Protests in Leeds, UK
Has anyone heard about the protests? The media has called them "riots", but those involved were protesting.
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ArishMell · 70-79, M
@SW-User That would be laughable if it were not about a real situation. I don't where you are writing from (Moscow?) but the "British state" does not "steal" children.
It has become clearer the dispute was a child-protection problem though. Their being of foreign backgrounds is not relevant.
Though if supposed grown-ups behave like the hooligans who did so much damage, I fear for the future of any children in that area, brought up to believe wilfully destroying others' property is the thing to do. Perhaps that's why the Social Services were concerned....
It has become clearer the dispute was a child-protection problem though. Their being of foreign backgrounds is not relevant.
Though if supposed grown-ups behave like the hooligans who did so much damage, I fear for the future of any children in that area, brought up to believe wilfully destroying others' property is the thing to do. Perhaps that's why the Social Services were concerned....
@Sharon On the other hand, in some of the most tragic cases that we get to hear about, the first question raised by many is "why didn't social workers do anything?"
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@Sharon That's not true.
I am not saying they don't sometimes remove children wrongly, but more commonly, and wrongly, the social workers fail to remove children in time to save them from brutal or negligent parents or other guardians who should never be anywhere near children.
Then when the child is killed by the brutes, or simply very seriously neglected, all hell breaks loose with demands for everyone and anyone to be sacked, "lessons must be learned / procedures put in place so it can never happen again", and so on.
Then when it does happen again, often the same reason is revealed: the social-services do not have enough people, resources and authority, and the links between them, schools, health service and police are too complicated and weak to provide proper support.
How about thinking of the children's welfare....? Don't they count?
I am not saying they don't sometimes remove children wrongly, but more commonly, and wrongly, the social workers fail to remove children in time to save them from brutal or negligent parents or other guardians who should never be anywhere near children.
Then when the child is killed by the brutes, or simply very seriously neglected, all hell breaks loose with demands for everyone and anyone to be sacked, "lessons must be learned / procedures put in place so it can never happen again", and so on.
Then when it does happen again, often the same reason is revealed: the social-services do not have enough people, resources and authority, and the links between them, schools, health service and police are too complicated and weak to provide proper support.
How about thinking of the children's welfare....? Don't they count?
Sharon · F
@autumngirl27 @ArishMell Social workers are often driven by their preconceived prejudices. They'll go after single fathers, especially those bringing up daughters, but turn blind eyes to abuse by single mothers.
In divorce cases, custody is almost automatically awarded to the mother, usually supported by social workers, regardless of how bad she is and what the children want. Fathers who attempt to adduce evidence against the mother are labeled spiteful and often denied all contact with their children.
In divorce cases, custody is almost automatically awarded to the mother, usually supported by social workers, regardless of how bad she is and what the children want. Fathers who attempt to adduce evidence against the mother are labeled spiteful and often denied all contact with their children.
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@Sharon I am not saying they always get it right, and they probably have been hampered by a strong anti-male thread that developed in the days of the Child Support Agency run by the man-hating, arch-bureaucrat Ros Hepplewhite, encouraged by Harriet Harman MP.
Nevertheless you cannot dismiss an entire service and its staff thanks to us only hearing about it when something goes wrong.
What you rather have: social services that do their best in the face of hatred for making mistakes occasionally (no human-made system is ever perfect) or even just existing; or close it down and make attempt to protect anyone from cruelty and neglect?
Nevertheless you cannot dismiss an entire service and its staff thanks to us only hearing about it when something goes wrong.
What you rather have: social services that do their best in the face of hatred for making mistakes occasionally (no human-made system is ever perfect) or even just existing; or close it down and make attempt to protect anyone from cruelty and neglect?
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@Sharon I like that nick-name for her! I think she means well, and she is or was married so is not entirely anti-men. She just goes too far!
If every decision by every public body had to be subject to independent review nothing would get done. Everything would keep grinding to a halt, its time and money sapped, so every move can be dissected and processes tweaked to show Someone is Doing Something "Useful".
