On Friday, I described Labour as bastards. I don't regret doing so. No one seemed to disagree with me. I did so with regard to the plan Labour now seems to have to continue with the two-child benefit cap.
Yesterday, they tried to outdo themselves. As the Guardian noted:
Hundreds of thousands of children with special needs could lose their legal entitlement to extra support in schools in England under plans being considered by ministers, a move that campaigners warn could force thousands more pupils out of mainstream education.
As they noted:
The reforms relate to education, health and care plans (EHCPs), statutory documents families have relied on for more than a decade to guarantee their children's right to support for conditions such as autism spectrum disorder and mental health issues.
Who is going to suffer as a result of this (which Labour deny, but they are not noted for telling the truth)? As the Guardian notes:
The reforms relate to education, health and care plans (EHCPs), statutory documents families have relied on for more than a decade to guarantee their children's right to support for conditions such as autism spectrum disorder and mental health issues.
These plans tend to address:
-
Speech, language and communication needs
-
Autistic spectrum condition
- ADHD
-
Broad learning difficulties
-
Specific learning difficulties such as:
-
Dyslexia – difficulty with reading, writing, and spelling.
-
Dyscalculia – difficulty with understanding numbers and mathematics.
-
Dyspraxia (DCD) – coordination and motor skills challenges.
-
The implication is very clear. Labour, with Badenoch and Reform, is obviously now trying to deny three things.
The first is that these conditions exist.
The second is that they need to be addressed.
The third is that it is the responsibility of the state to help address them.
This is total neglect by Labour. This failure will have numerous consequences.
The first is lost opportunity for those who will be denied the chance to realise it.
The second is a massive long-term cost as a result of those prejudiced now by choice having problems later.
The third is significant classroom disruption by those who need help and do not get it, with harm to the education of other children happening as a result.
The fourth is dramatically increased stress for class teachers who will be left without the support they need for children in their classes. This will be at cost to education as a whole.
In other words, this decision is total madness. It makes literally no sense at all.
It is as if Labour hate children and most especially children with needs or those in poverty, and is intent on doing everything they can to make life as hard as possible for them and all those who care for them.
My opinion is confirmed. These people really are bastards. There is no other description for them.
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Complete lack of care for people stems from what the journalist Sam Freedman calls “Treasury Brain”. In turn, Treasury dominance stems from Britain’s absolute power model of governance. The wider problem needs solution before people can come first.
I so admire your posts. Today, ‘How many poets’ and this one are excellent.
That said, I don’t like the word ‘bastards’ being used about politicians. I am often hugely amused by some of Mike Parr’s abusive names (others do it) but I wish you would all stick to criticizing policies not people.
What I want is for three or four civil servants in a department to independently (and without hesitation for redaction) put the output of this blog on a minister’s desk with a note saying something like ‘This is what we should do.’ And other departments – and again and again.
It also looks as though – the much abused – Rachel Reeves intended to tax the banks but was blackmailed by the likes of JP Morgan Chase.
Noted
I only use such language occassionally.
That is deliberate.
If you suffer from the belief that ‘there is no money’, this is what you get.
What is so unforgiveable is the ‘unknown known’ – that Bridget Phillipson and Liz Kendal both sit atop a huge sovereign money making machine.
In the cold light of day everyone, there are no excuses for this.
None.
Agreed
To be more precise, the Labour Party has been taken over by a coterie of bastards. I have friends who are Labour Party members, in the past I have even voted Labour. Labour’s current policies are being imposed by the coterie of bastards. But, if we are to have any chance of changing this situation, we have to influence the sane, reasonable MPs who are probably not bastards. They need to realise that they will undoubtedly lose their seats if they continue to support the policies of the bastards in their party. For the first time in my life, I live in a constituency with a Labour MP. He seems like a decent conscientious chap and I think he could be persuaded to rebel against the bastards and vote with the independent group and Greens and others to bring down the bastards. Let’s keep the pressure on and aim the insults where they belong!
I wonder what my Junior Minister LINO MP would advise my daughter, almost completing her 2nd year of probation as an Early Career Teacher, as to how she will in future deal with the Special Needs of one of her much loved ADHD 7 year olds, who recently and suddenly lost her father, if this little girl no longer has any EHCP mandated support?
Exclusion?
Warehousing in a special unit where she can be sedated into a compliant zombie?
Assisted dying?
I think maybe I should write again to my MP and ask her.
