At least, that seems to be what Ryan Shorthouse is
leading up to...
In today's Britain, people are impoverished by weak connections with, and minimal support from, family and friends. Iain Duncan Smith, the secretary of state for work and pensions, will announce this week new indicators to measure child poverty . Poor social networks should be included as a contributor to and signal of poverty.
Wha..?
Lamentably, social isolation seems to be on the increase. Single-person households have doubled over the past half-century. Time-use surveys indicate that people are spending more time working and looking after their own children than some decades ago, squeezing time for community and recreational activity.
Presumably, they are only concerned about government-approved activities?
When loneliness is combined with material deprivation, the result is toxic. A cycle of worklessness, indebtedness and depression is so much harder to escape. Policymakers need to focus resource and attention on these people.
How are you going to identify them, then?
Professionals such as health visitors need to focus efforts not only on social groups traditionally most likely to be associated with social exclusion – those on low income, teenage mothers – but also those identified as having poor social networks.
I just despair... WAIT! Don't send anyone round!
Duncan Smith is right to seek a richer understanding of poverty and its causes. Social isolation and loneliness are a growing scourge that should be understood as a major factor contributing to impoverishment in modern Britain. To support people in poverty, to help them escape it, policy is needed to enable them to foster stronger and more diverse social networks.
Is there no end to the personal details in which the government seeks to meddle?
12 comments:
Maybe they could restore pubs clubs and bi go halls. Now how could they do that?
They can always make penpals with the guys on the nonce wing, I suppose.
But you can count on people like Ryan Shithouse to come up with completely metaphysical concepts which will require retrofitting into what the less keenly-brained people these days call 'metrics'.
Statistics, or facts and figures to us.
The health visitors might as well ask what a person's favourite colour is or which composer lends himself best to melancholy music.
You could be forgiven for thinking that Ryan Shorthouse has been snorting his belly button lint when he comes up with this:
Indeed, the Equality of Opportunity Project in the US has shown that for two children with parents on the same income and with the same educational qualifications, the child who lives in a more mixed socio-economic neighbourhood is likely to experience higher social mobility.
It would be too taxing of Shithouse to analyze why someone would live in an area beneath their social status. Why, only a raving leftard would do something that daft. Oh.
Doesn't this twerp realise that some of us have poor social networks because we spend all our time working or travelling to and from work in order to pay the absurdly inflated bills and the taxes required to keep legions of otherwise unemployable box-ticking and clipboard-wielding social access monitoring officers in employment?
Btw, a lot of people are "isolated" because they're the sort of people nobody in their right mind would want to associate with.
It occurred to me that what "single, teen-aged mothers" need is a somewhat smaller social circle, it might make paternity a trifle easier to ascribe.
A bit more seriously, my wife and I, no youngsters ourselves, have befriended a significantly older widower who, since the smoking ban forced him out of his local, has been left friendless. He lives near-by and pops round about twice a week. He brings his own beer and he loves to sit and have a chat and a fag or two. He's fully conversant with current affairs and has some rather rigorous opinions as to how criminals should be dealt with.
It wasn't until very recently that we found out that he'd been decorated for bravery whilst serving in the Malayan Emergency.
It's angrifying that the "government" proposing State Approved Friends is the same "government" which refuses to restore the greatest social networking institution that this country has ever had, the pub, now placed out-of-bounds to so many older people by the smoking ban.
Ah, that's why I don't have time to myself in the pub, there's never anyone in their right mind.
When I was working I had little time to develop a wide social network (bloody mouthful, that). As a carer I have less. Being by myself, enjoying my own company (and that of others in the blogosphere) is enough. Am I borderline sociopathic? Is there a gummint scheme to help me?
Another piece of eye-watering hypocrisy from a Left-wing prat, whose 'comrades' have spent decades undermining the best 'social network' ever known -the traditional family.
Do we still have a socialist government? Bloody wet Camoron - just think how much worse this sort of crap will become if the drEDs are elected?
So let me make sure I've got this right. Having comprehensively ridiculed and then undermined the traditional family to the point of its destruction, the Left is now whining about the inevitable consequence - social isolation?
They really are every bit as thick as we've always thought, aren't they?
It is likely that the powers that be are nervous of 'isolated people'.
these are the ones that brood on their injustices and then -suddenly - it is 'Goodbye!' to a beloved leader.
When I worked I found myself surrounded by leftards(NHS) whose showed natural enthusiasm for the hand that fed them, so my opportunities to speak honestly limited my social inclusion. Now I am happy to surf the internet for like minded heretics and find boring my family with my nonpc opinions less necessary to my blood pressure.
"Now how could they do that?"
Gosh, let me think...
"You could be forgiven for thinking that Ryan Shorthouse has been snorting his belly button lint when he comes up with this..."
On the salary he's probably on, I bet he can afford the good stuff!
"Btw, a lot of people are "isolated" because they're the sort of people nobody in their right mind would want to associate with."
Good point. I doubt Ryan has ever met any.
"It occurred to me that what "single, teen-aged mothers" need is a somewhat smaller social circle, it might make paternity a trifle easier to ascribe."
:D
"Another piece of eye-watering hypocrisy from a Left-wing prat, whose 'comrades' have spent decades undermining the best 'social network' ever known -the traditional family."
A VERY good point!
"They really are every bit as thick as we've always thought, aren't they?"
Not really. They seem to have a good plan to replace that with...well, people like themselves.
"Now I am happy to surf the internet for like minded heretics and find boring my family with my nonpc opinions less necessary to my blood pressure."
Hmmm. Maybe I could get a grant to do this...? ;)
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