Grammar schools - social mobility or social pariah?

This week the opening of a new grammar school was approved by the incumbent Tory government in my home country of Kent. Based 10 miles away from Tonbridge's Weald of Kent Grammar school, the building in Sevenoaks has been decreed as an annex to that existing complex - thereby neatly skipping around the "no more grammar schools" rule installed by that very public schoolboy Tony Blair in 1998.

As a result of yet another Tory deception social media went ballistic at the news and there were many commentators putting their two pennies worth into the mix... so here's mine:

Brought up on a council estate by a single mother in the 1960s I, like many other children, were consigned to a life path of low paid, unskilled work with no ambition of owning our own homes.

But along with several others in my primary school, I passed my 11 plus. I didn't even know what that was and didn't even realise I'd taken any test that would take me from the comfort of my peer group and place me smack bang into a world I'd never experienced. I was just told I was going to the grammar school. I wanted to go to the (awful) local secondary.

My protests fell on deaf ears. My family was proud. I was the first one to pass the 11 plus. It was something to be celebrated. It would lift me out of the inevitable drudgery of factory or shop work. I could be a secretary, or even go to university.

I didn't fit in. I was the one who queued on a Monday morning, with a select few, outside the secretary's office to collect our free school dinner tickets. I didn't have parents who encouraged me to do my homework. I didn't have a clue about how to study to pass exams.

My old primary school friends now saw me as "posh" and that social circle withered away. My new school associates saw me as "the poor kid" dressed in a second-hand uniform so I remained outside their cliques.

I hated every day I walked through the gates of my grammar school. I left with two O levels... grade C.

So much for social mobility.

Of course, as those have argued so vociferously on social media have said, how can you decide a child's fate at 11 years old?

And, more importantly, those old days of supposed grammar school social mobility have now been overtaken by the feeding frenzy of pushy middle class parents who can afford to tutor 10 year old Henry and Felicity to pass the exam to attain that elusive school place... and continue to fund their progress on that extending social ladder.

Me? Well I did just fine in the end. My education came through my work experience as an adult. I bought my first property at 22 years old. I got that nice little job in the City on an above average salary. And just to add the icing to the cake, I received my BSc First Class Honours degree in Psychology, after five years of studying with the OU, in 2008.

Grammar schools? Who needs them.

IDS getting ready to rob your granny?

Today has seen a flurry of Twitter activity in response to the suggestion by the right-wing quango, The Tax Payers Alliance (TPA), that the government should remove pensioner benefits.

Justifiably many people are angry.

Personally, I'm just bemused and surprised at the reactions because what the TPA has suggested is already happening and despite mine and others efforts to publicise it, nobody has taken the blind bit of notice.

Why?

Well it's simple really. The already affected OAPs are those of us living in other EU countries, whose entitlement to the pension cash benefit known as "winter fuel payment" was finally removed by the implementation of Statutory Instrument 3270 just two weeks ago on 21 September.

Derided as renegades, or rich... or both, we "British migrants" are the non-entities that the UK Government can effectively "rip the piss" out of and nobody bats an eyelid.

Well, maybe if the TPA's suggestion is taken up by the (dis)honorable Iain Duncan Smith - and in all likelihood he's already been planning this for a long time anyway - then it'll be more than an eyelid that's batted.

This could be the straw that breaks the camels back and bring Cameron and his cronies to their knees when their loyal band of merry pensioners give them the finger in 2020!

In the meantime, I'm not normally the sort to say "I told you so" - but on this occasion I will.

Since George Osborne announced the removal of winter fuel payment for OAPs living in the EU in the coalition's Autumn Statement of 2013, and the signing of SI 3270 in December by then-Pensions Minister, LibDem Steve Webb, I have trumpeted the call to arms from every rooftop.

But nobody listened. Nobody cared. A classic case of "it'll never happen to me".

Well pensioners of the UK, looks like you might be in the cross-hairs of IDS now.

We know how it feels, We know how to deal with it (and, trust me, we are). We hope you can too.

IDS a liar? Tell me something I don't know.

Today the world of social media erupted when a FOI request submitted to the DWP revealed that the department had faked claimants stories, relating to benefit sanctions, to portray a positive spin to their evil wrongdoings.

Outraged, the Twittersphere was suddenly bursting at the seams with tweets abusing, mocking and deriding Secretary of State Iain Duncan Smith under the collective #fakeDWPstories

Some people appeared genuinely shocked - and in that respect I was amazed.

After all us British migrants, living within the (supposedly) legally protected EU, have been dealing with the crap meted out by this government department for many years now.

We even had the misfortune to come up against the now Labour leadership candidate Yvette Cooper when she was at the helm of this ship... and while she talks of social justice today during her campaign, I can tell you that she was anything but "just" back in 2009.

