KEEPING MUM

When I worked in an office, I was always surprised (and maybe a little annoyed) at how often new members of staff tried to solve problems without any attempt to look through the file and see what we did last time.  I liked the new, and sometimes creative, approach, but surely it doesn't hurt to see what the regular procedure was or what others had done earlier, before wasting a lot of time on a new policy.

But I wondered whether this was how the younger generation operate these days.  Unlike us, they left the family home early and made their way in the world much more independently than we did.  Or maybe this is another way of saying that Mums or one's elders are not such an important part of the household today. 

We were asked to pop down to Worthing this morning to help out my daughter.  Imogen has chicken pox and is not so happy and Isaac is at home too.  For us, it's actually nice to go there and take Isaac out for a while, so we were happy to do so, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves in the children’s library and in the playgroup.  But I suppose, once upon a time, the family would still have been living in the family house and Mum would have been permanently on hand to look after kids.

I was reminded of this the other evening, when watching a wildlife programme on television.  Three young elephant females were trying to cross a swollen river and their three baby calves were swept away in the torrent.  All was well in the end, but the commentator made the point that, if there had been an older and more experienced female there (all killed by poachers I think), they would have found another crossing point known to be safer, or they would just not have attempted to cross at all.  Having Mum around is not always a nuisance; sometimes she serves a useful purpose and stops us doing stupid things into the bargain.

I have posted several comments recently about young people today and maybe the cases I mentioned all come down to this lack of parental guidance.  Somewhere along the line, the role of Mums has changed.  Once she was the wise one who one turned to for help and advice.  Now she is more likely to be as unwise as her kids and a bit of a burden if still in the house.  This is not a dismissive criticism, but people have just stopped turning to parents every time they need to do something.  And today’s parents have often lost that contact with their mothers too.  Just like those young recruits in my office, they just bash on and hope to get it right.  Or maybe even think that they know best.

So I for one am not at all critical of the new Government initiative‎.  It does seem an unusual policy for a Conservative Government (although the present Government is not entirely Conservative of course), but if it leads to more skill and experience among young parents, and thence to more responsibility among young people, it can only be good.  Ultimately, it could save a lost of wasted time and money in the police, NHS and local services generally too and, who knows, encourage better attention to education.  Let’s hope, like my elephants, they don’t forget.

WHO CARES?

I have been trying to find something sensible to say about the recent spate of sex grooming cases here.  The first convictions in such a case were reported here.

 

For those of you that haven’t heard of these cases, men, mostly in the Midlands, have been systematically plying very young girls with drink and drugs and then taking advantage of them sexually and selling them for sex to friends and relatives.  There seem to be many such cases, but few culprits have been tried and convicted.  There was another conviction of an individual this morning on similar offences, so perhaps investigations are becoming more successful.

Everyone has been trying hard not to say that there is some racial element involved here, mostly because white far right groups have been trying to incite violence against immigrant communities on the back of the scandal.  But the fact is that almost all the men involved are Pakistanis (hence they are mostly found in the Midlands, a major Pakistani community) and almost all the girls involved are white.  A separate issue is that most of the girls live in care homes or are otherwise under care and are therefore particularly vulnerable.

I listened to a chilling account on the radio yesterday by one of the girls involved.  She was 13 when she decided to go into town one night ‘for a bit of fun’.  A Pakistani man stopped in his car and asked her whether she’d like a lift.  She agreed and, whilst he drove, she drank from a vodka mix drink he gave her.  When he eventually stopped, not in the town centre, but at his house, she was drunk and went inside with him.  He had sex with her and then took her home.  From then on she found herself locked into a relationship with him and was frequently picked up and passed around others for sex.

This account was given in such a matter of fact voice that, at each stage, you felt like screaming ‘but why did you do it?’  There was no explanation.  Of course these girls are the victims, but the men’s description of them as willing whores was not at all contradicted by this girl’s account or by others I have read.  Yes, they present themselves as victims, and they were abused and the men were acting against the law, but at no time is there any rationale for what the girls did.

How has this state of affairs come about?  One problem of course (if you accept the premise that there is a major Pakistani involvement) is the culture and practices of Pakistani Muslims, not only in their own country, but transported to UK by immigrants and maintained here by British born Pakistanis.  There are frequent stories in the media concerning crimes committed by Pakistani families, often where daughters do not marry the man chosen by the father.  One in today’s newspaper concerns a girl abducted by her family, despite being married, because she is expected to marry a cousin in Pakistan.  She was apparently betrothed without her knowledge when she was 15.  And it isn’t just the father that commits these acts; she was drugged by her sister and carried off by her mother and father.  In another case, a young Pakistani bride was kept locked in the house by her father in law and subjected to sexual abuse.  And there have been many worse cases where girls are murdered because they get involved with a man the father believes is unsuitable. It is shameful for Pakistani girls to be involved with an 'unsuitable' man.  But the way to overcome that seems to be for Pakistani men to turn to a non-Pakistani for sex.  That seems not to be shameful. 

