Fenland Citizen letters – June 17, 2020
Schools need space they don’t have
“I’m so angry and disappointed. Our kids are going to suffer for years.” These are the words of one parent on hearing the news that the Government had given up on its plan to get all children back to primary school in England before the end of the school term. Some may be relieved that they do not have to make the decision themselves. Others are perhaps resigned to the fact that they are in the strange and sometimes stressful world of home schooling.
But for families around the country, classrooms staying empty is not just about missing out on sports day or the summer fair.
It’s not just about the huge stress for many parents trying to work, or find work, while juggling kids at home, rather than them being safely at school for most of the day.
And it’s not even just about the loss of classroom learning or time with friends.
But for too many children it is about the loss of a place of safety. But when the choice was made, it was easy for ministers to make it happen.
Ministers always warned it would be a gradual return, but it’s been so gradual that, as the Education Secretary confirmed, the idea of whole schools going back this term has been ditched and the picture for secondary schools is not completely clear.
But the “keep your distance” rules are the principle. That means schools need space they just don’t have.
The Department for Education can set a policy. But there are academy schools that are sometimes run by big chains, schools that operate under the auspices of local councils, and private schools (no news has been heard of these) where head teachers and school governors’ bodies have their own powers.
And then, like it or not, education is intensely political too, with the sometimes competing influences of national government, local government and the teaching unions.
Of course, they would all say they have the best interest of kids at the forefront of their minds, but they are different beasts, with different overall political priorities and that matters.
Remember for several weeks’ opposition politicians were calling for Number 10 to give their exit strategy as quickly as they could.
But even some Tory MPs worry that there is a sense of drift exemplified by how this halting return has unfolded. Politics is about expectation and making things happen, not just being able to provide excuses when things go awry.
John White
Wisbech
Socialist ideas more relevant than ever
Anti-racist protests have swept across the country and the world.
The spark that lit the fuse was the horrific murder of George Floyd by racist police in the US.
Here in the UK, we have seen an outpouring of working class youth taking leading roles in the protests and marches.
The protests are also for justice for all those who are still suffering from Grenfell and justice for the Windrush generation at the sharp end of the Tories’ ‘hostile environment’.
At protests, we have seen working class youth making speeches about how they want full justice in society, free from the oppression of systemic racism, joblessness, homelessness and a society with no prospects.
The establishment politicians, Tory and Labour, have decried the toppling of a statue of slave trader and Tory MP, Edward Colston, in Bristol.
Colston shipped an estimated 84,000 people from Africa to the US as part of the establishment of capitalism there.
This is why the slogan, ‘the UK is not innocent’ has been taken up. Many young people recognise the need for fundamental change in the running of society.
Their future is under threat of being sacrificed for capitalist crises, just as their childhood has been, with the slaughter of youth services and youth clubs, the trebling of university fees, the insecurity of zero-hour contracts and the lack of council homes and rent control.
We have seen young people quoting Malcom X, Martin Luther King, Fred Hampton, Bobby Seale, Huey Newton and others, calling for a joint, working class fightback against all the social and economic in,justices this system breeds.
All these black leaders were advocating, or moving towards, a socialist solution to the racism and class inequality of the capitalist system.
For a new generation of young people awakening into struggle, those socialist ideas are more relevant than ever.
John Smithee
Wisbech
Talk is cheap, volunteers are vital
Following a telephone call last weekend, then an interview ‘on air’ with Radio Cambridgeshire, I heard of yet another campaign to get the railway line from Wisbech and Cambridge reopened, at a cost of some £220million.
Upon getting my copy of Fenland Citizen today, I read further details of it.
Not one person showed an inch of interest when this was first started by Peter Downs when suggested. Even when Peter stood down, and I was then elected Chairman, not one of those mentioned on the front page of your paper even attended a monthly meeting.
I only resigned as chairman when my now late wife and I were married, having lost her to cancer eight days later and less than 36 hours after being diagnosed with it.
Last year, when I learnt they no longer held meetings, I tried to revive the group but had just two people who showed any interest, so I gave up.
Will this latest group realise that talk is cheap, but volunteers are the main people to keep any interest in a group successful?
Brian Baylis
via email
When fate turned to fake news
Three-and-a-half years ago, I lost my last little cat, Jimsy. I have battled depression ever since, but that is not what this letter is about.
Two years before that, I lost Fessy, her brother. I was never a fan of male cats, but he was so different, so small, yet so emboldened.
He was black, with a bright white streak from his chin down to his ribcage. He had the biggest beautiful eyes and, dare I say it, he was a little bit camp. He was definitely a Daddy’s boy! Just over a couple of weeks ago, I dreamt they had both come home. Fessy had been missing, but he came back with a made-to-fit PPE mask on his face, Jimsy hadn’t been missing and she didn’t have a mask. I was so ashamed I never made her one when a stranger did it for my Fessy
Then I woke up, alone and in floods of tears.
Then a few days later, two weeks ago, I opened the Citizen to see a piece that the RSPCA had submitted about neutering, how many cats they had taken in, and how overwhelmed they were about to be.
The picture they used was the spitting image of my Fessy and I was torn.
After saying never again, I’d had that dream and there was a chance of self-redemption. Was it fate?
I plucked up the courage to at least allow the stars to align, to welcome fate, and new beginnings, so I enquired, I asked about the kitten in the photo and also asked if it was a real kitten or a stock photo?
And that was the moment that fate turned to fake. I was told there were no kittens in the RSPCA shelter at Block Fen at all and the person I spoke to was so apologetic after I explained. I have not had much in the way of respect for the RSPCA, in terms of how it is run for many years.
The CEO earns over £150,000 per year in salary, bonuses are undisclosed, many of the animals they take in are put to sleep, regardless of health, and they have been currently embroiled in fights with their workers over diminishing hours, salaries and overtime rates.
I think it’s disgusting to just use random pictures to generate donations to ‘charities’ when the UK has been so giving already to many, many charities.
Here’s a tip for Chris Sherwood, the RSPCA’s chief executive, charity begins at home so why don’t you give back some of your earnings? Wouldn’t that be the charitable thing to do?
Treating these animals, and your staff, with dignity and respect would be a good start wouldn’t it? In 2017, the RSPCA received a total income of £140.9million, but its overall expenditure was £129.4m, leaving £10.5m unaccounted for. I have total respect for those that care for, and look after, the animals in the shelters, those that go out in all conditions to save and rescue them from torture, cruelty and negligence.
You all do your jobs, you do the nation and our animal nation the best of service.
Many things that you see, encounter and treat, would turn the hardiest of constitutions. But you still do your jobs, and we are so thankful you do.
It’s the greedy bosses that need culling.
Ashley Smith
March
