I don't know what to think about this - Some parents need to be nannied by the state

That is exactly my point. The assumption was that by giving all the youngsters degrees, the economy would improve. The two are not nearly so closely correlated.

@EuclidianGeometryFan I don't think that Blair accounted for Brexit and the country voting for economic suicide on the tail end of an international financial crisis.

This was Blair's biggest blind-spot - thinking that inequality could be tackled by improving the outcome for the disadvantaged without tackling unearned privilege and excess wealth at the other end of the scale.

Blair was the most politically astute politician Labour (tbh any UK political party) have had in decades. He knew that politics was won and lost in the centre ground. He couldn't reject the Politics of Aspiration and afford to turn off the broadly centrist middle class of the time. This is why all parties talk of Levelling Up.

IMHO a traditional university system, based on worthwhile research and giving places to the few 5% or so of youngsters suited to a highly academic research-focussed career, is the way to go.

That's a horrendous piece of educational elitism, but I have no idea whether this is an abhorrent philosophy you hold dear or just an opinion based on ignorance. University is not just for academic and research-focussed careers.

I have not accused you of being a troll and I really have no desire to check you out further.

You have my reply above.

If you search my username you'll find me making reference to my work occasionally, if that helps reassure that I'm not some sort of food bank troll. If you're desperate to check me out further I can DM details of the project I run. If you have doubts about the nitty-gritty of what I'm saying beyond that, that's OK with me. MN is a public forum and I'm sure you've raised an eyebrow more than once about the accuracy of what people post on here; it's your right to do so.

That was one of the most pretentious things I've read this week 😂 and all that for an online newspaper that isn't even behind a pay wall clearly not that high and mighty if us peasants can read it with a click of a button

"Supporting is not stigmatising. Pointing out differences between parents is not blaming parents for those differences, merely a necessary condition for helping to address them. Schools alone can’t narrow the gaps between children from different families."

I actually agree 👍

One really big point no one has made and I hear every day in London: don’t shit on the poor who work bloody hard by hurling freebies at the latest sob story on the block.

You should hear what the Windrush generation has to say about asylum seekers/economic migrants. (I’m in London where the arrivals are usually fit young guys from safe countries.Not all, most.)

It’s a slap in the face to black Britons that having clawed their way out of poverty by eye-bleeding amounts of work and sent their grandchildren to uni, they’re watching Albanians getting waited on hand & foot in 3-star hotels.

Social justice starts with one rule: don’t make it worse.

I agree.
I'm not a dentist, but anaesthetists spend a lot of time looking in people's mouths and I definitely saw a general upward trend in dental health over my career.
Childhood caries has always been a big problem and it sadly remains so, but part of that is because we see it differently manage it differently now. As a child growing up in a working class but not really underprivileged* *environment in the late 60s/70s having gas to have teeth out at the dentist was just a fact of life for most of us. It was to be expected. I don't think anywhere near as many of the children I grew up with would need teeth out if they were kids today - even flouride in toothpaste wasn't ubiquitous then but I'm sure our parents would have done better with access to modern knowledge and products. The general trend has been up.
Unfortunately however there are still plenty of children needing teeth out and thankfully, safety standards are very different. That's lead to the relevant services becoming over stretched, there are now huge waiting lists and it costs Trusts a lot of money. So in some ways it's a bigger problem than it used to be, but the reasons are complex and multiple. It's far too simplistic to blame parents for not being bothered to brush their offsprings' teeth and certainly not true that everyone used to do it in the past.
Of course many people could do better, but as with many public health messages, just berating them really doesn't work. I anaesthetised for paediatric dental lists throughout my Consultant career and yes, I used to get frustrated when I was seeing sibling after sibling in the same families attending for multiple extractions, and even towards the end of my career, children of children that I'd anaesthetised but I honestly met very few parents who I actually thought were "bad". I met lots who I thought had poor understanding, less than ideal priorities, a general lack of control over their children or indeed their lives as a whole, and plenty who still accepted poor dental health as "normal", probably because in their families it was, but very few who genuinely didn't care. I don't think there's an easy answer, though improving access to NHS dental care and investing in parenting support and education would probably be a good start. I think "nannying" is the wrong word but there are lot of parents who need more support and that needs to be more than a poster or a link to a website which is what seems to pass for preventative medicine now.

