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1. 15 bewildered says:
   April 14th, 2008 at 1:52 pm

   Liz - the huge problem is the loss of our manufacturing industries, though I really don’t know if it could have been avoided. But our politicians are so stupid …

   I remember trying to explain to a Tory (lawyer) parliamentary candidate in about 1993 that you needed manufacturing - to sell abroad - to earn foreign currency - to prop up the immense public sector and domestic service industries in this country, because the latter didn’t earn money, they merely re-circulated it. He patronisingly told me (a business graduate with industrial experience and at that time a strategic management lecturer) that I was naive and didn’t understand the ‘new’ economy. Well, perhaps he now realises ‘why the Chinese haven’t been busy doing anything other than supplying the world with manufactured goods these last 40 years. The Indians do, of course, having cornered the world market in IT-based products, and between them they are doing very well. Each to his own. They succeed, of course, because their workers are cheap, but that doesn’t help us, even if we console ourselves that one day - in 50 years time - they might have the same problem as we do now.

   One thing that puzzles me is why people think growth is infinite. It clearly isn’t, as the world has finite resources, so the success of one group must always be mostly at the expense of another, even if we do make technological and some, ethical, progress. But I don’t know how we can help our ‘underclass’ given these global problems of credit, climate change, potential peak oil, and power shifts.

   And the fact that we pay huge taxes, and see no discernable benefit in our public services is surely more to do with the fact that it’s spent largely on so-called ‘management’ or social jobs, the ever-increasing occupants of whom would - 40 years ago - have been doing something much more useful. Making stuff to sell abroad. We don’t do too badly in selling some services - BBC programmes, some financial services etc., but it’s not enough. And being hitched to the USA will prove disastrous soon, since they are virtually bankrupt. One of Saddam’s sins was to think he might like to be paid in Euros for his oil, instead of petro-dollars.

   Anyway, all this has nothing directly to do with Shannon, about whom this thread is supposed to be talking. Except - she is powerless, as is her mother, to do anything about it. Her mother doesn’t stand a chance, and I’m sure I wouldn’t like her if I met her. However, we should try to make a better world for her daughter even if, as I very much suspect, it’ll be too little, too late.

   PeterMac -
   You’ve set me thinking, too. And your family background reminds me vaguely of my own, and “When the Boat Comes In”. Remember that series on TV?

2. 14 lyn says:
   April 14th, 2008 at 12:36 pm

   IMO Shannon is only 9 years old, and has an old head on her shoulders. To make a firm decision about not going back home was not hard for her. This family situation whatever went on…could have gone on for years and totally ruined Shannon’s life (going by what we know up to date). As things stand now, she can only go forward, hopefully.

3. 13 Liz727 says:
   April 14th, 2008 at 7:09 am

   Peter Mac and Bewildered, very interesting discussion, and a very good point about jobs going overseas.

   Perhaps it would be better if, instead of the government handing out what must be a huge sum of money in benefits to people to sit at home and do nothing, they took that money and built factories again in deprived areas to produce goods we now have to import from other countries? Some young people (and not so young any more) have never known what it’s like to have employment on their doorstep. They would at least be afforded the opportunity to advance (work harder, get paid overtime, move up the ladder), take pride in themselves and their achievements and no doubt the taxpayers, who pay for it all anyway, would be a lot happier their taxes were going towards something with a future in it rather than the bottomless pit of welfare.

   How much less trouble would there be if young people weren’t able to hang around street corners and town centers all night, drinking and creating mayhem, because they had to get up for their work in the morning? How, if some of them had their own money in their pockets, they wouldn’t be tempted to mug someone else for theirs.

   This lack of “something meaningful to do” has been the downfall of our society. We can’t all be rocket scientists, but there are plenty of things we need that could be manufactured here. Wouldn’t it be great to go into a shop again and buy something with a label on it again that said “Made in England” as opposed to everything being “Made in China”? And, no two ways about it, if the employment was there to be had and they didn’t take it, no more free handouts.

   Even if these factories needed subsidised to keep costs down, I would be far happier to pay for them than pay for the Iraq war, or gold-plated pensions for MP’s, or their second-home mortgages, or their exhorbitant living costs when all they have done is destroy our country with their laws and policies that help no-one but themselves.