Incidentally, talking about the private company and personality cult Reform, I see that Fascist populism is again in play. The lying Reform Führer has said he will scrap the 2 child benefit cap and restore the winter fuel payment thus positioning Reform to the left of LINO.
Starmer isn’t just digging himself into a hole, he’s shovelling the sh*t in on top of himself as fast as he can. He isn’t in a position to call Fa***e out for lying, given that Starmer is one of the most consistently dishonest party leaders I’ve seen in my lifetime (10 pledges, friend of Corbyn, nationalisation of utilities, grass roots membership control of Labour etc.).
Well Mr McSweeney, what’s your line on this one?
See my blog just posted
With its leftward PR to appeal to working people, it won’t be long before Reform UK Party Limited (https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/16260766/officers) will need to change its name to National Socialist Workers Party Limited.
I note this observation in ‘The Sunday Times’ (Ben Taylor) on the U-J-turn on the Winter Fuel Allowance (it seems it really is a complete U-turn): the Labour plan is to go back to the original method, because; “a new means test for the winter fuel payment would be highly complex and ministers are considering a simpler option, which is restoring it as a universal benefit and then recouping the money when high income pensioners fill in their tax returns.”
This is exactly what I have been arguing from the very start; pay the universal benefit, and tax the benefit back from the wealthy through the income tax system. It is obvious. It always was obvious. It is one of the few Government systems that actually work. The efficient, fair and only reliable way to pay benefits, wherever practicable is by universal benefit. That is the cheapest way of doing it by far (the bureaucracy cost reduces drastically against means testing, and it delivers to everyone who needs it). How to deal with the Wealthy? Through the tax system, that is already designed to do the job. Why doesn’t it happen in Britain.
Because in our corrupted and diseased politics, our foolish, ill-informed and totally inadequate politicians prefer the insane politics of the focus group (a collection of ill-informed electors forming opinions based on the lethal and cynically exploitative propaganda of a corrupt press, bought and paid for by narrow and dangerous vested interests) Means testing is a means for Government to waste money in the £Biliions. This is deliberate. It is a central part of the disturbed psychology of neoliberalism, that is based on the proposition that the sole reason to work – is fear; because with fear comes cheap labour; and of course, cheap labour often isn’t very committed or effective. The result? Look around at how much doesn’t work in Britain; or the decayed infrastructure, juxtaposed to the abundant examples of ostentatious wealth. The system works well for a few, at the cost of the standards to be expected for millions of people. Means testing has become a neoliberal trope for good reason; for a very small and exclusive sect of exploiters, who will push the envelope further and further; because the can. The focus groups are in their pocket, and focus groups are easily manipulated.
John
A great deal to agree with, and so obvious that it takes about 3 seconds to come up wih this conclusion.
But that is beyond our Labour ministers.
Richard
Hi
I asked you about Universal Benefit (UB) and you said you did not support it, and I read your past posts as asked and you did in that past aggree its time had come.
You seem to be now supporting UB again?
Clearly the UK is in the vanguard of subjecting its poor and dis-enfranchised people to deliberate poverty. Of course in the future we can earn consultancy Pounds from foriegn governments on how to transistion to a bankrupt economy!
Its sad to observe the lack of support for citizens with health and income issues. And lack of forethought about the unfolding situation.
I have difficulties with UBI, not universal benefits.
Saw the following posts on X:
1. “Since Keir Starmer “changed” the Labour Party, he has lost 255,443 Party members.
His leadership has reduced Labour Party membership by 45%.
“To lose one Party member, Sir Keir, might be regarded as a misfortune.
To lose 255,443 can only be regarded as carelessness””
2. “Labour Party membership:
2014: 193,754
2015: 388,262
2017: 564,443
2023: 370,450
2025: 309,000
Aug 2024:
“With Keir Starmer’s leadership, the Labour Party has changed, returning politics to public service & a laser focus on rebuilding our country.”
Yeah, right.”
Agreed
Having known and worked with some fine people born out of wedlock, might an appropriate alternative to “bastard” be “predator”?
“Vulnerability is the biggest attraction to all predators.” (Mitts Xinindlu)
I don’t think the term means people born out of wedlock anymore. Language morphs.
I don’t disagree with the point on language changes. LINO ain’t predators – this implies some agression, some teeth.
Nah – LINO, Starmer, McSwine et al are………..cowardly psychopaths.
They do what they do (like man-baby in the USM) cos they have their hands on the levers of power.