Honestly, come off it. You presented that story as though it was 100% true.

If you had prefaced it with a disclaimer that you had changed a few details to protect client confidentiality, fair enough. But you didn't do that until I challenged you.

It's a very strange article to me in that he says parents need 'nannying' by the state in a derogatory sounding manner - and then says 'supporting is not stigmatising'. Hello! You're saying the support isn't stigmatising while calling it 'nannying' - you can't have it both ways surely?

Well, I care about my clients' privacy, so I amend details accordingly. I could NOT do that, and then get comments like yours, or I could do that, and then get accused of making things up. Rock / hard place... You either assume that I have given a comparable example that reflects the reality, or you decide you don't trust what I'm saying. Either is fine by me.

We're not drowning in underemployed graduates now because they were failed by the education/university system then. The economy failed to keep pace and the opportunities are lacking.
That is exactly my point. The assumption was that by giving all the youngsters degrees, the economy would improve. The two are not nearly so closely correlated.

But there was no way that university numbers could have remained static and participation opened up to a broader range of socioeconomic groups without displacing private school pupils in favour of state school.
This was Blair's biggest blind-spot - thinking that inequality could be tackled by improving the outcome for the disadvantaged without tackling unearned privilege and excess wealth at the other end of the scale.
Society is a pyramid. Attempts to create a non-pyramid society don't succeed, because basically humans are primates who think power and status are important. So the best a government can do is flatten the pyramid to be broad and not too tall. Blair tried to change the shape into a rhombus, or even a kite.
(This analogy is oversimplified and of course ignores the small 'underclass' below the bottom of the pyramid).
If universities were disproportionally stuffed with private school pupils, this could have been tackled head-on, but instead the option taken was just increase the places available.
IMHO a traditional university system, based on worthwhile research and giving places to the few 5% or so of youngsters suited to a highly academic research-focussed career, is the way to go.
University as a way of 'broadening minds' and career training is definitely not the best solution - there are better (and cheaper) ways of achieving these aims, such as subsidising adult-education as used to be the case.

it is very unprofessional of you to post details of your client like that. She could be on here and recognise herself.

Thank you @PandoraSox , but I have changed enough details that that would be unlikely.

Your language here infers that some of your food bank clients demonstrate grotesquely infantile levels of dependency, and the example you give of this is a woman not being sufficiently grateful for being offered an unwanted item of clothing for her child.

@izimbra - no, the example I gave is of a woman coming to us requesting a winter coat for her child because she didn't have one, when in fact she had one but wanted another which wasn't "school". It's not the problem of a food bank or anyone other than the child's parent/s to provide multiple coats for children, and I think it's hugely entitled to assume that it would be. And I anticipated and addressed the example you give of your mum in my first reply to you. Poverty does leave scars and we make plenty of allowances for that in our work - though usually what we see is the other way round, people trying to get by with far less than is acceptable, like living with no fridge facilities. If your mum had one good winter coat would she be approaching a charity to fund another for her, do you think? Many people of her generation would have gone without one even, or "made do".

I have done my job for years now and seen literally thousands of clients. I unfortunately do stand by my assertion that some are unpleasantly entitled, and I have no idea what could be done to extend a bit less welfare to these people without harming those in acute need. You can sling whatever hyperbole at me you like; it doesn't make me change my conclusions of what I have seen professionally.

If Sure Start centres were attended by 'good' parents, as well as parents in need of support, that can only have been a benefit and a good thing.

Firstly, no-one else can judge just how much a parent (usually a mother) might need help - she can be wealthy, well-spoken, educated, and still struggle massively with some or all aspects of parenting a young child.

Secondly and more importantly, a universal service is more acceptable to many people, whereas targeted services are stigmatising. We see the same principle with pensioners who will take the state pension that they have 'earned' but will not touch any means-tested benefits.
Struggling parents, of any social class, are more likely to attend a place that 'everyone' goes to. The poor, uneducated mother won't feel singled-out if every other mother she knows or has seen locally is going to the centre too.

Also, a place that 'every' parent goes to encourages mixing of people from different backgrounds, helping integration and cohesion and community.

