What Baby P says about our society

mckenzie

James, I am afraid the root of the problem runs much deeper than this, and this continence of party politics is becoming equally gut churning.

Austin Barry

It will only get worse. The seething, multicultural morontocracy, sustained by handouts, attenuated by junk food, strung-out on a rancid line of booze and drugs, will continue descending the evolutionary ladder taking this country with it. The future is one of mayhem and disorder shot-through with blood. Watch it all come down.

simon hb

Perhaps it might also be an idea - as nobody else seems to be bothering - to also take some time to value the people who work for child protection, for little reward, without whom we would see many, many more cases like this. It's right to call for restitution when something as unacceptable as this happens - but perhaps more people, even better qualified people, might work in the sector if the only time the media focused on the jobs being done wasn't just when something goes terribly, terribly wrong.

Do you know how many children's lives have been saved by social workers working diligently, quietly, away from the public eye? No, you don't. And nor do I. Because the only time magazines like The Spectator even remembers there are people who are providing help for people who need the help is when something goes wrong.

TrevorsDen

The fault lies with labour. They have created and perpetuated an underclass a quiescent very often voter fodder underclass.
They have given up on the problem as they blew their way via a debt fuelled pathway from boom to bust. The problem was brushed under the carpet, hidden by an influx of immigrants.
A fiction of well being and job creation fuelled by an unsustainable immigration policy.
Meantime people were cast on to the slagheap - betrayed by propaganda dressed up as economic competence. Millions and millions of people who have been denied a decent education denied decent job options and just shovelled into benefits.

Now we see the full extent of government betrayal as ministers just ignore the whistle blowers and just jolly along with the incompetent social workers.

Our society is being destroyed by these bastards. Brown presumably knew of the ministerial carelessness - no wonder he did not want to discuss it, no wonder he tries to frighten people off by accusations of party politics.

The Bastard. The shameless bastard.

Wily Trout

Part of the problem is that the administrative bureaucracy producing the policies and procedures and legislation directs it all at an audience composed of its own members. The people at the receiving end do not share the values and hopes and fears that underpin the actions of the bureaucratic class. They have quite a different take on life. Middle management upwards and the politicians might as well come from Mars. There is no shared aim.

Verity

Wily Trout writes: "Part of the problem is that the administrative bureaucracy ...".

No, the problem is not multifaceted. It is directed, discrete and finely targetted. Its aim: the destruction of Britain. Its planners and perpetrators: the left. Why?

Malice. Can anyone persuade themselves that Tony and Cherie Blair are not malign? That Gordon Brown and Jack Straw and all those weird, pointless women in the cabinet are not malign? That The Guardian tendency is not malign and gleeful? That the BBC is not malign? That all those local councils taking control over the citizenry, step by tiny step, are not motivated by malice? Caerphilly Council, which has an inexplicable £12m surplus that it invested in an Icelandic bank, has decreed that referring to people as "British" is like referring to people as "Negroes". Another tiny step in the deconstruction of the country defended by those whose deaths we mourned again three days ago.

The malicious left has been on the march since the end of the First World War. And they're gaining on us.

And the biggest weapons of control in their armory? The NHS and the BBC. Which is why these two monsters must be blown to smithereens.

George Laird

Dear All

Years ago for an experiment Matthew Parris decided to spend a week living as a member of the underclass.

After finishing that week his opinion of everything being rosy in the unemployment garden changed.

People are talking about the underclass now because of Baby P; we have allowed a section of our society to sink so low that they are not of our society anymore.

They don’t have a stake in society and that is the problem. No one is investing in them period.

Both Labour and the Tories are to blame; equality doesn’t exist in this country.

For example, Jack McConnell, MSP at Holyrood is given a High Commissioner’s job in Malawi, given it, no experience, no qualifications and no career in the diplomatic service.

This is at the same time that Gordon Brown is talking about equal opportunity and social justice as his “moral” compass.

Another example is how the children of Labour Party officials walk into top jobs at the EU and the British Council.