Picture McSwine in a pub arguing that he was in favour of the two-child limit even though it meant children going hungry.
I can imagine him a bit later in A&E having been shown, directly by citizens, the error in this thinking.
People like McSwine (ditto 100% of the LINO cabinet) have no empathy, they are functioning psycopaths (ref: Starmer and Gaza).
We have a gov of psychopaths, advised by psychopaths. They should all be in Broadmoor, for life.
Those at the top of the UK government are terrified of the genius McS, spout the mantra of “there is no money and we need to balance the books”, slavishly giving the City whatever “help” it demands.
They are dimwits utterly incapable of doing anything for the benefit of the majority of the UK population.
To associate dimwits with this lot is to do honest, decent dimwits a disservice. Surely, the don’t deserve that!
TBH…… I have known and taught some fine dimwits in my time.
Seems McSweeney is not the genius he’s cracked up to be. A “founding myth” to place him where he is, perhaps? If so, by whom – and why?
https://open.substack.com/pub/adambienkov/p/the-founding-myth-of-morgan-mcsweeney?r=1i0za&utm_medium=ios
Does all of this come from the simple proposition that the economic cost does not have sufficient political benefit? That sounds like a DOGE lens. We’ll see how well that works when parts of US infrastructure fall over this year, from fire watching to hurricane forecasting.
I think we might find out that people actually do care about children, and old people, and the disabled. Because most of us are not sociopathic automatons like many economists assume.
The State seems to be spending more than ever before on identifying and labelling people with these conditions and more human resources are being spent addressing them. I wonder if this isn’t the direction to travel in search of solutions or amelioration. It’s possible to be on the autistic spectrum as you enter your teens and come off it when the same tests are done again when you enter adulthood but this seems to be rare. It would be interesting to compare to other countries to see if incentives matter here. I also wonder if the State is crowding out personal, parental and community solutions for people with these conditions.
If you want to post here please don’t post crap.
Autism is a condition.
So is ADHD.
You’re born with them.
You die with them.
They are not curable.
In some cases they need managemewnt.
In other cases not.
But they never go away.
Why are you stuoid enough to say what if grossly and offensively incorrect?
Why can’t you do some basic reseach?
Why are you so incapable of imagining another person’s condition?
Is that ignorance what you define as normal?
As with the disappearing Child Poverty Strategy, the long-term implications of reducing EHCP provisions could be substantial, and could well outweigh the short-term savings. Without adequate support, many SEND students will underachieve academically, limiting their employment prospects and increasing future reliance on social welfare programs. Lack of support will exacerbate mental health issues, leading to increased demand for mental health services in the future. It will also regrettably result increased interactions with the criminal justice system, which carries its own societal and financial costs. Then there is the substantial likely cost of legal challenges by families as they try to secure proper support for their children.
According to HM Treasury’s Green Book, all significant policy changes – including spending reductions – must undergo comprehensive appraisal to assess their long-term costs and benefits. This includes evaluating potential downstream impacts on other public services and societal outcomes. However, in the case of these proposed reforms, there is no public evidence that such a thorough financial analysis has been conducted or published.
The Department for Education has acknowledged possessing internal financial modelling related to the impact of these reforms. However, it has apparently declined to release this information, citing exemptions related to the formation of government policy. This lack of transparency has raised concerns among educational leaders and SEND experts, who argue that withholding this data undermines trust and suggests a potential hidden agenda focused on cost-cutting rather than improving support for vulnerable children.
In summary, it looks like the Government, once again, doesn’t care and can’t be bothered to show us its workings, if there are any.
But of course, above and beyond all this, EHCP provisions are needed because they’re really needed and if society really needs something, it’s affordable.
Much to agree with.
And on Sky News this morning, in response to Farage allegedly going to promise, well, you can say anything when in opposition, to remove the two-child benefit cap and restore the W.F.P in full, we had a “journalist” with a Scottish accent, bleating, “but where’s the money going to come from”. Is it stupidity, or is this attempt at brainwashing deliberate?
Oh but Farage had an answer!!! Cut all the net zero policies.
So lets destroy the planet, make us all poorer (esp children, the vunerable and old people) but that’s ok because we.ll give you a teeny bit back to “offset” the damage.
I despair!
“with a Scottish accent…”
The relevance of which is…?
So………..
The Government is worried about
The Disability Benefits Bill
The number of ‘economically inactive’ people
The Prison Population
How does cutting entitlement to ECHP’s address these issues?
