A great column from today's Observer

I really appreciate and agree with the points made in this column.

Social mobility and social exclusion
We block the ghetto exit and we pay the price!
Franklin Johnston
Friday, January 30, 2009

The channels to social mobility are at a trickle and our promising youth now turn to mischief. In past decades, we turned back the programmes which enabled the poor to move up in large numbers. This crop of leaders in medicine, politics, management, law, etc, is the last large group to come through the upwardly mobile pipeline.
Franklin Johnston

This group is old school and can be shamed; those after have no shame. So too, old money is urbane and understated; new money (legal and illegal) is loud, ill-mannered, in-your-face, sets a bad example and has no sense of service. Most of today's leaders are the first in their family to attend university; the first to attend high school, to complete primary school or to read and write. Many mastered the knife and fork late in life and found out that a dry white wine is wet. But they are the product of a healthy, orderly social process. We learn, advance and replenish all classes.

Today, the upwardly mobile channels are blocked as that great host of escapees from the ghetto (now aged 45 to 60 plus), by their policies and rhetoric, broke the ladders they climbed and slashed the social fabric. Trainable people are few and have no jobs; new workers are not replenishing the middle class and the top people - our repository of experience and financial security, not intimidated by politicians, is depleted. This group upholds our principles, defends the rule of law, are benefactors of the poor and the gatekeepers of our democracy. This group is passing, silenced, migrated or marginalised. Politicians want to supplant this group by using our taxes to curry favour with poor people for them to depend on politics instead. Most poor people make no progress, but they are ambitious, and sadly are leaching into the dark side in order to "make it".

Many no longer aspire to work; as one said when asked to cut a lawn, " I not lookin' slavery, I want cash." Workers are not revivifying the middle class which is also stagnant and the top class is no longer our vigorous arbiter and defence against corrosive people and policies. Our social contract is in breach.

The most feared people today are gunmen and corrupt politicians. Take your life or take your livelihood; both wreak havoc on the society. Citizens are destroyed or neutered; starved of work, lose their savings and driven to exile. We are afraid to speak so as not to upset powerful people. Some, poor and rich alike, see no evil, hear no evil. They don't want to be involved as they have families, jobs, contracts, permits and licences which depend on politics. they are involved already as our democracy is threatened. Victimisation (real or imagined) is rife. People don't buck the going orthodoxy, we are losing our freedom and don't care because we make money or hope to do so. We "bite our tongues", say nothing, but we have consciences, and at home we vent and bitch. Our family and our nation suffer. Our silence makes us ill. Stress kills. Our friends (men) die prematurely in their 60s and 70s. We are a nation on the edge! Some years ago we won a public contract. Soon after, there was a change of government and the new PM took away the job and gave it to "his consultant". That consultant, a professional colleague who did not have the expertise, gave us a sub-contract to do the work, with one change; the reports were to be printed on their letterhead. and some wonder why we don't work much at home; mind free, man free!

Independent opinion is not valued. The upper class used to keep the rapacious in check by ostracising them as the law couldn't touch them. Today, raptors savage the mores of our land. They don't care for principle or decorum; they were never habilitated and cannot be rehabilitated. The rich support the status quo; most made their money honestly, against all odds and deserve every penny. My mentor, the incomparable, late Abe Issa would say "business must always be in power". support all parties, give extra to the one you like. The rich are immune from victimisation and need to get active in protecting our values; the clergy, university teachers and those who by vocation and tenure cannot be victimised, should speak up for the speechless. Their silence is deafening.

Entry-level jobs are so scarce, they are bequeathed to worker's children by collusion with employers. Poor people without contacts cannot get a job. Sadly, in the past three decades few workers made it into the middle class. The nouveau riche went from poor to rich in one jump (even the taxman can't fathom it). They live in the right areas, but as they did not progress via the social conduit and don't have the values. They are visible, loud, gaudy, have more money than sense, no work ethic or community spirit. They can donate more; their chariots are bigger; their children are walking brands with the latest gadgets; but they don't write, are not missed at civic meetings and do not drive a social change agenda. They are tolerated; what they think is respect, is fear.

The social circulation system is broken and social exclusion is growing. As legitimate expectations flounder, drugs, the antisocial and the criminal take their place. I spoke to some students at Jose Marti and found that their "get out of jail free" card was to cut a tune like Beenie Man and get rich; school was an obstacle, not an opportunity. To get our social mobility pipeline flowing again we must fix the broken education; the decline of ethics, values, aspiration and desire. Fix the postcode lottery which stigmatises the poor. If your postcode is not Kingston 6 or 8, "dog nyam yu suppa" for good schools and jobs. Next, government's failure to plan and regulate housing. We started in Jones Town; money and family grew so we moved above Torrington Bridge, then above Cross Roads and finally into peri-urbia. Our planners have no progressive housing model; there is no "starter home" - the one bedroom for the person or young couple - new workers. If you start across the causeway, when money or family grows, instead of selling up to a young couple and buying a bigger house, you keep adding blocks and steel until this modern, prized seaside town becomes a slum. Last, we are taught to work, not to make a job; new jobs are few, yet we reward existing jobs - teachers, nurses and security forces etc and ignore new entrants. We must reopen the conduits of social mobility, otherwise the seething magma in the bowels of our nation will erupt and destroy the dollyhouse. More anon!

Happy New Year to all!

I won't make any promises about blogging more, but I have become interested more in writing. What I need now is motivation and muses...

I randomly wrote this dialogue just to see what would happen, this is where I stopped. Would you be interested in learning more of the story?

“What do you think?”
“I think he’s wrong. I don’t believe that Martin would actually kill someone, y’know?”
“You never know…some people can and will surprise you. Martin always seemed kind of weird to me.”
“Weird? How?”
“Remember the time in 5th form when we found that baby’s skeleton in that abandoned house behind school?”
“how can I forget. What about it?”
“When we were walking away, I saw Martin hanging around a bit longer, gazing at the skeleton with a strange look…almost as if he were longing to touch it, or wondering what it felt like to leave the baby there…”
“Naw, that’s crazy man. You’re just reading your own feelings into the situation. I know you never liked Martin from he first came to our class, how would you know what he was wondering?”
“Yeah, well maybe I was right to not like him. You didn’t see that look on his face, and I hoped I’d never see it again.”