4. 12 PeterMac says:
   April 13th, 2008 at 12:58 pm

   11 Bewildered
   You have managed to crysallise a very important point in a few short words.
   “We have been lifting people out of poverty through education now since the 19th century, so it’s not very surprising that the process seems to be slowing. ”

   As you say, that process could go on indefinitely. The bright people from the deprived homes became the tradesmen, craftsmen, Policemen, NCOs and so on. They now all go to Universty, leaving a huge gap in the crafts and skills market, which cannot be filled from below. So it has to be filled from other countries which have not yet educated their population to this extent. Switzerland was a prime example of an over-educated population, which then required many tens of thousands of Spanish and Italians to run their hotel trade. All of them spoke three languages fluently.
   Not something which could be said about people from the estate in Dewsbury.

   Council houses used to be for people from almost all walks of working life. My grandfather was a Police Sergeant for example. His son and daughter a GP and a teacher respectively, having got scholarships to the grammar school and then to the University. His son, my brother, a GP and so on.
   Now those same people afford their own homes, including their own former council houses, and the remaining council estates have had to be left for those people without the wit or the application to move on.

   I agree that there are now very few jobs for the unacademic, but there are some, and people should be ‘forced / engcouraged’ in some way take them and to keep them.
   The benefit trap could be abolished at a stroke, tomorrow, if any politician had the guts. But sadly they need the votes. They have to survive the next 2 years!

   Thank you for your post. It has set me thinking again.

5. 11 bewildered says:
   April 13th, 2008 at 12:30 pm

   Peter Mac
   you seem to be about my age, and I remember proud and tidy council estates too. I have to say I also remember one which wasn’t as well. I married a man who came from a council estate and who’d worked at night school through to get O and A-levels, an OU degree, and an MBA after a potential career as a pro footballer was ruined through injury when he was 17. I’d like to think there are still people like him being brought up on council estates, but I think you are right that there are fewer of them now, and those there are don’t get to go to grammar school like he did. Call them elitist and unfair if you will, but they did a good job of taking anyone who passed, no matter what their background, and offering them a different way of life.

   We have been lifting people out of poverty through education now since the 19th century, so it’s not very surprising that the process seems to be slowing. 100 years ago there were many highly intelligent people trapped in unskilled, semi-skilled or trademen’s jobs who saw the value of education for their children and pursued it vigorously e.g. the miners, and indeed parents in developing nations. Their descendants are now professionals - like everyone in my family’s last three generations. Before that my family was rather different.

   There will always be some people so apparently stupid that one can do nothing to help them, but we shouldn’t give up on their children. I see some boarding schools are now accepting some children from deprived backgrounds, and they are making some fairly startling progress. They are probably being cherry-picked as underachievers with potential if they are removed from their environment, but that doesn’t make it wrong. In fact, it makes sense. Can’t help more than a few, though.

   Like you, I don’t think we can afford the rose-tinted view that everyone has the potential to manage in an economy with very few jobs for the unacademic, but that’s a political hot potato. If we really are as rich as the Government says (which we are not) we should construct an economy in which nearly everyone has work to do and in which people don’t fall (for entirely understandable economic reasons) into the so-called benefit-trap where it pays you to stay at home and tempts you to fiddle the system.

   Mostly, I fear, we have to write off the adults over 25 - too set in their ways. So it’d have to be big sticks and only a few carrots for them. But their children deserve the carrots, and we need them to respond to it for the future of our country and civilisation.

