I recently published a post on the Child Poverty Action Group’s report which ranked the UK 24th out of 29 European countries. My wife took me to task over this and Ryan Conor provides the evidence I published in haste.

A few years ago, a report appeared from UNICEF which claimed that Britain was the worst possible place for children to live: the whole thing was lapped up gleefully by everyone from the Daily Mail (as a stick to beat Labour) to Polly Toynbee (in her crusade for more cash for early years). Now a ‘new’ report for the Child Poverty Action Group – surprise, surprise – says pretty much the same thing and is being given top billing on Today and in the Mail. Today’s Mail said that the CPAG research ‘echoed’ the UNICEF report. Well, it would do, wouldn’t it, since the principal author of both reports is Professor Jonathan Bradshaw of the Social Policy Research Unit at York University who decides which criteria to use in drawing up the league tables.

Now, having read some of his work, I think Professor Bradshaw is pretty good at his job. He can write reasonably well aside from occasional lapses into jargon – which can’t always be said for academics – and has developed a perfectly reasonable theory about how to measure relative childhood happiness and quality of life across countries. But it is just that: a theory. Yet it is being treated as irrefutable fact despite his league tables (as with the UNICEF report) giving equal weight to different things that few would regard as of equal importance or reliability. The CPAG report doesn’t tell you anything about Professor Bradshaw’s weighting of different aspects; in order to understand why the UK does so badly, one has to understand his weighting. To do that you need to fork out $34 for an article he wrote with Dominic Richardson of the OECD (in an independent capacity) in a journal called Child Indicators Research, published earlier this month.

The research splits 43 indicators into 19 components across 7 domains, giving each domain equal weight. There, you find, for example, that the reason the UK does poorly on child health is because of its relatively low childhood immunisation rates. These are given equal weight to infant mortality and to something called ‘health behaviour’ based on questions to children about whether they brush their teeth, are too fat or eat apples. The UK is apparently doing fairly well on these latter scores, but has been downgraded by its low immunisation rates. I wonder which newspaper and which morning current affairs programme has most to answer for on that score?

Then, there’s something called “subjective wellbeing” – which is ranked as importantly as health or education. This has three components – each one three times as important to a country’s score as whether kids can read properly. These are “personal wellbeing – the percentage of children reporting high life satisfaction” – whatever that means; wellbeing at school – whether children “feel pressure at school” (bad, apparently) or “like school a lot” (good); and ’self-defined health” – whether children think they are healthy. Each of these three subjective components is ranked more importantly than whether a country’s babies die in infancy. Anyway, needless to say, British kids score below average on this lot. But it is comforting to learn that in league table-free Finland, regarded as the best education system by many, children feel just as much pressure and are just as likely not to like school as their British counterparts. The authors tell us this is because “educational attainment may be a well-becoming indicator rather than a well-being indicator.” I did warn you Prof Bradshaw was guilty of occasional lapses into jargon.

Next up is relationships. There are just two components here, each worth considerably more to a country’s ranking than good literacy or low infant mortality. And as Britain is slightly above average here, we probably shouldn’t complain. But it is again subjective and is based on the percentage of children who “find it easy to talk to” their parents and who find their classmates “kind and helpful.” In case you were wondering, France is not a good place for this sort of thing. I trust President Sarkozy has a taskforce on the case already.

Then we turn to material wellbeing, which is based on relative poverty indices, measures of deprivation and children in workless households. This seems, like health, to be a reasonably objective indicator. Children in the UK are, apparently, among the most likely to be living in workless households, but the authors tell us this does not mean they are lacking in consumer durables (colour TVs, computers or cars) or under severe economic strain. The next ‘domain’ is risk and safety. The three components here are ‘violence and violent behaviour’ (fighting or experiencing bullying), child deaths and risky behaviour (early intercourse, smoking, drugs, drunkenness). Surprisingly, perhaps, the UK does a bit better on this list, being brought down by youthful drunkenness, but having a relatively low number of child deaths.

Then we turn to education. The UK gained slightly above average PISA scores (among the countries in this report) in literacy, numeracy and science (though the combination of these is only worth the same as each of the subjective questions above). The other two components are educational participation of 15-19 year-olds and in pre-school and NEET rates (those not in work, education or training). Since there is an obvious correlation between post-16 participation and NEETs, the authors have chosen to give half of the education score to this aspect of education. There is no mention of university participation, where the UK does well. And the relatively high pre-school participation rates, where the UK is also doing much better than many – and which most researchers would regard as the most crucial element – are apparently worth just a third as much as 16-19 participation/NEETs. That is the authors’ choice but this is not an accurate representation of any education system. There is a final domain for housing issues, which is a second poverty grouping.

