We've heard much about 'big government, small government'. Some things the establishment insists they do on our behalf (just as long as we don't send the bill to the tax havens). Other things they deem not to be their responsibility. But are there hidden aspects to the proposed development of our children to which we should be more aware?
Three things in the news recently had alarm bells ringing in my cynical old mind. I often say I wasn't born cynical (to which my long-suffering wife looks askance), so why the suspicion, I wonder, every time the gurus and apologists clash on the media? Who chooses these people, I ask myself (if there's no one else around to ask).
Why do I always get the feeling that the real debate happened long ago - handed down from a great height (as in class stratum) and a great distance (as in tax haven). The debate seems merely an opening gambit to introduce the new reality to the hoi polloi. The powers-that-be then have a chance to choose their weapons - perhaps putting a more subtle spin on the subject might do it. If not, then it's time to dust off the tear gas and water cannon.
A bit like the phony wrestling we used to get on Saturday-afternoon TV, it all seems too well choreographed to me. It seems they always miss the important points. Here's a link to a BBC News clip -
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-22810954
The issue, as far as the BBC, and guests, are concerned, isn't so much that some creepy bar-steward, we know not whom, but probably unelected by we, the people, has decided that it would be a good idea to bring regimentation into our children's lives. That should stymie any future George Carlin-type characters - good and proper.
But that's the question in my mind, whilst the BBC's slant is more about the lack of university degrees that these ex-warriors have acquired while out there fighting tooth and nail to bring civilisation to the empire (where there just happens, perchance, to be oil and other resources - human and otherwise, going cheap).
I suggest that the last thing our future leading lights, of 'free society', need on top of their formative decade of 'yes-Sir, no-Sir, three-bags-full-Sir' induction, is a certificate to prove it. So that they must then produce it, as they sign along the obligatory dotted line of life-long debt, to secure themselves a place in the University of Whatever the illustrious cabal deems conducive to their scheme of things. Flipping burgers (as they say across the pond) springs to mind, now that privatisation and selling off the family silver have culminated. You can see how a military training would come in handy though, when the collapse comes and you have to beat off the starving hoards with a fish slice.
It makes me wonder though. What's the hurry?
"The Troops to Teachers scheme will help 'highly skilled' former military personnel become teachers within two years."
Maybe the powers-that-be (those of the great-height and great-distance variety) are complaining that things (the sort of things that we know are decided behind closed doors - at a great height and distance) are behind schedule. (That inept hoi polloi leadership should've had WWIII started long since. You just can't get the staff these days.) It can't be all-bad mind you, if it at least gets that horrible wee Michael Gove a slap along the back o' the lugs from some Bilderberg bigwig. Yet he'll persist. No doubt, oblivious that though system-creepery is his bent, we're not all the same as him.
"The DofE stressed that the scheme would use a rigorous assessment, selection and recruitment process to identify those 'with the potential to become outstanding teachers'," says the BBC.
Achtung! It sounds like psychometric testing to me. I suspect that the real "rigorous assessment" happened some time ago. But I notice that the only complaint our Labour Party (the party of working people - for the many, not the few) representatives have about the scheme comes from Shadow Education Secretary, Stephen Twigg, who, according to the BBC, "said Labour supported re-training troops as teachers but said the government had been too slow to do it". How's that for polemics? It wouldn't do if he were 100% in agreement, would it? The hoi polloi might smell a rat. (Chance would be a fine thing.)
Anyway, another bandying of words going on in the UK media presently was about female doctors. Endorsed, then "backtracked" from, by Health Minister Anna Soubry, Conservative MP Anne McIntosh said recently, "It's a controversial thing to say, but perhaps I as a woman can say this..." (Maybe I could say it as a man, but it makes neither of us indubitably right) "...70% of medical students currently are women. When they go into practice and then in the normal course of events will marry and have children, they often want to go part-time and it is obviously a tremendous burden training what effectively might be two GPs working part-time where they are ladies. And I think that is something that is going to put a huge burden on the health service."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-22781875
Anyone listening to that would assume that work in the NHS (soon to be privatised by some devious, sleazy means or other) should take priority over child rearing. Maybe that makes sense to those of a corporatist mentality, but a mum's a mum isn't she? I wonder what kind of "huge burden" she'd have society bear, were we to abolish parenthood and, of course, then inevitably, blame the parents when ensuing generations turn out sociopathic - as one might duly expect them to do, in the image of their corporate mentors. Yet cost-benefit analysis remains the nub of the debate.
The whole thing reminds me of that Aaron Russo YouTube video apparently revealing that the true reason that the world owners emancipated women was not so much to do with equality, altruism, or even public pressure, but more to do with the prospective tax take from getting women out working. On the other hand, we must avoid motherhood at all costs, being, as it is, nought but a burden on the (corporate) community. Furthermore, we can't have mere mothers influencing the values of future generations. How might the military complex profit from a future without violence? What would happen to the so-painstakingly-engineered competitive society? What might the world be like were the noses of the great unwashed to disengage from the proverbial grindstone?
Is it just me, or does any one else see where this is all going? Either you mustn't train to be a doctor for fear of wasting valuable education (which, BTW, you or your parents paid for via debt peonage) or surrender your whippersnappers' education to the uniformity of the cabal. For we can't have you lot faffin' about with kids when we have an NHS to render saleable. Anyway, you might have the intellect to acquire a medical degree, but we shan't trust you to rear your own sprogs in a way that suits our purpose.
Well, then this morning again the BBC had my cynicism juices flowing when a couple of women were having a set-to about school attendance. To cut a long story short, it seems we can't have children growing up thinking that anything short of death or at least unconsciousness will get them out of a hard day's grind, keeping the debt-based, and fractionally reserved, merry-go-round going round. No it isn't! Yes it is! Au contraire! Ya! Boo - sucks! It went, as usual.
Personally, I can't tell the difference between the soap operas and the news pops these days. I think that what we really need to do now is teach our children how to deal with this New World Order we see creeping up on us, so that when they grow up they're properly equipped to order it out of their lives - and to demand a better way for their future.
We
do need a New World Order - but it needs to be one that deals with democratic complacency. As ever, that'll depend on how well we teach them to work together for the common weal. For, if we don't teach them our way, others will teach them their way.
David McBain wants people to read his articles and blogs. He was born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1948, one month before the start of the National Health Service (NHS UK) and fears now that he will outlive its usefulness to future generations. That, along with the constant threat to much of the social progress that ordinary people achieved in the last century, concerns him - and he wants to share his thoughts with others.