Social workers brace themselves for another round of media vilification.

Recent revelations about the shocking case of a father who repeatedly raped his daughters over a twenty five year period and the apparent complete failure of social and health care professionals to intervene, is resulting in another media led witch hunt of social workers. Some of this criticism will be justified, some less so. In a perfect world of course, communities would play a far bigger role in preventing child abuse but that is not the reality of today's world, and I'm not sure how much it ever was. Putting aside for a moment any visions of a future society that we might harbour, it has to be admitted that it is essential that we have some form of professional social care structure. Social workers are frequently portrayed as either elitist interfering, middle class, lefty do-gooders or as inefficient, uncaring careerists. There is probably an element of truth in both criticisms but I have to say that most of the social workers that I have come into contact with have been, regardless of any other failings, genuinely compassionate individuals doing there best in overstretched and underfunded departments. If you are a five feet two female case worker it must be pretty daunting doorstepping an intimidating six foot man with a known track record of violence. Why are there so few male social workers? Why don't some of those smart arse rugger buggers have a go? They might find it change from trying to be something in the city and moaning about clueless social services departments.

Interesting stuff about three blokes that hardly anyone under thirty has heard of.

Principia Dialectica is usually a bit too intellectually rarefied for my own simple taste but recently a couple of posts have caught my eye. One concerns the relationship between George Orwell and Michael Foot when Foot was editor of Tribune and the other item is possibly the best obituary of Colin Ward that I have come across so far.

Stranger than fiction.

I'm grateful to Henry for pointing me in the direction of the Lobster revelations about possible American funding of the Gang of Four and SDP. I don't know how plausible this is and I tend to be a bit cynical about many conspiracy theories but then again look at the surprising things revealed about the past every time a new batch of archived government records are made available. Today it was Hitler Youth cycling (spycling) holidays in UK, exchange visits with Walmington On Sea Scouts and Baden Powell being courted by Hitler. And there was I thinking it was all reef knots and picking stones out of horses hooves.

Message In A Bottle.

It seems somewhat ridiculous to talk of revolution ....... but all the alternatives are even more ridiculous, since they imply accepting the existing order in one way or another. S I 1960.
Recuperation, as I have said before, is not just some pseudo-intellectual concept dreamt up by the situationists in order to frighten the horses. In a world where so much of what we thought was "progressive' or "radical" has been gift wrapped and sold back to us. In a world that has reduced militants to mere bit players in the spectacle of rebellion. In that kind of world where the dream of the non-hierarchical organisation of production has come back as that nightmare product of the business school; the team leader infested "horizontal organisation". In that kind of world it's clear that little short of total rebellion can succeed. I have never been in favour of gratuitous violence. A single act of kindness is likely to impress me more. But in a world like this the molotov cocktail through the bank window is the ultimate message in a bottle. And the message? "Recuperate THAT".

Confessions of an Essex Boy.

As is well known, the roots of the blues lie not in the levees of the Mississippi Delta but in the windswept seawalls of the Thames Estuary. At least that's the version of history favoured in South Essex. It's certainly true that back in the 70s bands like Dr Feelgood and The Kursaal Flyers for example, saved us all from a fate worse than Wings. I don't think that there is a county in the country quite like Essex. It is the home of bellwether constituencies, poisoned industrial wastelands, eerie tidal marshes, New Towns, Constable Country, shopping centres the size of small republics, Essex Man, Essex Girls, Tiptree Jam and Southend Pier.
My own involvement with the county started when at the age of five we moved from London to live in a wooden bungalow on the Canvey Island plotlands. Canvey at that time only had a couple of made up roads with the majority of wooden dwellings being located on dirt tracks that turned to quagmires in winter. We had no mains drainage, the chemical toilet being emptied into a pit in the garden. Lying below high water mark the island, joined to the mainland by the bridge at Benfleet, was protected by a seawall built by the Dutch a couple of hundred years previously. I think that even at that young age I knew that Canvey was different; was unlike other places. The dreadful floods of 1953 forced us to retreat to higher ground. We decamped and headed to the sunlit uplands of Leyton. Although much like any other part of that swathe of Victorian development that lies beyond the Old Eastend, and considered to be "London" in every respect, Leyton was at the time officialy part of Essex. On my sixteenth birthday we moved back to Essex proper and the small port of Brightlingsea. Essex has in the past been socially and economically divided between the industrial south and the more rural north of the county. North Essex, and Brightlingsea was very much North Essex, was very different to the south. People spoke with a totally different accent for one thing. North Essex was South East Anglia, rural in speech pattern and outlook. South Essex, populated to a large extent by refugees from The Blitz and Eastend overcrowding, was a different world. People in the southern part spoke with a London accent that would later be categorised by the pointy heads as Estuarine English.
When I left home at the age of seventeen it might well have been the end of my involvement with Essex but for some years afterward I would work on coastal trading vessels that frequently visited the Essex ports. I very often found it frustrating to fetch up for the evening in somewhere like Purfleet with no social option but a few pints in the Working Men's Club up the road while knowing full well that a few miles to the west Swinging London was swinging along quite well without any input from me.
I spend quite a bit of time pondering the question of identity and what it means in a multicultural nation. While I don't feel particularly British or even all that English, I do very much identify with being a Londoner. Truth is of course that a lot of my formative years were spent in that slightly odd, little bit dodgy nether world of Essex.

A link to the past - and a lesson for the future.

The death of Michael Foot has severed perhaps the last link between New Labour and the old time Labour Party that was a joint project of trade unions, co-ops and the Fabian Society. Acres of newsprint not to mention the blogosphere will be devoted to dissecting Foot's political career. Darling of the left, that coat, consummate parliamentarian, wonderful orator, last of the pre-celebrity politicians, old fashioned West Country liberal gentleman. Some of it is even true. For me however the real lesson from Michael Foot's life is that even the most principled of people can come a serious personal and political cropper if they allow loyalty to the party to become more important than loyalty to those principles. It's a very old dilemma and just as pertinent today as ever.

Back by popular demand.

Not only popular, but as you can see from the comments on the right, international demand as well. I'm not sure about the Japanese contribution. Why is SEX written in English? Is that an offer of sex if only I will resume blogging? I suspect not. Anyway my technical difficulties seem to be resolved at last and I'm back on the case.
Now, about this Non-Dom malarkey. As I understand it Lord Ashcroft doesn't pay tax anywhere but makes huge contributions to political parties in the certain knowledge that when they come to power politicians will smile benignly on His Lordships business enterprises. In Belize the People's United Party went as far as rewarding Ashcroft's funding of that party by introducing legislation that was advantageous to him. Lets be clear about this. All this talk of money is to some extent a smokescreen. This is not you or me doing a bit of graft "off cards". This is not your normal businessman being advised how to keep his tax to a minimum. This is not even that Bertie Wooster of the environmental movement Zac Goldsmith keeping the family silver offshore. No, this is about one man reinvesting the millions saved in unpaid tax. Reinvesting it in political parties that will in turn pay interest in the form of political power that is undemocratic, undisclosed and difficult to trace. This is the kind of corruption that makes bunging the odd duck house on expenses look like running off your birthday party invites on the office photocopier.