.@JeremyCorbyn found #Farage bathing one day & stole his #BREXIT/#LEXIT glad rags, but only for @UKLabour to wear them ironically? #FBPE

Corbynism is not the future, it is the future refusing to be born

1964, 11 years before the EU referendum of 1975, the West Midlands constituency of Smethwick was the most colour-conscious place in the country, and the scene of a Tory campaign that successfully exploited anti-immigrant sentiment.  The infamous slogan that propelled a Tory into the House of Commons was, “If you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote Labour.”

Peter Griffiths, the successful Tory candidate refused to disown the slogan, “I would not condemn any man who said that,” he told the Times during his election campaign.  “I regard it as a manifestation of popular feeling.”

All sounds rather depressingly familiar, does it not?  One need not strain one’s imagination to hear Farage today saying exactly what Griffiths said to the Times in 1964.

One never, in one’s wildest dreams, expected to hear a Labour leader use the same language.  Certainly not one like Corbyn, whose fans claim he is the true Socialist Messiah.

ukip’s forebears, dear Cult of Corbyn members, were fascists in the 1930s, fought the suffragettes in the 1900s, burnt industrial machinery in the early 19th Century, persecuted Catholics (sometimes with official approval and even sanction in the two centuries after 1605), massacred 150 Jews in York on March 16th, 1190 at York …  I could go on, but the common link is an inability and/or unwillingness to accept economic, political and social change, combined with various forms of intolerance towards the other.  Moreover, these responses were and are not unique to any one particular class.

Anti-semitism being quite common amongst the upper class in the 1930s as much as it was amongst the working class followers of Sir Oswald Mosley, 6th Baronet of Ancoats.  Anti-semitism is today rife amongst some of Corbyn’s most committed supporters.  One might go so far as to say that it is a defining trait for some of them.  As Aneurin Bevan once observed, “Fascism is not in itself a new order of society.  It is the future refusing to be born.”

Bevan once asked, “How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power?  Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics in the twentieth century.”  Step forward, Alf Garnett, the perfect example of a working class Tory.  Alf  arrived on our television screens in 1965, but as a skilled member of the working class he got the vote in 1867, courtesy of Benjamin Disraeli.  Mr Disraeli gave Alf the vote because he was banking on the conservatism of the British working man favouring the Tory Party at election time.  Alf was not liberal in outlook.

ukip is wealth persuading poverty to keep it in power, because ukip has nothing to say to the left behind that would make their condition any better than it is now.  Labour under Corbyn is asking the working age poor to vote it into office so it may expand the middle class welfare state at their expense.

The Liberal Democrats went into the 2017 General Election committed to reversing all of the £9bn of Social Security cuts over which IDS resigned.

Labour only committed to reversing £2bn of the cuts, leaving the benefits cap and benefits freeze in place, because, Emily Thornberry said, it could not afford to do more.  Although it could commit without any caveats to the Pensions Triple Lock.

Labour only committed at most £500m for Sure Start.  Not enough money to fully reverse the savage Tory cuts since 2010.  Although it could find the money to commit £10bn plus to deliver universal free university tuition for students mostly from middle and higher income families.

Incidentally, if you are on a low income in our society you are more likely to be from a background other than the white middle class (the group illustrated in Momentum’s recent home video).

You are more likely to be from an ethnic minority background.  Warm words at an anti-racism rally and posing for pictures with Weyman Bennett are no substitute for real action to address the disadvantage someone faces, simply because of their family tree.

And posing with a man with a reputation like that of Bennett casts doubt on your commitment, Corbyn, to helping the most disadvantaged group in our society, women (whatever their sex, their age, their disability, their gender, their race, their geographical locality, their circumstances, their background and their class), realise their full potential.

Standing shoulder to shoulder with people who think LGBT folk have no right to live, because of being LGBT is no way to flaunt your liberal credentials.

How many of those, Corbyn, whose take on LGBT rights you endorse by standing on a platform with them, come anywhere near the view ISIS has of the disabled?  They murder children with Down’s Syndrome for being born with that condition.

How many of those extremists, with whom you make common cause, Corbyn, are opposed to democracy; equal rights for all; the right of Israel to exist and so on …

Let me see, BAME, LGBT, women, the disabled, the poor and the working class, BAME as well as white.  Do they not, Corbyn, make up the group with whom you, uniquely, claim to relate?  Are they not en masse a large enough group out of whom to build an General Election winning majority?

There was a time when Labour was behind in coming forward to call out racism.

There was a time when Paul “Foot castigated “the inability of the local (Smethwick) Labour party, corrupted as it was by anti-immigrant sentiment, to hit back in a determined and principled way” against Griffiths and what he stood for.”

It is a moot point whether Foot would have wholly approved of Labour’s General Election 2015 Campaigning Against ukip document, but I think he would have accepted that Labour had moved on.

Has Labour moved on though?

Laying out the case for leaving the single market, Corbyn used language we have rarely heard from him, blaming immigration for harming the lives of British workers.  The Labour leader said that after leaving the EU, there would still be European workers in Britain and vice versa. He added, “What there wouldn’t be is the wholesale importation of underpaid workers from central Europe in order to destroy conditions, particularly in the construction industry.”

Did Corbyn ever tell his ex girlfriend’s mother, Diane Abbott’s mom, that she had in some way damaged the pay and conditions of indigenous workers when she came to the UK to work in the NHS?  That was an argument used by, amongst others, trades unionists back in the 1960s.  They worked then with the CBI to attempt to prevent a Race Relations Act going on the statute book that would address discrimination in the jobs and housing market.  The first Act of that kind having failed to address either subject.  Roy Jenkins on becoming Home Secretary (boo, hiss from the seats of the committed socialist ABC1s now dominating Labour’s membership) put that right.

The question each generation has to ask itself is do you seek to narrow or bridge gaps within society or, like Farage widen and exploit them for your own political and financial ends?  Corbyn, born into a similar class background as Farage, has decided to do the other thing, the easy thing and blow the silent dog whistle that Griffiths bequeathed to Farage.

How about we try taking Gandhi’s advice about hating the sin, but not the sinner, and thereby try to change attitudes and not reinforce them?

Incidentally, Alf Garnett, through seeing people as individuals not as a mass of the other, mellowed over time …

Smethwick 1964

For those unfamiliar with the events of 1964 in Smethwick and how they resonate in sympathy with the events of today then I think Stuart Jeffries article is a good place to start.  Incidentally, I understand that a variation of the slogan that I have read in a number of places was “… vote Liberal or Labour”.

Other interesting articles:

Looking Back at Race Relations

Peter Griffiths – Obituary (Daily Telegraph)

Peter Griffiths – Obituary (Wolverhampton Express and Star)

Neil Hamilton provides a link between then and now.  Griffiths once wrote, “Apartheid, if it could be separated from racialism, could well be an alternative to integration.”  Hamilton did his bit to try and help the apartheid regime of South Africa improve its chances of survival.

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Jeremy #Corbyn & The Return of Alf Garnett Or If You Don’t Want a Bulgarian For a Neighbour Vote #Labour? #ABTV #WATON #FBPE #RJCOB #PCPEU

Corbynism is not the future, it is the future refusing to be born

1964, 11 years before the EU referendum of 1975, the West Midlands constituency of Smethwick was the most colour-conscious place in the country, and the scene of a Tory campaign that successfully exploited anti-immigrant sentiment.  The infamous slogan that propelled a Tory into the House of Commons was, “If you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote Labour.”

Peter Griffiths, the successful Tory candidate refused to disown the slogan, “I would not condemn any man who said that,” he told the Times during his election campaign.  “I regard it as a manifestation of popular feeling.”

All sounds rather depressingly familiar, does it not?  One need not strain one’s imagination to hear Farage today saying exactly what Griffiths said to the Times in 1964.

