoid you being caught speeding if your speedometer is inaccurate.
Brakes. The brake pedal is the most useful part of the car. Push the brakes on when you are coming to a corner (any corner), when you see a car coming towards you on the other side of the road, when you are about to go up a hill, when you are going down a hill, and when you can see some traffic lights in the distance ahead of you.
Traffic lights. Wait a bit after the lights have changed to green. You never know if they might suddenly change back to red again.
Roundabouts. Never go on a roundabout if you can see another car approaching it. When you go on a large roundabout, always stick to the left-hand lane whether you are going left, straight ahead or right.
Country lanes. These do not have white lines down the middle, which means you can safely drive in the middle of the road. If you are lost, just stop the car and look at a map.
Motorways and other roads with three lanes each way. Very careful drivers avoid motorways altogether. But if you are on one, always drive in the middle lane. This gives you a clear view of the road, particularly important when other drivers try and pass you on the inside!
Filter lanes. Do not filter into traffic because you might then need to change lanes while moving. Instead, wait until the road is clear and drive straight over to the lane you want to be in. While you are waiting to do this, you should ignore the drivers behind you beeping their horns - they have obviously not learnt to appreciate how to drive the Worcestershire way.
Monday, 15 June 2009
Where have all the Marxists gone?
Most of the time, you walk through life with your head down. Every so often, you stop, look around, and realise that the scenery has changed. Part of this scenery is the everyday chatter from the mass media, family and friends. The content of this chatter changes all the time, following personal experiences, news events, and the deeds of celebrities. But political and economic chatter can also be remarkably transient. Nobody now talks about monetarism, although this was one of the dominant political ideas of the 1980s. Neo-Liberalism and Neo-Conservatism also seem destined to wither. One set of ideas that has almost completely disappeared is Marxism.
This is strange because capitalism is now truly in crisis, and there was a time in the recent past when Marxism seemed a powerful set of intellectual ideas. At the time I was active in the British Labour Party (in the 1970s and early 1980s), political debate among activists in my constituency party was dominated by different versions of Marxism. Various Trotskyist factions existed within the Party, of which the strongest was the ‘Militant Tendency’. This was essentially a self-contained and disciplined political party which pretended to be an informal group of voluntary newspaper sellers. There was a minestrone of other Marxists groups outside the Party, most of whom had names with various combinations of the words ‘Revolutionary’, ‘Communist’, ‘Socialist’ or ‘Workers’. None of these factions had much mass support: they were stage armies of would-be leaders of a revolutionary struggle which they (and many others on the Left and Right at that time) believed was imminent.
The lack of mass support did not seem important because British politics is dominated by secretive committees and caucuses. This gives great political leverage to small and well-organised groups. Control of constituency labour parties can be won by getting a few activists nominated from poorly-attended or inactive local branches, who can then nominate candidates for Parliament who can be elected on a Party ticket even though their voters usually have little idea of their personal opinions (or personal morality). Many of the most ambitious local politicians in the Labour Party in the early 1980s rose either as members of one of the Marxists factions, or by doing deals with them. Either way, this required sharing a political language of class struggle against capitalism. In reality, ‘class struggle’ amounted to organising local and Parliamentary election campaigns, supporting strikes, and passing long and angry resolutions to be despatched to the Party’s National Executive Committee.
This all made Marxist ‘entryism’ a successful strategy up to a point. Members of various factions could become councillors and a few became Members of Parliament. But once Marxists had made it onto the national stage, they showed an extraordinary ability to lose votes, particularly when they tried to use local councils to introduce ‘socialism in one borough’. The Party leadership realised at that point that they needed to act against the factions. But a more important cause of the decline of Marxism was the rapid disappearance of communism in Eastern Europe, and, more locally, the continued success of the Conservative Party in British elections. In other words, the struggle against capitalism seemed to have been lost, and ambitious politicians decided they must find another route to power. This other route involved following Tony Blair in portraying Labour as competent and non-threatening, but also being relaxed about major and growing inequalities in wealth, subservience to the USA in foreign policy, and the parcelling out public services to the great profit of an inter-connected web of management consultancy, IT and PFI companies.
This is a world away politically from the Marxism of the early 1980s, but the ex-Marxists who now dominate the Labour Party have retained many of their old habits of mind. There is still the bitter factionalism, the preference for secretive committee-room conspiracies, and the contempt for public and for democratic politics. Gordon Brown became Prime Minister as a result of the first two of these, while his failure to hold a general election shortly afterwards illustrates the third. What we miss from Marxism, and what has been abandoned by these politicians, is the political energy, the internationalism, and the dream of a society organised on a different and fairer basis.
