This is an appalling, shocking and tragic story and now NL seizes the ’Fiona Pilkington’s case’ to go on an anti-social frenzied bender. But Brown nor Johnson will concentrate on the underlying reasons why this kind of behaviour exists. Instead it will be about tagging, curfews and ASBOs… which will mean further criminalisation.
And NL will never take responsiblity or accountability for creating the very conditions for ‘anti-social’ behaviour to happen. The politics of neoliberalism further oppresses, atomises and alienates people, pushes people into a corner, how to deal with this powerlessness is to bully and victimise people in a worse situation than yourself and are less powerful than yourself.
NL has generally pitted working class people against each other, divided people and isolated them. That’s central to the ideology of neoliberalism. And the society NL has created reflects this. Neoliberalism is not about transforming society into an equitable and positive one, where people have self-worth and self-confidence. It is, instead, about divide and rule, dog-eat-dog mentality. So what kind of values are instilled in people?
Furthermore, Gordon Brown’s speech today contains more ways of stigmatising young people,especially young women and that’s supervised homes for pregnant teenagers. What message does that highlight? The emphasis being on ‘responsibility’ again, the usual favourite loose language of NL.. There is nothing intrinsically progressive about this rather Victorian retrograde step of shoving young women into ‘supervised homes’…(it also comes across as punishing the young woman for getting pregnant in the first place).
And central to this is will the woman be able to choose or will the ‘choice’ be forced upon her with the threat of benefit sanctions..? Again, I am only guessing but knowing NL’s track record, well, I wouldn’t put it past them.
And what has been noted is where are the resources to do this, including the money, what will it entail? All there is at the moment is half-baked policies to appeal to whom?
It is well worth reading Kevin’s post on this issue regarding anti-social behaviour. Thought provoking.