One never, in one’s wildest dreams, expected to hear a Labour leader use the same language.  Certainly not one like Corbyn, whose fans claim he is the true Socialist Messiah.

ukip’s forebears, dear Cult of Corbyn members, were fascists in the 1930s, fought the suffragettes in the 1900s, burnt industrial machinery in the early 19th Century, persecuted Catholics (sometimes with official approval and even sanction in the two centuries after 1605), massacred 150 Jews in York on March 16th, 1190 at York …  I could go on, but the common link is an inability and/or unwillingness to accept economic, political and social change, combined with various forms of intolerance towards the other.  Moreover, these responses were and are not unique to any one particular class.

Anti-semitism being quite common amongst the upper class in the 1930s as much as it was amongst the working class followers of Sir Oswald Mosley, 6th Baronet of Ancoats.  Anti-semitism is today rife amongst some of Corbyn’s most committed supporters.  One might go so far as to say that it is a defining trait for some of them.  As Aneurin Bevan once observed, “Fascism is not in itself a new order of society.  It is the future refusing to be born.”

Bevan once asked, “How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power?  Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics in the twentieth century.”  Step forward, Alf Garnett, the perfect example of a working class Tory.  Alf  arrived on our television screens in 1965, but as a skilled member of the working class he got the vote in 1867, courtesy of Benjamin Disraeli.  Mr Disraeli gave Alf the vote because he was banking on the conservatism of the British working man favouring the Tory Party at election time.  Alf was not liberal in outlook.

ukip is wealth persuading poverty to keep it in power, because ukip has nothing to say to the left behind that would make their condition any better than it is now.  Labour under Corbyn is asking the working age poor to vote it into office so it may expand the middle class welfare state at their expense.

The Liberal Democrats went into the 2017 General Election committed to reversing all of the £9bn of Social Security cuts over which IDS resigned.

Labour only committed to reversing £2bn of the cuts, leaving the benefits cap and benefits freeze in place, because, Emily Thornberry said, it could not afford to do more.  Although it could commit without any caveats to the Pensions Triple Lock.

Labour only committed at most £500m for Sure Start.  Not enough money to fully reverse the savage Tory cuts since 2010.  Although it could find the money to commit £10bn plus to deliver universal free university tuition for students mostly from middle and higher income families.

Incidentally, if you are on a low income in our society you are more likely to be from a background other than the white middle class (the group illustrated in Momentum’s recent home video).

You are more likely to be from an ethnic minority background.  Warm words at an anti-racism rally and posing for pictures with Weyman Bennett are no substitute for real action to address the disadvantage someone faces, simply because of their family tree.

And posing with a man with a reputation like that of Bennett casts doubt on your commitment, Corbyn, to helping the most disadvantaged group in our society, women (whatever their sex, their age, their disability, their gender, their race, their geographical locality, their circumstances, their background and their class), realise their full potential.

Standing shoulder to shoulder with people who think LGBT folk have no right to live, because of being LGBT is no way to flaunt your liberal credentials.

How many of those, Corbyn, whose take on LGBT rights you endorse by standing on a platform with them, come anywhere near the view ISIS has of the disabled?  They murder children with Down’s Syndrome for being born with that condition.

How many of those extremists, with whom you make common cause, Corbyn, are opposed to democracy; equal rights for all; the right of Israel to exist and so on …

Let me see, BAME, LGBT, women, the disabled, the poor and the working class, BAME as well as white.  Do they not, Corbyn, make up the group with whom you, uniquely, claim to relate?  Are they not en masse a large enough group out of whom to build an General Election winning majority?

There was a time when Labour was behind in coming forward to call out racism.

There was a time when Paul “Foot castigated “the inability of the local (Smethwick) Labour party, corrupted as it was by anti-immigrant sentiment, to hit back in a determined and principled way” against Griffiths and what he stood for.”

It is a moot point whether Foot would have wholly approved of Labour’s General Election 2015 Campaigning Against ukip document, but I think he would have accepted that Labour had moved on.

Has Labour moved on though?

Laying out the case for leaving the single market, Corbyn used language we have rarely heard from him, blaming immigration for harming the lives of British workers.  The Labour leader said that after leaving the EU, there would still be European workers in Britain and vice versa. He added, “What there wouldn’t be is the wholesale importation of underpaid workers from central Europe in order to destroy conditions, particularly in the construction industry.”

Did Corbyn ever tell his ex girlfriend’s mother, Diane Abbott’s mom, that she had in some way damaged the pay and conditions of indigenous workers when she came to the UK to work in the NHS?  That was an argument used by, amongst others, trades unionists back in the 1960s.  They worked then with the CBI to attempt to prevent a Race Relations Act going on the statute book that would address discrimination in the jobs and housing market.  The first Act of that kind having failed to address either subject.  Roy Jenkins on becoming Home Secretary (boo, hiss from the seats of the committed socialist ABC1s now dominating Labour’s membership) put that right.

The question each generation has to ask itself is do you seek to narrow or bridge gaps within society or, like Farage widen and exploit them for your own political and financial ends?  Corbyn, born into a similar class background as Farage, has decided to do the other thing, the easy thing and blow the silent dog whistle that Griffiths bequeathed to Farage.

How about we try taking Gandhi’s advice about hating the sin, but not the sinner, and thereby try to change attitudes and not reinforce them?

Incidentally, Alf Garnett, through seeing people as individuals not as a mass of the other, mellowed over time …

Smethwick 1964

For those unfamiliar with the events of 1964 in Smethwick and how they resonate in sympathy with the events of today then I think Stuart Jeffries article is a good place to start.  Incidentally, I understand that a variation of the slogan that I have read in a number of places was “… vote Liberal or Labour”.

Other interesting articles:

Looking Back at Race Relations

Peter Griffiths – Obituary (Daily Telegraph)

Peter Griffiths – Obituary (Wolverhampton Express and Star)

Neil Hamilton provides a link between then and now.  Griffiths once wrote, “Apartheid, if it could be separated from racialism, could well be an alternative to integration.”  Hamilton did his bit to try and help the apartheid regime of South Africa improve its chances of survival.

#Corbyn & The Return of Alf Garnett Or If You Don’t Want a Bulgarian For a Neighbour Vote #Labour?

Corbynism is not the future, it is the future refusing to be born

1964, 11 years before the EU referendum of 1975, the West Midlands constituency of Smethwick was the most colour-conscious place in the country, and the scene of a Tory campaign that successfully exploited anti-immigrant sentiment.  The infamous slogan that propelled a Tory into the House of Commons was, “If you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote Labour.”

Peter Griffiths, the successful Tory candidate refused to disown the slogan, “I would not condemn any man who said that,” he told the Times during his election campaign.  “I regard it as a manifestation of popular feeling.”

All sounds rather depressingly familiar, does it not?  One need not strain one’s imagination to hear Farage today saying exactly what Griffiths said to the Times in 1964.

One never, in one’s wildest dreams, expected to hear a Labour leader use the same language.  Certainly not one like Corbyn, whose fans claim he is the true Socialist Messiah.

ukip’s forebears, dear Cult of Corbyn members, were fascists in the 1930s, fought the suffragettes in the 1900s, burnt industrial machinery in the early 19th Century, persecuted Catholics (sometimes with official approval and even sanction in the two centuries after 1605), massacred 150 Jews in York on March 16th, 1190 at York …  I could go on, but the common link is an inability and/or unwillingness to accept economic, political and social change, combined with various forms of intolerance towards the other.  Moreover, these responses were and are not unique to any one particular class.

Anti-semitism being quite common amongst the upper class in the 1930s as much as it was amongst the working class followers of Sir Oswald Mosley, 6th Baronet of Ancoats.  Anti-semitism is today rife amongst some of Corbyn’s most committed supporters.  One might go so far as to say that it is a defining trait for some of them.  As Aneurin Bevan once observed, “Fascism is not in itself a new order of society.  It is the future refusing to be born.”

