Absent Fathers

Absent fathers are often attacked and stigmatized but fathers who are living in the house do not always participate in family life. Absent fathers are used by the right wing as evidence of so called delinquent behavior among the working class. From my observation absent fathers in the home is a middle class and rich class problem. Many children are growing up without the influence of a paternal role model who is interested and beneficial to their lives. I have some answers about the middle class absent father syndrome. Fathers  in this bracket do participate in family life because they are content with the way things are. They They do not bother to enhance their children's lives because they do not see the need for paternal influence. There is no concept of fathering like their is for mothering. Some middle class fathers are very content to leave parenting to their partner or wife because it is seen as a 'feminine' role. These Fathers have disposable income and instead of emotionally connecting with their child they compensate for the lack of parenting by indulging in gadgets, clothes and toys for their children. David Lammy had written something similar in the Guardian

Why do a lot of People in China Mistreat Children?

When my mother was pregnant with me she read an article on the one-child policy and accompanying the article was a photograph of baby girls placed in buckets in a forest in China. They were abandoned and left to die. She was traumatized by this and has never wanted to visit China. I have never quite understood this because she has a great interest in Chinese history.

When I was 10 she would read to me from the book about the Last Emperor called 'From Emperor To Citizen: The Autobiography of Henry Pu Yi: Last Emperor of China'. I also enjoy browsing through the 'Peony Pavillion'. Why is all this relevant? Because it is a mystery to me as to why a country that has a rich history and culture is able to throw babies into dustbins, down toilets and for the Government to sanction the killing of babies both before birth and after birth. This all came home to me yesterday when I watched coverage of Baby no 59 on TV.

The sight of a baby stuck tight in a toilet pipe and covered in waste grime will come to symbolise the child cruelty of China. 

China is also facing a growing rate of child abductions. I watched a documentary about parents who chain their children up like dogs for fear of having the child abducted while they work. The child is left chained at home while they toil the fields. Then there was the case of the 2- year old who was left to die. People of China, you walked by and watched a little child lie there. Has anything changed since 2011?

What sort of country that is a so-called economic powerhouse builds high -tech buildings enabled with the 'Internet of Things' while at the bottom there could be a baby in a bin discarded like a thing? Why do you not grasp that there is a human element to development? No doubt people will point to Britain and the child abuse that takes place. There is a difference. It is a crime in Britain to harm a child.

 I constantly read about how Chinese children study for umpteen hours a day from the age of 2 or something equally ridiculous. There are children from China who attend schools in Britain. I know a few from a far. I can only conclude that children are treated in China either as nuisances or as future money earning citizens. Is there a human dimension to childhood?  Finally, I find it difficult to understand why China which has a Confucian tradition of putting the family first devalues motherhood through the ill-treatment and cruelty of children.

I have read about how common it is to see babies lying in dustbins in China or to be found head first in buckets filled with water. China - is it not time to incorporate empathy into your economic agenda?

Below is a Google Translation of the above blog post into Mandarin:

当我的母亲怀上了我，她看过一篇文章，在一胎化政策，并伴随的文章，是中国森林水桶放置在女婴的照片。他们被遗弃，留下死。她受到创伤，也从未想访问中国。我从来没有完全理解这一点，因为她在中国历史上有着极大的兴趣。

当我10岁的时候，她会读给我听的末代皇帝被称为“从皇帝到公民：从书：中国的末代皇帝溥仪的自传。我也喜欢浏览通过“牡丹亭”。为什么所有这些有关？因为这对我来说是一个谜，为什么一个国家，拥有丰富的历史和文化是能扔进垃圾桶，同比下降厕所和政府批准杀害的婴儿在出生前和出生后的婴儿。这一切都回到家中，我昨天，当我在电视上观看覆盖婴儿没有59。

一个婴儿的视线紧粘在马桶管道覆盖污垢废物来象征中国的孩子残酷。

中国也面临着一个绑架儿童的生长速度。我看了一个纪录片，讲述连锁他们的孩子的父母谁像狗一样，生怕孩子被绑架，而他们的工作。孩子留在家里，而他们的辛苦链领域。然后有2 - 岁左死的情况下。中国人民，你走了，看着一个小孩子躺在那里。自2011年以来有没有什么变化吗？