Ex First Minister, Donald Dewar’s daughter has a top EU job and Neil Kinnock’s son has a job the British Council in St Petersberg, Russia.

How can so many of the Tory shadow Cabinet; all be from Eton?

What message does that send out?

More importantly what is the perception others will take, will that crush hope?

Everything in Britain is geared to one objective, giving the illusion of equality, to that end an industry has been set up.

The Poverty industry is staffed by people who are all in highly paid jobs.

Example, Taroub Zahran, Chief Executive of the housing charity, GHA, Glasgow pockets £200,000 for her charity work.

Recently in Easterhouse I spoke to one of her "clients" who had been asking for 3 years for the GHA to fit central heating because one of the children is seriously sick, in and out of hospital.

Why didn’t the GHA offer the man another flat with central heating in it?

Because no one in the GHA could be bothered, keep the problem in the same place and fob them off.

That is the reality of life for the poor by Poverty industry staff; any trouble is too much trouble for them.

Finally, one of my favourite Departments is the Public Honours Unit of the Culture Department. If you take the time to see who gets the appointments then you will see a glass ceiling against the working class.

I asked by FOI how many working class people in ordinary jobs, taxi driver, bricklayers etc get accepted onto boards etc.

Answer, they don’t keep that type of information. If they did this would prove that the Culture Department operates a policy of discrimination which only allows middle class white collar professionals to access appointments.

That is how the state operates in Britain and the lists of appointments are open to view if veracity is an issue.

And that is as General Mike Jackson aptly put it, “we are where we are”!

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University

mac

Austin,

You're off message. Write out 100 times: The rightthingtodo is to support boldprogressivelabour in its historic mission to makeBritainabetterplace for for hardworkingfamilies.

Read all about in today's Telegraph, wee Dougie tells it how it is. (Strangely, there's no mention from wee Dougie about an election).

Travis Bickle

This is what you get with a welfare state that encourages people to breed at any age, and without any need for financial or social responsibility. In all probability the parents of baby P were not treated much better when they were children and clearly were not brought up with any sort of love or taught respect. Governments of both parties over past 30 years have caused this situation to happen. Shame on all of them.

George Laird

Dear Verity

The malicious left of New Labour as you so describe are actually more right wing than the Tories.

These PC Types on Caerphilly Council if you care to look at their wage packets are most probably are middle class cannon fodder following the noise of the New Labour band.

Labour says baa, they say baa!

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University

Austin Barry

Mac

I stand corrected and will attend the appropriate re-education classes. Meanwhile, Labour's efforts to create the modern family seem to be based on the Charles Manson template rather than the Von Trapps.

Verity

The welfare state is malign. It's a cancer.

mac

George Laird:

"the Culture Department operates a policy of discrimination which only allows middle class white collar professionals to access appointments."

Not convinced by your assertion. And, anyway, the full picture would require a rider, Mr Laird - "preferably those with 'diverse', 'multicultural' or evident lefty credentials".

Forlornehope

The root cause lies very deep. Take a walk around the British Museum and try to find a society that did not have some form of religious behaviour. The only one is the one that we are living in. This has nothing to do with the truth of religions but a lot about what has evolved to moderate human behaviour. This is not to ignore some pretty horrid things done in the name of religion. Put these in the context of maintaining a stable society and they make more sense. We are conducting an experiment in running a religion free society and there is no evidence that it can work. Aldous Huxley showed one answer. His Brave New World is a bland, hedonistic totalitarian state that controls and conditions every aspect of life. Is that where we are going?

James J

In case anyone thought the Social Services culture in this country had any connection either with the majority culture or common sense this is from today’s Daily Mail:
“The mother of Baby P gave birth to a girl in jail while awaiting trial - and social workers wanted to let her keep the child.
Council officials told police it was ‘against the human rights’ of the mother to take the baby away.
A social worker even told officers: ‘We need to let her bond.’
Despite the appalling events surrounding the death of Baby P, social workers still tried to block moves for the baby girl to be taken into care. “

After this latest news I am trying to decide if social work is a profession or a Cult.