Bevan once asked, “How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power?  Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics in the twentieth century.”  Step forward, Alf Garnett, the perfect example of a working class Tory.  Alf  arrived on our television screens in 1965, but as a skilled member of the working class he got the vote in 1867, courtesy of Benjamin Disraeli.  Mr Disraeli gave Alf the vote because he was banking on the conservatism of the British working man favouring the Tory Party at election time.  Alf was not liberal in outlook.

ukip is wealth persuading poverty to keep it in power, because ukip has nothing to say to the left behind that would make their condition any better than it is now.  Labour under Corbyn is asking the working age poor to vote it into office so it may expand the middle class welfare state at their expense.

The Liberal Democrats went into the 2017 General Election committed to reversing all of the £9bn of Social Security cuts over which IDS resigned.

Labour only committed to reversing £2bn of the cuts, leaving the benefits cap and benefits freeze in place, because, Emily Thornberry said, it could not afford to do more.  Although it could commit without any caveats to the Pensions Triple Lock.

Labour only committed at most £500m for Sure Start.  Not enough money to fully reverse the savage Tory cuts since 2010.  Although it could find the money to commit £10bn plus to deliver universal free university tuition for students mostly from middle and higher income families.

Incidentally, if you are on a low income in our society you are more likely to be from a background other than the white middle class (the group illustrated in Momentum’s recent home video).

You are more likely to be from an ethnic minority background.  Warm words at an anti-racism rally and posing for pictures with Weyman Bennett are no substitute for real action to address the disadvantage someone faces, simply because of their family tree.

And posing with a man with a reputation like that of Bennett casts doubt on your commitment, Corbyn, to helping the most disadvantaged group in our society, women (whatever their sex, their age, their disability, their gender, their race, their geographical locality, their circumstances, their background and their class), realise their full potential.

Standing shoulder to shoulder with people who think LGBT folk have no right to live, because of being LGBT is no way to flaunt your liberal credentials.

How many of those, Corbyn, whose take on LGBT rights you endorse by standing on a platform with them, come anywhere near the view ISIS has of the disabled?  They murder children with Down’s Syndrome for being born with that condition.

How many of those extremists, with whom you make common cause, Corbyn, are opposed to democracy; equal rights for all; the right of Israel to exist and so on …

Let me see, BAME, LGBT, women, the disabled, the poor and the working class, BAME as well as white.  Do they not, Corbyn, make up the group with whom you, uniquely, claim to relate?  Are they not en masse a large enough group out of whom to build an General Election winning majority?

There was a time when Labour was behind in coming forward to call out racism.

There was a time when Paul “Foot castigated “the inability of the local (Smethwick) Labour party, corrupted as it was by anti-immigrant sentiment, to hit back in a determined and principled way” against Griffiths and what he stood for.”

It is a moot point whether Foot would have wholly approved of Labour’s General Election 2015 Campaigning Against ukip document, but I think he would have accepted that Labour had moved on.

Has Labour moved on though?

Laying out the case for leaving the single market, Corbyn used language we have rarely heard from him, blaming immigration for harming the lives of British workers.  The Labour leader said that after leaving the EU, there would still be European workers in Britain and vice versa. He added, “What there wouldn’t be is the wholesale importation of underpaid workers from central Europe in order to destroy conditions, particularly in the construction industry.”

Did Corbyn ever tell his ex girlfriend’s mother, Diane Abbott’s mom, that she had in some way damaged the pay and conditions of indigenous workers when she came to the UK to work in the NHS?  That was an argument used by, amongst others, trades unionists back in the 1960s.  They worked then with the CBI to attempt to prevent a Race Relations Act going on the statute book that would address discrimination in the jobs and housing market.  The first Act of that kind having failed to address either subject.  Roy Jenkins on becoming Home Secretary (boo, hiss from the seats of the committed socialist ABC1s now dominating Labour’s membership) put that right.

The question each generation has to ask itself is do you seek to narrow or bridge gaps within society or, like Farage widen and exploit them for your own political and financial ends?  Corbyn, born into a similar class background as Farage, has decided to do the other thing, the easy thing and blow the silent dog whistle that Griffiths bequeathed to Farage.

How about we try taking Gandhi’s advice about hating the sin, but not the sinner, and thereby try to change attitudes and not reinforce them?

Incidentally, Alf Garnett, through seeing people as individuals not as a mass of the other, mellowed over time …

Smethwick 1964

For those unfamiliar with the events of 1964 in Smethwick and how they resonate in sympathy with the events of today then I think Stuart Jeffries article is a good place to start.  Incidentally, I understand that a variation of the slogan that I have read in a number of places was “… vote Liberal or Labour”.

Other interesting articles:

Looking Back at Race Relations

Peter Griffiths – Obituary (Daily Telegraph)

Peter Griffiths – Obituary (Wolverhampton Express and Star)

Neil Hamilton provides a link between then and now.  Griffiths once wrote, “Apartheid, if it could be separated from racialism, could well be an alternative to integration.”  Hamilton did his bit to try and help the apartheid regime of South Africa improve its chances of survival.

Ex soldier left relying on foodbanks slams Cameron & Tories for abandoning war veterans #GE2015

Infantryman Philip Wesley says the PM was happy to send soldiers into battle but has given them nothing back!

A former soldier has launched a stinging attack on David Cameron for failing to support war veterans.

Infantryman Philip Wesley says the PM was “happy” to send soldiers into battle but has given them “nothing back.”

The father-of-one says his life since leaving the Army has been one of food banks, low-paid work, soaring energy bills and expensive housing.

At every turn he has faced difficulties because of the policies of the Conservative-led government , he reveals.

Mr Wesley, 27, served five years in the Army including two tours of Afghanistan.

He had to leave in 2012 to look after his daughter Violet, now three-and-a-half.

On return to his home city of Birmingham, he found it impossible to get a council house for them to live in.

“I was laughed at. I waited two years for social housing.

“In the end the British Legion gave me the money for a deposit so I could rent privately,” he explains.

The problem was the bedroom tax. So many people hit by the bedroom tax had to move out of three-bedroom homes meaning there were not enough two-bed properties available for people such as Philip.

“To be honest with you I was expecting a lot more. I have had help from the British Legion but absolutely nothing from the MoD.

“The main issue for me was housing. I had nowhere to live and I was still at the very bottom of the list.

“There were no two bed homes that were suitable for me. It was crazy.”

His mother who has severe epilepsy has also been hit by the bedroom tax.

Because his house had no central heating he racked up a £700 electricity bill to heat the home for his daughter.

“I was alright, I put on coats but my daughter was cold,” he says matter of factly.

At one point he had to rely on foodbanks to feed his family.

“And that was when I was working,” he said.

“We are supposed to be one of the most developed countries in the world and we have people having to use foodbanks,” he adds in a video made for the Labour Party.

Mr Wesley is now studying for a computing degree at Birmingham Metropolitan University, even though this will cost him £9,000 a year in tuition fees.

While he is full of praise for the support he received from the British Legion, his verdict on Mr Cameron is damning.

“Whenever I hear David Cameron saying anything it makes my blood boil. The only thing David Cameron sees when he looks at the Armed Forces is money and how much it will cost him. It’s just all numbers to him,” he says.

And he says other veterans have experienced similar problems.

“He’s (Cameron) happy to throw us into these wars but we get nothing back. There are people who have done a hell of a lot for their country and I don’t think it’s been rewarded in the slightest,” he says.

In December, Mr Cameron praised the Armed Forces as Britain marked the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.

“Everyone in this country is forever in your debt,” he said.

Labour’s Jack Dromey said: “A war hero who fought for his country has been let down by Cameron’s Britain.