We need trust the professionals, and though public accountability is proper, it must be done properly, via Government and Parliament. No-one would want to work under constant surveillance by external bodies who do not understand or worse, do not value, their work.
So how to gain trust? The social- and other difficult public services, need work as well as can be reasonably expected; but they can only do that if allowed the resources, including personnel and training, to do so. Whilst also not hounded by outsiders every time something slips - and even when not - especially for pseudo-political reasons or from mere stupidity.... as perhaps happened in Leeds.
If every decision by every public body had to be subject to independent review nothing would get done. Everything would keep grinding to a halt, its time and money sapped, so every move can be dissected and processes tweaked to show Someone is Doing Something "Useful".
We need trust the professionals, and though public accountability is proper, it must be done properly, via Government and Parliament. No-one would want to work under constant surveillance by external bodies who do not understand or worse, do not value, their work.
So how to gain trust? The social- and other difficult public services, need work as well as can be reasonably expected; but they can only do that if allowed the resources, including personnel and training, to do so. Whilst also not hounded by outsiders every time something slips - and even when not - especially for pseudo-political reasons or from mere stupidity.... as perhaps happened in Leeds.
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SW-User
@autumngirl27
These are normally cases with clear evidence of violence. One must ask why, in the UK, more children are removed from their families for vague and obscure reasons than they are for physical harm. I do believe they have a law that has made this practice legal, but it is morally wrong and viewed as insane by the rest of the world. In other countries, children are removed if they have been beaten or if their physical needs have been neglected. In the UK, they will do this when the family or at least one parent is foreign or has different cultural practices, if they are considered "untrustworthy", or if state has perceived an issue with their character or lifestyle. Mental illness and personality disorders can be a problem. An issue with this is that they are not investigated and diagnosed in these parents. Often, the state will lie about their findings.
Family is a natural right, and the state should not interfere with it.
On the other hand, in some of the most tragic cases that we get to hear about, the first question raised by many is "why didn't social workers do anything?"
These are normally cases with clear evidence of violence. One must ask why, in the UK, more children are removed from their families for vague and obscure reasons than they are for physical harm. I do believe they have a law that has made this practice legal, but it is morally wrong and viewed as insane by the rest of the world. In other countries, children are removed if they have been beaten or if their physical needs have been neglected. In the UK, they will do this when the family or at least one parent is foreign or has different cultural practices, if they are considered "untrustworthy", or if state has perceived an issue with their character or lifestyle. Mental illness and personality disorders can be a problem. An issue with this is that they are not investigated and diagnosed in these parents. Often, the state will lie about their findings.
Family is a natural right, and the state should not interfere with it.
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@SW-User NO: the social services cannot remove a child from a family merely for different parental backgrounds. That is a foolish, ignorant and frankly racist accusation, but as you do not live in the UK I can allow for you only hearing of cases from sources that want to undermine the UK for their own reasons.
The "state" as you call it, only "interferes" as you call it, when children are thought to be at risk from some hazard that may not be necessarily physical violence against them. Whilst I agree this can go wrong in a few cases, it is better that than to the leave them in the hope they will be safe after all. For their have been too many cases where they were not safe at all, some have been treated appallingly, even killed. Or do you think cruelty a natural family right?
If the social services can go wrong occasionally, and they do, as no system can be "perfect", then so can families! Having a family is indeed a right, but people, especially children, also have rights to be protected if the family is bad.
I do not know the full details in this case, and I very much doubt you do either - I would expect it to be as confidential as their medical details unless one or other family member has been charged with breaking the law.
However, your initial reaction here was to applaud gangs of interfering ne'er-do-wells destroying vehicles. They were also hurling trolleys and goods from a nearby shop around. I.e, you were trying for no good reason at all, to support wanton, needless, mindless damage and destruction of others' property not even involved in the case.
You imagining a law or system you don't know, to be wrong is no reason for breaking other laws.
I bet you'd be among the first to protest at the vandalism if it happened in your country, whatever "excuse" might be concocted by its apologists. Either that or you be among the first to attack the nearest bus for the sheer hell of it.