George Laird

Dear Mac

I am sorry that you are not convinced.

Did you swan across to the Culture Department site for a looksee through the lists?

Did you spot anyone who was a taxi driver or bricklayer or store clerk?

I guess not!

I think I would definately qualify as having lefty credentials being a bit gobby on social justice issues.

I comment alot on New Labour and it's myth of equality and social justice which they peddle to the gullable.

Finally, I thought it was common knowledge how the Culture Department worked. The interview system is a rather good way to keep out the wrong sort by subjective opinion.

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University

biggestaspidistra

One disturbing reaction to Obama's election in the British press was the repeated question: 'could there be a British Obama?'. 'He isnt really black' was one of the Spectator's sadder reflections on this theme. But UK and US societies are not the same. Class in Britain's is a closer equivalent of race in the US. All of the above comments seem to acknowledge this. Our choice in government is between champagne marxists and incompetent toffs. The underclass (or lower working class) loses either way. Could there be a British Obama? Yes, but he would be from the white underclass. And that would be a revolution.

David Lindsay

Social Services are having a well-deserved bad week. We now have a whole new light in which to view their highly organised kidnap of children from Old Labour homes in order to place them, via Family Courts whose secrecy is incompatible with the rule of law, in New Labour homes.

And the old line from Yes, Minister that social problems increase in order to occupy the time of the number of social workers employed to deal with them springs horribly to mind. Those who killed Baby P are their client class. The working class, properly so called, is not.

But they are not the only people who deserve excoriation.

How dare the Tories, of all people, preach about these matters? Not only (though certainly) because they brought in Thatcher's Children Act. And not only (though certainly) because the economic basis of paternal authority was destroyed - initially in working-class families and communities, but then very rapidly throughout society as a whole - by their heroine, who had left her own small children to hired help while she pursued first her legal and then her political ambitions.

There are many ways in which the Tories have long, or even always, been actively hostile to the views and values of those on whose votes they depend. Support for the anti-national, anti-farming, anti-manufacturing, anti-shopkeeping, anti-local, anti-family “free” market is one. Their actual record in office on the EU and on Northern Ireland is another. And there are plenty more.

But there is none more flagrant or more fatal than the fact that they are not just largely products (which they cannot help), but also almost invariably users and stalwart defenders, of just about the most anti-family institutions imaginable, founded on the premise that children should be brought up with as little parental contact as possible except when it comes to paying the bills, and organised towards the acting out of adolescence in single-sex residential environments.

mac

Wonder if anyone will tell patriotic Gordon that 'British' is bad?

I see this pearl of wisdom originated with Ron 'Badger' Davies. Malignant, Verity? Nah. Saddo.

Verity

Social workers are a symptom of the cancer that the left has introduced into British society with such astonishing success. There is not such degeneration of civilised values in any other country that I have ever seen.

Austin Barry

Mac

The penchant of the preposterous Ron 'Badger' Davies for leaping out of the politically-correct undergrowth waving his flaccid tool of social engineering is unspeakable. I had hoped we'd seen the last of this badger-botherer, but evidently not.

Verity

Mac - You are naive. Malignant. This complete disintegration of our formerly secure and gentle civil society did not come about by accident or because of incompetence. It was deliberate and malign.

No other country in the world has descended as far as Britain.

mac

George Laird:

A random selection from the recent Culture Department appointment lists on their website includes Professor Michael Collins to the Advisory Committee on Historic Wreck Sites. As he is Professor of Oceanography at Southampton University I think he's probably better equipped for the post even than Fred Housego, don't you?

Another example. Mr Winston Roddick was reappointed to the S4C Authority. He's a QC, but as a member of the Gorsedd, a former member of the ITC and Vice Chair of Aberystwyth University his credentials seem to me to be more compelling than most bricklayers.