“He thought he was returning to a country fit for heroes but at every turn they have made it more difficult for him and his family.

“Labour will abolish the bedroom tax that has hit Philip’s family hard.

“Labour will cut tuition fees by £3,000 so people like Philip can get on and Labour will never let our Armed Forces veteran down in this way.”

The Danczuks, Never Mind Quality Of Our ‘Facts’ Just Admire Our Rhetoric! 2/2 #GE2015 #RaceForNumber10

“On immigration, Karen says Rochdale is at the “end of its tether”.  Simon adds: “The liberal intelligentsia, this north London liberal elite, don’t have to live with the problem.  Proportionally there are more asylum seekers in Rochdale than in London.”

The reason people should listen to them, they say, whether it is on child abuse or the problems of welfare, is that their views come from experience.  “If my mum had been forced to work and not live her life as a single parent on benefits, she would have had a job and friends and a better life, which would have benefited me,” Karen says.

And immigration?  A rich country like the UK should take in asylum seekers and economic migrants, Simon argues.  But Rochdale’s cheap housing makes it a magnet. “I do feel that the strains and stresses being put on a relatively small town is unfair.  It is all about fairness.” ”

We’ll keep telling it like it is on welfare, immigration and the liberal elite

The following datasets provides 2011 Census estimates that classify non-UK born short-term residents in England and Wales by country of birth.  The estimates are as at Census day, 27 March 2011.

A non-UK born short-term resident is defined as anyone living in England and Wales who was born outside the UK, who intended to stay in the UK for a period of between 3 and 12 months.

Out of a population of 8,173,941 in London in 2011, ONS estimates that 0.8% or 68,992 were non-UK born short-term residents (see first table).

Out of a population of 211,699 in Rochdale in 2011, ONS estimates that 0.07% or 144 were non-UK born short-term residents (see second table).

Table population: All non-UK born short-term residents

Country of Birth by measures

Units: Persons

date	2011
geography	London

	value
All categories: Country of birth	68,992
Europe: Total	27,515
Europe: United Kingdom: Total	0
Europe: United Kingdom: England	0
Europe: United Kingdom: Northern Ireland	0
Europe: United Kingdom: Scotland	0
Europe: United Kingdom: Wales	0
Europe: Great Britain not otherwise specified	0
Europe: United Kingdom not otherwise specified	0
Europe: Guernsey	15
Europe: Jersey	17
Europe: Channel Islands not otherwise specified	4
Europe: Isle of Man	9
Europe: Ireland	930
Europe: Other Europe: Total	26,540
Europe: Other Europe: EU countries: Total	23,080
Europe: Other Europe: EU countries: Member countries in March 2001: Total	16,071
Europe: Other Europe: EU countries: Member countries in March 2001: France	4,084
Europe: Other Europe: EU countries: Member countries in March 2001: Germany	2,339
Europe: Other Europe: EU countries: Member countries in March 2001: Italy	2,892
Europe: Other Europe: EU countries: Member countries in March 2001: Portugal	497
Europe: Other Europe: EU countries: Member countries in March 2001: Spain (including Canary Islands)	2,709
Europe: Other Europe: EU countries: Member countries in March 2001: Other member countries in March 2001	3,550
Europe: Other Europe: EU countries: Accession countries April 2001 to March 2011: Total	7,009
Europe: Other Europe: EU countries: Accession countries April 2001 to March 2011: Lithuania	818
Europe: Other Europe: EU countries: Accession countries April 2001 to March 2011: Poland	2,118
Europe: Other Europe: EU countries: Accession countries April 2001 to March 2011: Romania	1,412
Europe: Other Europe: EU countries: Accession countries April 2001 to March 2011: Other EU accession countries	2,661
Europe: Other Europe: Rest of Europe: Total	3,460
Europe: Other Europe: Rest of Europe: Turkey	863
Europe: Other Europe: Rest of Europe: Other Europe	2,597
Africa: Total	4,855
Africa: North Africa	778
Africa: Central and Western Africa: Total	2,399
Africa: Central and Western Africa: Ghana	395
Africa: Central and Western Africa: Nigeria	1,652
Africa: Central and Western Africa: Other Central and Western Africa	352
Africa: South and Eastern Africa: Total	1,666
Africa: South and Eastern Africa: Kenya	195
Africa: South and Eastern Africa: Somalia	279
Africa: South and Eastern Africa: South Africa	510
Africa: South and Eastern Africa: Zimbabwe	95
Africa: South and Eastern Africa: Other South and Eastern Africa	587
Africa: Africa not otherwise specified	12
Middle East and Asia: Total	24,655
Middle East and Asia: Middle East: Total	2,683
Middle East and Asia: Middle East: Iran	579
Middle East and Asia: Middle East: Other Middle East	2,104
Middle East and Asia: Eastern Asia: Total	6,570
Middle East and Asia: Eastern Asia: China	3,599
Middle East and Asia: Eastern Asia: Hong Kong (Special Administrative Region of China)	603
Middle East and Asia: Eastern Asia: Other Eastern Asia	2,368
Middle East and Asia: Southern Asia: Total	12,356
Middle East and Asia: Southern Asia: Bangladesh	844
Middle East and Asia: Southern Asia: India	7,186
Middle East and Asia: Southern Asia: Pakistan	2,315
Middle East and Asia: Southern Asia: Sri Lanka	1,349
Middle East and Asia: Southern Asia: Other Southern Asia	662
Middle East and Asia: South-East Asia: Total	2,691
Middle East and Asia: South-East Asia: Philippines	509
Middle East and Asia: South-East Asia: Other South-East Asia	2,182
Middle East and Asia: Central Asia	355
The Americas and the Caribbean: Total	9,307
The Americas and the Caribbean: North America: Total	5,941
The Americas and the Caribbean: North America: United States	5,072
The Americas and the Caribbean: North America: Other North America	869
The Americas and the Caribbean: Central America	348
The Americas and the Caribbean: South America	2,600
The Americas and the Caribbean: The Caribbean: Total	418
The Americas and the Caribbean: The Caribbean: Jamaica	120
The Americas and the Caribbean: The Caribbean: Other Caribbean	298
Antarctica and Oceania: Total	2,660
Antarctica and Oceania: Antarctica	0
Antarctica and Oceania: Australasia: Total	2,636
Antarctica and Oceania: Australasia: Australia	2,015
Antarctica and Oceania: Australasia: Other Australasia	621
Antarctica and Oceania: Other Oceania	24
Other	0

In order to protect against disclosure of personal information, records have been swapped between different geographic areas.  Some counts will be affected, particularly small counts at the lowest geographies.