什么样的国家，是一个所谓的经济强国建立高科技大厦启用“物联网”，而在底部有可能是宝宝就像一个东西丢弃的垃圾桶？你为什么不graps发展，有一个人的因素？毫无疑问，人们将指向英国和虐待儿童发生。是有区别的。这是一个在英国犯罪伤害孩子。

 我经常阅读有关你的孩子如何学习许许多多小时全天候的年龄从2个或同样可笑的东西。有来自中国的孩子在英国上学。我知道一些从远方来。我只能得出结论，儿童被视为在中国无论是作为的滋扰或作为未来赚钱的公民。是否有一个人的维度的童年吗？最后，我觉得很难理解为什么中国有儒家传统，把家庭第一贬低母亲的虐待和残酷儿童通过。

我看了一下它是多么常见看到婴儿躺在垃圾箱在中国或装满水的水桶中被发现头部先。中国 - 是没有时间将移情到你的经济议程？

Do The Tories Hate Children?

First they went after the unemployed, then they came for the disabled and now they are after the children. Recently they have really been gunning for children. There is a growing pool of vulnerable people that the Tories target because the groups are not able to be participants in the Tory ideology of the 'Free Market'.

The Tories want everybody to be divided into groups of 'productive' and 'unproductive' free marketeers. The weak and unable are left behind in the scrum for the spoils of the free market. Just look at what the Tories have said in recent weeks.

1. Too Busy to Participate 

Two Tory ministers who promised to turn up at a meeting with parents of disabled children hardly made any attempt to contribute or understand the plight of the children. According to the Children's Society 4 in 10 of all disabled children live in poverty and the cuts will push these children into further deprivation. 

2. Nick, Stand Firm

It is so obvious that the reason the ratio is being raised is to get parents into work and lower the costs of childcare by cutting down on the amount of childcare workers needed. The safety and well being of children is being compromised for an ideology. I really hope that Nick stares them down on this. 

3. Unruly Toddlers

Children in nurseries are not workers in training for a capitalist conveyor belt. Children are in nurseries to run around and be children in a safe environment. There is a difference between being unruly and lively. What would appear as unruly to the Tories is actually children developing and learning by playing and having fun. What would the Tories prefer? My guess is that they want British childhood to resemble a Chinese one- 23 hours of study and 1 hour of sleep. My guess is based on the constant comparisons that  Michael Gove makes with the Asian system of education. Out of all the children that I know my upbringing most closely resembles an Asian upbringing. I could write 10 words at the age of 3 and, believe me, I was 'unruly' the whole time. If it is passive obedience that the Tories are after then the British childhood way of natural inquiry will be a lost treasure. 

'Ubah' Greetings From Britain on a Historical Day for Malaysia

'Ubah' is the Malay word for 'change'. Historical elections are taking place in Malaysia today. Never has the opposition, led by Anwar Ibrahim this time, come so close to winning. There are only a few hours left for Malaysians to get out and vote for change. I have a huge interest because my Asian side of the family are Malaysians. I am pictured here with my uncles who are twins. They work as cardiologists in the Midlands. The family met up yesterday to discuss the election which is being held today - 5 May.

I am sure my Liberal friends will join me in sending wishes and messages of hope to those who feel disaffected by the current system. 

Does Capitalism have Limits on Cheap clothing?

A rising death toll, exploited workers and a lucrative garment industry. What are the limits of capitalism? How many more lives will have to be taken before workers are not treated as machines who need barely any food, money or sleep to survive on? 

As a teenager I know many people, including myself, who shop at 'Primark'. The reality of global capitalism was brought home to me, literally, when I realised that my shopping could have impacted on the mistreatment of a worker in Bangladesh. When workers are forced to produce a certain amount of clothing for a company   it is in our hands as to whether we buy the garment, and subsequently support the exploitation of the worker, or we could boycott the shop because consumers have power to set trends in the market. The deregulation of these factories has lead to a huge market of exploitation which is inescapable because it runs through all of the 'trendy' clothing stores which most consumers will continue to buy from no matter how unethical it is. 

Global regulation is essential to ensure that factories are not Dickensian. Globalization cannot just be about moving money around the world in search of a tax haven. 

I dedicate this post to the workers who died in Dhaka. 

The musings of a Young Person on Thatcher

I have written an article here.

Who is Margaret Thatcher?

There has been much made of the fact that teenagers and young people who were not born till after Thatcher left office don't know about Thatcher and Thatcherism. This raises the question: Should they know who she was? In the Times newspaper April 9 George Osborne said that, "children will study the former Prime minister in the same way that they study Elizabeth 1, Cromwell and Churchill."