And another. Elisabeth Murdoch recently joined the Tate Trustees. Apart from her name and influence, I wonder what got her the post? If her appointment generates money for the Tate that otherwise would come from the taxpayer, then I'm all for such 'elitist' recruitment.

I don't doubt your commitment to social justice, but what you seem to be suggesting is a form of purposeless egalitarianism.

I concede, however, that with 5 minutes OJT a cabbie or brickie probably would make a better fist of the Speakership, Home Office or Transport Ministry than the present incumbents.

mac

George Laird:

A random selection from the recent Culture Department appointment lists on their website includes Professor Michael Collins to the Advisory Committee on Historic Wreck Sites. As he is Professor of Oceanography at Southampton University I think he's probably better equipped for the post even than Fred Housego, don't you?

Another example. Mr Winston Roddick was reappointed to the S4C Authority. He's a QC, but as a member of the Gorsedd, a former member of the ITC and Vice Chair of Aberystwyth University his credentials seem to me to be more compelling than most bricklayers.

And another. Elisabeth Murdoch recently joined the Tate Trustees. Apart from her name and influence, I wonder what got her the post? If her appointment generates money for the Tate that otherwise would come from the taxpayer, then I'm all for such 'elitist' recruitment.

I don't doubt your commitment to social justice, but what you seem to be suggesting is a form of purposeless egalitarianism.

I concede, however, that with 5 minutes OJT a cabbie or brickie probably would make a better fist of the Speakership, Home Office or Transport Ministry than the present incumbents.

HJ

James Bartholomew makes similar points to Camilla Cavendish in his book "The welfare state we're in".

mac

Verity,

My preference for saddo over malignant relates to the particular here.

More generally, applied to the New Labour Project and it's destructive, statist cheerleaders, crypto-marxist practitioners and robotic client workers and duped sheep, I agree with you.

C Powell

The biggest crime liberals have committed is to say that we must not be judgmental and to attack all moral standards other than doing what you want.

Utter tosh and dangerous, too: we cannot behave as civilized human beings unless we apply judgment; we cannot have a civilized society unless we apply judgment; we cannot provide sensible services or care to the vulnerable unless we apply judgment. And the result is a society where - at least in parts of it - there is a moral vacuum, where evil flourishes.

So we have a a society which refuses to criticise girls (and boys) who have sex when they are still children; girls who have children one after the other with different men; men who disappear as soon as the deed is done and abandon their girlfriends/wives and children; girls who think it OK to live like slatterns (drinking to excess, dressing like tarts, vomiting and generally behaving indecently and vulgarly in public); girls who think that having a baby entitles them to a flat and benefits; parents who refuse to take responsibility for their children; people who blame others or "society" for their own failings.

We should insist on personal responsibility, personal morality, decent living. We should talk about "good" and "evil" and "right" and "wrong". We should say that people have a choice and need to accept the consequences of their choices. We should be judgmental about appalling or even just bad behaviour. We should stop pretending that it's all about lifestyle choices and one lifestyle choice is much the same as another, when all the evidence shows that some choices are extremely damaging and harmful, especially for children.

If we don't, if we refuse to teach the difference between "right" and "wong" or the concept of personal responsibility and what that means, it is little wonder if people behave without restraint, gratifying only their own desires (however repellent or disgusting) without any regard for anyone else.

I think that we should make clear that if you have a child you need to take responsibility for it and you shouldn't have one if you can't. The only benefit you should get is child benefit, payable to all mothers. We should stop now this nonsense whereby having a child on your own entitles you to free housing and a range of benefits. The families of such girls should take responsibility, the fathers should take responsibility and if neither of them are around or refuse to then we should have a system of foster families or, maybe, mother and baby homes, where there is a responsible adult who ensures that they learn that growing up is about more than having sex but entails responsibilities, for years and years. And if the girls don't want to do this then the children should be adopted by those who will give them a loving home. But no more girls living on welfare at our expense with a succession of men wandering in and out of their lives and their childrens' lives. We permit this, subsidise it (unlike every other European country) - and then wonder why we have the problems associated with such a way of life. (Look at the dreadful Shannon Matthews case, look at the mother of the girl murdered in Goa.)