Table population: All non-UK born short-term residents

Country of Birth by measures

Units: Persons

Date	2011
Geography	Rochdale

	value
All categories: Country of birth	144
Europe: Total	41
Europe: United Kingdom: Total	0
Europe: United Kingdom: England	0
Europe: United Kingdom: Northern Ireland	0
Europe: United Kingdom: Scotland	0
Europe: United Kingdom: Wales	0
Europe: Great Britain not otherwise specified	0
Europe: United Kingdom not otherwise specified	0
Europe: Guernsey	0
Europe: Jersey	0
Europe: Channel Islands not otherwise specified	1
Europe: Isle of Man	0
Europe: Ireland	3
Europe: Other Europe: Total	37
Europe: Other Europe: EU countries: Total	35
Europe: Other Europe: EU countries: Member countries in March 2001: Total	14
Europe: Other Europe: EU countries: Member countries in March 2001: France	4
Europe: Other Europe: EU countries: Member countries in March 2001: Germany	4
Europe: Other Europe: EU countries: Member countries in March 2001: Italy	2
Europe: Other Europe: EU countries: Member countries in March 2001: Portugal	1
Europe: Other Europe: EU countries: Member countries in March 2001: Spain (including Canary Islands)	0
Europe: Other Europe: EU countries: Member countries in March 2001: Other member countries in March 2001	3
Europe: Other Europe: EU countries: Accession countries April 2001 to March 2011: Total	21
Europe: Other Europe: EU countries: Accession countries April 2001 to March 2011: Lithuania	2
Europe: Other Europe: EU countries: Accession countries April 2001 to March 2011: Poland	11
Europe: Other Europe: EU countries: Accession countries April 2001 to March 2011: Romania	0
Europe: Other Europe: EU countries: Accession countries April 2001 to March 2011: Other EU accession countries	8
Europe: Other Europe: Rest of Europe: Total	2
Europe: Other Europe: Rest of Europe: Turkey	0
Europe: Other Europe: Rest of Europe: Other Europe	2
Africa: Total	8
Africa: North Africa	0
Africa: Central and Western Africa: Total	5
Africa: Central and Western Africa: Ghana	0
Africa: Central and Western Africa: Nigeria	2
Africa: Central and Western Africa: Other Central and Western Africa	3
Africa: South and Eastern Africa: Total	3
Africa: South and Eastern Africa: Kenya	0
Africa: South and Eastern Africa: Somalia	0
Africa: South and Eastern Africa: South Africa	0
Africa: South and Eastern Africa: Zimbabwe	1
Africa: South and Eastern Africa: Other South and Eastern Africa	2
Africa: Africa not otherwise specified	0
Middle East and Asia: Total	90
Middle East and Asia: Middle East: Total	3
Middle East and Asia: Middle East: Iran	1
Middle East and Asia: Middle East: Other Middle East	2
Middle East and Asia: Eastern Asia: Total	4
Middle East and Asia: Eastern Asia: China	3
Middle East and Asia: Eastern Asia: Hong Kong (Special Administrative Region of China)	1
Middle East and Asia: Eastern Asia: Other Eastern Asia	0
Middle East and Asia: Southern Asia: Total	80
Middle East and Asia: Southern Asia: Bangladesh	4
Middle East and Asia: Southern Asia: India	16
Middle East and Asia: Southern Asia: Pakistan	55
Middle East and Asia: Southern Asia: Sri Lanka	0
Middle East and Asia: Southern Asia: Other Southern Asia	5
Middle East and Asia: South-East Asia: Total	3
Middle East and Asia: South-East Asia: Philippines	1
Middle East and Asia: South-East Asia: Other South-East Asia	2
Middle East and Asia: Central Asia	0
The Americas and the Caribbean: Total	5
The Americas and the Caribbean: North America: Total	4
The Americas and the Caribbean: North America: United States	2
The Americas and the Caribbean: North America: Other North America	2
The Americas and the Caribbean: Central America	0
The Americas and the Caribbean: South America	1
The Americas and the Caribbean: The Caribbean: Total	0
The Americas and the Caribbean: The Caribbean: Jamaica	0
The Americas and the Caribbean: The Caribbean: Other Caribbean	0
Antarctica and Oceania: Total	0
Antarctica and Oceania: Antarctica	0
Antarctica and Oceania: Australasia: Total	0
Antarctica and Oceania: Australasia: Australia	0
Antarctica and Oceania: Australasia: Other Australasia	0
Antarctica and Oceania: Other Oceania	0
Other	0

In order to protect against disclosure of personal information, records have been swapped between different geographic areas.  Some counts will be affected, particularly small counts at the lowest geographies.

The Danczuks, Never Mind Quality Of Our ‘Facts’ Just Admire Our Rhetoric! 1/2 #GE2015 #RaceForNumber10

“On immigration, Karen says Rochdale is at the “end of its tether”.  Simon adds: “The liberal intelligentsia, this north London liberal elite, don’t have to live with the problem.  Proportionally there are more asylum seekers in Rochdale than in London.”

The reason people should listen to them, they say, whether it is on child abuse or the problems of welfare, is that their views come from experience.  “If my mum had been forced to work and not live her life as a single parent on benefits, she would have had a job and friends and a better life, which would have benefited me,” Karen says.

And immigration?  A rich country like the UK should take in asylum seekers and economic migrants, Simon argues.  But Rochdale’s cheap housing makes it a magnet. “I do feel that the strains and stresses being put on a relatively small town is unfair.  It is all about fairness.” ”

We’ll keep telling it like it is on welfare, immigration and the liberal elite

Out of a population of 8,173,941 in London in 2011, 63% or 5,175,677 stated their country of birth as the United Kingdom (see first table).

Out of a population of 211,699 in Rochdale in 2011, 89% or 188,102 stated their country of birth as the United Kingdom (see second table).

See next post for details of the non-UK born short-term residents in both areas in 2011.

Country of Birth by Sex (2011 Census)

Units: Persons

Date	2011
Geography	London

	All persons	Males	Females
All categories: Country of birth	8,173,941	4,033,289	4,140,652
Europe: Total	6,174,371	3,063,095	3,111,276
Europe: United Kingdom: Total	5,175,677	2,589,406	2,586,271
Europe: United Kingdom: England	4,997,072	2,496,875	2,500,197
Europe: United Kingdom: Northern Ireland	32,774	16,847	15,927
Europe: United Kingdom: Scotland	89,527	47,279	42,248
Europe: United Kingdom: Wales	53,828	27,045	26,783
Europe: United Kingdom: Great Britain not otherwise specified	544	275	269
Europe: United Kingdom: United Kingdom not otherwise specified	1,932	1,085	847
Europe: Ireland	129,807	59,884	69,923
Europe: Other Europe: Total	868,887	413,805	455,082
Europe: Other Europe: EU countries: Total	711,133	338,198	372,935
Europe: Other Europe: EU countries: Member countries in March 2001	341,981	163,032	178,949
Europe: Other Europe: EU countries: Accession countries April 2001 to March 2011	369,152	175,166	193,986
Europe: Other Europe: Rest of Europe	157,754	75,607	82,147
Africa	621,613	295,781	325,832
Middle East and Asia	966,990	490,027	476,963
The Americas and the Caribbean	326,280	143,476	182,804
Antarctica, Oceania (including Australasia) and other	84,687	40,910	43,777

In order to protect against disclosure of personal information, records have been swapped between different geographic areas.  Some counts will be affected, particularly small counts at the lowest geographies.

Country of Birth by Sex (Census 2011)

Units: Persons

Date	2011
Geography	Rochdale

	All persons	Males	Females
All categories: Country of birth	211,699	103,642	108,057
Europe: Total	194,495	95,069	99,426
Europe: United Kingdom: Total	188,102	92,029	96,073
Europe: United Kingdom: England	184,354	90,231	94,123
Europe: United Kingdom: Northern Ireland	886	423	463
Europe: United Kingdom: Scotland	1,929	918	1,011
Europe: United Kingdom: Wales	915	449	466
Europe: United Kingdom: Great Britain not otherwise specified	4	3	1
Europe: United Kingdom: United Kingdom not otherwise specified	14	5	9
Europe: Ireland	1,852	825	1,027
Europe: Other Europe: Total	4,541	2,215	2,326
Europe: Other Europe: EU countries: Total	4,161	2,037	2,124
Europe: Other Europe: EU countries: Member countries in March 2001	1,447	672	775
Europe: Other Europe: EU countries: Accession countries April 2001 to March 2011	2,714	1,365	1,349
Europe: Other Europe: Rest of Europe	380	178	202
Africa	2,654	1,319	1,335
Middle East and Asia	13,883	6,901	6,982
The Americas and the Caribbean	497	252	245
Antarctica, Oceania (including Australasia) and other	170	101	69

In order to protect against disclosure of personal information, records have been swapped between different geographic areas.  Some counts will be affected, particularly small counts at the lowest geographies.