This is strange because capitalism is now truly in crisis, and there was a time in the recent past when Marxism seemed a powerful set of intellectual ideas. At the time I was active in the British Labour Party (in the 1970s and early 1980s), political debate among activists in my constituency party was dominated by different versions of Marxism. Various Trotskyist factions existed within the Party, of which the strongest was the ‘Militant Tendency’. This was essentially a self-contained and disciplined political party which pretended to be an informal group of voluntary newspaper sellers. There was a minestrone of other Marxists groups outside the Party, most of whom had names with various combinations of the words ‘Revolutionary’, ‘Communist’, ‘Socialist’ or ‘Workers’. None of these factions had much mass support: they were stage armies of would-be leaders of a revolutionary struggle which they (and many others on the Left and Right at that time) believed was imminent.
The lack of mass support did not seem important because British politics is dominated by secretive committees and caucuses. This gives great political leverage to small and well-organised groups. Control of constituency labour parties can be won by getting a few activists nominated from poorly-attended or inactive local branches, who can then nominate candidates for Parliament who can be elected on a Party ticket even though their voters usually have little idea of their personal opinions (or personal morality). Many of the most ambitious local politicians in the Labour Party in the early 1980s rose either as members of one of the Marxists factions, or by doing deals with them. Either way, this required sharing a political language of class struggle against capitalism. In reality, ‘class struggle’ amounted to organising local and Parliamentary election campaigns, supporting strikes, and passing long and angry resolutions to be despatched to the Party’s National Executive Committee.
This all made Marxist ‘entryism’ a successful strategy up to a point. Members of various factions could become councillors and a few became Members of Parliament. But once Marxists had made it onto the national stage, they showed an extraordinary ability to lose votes, particularly when they tried to use local councils to introduce ‘socialism in one borough’. The Party leadership realised at that point that they needed to act against the factions. But a more important cause of the decline of Marxism was the rapid disappearance of communism in Eastern Europe, and, more locally, the continued success of the Conservative Party in British elections. In other words, the struggle against capitalism seemed to have been lost, and ambitious politicians decided they must find another route to power. This other route involved following Tony Blair in portraying Labour as competent and non-threatening, but also being relaxed about major and growing inequalities in wealth, subservience to the USA in foreign policy, and the parcelling out public services to the great profit of an inter-connected web of management consultancy, IT and PFI companies.
This is a world away politically from the Marxism of the early 1980s, but the ex-Marxists who now dominate the Labour Party have retained many of their old habits of mind. There is still the bitter factionalism, the preference for secretive committee-room conspiracies, and the contempt for public and for democratic politics. Gordon Brown became Prime Minister as a result of the first two of these, while his failure to hold a general election shortly afterwards illustrates the third. What we miss from Marxism, and what has been abandoned by these politicians, is the political energy, the internationalism, and the dream of a society organised on a different and fairer basis.
Thursday, 4 June 2009
The old wandering track
England is not a land of straight lines. Our streets curve, wander, change names at every intersection, and rarely intersect at right-angles. Our country lanes follow the track of paths between fields and follow the curves made by ancient plough-teams. Our footpaths follow old routes along ridges and between fords, and paths taken to carry coffins from outlying hamlets to the parish church. So it is not surprising that experts were sceptical about Alfred Watkins’ proposals in the 1920s that there was an ancient network of straight tracks across the landscape, from one hill fort and stone circle to another. Watkins called these ‘ley lines’ because they often went through places with the suffix ‘ley’. I live in one such community, which are thick on the ground in this part of the Midlands, probably because this land was once covered by trees, and a ‘ley’ means a meadow cleared from woodland (and is pronounced ‘lee’ not ‘lay’).
Watkins’ ley-lines became adopted by ‘new age’ believers, the most rapidly-growing faith group in this country. Whereas Watkins proposed that ley-lines were just a means of finding your way across the wooded and boggy prehistoric landscape, new-agers speak of ley-lines leading along ‘lines of magnetic power’ across the ‘living rock’, and other such wonderful codswallop. I have a better explanation for lines of the landscape - to reach a good pint of ale. I have noticed that the pubs close to my home form a line, from the Fox at Lulsley, via the Talbot at Knightwick and the Admiral Rodney at Berrow Green, to the Crown at Martley. Extend the line Northwards, and you get to the Red Lion at Holt Health. Ale is an ancient drink, regarded as much safer to drink than water through much of English history. My ‘ale lines’ provide a much better motive for travelling than just following lines of magnetic power. Of course, if you stop at a few pubs on the way, you will no longer follow a straight path, which helps explain why the English landscape looks the way it does.
