Subsidiary Politics

People good news! Poverty in India is down from 20.9% in 2012 to 11.8% in 2014! I’m serious! The percentage of poor has more than halved in two years! Wonderful news because that means that whereas the number of poor a couple of years back was as high as 396 million it is now as low as 148 million! I kid you not, such is the rate of improvement in what used to be termed the developing world.

Now, you may be wondering what this has to do with you, after all we are in England are we not? And these figures are solely to do with the Indian economy are they not? Well yes and no, because whereas when people were poor they remained mired in poverty, nowadays they choose to take themselves abroad.Which is easy to do, provided you have acquired both the money and a Student Visa.

Student Visa’s, those slips of paper which guarantee you entrance into a country in order to study. But which can also be used to ensure you a limited period of stay in order to acquire a job, raise an income and, establish yourself back in India as a legitimate small businessman or woman. Now, it may take you a year or so to generate that income, but that’s okay provided you’ve signed on with an educational provider who gets the joke. And that joke is a government who having fully embraced the exploitation of the poor via the corrupt practices of multifarious private sector corporations (remember Serco & G4S?), has the unmitigated gall to carp and complain about poor people exploiting a weakness in the system.

Subsidiaries, those little corporation ‘offshoots’ that enable companies engaged in questionable practices, to disavow all knowledge of those questionable practices they know (even vaguely) that they are engaged in. And so we have Educational Testing Services a subsidiary of an America company, ‘outed’ by a government minister because it’s invigilators and, even some of its test centres, have been found to be corruptly facilitating the ability of many economic migrants to remain in the country long enough, to amass the kind of capital, that will enable them to care for an entire extended family back home in India. Apparently, this isn’t just a case of the Indian equivalent of G4S manipulating the rules of the game to their profit. Woah no! These guys are organised criminals manipulating our system to their benefit, so that they can settle in England and never leave.

The problem with that argument is this, the system ‘facilitates’ many none too bright members of the Indian middle classes, entering this country and completing their internships abroad prior to returning home. As well as enabling families to generate an income via employment within an Indian run business in the UK, in a way they never could back in India. And as for the organised criminal element? Merely corrupt businessmen and lawyers who see a loophole in the system which they have been quick to eagerly exploit to their profit. Shouldn’t the government be proud of these enterprising business people rather than catigating them?

 

 

Man Up!!!!

‘Although we are fast approaching the end of the current academic year, we are only about ten weeks away from the start of the next academic year in September.’

– Dr Fox, Principal of Ryde Academy

And there we have the world according to the DFES, one in which sitting in isolation with your hands stretched out on a desk is considered ‘functional’ discipline. And in which a Headmaster objecting to a lack of discipline within his school, sees nothing wrong with suggesting to parents that they go out and buy a new school uniform, two and a half months away from the end of the school year. Does he know how many of his parents are in work? Or perhaps how many of them are unemployed or even disabled and claiming benefits? Does Sir Michael Wilshaw know?

Grimy crumpled school uniforms, incomplete homework, struggles with literacy? All good reasons to call a child’s teachers together and work out what extra support might be required I should have thought. But no..Sir MIchael Wilshaw has asserted that the parents of such children should be castigated as bad parents and fined. Well and good if the parents aren’t coping with mental illness, disability, chronic illness, unemployment, post-natal depression, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, need I go on? But if they are, what will the self-righteous assertions of middle class teaching staff achieve? A child struggling to make progress in an already competitive environment will wither on the vine altogether, if repeatedly told how no good they and their parents are. And then of course there’s the whole point of telling them how far short of the standard of excellence they and their parents have fallen. Which is quite simply to urge them on towards meeting those targets, which will ensure that come inspection time the school can exhibit impressive stats, which will earn it a nice big tick of approval.

There is really nothing quite like the seething, suppressed resentments carried by students who have been bullied, pummelled and pushed towards excellence. Sooner or later somewhere in the midst of their education those resentments will find their expression and, very likely undo some of the ‘outstanding’ good that an academy education was supposed to have helped them achieve.

 

Feudal Practices

A picture of Muslims at prayer and I know I’m stating the obvious when I say this but with all the media coverage lately it does need saying. When these guys get down on their knees and bow forward to pray? They’re not praying to Al-Qaeedah, they’re not praying to which ever Muslim fundamentalist with a beef against whichever government happens to be holding a bomb, they are praying to god. Yeah, I know that it sounds as though i’m assuming that people on the whole don’t realise that, but it can get that way when the media (particularly the BBC) gets on its hobby horse.

Muslim vigilante patrols? That would be men with little to do, irritating everybody else, by striding aggressively up and down outside the local mosque (my apologies to those who have been forced to do so by racists). Britain First vigilante patrols? Racist men barely able to keep within the bounds of the laws of the land on any given day, trying to lay down the law (how ironic!) to Muslim Communities.

And the real enemy? Picture this, failing businessmen who have successfully obtained mortgages for properties they can ‘buy to let’, charging outrageous rents for very poor housing. And then increasing those rents so that they can boost their ‘cash reserves’ in order to invest in more predestined to fail business deals. Picture tenants who are struggling to pay their rent and feed themselves and their families. Picture grandparents providing not just the funds, but the housing for children who have no work or are so poorly paid, that they can’t afford a home of their own. This is happening all over the country to people of every race and religion and culture.

And now imagine this, an employee at a franchise booth at a busy train station positioning the occasional customer at a counter. And doing so in such a way that the distraction thieves positioned in various locations around that booth can take full advantage of the occasional customer. Now this could be happening in any town or city in country in the world, it isn’t right, but it’s a convenient way of making up for the money your employers should but refuse to pay you. And the interesting thing? Watching thieves and franchise employees of every religion, race and culture work together to achieve that result.

 

Teacha’s Pet

I was struck by what Umaru Abdul Mutallab did once he realised that his son had become far more ‘Islamic’ than was normal for a devout and honourable Muslim. He picked up his phone and he called the American Embassy to let them know his son had become a terrorist and was up to no good in the Yemen. His actual words were that his son had ‘absconded’ and taken up with some ‘dubious’ people, all without bothering to show his family respect, by notifying them that he had become a terrorist. Accordingly his son’s name was added to a General Watch List by the Counter-Terrorism-Centre and he was subsequently arrested.

And now to the matter of Trojan Horses residing in certain Birmingham Schools. I could be wrong but I very much doubt that many Muslim parents would appreciate a handful of ‘unstable’ Muslims being given control of their childrens’ education. Because you see not everyone who is a Muslim believes that they should be governed by an Islamic government in a European country. And nor do many Muslims believe that the key to getting what you want lies in educating youngsters into  a way of life that has nothing to do with the Quran. Many of the Muslims who settled in Britain did so because like many an African they did not want to be bogged down by cultural expectations or norms. And many have married reverts (converts to Islam), many of whose nationalities would make them unacceptable within the parameters of their spouse families cultural background.

Nope. My biggest concern if I was a Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Bahai, Buddhist or Agnostic parent would be that whilst a bunch of dysfunctionally religious nutters were plotting their bloodless coups and, carrying them out the government did nothing.This hands-on-in-yer-face-smooth-slick bunch of wheelers and dealers had not a clue that certain schools in Birmingham were being ‘Al-Qaeederized’, not a clue. And that would bother me more than the spat that has taken place between the Home Secretary and ‘he who shall not be named’ this week.