Hurrah for Rishi Sunak. His unerring eye has identified anti-social behaviour as a priority, requiring additional police powers to tackle “nuisance” beggars.
It really is so inconvenient entering a shop when you end up tripping over the detritus of humanity or their miserable, rain-sodden blankets. Or when you want to access your hard-earned cash but can’t get near the machine for some no-hoper lurking nearby.
I mean, occasionally they make you feel a twinge of guilt, but that is a very unpleasant thing to lay on your fellow man. It is entirely on them, and you can’t give in because God knows where it would end. Said no-hopers might hover round Rishi’s recent £400,000 extension of swimming pool, hot tub, yoga studio, gym or tennis court – or even want to use one of the pool’s four showers.
Why can’t these nuisances just – poof! – disappear? Jealousy is a terrible emotion and you can’t say Rishi isn’t facing the same energy crisis as everyone else, because it has been estimated that the swimming pool alone will require a whopping £14,000 annually to heat. I worry for him.
Tory MPs Matt Hancock and Kwasi Kwarteng are doing their bit to raise the tone of unsightly street begging by wearing ties and doing it on Zoom instead, demanding 10,000 sterling for their daily rate. Good for them. That’s what I call a public-spirited, clean-up.
Some might say that £10,000 a day is hard to square when simultaneously dismissing public servant pay requests as “unreasonable” but, you know, people just need to get real and recognise that Matt Hancock’s incredible talents for – well, self-promotion and stuff – are far more economically valuable than some bleeding heart in a nurse’s uniform looking after an old codger who is (hopefully, because it will save money) going to die anyway.
As for Kwasi, he was chancellor for about 3.2 minutes but still managed to crash the pound spectacularly, a test of inner belief that his request for 10,000 – sterling, preferably, but dollars if necessary – shows he passed with flying colours.
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Also, it is fortuitous that the additional powers for ridding our streets of undesirables will go to our brave bobbies pounding the beat – or sitting in their nice warm panda cars – because it will give them the opportunity to demonstrate firm but fair behaviour. Though maybe more firm than fair, given that the Casey report judged the Met to be racist, sexist, homophobic and institutionally corrupt. Ridiculous! As Home Secretary Suella Braverman pointed out, that’s just not true.
I feel sorry for Suella, because it’s getting increasingly difficult to find people loyal enough to investigate public issues without dropping you in it by telling the public the truth.
A life ripped apart with one devastating word: inadequate
Enough, enough, enough. Anyone else feel that they are in a parallel universe, or stuck in an episode of Yes Minister? Anyone else tired of the one-word labels being bandied round to humiliate, condemn and dismiss vulnerable individuals while organisations get protected? Beggars are a “nuisance”. Refugees are “criminal”.
Into the mix of lazy, dehumanising language comes Ofsted, the school inspectorate which dismissed headteacher Ruth Perry’s school, Caversham Primary, as “inadequate” within hours of setting foot in it. How astute to be able to judge instantly! Describing their visit as “the worst day of my life”, Ruth Perry subsequently died by suicide.
Nobody would deny the necessity of ensuring standards, but what possible improvement comes from downplaying strengths and overemphasising weakness?
Caversham Primary parents described the school as “excellent”, with one mother angrily denouncing “the name, blame and shame culture” that predominates in British society. How right she is.
Caversham was rated “good” in five out of six categories, but condemned as “inadequate” overall because of one single category. Nobody would deny the necessity of ensuring standards, but what possible improvement comes from downplaying strengths and overemphasising weakness?
Staff at the John Rankin Schools appear to make a statement outside the school gates. Headteacher Flora Cooper tweeted yesterday, saying that she would refuse entry to Ofsted inspectors following the death of fellow headteacher Ruth Perry in January pic.twitter.com/b0zmNjwqOJ
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Inadequate record-keeping put children at risk, inspectors claimed. Well, that’s all relative. In a recent article, former prime minister, Gordon Brown, slammed the last budget for ignoring the 400,000 children who will sleep without a bed of their own tonight, the 14 million people condemned to damp or substandard housing, and the 7.5 million households in fuel poverty. Now that really IS putting children at risk.
Ruth Perry sounded much-loved in her community. She once wrote a year book preface urging leavers to carry the school’s values with them, the most important of which was compassion. Always, she told children in her charge, be kind.
Sadly, the values she inculcated in children on society’s behalf were not returned to her by that society. How incredible that inspection procedures can brutally rip a life apart with one devastating word: inadequate.
Whether it’s beggars in the street, middle-class teachers or desperate refugees, it feels like we can’t be bothered looking for talents or potential, or even for basic humanity anymore. We prefer dismissive judgment to constructive support, in Sunak’s case, shouted lazily from some glasshouse extension. But, then, it’s always so much easier identifying other people’s failures than looking into that glass and seeing your own.
Catherine Deveney is an award-winning investigative journalist, novelist and television presenter, and Scottish Newspaper Columnist of the Year 2022
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