Something strange is happening in the heart of London, something an entire generation has never witnessed. You see it by piecing together the news ignored as too small by the big media and reported only by the local journalists covering their particular boroughs. So try these snippets.
Last week, Lambeth announced that a secondary school founded in 1685 will close for good this summer, with its students farmed out elsewhere. In Camden, St Michael’s primary will not even make the end of the school year – it closes this month, the fourth in the borough to go since 2019. Days before the Easter holiday, Hackney warned that two of its primaries are likely to fold and another four may have to merge to survive. Neighbouring Islington is considering closures, while Southwark believes 16 primaries are at risk.
And it’s Tory Bastards who are denuduing London of children because capitalist housing.
Guess the thing he doesn’t even think to include? Yep. The national birth rate sank 20% or so between 2010 and 2019 – makes a hell of a difference to the number of school places required, no?
Tosser.
This is also fun:
The families going missing are those who can no longer afford to buy or rent. Parents such as Louise Ellery, who rents from the Peabody housing association, a charity set up to provide shelter for the “artisans and labouring poor”. Yet she has seen her rent go up and up, along with her other bills. On her phone, she shows me the bank statement: £1,400 a month for her two-bed flat, which many London renters might consider a bargain. But her salary as a school teaching assistant nudges just over £1,600. For the rest of the month she has to feed, heat and clothe her two kids on that wage, a little bit of benefits and the occasional helping hand from a relative.
The relatives include the father(s) of those two kids? If not why not?
“the thing he doesn’t even think to include”
You describe a process prohibited by his employer…
Children of Men was a warning, not an instruction.
The national birth rate sank 20% or so between 2010 and 2019
I don’t wanna be a Debbie Downer or nothing, but the fact that precisely nobody in a position of authority gives a single, solitary shit about the fertility crisis isn’t just another weird political factoid.
The continued physical existence of our people isn’t like potholes or Brexit, it’s not a subject we can safely fail to resolve.
The Western world is now Big Jim’s Kool Aid party. We’re all invited, and in fact attendance isn’t optional. Can’t vote your way out, but maybe something else will happen.
’The relatives include the father(s) of those two kids? If not why not?’
She can’t narrow it down enough to allow the CSA a fighting chance to track them down?
Had to look it up. Tenison’s at the Oval. That used to be a Good School. No idea what it’s like these days, but it is also a Church school and possibly the enriched communities of Lambeth can’t provide enough Christians for it.
What’s the chances that the “little bit of benefits” is upwards of £500 a month?
Boddicker: you’ll notice how precisely zero of these people featured in the Guardian publish their domestic budget.
No spreadsheet = no sympathy.
There’s a tv advert stating government help, covering several categories, is available to help people financially. These include help with low salaries and rent. With the odd bung from the baby daddies, she should be fine. Makes me proud of being a taxpayer for the last 60 odd years.
47 years old. Kids in late teens (A levels).
Teaching assistant.
Not a career lady then (or else a remarkably unsuccessful one). A likely explanation would be a recent divorcee who has up to now had a reasonable lifestyle in an expensive part of inner London without the need to go out to work and is now using her settlement to move to Somerset. Knows the right people to be featured in a Guardian article. A career writing weekly lifestyle columns beckons if she needs the cash.
Boddicker:-
Single mum
Presumably not working as bringing up 2 kids with apparently no other source of income.
I’d be buying big time at £500 per month.
Lived in the Smoke for 25yrs. Was a rite-of-passage, soon as you were pregnant with second sprog (and in need of additional bedroom) you sold up and moved back to Sheffield or wherever you originally came and, with the proceeds of your small London flat, purchased a ‘family’ home. We’re speaking two-parent family in professional type employment rather than a single-parent household in need of benefit payments or subsidised social housing.
@Steve
“I don’t wanna be a Debbie Downer or nothing, but the fact that precisely nobody in a position of authority gives a single, solitary shit about the fertility crisis isn’t just another weird political factoid.
The continued physical existence of our people isn’t like potholes or Brexit, it’s not a subject we can safely fail to resolve.”
True although increasing birth rate should not be solved by making single motherhood a profession.
Well the number of required school places is going to go down sharpish again in 2027, as the birth rate dropped significantly (10-15%) in 2022 (no nothing whatsoever to do with everyone having been given an experimental gene therapy drug in 2021) and doesn’t look like its rising again any time soon.
OT,
Biden can’t tell one black from another.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11968115/White-House-forced-correct-Joe-Biden-Black-Tans-jibe.html
Hilarious article on the Beeb about those rising house rental prices. Hmm, why could that be?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-65252376
Buried in the small print:- “Surveyors reported that tax and regulations were leading many landlords to consider whether to continue or sell up”
No sh*t
Meanwhile, why DID the police raid that pub that had golliwogs on display?
“Police said a member of the public reported being racially distressed after attending the pub.”
Okey-dokey.
Steve
You have to look on the bright side. The Tories will be sending you their good wishes on Eid in a week or so’s time. They’ve got the situation under control for sure….
I think they are probably pinning their hopes on the boats providing a good source of fresh children once family reunions are permitted under a general amnesty for the myriad people coming into the country in that fashion. Otherwise, the usual nonsense from someone arguably very close to Richard Murphy in the level of his disingenuousness.
You can be sure he supports:
– Net Zero
– COVID lockdowns
– Unlimited QE and ‘an end to austerity’
– Unlimited immigration from all countries and the establishment of ‘safe routes’
And I’d hazard he supports the Ukraine campaign.
All of these contribute to the general inflation and economic dislocation, affecting every aspect of life, including housing. Unless you remove them all, you are literally pissing in the wind.