6. 10 PeterMac says:
   April 12th, 2008 at 4:40 pm

   8 Logic
   Thank you for the reply.
   In my view there has to be some link between effort and reward. The whole idea of calling the Dole “unemployment BENEFIT” seems grotesque. There should be no Benefit for being unemployed. We live in a country with more of less ‘christian’ values, and it is undoubtedly right that we should help those less fortunate than ourselves. But by that I mean we should help them towards bettering themselves. Not simply pay them for doing nothing.
   My Grandparents lived on a council estate in what is now a sink area of Manchester.
   It wasn’t then. People trimmed their hedges and mowed their lawns, and tended roses with soot from the chimneys, and grew vegetables and soft fruit in a patch at the back next to the Anderson shelter. They cleaned their front doorstep and polished the windows, and were grateful for what they had.
   By the time I started work in the slums of Notthingam in the early 70s, the hedges were 40 feet high, and the standard response was “The Council should do something about it”. Socialist councillors were terrified of evicting anyone even for for blatantly antisocial or outright criminal behaviour, and the whole situation was allowed to get out of control.
   So they built new flats, and filled them with the same people and the same atttudes, and watched as they became ghastly vertical slums. Now theyare pulling them down again,a dn blaming the flats. One of the then most notorious blocks, the Victoria Centre, in Nottingham has been transformed into luxury accommodation, initially by simple restriction of access to non-residents. No dogs, and no children are two of the rules. They are now highly sought after.
   It is the people who make the slums, not the houses.
   Look at London and other big cities, where whole areas of what was once rotten slum housing have been “gentrified’ because decent people with different values have moved in.
   OK they have more money to start with, but there is some evdence tht fter taking on a vast mortgage, particularly in London, the disposable income of some of the so called Yuppies, is actually less than that of the previous tenants.
   So back to my original premise. Effort and reward should be linked. Idleness and fecklessness should not be rewarded.

7. 9 silky123 says:
   April 12th, 2008 at 4:11 pm

   Keith Joseph was reviled and ridiculed when he ‘dared’ to mention ‘the underclass’………

   Well, they’re still here - and he wasn’t wrong.

   There will always be dumb, ignorant people - and it’s not always to do with education - although it’s free in our society.

   That’s probably part of the problem.

   Every third-world country where free education is scarce, honour and feel so privileged to be GETTING an education, that they are so much more diligent and productive with their lives. They appreciate it.

   We don’t.

   And - the underclass will always exist, while we, as a society, continually support these feckless people.

   The Government needs to addres this problem - and stop ‘feeding’ this element, which insidiously grows by the day.

8. 8 Logic says:
   April 12th, 2008 at 3:51 pm

   7 PeterMac

   What a lot of sad truths you speak!

   You are right. The chances of Shannon ever living a productive happy life are close to zero. Lots of children may well be her only show of productivity! Low levels of intelligence are undoubtedly at the root of the problem. However, not all people of low intelligence would be prepared to use their children and some of the people of these council estates would undoubtedly benefit and improve if they were removed to decent housing and a decent environment.

   People however cannot forever be forgiven for their deeds because they come from a social underclass. There must at least be some attempt to break the cycle. I, like you, despair of the whole situation. It’s very tempting to just close the newspaper and stop listening to the news, and sometimes necessary to save one’s sanity!

9. 7 PeterMac says:
   April 12th, 2008 at 11:01 am

   1 bewildered
   ” I know the poor will always be with us, but this sort of situation seems to me to be largely as a result of dire education, and that reflects upon us all.”

   2 Loraine
   “I hope that Shannon and her siblings will be left alone by the media, and allowed to live well balanced, safe lives”

   3 Pamela “… I have been honestly stunned at the depth and intensity of the British class divide exposed by these events.”

   5 Suzanne
   “Why are people calling them poor? They had three computers in their house. I expect she gets lots of child benefit. Is it the fault of money just because their house is dirty and they look a mess? Or do they just have no standards?”

   Some very thoughtful pieces from all the contributors. It is not in my view merely dire education, it is also a dire lack of intelligence, and a total inability of people in this situation to think ahead. The intelligent and educated classes call it “delayed gratification”. people on these sink estates would not even be able to spell the words.
   Shannon will not lead a well balanced life. She is a product of this sub-class, and will behave exactly according to her upbringing and peer pressure. And she is now in care, which has an even lower success rate. She is no more likely to be intelligent that any of the rest of them.
   The ‘class divide’ starts with intelligence and education. From that springs money and opportunities. Once the craft trades were removed from working people by technology and the export of menial jobs there were few ways in which they could escape from their position.
   And, yes, the money actually has little to do with it. Many of the poor are poor not becasue they lack money, but because they spend what little they have on stupid things, (stupid in the eyes of the rest of us). Near the Dole office you will find a pub, an off-licence and a betting shop. The supermarkets are full of the poor buying ready made junk food at exhorbitant prices, and the kebab houses, and fish and chip shops are legendary.

   I policed estates like this for nearly 30 years and like you, I despair. No one has the guts or the determination to face the political realities of the situation. One is unfortunately reminded of the Roman Bread and Circuses = The Dole office and All day game shows on TV.
   The issue is keeping the country governable, and to that end no government can afford to tackle this head on.