The point is that, although these crimes take place in Britain, none of those involved seem to think that they are in fact crimes.  There is mixed comment from others in the community about whether such acts are normal in Pakistani culture, but anyway, plenty of members of the community believe they are.  The men convicted in the sex grooming case made it quite clear they didn’t think that they had done anything wrong.  And of course betrothals at a very early age (often to older men) help to sustain the thought that sex with young girls is OK.

What to do?  Clearly there is a problem in the Pakistani community.  I assume that not all Pakistani people believe such practices should be condoned.  Yet, no one from the community came forward and reported the crimes to the authorities.  Community leaders must be instructed to do more to get across to their communities that such practices are unacceptable in Britain, if not everywhere.  But we should do more too.  I am all for multiculturalism, but immigrants and their families (at the time of immigration – many members of these communities were of course born here, which is why community leaders have to take responsibility now) must be made to understand what the laws and culture of Britain are.  Where there is a clash, the law of their chosen country (ie Britain) must prevail.  I hope that increased success by the police in stamping on this activity will help to bring home to others that it is wrong.  That is why working with community leaders must start now before others in the 'business' are pushed underground or deeper into the community.

But we must also do something about the victims and the potential victims.  If children are in care, if the home is called a ‘care home’, then it is the Director's responsibility to ensure that care is applied.  It just won’t do to allow young girls to go wandering off at night.  There is some suggestion that the homes knew the girls were being picked up in cars outside.  If this is true, the duty of care has certainly been lost somewhere and those responsible should be made to understand.  

Care homes are currently the subject of an inquiry, following this recent case, and that is as it should be.  But surely there is more to looking after young, vulnerable girls than just stopping them from going out at night.  Any father of teen-aged girls knows how difficult that is and knows what it’s like sitting up waiting nervously for them to come home.  But, before this moment, the girl will have been given a good deal of education and instruction and advice (probably scorned, but hopefully not forgotten).  I can’t forget the calm way that girl described her experiences, as though they were inevitable, or maybe that there was nothing else to do of an evening, or (can it be) that she didn’t know what was happening.  It is not clear to me that the care homes are offering anything like a parental duty of care, but nor do they seem to be providing education.  There may be something we should be doing to prevent so many girls ending up in care like this, but meanwhile, simply sticking them in a home is not in itself a solution to their problems.

There are many angles at which we as a society should be ensuring education is applied, not only to young people, but also to those of different cultures and to those in positions of authority.  But we seem to have failed to do so in every respect.  The most horrific feature in all this is that so many people seemed to know what was going on – other Pakistanis, families, friends of the girls, shopkeepers and neighbours, care home staff.  Yet no one seems to have cared quite enough to do anything about it.  Maybe we should now make it clear that we care.

LIFE IN THE LAY-BY

There has been another exchange in the press recently about baby boomers.  On the one hand, young people wishing to start out in life on their own believe that the older generation had it easy and still have it easy today, luxuriating in their retirement, whilst jobs, homes and benefits are in short supply; on the other hand, older folks think they have only the champagne and foreign travel that they deserve and that youngsters should stop whingeing and get their fingers out.

It is the (relatively) new Government and the severe cuts they are having to make in spending that has prompted this new exchange of recriminations.  But the debate has in fact been going on for years.  To be honest, I, one of those selfish baby boomers, was quite taken aback at the ferocity of one article I read recently by some 20-something.  I have never felt I was luxuriating.  I still have to scrimp to do what I do and I only benefit from anything easy to the extent that I don’t have to leap out of bed in the morning (nor go to bed yet) and can only spend what little I receive from pension and lifelong investment (pretty pathetic income at present) because I have scrimped for a very long time and managed in the process to pay off my mortgage.  As usual in these things, the truth is somewhere in between the two extreme views.

I accept that university degrees are not a guarantee of a job these days and that probably they were in my youth.  But, in my youth, gaining a university place was pretty tough.  One change that happened during my younger years was that the number of universities was near enough doubled.  This meant that many more students had the opportunity of further education.  I didn’t succeed in gaining entry to a university and so the benefit of a degree was irrelevant in my case.  What was important though was that instead I worked all hours under the sun and managed to save some money for my future.

