{"id":81704,"date":"2025-04-17T08:23:17","date_gmt":"2025-04-17T07:23:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=81704"},"modified":"2025-04-17T08:23:17","modified_gmt":"2025-04-17T07:23:17","slug":"we-are-living-in-a-fucked-up-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2025\/04\/17\/we-are-living-in-a-fucked-up-world\/","title":{"rendered":"We are living in a fucked up world"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the Guardian notes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

A third of school staff have seen \u201cphysical underdevelopment\u201d in students due to poverty, with schools in England stretching their budgets to buy basic household items such as cookers, bedding and clothes for pupils whose families are struggling.<\/p>\n

A survey of more than 14,000 school staff, published at the National Education Union\u2019s annual conference in Harrogate, found that this rose to more than half of those teachers working in deprived areas, with warnings that things \u201ccan only get worse\u201d after\u00a0recent benefit cuts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Teachers attending the conference said the malign impact of poverty went beyond malnutrition, with families needing help to navigate the benefits system and lacking necessities such as beds or tables.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

No doubt, they will be called Marxists by ministers and the media for pointing this out.<\/p>\n

After all, what else could promote compassion in the human spirit but revolutionary socialism?<\/p>\n

It could be Christianity, too.<\/p>\n

Or, just normal human compassion.<\/p>\n

Or empathy.<\/p>\n

A quote came to mind<\/a>, from Aldous Huxley, that would appear to describe our ministers:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal.<\/p>\n

\"Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does.\"<\/p>\n

They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2015\u00a0Aldous Huxley,\u00a0<\/span>Brave New World Revisited<\/a><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He was right to note that.<\/p>\n

Tolerance of the unacceptability of the lived condition of far too many in our society is evidence to support his suggestion.<\/p>\n

We are living in what I can only describe as a fucked up world, and what is most worrying is that outr politicians do not even seem to have noticed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the Guardian notes: A third of school staff have seen \u201cphysical underdevelopment\u201d in students due to poverty, with schools in England stretching their budgets
 Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[204,35,211,16,147,118,106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economic-justice","category-economics","category-education","category-ethics","category-inequality","category-labour","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81704"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81705,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81704\/revisions\/81705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}