The Danczuks, The Dangerous Dogs Act & Those Enduring Myths About Lone Parents #GE2015 #RaceForNumber10

“In a political arena in which words are carefully chosen, PR narratives carefully designed, and human frailties rarely admitted, the Danczuks stick out.  They both come from broken families, in which dependence on benefits was par for the course.

Karen, one of five children, was the only one to carry on her education after school and says she lives a life that her siblings wouldn’t recognise.”

“Danczuk has been an outspoken critic of politics geared towards the metropolitan elite.  On welfare, he and his wife agree that Labour isn’t tough enough.  “Instead of people being sat around on benefits, if they are capable of work why not have them make a contribution locally and keep them in mind for work,” Simon says. “If you want to call it hard-line, so be it.” ”

“The reason people should listen to them, they say, whether it is on child abuse or the problems of welfare, is that their views come from experience.  “If my mum had been forced to work and not live her life as a single parent on benefits, she would have had a job and friends and a better life, which would have benefited me,” Karen says.”

We’ll keep telling it like it is on welfare, immigration and the liberal elite

Well, Karen, in my experience your kind of subjective approach to policy making leads to Dangerous Dogs Act outcomes.  Personally, speaking, again from experience, I think we have already had quite enough of that sort of ‘informed’ approach to Social Security and Welfare to Work.

Alas, for Simon and Karen, I am not a member of the metropolitan, liberal elite, although I do live in a metropolitan county.  I was, though, Birmingham and Solihull’s lead Employment Service Implementation Manager for New Deal for Lone Parents in 1998 and a deputy Childcare Partnership Manager for the same area in the late 2000s.  I know a fair bit about Children’s Centres, I have worked alongside Gingerbread and the National Council for One Parent Families, I have worked with groups supporting lone parents, groups of lone parents and I have even interviewed a fair few lone parents in my time.  I suspect that gives me as much, if not more insight than the Danczuks into the challenges facing lone parents, but I would not say enough of an insight to be able, on my own, to draft policies addressing those challenges.  I may know most of the questions to ask, but few of the answers to them.  I know my limitations!

In over two decades I only ever came across one person who regarded herself as married to the State.  Frankly, I was gob smacked that anyone would want to be a lone parent until they claimed their State Pension at 60, but this person was very much the exception to the rule.  I did segue into the dependant on the State line on the grounds that surely she would not want to bring up more children on just Income Support.  What about their quality of life?  I say more children as she was in front of me, because her youngest child had reached 16 and so she had no option, but to claim Jobseeker’s Allowance.  She seemed more than a bit put out by the requirement to be both available for and actively seeking work.  She took the line that at 40 or so it was too late to take up employment hence the discussion of possible alternatives to paid work.

Now, Karen and Simon would it really be a good idea to build our party’s (that is Labour’s, by the way, and not ukip’s) policies for lone parents on that interview alone?  You certainly seem to think that your personal experiences are representative evidence of the behaviour of the typical (tabloid) single parent and thus the basis on which to formulate a tougher Social Security regime for lone parents.  Or would it be better to adopt an evidence based approach?  One starting with the facts (listed below) about single parents, courtesy of Gingerbread, an organisation that thinks discussions about lone parents (a very diverse group) should be based on reality and not myths.

Incidentally, Karen is Simon’s second wife and he had two children with his first partner so I guess he knows a bit about making lone parent families (see fourth bullet point in the list below), if nothing else about them.  A policy of tough on lone parents, but not tough on those who put many in that position, eh, Simon?  And what happened to sticking with one’s husband or wife through thick and thin until death do you part, eh, Simon?  Surely, a big problem is the ease with which one may get divorced, eh, Simon?  Now is it not the liberal elite which was responsible for making divorce easier, eh, Simon?  Shame on you Simon, a working class boy, for allowing yourself to be seduced from the path of righteousness into the path of divorce.

Simon, some days I wish I had been born a decade or so earlier than I was so I might enjoy the experience of living through the 1960s first hand.  I get the distinct impression that you (like Farage, Howard and Blair) wish that decade had never happened.  Well it did, get over it and move on.  And, I have no problem with your divorce or the divorce laws, but I do with your hypocrisy.

Roy Jenkins was a real Socialist when it came to addressing the social issues of the 1960s.  He saw through Parliament, when Home Secretary, the permanent abolition of hanging, the relaxation of the licensing laws, the ending of theatre censorship and introduced a ground breaking Race Relations Bill.  He secured government time to ensure the passage of Private Members’ Bills on both homosexuality, finally legalising it and abortion.  He ended flogging in prisons.

In 1976 he told the Police Federation conference that for many prisoners, prison did not work.  He urged them to look at the evidence and to recognise how little the widespread use of prison reduces crime or deals effectively with the individuals concerned.  Faced with concerted booing, he gave his hostile audience a lecture on democracy.  The rule of law in a democratic society did not mean our pet prejudices, but the rule of Parliament as applied by the courts.  One cannot have a rule of law while dismissing with disparagement Parliament, the courts and those who practise in them.  The job of the police and that of the Home Secretary, he told them, is to apply the law as it is and not to decry it.

Roy Jenkins was one of the most reforming Home Secretaries of all time.  He was in favour of evidence based policy.  I understand you think people like me are in the wrong party, because we are proud not only of his bringing in such liberal legislation, but because we want to do more?  That our liberal tendencies makes us less socialist than you?  Personally, I think you would be more at home in ukip with its net curtain twitching, back to the 1950s, knee jerk attitudes than in a party which is at its best when it bases policy on evidence not anecdote.  Evidence, Karen, tinged with more than just a little empathy for those worse off than ourselves.

And now for those facts about single parents

There are 2 million single parents in Britain today (1) – they make up a quarter of families with children, a figure which has remained consistent for the past decade (2)

Less than 2 per cent of single parents are teenagers (3)

The median age of single parents is 38.1 (4)

Around half of single parents had their children within marriage – 49 per cent are separated from marriage, divorced or widowed (5)

63.4 per cent of single parents are in work, up 19.6 percentage points since 1996 (6)

The employment rate for single parents varies depending on the age of their youngest child.  Once their children are 12 or over, single parents’ employment rate is similar to, or higher than, the employment rate for mothers in couples (71 per cent of single parents whose child is 11-15 are in work) (7)

Who are single parents?

There are 3 million children living in a single parent household (23% per cent of all dependent children) (8)

Around 8 per cent of single parents (186,000) are fathers (9)

The average duration of single parenthood is around 5 years (10)

Only 6.5 per cent of all births are registered alone, and 10 per cent are registered to two parents who live apart (11)

Single fathers are more likely to be widowed than single mothers (12 per cent of single fathers are widowed, compared with 5 per cent of single mothers), and their children tend to be older (12)

Just under half of couples divorcing in 2009 had at least one child aged under 16.  Over a fifth (21 per cent) of the children in 2009 were under five and 63 per cent were under eleven (13)

The proportion of single parent families has increased since the 1970s, but it hasn’t changed much in the last ten years

In 1971 just 8 per cent of families with children were single parent families (14)

In 1998 24 per cent of families with children were single parent families (15)

In 2011 26 per cent of families with children were single parent families (16)

Single parent families and poverty:

Children in single parent families are nearly twice as likely as children in couple families to live in relative poverty.  Over four in every 10 (42 per cent) children in single parent families are poor, compared to just over two in 10 (23 per cent) of children in couple families (17)

Paid work is not a guaranteed route out of poverty for single parent families; the poverty rate for children in single parent families where the parent works part-time is 30 per cent, and 22 per cent where the parent works full-time (18).