10. 6 Suzanne says:
    April 11th, 2008 at 10:01 pm

    Then again, with men getting what they want after a drink in a pub nowadays, is it any wonder that hardly any stay around once the woman is having a baby after a couple of months?

11. 5 Suzanne says:
    April 11th, 2008 at 10:00 pm

    Why are people calling them poor? They had three computers in their house. I expect she gets lots of child benefit. Is it the fault of money just because their house is dirty and they look a mess? Or do they just have no standards? She can’t have any standards by having 7 children with different fathers and forgot how many children she has. She seems to be able to afford to smoke and it’s over 5 pound a packet. It looks like she smokes a packet a day. I applied for a council house but I was laughed at because I wasn’t a single mother. It’s because these types are given the houses and there aren’t any role models on council estates.

12. 4 Suzanne says:
    April 11th, 2008 at 9:53 pm

    Isn’t Shannon’s family the norm nowadays? Women are rewarded for having children without a partner by being first on housing lists and benefits. There’s no excuse as condoms and other contraception is free.

13. 3 Pamela says:
    April 11th, 2008 at 2:49 pm

    May I just say that the response to both the McCann case and this one has been a truly
    eye-opening experience for me. I am not trying to be a hypocrite; my own country has many serious and deeply, deeply divisive issues, but I have been honestly stunned at the depth and intensity of the British class divide exposed by these events. I’ve really never seen anything quite like it, and I have to say that–apart from what I fear is about to be a catastrophic financial situation here–I now worry more for your nation’s future than my own.

14. 2 Loraine says:
    April 11th, 2008 at 1:17 pm

    In the beginning I knew exactly what I thought. I was adamant that this was a child abducted, against her will etc etc. After reading through many news reports, from many different sources, I have decided that I will reserve judgement on who was to blame, who’s idea it was and who is guilty. I do however find it strange that Karen was only arrested after Craig Meehan was, and that there are conflicting reports of what Karen is supposed to have said to the Liason Officer.

    I cannot comprehend anyone ever using a child for personal gain, or using the public and the community, although I am not naive enough to think it doesn’t happen. In this particular instance I have a belief that the truth, when it comes out, will surprise us all, more so than the recent developments.

    I hope that Shannon and her siblings will be left alone by the media, and allowed to live well balanced, safe lives. Afterall, whatever has happened, it’s not their fault, they are just children.

15. 1 bewildered says:
    April 11th, 2008 at 12:41 pm

    Well, hardly ‘prole porn, where respectable folk can get a thrilling glimpse of society’s dark underbelly…’

    For a start, thrilling it is not. Deeply worrying and sad, maybe, and totally confusing. I rather doubt that mother Karen is the prime mover in all this, more that the Meehan side of the ‘family’ knew more. She seems like a very dim dupe, who didn’t know at the beginning what was going on and then very rapidly found herself in over her head, and unable to decide what to do. The so-called allegations in the media so far are all redolent of stupidity, if there is any substance to them. Being inspired by ‘Shameless’ - one can scarcely believe that, but I suppose you never know; making demands on the McCann fund by phone and email and not through a lawyer; underestimating the reaction of the police and media to the disappearance of a 9-year old; allowing neighbours to move heaven and earth to help when you knew / suspected the child was not really ‘missing’ at all; no personal support for Karen from either her parents or her sister - quite the reverse it seems; and the role of ’stepfather’ for a 22-year-old live-in boyfriend later charged with child pornography offences. One could go on about the fathers and children, the definition of twins, not being sure how many children you actually had etc. - all allegedly, of course.

    It really is a disgrace that in the 21st century such people are struggling through such chaotic lives, but at least Shannon seems likely to be out of it now, as well as the other children. I know the poor will always be with us, but this sort of situation seems to me to be largely as a result of dire education, and that reflects upon us all.

    And what of the possible outcomes? If found guilty, Karen will probably get a minimal sentence because she seems so disfunctional, and will live her life without her children and in fear of vigilantes. If found guilty, 22-year old Craig - thanks to the media stepfather label - will be punished and on the sex offenders registe for life, and have to give his email address to the police (and how stupid is that new requirement … just get another one on webmail). And Lord knows about the reportedly suicidal ‘uncle’ and the rest of them.

    It’s all hopeless really.

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