And it isn't about demonising single mothers. It's about making clear that you have a child only if you are prepared for the responsibility - financial, emotional and social -that it entails and that it is not a way of getting things (a home/an income of sorts) which others have to work for.

There will always be people for whom we as a community need to care for but our welfare system needs to be based on some level of judgment not just simple woolly-minded "compassion" for the "poor" (some of whome are poor only in the moral sense). It needs to reinforce the concept of personal responsibility not relieve people of the consequences of their actions so that people come to believe that they have no obligations, no duties, only "rights". That is what our welfare system fails to do because we are afraid to say these simple things because they might be unpalatable, because we are afraid to say - other than when an awful case like this comes to light - this is wrong.

And we also need to expect the highest standards of professionalism from those in public service, well, everyone actually. But we don't - and this is the result.

Apologies for the length of this. Theodore Dalrymple has said all this much more eloquently than I can.

carol42

All this for forecast and written about years ago by Charles Murray in the Sunday Times. For this he was roundly condemned by liberal opinion. What a great pity someone, somewhere didn't take it seriously. Everything he wrote about has come to pass and I only wish I knew how we could change it in future.

David Lindsay

If the Parental State had not replaced Baby P's natural father, then this tragedy might very well have been averted.

The presence of the natural father is far and away the strongest defence against child abuse of whatever kind.

Yet, even in this of all cases, how long has it been before anyone has even bothered to track him down and ask him what he thinks?

She who massively extended the Parental State with her wretched Children Act and other measures also destroyed the economic basis of paternal authority, initially in working-class families and communities, and then very rapidly throughout the society that, in any case, she denied existed at all.

Her party (which went on to give Helen Brook, weirdo coiner of the very term "the Parental State", the CBE) has learnt nothing, to say the least.

It did not even whip its MPs to oppose the legal abolition of fatherhood, now that two women can be named as the parents on a birth certificate.

Expect many, many, many more Baby Ps.

gary

Clearly mistakes have been made in the case of Baby P. However, it is unforgivable that papers like the Sun are abusing the power they hold in creating mass hysteria against all Social workers.

Don’t they realise that this only goes to make people more suspicious when talking with social workers – therefore making them less likely to not engage with the service? Great work the Sun. In one reckless article they have perhaps endangered the lives of many more children because people may be hesitant to report incidents to social workers.

Its a shame more people don’t recognise this. Perhaps if they did there would be more calls for the resignation of irresponsible journalists.

I’m quite sure the Sun (and some people who have commented here) will be happy when all social workers are condemned for the sick actions of a mother. How about recognising the fantastic work that the majority of social workers do day in day out.

If you agree why not sign the petition against the Social Worker Witch hunt:
http://www.socialworkfuture.org/?p=31

IM

To C. Powell - thank you, everything you said is what I think too.

M

I have read your comments with interest. My heart goes out to Baby P and the suffering he experienced and I truly hope that he is safe, in a loving place and is at peace.

How do we begin to solve these problems? Indeed there are tremendous and complex problems in society. I agree with what people have said that there needs to be a stronger focus on morality, values and healthy family life. However, I do feel we need to support people more.
I have experienced first hand being let down by Social Services as a child who closed my case without even speaking to me, because they accepted what my Mother told them. I found out some years later, but what had gone in within the family caused me tremendous damage. When I was a child, I didn't think much of Social Worker's but today I recognise many, I am sure are doing some really excellent work but weaknesses in systems, people and procedures can be there and we always need to strive to improve things and protect our most vulnerable.

I don't feel we should condemn everyone who is on benefits- I agree there should be a stricter welfare system and a focus on responsibility, but we do need instilling a sense of self worth, hope and to look out for one another.

May Baby P rest in peace.