The median weekly income for working single parent families doing 16 hours a week or more is £337, compared with £491 for couple families with one worker and £700 where both parents work (19)

43 per cent of single parents are social housing tenants compared to 12 per cent of couples (20)

71 per cent of all single parent renters receive housing benefit compared to 25 per cent of all couple renters (21)

Single parent households are the most likely to be in arrears on one or more household bills, mortgage or non-mortgage borrowing commitment (31 per cent) (22)

38 per cent of single parents said that money always runs out before the end of the week/month compared to 19 per cent of couples (23)

63 per cent of single parents have no savings compared to 34 per cent of couples (24)

Work and childcare

Where single parents are not working, this is often because there are health issues that make work difficult: 33 per cent of unemployed single parents have a disability or long-standing illness (25) and 34 per cent have a child with a disability (26)

Over half of single parents are in work (59.2 per cent), up 14.5 percentage points since 1997.  In the same period, the employment rate of mothers in couples has risen three percentage points to 71 per cent (27)

Single parents rely heavily on informal childcare.  Of those using childcare, 46 per cent said it was informal. (28)  For single parents working 16 hours a week or more 34 per cent had a childcare arrangement with the child’s grandparents, and 17 per cent had an arrangement with their ex-partner (29)

Working single parents paying for childcare are much more likely than working couples paying for childcare to find it difficult to meet childcare costs (32% compared to 22% of couples where one partner is in work, and 20% of couples where both work) (30)

Child maintenance

Only two-fifths (38 per cent) of single parents receive maintenance from their child’s other parent (31)

For all those with an agreement for child maintenance (both through the CSA and private arrangement) the median weekly amount received is £46 per family (32)

The average amount of child maintenance liable to be paid through the CSA is currently £33.50 per week (£22.50 if all cases with a weekly assessment of zero are included in the average). (33)  Among parents with care in receipt of income-related benefits, the average amount is £23 (excluding cases with a weekly assessment of zero) (34)

Of single parents receiving child maintenance through the CSA, 40 per cent receive less than £10 per week, 38 per cent receive between £10 and £50 per week and 22 per cent receive more than £50 per week (35)

Family life

At least 9 per cent of single parents share the care of their child equally, or nearly equally, with the other parent (36)

The majority of children have face to face contact with their other parent.  71 per cent of resident parents said that their child had direct contact with the other parent (37)

65 per cent of those with contact said this included overnight stays, usually at least monthly (38)

Only 20 per cent of all resident parents say that their child has no contact with their other parent (39).  Of these, 63 per cent said there had been no contact since the parental relationship ended (40)

Parental separation by itself is not considered predictive of poor outcomes in children (41)  Parental conflict has been identified as a key mediating variable in producing negative outcomes in children.  A comparison between couple families experiencing high levels of conflict with single parent families found that children fared less well in conflicted couple families, demonstrating that family functioning has a greater impact than family structure in contributing to child outcomes (42)

Parental separation and the resulting single parent status often leads to financial hardship.  That resulting poverty may be a significant factor in explaining poorer child outcomes rather than family structure (43)

References

1. Families and households 2014, Office for National Statistics, 2015
2. Families and households 2014, Office for National Statistics, 2015
3. Figure produced for Gingerbread by the Fertility and Family Analysis Unit, Office of National Statistic and derived from the Annual Population Survey (APS), (Labour Force Survey plus boost), 2009 data
4. Lone parents with dependent children, January 2012, Office for National Statistics
5. Lone parents with dependent children, January 2012, Office for National Statistics
6. Working and Workless Households, 2014, Table P. Office for National Statistics, October 2014
7. Families with children in Britain: Findings from the 2008 Families and children study (FACS), Table 3.2. Department for Work and Pensions, 2010
8. Households Below Average Income, An analysis of the income distribution 1994/95 – 2009/10, Table 4.1ts. Department for Work and Pensions, 2011
9. Lone parents with dependent children, January 2012, Office for National Statistics
10. Leaving Lone Parenthood: Analysis of the repartnering patterns of lone mothers in the U.K. Skew, A., Berrington, A., Falkingham, J. 2008, on data from 2005
11. Derived from Households and Families, Social Trends 41, Table 6 & 7. ONS, 2011. Data from 2009
12. Analysis of Labour Force Survey data from June 2006 produced for Gingerbread by ONS
13. Divorces in England and Wales 2009. ONS Statistical Bulletin, February 2011
14. General Household Survey 2007, Table 3.6. ONS, 2009
15. General Lifestyle Survey, 2009, Table 3.6. ONS, 2011
16. Lone parents with dependent children, January 2012, Office for National Statistics
17. Households below average income (HBAI): 1994/95 to 2012/13,Table 4.14ts. Department for Work and Pensions, 2014
18. Households below average income (HBAI): 1994/95 to 2012/13,Table 4.14ts. Department for Work and Pensions, 2014
19. Family and Children Survey 2008, Table 6.3. DWP, 2010
20. Family and Children Survey 2008, Table 9.1. DWP, 2010
21. English Housing Survey, Household Report 2009 – 10, Table 3.6. Department for Communities and Local Government, 2011
22. Wealth in Great Britain. Main Results from the Wealth and Assets Survey 2006/08, p.108. ONS, 2009
23. Family and Children Survey 2008, Table 8.8. DWP, 2010
24. Family Resource Survey UK, 2008-2009, Table 4.10. Department for Work and Pensions, 2010
25. Family and Children Survey 2008, Table 3.2. DWP, 2010
26. Family and Children Survey 2008, Table 12.5. DWP, 2010
27. Working and Workless Households, 2012, Table P. ONS Statistical Bulletin, August 2012
28. Family and Children Survey 2008, Table 16.5. DWP, 2010
29. Family and Children Survey 2008, Table 16.1. DWP, 2010
30. Childcare and early years survey of parents 2009, p.83. NatCen/Department for Education, 2010. Research Report DFE-RR054
31. Family and Children Survey 2008, Table 15.1. DWP, 2010
32. Family and Children Survey 2008, Table 15.4b. DWP, 2010
33. Child Support Agency national statistics, June 2011. CMEC/DWP, 2011
34. Parliamentary Question, Hansard 24/03/2011, col 1242W
35. PQ response to Karen Buck, March 2011, Letter from Stephen Geraghty (CMEC), 17/3/11 Col 566W
36. Problematic contact after separation and divorce. Peacey, V., Hunt, J. Gingerbread, 2008
37. I’m not saying it was easy…Contact problems in separated families. Peacey, V., Hunt, J. Gingerbread, 2009
38. I’m not saying it was easy…Contact problems in separated families. Peacey, V., Hunt, J. Gingerbread, 2009
39. Problematic contact after separation and divorce. Peacey, V., Hunt, J. Gingerbread, 2008
40. I’m not saying it was easy . . . Contact problems in separated families. Peacey, V., Hunt, J. Gingerbread, 2009
41. Impact of Family Breakdown on Children’s Well-Being. Mooney, A., Oliver, C., Smith, M. Thomas Coram Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London, 2009
42. Impact of Family Breakdown on Children’s Well-Being. Mooney, A., Oliver, C., Smith, M. Thomas Coram Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London, 2009
43. Impact of Family Breakdown on Children’s Well-Being. Mooney, A., Oliver, C., Smith, M. Thomas Coram Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London, 2009

#ukip Return of Alf Garnett Or If U Want Rumanian For Neighbour, Vote Labour? #GE2015 #RaceForNumber10

There was another piece of codswallop (and book promotion) from Matthew Goodwin in the Guardian on Monday 15th December.

And here is the prime piece of codswallop:

“In short, since the 1970s there has been a deep and growing divide in the values that separate who we might loosely term pro-Ukip and anti-Ukip voters.  Pro-Ukip voters are instinctively receptive to Farage’s anti-EU, anti-immigration and anti-Westminster message, and comprise between 25% and 30% of the overall electorate.  These are the voters who grew up before Britain joined the EU (so they must be 57 and over at least if they voted in the 1975 referendum), before increased immigration (67 and over, if talking about post Empire Windrush) and in an era when genuinely competing ideological projects existed in politics (over 100 if we are to believe the far left).”