In their academic article, the authors themselves show how easy it is to manipulate the data – and, to be fair, are happy to offer it to anyone else wanting to do so. They pick just seven indicators – child immunisation, ‘high life satisfaction’, talking to dads, lack of educational possessions, recent bullying, maths scores and houses with housing problems and the UK finds itself up in 18th position instead of 24th, ahead now of France and Italy.

I have no quibble with researchers reporting these indicators and highlighting where Britain ranks according to each one of them. I also think it is important that young people’s voices are heard – as is increasingly the case in schools. But I worry about arbitrary weightings which give far more weight to subjective – and perhaps culturally sensitive – questions than to matters of life and death or pretty basic educational outcomes. The CPAG should publish all this information on its website, but if the media weren’t so keen on talking our country down, they might actually explain the arbitrary nature of these rankings – and own up where our low rankings reflected their own efforts rather than the policies of the government. Ryan Conor.

We all make mistakes.

It’s depressing that after all these years of A Labour government the UK fares so badly. Here’s the table in full.

1 Netherlands
2 Sweden
3 Norway
4 Iceland
5 Finland
6 Denmark
7 Slovenia
8 Germany
9 Ireland
10 Luxembourg
11 Austria
12 Cyprus
13 Spain
14 Belgium
15 France
16 Czech Republic
17 Slovakia
18 Estonia
19 Italy
20 Poland
21 Portugal
22 Hungary
23 Greece
24 United Kingdom
25 Romania
26 Bulgaria
27 Latvia
28 Lithuania
29 Malta

Source: BBC.

The table includes 43 separate indicators summarised in the report into seven categories.

Health including indicators on infant mortality and birth weight, the UK ranked 24th
Subjective Wellbeing including indicators on how children feel about their lives and health, the UK ranked 21st
Relationships including indicators on how easy children say they find it to talk to their parents and get on with their classmates, the UK rankled 15th
Material Resources including indicators on child poverty, the UK ranked 24th
Education including indicators on achievement and youth inactivity, the UK ranked 22nd
Housing and Environment including indicators on overcrowding and housing problems, the UK ranked 17th

Source: Child Poverty Action Group.

Still don’t be fooled that the Tories will be any better – they’ll leave it to market forces and a quick look around the world reveals that market forces is pretty keen on using children as slave labour.

Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor in their article Love thy neighbour defend kindness and debunk the myth of humans as basically selfish, it’s a worthwhile read and here’s quote to whet your whistle.

Capitalism is no system for the kind-hearted. Even its devotees acknowledge this while insisting that, however tawdry capitalist motives may be, the results are socially beneficial. Untrammelled free enterprise generates wealth and happiness for all. Like all utopian faiths, this is largely delusory. Free markets erode the societies that harbour them. The great paradox of modern capitalism, the ex-Thatcherite John Gray has pointed out (False Dawn, 1998), is that it undermines the very social institutions on which it once relied – family, career, community. For increasing numbers of Britons and Americans, the “enterprise culture” means a life of overwork, anxiety and isolation. Competition reigns supreme, with even small children forced to compete against each other and falling ill as a result. A competitive society, one that divides people into winners and losers, breeds unkindness. Kindness comes naturally to us, but so too do cruelty and aggression. People placed under unremitting pressure become estranged from each other. Like the bullied child who bullies others in turn, individuals coerced by circumstances become coercers. Sympathies contract as open-heartedness begins to feel too exposed. Paranoia blossoms as people seek scapegoats for their unhappiness. Such scapegoating is a self-betrayal because it involves sacrificing our kindness. But this is a price many pay when tribal loyalties, sometimes vicious in their expression, replace wider communal bonds. A culture of “hardness” and cynicism grows, fed by envious admiration of those who seem to thrive – the rich and famous, our modern priesthood – in this tooth-and-claw environment.

What is to be done?

Nothing, many would say. Human beings are innately selfish and that is that. Newspapers bombard us with scientific evidence to back up this pessimism. We read about greedy chimpanzees, selfish genes, ruthless mate-selection strategies, even about meerkats – those famously cooperative creatures – who instead of looking out for their fellows spend most of their time “watching their own backs”. Richard Dawkins of “selfish gene” fame lays it on the line: “Human society based simply on the gene’s law of universal ruthless selfishness would be a very nasty society in which to live. But unfortunately, however much we deplore something, this does not stop it being true …” Yet Dawkins does not despair: “If you wish, as I do, to build a society in which individuals cooperate generously and unselfishly towards a common good, you can expect little help from biological nature. Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish … Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs.”