This link to a debate in Westminster Hall tells the story, with her Minister for the Disabled acting as her henchman and mouthpiece... and like her successor IDS, Ms Cooper can also be seen to have the deaths of claimants firmly on her record:

http://www.theyworkforyou.com/whall/?id=2010-01-12b.167.0

Anyway, back to the deception by IDS and his DWP cronies, which has #fakeDWPstories merrily trending while I am writing this.

His actions are nothing new and nobody in their right mind should be shocked by them. Instead maybe folk could start taking more notice of what the Tories are doing to other minority groups with no voice or UK public support.

Yes, British migrants living in other EU countries... otherwise known as expats and all the stereotypical claptrap that goes with that old Empire title if you are stupid enough to read and believe the Daily Mail or Express!

Because less than a year ago IDS pulled another big fat lie out of his bag that has condemned many OAPs to the worry of how to afford to heat their homes this winter.

I'm not even going to bother writing the nitty gritty details of IDS' disgusting and disgraceful treatment of elderly folk - including those who fought in WW2 to protect their land and bring about the freedoms we enjoy today...

Instead I'll just leave this link here for you to read through at your leisure:

http://www.winterfuelpayment.info/index.html

Iain Duncan Smith a liar?
Tell me something I don't know.

Labour doing Tories dirty deeds... again!

In 1992 the Conservative government, as part of designating social welfare benefits under EU regulatory provisions, placed Disability Living Allowance, Attendance Allowance and Carers Allowance into the category of "non-exportable benefits"... effectively ensuring that anyone taking advantage of the EU's fundamental principle of Freedom of Movement could not claim these - in some cases essential - disability financial assistance payments. In other words, if you were disabled then the moment you left Blighty's shores, your disability would miraculously disappear and you would, by some biblical miracle "rise up and walk again".

With the advent of New Labour in 1997, pro-EU and with a presumed "fairer society" attitude, those affected by the Nasty Party's previous action were confident that the discriminatory decision to assign DLA/AA/CA as non-exportable would be overturned. After all, Child Benefit was payable to immigrants working in the UK to send home to their children living in other EU countries... so surely fairness in society would permit those (many of whom were retired) to receive monies from the country they had paid their dues to for decades.

But no. Blair's New Labour was not prepared to undo the injustice of their opposition. Instead campaigners were forced to take their case to the European Commission, who instigated an investigation that resulted in a lengthy court battle, the UK government's defence being funded by the British taxpayer, through the European Court of Justice*. Finally heard in 2005, the ECJ made a ruling in 2007 that fell (mostly) in favour of the disabled claimants. DLA (care component), AA and CA were legally payable to British subjects living within the EU. DLA mobility component was denied at this point and another court case was heard and ruled on in 2011, falling in favour of the new coalition government and it remains non-exportable.

From the decision in 2007 until just before they lost power in 2010, Labour steadfastly refused to adhere to the ECJ ruling. Instead they made more and more outrageous (and quite frankly ridiculous) assertions as to why they should not pay British disabled citizens their rightful benefits. Instead individual claimants were forced through DWP appeal court cases... again funded at great cost by the UK taxpayer (ironically, quite a few Brits abroad are mandatory payers of UK tax).

Finally, once the coalition was formed in 2010, the DWP complied with the ECJ ruling on the proviso (i.e. by changing domestic social security rules) that any recipients must have made a minimum contribution into the UK's National Insurance contribution scheme. Fair enough.

So now we whizz forward to 2014, following an announcement in Osborne's 2013 Autumn Statement that the coalition (in reality, Conservatives) would remove the state pensioner winter fuel payment from Brits living in DWP-defined "hot" countries. And in order to remove the maximum number of people from the scheme, DWP Secretary of State, Iain Duncan Smith, had his minions skew their "temperature test", by the addition of French tropical islands (in the Indian Ocean and Caribbean) to artifically increase mainland France's average annual temperature by two degrees above the SW UK average on which the test is based. In reality France is below that criteria by two degrees!

Petty politics? Of course, we're taking about the Nasty Party.

On 10 December 2014, a statutory instrument (3270) was signed to amend the social security law relating to payments of winter fuel. At this point, for the uninitiated, I must just add that winter fuel payment was introduced by New Labour as a "top-up" to what was then an even more derisory basic state pension than now. Accordingly, the European Commission, which defines winter fuel payment as a "pension benefit" linked to the basic state pension, has instigated an investigation into the actions of the just dissolved government.

Meanwhile, the Labour party, hoping to take their place on the ruling benches at Westminster on 8 May, have been asked for their comments - and possible action - to correct the discriminatory wrong by English-speaking newspaper Connexion France.

Labour's response:

"Concerning the WFP it would not change the current arrangements, and would also remove it from the richest 5% of pensioners...

...because there is less money around we cannot continue to pay WFPs to the richest 5% of pensioners, but we have no plans to undo other changes to the WFP made by this government.” 

Deja vu anyone?

*Note: The European Court of Justice is a separate entity from the European Court of Human Rights, which is regularly lamblasted in the right-wing press on issues such as prisoner votes.