Watkins’ ley-lines became adopted by ‘new age’ believers, the most rapidly-growing faith group in this country. Whereas Watkins proposed that ley-lines were just a means of finding your way across the wooded and boggy prehistoric landscape, new-agers speak of ley-lines leading along ‘lines of magnetic power’ across the ‘living rock’, and other such wonderful codswallop. I have a better explanation for lines of the landscape - to reach a good pint of ale. I have noticed that the pubs close to my home form a line, from the Fox at Lulsley, via the Talbot at Knightwick and the Admiral Rodney at Berrow Green, to the Crown at Martley. Extend the line Northwards, and you get to the Red Lion at Holt Health. Ale is an ancient drink, regarded as much safer to drink than water through much of English history. My ‘ale lines’ provide a much better motive for travelling than just following lines of magnetic power. Of course, if you stop at a few pubs on the way, you will no longer follow a straight path, which helps explain why the English landscape looks the way it does.
Wednesday, 3 June 2009
Dining in Yuppieland
A map of Birmingham looks like a spider’s web. Like most inland cities in Europe, a series of concentric ring roads encircle the city, while main roads radiate from the centre, usually named after their destinations. If you head outwards from the city down the Stratford Road, you pass through the long straight streets of terrace houses of the late 19th and early 20th Century, into the semi-detached estates built a generation later. You then pass the sprawling ‘shed cities’ of supermarkets and the new ‘executive homes’ to emerge in the fields and villages that are the homes of the young upwardly-mobile professionals of Yuppieland. To an outsider, Yuppieland looks rural, but instead of farms there are golf courses, riding stables and craft centres. The cottages of the peasantry have become the mansions of the wealthy, while the village pubs have become expensive restaurants.
My experience is that dining in these converted pubs is dispiriting. Earlier this year, I went with my mother to Henley-in-Arden, a beautiful small town along the Stratford Road in the heart of Yuppieland. The restaurant included mediaeval features, superb decor and friendly staff. The food was a work of art presented on elegant plates and looked wonderful. It was expensive but poorly-cooked. It somehow managed to be both tasteful and tasteless. This has been my experience with several dining expeditions to this part of the world. People in Yuppieland are prepared to spend a lot on their meals, like them to be an impressive visual experience in a fawning environment, but can not discriminate between good food and bad.
Not all of England is like this. To encounter good food made from fresh local ingredients, it is better to move further from the big cities. In my own area of rural Worcestershire, there are two places I visit which always delight. The first is the Talbot at Knightwick. This is a small hotel with its own brewery and farm. The food is imaginative, is sourced from the Teme Valley and is full of taste. The main draught beers are called ‘This’ and ‘That’, and these are the best beers I have ever tasted anywhere. The plates and beer glasses are not the products of designer studios, but who cares. The second place to eat is the Venture In in Ombersley. This is a small restaurant (with Michelin rosettes) owned by its cook, who lives with his family above the shop. I have a family connection with the Venture In because my son Andrew worked there as a kitchen porter one evening a week before going to University. The atmosphere in the kitchen was far from the kind of shouting match shown on television pictures of restaurants. Instead, there was an effective and friendly team of people dedicated to cooking in the best way from the best ingredients. The result is food that is as close to heaven as can be attained on earth.
My experience is that dining in these converted pubs is dispiriting. Earlier this year, I went with my mother to Henley-in-Arden, a beautiful small town along the Stratford Road in the heart of Yuppieland. The restaurant included mediaeval features, superb decor and friendly staff. The food was a work of art presented on elegant plates and looked wonderful. It was expensive but poorly-cooked. It somehow managed to be both tasteful and tasteless. This has been my experience with several dining expeditions to this part of the world. People in Yuppieland are prepared to spend a lot on their meals, like them to be an impressive visual experience in a fawning environment, but can not discriminate between good food and bad.
Not all of England is like this. To encounter good food made from fresh local ingredients, it is better to move further from the big cities. In my own area of rural Worcestershire, there are two places I visit which always delight. The first is the Talbot at Knightwick. This is a small hotel with its own brewery and farm. The food is imaginative, is sourced from the Teme Valley and is full of taste. The main draught beers are called ‘This’ and ‘That’, and these are the best beers I have ever tasted anywhere. The plates and beer glasses are not the products of designer studios, but who cares. The second place to eat is the Venture In in Ombersley. This is a small restaurant (with Michelin rosettes) owned by its cook, who lives with his family above the shop. I have a family connection with the Venture In because my son Andrew worked there as a kitchen porter one evening a week before going to University. The atmosphere in the kitchen was far from the kind of shouting match shown on television pictures of restaurants. Instead, there was an effective and friendly team of people dedicated to cooking in the best way from the best ingredients. The result is food that is as close to heaven as can be attained on earth.
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