.....
Incidentally, as well as trying to protect children generally, there are also laws in the UK that aim to protect girls against enforced genital mutilation (very difficult but there have been one or two prosecutions), "modern slavery", and what is called "coercive and controlling behaviour". The last is chiefly of either spouse by the other, more often of wife by husband. Maybe you think those laws wrong, too; maybe you think FGM, slavery and oppressive bullying are "natural rights" too because they occur within families.
The "state" as you call it, only "interferes" as you call it, when children are thought to be at risk from some hazard that may not be necessarily physical violence against them. Whilst I agree this can go wrong in a few cases, it is better that than to the leave them in the hope they will be safe after all. For their have been too many cases where they were not safe at all, some have been treated appallingly, even killed. Or do you think cruelty a natural family right?
If the social services can go wrong occasionally, and they do, as no system can be "perfect", then so can families! Having a family is indeed a right, but people, especially children, also have rights to be protected if the family is bad.
I do not know the full details in this case, and I very much doubt you do either - I would expect it to be as confidential as their medical details unless one or other family member has been charged with breaking the law.
However, your initial reaction here was to applaud gangs of interfering ne'er-do-wells destroying vehicles. They were also hurling trolleys and goods from a nearby shop around. I.e, you were trying for no good reason at all, to support wanton, needless, mindless damage and destruction of others' property not even involved in the case.
You imagining a law or system you don't know, to be wrong is no reason for breaking other laws.
I bet you'd be among the first to protest at the vandalism if it happened in your country, whatever "excuse" might be concocted by its apologists. Either that or you be among the first to attack the nearest bus for the sheer hell of it.
.....
Incidentally, as well as trying to protect children generally, there are also laws in the UK that aim to protect girls against enforced genital mutilation (very difficult but there have been one or two prosecutions), "modern slavery", and what is called "coercive and controlling behaviour". The last is chiefly of either spouse by the other, more often of wife by husband. Maybe you think those laws wrong, too; maybe you think FGM, slavery and oppressive bullying are "natural rights" too because they occur within families.
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@Sharon There ARE such laws. They are designed to protect anyone of either sex.
That they sometimes fail, terribly, such as in the case of Peter Connolly ("Baby P"), is not by the law itself but usually by the different agencies involved not communicating properly with each other, or being too entangled in "procedures", so the social-services cannot intervene early enough. When they do, the unfortunate case-workers are sometimes rendered powerless by manipulative parents doing their best to hide their own failures and negligence as parents.
Really we only ever hear of their work when something does go wrong.
That they sometimes fail, terribly, such as in the case of Peter Connolly ("Baby P"), is not by the law itself but usually by the different agencies involved not communicating properly with each other, or being too entangled in "procedures", so the social-services cannot intervene early enough. When they do, the unfortunate case-workers are sometimes rendered powerless by manipulative parents doing their best to hide their own failures and negligence as parents.
Really we only ever hear of their work when something does go wrong.
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@Sharon Ah! Sorry. I'd not realised your meaning.
Yes, I agree there.
I do think "circumcision" of either sex wrong, unless by free choice by adults not under others' pressure, and performed as a proper surgical operation. Even then I'd rather they did not have it done as it is not necessary, and all operations carry some hazards.
To be fair, if performed as a proper operation the male circumcision is less intrusive and damaging than the female version. I think that may be one reason such a ban might be extremely difficult to introduce, but it would probably also raise loud squeals of "racist" and similar nonsense objections.
I have had it done but when far too young to know, and to cure a real medical problem; not for some supposedly "cultural" excuse. It did not affect my ability to make love decades later.
I once heard a rabbi talking about this on the radio. He said something like "It defines me as a Jew", in a religious sense. I thought myself glad not to belong to any faith that defines its male followers by a needless operation to correct an anatomical mistake made by its own deity. (Actually, I don't belong to any faith!)
Yes, I agree there.