Although we must accept that nature makes people nasty, “we” – that is, altruistic people like Dawkins who somehow, mysteriously, have escaped their genetic destiny – can none the less set things right. Here we are truly in the realm of magical kindness, akin to the type experienced in infancy, but which now is required to overcome not just ordinary human unhappiness but the realities of human biology. The speciousness of Dawkins’s diagnosis of the human predicament is matched by the absurdity of this solution.

The report Monitoring poverty and social exclusion 2008 by the New Policy Institute commissioned and published by the Joseph Rowntree Trust uses 56 statistics measuring the State of poverty and social exclusion over the last 10 years and reports the progress over the last five and previous five years as show in this table.

The report concludes that many of the government’s initiatives have stalled and the government needs to review policy. I still contend that some policies such as SureStart are long term and their effects are still to filter though to these measures.

Dan Paskini has a different take on the figures.

So to supplement their analysis, it is interesting to look at those indicators which are the responsibility of the Department for Work and Pensions, and to use the cut off point as September 2004. The DWP is, after all, the government department which spends the largest amount of money on trying to reduce poverty.

Between 1998 and 2004, the DWP and its predecessor, the Department for Social Security, were headed by Alastair Darling and Andrew Smith, key allies of Gordon Brown. In September 2004, Andrew Smith resigned and control over the DWP passed to a series of supporters of Tony Blair – Alan Johnson, David Blunkett, John Hutton, (Peter Hain) and now James Purnell. From 2006, its work was supplemented by the Social Exclusion Task Force.

It is therefore possible to compare the two approaches – the “Brownite” approach under Darling and Smith, which was based around higher benefits plus improved state-provided services to help people into work, as opposed to the “Blairite” approach which emphasises a greater role for the private sector in delivering services for targeted “hard to reach” groups, together with emphasis on the need for poor individuals to take greater personal responsibility for getting out of poverty.

Of the 32 indicators which DWP policies were primarily responsible for affecting, under Darling and Smith 17 improved, 11 stayed steady, and 4 got worse. After the “Brownites” lost control of the DWP and the “Blairite” approach was tried instead, 4 improved, 17 stayed steady and 11 got worse.

Which is an endorsement of Brown’s policies however as Dan writes, one reason for the poor performance after 2004 was Brown turned his attentions and spending priorities away from reducing poverty and on to other causes. Now how can we get Brown to turn his attentions back?

I/m not a supporter of the death penalty, but the case of Jason King, sentenced to just 24 years, does start to try my position.

Jason King, 38, from Balfour Street in Newtownards, County Down, was told that he was every parent’s worst nightmare.

Mr Justice Gillen said he considered King’s case to be “probably the worst instance of multiple child abuse” that he had come across.

He was sentenced at Belfast Crown Court after being convicted on 58 counts.

These included nine rapes and 25 indecent assaults which dated from 1986 when he separated from his wife.

King was said to have groomed and preyed on the schoolgirls, aged between 12 and up to 15. Two of them became pregnant.

Mr Justice Gillen instructed that he sign the sex offenders’ register for the rest of his life and barred him from ever working with children.

He also stipulated that in order to protect the public from King, believed to be at high risk of reoffending, would be released on licence.

I’m firmly of the belief that King should never be released; he will always be a danger to children, why should another child suffer at his hands?

Channel 4 News reports Padded lampposts are being trialled in Brick Lane, London to prevent people who walk into lampposts whilst texting injuring themselves. Padding! How about spikes and do the gene pool a favour.

I’ve always been a supporter of 24-hour licence laws. A government review will also back the laws, with ministers pointing to the latest figures, which suggest a fall of 1% in overall crime and of 10% in violent crime committed since licensing laws changed. Critics will point out that the continental-style cafe culture that the laws were supposed to encourage has failed to appear. After just three brief years, I don’t know why anyone expects a culture change – try again in 10 years.

Imagine the scene, you’re sat in your sister’s car, waiting at the traffic lights when two youths walk past, one of whom lobs a half-eaten chocolate bar through the open window, you get out of the car and remonstrate with the youths, before you know it you’re fatally wounded, fall into a coma and die just eight days later. Sounds like fiction? No, that’s what happened to Evren Anil. I know it’s one incident but it makes you stop and think? Soure: BBC.