Nursery World - Ship without a rudder

The Government is ignoring the plight of the populace, which urgently needs a strategy to help it, says Michael Pettavel

We live in a time of contradictions. I have often criticised others for being (in the words of Mike Leigh) too ‘miserablist’. I didn’t subscribe to the ‘Toxic’ view of childhood expressed by Sue Palmer and worried that there was a tendency to keep picking holes in society, revelling in what was wrong rather than what is going right. However, last week has shaken me up a bit. It may be a down phase to my normally optimistic, cheery outlook – but everything really does feel a bit critical at the moment.

We have the road crash of Universal Credit genuinely making people poorer, the OECD telling us it will take five generations before those with the least prospects can gain an ‘average’ income, a top judge indicating that it is easier to get children into care than keep them with their families, university grants in crisis and a school asking parents for toilet rolls and Blu Tack. Please note, I have made a special effort not to go off about early years funding, business rates and 30 hour codes…

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