Do I want to study about Thatcher? I partly agree with George Osborne. I read up on Thatcher during last summer's school holidays. I came to the conclusion that her legacy still lives on and has woven itself into the fabric of our economic, social and political systems. If you think about it, in the days before she died the harshest ever welfare reforms were implemented and people who didn't manage to buy their council houses were hit with the bedroom tax. Thatcherism is everywhere. Just as are the people who dislike her, who were born after she had left No 10. Her shadow looms large. People who turned out to party at Trafalgar Sq yesterday prove this point. The right may refer to them derogatorily as being 'lefties' or 'Marxists' but an intellectual point is lost - while Thatcherism is practised in any shape or form the recipients have a right to either agree or disagree.

Osborne says that "Margaret Thatcher was an optimist... She had optimism that Britain's best days lay ahead of it  not behind it..." If Thatcherism was taught in this way it would be brainwashing.  Thatcherism would have to be taught in a way that drew together the facts and the evidence. As a student I would want to be taught about how Hayek's "Road to Serfdom"  came to knock Keynes off  the nation's bookshelf. Most importantly, I would want to know why a woman who wasn't open to new ideas and wasn't for turning came to dominate the lives of children who will be born after her death.

Enough of the Politicization of a Song Which is Associated with Childhood

Suddenly everything is being centered around Margaret Thatcher. I know that she was probably the most famous British PM to date but using a children's song for political point making is wrong and immoral. When I was younger I used to sing along to 'The Wizard of Oz' and the sight of quirky munchkins jumping around demands that this song be remembered for being a jolly and great piece of acting, singing and dancing. Let us    just remember Toto, Munchkins and Dorothy. 

The Five Mysteries of Thatcher to a Young Person

I was born almost ten years after Thatcher had resigned and yet I have heard her name being both condoned and praised all at the same time as I have been growing up. Coincidentally, I read up on Thatcher last Summer during the school holidays and I was stunned by the contradictions of her premiership.

1. Why does Thatcher's time in office come across as a series of unrelated knee jerk events? She seemed to be so driven by the ideology of the free market that her years seemed to lack a narrative. Ideology, surely, must be followed by coherent practice. Miner's strikes, right to buy, Germany etc - what was the unifying ideological practice? The miners were fighting for the right to work. Working class people were given the right to buy council property but their means to earn a living were reduced.

2. Why do people insist on calling her a feminist when she herself said that feminism had done nothing for her. Thatcher never believed in collectivism so how could she possibly be a feminist?

3. Why wasn't Thatcher held to more account for not spending the North Sea revenue to improve the country when Gordon Brown is constantly criticized for selling the gold reserves at low prices?

4. Thatcher wrote about how thrifty she and her family were. There is even a story about how they reused thread. How did this thrift extend to an 80s error of champagne and Rolls Royce excesses?

5. She was a show woman. PMQs were about her taking bows, getting the loudest agreements and a delight in upsetting people. What happened to that war spirit that she wrote about when she said "So I did not grow up with the sense of division and conflict between classes".

What was Thatcherism about - just the free market? Isn't that a purely hands off approach?

Would you Employ a Young Disabled Person?

 This is what we need trade unions for. The  SERTUC branch of  the TUC hosted a conference called "Young Disabled People- Employed and Empowered?". In an age where disabled people are being branded as 'scroungers' the youngest of these are suffering. The stats are depressing with 15% of young people with disabilities unemployed, out of education or not in training and 21 % aged 16-24 with no qualifications.

The conference was a brilliant platform for an analysis of how disabled youngsters are coping in the current economic climate and it showed that the cuts and language used stigmatizes them to an extent where employers do not believe that a young disabled person will fulfill the job in the same way that a person without a disability could. The cuts have also slowed down what young disabled people can do because they don't have as much access to facilities such as private transport (public transport is difficult to use). Ambition, that is what is being thwarted here. Access to university, school and work which provide qualifications and life skills are being halted because of lack of funding.

In hindsight I wonder if the Paralympics was a convenient event for the cuts that followed? I am being cynical but I think that the glory of  (so called) helping and providing opportunities for disabled people provided a smoke screen that is hoped would outweigh the cuts and demeaning language used by the Government to justify welfare reform.


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