Time to end cycle of suffering for children

The Friday Thing
LAST WORD ON THE WEEK: IT has been a long time since I have heard anyone — unless it is a child blessed with the crushing skill of irony — say that schooldays are the best days of your life.

With 9,000 children living in poverty in Oldham and, nationally, 90,000 young people on invalidity benefit and 600,000 young people never having had a job since leaving school, it is, for far too many, plainly no fun being young.

I don’t think it’s what the scriptures have in mind when they talk about “suffer little children . . .”

The politically-correct jargon for what has happened is that these unfortunate young folk have been “left behind” when, in fact, they have been failed by the education system and by the social and political networks that ought to be in place to look after youngsters.

The cry is always the same: “What about the feckless parents?”

Well, yes, what about them? Don’t we realise that by this total disregard for the plight of the young people we are creating another generation of feckless parents who, like their modern-day counterparts, will not have a clue about bringing up children or the responsibilities that go with being a parent.

Those to whom a child is a meal ticket — family allowance, the key to a home and the guilty bounties provided by a state that has for too long connived in this dismal spiral of community collapse — cannot be blamed, as they know no better and nor will their offspring. Society, and especially its educators, social engineers and politicians must get to grips with the horrendous and shameful neglect that has brought us to the position we are in today.

American sociologist Charles Murray described Britain’s wasted generations as the underclass a decade and more ago, but what has been done in the intervening years to break the cycle of poverty, joblessness and lack of opportunity and hope?

Nothing.


ROCHDALE Council is to part company with its chief executive and plans to, in the words of its spokesman: “Share a chief executive with a neighbouring authority.”
Could they (as the Chronicle asked yesterday) have their eyes on our Charlie? Could Charlie add Rochdale to his power portfolio? And, if so, where next? Bury? Tameside?

Howard Sykes has applauded Rochdale’s move but not because he wants to see the back of Charlie to allow him to rule over Oldham without, as it were, a consort, but because it means that money can be saved.

But could the linking of Oldham and Rochdale at this level be the first step on the road to amalgamation. Could we have Olddale or Rochham with Charlie gliding effortlessly up Rochdale Road in a specially-liveried limousine?

One thing is for certain; given the choice I bet Charlie would rather work from Rochdale Town Hall than Oldham Civic Centre. It would be like moving from the garden shed to the mansion and our Charlie is definitely a mansion sort of guy.

Watch this space.


IT never ceases to amaze me how hypocritical our leaders are when it comes to despots and doshpots.
We take great delight in selling weapons and killing machines of every description to folk all over the world that you and I would not trust with a catapult or even an elastic band and rolled-up paper pellets.

One of the real ironies is that we have been selling deadly arms to Libya for decades. Ignoring the fact that the potty despot that is Gaddafi handed loads of the guns and explosives over to the IRA so that they could kill British soldiers and Protestant Irish civilians.

The arms industry is certainly an industry of which we can all be proud. But not as proud as we are of generations of arms-dealing politicians.


FINAL WORD: The news that advertising breaks on TV are to be extended to six minutes is great.
Instead of just giving you time to put the kettle on you can nip out to the chippy or the take-away and get back with supper for four in good time to watch all of “American Idol”.

Lucky you!