These voters are, I assume, the people for whom Farage speaks when he says he is ambivalent about homosexuality, but understands why older people who grew up before the EU are made uncomfortable by gay people?  There being no LGBTs, visible ethnic minorities, liberals, people on Social Security, lone parents, in fact anyone ukippers rant on about whilst on painkillers in the UK before 1975.  Time Goodwin outed Farage, surely?  We are not talking about the EU here are we?  But instead the 1960s, that decade that Tony Blair and Michael Howard both blamed for all of society’s ills back in the 2005 General Election.  I do not see Farage rolling up for a Magical Mystery Tour either, not unless Sir Cliff is driving the bus.  Back to the 1950s means a repudiation of the social advances of the 1960s.  Advances which were partly in reaction to a stifling, conformist conservative society.

I really have no idea what Goodwin is an expert in and these days I wonder if he does so himself.  In 1964, 11 years before the EU referendum, the West Midlands constituency of Smethwick was the most colour-conscious place in the country, and the scene of a Tory campaign that successfully exploited anti-immigrant sentiment.  The infamous slogan that propelled a Tory into the House of Commons was, “If you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote Labour.”

Peter Griffiths, the successful Tory candidate refused to disown the slogan, “I would not condemn any man who said that,” he told the Times during his election campaign.  “I regard it as a manifestation of popular feeling.”  All sounds rather depressingly familiar, does it not?  However, it proves, once again, that Goodwin knows precious little about this country’s economic, political and social history.  He also seems confused if he thinks that the commitment of most political parties to equal opportunities for all is not, in part at least, a matter of ideology (as well as political necessity) and a sign that they are as important to someone living in Smethwick as they are to the stereotypical Islington social liberal.

ukip’s forebears were fascists in the 1930s, fought the suffragettes in the 1900s, burnt industrial machinery in the early 19th Century, persecuted Catholics (sometimes with official approval and even sanction in the two centuries after 1605), massacred 150 Jews in York on March 16th, 1190 at York …  I could go on, but the common link is an inability and/or unwillingness to accept economic, political and social change, combined with various forms of intolerance towards the other.  Moreover, these responses were and are not unique to anyone particular class.  Anti-semitism being quite common amongst the upper class in the 1930s as much as it was amongst the working class followers of Sir Oswald Mosley, 6th Baronet of Ancoats.  As Aneurin Bevan once observed, “Fascism is not in itself a new order of society.  It is the future refusing to be born.”

In one sense, Goodwin is right, we have been here before, because I can hear Farage today saying exactly what Griffiths said to the Times in 1964.  Moreover, Goodwin says, “In short, since the 1970s there has been a deep and growing divide in the values” of voters.  Goodwin, there always has been such a divide and there probably always will be.  Partly because, Goodwin, some of the voters, some of the time, whatever you may think, are stupid.  Bevan asked, “How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power?  Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics in the twentieth century.”  Step forward, Alf Garnett, the perfect example of a working class Tory and now ukip supporter?  Alf  arrived on our television screens in 1965, but as a skilled member of the working class he got the vote in 1867, courtesy of Benjamin Disraeli.  Mr Disraeli gave Alf the vote because he was banking on the conservatism of the British working man favouring the Tory Party at election time.

ukip is wealth persuading poverty to keep it in power, because ukip has nothing to say to the left behind that would make their condition any better than it is now.  What intrigues me, Goodwin, is why you seem to think they do and whether your ignorance about the state of the modern labour market, especially the implications of deindustrialisation, is feigned or real.

“Calling out racism where racism exists is important” says Goodwin, “But over the longer term this will not get our society very far.  If it did, then Europe as a whole would not have seen a stubbornly persistent rise of radical right politics over a 30-year period.”  There was a time when it was felt calling out racism was not important, because it was stubborn and persistent.  There was a time when Paul “Foot castigated “the inability of the local (Smethwick) Labour party, corrupted as it was by anti-immigrant sentiment, to hit back in a determined and principled way” against Griffiths and what he stood for.”  It is a moot point whether he would have wholly approved of Labour’s Campaigning Against ukip document, but I think he would accept that Labour has moved on.

By the way, Goodwin, Labour is spelt with a u.  Your Tweet of yesterday referring to blue collar workers suggests you either think this is the 51st State or that (like the libertarians in ukip) that it should be.  Bevan would, though, have recognised Joe the Plumber, the archetypal blue collar worker of the 2008 Presidential Race.  The man who proved voters can be stupid when he told Obama that he, Joe, would be worse off as a result of the candidate’s proposed tax cuts (for middle class voters like Joe).  The same Joe the Plumber who feels his right to bear arms trumps the right of others to life.  Definitely a natural Labour supporter!

The question each generation has to ask itself is do you seek to narrow or bridge gaps within society or, like Farage widen and exploit them for your own political and financial ends?

For those unfamiliar with the events of 1964 in Smethwick and how they resonate in sympathy with the events of today then I think Stuart Jeffries article is a good place to start.  Incidentally, I understand that a variation of the slogan that I have read in a number of places was “… vote Liberal or Labour”.

Other interesting articles:

Looking Back at Race Relations

Peter Griffiths – Obituary (Daily Telegraph)

Peter Griffiths – Obituary (Wolverhampton Express and Star)

Neil Hamilton provides a link between then and now.  Griffiths once wrote, “Apartheid, if it could be separated from racialism, could well be an alternative to integration.”  Hamilton did his bit to try and help the apartheid regime of South Africa improve its chances of survival.  One hopes he is equally successful with ukip’s electoral chances!

#DWP #WOW To Use Fraud Staff To Harass People Off #ESA In #Birmingham #IDS

An informed source within the geographical area of DWP, wherein I used to work, recently informed me that fraud staff were being redeployed to conduct robust interviews with people claiming Employment and Support Allowance.

Yesterday, I was Tweeted a link to this website and specifically this post:

“DWP management target disabled  benefit claimants.

Over the next 24 hours DWP management will ‘invite’ close on 2,000 benefit claimants from Birmingham to attend interviews, with a goal of getting at least 10% off the benefit register.

The group of benefit claimants being targeted are in the majority waiting for assessments to decide if they are able to be deemed ‘fit for work’. (The assessment formerly and controversially run by ATOS). Those waiting assessments are often disabled or vulnerable adults.

The ‘invitation’ letter issued makes no suggestion that the attendance to these interviews is purely voluntary, indeed DWP staff in Birmingham (and Central England) have been advised verbally and by email from management to keep it to themselves that attendance to these interviews is not mandatory. One manager in a city based office was overheard saying that the way to deal with these claimants is to ‘hassle, hassle them off benefit’.

Andrew Lloyd, PCS Midlands regional secretary that represents DWP staff said, “It is outrageous that the DWP are duping the most vulnerable by issuing this letter, and then worse still setting a target to get those off benefits, it could be argued that this approach is unlawful. Our members are totally opposed to this approach but are faced with inferred disciplinary action unless they act upon these targets.”

[Press Release from PCS Union on 14th November 2014]”

Where did I use to work?  Birmingham!

Is This The True Face Of #ukip, #MarkReckless, #DouglasCarswell & #NigelFarage? #ThanetSouth

The discomforts of Douglas Carswell

Credit where it is due that Kamikaze (Douglas) Carswell asked to be removed from the exchange above.

Watch Douglas Carswell gives his victory speech

Douglas Carswell’s Clacton victory speech: ‘Ukip must stand for all Britons’

Douglas Carswell fails to endorse plan by Farage for ban on migrants with HIV

Pinning Down Farage: What is UKIP’s policy on the NHS and health?

I will edit this post if I receive an apology in full from Cheeky Latte that I may ask to be published on a number of websites.