Strong Families - Strong Societies
In July 2024 I was invited to give two ten minute talks at the Global Home Education Conference in Manchester, England.
Those talks were not recorded at the time, so I recorded them a few weeks later when I presented them to another group of people.
On this occasion I reversed the order of the talks , and took a little longer than the original time allotted!
This is the first of the recordings, and it lasts for 16 minutes.
In this presentation I look at the UK tax system and recent political manifestos in order to illustrate ubiquitous cultural changes which have devalued the family. I then review major British scandals in which justice has been fought for not by government or by public bodies, but by families!
My take-home point is that in any society, families are the only hope for justice.
Those talks were not recorded at the time, so I recorded them a few weeks later when I presented them to another group of people.
On this occasion I reversed the order of the talks , and took a little longer than the original time allotted!
This is the first of the recordings, and it lasts for 16 minutes.
In this presentation I look at the UK tax system and recent political manifestos in order to illustrate ubiquitous cultural changes which have devalued the family. I then review major British scandals in which justice has been fought for not by government or by public bodies, but by families!
My take-home point is that in any society, families are the only hope for justice.
Category
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LearningTranscript
00:00you
00:30I was given two topics at the global education conference 10 minutes so
00:42these will be short the second one was this one strong families strong
00:47societies I thought how am I going to handle this there's gonna be other
00:52people that I don't know how to handle it but I settled on this first question
00:59do governments agree that strong families make strong societies well my
01:08first example was this you can't read it it's too small I'm just crediting the
01:12website UK tax history which actually does this wonderful record of British of
01:24UK tax system on lots of topics and this is the one for income tax so I've
01:30blown the graphic up here with the three arrows on it and I've blown up the
01:35numbers with the table on the right hand side and the three areas the top arrow
01:43is single persons allowance and then does any of you remember married man's
01:49tax allowance I do from my early years my dad was always talking about it and
01:56then underneath it child allowance per child and a family was taxed as a family
02:05it was not taxed as two individuals and so on the top line 1997 to 1980 you got
02:14your single persons allowance and if you were married man you got that much
02:20extra and that was the amount you got and then for every child you had you had
02:25extra 365 pounds now I'm not talking about today's money I'm talking about
02:31the money back then right and this is the money they got back then as you can
02:40see I've put the percentages at the bottom it was around 60% in those three
02:47years right but what happened next well the next line down the yellow strip has
02:58got the dates continuing but notice the child allowance per child has disappeared
03:07in that time so you lost that and then yeah you don't worry too much it's just
03:18I'm showing it's a blank line there right and then right at the end there's
03:23some changes and there's two letters underneath TR if I blow that up you'll
03:30see before we get to that column we're still around the 60% however in fact the
03:35very last year of this flat rate 89 to 90 it was even 72% increase for being a
03:44married person 60% is about right because you have some shared things so
03:49the government supported married men with families but what happened next
03:58well now the pages are on graphics so up there on the top right is where the
04:05figures we've been looking at you come down and in the lower box in 1990 they
04:15began to introduce changes on individual tax allowance in one's own right and the
04:23amount transferable was progressively restricted from 1995 and abolished
04:34completely in 2001 and since then husbands and wives have got a separate
04:42tax allowance and so you do not get tax allowance for a wife or a husband if she
04:50or he is not working and that disadvantages home educating families so
04:59the tax system is anti-family now right they disadvantage families today and the
05:08majority of home educating families included example number one example
05:15number two we've just had a we've just had in Britain a general election the
05:22graphic you don't need the details I'm just showing you the dotted blue line is
05:28where the number of candidates on the right drops below 100 and the one with
05:36the red line through is the independents which was 459 independents stood in the
05:41last general election and they're not a party so I've discounted them so I looked
05:47at the manifestos of the seven largest parties with candidates everybody over
05:55a hundred there they are you can read them Workers Party of Britain if you've
06:02not heard of it it's the one that was led by George Galloway they didn't get
06:08any candidates in extreme left-wing you've heard of reform most media wants to call it
06:17right hard right it's not it is relatively right but not hard right Social Democratic Party is
06:26historic party SDP it came it had a brief spell in the limelight when people broke away from the
06:36Labour and Liberal Democrats and formed it the remains of that party had a donor who paid for
06:43them to have a lot of candidates in this election they didn't get any but those are the seven parties
06:52with the most candidates I was presenting this to an international audience so this is where they
06:58stand in my understanding on the left to right scale you can see I've put the Workers Party of
07:06Great Britain out on the left not as far out on the right is reform and then the others are mostly