Those who then don't attend, can be flagged for follow-up - are they unaware? or are they feckless, lazy, disaffected, anti-society, and their children in need of a great deal of support?

It is a mistake that both left and right make, to think of means-testing or targeting as a way of saving money, when in fact that undermines the whole service, sometimes to the point of it becoming entirely ineffective.

Food banks etc are there to help the service users. Not to make the volunteers feel better about themselves. As long as the service users aren't abusive or aggressive then that's fine.

I think if I were in dire straits and someone offered me a helping hand to feed my kids I would be extremely grateful to be frank. Especially if there were people out there good enough to spend their own money on making sure my family was fed.

Some people are entitled, some people will take what they don’t need, it’s just the way it is, people are people after all.

Goodness, so many people have misunderstood the point of the article.

Author isn't saying that only Cambridge and Maths are elite/worthwhile - rather that for many people, they could not identify the fact that of the list given, Cambridge is the most elite. Maths is clearly not the only subject worth taking - but many people did not know that compared to Business Studies, Maths is considered a more rigorous area of study.

Maybe some of you could have benefited from Sure Start yourselves...

Probably a bit of that.

But there was no way that university numbers could have remained static and participation opened up to a broader range of socioeconomic groups without displacing private school pupils in favour of state school.

If you look at UK economic history in the run-up to Blair and Brown's Education, Education, Education based policies. Under Thatcher heavy industry had gone into decline, state intervention in high tech wasn't working, retraining and reskilling in former heavy industry communities wasn't working, financial services was the growth sector, Tebbit's solution was to everyone not smart enough to work in a bank was "get on your bike", etc. Under Major a start was made in improving the education system. Educating and upskilling the workforce was seen as an alternative solution to encourage international investment in clean manufacturing. Degrees were seen as attractive qualifications.

I think it's easy with hindsight to forget the optimism that was running through education and the university sector at that time. We're not drowning in underemployed graduates now because they were failed by the education/university system then. The economy failed to keep pace and the opportunities are lacking.

I know exactly the type of people she is talking about.
Personal experience from my own family, teen starts going off the rails, drinking, smoking, underage sex with grown men, skipping school. Concerns raised by family members which got dismissed as them being nosy and what do they know what it's like being a parent. School raises concerns. Conversations had about parenting as parent is big into a party lifestyle, out every weekend with friends, hungover Monday to Friday, barely home to cook meals and obviously the kids use parental absence to do god knows what.
When challenged, instead of accepting concerns, or listening to the impact its having on the kids, they kick up a fuss on how they can't possibly do what's needed because it will stop them from enjoying their life. It will stop them from partying, they will have to get up early go with kid to school etc. This weekend they wanted to put kid in a care home because the kid is "stressign them out", well yes, because that's what parenting does to you.

What’s the difference between children centres and sure start centres?

We have amazing children centres in our area that have baby massage / breastfeeding cafes etc. Free activities for children / toddlers or at very little cost. Do all areas not have this still?

I remember the dentist visits at my very middle class school in the 80s. It was the best lesson as we got disclosing tablets and very purple teeth 😁

I read an article in the Guardian a few months ago about a ‘Baby Bank’ where mothers in need could get used equipment, clothes and be given nappies etc. The two cases cited both had three or four children and were expecting another. No mention was made of the fathers. If their mothers can’t limit their families when they can’t afford the children they have, their children will inevitably grow up disadvantaged. People do have to take some responsibility; it’s a sad fact that if you’re rich you can have all the children you want like most things in life. If you’re not, you can’t (or shouldn’t).

@TheWayTheLightFalls it is very unprofessional of you to post details of your client like that. She could be on here and recognise herself.

@TheWayTheLightFalls

"I said that there is a tranche of people who expect someone else to do everything for them practically down to wiping their backsides, and that they display an extreme sense of entitlement."

Your language here infers that some of your food bank clients demonstrate grotesquely infantile levels of dependency, and the example you give of this is a woman not being sufficiently grateful for being offered an unwanted item of clothing for her child.

Honestly you're not covering yourself with glory here.

I mean, maybe she didn't need another coat the same as the other one. It made me laugh that she didn't like the coat you'd gone to such a huge effort (really??) to give to her. Good for her.