Andrew C
I don’t usually post Guardian articles but this one was illustrative of why anything related to hate crimes needs to be repealed from the statute book.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/apr/13/golliwog-dolls-what-are-they-and-are-they-to-display
From the bbc news front page, where the worlds most important news is reported, more on the Great British Golly Stand-Off:-
It was reported that Home Secretary Suella Braverman had contacted the force about the investigation. Essex Police said that was “categorically not true” but did not rule out having been contacted by the Home Office.
So she didn’t actually make the phone call herself.
Then in the same article just below a photo of the Home Secretary:-
Essex Police said it was “categorically not true” that Suella Braverman had contacted the force
As in the Elon Musk interview the bbc twists, mis-states and wilfully distorts the truth so much that it doesn’t even realise it’s lying.
@Andrew C,
There was a report that a bloke (the complainant?) walked into the pub, photographed the dolls, and left, without even buying a drink. So, if true, he was either a numpty determined to stir the shit, or a snowflake, so affected and shocked by the sight of these hideously racist figures, that he felt compelled to immediately leave. I wonder which one it was?
@ Andrew C: this morning I saw an article about two black footballers brawling in Germany. It occurred to me that nowadays the representative black man is a figure of menace. But in my innocent childhood the only black I ever saw was a golliwog on a jam jar label – a cheerful soul, obviously a friendly bringer of pleasure and joy.
It’s therefore odd that a war should have been waged against Golly, especially as his job has been resurrected by the adverts on TV, where smiling black males spend their time cosseting their children and spreading pleasure and joy (but with less attractive haircuts).
They will prize my 80-year-old golly from my cold dead hands.
@ dearieme re “odd”
There is an overlap between those waging war on golliwogs and those making a living by complaining about racial disharmony and the alleged racial discrimination against blacks.
When I was at high school it was 2 stuck together total 1600 kids over the road another of 1200 kids.
Today, one is gone the other halved, no new schools built in the area.
This since the early 80s .
https://www.statista.com/statistics/478929/teachers-in-the-uk/
Fewer pupils
Schools closing down
Number of teachers (overwhelmingly paid out of the public purse) continues to increase.
It’s a puzzler.
Just checked my old school in Tooting.
It had 1500 boys there in the early 1980s
School capacity
1200
Number of pupils
925
FIVE plod turned up to the White Hart pub in Grays to confiscate the dangerous items. Glad to see the thin blue line at last have the resources necessary to combat high level criminality.
CAMRA have waded in by removing said licensed premises from their Good Pub guide. I have removed CAMRA from my discretionary purchases list.
Re: the topic, England and Wales saw a 6.5% increase in population between 2011 and 2021. Between 2009 and 2019 there was a 12.7 million / 8% increase in those aged under 16, so it seems there are more rugrats not fewer.
Coward – I know, that’s why my wife is pregnant again.
I’m doing my part.
Are those the under-16 rugrats with long white whiskers who come over on the boats, Addolff??
We had a local school closed due to declining numbers, at the meeting I brought up that the council had announced a housing densification plan which the school board deemed wasn’t relevant.
We now, years later, have a school with a row of porta-cabins to accommodate the extra kids instead of 2 schools.
Still at least they were able to rent out the old school to a private school which should pay for the porta-cabins I suppose
The penny drops! Labour wants to drive children out of private schools to fill up the emptying state schools so that labour-voting teachers can be kept in their cushy jobs.
Some schools are definitely expanding- my old grammar school in Kent had 600 pupils when I started there 30 years ago. It’s now got over 1400, 60% of which are none white…
Some schools are definitely expanding- my old grammar school in Kent had 600 pupils when I started there 30 years ago. It’s now got over 1400, 60% of which are non-white…
@Steve
Congrats. I think one reason why people are having less kids is because they leave it later and that doesn’t always work.
Certainly I didn’t know that to be more sure of things working you need to start when she is 28 at latest.
This is because you can only see a Doctor if you have been trying for 2 years.
IVF works best at 32 or younger.
If I had known that we would have 2 not 1 child
@Andy… “When I started there 30 years ago…”
One of the best schools in my area of London was Catholic, all white, many kids of Irish-heritage. I believe it remains Catholic, albeit Nigerian-heritage Catholic.
Coward – thank you. We’re no doubt getting too old for this shit (well, I am) but I think we, modern people, worry about far too much in general and babies are always good news.
VP – very cunning of the Conservatives to introduce voter ID *except* for postal voting.
Steve,
We’re probably just going through some sort of evolutionary adjustment.
Most of this is just about choices. There are eternal children out there, whether it’s men who do non-jobs, or women who do dumb degrees. Probably living in a flat in London. We’ve probably let bad genes survive that used to previously die in childhood or on the battlefield 100 years ago.
Like I met a barista in Starbucks one day who told me he had a computer science degree. And I was like “so why are you doing this?” “Oh, too much stress”. But that means he’s never going to have a house, family. But I’ve also met people who taught themselves to code and have jobs and girlfriends.
“Oh, too much stress”, that’s a cope if ever I heard one. Coders code – that’s what they do.
I think people nowadays are simply too self absorbed, mollycoddled, narcissistic, and simply not serious any more.
Hence why we have the typical incel, soy-boy type who never grows up, and still spends all their time on the X-Box. Man children who are constantly running away from responsibility and obligation.
I remember reading my Grandads diary (not long after his death) regarding the birth of my Mum.
My Nana had only a couple days off work to recover then it was business as usual for her.
He didn’t have so much as a days leave – they couldn’t afford it. But he was stoic about it. You just got on with things back then.
I’m wondering if Putin might just give us one of these epochal wars, that we may ship off a good few of these sorts to fight, and help cleanse the gene pool.
@ BlokeinBrum
Regretfully, I point out that when we have a war it isn’t the soy-boys who fight it.