I do think "circumcision" of either sex wrong, unless by free choice by adults not under others' pressure, and performed as a proper surgical operation. Even then I'd rather they did not have it done as it is not necessary, and all operations carry some hazards.
To be fair, if performed as a proper operation the male circumcision is less intrusive and damaging than the female version. I think that may be one reason such a ban might be extremely difficult to introduce, but it would probably also raise loud squeals of "racist" and similar nonsense objections.
I have had it done but when far too young to know, and to cure a real medical problem; not for some supposedly "cultural" excuse. It did not affect my ability to make love decades later.
I once heard a rabbi talking about this on the radio. He said something like "It defines me as a Jew", in a religious sense. I thought myself glad not to belong to any faith that defines its male followers by a needless operation to correct an anatomical mistake made by its own deity. (Actually, I don't belong to any faith!)
PicturesOfABetterTomorrow · 41-45, M
@ArishMell I will admit I don't live in the UK but I would not automatically assume that Family Services are above nefarious purposes.
I live in Canada were even the government has officially admitted and paid reparations for using Child and Family Services to essentially forcibly remove and place Aboriginal kids into white families to "civilize" them. Look up the 60's Scoop.
I live in Canada were even the government has officially admitted and paid reparations for using Child and Family Services to essentially forcibly remove and place Aboriginal kids into white families to "civilize" them. Look up the 60's Scoop.
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow There is no reason to believe the UK has any nefarious purposes now. .Far from it, and it would not be possible to keep any such idea secret anyway.
It did have a dreadful scheme back in the 1950s to send children from very poor backgrounds, and especially if illegitimate as that was so frowned on in those days, to supposed new and better lives in Australia and Canada. The idea was sincere but no-one thought to administer it properly, so many of the children ended up, filtered via nasty church-run orphanages and even the children's rescue charity St. Barnardoes, adopted by farmers and the like as just free labour. Many were treated very badly, as well, by both the orphanages and their foster-parents.
At least it was not quite was harsh as the appalling Magdalen Laundries slave-labour camps for "fallen" women (ones who'd had babies out of wedlock) in Ireland. Large but unknown numbers of the babies died because the nuns had no idea how to look after them, even if they cared, and were buried in un-marked graves in the laundry grounds.
In both countries large sections of society did not want anyone to understand "the Facts of Life", found the mating instinct difficult to comprehend, were strongly against contraception euphemistically called "Family Planning" and mysoginy was rife among the men. Then they wondered why girls would "get into trouble"...
Just as heartless but perhaps slightly less brutal was the 1940s-50s Swiss pogrom against its own Romanies. That was operated by kidnapping the children and fostering them under new, approved names to approved Swiss families. Again, the Church helped by using its orphanages as "transit camps". Their parents and other adults were largely left alone to die out naturally... or emigrate.
Australia had a somewhat similar scheme to Canada's, and the Chinese government is presently very busy destroying its Uyghur culture by "assimilating" these mainly-Muslim people into being fully "Chinese".
However, there is no such or any other scheme in Britain now. There'd be Hell to pay if anyone tried it. I think the trouble in Leeds might have stemmed from people who for one reason or another fear any officialdom they do not understand, and cannot understand the social-services are trying to help them.
It did have a dreadful scheme back in the 1950s to send children from very poor backgrounds, and especially if illegitimate as that was so frowned on in those days, to supposed new and better lives in Australia and Canada. The idea was sincere but no-one thought to administer it properly, so many of the children ended up, filtered via nasty church-run orphanages and even the children's rescue charity St. Barnardoes, adopted by farmers and the like as just free labour. Many were treated very badly, as well, by both the orphanages and their foster-parents.
At least it was not quite was harsh as the appalling Magdalen Laundries slave-labour camps for "fallen" women (ones who'd had babies out of wedlock) in Ireland. Large but unknown numbers of the babies died because the nuns had no idea how to look after them, even if they cared, and were buried in un-marked graves in the laundry grounds.