Many more university places means many more graduates, but not necessarily many more jobs.  I accept that there are not so many ‘good’ jobs around at the moment.  But one unfortunate outcome of widely available tertiary education is that expectations are higher.  Britain is still the same as it was 30 years ago in the sense that there are jobs and workers which more or less match up (actually there may be fewer dirty manufacturing jobs and more cleaner desk jobs around now), but having achieved academically, it is an apparent disappointment or lessening of standards to undertake work that involves physical, rather than intellectual, effort.  I really feel for those who might have had higher expectations, but in fact the same competition for much the same jobs exists now as it always did.

The main area which might arguably have been different in my youth is the general entrepreneurial one in the creative industries.  It seemed that there were young people everywhere starting up businesses or performing.  This phenomenon was hardly unexpected, as post-war hardship and gloom gave way to freedom and relative prosperity.  But none of this came on a plate and for every Mary Quant and Beatle there were at least as many failures.  But I can understand how today’s graduates may have come to expect that the job they want should just be there when they want it.

I have resisted talking about my youth in detail before because I know I sound like a grumpy old man, but never the less it genuinely wasn’t easy.  OK, we had new found freedoms, but that mostly manifested itself amongst my friends in partying.  Parties in those days consisted of gathering in each other’s homes, playing a few records which we all brought with us, dancing and, for those that could afford it, beer.  I usually managed to buy myself a couple of bottles of beer on a Saturday night and maybe once during the week met up with friends in a pub for a pint.  It’s not that I object to binge drinking, but it seems to me that the habit comes from lack of direction and responsibility rather than anything else.  Of course it signals that a jolly good time has been had, but it contrasts so markedly with my youth.  My friends couldn’t afford spirits, we didn’t have wine anyway in those days, and a pint down the pub was often mild and bitter, a cheap form of beer I don’t think you can still get today.  I would probably have enjoyed the odd binge too, but my Mum couldn’t really afford to keep me in beer and food.  The loss-leading supermarkets of today didn’t exist and takeaway food for us was a bag of chips on Friday evening.  I think this practice came from a sort of celebration of the man of the house bringing home a pay packet on Friday.  A restaurant meal was a very rare pleasure indeed for us.

And I knew that, saving money by not going out, I was putting something away which would help me in due course set up a home of my own.  When the time came to move away from home, I had saved the equivalent of a half year’s salary.  The only house I could afford then was a sort of shed in the middle of Essex, 4 hours away from my parental home and 2 hours train and underground journey from where I worked in London.  For the next few years I lived on home-made sandwiches and only went home to sleep.  I didn’t much like it, but in that way I got my foot (well, toe anyway) on the property ladder.  I know, I know, you lived in a cardboard box in the middle of the motorway.

But the main difference in modern times is simply the way in which convenience is now built-in.  Supermarkets, prepared foods, takeaway meals, inexpensive fashion, inexpensive booze, affordable technology – none of this, normal today, existed in my youth.  One of my jobs at home used to be to cut buttons off old shirts.  My Mum reused the buttons and the shirts became cleaning cloths.  We don’t do that now of course.  And I still think the ultimate decadence is buying plastic bags each week simply to throw away filled with my rubbish.  And making one’s own sandwiches and a flask of tea to consume at the desk is no doubt seen as laughable these days.

The point is not that I had it tough, but that these modern advances make it very hard for today’s young to economise or to endure inconvenience and very easy for the elderly to luxuriate in having come to the end of their hardship.

It’s not that I feel I have earned the right to be selfish, nor that I think the young should stop moaning.  But I have earned the wherewithal to help my own family get a start in life.  I have also earned the free time to spend most of my daylights hours giving back to the community in a variety of voluntary ways.  And occasionally I can afford to buy a newspaper and sit in a café and drink a cappuccino too.  But I can’t afford that every day even now.  But, equally, I don’t find it easy to hear people say they don’t want certain jobs or can’t live in certain areas.  There may be some good reason why the young person who complained about baby boomers has no help from her family or from the voluntary sector in her community, but I am happy to say that it’s not the case round here and certainly not my fault.

I do sympathise, I really do, with young people who can’t get the job they want or can’t afford the house they want, but I can’t really see the essential difference with what I and my friends had to endure.  I see how hard it is to forego pleasure and leisure, especially when so many footballers and pop and reality TV performers are able to wear the latest fashions and drink in the trendiest clubs and jet off to the most desirable destinations (and maybe also with the sight of their grandparents seemingly sitting in the garden forever).  But these choices are the sorts one has to make in this thing called life.