07:15left apart from the Conservatives who like to struggle both sides of the line these days one
07:21time they would been further out to the right but they are struggling it okay in that two parties
07:28had a real strong statement about the family one was one said which or the question is which party
07:38believes strong families are the bedrock of a thriving society we support family formation
07:46and give parents back control we will support family formation give parents back control and
07:54another party said and which one this becomes of critical importance when we look at the bedrock
08:01of society the working-class family any guesses on who said the first one reform you're right
08:10what about the second one there's a clue in the wording hey no working part right so you've got
08:21the two extreme parties in Britain saying they believe the family is the bedrock of society okay
08:31so there they are those are the two what did the others say okay the center ground well I don't
08:39think it really is this is what they said about the family we are the Conservatives we are delivering
08:46the largest ever expansion of childcare in history Labour Party high quality early education and
08:55childcare is a crucial opportunity to transform life chances too often it's unavailable or
09:02unaffordable Liberal Democrats flexible affordable childcare and early years education is a critical
09:10part of our economic infrastructure and helps those helps close the attainment gap between the
09:17rich and the poor right do the government agree that strong families make strong societies the
09:27promotion of state-funded childcare disadvantages families today like the other it also undermines
09:38those who elect to home educate their children you see what they've done they've taken the money
09:44off families to be a family and they're putting it into childcare not to be a family this is their
09:57policy it's not just the UK this is happening everywhere so my next statement was this families
10:08are more important than governments why do I say that governments do not fight for justice families
10:19do illustration I've got to back up statements like that with evidence what's this about we've
10:30just had in the last few months the post office horizon scandal right who has not been delivering
10:41justice for years to these people to these post office workers the government has been blocking
10:48justice who fought for the justice from the family for the people their families right we've had the
10:59infected blood scandal it was reported on recently right who fought for justice the families who
11:10didn't deliver justice till it became an embarrassment the government okay Windrush do
11:22you remember that about ten years ago who was blocking justice for these people the home office
11:32who fought for justice families right Oh Hillsborough remember Hillsborough sorry about
11:41the quality of these photographs these are old website uploads I managed to find their lower
11:48resident today but right notice the one on the right finally the Hillsborough families know the
11:59truth the institutions of the state for decades blocked the truth they blocked justice their self
12:09interest stopped it families are more important than governments because they look for justice
12:17oh there's been other things National Health Service two of the recent decades living recent
12:28living memory there reports into scandals in hospitals there are more right those are the two
12:36that came up what about child sexual exploitation children's services police and local authorities
12:45all criticized in one two three four five six six places I've listed same problem spread out
12:57families have fought for justice the victims have sought for justice the state has been interested
13:06in its self-interest when things go wrong governments protect themselves families fight
13:15for justice in England and other parts of the UK we've seen a significant growth in numbers of
13:29being electively home educated the state wants to reserve reverse this trend but will not face
13:38up to what's driving it essentially schools are failing to provide many children with a suitable
13:47education what why are people saying no to state education peer-on-peer bullying and abuse a
13:56long-standing problem schools unable to support neuro device children the diverse children those
14:04with other forms of special educational needs well-being and mental health concerns fresh
14:14insights into home education because through lockdowns families saw what their children were
14:19learning in how different they were when they were not going to school increase in a culture
14:26which makes unreasonable demands on parents and blames them for their children not coping in
14:33schools we've just seen fines go up for not attendance at schools many more what about sex
14:44and relationships education it's driving people out of the schools and the government will not
14:52face up to it we've just had a change of government and the new government is the new Labour government
14:59is coming out with the same rhetoric about schools as the old conservative government did change of
15:07government no change in pig-headedness over this topic right the state's only response to parental
15:19rejection in its school system is to threat of its school systems threatening with fines and
15:26imprisonment as home educating families in England and Wales know it's becoming clear that strong
15:35families are not the only ones are the only ones who will be able to resist the pressure to conform
15:42all right this is the state we're in we have witnessed several generations of parents who
15:54have been seduced through offers of state-funded child rearing and education consequently they
16:01have surrendered their parenting responsibility to the state and to its employees home educating
16:11families apparent are amongst the few who have resisted this drift can they now inspire others
16:19parents to take back their parenthood that's my question I think we need it if we want strong
16:30societies we have to have strong families