Answer BTW it makes them all worse
In the past it was a Statement. These children made up 2% of school population, the Statement ended at 18 years.
This 2% of the population are very disabled children. They have sensory, physical and cognitive disabilities, often with complex health needs. It’s called the bell curve, which Labour should understand.
Currently EHCP’s are around 5 %. And growing but these are still high need children, and have always been high need, but were managed when there was more resource, and when schools and the curriculum were managed differently.
One reason why the percentage moved up is because when EHCPs were statements they ended at 18 years, now they end at 25 years, beyond the end of school age population. It’s just maths that the numbers swelled.
Another reason demand increased is due to the cuts to school’s real budgets, and cuts to children’s services. At a time when needs are rising due to poverty which causes SEND, and other societal factors like alcohol misuse which causes FASD and more prevalent than ASD, Covid impacts. Just where are parents and teachers supposed to go?
Quite simply EHCP has become the last place left where needs can be met in a hollowed out country.
The children’s needs are more complex, teachers are managing unprecedented levels of violence and harm, fuelled by a country where there is ‘no such thing as society’ , yet children need ‘society’ and so find their ‘society’ in X rated social media encouraging misogyny, radicalisation, child criminal and sexual exploitation, harm to self and other.etc These are new levels of demand. They didn’t exist to the same level as they do now yet big tech is untouchable.
Another reason why EHCPs are increasing and have done for years which Labour refuse to address is the unfit for purpose, politicised overburdened, and unyielding English National curriculum, along with a punitive English OFSTED system.
It’s interesting that the first demand point for EHCP is before the age of 5. Many come from health and early years educators who have been working with our most of the profoundly disabled children. Many of these infants go to Special School reception classes at 5 years.
The next demand point is around year 2, so 6 going on 7 years.
Why because the curriculum falls off a cliff edge, so by year 2 it’s a struggle to get play based and practical learning approaches in classrooms. The chalk and talk or death by power point increases as a child moves into Juniors / Year 3, the curriculum becomes flattened, 2 D and highly verbal. And the less able children can’t keep up.
Meanwhile the Scandi countries follow the evidence base, and teach children through a multi-sensory, hands on approach. All children learn best through this approach regardless of ability, huge evidence base to support this. ignored by the English DfE. Scotland has developed practice in line with the evidence base and Scandinavian approaches, albeit with much less available resource. Scandinavians understand the importance of investment in the critical sensitive period of development 0-8 years.
The next demand point is secondary transfer. This is the group who have struggled along but won’t manage the next cliff edge, as the rigidity and demands of the English National Curriculum goes into overdrive after primary school.
Many children could be included, but they can’t in a rigid, punitive system that punishes children who can’t access learning and punishes teachers: to the point where teachers feel suicidal, and many leave the profession within 5 years.
I have worked for decades in this system, it’s regressive and harmful but with lots of amazing teachers and beautiful children.
In summary there is something rotten in the state of Denmark, and Labour are doing nothing to change that.
A great deal to agree with.
And when I say less able, that means a narrow ability to fit in and conform to a rigid system that requires children to sit still in a seat for long periods of time and absorb bad curriculum content prescribed by a National Curriculum that no one dares depart from for fear of OFSTED punishment.
The National Curriculum is a national scandal and about as anti-educational as it’s possible to be.
It is a complete turn off for a significant minority of children, which then has a damaging effect on the rest, through disruption of lessons, and is a major cause of teacher stress.
Much to agree with on that curriculum
So, potential gifted future workers cast onto the scrap heap, along with their parents who will have to quit work to school from home, and the specialist teachers who work in the field. I suspect, money or no money, many educators will not give up on these children.
A nasty aspect of the hostile state. As soon as government signals its disinterest/hostility the ripples start spreading. Already some people are becoming openly hostile towards disability. There are reports of wheelchair users struggling to get on trains with some staff either disinterested or actively hostile. I heard a story about this on the radio but cannot provide any links.
It has taken decades for anything to do with autism, dyslexia, adhd and so on to become accepted as disabilities, the process was by no means complete. Now we are seeing a Labour government, I can hardly even type that, unwinding the process.
What a shameful bunch of bastards.
I am going to keep reposting your blogs on ny Facebook page , to see how many it takes before one if the labour members report me ar get me expelled from the party. Or until you, Jeremy Corbyn, Jack Polanski and the Majority Movement come to a coalition to take on Labour. Then I will join you .
Ex unity authority Labour Leader.
Thanks Philip
Good luck!