In both countries large sections of society did not want anyone to understand "the Facts of Life", found the mating instinct difficult to comprehend, were strongly against contraception euphemistically called "Family Planning" and mysoginy was rife among the men. Then they wondered why girls would "get into trouble"...
Just as heartless but perhaps slightly less brutal was the 1940s-50s Swiss pogrom against its own Romanies. That was operated by kidnapping the children and fostering them under new, approved names to approved Swiss families. Again, the Church helped by using its orphanages as "transit camps". Their parents and other adults were largely left alone to die out naturally... or emigrate.
Australia had a somewhat similar scheme to Canada's, and the Chinese government is presently very busy destroying its Uyghur culture by "assimilating" these mainly-Muslim people into being fully "Chinese".
However, there is no such or any other scheme in Britain now. There'd be Hell to pay if anyone tried it. I think the trouble in Leeds might have stemmed from people who for one reason or another fear any officialdom they do not understand, and cannot understand the social-services are trying to help them.
PicturesOfABetterTomorrow · 41-45, M
@ArishMell The point is nobody knew anything nefarious was going on here and it all seemed totally legit and nobody took the complaints from Native people seriously because they were a minority nobody gave a shit about.
The truth only came out when all the people responsible had died of old age by that point.
I mean you are talking about the same country that up till a few weeks ago was going to start deporting people to Rwanda.
The truth only came out when all the people responsible had died of old age by that point.
I mean you are talking about the same country that up till a few weeks ago was going to start deporting people to Rwanda.
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow Oh, I don't condone any of that bad treatment of indigenous people - including by their fellow indigenous ones..
Those who were to be deported to Rwanda were ones coming to Britain illegally, by ruthless criminal gangs. The difficulty is that they are arriving more rapidly than their claims can be assessed. A lot of them are escaping wars, drought, oppression or persecution, and may have a case for staying, but there are plenty of them who cannot use those reasons. Those imagine they will find a better way of life, but they are unlikely to do so, and if they have particular skills in some trade or profession, their leaving is a loss to their home nation.
Some apparently end up disappearing into society by becoming ensnared by exploitative "black economy" firms or private "employment" that is merely modern slavery, as the law against it calls it - possibly worse off than if they had stayed at home..
Those who were to be deported to Rwanda were ones coming to Britain illegally, by ruthless criminal gangs. The difficulty is that they are arriving more rapidly than their claims can be assessed. A lot of them are escaping wars, drought, oppression or persecution, and may have a case for staying, but there are plenty of them who cannot use those reasons. Those imagine they will find a better way of life, but they are unlikely to do so, and if they have particular skills in some trade or profession, their leaving is a loss to their home nation.
Some apparently end up disappearing into society by becoming ensnared by exploitative "black economy" firms or private "employment" that is merely modern slavery, as the law against it calls it - possibly worse off than if they had stayed at home..
PicturesOfABetterTomorrow · 41-45, M
@ArishMell Ok first off your statements are contradictory. You say the people coming over are refugees which is by definition no illegal. Refugees are a legal immigration status by definition.
And that is definitely no excuse for dumping them in a poor third world country who has absolutely no recourse to prevent the UK from deciding to make them their problem.
And that is definitely no excuse for dumping them in a poor third world country who has absolutely no recourse to prevent the UK from deciding to make them their problem.
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow The refugees are not illegal for being that, no, but many of the arrivals are not refugees; and the trafficking gangs who exploit them are entirely illegal.
Rwanda was perfectly free to refuse the plan, and could have done. I must admit I am surprised it accepted, so I don't know what they get out of it.
Rwanda was perfectly free to refuse the plan, and could have done. I must admit I am surprised it accepted, so I don't know what they get out of it.
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Sharon · F
@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow The previous (Conservative) UK Government was doing all it could to prevent refugees' cases being heard. The idea was to immediately deport them all to Rwanda. The UK Governement said their cases would considered there but, even if found to be genuine, they would not be allowed back into the UK. This country was becoming more and more like a rogue state. Hopefully the new (Labour) Government will honour its international treaties regarding the treatment of refugees.
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